Natural selection 2 is a high skill game that combines elements from many competitive games. It has rts elements and many arena shooters. In the end, it is a very flavorful fps game with wonderful graphics. It has a great blend of skill ceiling and fun, and the community on ensl is very open to suggestions on the comp mod (the mod that balances the game around 6v6). The community is very close so you will get to know a lot of the players very quickly. So if you're an fps fan and looking for an fps to get into that's not very repetitive and has lots of beefy strategy, ns2 is a great choice.

There are several places where players play outside of public matches.

Our small little world series event. Organized and with referees from ensl, it is the place where teams go to show their greatest hands. The events cost most of the budget unfortunatly (around thirty thousand dollars), so the rest goes to the winning teams.

Home of the developer and the community development team, or uwe and cdt.

The administrators and referees of the world cup, also the home of discussion of titus's comp mod and they also host pick up games for eu west. Very few players use ensl for pick games though. Europian Natural Selection League, now goes by just NSL.

A mod made to make the game more interesting and balanced by competetive players since the cdt have stopped working on the game. As of now, compmod 3.5 is going to be the version used in season 5. Version 4, which will likely try out lots of new awesome things, won't be made until season 5 is done, so train now so you can discuss compmod 4 on the forums!

This is where eu teams have their team mic channels, and you will need to be in this if you have joined an ensl pick up game. They set up scrimmages by talking to the heads of other EU teams they have on their friendslist, then they hop into the ensl channel for their respective teams and have a match on an ensl server.

ensl.org -is the address in teamspeak
no password

Mostly EU servers that serve for NSL ladder matches and NSL pick up games.

type in nsl into search bar -this will bring up all the nsl servers
ns2nsl -the password for most nsl servers

This is where most pick up games are played. It and it's servers are hosted by Kaneh, who hosts them out of Texas. Every night at at around 9 pm - 2 am Eastern us time, they have 3-8 pick up games. If you want to talk to a bunch of competetive players, this is the best place to start. Join the mumble and and wait in the channel called

the pug bar

until night comes around, then tell them you are new to ns2.

50.97.73.146 -adress for mumble
64738 -port
no password

Dallas -what you search in ns2 to find the r/ns2 servers.
pug -the password for the r/nst pick up game servers

Not gonna happen before season 5 starts (already did), but you can talk to random people in the r/ns2 mumble about pick up games, drilling and stuff like that. They will likely direct you to a division 3 or 4 team you can drill and scrim with if they have open slots. But the standard is to play in pick up games and add people and network to get yourself on a team.

Mod for ns2 that is whitelisted on all competitive servers. Allows users to customize things like hitsounds, your hud, in game sound, lighting, and other things. Mendasp is the primary developer.

-tournaments, scrimmages, and pick up games are 6v6
-marines are always stronger than aliens at top level play
-it takes roughly 15 seconds to respawn
-compmod is used in all competitive games. Before compmod, marine winrate was around 80%+
-you need to learn the maps tram, summit, veil, jambi, biodome, and mineral(it's not refinery)
-aliens regenerate hp at a rate of 1 every second with no upgrades or structures around
-Each team has a commander, who generates no res and can hop out of the chair occasionally.
-alien spawn is always generated first, which only matters on a few maps, namely tram
-different weapons have different draw times and movement speed when equipped
-the shotgun has different reload times based on how many shots are left.
-it's possible for marines to boost almost every vent in the game

>Solo boostable vents
There are vents in the game which marines can enter without the help of other marines. This makes these vents much less safe for aliens to hide in while they regenerate hp. Some vents that can be solo boosted are: the mezzanine vent on tram, the ore processing vent on tram from both sides, the reactor vent on summit from the glass hallway side, and the west junction/overlook vent entrances on veil.





>duo boostable vents
These vents can be boosted with two marines. One marine crouches, then the other jumps on his head. They both start jumping, then the top marine crouch jumps into the vent. Examples of duo boostable vents are: the skylights entrance to the left vent on veil, the organ donation vents on jambi, the crossroads vent from both sides on summit, the summit reception entrance vent on summit.





>blueprint boostable vents
This is similair to the double boost, but the two marines do the boost on top of a blue print of an armory. This is rarely used, but it's commonly used on tram for marines to snip the skulks in the observations vent. You place a blueprint down in front of the vent, and the marines either find a way to trick jump onto the armory blueprint or a third marine needs to be there to boost the two marines onto the blueprint. When they are both on the blueprint, they do a duo boost, and when the marine is in the vent you recycle the blueprint. it's better if you can bait a lifeform onto the blueprint to cancel it, but it's not likely to happen.

Drilling is the primary method of improving ones mechanical skill. In order to drill, you need a drilling server. You can either ask a server admin to turn cheats on his server for you, or forward your ports and host your own server.

The basic order of opening your own drilling server goes as follows:
-Have comp playing friends online, if you don't have any add people from ensl or pick up games
-Forward your ports and stuff
-host a server while mods such as ns2+ are turned on in your mods tab on the main menu
-In console, type these commands

>sv_autobalance false
>sv_cheats 1
>bind F1 marine -make sure to capitalize the F
>bind F2 skulk -skulk can be changed to lerk or fade or onos or gorge
>bind F3 swap -so you don't need to go to the readyroom

With those enabled, you can now drill with another user. Whenever you die, you need to immediately hit F1 or F2 so that you respawn instantly where you died.

So in your first drilling session, you should do as follows:

-in the server with cheats active, tell your friend to go to a room and give him the console commands
-the marine and skulk fight in the room
-when somebody dies, they hit F1 or F2 to respawn in the location
-when somebody respawns, both lifeforms reset to have maybe 3-10 feet between eachother, they then fight again

Now if this is skulk vs marine in a room with moderate cover, marine should eventually win 85% of the fights. You should try this in various room and spots around the map to make sure that both of you can fight skulks as a marine, and land bites as a skulk.

Eventually, you can try other types of drilling. Typing:
>tres
into console gives your team 100 tres, and
>autobuild
makes all tech research instantly. This allows you to do other types of drilling. Some common types of drilling of advanced players are

-1/1 marine vs lerk
-1/2 or 2/1 shotgun marine vs carapace and metabolize fade, or just a raw fade

If you want to reset your upgrades, type
>sv_reset
into console

"Lit lifeform coming to your position!"

A majority of the played maps are marine sided. Marines however, have slower rotation speeds, a larger reliance on tres, reload times, and other timed weaknesses that aliens will attempt to exploit.

Assuming there are no current orders, pinch requests, or et cetera, you would resume something called laning. This is where marines fill in positions and try to not allow aliens to break your lines. Usually marines will hold lines until they know where aliens are. If marines can confirm aliens are crushing a location, the marines getting crushed dig in and and try to stall or cause damage to the crush before they die. While the marines are being crushed, marines in other locations would pressure an alien node, until the aliens rotate to crush the marines, and this continues. This is just a basic example of laning though, as it often fluctuates based on strategy and map. Note how lanes are not always perfect, but always rational. For example, imagine the blue dots are marines:


This is an example of improper laning from marines. If aliens can scout this out, they have many options here, including a base rush, res clear, et cetera. Marines also can only lane on one node here assuming waste recycling is the alien spawn, so this would be an all in cheese for them.


Here is an example of more proper lanes. Notice how many options the marines are giving themselves. If aliens crush repairs, offload can cap supply lines, supply lines can rotate to base and the commander can hop out until the repairs marine spawns. Marines pushing x would also have success destroying an alien expansion lane. If aliens crush gravity/x marines, then marines have two nodes and a pressure team primed if the aliens decide to crush a natural.

There is no dedicated marine role, you should know how to play every role of marine every game, and as long as you can kill skulks in engagements and lane properly you can contribute to teams. However, players do have different marine styles, and knowing what your teammates excel in is very important.

-Recapper
Marine that chases skulks biting res and recaps the nodes, also usually the marine closest to base. It's important that you call out where the lifeforms are, or how many life forms you don't know the position of so that this marine knows when he needs to scout the room he's capping, just power build the node, or not even bother capping the node and just lane and get ready to try and cause damage to an incoming lifeform.

-Duo
Pair of marines laning until a hole in the alien defense opens up for them.

-Solo
Standard lanes usually have pressure/capping teams of two. When one duo is being crushed, another pressures or gets in position to pinch a lifeform. Sometimes you can leave one marine to lane or cap and just one marine to push in. This is usually done to capitalize in holes of the alien defense. If a solo is a good shot he likely won't die to a single skulk, so the higher lifeforms need to rotate in to crush the single marine, while the marine that wasn't pressuring with him is still laning to stop skulks or capped a node. Or sometimes, the solo can get into a pinching position when two marines are pressuring. If aliens scout it, they have to kill the pinch marine before crushing the pressure team less the engagement becomes highly risky for them, and in the time the solo dies the marines may have gotten the node.

Having three marines in one room is only optimal in certain scenarios, such as when you are forcing up a phase gate, or one of the marines is sweetie botting (hiding for an ambush) and you know the aliens will crush the pair, resulting in high damage for the aliens. The rest of the time, just having marines lane until you know what the aliens are going to do is usually a more fruitful use of resources.

This chronology is just the general benchmarking. It changes greatly depending on the marine play and strategy. Sometimes marines hardcap and defend, sometimes marines barely cap at all and pressure the alien nodes a lot. Sometimes you throw mines or early shotguns into the mix, but in your standard game you want tech to look something like this:

-by 15 seconds
This is where you decide your first tech. The most typical plays in compmod 3.5 are either having three capper marines building the arms lab while your pressure team/mid players leaves base, then you start either weapons or armor 1 and attempt to cap both naturals. Or all marines leave base and the comm jumps out to build the second infantry portal. First buy armory is not as common in compmod 3.5 as it is in vanilla, but occasionally you will see aggressive mines or hmg tech rushing.

-by minute 3-4
You want at least one upgrade, optimally you have 1-1 or one upgrade and double ip or shotguns You can rush your second infantry portal or you can get it as your second buy.

-by minute 5-8
You really want 1/1 minimum to deal with lerks, or aliens will start snowballing here. You want your second infantry portal up before this, and it has to be up by minute 8.

-by minute 8-11
Either 1/2 or 2/1 and shotguns/hmgs should be done by now to deal with fades. Minimum, you need 1/1 and shotguns/hmgs. If you can't do that tech by minute 11 you should probably just cheese with sentries or grenades or something, because there is no way you will win in the long run.

-11 and on
From here, marines can do weapons 3, catpacks, phase tech, or whatever they feel healthy with. Exos and jetpacks are both viable now with compmod three, but hmgs with weapons 3 and catpacks is the more common choice.

Phase gates are usually always needed to finish games that aliens don't gg on. They are usually picked up around 8-16 minutes into a game depending on how things are playing out. Phase gates have fairly low hp/armor for a structure.

Phase gates should be somewhat close in the room to areas you want to rotate to, but you also want it to be away from cover or things skulks can use to gain speed. Optimally, you want it to be at least 5 feet away from walls or cover. You can put it in rooms furthest from lifeform entry points, but this lowers marine rotation speed. If you can, you want it to be out of bile distance for gorges to bile around corners, but this is situational and rare. Another potential luxury is putting it near cover in the room, which makes it easier for skulks to get to the gate, but lerks can't harass with spikes as well. It's not advised to do this unless you are up against three lerks or something.

Map placement of phase gates is very situational.

-Near mid trigate
This is the most common use of phase gates. Three phase gates: one in base, and two forward near the middle area of the map. This makes it so that marines have good options for map rotations, and can also moderately rotate from one gate to others on foot in case the gate is being grinded (gang banged by alien lifeforms). Common applications of this are system waypoint and nanogrid gates, gravity/skylights and security/x/oxygenation gates, hub and ore processing/server room/mezzanine gates.

-Double gate
This is when marines put two forward gates in line of sight of eachother, such as a gate in hub and a gate in north tunnels to arc the warehouse hive on tram. This is usually for when marines are about to make a very aggressive play and are willing to sacrifice some map control for success in the engagement. It's not advised you try this with anybody but a formal team.

I've reached the word count max for a section, so that's all this will cover for now.

"Where the ♥♥♥♥ are our parasites?"

Aliens where mostly buffed with 3.5, taking a chunk out of the marine 80% winrate. They still are weaker, but they win nearly all pick up games below premier level, mostly because they have faster recovery than marines, cheaper scouting, faster rotations/punishes, et cetera.

Aside from the first engagement, the backbone of competitive alien play is scouting and keeping the marine rape train distracted with other things. As a new skulk, you are a living distraction. Sneak behind enemy lines, chew on their res nodes, and parasite the marines that come to kill you. Marines are less expendable than a skulk, so as long as you eventually get a node down it is a good sacrifice to waste a marines time. A marine is mathematically stronger than lerks and about on par with a fade with no upgrades, but that requires they make no mistakes. Aliens must learn to attack around tight corners, move in ways that throw off marine aim, and capitalize on marine immobility. Alien play is much more fluid and adjusts to the marine play so I can't really give as good of a general assessment of alien play, but I can cover some basic plays and scenarios.

The first movement from the aliens, otherwise known as their splits, is the first play they make. Since aliens move across the map much faster than marines, they usually choose where to take the first battle. Some examples of splits are:

-four crushing a natural
This is when aliens send four skulks to crush(or gangbang) a marine natural. If there are two marines there, it's expected that 2-4 skulks will die clearing the marines depending on their positioning. The other skulk is on the other side just parasites and tries to not get killed. This is the most common type of split. It just tries to slow down the marine expansion a bit, but also gets some scouting up so that aliens aren't blind to the rest of the marine team and can rotate to crush if they need too. If a lot of skulks survive the engagement, they usually rotate out of this to attempt to kill the first marine pressure team, or on some maps, hop naturals.

-five crushing a natural
Similar to above, but gives up some scouting for more potential momentum. Specifically, it gives the aliens a cleaner clear on the marine res node, making hopping naturals or going to marine base easier, however due to lack of parasiting it makes crushing the first marine pressure team harder. This actually is the less greedy play if you are up against premier division marines, but if you aren't then it's probably better to just do the four crush

-Even splits
This sends 2 skulks to each natural and one skulk to middle. It has the best scouting of any split, but requires some lucky picks on the marines in order to be worth doing. A common trap new teams fall into is assuming that they need to be doing even splits often and marines end up getting picks and capping both naturals AND pressuring successfully as a result.

-Crushing mid
Skulks just try to hunt down and kill the first pressure team. This is done by skulks not really pushing into marine naturals for parasites, but rather waiting around the middle area in safer spots and waiting for marines to push them. This has always been the most common split on veil, but it was deemed underwhelming on other maps for aliens. With the expansion speed of aliens increased however, this is now actually a viable strategy almost all competitive maps, especially jambi. The way aliens can afford to do this is if they fast expand, cysting to both naturals and capping both nodes simultaneously, and even trying for a fourth node with forward crags and whips to help defend it. You commonly see this on tram when aliens intend to expand from warehouse to mezzanine, or on veil when aliens want nanogrid.

Alien positioning, again, is not as linear as marine positioning, who lane until they find opportunities for aggression. Aliens will frequently change up play, and switch from deathballing to solo play. Here are some standard alien rotations. Keep in mind these are more tactical than strategic, and they can change every minute depending on what aliens think the best play is at the moment.

-Skulks pressure, lifeforms defend nodes
Lerks/fades rotate from side to side, with the intention of kill marines pushing their nodes.

-Deathball a single lane at a time
Two skulks and two higher lifeforms going down the side of one lane, killing everything in an attempt to slow down the marine economy at the sacrifice of some of their own res.

-Skulk deathball defensively, lifeforms decap
Skulks deathball around mid and their naturals, higher lifeforms try to kill recapping marines. This is usually done when aliens have just cleared res.

from minute 2-10, aliens on one node are losing, aliens on two nodes are barely surviving, aliens on three nodes are doing okay, and aliens on four nodes are winning. Now aliens are very effective with only 45 tres of upgrades. Eventually you need to get around to biomass upgrades, but aliens in general are much less tres dependent than marines, and much more pres dependent. With the expansion rate update of 3.5, it's very important that aliens try to pool as little tres as possible, which means dropping nodes that may die, giving drifter support to crushed, and building pve that slow down the marine de-capping of your nodes. Sometimes it's worth dropping a node that dies before it's done if it slows the marines from pressuring the next node, since alien tres is much more abundant than their pres.

-by 15 seconds

>Some comms right now love being frugal as aliens. They only cyst one natural and only build one drifter, and sometimes hop out to help in the crush while they wait for the cyst to develop. If you aren't crushing the first marine pressure team as priority one, this is often the best option. You can get your upgrades out very early and can cause a ton of damage to the marines, but it's also not safe. The marine pressure team not getting crushed has potential to cause huge damage to your economy. So basically you cyst a natural, drop a shell or two, and a drifter, then either start building the node or give drifter support to the team, or hop out and be the first skulk in the six crush.

>Alternatively, you can delay your shells and attempt to open more expansion lanes. This means two drifters, and cysting to both naturals and maybe even a fourth node. There are a lot of things you can do hear. Have one drifter support a lane crush while another drifter builds the node of that lane, having one drifter build a node and another drifter build a crag on the node, or if you crushed the pressure team you can have the drifters build two nodes at once. This gets your lerks up faster, but it delays your upgrades quite a bit and lerks without them can be a huge risk.

-by 3-8 minutes
You want your lerks up by now and eventually your shells. One forward crag on a natural or in an aggressive position is a great investment for keeping your lifeforms on the field, although two or even three crags(rarely) can be fruitful if your lerks are winning engagements across the board. You want at least biomass one before fades are about to pop.

-by 8-11 minutes
You want your fades up by now, and you want metabolize up as well. If the fades are having success with their engagements, then you should try to get a second hive, as just having it up gives a ton of utility and you may not be able to get it up as safely if marines reach a certain amount of tech.

How a team goes about engagements, tech decisions, and movement fluctuates before and throughout a round on many factors. We've discussed some generic reason they would change based on enemy positioning before this, and now we will talk about some play style differences based on some of the maps. This section will be edited with pictures once I return home.

Natural selection 2 has a few cheese plays. They are not very viable, but against unprepared teams they sometimes result in a win.

-The air france
The most common cheese, when aliens are losing and they want to pull one last play all of the field players on the team go lerk when they reach the pres requirement. Usually has no success due to the fact that all lerks means there are no parasites, which means solos can easilly set up pinches, as well as the fact that users who don't drill as lerk often get bursted down.

-hydra rush
All skulks crush a lane, and then all go gorge, and lay down hydras in the main base. The gorges are helpless against medpacks though, so until they put down their mass hydras they are easy to snipe, which usually happens.

-sentry rush
Marines power build robo in main base, then one stays and four leave. One marine builds sentries in base while the four other marines push a high priority target, such as a hive, or a place like system waypoint/nanagrid. Comms stays in chair and drops the sentries at the high priority target for the four marines, or jump out to defend main with the other marine and sentries. This is countered by scouting and either a five crush with enzyhme/hallucinations, or if you went crag hive you will need to six crush, and you need to win the engagement. Alternativally you can go to marine base, have one user gorge, then push into their base with the gorge tanking sentries and drifter support. This is much riskier and more all in for aliens, but they win the game if they clear the base. If the marines didn't push a hive with their sentries, then once they get the forward sentries down they need to recyle the base sentries for res node money and resume laning.

-Shotgun rush
Marines power build armory in main and shotgun research is started. There is no time for powerbuilding nodes since this cheese leaves marines open to base rush. Either four or five marines leave main base and go to an area near the alien hive or inside the room, build a forward armory, and everybody buys shotguns and takes on the hive. This cheese is relativally easy to deal with , just pressure main or do an organized five/six crush.

-Catalyst pack rush
Marines either just go straight cats or do cats and double ip. Early catpacks is not cheesing, but getting them on firstbuy is. Marines have a significant advantage in early engagements and they can do devestating economic damage to aliens, but they need successful engagements across the board, including capping their naturals and having success with their pressure teams. Best way to deal with this as aliens is to deathball so at least a wing of their flight is destroyed and they have to deal with slow tech.

-Phase gate rush
Although common in pubs due to there being many marines, this is not nearly as fruitful in 6v6. If marines win the first few engagements and only get pg research while getting a few nodes down, they can get a fast aggressive pg up, but all the risk and tech delays involved in this means it is never really done.

-Forward mines
This cheese is so common and viable that it isn't considered a cheese by many players in spite of the risk involved in the plays. Armory and mines come out early, and then if the forward pressure team has won their engagement or the aliens crushed somewhere else, they build a forward armory on an alien natural, buy mines, and cap the node. This closes off an alien expansion lane and is a huge punish for the aliens crushing marine naturals instead of mid. Two marines can justify staying ang guarding that node as long as they have it and the next res node in the lane capped, so it becomes very hard to push into with six mines. This is most commonly done in oxygenation on jambi.

-6pool
This is where all 6 aliens, including the commander, straight up rush the enemy base. This is never done now since enzyme 5 crush does more dps, and hullucination/mucous 5 crush has more effective hp. However, if you consider drifter build time and the time for the drifter to travel to marine base, it takes 5-10 more seconds for drifter support to arrive than straight rushing in. This gives marine extra time to rotate one marine back to main base. Since marines are stronger than skulks though, base rushing as the alien teams first play is usually not tried, and they just try to slow down the marine economy.

-Weapons 2 rush before any other tech
This isn't really a cheese, but it's an extremely greedy play. If the comm is medding well enough to make marines 3 bites, and the marines are aiming well it is a great way to push a lead.

-Grenade rush
Although more viable now due to compmod, the primary reason this isn't done is because grenade research time means you won't have them on any marine in the first engagement, or the one where skulks may be forced to crush you. If nade research time was instant, you would see this very commonly on maps such as veil as it means that aliens attempting to crush a nanogrid crush would have to tank 2-4 pulse grenades. However that isn't the case, and it hurts the marines shotgun pres so it's seldem used.

-AA tech rush
Exo's and jetpacks received buffs with compmod, HUGE buffs. HMG's where added in as well. HMG rushing was actually a thing and it was overpowered for a short while, but it's damage was changed to piercing so that you can't really put hmg's on all marines. Regardless, if you can get 1/1, you can get aa tech like exos as early as 10 minutes, and if you are in the lead exos actually pack a lot of dmg. Real men however, rush flamethrowers/catpacks and have no remorse. NOBODY HAS EVER RUSHED FLAMETHROWERS AND CATPACKS AND LOST (mostly because nobody has ever done this, but the point still stands).