Besides SBM, the servers run a set of mods that fix vanilla bugs and add quality-of-life features. None of them change damage or costs. Most players notice them as "things that just work better".
Aliens#
- Better Egg: evolving in place. Evolving no longer teleports your egg to a random nearby spot. If the new lifeform fits, you evolve where you stand (only the height is adjusted), and you can evolve upgrades even in small vents. The evolve menu stays open while you move, with a placement preview. See Eggs and evolving.
- Fixed starting upgrades. When the game auto-picks upgrades for you at respawn, it gives Carapace, Celerity and Aura instead of random ones. Your own picks always win.
- Better Infest. Infestation spreads along connected ground and no longer passes through walls and floors. Generated cyst chains stay on floors, and the alien commander's cyst guide shows real coverage as green/red hexes (toggle under Options > Mods). See Infestation.
- Drifters follow cyst chains. A drifter that finishes a cyst moves on to the next unbuilt cyst nearby by itself. See Drifter.
- No dead ends. Drifters, cysts and other alien units can't get trapped by alien structures placed around them; the same goes for ARCs.
- Alien player orders. The alien commander can give attack, move, defend, construct and heal orders to players, with voice lines.
- Lifeform eggs on the minimap. Gorge/Lerk/Fade/Onos eggs show as their lifeform icon to aliens.
- Hive drop sound. When the commander drops a new hive, aliens far away (beyond the normal 50 m hearing range) hear it quietly.
- Lifeform announcements. In the first minute aliens see who is going gorge (with a count); during the round, who goes lerk, fade or onos.
- Instant hive login. A just-built hive can be entered immediately.
- Biomass progress. Biomass research appears in the research list ("BIOMASS 3") and the biomass bar shows partial progress.
Marines#
- Weapon swap fix. Holding E over a dropped weapon swaps once instead of flipping back and forth.
- Dropped weapons near armories settle properly instead of bouncing away.
- Structure placement. Observatories and Arms Labs can't be placed inside walls; marine structures can't overlap power nodes; the ARC factory's blueprint no longer clips into geometry.
- ARC counter on the marine top bar.
- Fair start. The power is cut in every room the aliens could have started in, so the dark room no longer reveals the hive.
- Parasite on exos. An exo that ejects keeps showing as parasited correctly.
Both teams#
- Research list while dead. The research-in-progress list stays visible while you are dead or waiting to respawn.
- Commander cooldown numbers on ability buttons (Options > Mods > Shimizu QoL).
- Multi-ping, context pings, radio commands, proximity voice, muted indicator. See Communication.
- Start-of-round AFK check. Players who never leave their spawn room are moved to spectator shortly after the round starts (about 45 s), so nobody has to call kick votes one by one.
- Leave announcements. Chat says when a player leaves a team or the server during a round.
- Reworked unstuck. The vanilla
stuckconsole command actually frees you now. - Extended skill tiers. Tier 8 and Tier 9 ranks with their own emblems, plus commander tier insignias.
- Name guard. Blank or invisible names, overly wide names and impersonating someone else's name are blocked.
Spectators and the ready room#
- 25 spectator slots, so you can watch or go AFK without being kicked. When the server is full you wait in a queue; see Ready check and queue.
- Mini-games for spectators and the ready room; see Minigames and quests.
- Ready-room fun: a sheathed axe, fades and onos with their abilities, third-person view. See Cosmetics.