The game Natural Selection features two teams: Kharaa (the aliens) and Frontiersmen (the humans). The alien vs. human conflict is a common science fiction theme, notable examples being the StarCraft game and the 1986 film Aliens. According to the NS story line, the aliens creatures depicted in the game are by products of the Kharaa, which are actually a bacterialogical lifeform.
Kharaa
Kharaa life forms
Kharaa units may upgrade/evolve to other forms during play, which costs both resources and a short time delay spent gestating in egg form. Each form has a unique assortment of potential abilities, arranged in 4 slots (listed in order below). In Classic Mode (See Below), every hive enables a new ability slot. The slot 1 ability is always active; one hive provides slot 2, two hives provide slot 3 and three hives provide slot 4. In Combat Mode, access to slots 3 and 4 each require separate personal upgrades. All aliens also enjoy an innate regeneration of 2% health per second (will always heal at least 1 point of health or armor). Kharaa actually comes from the Mongolian phrase 'look out!'.
Kharaa skulk
- The skulk form is a wall-walking light-combat class, effective at basic combat, stealth ambushes, and providing intelligence. All aliens spawn as skulks. The skulk is very weak, and it is often possible for a skilled player on the marine side to take on several skulks at a time with only default weapons.
- Bite: a close-ranged bite that deals 75 damage.
- Parasite: attaches a parasite to a target at long range. A parasited target shows up on hive sight, revealing its position to all aliens through walls. Parasited buildings appear as a yellow shield, while parasited marines appear as a yellow circle. The attack also does 10 damage to marines (none to structures).
- Leap: the skulk jumps forward while thrashing its claws. Often used to quickly rush marines or traverse the map faster. The damage dealt by the leap is dependent on how long you stay in contact with the target during a leap. Maximum damage is 80 per leap.
- Xenocide: the skulk self-detonates, causing 200 damage from epicenter to nearby marines and structures, and pushing the marines away from the explosion.
Kharaa gorge
- The gorge form is a vulnerable builder class, essential for constructing new structures and static defenses. Affectionately nicknamed the "fatty", gorges are usually targeted first even in the presence of more advanced life forms. They are often associated by players as "cute and cuddly" due to their often innocent and defenseless nature. Costs 10 Resources (or 1 point in Combat mode)
- Spit: a ranged attack which deals 30 damage to a single target. Can also be used to detonate mines and activate switches.
- Healing Spray: a medium-range multiple attack which heals the gorge, other aliens and friendly structures for 13 + 2% of maximum hp hp. Gorge heal self by 50% of own self Healing Spray (http://www.unknownworlds.com/ns/v312-changelog.html). Also does 13 damage to marines (but no damage to marine structures).
- Bile Bomb: an arched, medium-range splash attack which deals 200 damage to marine structures (but none to players), and can also be used to detonate mines.
- Web: targets a web marker point. A web line is automatically constructed between successive web marker points. Marines contacting a web get caught for a short while, during which they cannot fire their weapon and moving speed is greatly reduced. Webs can be destroyed by the welder or grenades.
Kharaa lerk
- The lerk form is a flying support class, effective at disrupting enemies and enhancing teammates. The lerk can fly by tapping the jump button repeatedly or glide by holding the jump button. When gliding a lerk consumes no energy. Costs 30 Resources (or 2 points in Combat mode)
- Bite: a close-ranged bite that deals 60 damage
- Spore: creates a poisonous gas cloud which slowly damages marines, lasting 6 seconds and doing 7 damage every half second (unless they are protected by Heavy Armor).
- Umbra: creates a gas cloud which prevents 1 out of every 2 bullets from damaging anything within.
- Primal Scream: gives nearby aliens, including the lerk, temporarily increased attack rate (30%), damage (30%), and energy recharge rate (60%).
Kharaa fade
- The fade form is a strong hit-and-run warrior class, very effective and versatile in general combat. Its health is quite limited, but it is very quick and a massive threat, according to the skill of the fade-player. The skill required to use the blink ability effectively makes this class particularly difficult for new players. Costs 50 Resources (or 3 points in Combat mode)
- Swipe: a close-ranged claw swipe that deals 80 damage
- Blink: the fade flies forward at an extremely fast speed while consuming energy
- Metabolize: heals self for 20 hitpoints and restores ~20% energy
- Acid Rocket: fires a rocket that deals 25 splash damage at the point of impact (does double damage against marine's armor)
Kharaa onos
- The onos form is a huge heavy-assault class, effective at absorbing damage and disabling enemies. Costs 75 Resources (or 4 points in Combat mode)
- Gore: a close-ranged horn attack that deals 90 damage (180 against structures).
- Devour: swallows a marine whole. The devoured marine is rendered helpless and slowly digested (until dead), while the onos gains additional regeneration (+3 health a second). The time spent digesting and health regenerated is proportionate to the amount of health the marine has at the time of being eaten. If the onos is killed or redeems before the devour process is complete then the marine is ejected, damaged but alive. Each onos can devour/digest only one marine at a time. The onos speed is reduced and the onos cannot gestate while digesting a marine. A marine being devoured cannot be beaconed out of the onos.
- Stomp: stuns all marines standing in front of the onos for one second. Marines with a jetpack (and are in the air) are not affected.
- Charge: doubles the speed of the onos and damages everything it touches, while continuously draining energy. The effect does not end until the onos is out of energy.
Kharaa upgrades
A gorge may build offensive chambers which attack nearby enemies. A gorge may also build a hive. The hive is a respawn point and can only be built in certain locations predetermined by the map maker; also, each hive built allows the alien team to build one type of upgrade chamber. Kharaa upgrades become available for selection to the entire team when a gorge builds an upgrade chamber. Sometimes a poll is taken (unofficially) at the start of the game to choose the first chamber, then another poll is taken when a second hive is built. Kharaa players are allowed a total of three upgrades, with one type of upgrade for a specific upgrade chamber.
Defense chamber
Defense chamber (10 res): Kharaa upgrade chamber that provides healing and other abilities
Heals nearby Kharaa players and structures. Provides one of the following upgrades:
- Redemption: With each level, the hive will have a greater chance of pulling the player back when near death (i.e., the health display is in red.)
- Carapace: Each level provides more armor, increasing the amount of damage the player can take before dying.
- Regeneration: Each level forms a 3% life regeneration, based off the base health of the unit. The upgrade regenerates life every two seconds, and replaces innate regen.
Movement chamber
Movement chamber (10 res): Kharaa upgrade chamber that provides increased speed and other abilities
Replenishes the energy of nearby Kharaa units and teleports them to an active hive when used. Can also teleport to a building hive, if the hive is under attack. A widely used tactic is "movement rushing" where a hive is dropped by a gorge at a hive ___location that has been "locked down" allowing the team to teleport in and reclaim the area. Provides one of the following upgrades:
- Adrenaline: Each level will give an alien a 33% greater gain of energy regeneration, allowing an alien to use their abilities more.
- Celerity: With each level, the player will gain a boost in run/fly/blink speed. This speed boost lets the unit move around the map more quickly and makes it harder to hit in combat.
- Silence: Each level of this upgrade will reduce the volume of noise made by the player progressively up to complete silence with level 3, offering considerable ambush advantages.
Sensory chamber
Renders nearby Kharaa players and structures invisible, nearby Marines show up on scent of fear. Provides one of the following upgrades:
- Cloaking: Offers complete invisibility for players moving at walking speed or slower, with progressively increasing opacity as speed increases beyond this. Any attack by or on a cloaked player decloaks him completely, and each level of the upgrade decreases the amount of time the user must wait after such an action before he begins to cloak again, down to a minimum of 3 seconds at level 3. Observatories and scanner sweeps will also decloak all aliens within their radii. Turrets will not fire at aliens with less than 10% opacity.
- Focus: An alien's slot 1 (skulk bite, gorge spit,lerk bite, fade swipe and onos gore) attack will do 33% more damage with each level, but the delay between attacks will increase by 50% per level. Thus, at level 3 the damage an alien's attack will inflict is doubled, but the rate of fire is dropped to two fifths. This is arguably one of the best upgrades available for skilled players, eliminating marines with a few well-timed attacks.
- Scent Of Fear (SoF): Marines outside the user's line of sight will show up on his hive sight as red circles. Each level increases the range inside which marines are detected by 600 units, starting at 600 units at level 1.
Defunct weapons and upgrades
From time to time players like to relive nostalgia in their conversations on NS servers. This section is on weapons and upgrades used in Natural selection's past, but which are no longer used(Having been made obsolete, or outmoded by new gameplay tweaks)
- Babblers : Released a lesser version of the skulk that is computer controlled. It bit any enemy that is nearby and used a weaker version of Xenocide on death or after a certain duration. A Gorge could release many Babblers in a short amount of time. Hive 3 ability, replaced by webs.
- Spikes : Launched two spikes that dealt 16 damage on impact. The rate of fire was fast and the projectiles hit instantaneously. Firing spikes did not reveal the position of the lerk, but instead made a spooky tic-tic-tic sound at the target. (hive 1 ability, replaced by bite)
- Paralyze : Paralyzed a single target marine within range. The paralyzed marine could shoot but cannot move for a duration, was useful against jetpacking marines. (hive 1 ability, replaced by devour)
- Pheromones : Provides vision of yellow markers left behind by any Marine movement, like footprints in the snow.(became outmoded with the introduction of scent of fear)
- Enhanced Hive Sight : When alien flashlight is enabled, alien structures and all players are also illuminated. Worth mentioning that this is now a permanent feature of the alien flashlight as of v3.0 beta 6.
- The Nuke: A very old weapon from one of the very first versions of NS. A commander could drop a large portable, but slowmoving nuke, which, when constructed at the target site, would detonate after a predetermined time. Any alien structures, players, or indeed, marines caught in the blast would be instantly incinerated. Removed due to the fact it did not encourage a very exciting mode of play, and was considered just a tad boring and overpowered.
Kharaa organic structures
The Kharaa structures in addition to the defense, movement, and sensory chambers described above are all organic structures as opposed to the mechanized Frontiersmen structures. Additional Kharaa structures include the hive, resource chamber, and offense chamber. All structures must be built by gorge with enough resource points. Unlike marines structures, all alien structures are self-building, i.e. the structures will deploy. The gorge player is the only player that can also help build and expedite the deployment process.
Kharaa hive
The Kharaa hive allows the aliens to spawn. Each hive respawns an alien every 7 seconds. However, this respawn time is decreased for teams larger than 6. As the more hives are built, this time is increased, so at 3 hives the respawn rate is the same as a 6 player game. The hive has 7000 hitpoints and will heal surrounding damaged structures and restore health and armor of aliens within range of the hive. The hive itself also regenerates very slowly.
Classic mode
Aliens lose if all hives are destroyed and all aliens are killed. Only one hive can be built at a time and only in predefined hive rooms. Hives lock in and allow for only one type of upgrade chamber (defense chamber, movement chamber, or sensory chamber) per hive. A maximum of three hives can be built on typical maps. The ___location of built and unbuilt hives will show up in the ‘’hive sight’’ for the alien players. When multiple hive's are built, an alien player will randomly spawn at any of the built hive locations.
- Function: Spawns aliens, heals nearby aliens and structures, unlocks alien abilities
Hitpoints: 7000 Cost: 40 resource points
Combat mode
Aliens lose if hive is destroyed within the time limit. Only alien structure in Combat.
Kharaa resource chamber
The Kharaa resource chamber (a.k.a. resource tower, RT, res node) collects 1 resource point every 4 seconds. Resources are split evenly among the aliens who have not reached their maximum limit(i.e. have 100 resource points). The resource chambers can only be built on open resource nodes by a gorge player with enough resource points. During extended games it is possible for all aliens to "max out" their resource's. when this happens, all resource points are put into a "resource pool". This pool serves the same function as the marine one, to store unused res points until they are needed.
- Function: Harvests 1 resource point every 4 seconds
- Hitpoints: 2500
- Cost: 15 resource points
Kharaa offense chamber
Kharaa offense chamber
The offense chamber fires at marines and marine structures within its range with 20 hitpoints of damage. The offense chamber does 10 hitpoints in damage to Heavy Armor marines. Offense chambers will prioritize players over structures.
- Function: Fires spikes at marine structures and marines within range
- Hitpoint damage dealt: 20
- Maximum built in an area: 8
- Hitpoints: 1000
Kharaa evolving
Kharaa gestation egg
The Kharaa player may choose to evolve, either into different upgrades or to new life forms. The upgrade system works differently depending on the game mode (Classic or Combat, more in below subsections). During the evolution stage, the Kharaa player gestates into an immobile insect-like cocoon, more commonly referred to as an egg. The gestation period varies depending on game mode and the life form that the player is morphing into. The evolution period is the most vulnerable stage for the Kharaa during the entire game as the player is unable to fight or flee and only has limited health and armor while gestating. Any Frontiersmen that happens to come across a gestating egg will invariably destroy the egg over anything else. Gestating egg will also emit a distinct sound that can be heard by marines and will cause them to search for the egg. As such, the Kharaa player will choose a safe ___location to gestate such as inside a vent, on a high ledge, in a dark corner, etc.
Once the evolution cycle is complete the player emerges from the egg as new life form. If the Kharaa player emerges from the gestation period with some damage inflicted to the egg, the newly emerged life form will also have a proportional amount of damage inflicted to it. Note that a player can also devolve from a higher evolved life form to a lower life form.
Classic NS
Players spawn as un-upgraded skulks. Upgrade evolutions do not cost resources. Evolutions are not retained after death or changing life forms; they must be upgraded again. There are a total of 9 upgrades, 3 from each of the strategic chamber structures: Defensive, Movement and Sensory. However, a player may only have a maximum of 3 upgrades, one of each type. This allows specialised strategies involving certain combinations of upgrades. Once chosen, upgrades cannot be changed until the player dies or gestates into another lifeform.
Evolving into advanced life forms costs resource points, and the cost to do so ranges with the life form to be evolved. Evolving from an advanced life form back into a skulk does not cost resources.
Combat Mode
All evolutions cost skill points. These skill points can be used to evolve life forms or upgrades. When a player has acquired the requisite amount of points for a specific life form, they may choose to spend on that life form. However, when a player dies, they will spawn as a skulk and any points they used for life forms are refunded. The player will then have to re-evolve to the life form of their choice, assuming they have sufficient skill points. A player may not evolve from one higher life form to another.
Evolving upgrades costs 1 skill point per upgrade (with exception of focus, which costs 2) and are retained after death. A player can evolve any of the 9 upgrades as many as they like as long as they have the skill points to do so. In combat, players can also evolve (or unlock) hive abilities, thereby receiving the corresponding third or fourth slot attacks. The third slot costs one skill point to unlock, while the fourth slot costs 2.
Combat mode servers often use two server-side additions- one which adds extra levels, and another which allows structures to be built in Combat mode (using points). Extra levels for the Marines include, for example, Cybernetics (Speed upgrade), Advanced Ammo Pack (higher capacity), and Uranium ammo (damage increase for bullets). For the aliens, they include things like thickened skin (more health), blood lust (more adrenaline), hunger (bonuses for getting kills), and sense of the ancients (special upgrades depending on creature). Upgrades can sometimes be locked until a certain level is reached, or require another upgrade. For example, uranium ammo is often locked until level ten.
Buildings usually require a point. Aliens must be a gorge and marines must have a welder, though not all servers require this. Marine structures usually includes just the phase gate, observatory, and turret factory and turrets, but not sieges or other upgrade structures. For aliens, the four main chambers but not hives are usually used.