Most NS2 rounds are decided by which team talks better. Say what you see, where, and what you are doing.
Vanilla tools#
- Voice (Alt): team voice chat. Keep it short: "fade in Cargo", "need a med", "onos coming from Pipeline".
- Team chat (Y) and all chat (Enter).
- Requests (X menu, Q heal/med, Z ammo, H order): the commander sees them as alerts.
- Ping (middle mouse): marks a spot on the map for your team.
- Room names appear on the minimap and at the top of your screen. Use them.
Pings, radio and voice#
Personal pings#
Every player has their own ping, with their name next to it, coloured by skill tier. Dead players can ping by right-clicking the big map. Player pings have a 30 s cooldown; muting a player hides their pings too.
Context pings#
Pinging something specific does more than mark a spot:
- Ping a visible enemy to mark it for your team for 6 s: aliens see it glow, marines see a target icon, and it flashes on the minimap with your name. If the marked enemy dies while marked, everyone who pinged it gets their ping cooldown back.
- Ping a dropped weapon, jetpack or exosuit (marines) to call "pick up this".
- The commander's chat line for the ping says which room the target is in.
Radio commands#
Bind Radio Commands under Options > Mods. Press the key, then a number for the group (Personal, Group, Objective, ...) and a number for the line, e.g. Follow me, Need assistance, Structure needs welding. You hear a voice line and your team sees the text. You can set the radio volume there too.
Proximity voice#
Enable Proximity Voice under Options > Mods and bind its push-to-talk. Anyone close to you who also has it enabled hears you, including the enemy team, so it is for ready-room chat, banter and trash talk more than callouts. Spectators can listen but not talk on it. Normal team voice is unchanged.
Muted indicator#
If you have muted a player, an anonymous "Muted" bar shows while they talk, so you know someone is speaking.
Etiquette#
- Don't hold the voice key to complain. Callouts first.
- Mute and report rather than argue. Votes exist for real problems; see Voting.