This topic differs from Sarisel's in that it's seeking firsthand accounts of fun events and types of events you enjoy in NS.

Mine would include the following:

Aliens

- Tricking/Faking as fade
- Baiting as gorge
- Mind######ing as lerk, maybe chuckling to mask footsteps
- Chewing nodes early and later watching the effects of a comm who's suddenly realized a total choke of res
- Realizing that after many hours of play that I am getting noticeably better (aim/fade/etc.)
- Wrapping around and flanking an entrenched group of marines after Fairy died as lerk
- Bdropping Asmodee
- Bdropping Chopstick

Marines

- Using airspeed, ducking, and strafe jumping to kite skulks & fades
- Baiting skulks out of ambush points
- Ninja phase gate shotgun rushing
- Finding a new relocate (Aux Gen FTW)
- Using "follow me" binds to get groups of marines working together
- Dynamically switching my role from tank to healer by spam welding the team without shooting at threats
- Crouch-jumping to surprise skulks w/no noise attacks
- Bhopping/climbing into ninja spots on Caged
- Soloing lifeforms
- Relocating to my friend's starting hive with him as onos and dropping cc's in his way to bar him from getting back and then electrifying his hive down

There are more, but that's a start. x5 had some good ones if he wants to repost them.

Last second one time kills. Today in fact it happened, and it was while totally random, badass! Rines rushed our hive at begining of game, both sides suffered casualties so that I was the last alien and there was one marine left. I had just dropped two OCs and an MC behind them in the hive area, so as to defend against the (hive rush). He ran in and suffered from my OCs, then as the commander spent his last res to drop hella ammo and health packs for him to kill me (I was last alien), I just spit everywhere in his direction like crazy. I was aiming at him, but it was more of a "screw you/get out" kind of thing, I did not expect to get any kills. Well, right before he reached the med packs and ammo, I spit him in the head, killnig him! hahaha

The packs were waisted, as well as the unbuilt PG the comm dropped by the hive opening. Funny thing is they didnt build any IPs and we had only two MCs, so I dropped another MC while my team was all respawning, and we rushed the rine base raping it. >D I guess you had to be there, but it was cool being the last two guys (and one of us being a gorge!) and getting the game winning kill using spit of all things. haha Good times.

playing against and with some of the best players NS has had.


Pissing off Mak and Arc, always enjoyable

Climbing up the clan ranks, until eventually top.

Knocking off the top in an undefeated tournament to be ranked the new best ns team.

Playing with and against some of the best NS players NS has ever witnessed.

Teamwork.

Carrying.

Winning rounds against terror/exigent on american servers and listening to them whine haha. :-)

All other things covered in first post i guess.

Playing with Solus, J, and Richie for about a year, best gaming experience ever.

Being possibly the most inventive Commander and still winning games.

"Phase Gate Art!"


I "think" I was the 1st person ever to try this in a live game.

Doing this 'never' jeperdised the out come of the game for the marines because the base Phase Gate still linked DIRECTLY to the front Phase gate. However sometimes people got abit rowdy and refused to listen to orders from a "crack pot" commander and we came close to losing.

Playing on friendly well admined servers: d.dozen, TSAO, I-AM, necrophix
Epic turnaround games as comm.
Knifing a paper onos as a vanilla almost solo on mineshaft.

1. Knifing 5 skulks in a row in ~20 seconds with a JP
2. The first time playing as a comm winning
3. Killing a fresh-from-the-base shotgun-HA marine as a skulk.
3. Biting marines to death after long time of ambushing / sneaking up on them.

Bringing entire pub servers to their knees - getting banned, unbanned, banned, unbanned, changing the mindset of many admins - then showing some pub players the huge difference a few settings in NS can make.

Frustrating "elite" veteran players that were on their quests to dominate pub servers. Going against stacks of veterans and carrying my team to victory under a smurf name. Being spectated by veteran players.

Enjoying a few rare moments of competitive NS where I was part of a team that could work together and overcome adversity without attacking one another.

Enjoying pubbing with some former team-mates and having fun playing roles that completely skewed pub games (ex. teaming up as gorges and winning the game via OC forts and spit-kills instead of fading, or relocating as marines outside alien hives and winning the game with regular pubmarines without upgrades, or cloak-lerking and making it seem overpowered to pubbers).

Near the end, when the competitive scene in NA was dead and before quitting NS, it was fun to discover aspects of the game that nobody else was aware of and then exploiting them in pubs.

Oh, and I completely forgot, being part of the process that eventually led to the elimination of the last server-slot hitbox bug (PSHB) - after a year of gathering evidence and spurring discussion, seeing the bug get consistently reproduced in a server.

Six hour game on 1.04 Bast, including me going one hive onos for an hour.

Commanding a four hour game a few weeks ago on the BAD server.

you can't stop us professional domineers okay


the highlight of my NS career was destroying the <BAD> server

You're right - at a certain point the rift between public and competitive players became too great and trying to carry against the stack became stupid.

Holding the siege room on Csiege as commander after losing my base and all my RTs.

We held it in a 16v16 game for 55 misn after siege room opened. Our total sum of equipment was 3 elec TF's 6 siege cannons that had killed 2 of thier hives, and about 4 turrets.

On my team we had lvl 3 wepons + armour and only 3 marines had equipment.

[wdfg]tehgee and [wdfg]Bal :O had JP and HMG of which they kept for the whole 55 mins and i cant remembr the other guy but he had HA and GL of which he kept being saved from onos eating him by tehgee and Bal.

We survived an 8 person onos rush... I think tehgee and Bal killed 3 each and rest of my team killed the other 2.

And finaly died to the whole team as onos....

An amazing "last stand".

Comming a victorious 35 min proto vs 2-hive pcw for the first time.
Finding out weird rt push moves for 6v6.
Snap reflexing skulks at most ridiculous places with sg.
Skulking and fading when everything just seems to go the way you want.
Catpacks.
Teamwork.
Ventrilo.

ahaahahahah, psymplejester that's excellent.


I don't know if I've had any particularly memorable experiences; but what I find most fun about NS is its fast frenetic gameplay that isn't UT-style spray and pray.

Well... playing LAN with friends was always memorable. Being able to taunt someone to their face is excellent.
"Scream for me, b-tch."
Doing it online just makes you seem like a ######head though.

I remember spiking down a Turretfactory guarding Data on Hera allowing us acces to a second hive and turning the game around, eventualy winning it

The ~2h games of well balanced fun on random maps and servers are allways lovely to, the games where it's hard to tell who's gona win untill the last moment...

Oh, and reading Nz_nexus threads on the mapping forum ^^

Anything involving 1.4 and pure crazy and cluelessness and epic games.

Anything involving the words homeless and piggies together

And most of all, during a competitive cal match I shotgun soloed a fade flawlessly and then when my commander realized I won he said "hold on I'll drop you a res node" and by the time he did I had disappeared . I had celerbrated my unlikly super amazing victory by causually dancing on rails while waiting for the node, fell off and landed in acid. Trying to explain to the commander what happened wasn't fun.

My first experience against a gorge rush. (5 marines blindly shooting a wall of health spraying mass)

learning to bind +movement to my mouse (try fading w/o that, lol, took me 2 years)

Actually teaching two awe-struck gamers how NS worked and alot of the nuancies involved (took 2 hours)

learning to use the alien flashlight

Playing without aid of bhopping, ever (that was more of me being unable to do it, though) and still keepin up with the good players

Epic redemp onos holdoff against 10 HAs, i believe we eventually won

Speaking of which, you just reminded me of the most awesome pub game I ever played. It was on [I-AM] gorge's hideout, where the alien team were pushed back from 2 hives back to 1 by an entire stack of HAs. The alien team proceeded to construct the most evil thing ever imagined in NS: a gorge tower (7-10 gorges standing on top of one another). All the HAs (15 of them) entering the hive were spat to death and the aliens proceeded to recover both hives and win the game.

Any game on hamburg, a good scrim, and smurfing back when i was in STD, getting banned from servers than getting in trouble when our guild leadership found out we were smurfing when someone found out who they banned and tried to apologize. good times

- SOLO balling the BAD server a countless amount of times and clearing it
- Balling the BAD server with malicious code and clearing it (on opposing teams, we'd make elaborate plans over vent and never attack each other good times)
- Knifing dante
- Knifing dreaming fairy's lerk inside of the subsector hive on veil (elite ninja), in a pub, just 1 minute after minstrel knifed it at system.
- Killing 5 pub walker skulks in a row and then utilizing every marine movement trick in the game to put distance between me and the 54387593485794357893 other walker skulks heading towards me. Oh yea BAD server, keep 'em coming. Epic.
- Getting chuck to hack
- Playing cracka in star craft and winning with the most cheesiest strategies (ZvP, hi ninja hatchery in your main lol)
- 5 rt onos rush on a team I joined, and then we (under my command) 5 rt onos rushed some other team. Huge wins.
- Avalanche
etc..

Getting my commander to create a base and seige in red room.

Being commander and hiding a beacon in the walls so when the 2nd base was dead I could try one last push.

Building a gigantic wall of lame and staying there till the whole marine team had armor and nade launchers to get me out.

Getting everyone to use the movement chamber when the hive was under attack.

and many others.

Emanon, I remember that name, did you play at TG?

This one time, I joined in a game after it had been going on for some time - Aliens had just gotten three hives up with the entire map under their control, and it seemed like it was all over. But anyways, I move out of base and manage to ninja my way to the Sewer hive, and manage to get a phase gate up. Comm beacons and everybody rushes it, but I'm already gone by the time it goes down, because I jumped into the vent towards the Ventilation hive, and manage to set up a phase gate in there as well. Comm beacons again, and it's rushed down. With aliens down to one hive and Marine team morale high, we go on to crush the last hive.

Another time aliens had the entire map and two active hives, with a third one going up. Comm gave me a JP/SG, and I soloed the Cargo hive. We still lost that game, though.

Once I was comming, and we were sieging the Eclipse hive. Somebody else was near Cargo, so I dropped a PG. Once the sieges got up, I beaconed and had them rush Cargo, which went down quick. Then they phased back and finished off Eclipse.

This is a Question:
What are Your Most Memorable and Fun NS Experiences?

This is an ansver:
What ? the Most great NS experience ? The Natural Selection LAN - PARTIES what we get together

Running the NS 3.2 in LAN PARTY mode without installed steam, and Internet connection. T0tally off-line LAN parties

i hope u will come next time.

of course the FUN MAPS from the BRY'S NS FTP is really requied. to play siege maps, and plays more fun . : D

Hastezone - Sleepless

Playing with all the my good friends. As someone else said before anything 1.4 related. Sneak sieges, solo hmg/jp hive destroying, a 3+ hour stalemate at Nancy, doing everything we could to survive and working together to repair, fight them off and come up with a plan to knock out a hive (1.4 of course.) At least the epic feel the old versions would create / the fear of when aliens would get a onos, and players screaming out Onos!!!!!

Going 80-0 in a pub 4 years ago and having friends from back then remind me about it 4 years later...
Have a buddy from the same four-year-ago period remind me of the time I inflamed my coccyx (or as he put it, broke my ass)
Long games where it doesn't come down to a carry-player or just simply more skilled, but rather who has better teamwork.
45-minute scrim round where at 45 minutes the game ends due to a setting, and knifing the hive down with 5 seconds left to go.
Coming back from no-hive and winning a game.
Organizing and coordinating strange rushes; command chair rush, lerk rush, gorge rush, etc.
Playing with weird strategies...
...not raging when things don't go my way...
and lately: having pub players come up to me and tell me they'd be interested in scrimming.

ah, if only this was the case more often

until the the fat lady sings, i say!

A long long time ago

My favorite experiences where in the competitive realm. I remember playing matches against the worlds best and competing well. I especially enjoyed playing against european teams, as they had a slightly different methodology from what I was used to, definitely provided a challenge.

My favorite public experience was on the Fr31ns server, when I was commanding against 3 hive team. The difference was they only had 3 nodes while we some how managed to secure the rest on the map (Tanith). I had JPers patroling for life forms, and I was able to organize a heavy attack against the hive. While attacking the hive, a few onos killed some JPers so I had to beacon. I beacon, get the onos down, but now I lost the forward phase gate and some nodes. We tried to recap and secure, but was unable to do so, and we eventually lost.

This was my favorite experience because the game challenged me in unfamiliar territory (3 hives vs full tech & nodes). Normally 3 hives is game over, but we were able to hold out and almost make a comeback.

This was great because the game became more about tactics/strategy, than simply out teching the opponent. Our tech was effectively equal, all upgrades were researched and everything else.

I was excited after this game because I really had an oppurtunity to experience something completely different at the late stage of the game. I tried my best to improvise, and the marines did a fantastic job, but we just got out played. I was very happy, and everyone at the end of the game had a huge congratulations.

When I saw how NS2 maybe slightly different it excited me very much, because I am thinking that the game that I experienced could be reproduced over and over again. This is definitely an exciting thing.

This game isn't about outteching the opponent. This game is about well placed medpacks and good aim on the part of your marines. It all boils down to what kills you get and where you get them.

The best time I had in NS was in 1.04. I was lerk rushing in a vent with a bugged hitbox. TAKE THAT COMMIES!

Thanks for the compliment! D.dozen for the win! Even though we only get together a few times a year now, we still proudly wear our tags

And for the question - My most memorable experience is when I com'd Bast (old bast) and killed all three hives using only Electrified TFs - I upgraded LVL3 Armor and Heavies and dropped welders for everyone and basically they just welded and built until I could electrify. The game took about an hour but it was well worth it. I worried that the server would crash as I had over 150 elec'd TFs towards the end!

There are many other times in the olden days I'd share if I had more time.

Q

GORGE RACE!!! ROFL that was the most fun I've ever had playing a game

I enjoy when the game gets a little goofy; gorge rushes, gorge forts, IP spam, dropping marines from the ceiling with lerk lift, etc.

WINNING SEASON SIX OF CAL-NS OMEGA. NSBOX LIVES ON.

Epic games where as aliens you had 3 hives up, then 2 of them got taken down. Stareing down the barrel of defeat you manage to sneak a hive back up and eventualy win the game.

Also, as marines when 3 hives up + stuck in spawn, someone manages to get out and sneak a phase, take down the hive, then take back some res and eventualy win the game.

One of mine would be from this game back in 3.0 final. It was a back and forth game for a long time but we couldn't hold it so we made our last stand. This was back when I first started playing NS mode and I pretty much got hooked after this.



5 minutes is a long time, probably a good thing this passage was sealed off in later versions.

Best time: Competative NS/raging...kinda goes together

LOL classic. there was nothing quite like having a last stand with your mates somewhere in the vents. I pretty sure the alien team love trying to get pop the can of sardines too.

My 3 favourite moments:

EDIT: being a HA marine, and having a friend go onos on the alien team. My friend would then devour me and walk back to the hive - he'd then type kill, and die, and I would pop out in the alien hive to build a phase gate

NS_um totally forgot, whats the one with via duct hive and power hive? anyways my house mate at the time was commanding the game, and we had this stupid idea of relocating somewhere really silly. just after we finished researching jet packs our hive got hit really badly, and we had to relocate. At the time i was in power hive, and luckily with a jet pack, I flew to the top and rebuild a fresh base.
In the end at the very top of power hive we had an entire base, eventually filling the entire bottom with turrets (the good old days where you could turtle because there was no space limits between structures, and onos would take full damage from turrets) and also eventually out fitting everyone with heavy armour so we were immune to lerk spores.
Bile bomb wasnt really a problem because everyone had HA and welders and some key people with GL's at the top of the base could reach anywhere without being in danger. Also thanks to the no reload bug on the gl some players kept up a constant barrage in either entry.
The aliens tried atleast 10 mass rushes, each time increasing the number of onos that charged in. There was simply no way that the alien team could do more than run in and maybe take out a few turrets, which we'd easily build back from the large amount of RFK's. And because we were occupying a hive the aliens had no way to get us out of there - no xeno, no acid rocket, nothing to slowly wear us away.
Eventually the alien team quit because with everyone in HA and hmg's we started to push out to the nearest res point (that one on the bridge thingy next to the quad lift)
Ofcourse this didn't work in the later versions of NS, but damn it was a lot of fun.



NS_CAGED the sewer hive has a pipe in the cieling. I was commanding at the time, and the tema was doing pretty well, i saved like 300 res, and started dropping heavy armour and heavy weapons, and the team was like "hell yeah lets go kick some ass"
Then i noticed the pipe in sewer hive, and as i was about to drop a phase gate near an occupied hive, i noticed that i could actually drop the phase gate inside this empty pipe in the cieling.
Meanwhile my teamw as suiting up and getting ammo, then i had a nasty thought, i placed teh phase gate into the hollow pipe and yelled into the mic "OMG PHASE!!! EVERYONE PHASE THROUGH!!!!" everyone started scrambling and jumped through the phase gate, and one i was satisfied that i had most of the team in the pipe and before most people could figure out where they were, i recycled the other phase gates.
There was no way out of the pipe!

After the alien team destroyed out base and eventually found about 8 marines in the pipe, they discovered that if they bit at the bottom of the pipe, the marines would actually get damaged through the wall (it must of been too thin) so we had HA pop corn machine as all the marines try to constantly jump and climb over each other and weld, in order not to get bitten.



ahh its moments like that, that made ns so much fun, i hope they don't try to balance the game so much as to restrict a huge amount of freedom.

Probably one of the most memorable moments in NS gaming was when i spawned in Ready room with all the weapons as a .

Recycling the COM chair while you were still in it! JK

First time witnessing the insides of an Onos.

Hearing Elfkiller complaining/crying over vent while his brother was punching him.

when playing on the same server with a house mate, and having an old router firmware which occasionally got the packets confused and made us swap places even while we were on different teams.

once he was commanding and i was running with a pack of mines, then we suddenly changed places, and i had the commander view with giant hands and was able to deploy mines in any part of the map!

shhhh!!! i love that trick, dont want em to fix it!

the best turtling experience i've ever had was in the sewer in ns caged. we relo'd there after our base was destroyed early. after building the commchair and a few other structures on the floor, we rushed to get an AA and jetpacks. once this was done we built all of the essential structures on the long thin beam up near the roof, that runs along the whole room (2 IP's, armory, proto, arms lab, obs, as well as 2 TF's and some turrets if they could fit). we also kept many of these structures down the bottom, as decoys. we then went about spamming the entire room full of turrets and a few sieges (to clear the MC's that were helping the gorges to spam bile), and electrifying everything. we also had a 2nd commchair down below in case one died, and both armories were advanced, or if the one below was destroyed it was upgraded asap.

it took the aliens a long, long time to figure out that our main base was actually up the top, out of reach from any onos. yet once they discovered the structures up top, they continued to prefer multiple onos rushes. once the rushes became more and more organized, we had to change tactics, and made most people HA instead of JP. it was a 20 player server, out of the 10 marines on our team, 8 were HA with HMG and welders, and all of them were sitting up on that beam. they were ordered not to leave their perch, otherwise they would have to wait 5 deaths before they get any more gear. the other 2 marines were JP/GL, 1 being the commander, the other one's main responsibility was to fly down from the beam and weld any damaged structures, build any replacements that were destroyed, and GL spam any annoying gorges bileing.

the main disadvantage to the aliens was that they had gotten SC and MC first, and we had locked down the last hive preventing them from getting DC, and thererfore regen or carapace to aid their rushes. once we got level 3 guns we were unstoppable.

the amount of onos grew after each rush as they tried different tactics. they would always have a few gorges to heal, and a lerk to spam umbra. you could see their desperation grow after each failed rush, and eventually we were greeted with the spectacle of 10 onos rushing at once. the turret farm down below and the 8 HMG's up top cut all of them to shreads within 30 seconds, the sound of gunfire drowned out by the mass of laughter coming from everyone's microphones.

eventually after 5 or so rushes of 10 onos at a time, the aliens FINALLY gave up and all F4'd, and copped an earful back in the readyroom. the game time in the end was just over 130mins, and it was definately one of, if not the most fun game i have ever played.

One of the most memorable moments were the 1st day after the 1st release, when everyone had a 400-500ms latency, no one was really know how to play, but still it was extremely fun. It was also great to see how the Polish NS scene was forming that day.

/cry

the first time we won a tournament game, against natural

winning a prac against vx after i lost the comm chair

relocations to observation deck on bast, and atrium on orbital

med spamming bz as he solo knifed a fade to defend a pg in a tournament match

This (still need to add another year)

playing in the first cal-delta championship match... and sucking bad... still hate nadagast

oh... and PTing combat... bugged skulks? shotgun that doesn't block your whole screen in between reloads?

You don't need jetpacks to get there. I actually relocated there at the start of a game with an old friend (champion of jump maps) and an armory in a 12v12 pub or something like that. Its impossible for aliens to do anything until they get bilebombing gorges within range... which they never accomplished because we wiped the floor with them. (6 minute shotgun walk-in into their building hive followed by a 7minute walk-in into their last hive)

2 hour game, LAN party, 20+ players, 3 different relocations, Marines won, ns_veil.

My first game of NS was with a bunch of noobies, all the noobies end up going Marines, I end up in the Comm chair and manage to keep the Aliens at bay for 1 hour.

My fav moment was when the game was ending (we rushed and killed there hive in like 1:30 ) and the game woulden't end. we found out a gorge had build like a chamber fortress of ds in a vent that the marines wern't supposed to access w/o jetpacks, and we coulden't build them cuz we didint even have a IP so made a marine tower that was about 8 marines high and i was the lucky one to go though the vent and kill the gorge after about 10 minutes of frustration (believe me it felt good to kill that gorge >:)

Most memorable:


Going onos for the first time after my team begged me not to and then dying immediately

Getting yelled at by angry commanders

Being the angry commander

Noticing for the first time that the hive looked like a giant ###### with an elephant trunk that has a vagina opening.

Some of my friends describe NS1 as this:

"Being yelled at by comms and eaten by Aliens"

Favorite quote:
<jenny> What is the plural of Onos?
<Mexican> For a while I thought it was Oh ######.