Here it is i had custom movie making mode on which doesnt represent the game. ill fix it it disables overview/minimap etc
I have re-recorded it with a different somewhat default setting folder, please note that i usually play with the voice volume very low, no ambient sound and no music that way you can hear skulks, so what you see in the video is somewhat of a bad representation and i uploading a video now which looks like aimbot it's mostly for herakles
ill also answer your questions later
edit:they're cel-shadeed models for movie making. Not toon models... and most good servers had consistency.
And block scripts, i only play on mp_blockscripts 1 servers because scripters are cheaters, oceania, asia, and most of europe had a no scripting policy it was just north america who seemingly thought it was okay... even competitivly it was frowned upon.
pistols in NS1 were almost unchained in speed limit for shooting, so was early NS2 FYI. Thats how i trained to shoot 112clicks per 10 seconds, well that and adding stats in an RPG muonline.
Infestation was static not dynamic in NS1, so map makers would texture them to make it look like it was creeping into MS and other areas, it was only visual.
there was a beacon sound it is very loud and room dependent it got louder the closer you were to a room, so you could tell where people were beaconed to based on that
also it wasnt a bug it was a feature, NS1 like NS2 also has that feature, you can run with grenades in throw action, no skills needed.
In this one you can see the beacon, it's a forced turtle, my team was absolute garbage, none the less it wasn't boring so i rated it 5/10, one thing i truly miss is the great sound architecture of NS1 more then half of the game was auditory for me and alot of other players.
One thing i don't miss from NS1 would be welders, they slowed you down, didn't do much damage and were a pain in the ass. I appreciate the NS2 welder, i remember the changes that happened throughout the life of NS2 and to be honest i think it's perfect where it is at right now went from being a chamber / lifeform killer to being a reasonable ally in my slot menu, don't change the welder or i'll cut you with my sword!
i actually miss Herakles hive relocations that turn into 16 marines with heavy armour and welders holding off alien teams with 9 rts and endless Fades, Lerks and Oni. Half of those were 2+ hour affairs.
Does anyone have access to any NS build 188 files? i would like to view some demos around that time i had recorded, i have about 20 demos that might be interesting
edit: here might be an interesting video for some of you
You can hear the skulk cloaking, i shoot where he should be and his sound, i even throw the grenade, i run forward while shooting and just as i start shooting the grenade impacts with a skulk behind me to whom i turn around and he's biting my ghost, poor skulk, in the end of the clip i show you his path and my bullet path trajectory. I am going to do some analyses on this this with a wallhack + sound esp if anyone is interested.
edit here it is.
As you can see in this video, the latency of mine combined with collision detection and hitbox collisions meant that when i came around the corner, i released my grenade at 0:09 seconds(hold that thought) however because the skulk touched me it collied with my hitbox before i got a chance to actually move around the corner and the server updated faster for him first before me. So when i updated i had actually been touched before i had got around the corner or before i even saw him uncloak, but luck was on my side because at 0:09 i had thrown my grenade which as you can see would have collided with the skulk regardles. In this case it bounced off the wall and instantanously imploded on the skulk who was now standing where i was initially so he could bite my ass, my computer hand't updated yet, meanwhile he was biting the air while i watched him attack my lag.
Lol'd at how accurate the initial pinpointing of sound locations can be once you get a nack for it, unfortunately same can't be said for NS2.
There were "official" scripts out there that you never needed to hold it... I pressed a mousebutton and the grenade was thrown instantly
Pistol was strong, you could empty your clip instantly, but it was hard to aim if you were against really good players who knew how to dodge... I could for example strafe left and right and I had a high chance that only 1-2 bullets hit me while someone was trying to pistol me...
I dislike the fact that you never ever see the minimap open :<
Reminds me of the days of binding to MWHEELUP/DOWN and unleashing against those retreating fades...Oh the rage
Man I wish I had been aware of NS1 back in the day because it sounds just plain awesome. Especially with all this talk about the superior sound it had back then..
There were "official" scripts out there that you never needed to hold it... I pressed a mousebutton and the grenade was thrown instantly
Pistol was strong, you could empty your clip instantly, but it was hard to aim if you were against really good players who knew how to dodge... I could for example strafe left and right and I had a high chance that only 1-2 bullets hit me while someone was trying to pistol me...
I dislike the fact that you never ever see the minimap open :<
Reminds me of the days of binding to MWHEELUP/DOWN and unleashing against those retreating fades...Oh the rage
Current NS2 pistol can unload in 0.9 seconds too if you script it or use mouse wheel. Some people can also press the trigger that fast, but I lose my aim if I try that.
There were "official" scripts out there that you never needed to hold it... I pressed a mousebutton and the grenade was thrown instantly
Pistol was strong, you could empty your clip instantly, but it was hard to aim if you were against really good players who knew how to dodge... I could for example strafe left and right and I had a high chance that only 1-2 bullets hit me while someone was trying to pistol me...
I dislike the fact that you never ever see the minimap open :<
Reminds me of the days of binding to MWHEELUP/DOWN and unleashing against those retreating fades...Oh the rage
Current NS2 pistol can unload in 0.9 seconds too if you script it or use mouse wheel. Some people can also press the trigger that fast, but I lose my aim if I try that.
People used to press their mouse or script it even faster than that 0.9 seconds. It was insane when they unloaded an entire pistol clip into you in 0.45 seconds.
There were "official" scripts out there that you never needed to hold it... I pressed a mousebutton and the grenade was thrown instantly
Pistol was strong, you could empty your clip instantly, but it was hard to aim if you were against really good players who knew how to dodge... I could for example strafe left and right and I had a high chance that only 1-2 bullets hit me while someone was trying to pistol me...
I dislike the fact that you never ever see the minimap open :<
Reminds me of the days of binding to MWHEELUP/DOWN and unleashing against those retreating fades...Oh the rage
Current NS2 pistol can unload in 0.9 seconds too if you script it or use mouse wheel. Some people can also press the trigger that fast, but I lose my aim if I try that.
People used to press their mouse or script it even faster than that 0.9 seconds. It was insane when they unloaded an entire pistol clip into you in 0.45 seconds.
It's still pretty insane when you face someone with a script/scrollwheel bind. To lerks, skulks, and anything without armor, it does more damage than a fully charged Railgun shot. (250 Light damage versus 150 Structural).
NS1 had better atmosphere, creepier map design. NS2 is pretty looking but it lacks that oppressive, grungy, eerie atmosphere.
I think that change stems from trying to make aliens stick out better from the environment so that you can track them, as well as wanting to show off more than just a single sort of map type with limited numbers of assets.
NS2 was originally designed with four maps in mind: Tram, Docking, Refinery and Mineshaft. Each map has a distinct style that ranges from truly organic to fully mechanical, and from dirty to clean. I think it was a wise choice making some varying palettes, as it offers more than just a grungey-dark-corridor feel.
It's still pretty insane when you face someone with a script/scrollwheel bind. To lerks, skulks, and anything without armor, it does more damage than a fully charged Railgun shot. (250 Light damage versus 150 Structural).
I have had my lerk flashed with all or most of the damage being from a pistol in about 1 second.
It's still pretty insane when you face someone with a script/scrollwheel bind. To lerks, skulks, and anything without armor, it does more damage than a fully charged Railgun shot. (250 Light damage versus 150 Structural).
I have had my lerk flashed with all or most of the damage being from a pistol in about 1 second.
Emptying your gun in less than a second isn't even that hard without scripts, this was even more true in NS, that shit was easy. For NS2 the devs created some kind of slow down script messing with the timing, so you can't emty it faster than 10 clicks in one second
This is without a script:
The funny thing is, I keep getting called a cheater when I unleash a pistol, either as a last resort or to initiate combat, in most games which have these kinds of pistols. Somehow it feels easier getting headshots at mid-range with a smaller viewmodel using a semi-automatic weapon. Because I am more in control when it fires to land those shots, compared to full auto of burst rifles/smg's.
Maybe because I'm a lot worse at continuously tracking compared to twitch and trick shots
There were "official" scripts out there that you never needed to hold it... I pressed a mousebutton and the grenade was thrown instantly
Pistol was strong, you could empty your clip instantly, but it was hard to aim if you were against really good players who knew how to dodge... I could for example strafe left and right and I had a high chance that only 1-2 bullets hit me while someone was trying to pistol me...
I dislike the fact that you never ever see the minimap open :<
Reminds me of the days of binding to MWHEELUP/DOWN and unleashing against those retreating fades...Oh the rage
Current NS2 pistol can unload in 0.9 seconds too if you script it or use mouse wheel. Some people can also press the trigger that fast, but I lose my aim if I try that.
People used to press their mouse or script it even faster than that 0.9 seconds. It was insane when they unloaded an entire pistol clip into you in 0.45 seconds.
It's still pretty insane when you face someone with a script/scrollwheel bind. To lerks, skulks, and anything without armor, it does more damage than a fully charged Railgun shot. (250 Light damage versus 150 Structural).
So I did some testing and my original assumption that pistols could fire once every 0.1 seconds is incorrect. The actual time between shots varies due to inaccuracies in the code and the moverate of the server in question, but with default values I seem to get pistols to shoot every 0.15 seconds. With higher moverates, pistols seem to shoot closer to the 0.1 seconds the code is trying to achieve.
NS2 was originally designed with four maps in mind: Tram, Docking, Refinery and Mineshaft. Each map has a distinct style that ranges from truly organic to fully mechanical, and from dirty to clean. I think it was a wise choice making some varying palettes, as it offers more than just a grungey-dark-corridor feel.
Just on NS2: It sucks how true this is man, 2/4 and summit are still played so often and they havent made proper sense since build 249. I barely liked them then either, but atleast they felt right in even matchups. Now they're just one way marine sided bullshit in 75% of properly actually even games. Like the game was so bad they had to change it completely, and it made the maps even worse.
NS1 had better atmosphere, creepier map design. NS2 is pretty looking but it lacks that oppressive, grungy, eerie atmosphere.
I think that change stems from trying to make aliens stick out better from the environment so that you can track them, as well as wanting to show off more than just a single sort of map type with limited numbers of assets.
NS2 was originally designed with four maps in mind: Tram, Docking, Refinery and Mineshaft. Each map has a distinct style that ranges from truly organic to fully mechanical, and from dirty to clean. I think it was a wise choice making some varying palettes, as it offers more than just a grungey-dark-corridor feel.
It's not because of the maps, its because UWE gave up on their original vision of a true and honest atmospheric successor to the original NS. I don't know why they gave up but go back to when they were making dev vlogs and look at how excited and passionate they are to make a better, more complete version of NS1 and how it slowly changed into making it "more competitive" which just sterilized the entire feel of the game.
NS2 was originally designed with four maps in mind: Tram, Docking, Refinery and Mineshaft. Each map has a distinct style that ranges from truly organic to fully mechanical, and from dirty to clean. I think it was a wise choice making some varying palettes, as it offers more than just a grungey-dark-corridor feel.
Just on NS2: It sucks how true this is man, 2/4 and summit are still played so often and they havent made proper sense since build 249. I barely liked them then either, but atleast they felt right in even matchups. Now they're just one way marine sided bullshit in 75% of properly actually even games. Like the game was so bad they had to change it completely, and it made the maps even worse.
NS1 had better atmosphere, creepier map design. NS2 is pretty looking but it lacks that oppressive, grungy, eerie atmosphere.
I think that change stems from trying to make aliens stick out better from the environment so that you can track them, as well as wanting to show off more than just a single sort of map type with limited numbers of assets.
NS2 was originally designed with four maps in mind: Tram, Docking, Refinery and Mineshaft. Each map has a distinct style that ranges from truly organic to fully mechanical, and from dirty to clean. I think it was a wise choice making some varying palettes, as it offers more than just a grungey-dark-corridor feel.
It's not because of the maps, its because UWE gave up on their original vision of a true and honest atmospheric successor to the original NS. I don't know why they gave up but go back to when they were making dev vlogs and look at how excited and passionate they are to make a better, more complete version of NS1 and how it slowly changed into making it "more competitive" which just sterilized the entire feel of the game.
And this is why you can never please everyone - some people want competitive balance, some want atmosphere.
NS1 had better atmosphere, creepier map design. NS2 is pretty looking but it lacks that oppressive, grungy, eerie atmosphere.
I think that change stems from trying to make aliens stick out better from the environment so that you can track them, as well as wanting to show off more than just a single sort of map type with limited numbers of assets.
NS2 was originally designed with four maps in mind: Tram, Docking, Refinery and Mineshaft. Each map has a distinct style that ranges from truly organic to fully mechanical, and from dirty to clean. I think it was a wise choice making some varying palettes, as it offers more than just a grungey-dark-corridor feel.
It's not because of the maps, its because UWE gave up on their original vision of a true and honest atmospheric successor to the original NS. I don't know why they gave up but go back to when they were making dev vlogs and look at how excited and passionate they are to make a better, more complete version of NS1 and how it slowly changed into making it "more competitive" which just sterilized the entire feel of the game.
NS2 maps in general have a "look but don't touch feel to them" (perhaps new tsf regulations) whereas NS1 maps had a bunch of interactables that gave flavor to their environment and it felt more like you were there instead of just taking a guided tour of the place.
Not to mention the reduction in vertical spaces due to the ai pathing requirements and the loss of swimmable water areas.
edit: here might be an interesting video for some of you
edit here it is.
Very interesting indeed! Really fun to see, but it feels awfully long time ago, but only 5-6 years Feel a sudden urge to play it, or at least install it. where are the files?
slowly changed into making it "more competitive" which just sterilized the entire feel of the game.
Most competitive oriented players I have spoken to are upset with the lack of competitive features. Most of them would probably say that NS1 had a better competitive featureset than NS2. It isn't that your opinion is wrong, but that both competitive and atmospheric players both feel like important features are missing.
Miss:
- Soft and beautiful precompiled radiosity lighting in the level
- Verticality (because everything could climb ladders, now onos must have a handicap access ramp, so mappers don't bother and make maps essentially flat)
- Uncluttered and abstract maps that were easy to move around and slide against for the most part without being snagged on unimportant garbage
- The superior quake engine player movement; snappy and precise as well as enjoyable to play with (especially jet packs, bunny hopping and blink)
- Good visual and audio indication of being hit, especially when taking a lot of damage (screen punch, pain noise, very obvious direction indicator, bullet tracers)
- Good visual and audio indication of hitting an enemy (very obvious blood sprites, pain noise)
- Better positional audio (especially in the windows 98SE days when I was using an aureal vortex 2 audio chipset; but even today stereo separation and direction is much more precise)
- Sleek and beautiful character and building models that didn't look so fat and chibi-fied (the armory and fade is particularly attrocious)
- Lack of cysts / dynamic infestation
- Lack of tech points
- Lack of alien commander
Don't miss:
- Poorly lit player models (side effect of using radiosity and not saving ambient light info inside volumes, source fixed this)
- Combat
- Fullbright siege maps
- Erratic HL engine performance/stutter in various openGL driver releases (until it was fixed in 2013 or so; now it runs at 2000 FPS or so if you completely uncap it)
- Various engine and technical limitations (max 256x256 textures, max 4 MB textures, max visplane limits etc.)
- Lack of gorge tunnels
- Lack of customizable FOV
- Shootable/long distance spore
- Buggy compile tools creating random, unexpected lips in clipnodes, especially at the top of slopes (still better than stock HL tools)
Things I miss about NS 1.04 in particular (the original NS died with NS 2.0 and was reborn as a different and better game):
- The creepy and dark atmosphere (unfortunately it was a big advantage to increasing your gamma, so the lighting had to be made more washed out)
- The overpowered welders
- The game being less reliant on individual skill and more team oriented, with long matches ebbing back and forth
- Onos paralyzing jetpackers when they were too high up so they fall down and die from fall damage
- No devour (guess I can't say this still, since NS2 got rid of devour)
- Only one gorge with massive 3X res flow and very powerful web
- The maps that never were the same after NS 1.04 (NS_bast, NS_nancy in particular)
ill reply to above comment soon in regards to not missed features and why you are wrong some of those features were broken by Valve which also ruined physics.(busy atm, will reply later)
DC_DarklingJoin Date: 2003-07-10Member: 18068Members, Constellation, Squad Five Blue, Squad Five Silver
The biggest thing I miss about NS1 is how building worked.
Both sides build EVERYWHERE.
Marines could relocate to everywhere.
No alien commander made the game vastly different combined with the building everywhere.
It wasnt balanced in many ways but I still would say I had more fun in NS1.
It was just done better in terms of gameplay.
It wasnt balanced in many ways but I still would say I had more fun in NS1.
It was just done better in terms of gameplay.
I want to say one of the main problems with NS2 is commanding from a gameplay perspective. A lot hangs on two individuals. In NS1, only marines had a comm, and the one saving for Hive was typically a bit more of a pliable role. If NS3 were a thing, I'd remove alien comm again, and focus on marine comm being more fun and much less of a direct support role.
Comments
Ah, well it wasn't too hard to do manually at least.
I have re-recorded it with a different somewhat default setting folder, please note that i usually play with the voice volume very low, no ambient sound and no music that way you can hear skulks, so what you see in the video is somewhat of a bad representation and i uploading a video now which looks like aimbot it's mostly for herakles
ill also answer your questions later
edit:they're cel-shadeed models for movie making. Not toon models... and most good servers had consistency.
And block scripts, i only play on mp_blockscripts 1 servers because scripters are cheaters, oceania, asia, and most of europe had a no scripting policy it was just north america who seemingly thought it was okay... even competitivly it was frowned upon.
pistols in NS1 were almost unchained in speed limit for shooting, so was early NS2 FYI. Thats how i trained to shoot 112clicks per 10 seconds, well that and adding stats in an RPG muonline.
Infestation was static not dynamic in NS1, so map makers would texture them to make it look like it was creeping into MS and other areas, it was only visual.
there was a beacon sound it is very loud and room dependent it got louder the closer you were to a room, so you could tell where people were beaconed to based on that
also it wasnt a bug it was a feature, NS1 like NS2 also has that feature, you can run with grenades in throw action, no skills needed.
One thing i don't miss from NS1 would be welders, they slowed you down, didn't do much damage and were a pain in the ass. I appreciate the NS2 welder, i remember the changes that happened throughout the life of NS2 and to be honest i think it's perfect where it is at right now
The tried and true of "less is more"
@Archie damn Fades were terrifying back then
edit: here might be an interesting video for some of you
You can hear the skulk cloaking, i shoot where he should be and his sound, i even throw the grenade, i run forward while shooting and just as i start shooting the grenade impacts with a skulk behind me to whom i turn around and he's biting my ghost, poor skulk, in the end of the clip i show you his path and my bullet path trajectory. I am going to do some analyses on this this with a wallhack + sound esp if anyone is interested.
edit here it is.
As you can see in this video, the latency of mine combined with collision detection and hitbox collisions meant that when i came around the corner, i released my grenade at 0:09 seconds(hold that thought) however because the skulk touched me it collied with my hitbox before i got a chance to actually move around the corner and the server updated faster for him first before me. So when i updated i had actually been touched before i had got around the corner or before i even saw him uncloak, but luck was on my side because at 0:09 i had thrown my grenade which as you can see would have collided with the skulk regardles. In this case it bounced off the wall and instantanously imploded on the skulk who was now standing where i was initially so he could bite my ass, my computer hand't updated yet, meanwhile he was biting the air while i watched him attack my lag.
Lol'd at how accurate the initial pinpointing of sound locations can be once you get a nack for it, unfortunately same can't be said for NS2.
Reminds me of the days of binding to MWHEELUP/DOWN and unleashing against those retreating fades...Oh the rage
Ahh the good old days of gaming.
Current NS2 pistol can unload in 0.9 seconds too if you script it or use mouse wheel. Some people can also press the trigger that fast, but I lose my aim if I try that.
People used to press their mouse or script it even faster than that 0.9 seconds. It was insane when they unloaded an entire pistol clip into you in 0.45 seconds.
It's still pretty insane when you face someone with a script/scrollwheel bind. To lerks, skulks, and anything without armor, it does more damage than a fully charged Railgun shot. (250 Light damage versus 150 Structural).
I think that change stems from trying to make aliens stick out better from the environment so that you can track them, as well as wanting to show off more than just a single sort of map type with limited numbers of assets.
NS2 was originally designed with four maps in mind: Tram, Docking, Refinery and Mineshaft. Each map has a distinct style that ranges from truly organic to fully mechanical, and from dirty to clean. I think it was a wise choice making some varying palettes, as it offers more than just a grungey-dark-corridor feel.
I have had my lerk flashed with all or most of the damage being from a pistol in about 1 second.
Emptying your gun in less than a second isn't even that hard without scripts, this was even more true in NS, that shit was easy. For NS2 the devs created some kind of slow down script messing with the timing, so you can't emty it faster than 10 clicks in one second
This is without a script:
The funny thing is, I keep getting called a cheater when I unleash a pistol, either as a last resort or to initiate combat, in most games which have these kinds of pistols. Somehow it feels easier getting headshots at mid-range with a smaller viewmodel using a semi-automatic weapon. Because I am more in control when it fires to land those shots, compared to full auto of burst rifles/smg's.
Maybe because I'm a lot worse at continuously tracking compared to twitch and trick shots
So I did some testing and my original assumption that pistols could fire once every 0.1 seconds is incorrect. The actual time between shots varies due to inaccuracies in the code and the moverate of the server in question, but with default values I seem to get pistols to shoot every 0.15 seconds. With higher moverates, pistols seem to shoot closer to the 0.1 seconds the code is trying to achieve.
Just on NS2: It sucks how true this is man, 2/4 and summit are still played so often and they havent made proper sense since build 249. I barely liked them then either, but atleast they felt right in even matchups. Now they're just one way marine sided bullshit in 75% of properly actually even games. Like the game was so bad they had to change it completely, and it made the maps even worse.
It's not because of the maps, its because UWE gave up on their original vision of a true and honest atmospheric successor to the original NS. I don't know why they gave up but go back to when they were making dev vlogs and look at how excited and passionate they are to make a better, more complete version of NS1 and how it slowly changed into making it "more competitive" which just sterilized the entire feel of the game.
And this is why you can never please everyone - some people want competitive balance, some want atmosphere.
NS2 maps in general have a "look but don't touch feel to them" (perhaps new tsf regulations) whereas NS1 maps had a bunch of interactables that gave flavor to their environment and it felt more like you were there instead of just taking a guided tour of the place.
Not to mention the reduction in vertical spaces due to the ai pathing requirements and the loss of swimmable water areas.
Very interesting indeed! Really fun to see, but it feels awfully long time ago, but only 5-6 years
- Soft and beautiful precompiled radiosity lighting in the level
- Verticality (because everything could climb ladders, now onos must have a handicap access ramp, so mappers don't bother and make maps essentially flat)
- Uncluttered and abstract maps that were easy to move around and slide against for the most part without being snagged on unimportant garbage
- The superior quake engine player movement; snappy and precise as well as enjoyable to play with (especially jet packs, bunny hopping and blink)
- Good visual and audio indication of being hit, especially when taking a lot of damage (screen punch, pain noise, very obvious direction indicator, bullet tracers)
- Good visual and audio indication of hitting an enemy (very obvious blood sprites, pain noise)
- Better positional audio (especially in the windows 98SE days when I was using an aureal vortex 2 audio chipset; but even today stereo separation and direction is much more precise)
- Sleek and beautiful character and building models that didn't look so fat and chibi-fied (the armory and fade is particularly attrocious)
- Lack of cysts / dynamic infestation
- Lack of tech points
- Lack of alien commander
Don't miss:
- Poorly lit player models (side effect of using radiosity and not saving ambient light info inside volumes, source fixed this)
- Combat
- Fullbright siege maps
- Erratic HL engine performance/stutter in various openGL driver releases (until it was fixed in 2013 or so; now it runs at 2000 FPS or so if you completely uncap it)
- Various engine and technical limitations (max 256x256 textures, max 4 MB textures, max visplane limits etc.)
- Lack of gorge tunnels
- Lack of customizable FOV
- Shootable/long distance spore
- Buggy compile tools creating random, unexpected lips in clipnodes, especially at the top of slopes (still better than stock HL tools)
Things I miss about NS 1.04 in particular (the original NS died with NS 2.0 and was reborn as a different and better game):
- The creepy and dark atmosphere (unfortunately it was a big advantage to increasing your gamma, so the lighting had to be made more washed out)
- The overpowered welders
- The game being less reliant on individual skill and more team oriented, with long matches ebbing back and forth
- Onos paralyzing jetpackers when they were too high up so they fall down and die from fall damage
- No devour (guess I can't say this still, since NS2 got rid of devour)
- Only one gorge with massive 3X res flow and very powerful web
- The maps that never were the same after NS 1.04 (NS_bast, NS_nancy in particular)
Both sides build EVERYWHERE.
Marines could relocate to everywhere.
No alien commander made the game vastly different combined with the building everywhere.
It wasnt balanced in many ways but I still would say I had more fun in NS1.
It was just done better in terms of gameplay.
I want to say one of the main problems with NS2 is commanding from a gameplay perspective. A lot hangs on two individuals. In NS1, only marines had a comm, and the one saving for Hive was typically a bit more of a pliable role. If NS3 were a thing, I'd remove alien comm again, and focus on marine comm being more fun and much less of a direct support role.