Siege is an attack/defense gamemode for Natural Selection 2, where the Aliens (Khaara) are the attacking team and the Marines (Frontiersmen) are the defending team. The game starts with a 5 to 7 minute “setup” period (shown by the timer at the top of the screen as “front door”), where the teams are separated by the front door. This is time used by the teams to get upgrades, establish defenses, and plan (or to just make art out of clogs). Once the doors open it is the alien’s job to destroy all of the marine command stations before the siege doors open (shown by the timer at the top of the screen as “siege door”) and it is the marine’s job to hold out until siege. The siege room is positioned right next to the alien hives, so once the siege doors open the marines can move ARCs into siege and destroy the aliens with impunity.

We strive to keep siege as close to vanilla as possible, but we have made some fairly significant changes (you can see these changes in-game by holding down “K”).

Marines

-Jetpacks have 25% extra fuel and regen
-Weight now affects jetpack's acceleration/maneuverability not fuel use.
-Sentries no longer take robo-cap.
-Armories regenerate armor.
-Phase gates now have two "channels": red and blue
-ARCs and MACs can now be "scuttled" (recycled but give no res back) by the commander.
-Exos have the 'old' price of 45 pres.
-Commanders can drop weapons they haven't researched. GLs and Flamethrowers must be researched (See: Why am I Told Not to Use Grenade Launchers?)

Aliens

-All aliens can now play in third person by pressing R (reload)
-Clogs can be "digested" faster (to prevent trolling)
-All aliens have +25% HP and armor, except fade who only has +15%
-All aliens evolve at the speed of being misted
-Onos
-----Bone shield has no energy cost to sustain
-----Bone shield now blocks all damage types except flame
-----Bone shield blocks ~20% larger cone in front of your face.
-The Gorge can now walk on walls
-Xenocide has a smaller radius and does light damage, but does more damage.
-Fade now has a ranged acid rocket that replaces stab.
-Fade's metabolize regenerates 1/2 as much health.
-Whips are now smarter and cause knockback
-Cysts don't spread infestation as far (easier for map makers)
-Crags now heal faster the longer it has been since you took damage. But they, and all other alien support structures, no longer function off of infestation.
-Cooldown on Contamination increased to 60 seconds, but also lasts 60 seconds.

Other Mods
-Creepier Atmosphere: Rooms start dark, and when they lose power, have only minimal lighting.
-Credits: Play on the server to earn points, which can be exchanged for badges and other cosmetic items!

First, communicate with your team. Microphones are preferable, chat is acceptable. If you don’t know what to do, or you don’t feel like you’re particularly good at any class, go minigun exo. You’ll help your team by providing additional damage to counter onos rushes, and onos are big easy target (Note: If they’re boneshielding [their head is down], try shooting their sides or back for better results). If you’d prefer a jetpack you can choose one of three ‘roles:’ offence where you will use the machine gun and a nerve gas grenades to hold the front; support where your flamethrower, pulse grenades, and welder will counter onos bone shield and bile bomb; or rapid response where you’’ use a rifle or shotgun) to fight whatever sneaks by your lines. You can obviously choose whatever you want for your loadout, and as long as you didn’t grab a GL you’re probably helping. For why we recommend against railguns and STRONGLY discourage grenade launchers, scroll down to “Why am I Told Not to Use Railguns?” and “Why am I Told Not to Use Grenade Launchers?” respectively.

First, communicate with your team. Microphones are preferable, chat is acceptable.If you don’t know what to do, or you don’t feel like you’re particularly good at any class, go onos. The job of an onos is to soak up damage for his team, so even if you just run into a room and stand there during a rush you’ll be helping. If you don’t have the resources, go gorge and rush in with bile bombs (don’t be afraid to die, you’ll have plenty of res), or go skulk and support your team with xenocide. If you’re good at playing lerk or fade kill jetpackers or try to rush/sneak by marine lines and either draw marines away from the fight or set up a sneaky tunnel behind their lines.

First, communicate with your team. Microphones are preferable, chat is acceptable.During setup you need to drop your extractors as far forward as your marines are and then drop an armory and two arms labs in spawn. Your priority is getting exosuits before doors (and a good comm can get jetpacks too) so make sure you get your advanced armory going ASAP. After that focus on upgrades (shoot for armor/weapons 2 by door, not 3), getting a phase gate network up (if you click on the blueprint you can set your phase gates on 2 different channels, allowing you to have 2 separate networks), building walls out of armories (if you have the resources), and getting 100% of the map covered in observatories. After doors open, you need to keep your team supported with MACs and Catalyst packs (cat packs), as well as keeping an eye on the map to make sure that aliens haven’t snuck by you. At about two minutes until siege doors, begin manufacturing ARCs for use in siege. Once the doors open, send them into siege and have them target the shade hive (to stop the aliens from using their ink ability to deny your ARCs). WARNING: You will have to manually tell the ARCs to re-target after every volley, so it’s probably best to select them all and hit Ctrl+1 so that every time your press your ‘1’ key it brings up your ARCs.

First, communicate with your team. Microphones are preferable, chat is acceptable. During setup you need to get the harvesters up first, followed by hives. You might want to drop your gorges building the hives a shift if there aren't that many of them. After that you need to focus on getting biomass and upgrades (remember, you can get both at the same time). Your priority should be onos > gorge > skulk > fade > lerk. Once the doors open, you need to support your team’s pushes with drifter abilities, and try to use contamination to shift eggs or whips behind marine lines. If any gorges manage to set up a tunnel behind marine lines, support them with structures and encourage your team to use that tunnel.


Marines: Start by building all of the extractors, remember to only have one person per RT (for why, scroll down to “Why am I Told to Only Have One Person Per RT?”). After you’ve done that you should focus on getting up whatever else your commander needs built. At about 20 sec until doors you should head to the front and grab your weapons of choice.

Aliens: First, go Gorge. After that build the harvesters, followed by hives. Drop your tunnel entrance down in case you get behind the marine lines. Once you’ve done that, it’s just a matter of waiting until you have enough res to go onos and going onos.


Marines: Go minigun exo and hold the line. No matter what is going on your team can never have enough minigun exos. If you’d prefer a jetpack you can choose one of three ‘roles:’ offence where you will use the machine gun and a nerve gas grenades to hold the front; support where your flamethrower, pulse grenades, and welder will counter onos bone shield and bile bomb; or rapid response where you’’ use a rifle or shotgun to fight whatever sneaks by your lines. You can obviously choose whatever you want for your loadout, and as long as you didn’t grab a GL you’re probably helping.

Aliens: Go onos and rush the enemy with your teammates. Out of resources? Go gorge or skulk to help out with bile or xenocide. If you want to play lerk or fade, then your job is to pull marines off the front and try to get a tunnel up behind their lines.


Marines: Continue holding the line, the commander will designate one or two people to go to siege but if that’s not you then you need to focus on making sure that the aliens can’t break through and get into siege.

Aliens: If you’re close, rush in and seize siege before the marines can get in. Any fades or lerks should make it their objective to immediately rush in, deny the marines, and set up a tunnel. If you’re not close then you need to coordinate your team for a hail-mary rush against either the marine power node, command stations, or siege.


Marines: Go back to base, buy a minigun exo and hop out. Now you and your teammates have a spare exo laying around for when resources gets scarce.

Aliens: Die more. Seriously, aliens always have plenty of resources so don’t be afraid to go suicide gorge, or to die in an onos charge. Even if you spend all your res there’s always xenocide. Death is temporary, failure is also temporary but it’s less temporary than death.


Marines: Drop jetpacks, machine guns, shotguns, and flamethrowers (or just jetpacks). Alternatively, replace your walls with / build more walls out of prototype labs. They’re stronger and don’t take up your valuable robotics cap.

Aliens: Upgrade your eggs to onos eggs. Alternatively, build a bunch of whips to shift behind marine lines.

IF you can aim well enough to consistently hit lower lifeforms (skulk, gorge, lerk, fade), AND if there aren't more than 1 railgun per 5-6 miniguns on your team, railguns aren't actually that bad of a choice. The problem with using railguns is that they don’t have a chance in hell of killing an onos (unless your teammates bring it down to 10% health first). Railguns do amazing burst damage, but extremely poor damage over time; making them good against things with low health, but garbage against the +2k effective health that an onos has (not to mention that bone shield blocks 95% of railgun damage).

Grenade launchers fall victim to the same flaws as railguns (high burst damage, criminally low DOT, being blocked by boneshield) and then proceed to add on a laundry list of other drawbacks. These include (but are not limited to, projectile travel time (making it hard to hit fast moving targets), reload time, and limited ammo. All of these drawbacks serve to reduce the GL’s DOT to inexcusably low levels, something marines can’t afford to be stuck with when they’re trying to kill an onos rush. The one time it is acceptable to use a GL is when you are clearing out structures and contamination, but you should be buying the GL when you need it and not using it for the whole round.

Aliens are the attacking team, that means they need to move forward to kill the marines. They can’t do that if your clogs are in the way, preventing your onos’ from leaving. Clogging up the doors/travelways is tantamount to sabotage, and can result in punishment from the admins.

Siege has a fair number of people contributing in some way, but our ‘main’ developers are Nin and Tachi. Please don’t bother them with complaints or suggestions however, that’s what Jon is here for.

If you want to contribute to Siege check out #welcome on the Discord or talk to Jon. We could always use more mappers, and we won't say no to people who are familiar with lua.


1. Have at least 36 hrs of playtime on siege (more is better, lots more is best)
2. Communicate (mic is preferable, but chat is fine).
3. Don't constantly be a salty butthole (salt is fine, constant salt is not).
4. Seed the server.
Bonus: Command regularly (this can get 1 requirement waived).

Having regular lets you join when the server is full, make events on the group, and use @everyone and @here on the Discord.

J owns and operates the server, and provides both the hardware and hosting out of pocket. Please give him appropriate levels of praise if you see him. The server resides in Florida.