Happy new year 40k fans, it gives me great pleasure to finally announce the release of Beta 6 of Exterminatus - Rival Species 2. This beta brings the number of player classes up to 10 and a total of 8 playable maps. Additional new features in this version include against the clock missions, marine battle cries and burst mode for boltguns.
You can get the beta 6.0 installer from it's ModDB downloads page, there is also a list of download mirrors is available at 40ksource.com where you can also find a Zip file installation around 310MB in size.
As with all recent EX releases the Exterminatus Game Group steam community page is the best place to find the servers and times to play EX.
Changes
The new (tenth) class in EX is the Tyranid Genestealer (AKA stealer), which is smaller and more agile than other tyranid classes and is available from the start of the game. While Farseer was working in the animations for the stealer I had time to add a much requested feature, a rapid fire mode for boltguns. The Specialist's Meltagun and the Zoanthrope's warp blast attacks have been brought into line with the boltgun by enabling them to fire through grates, making both classes more dangerous in tight, vertical areas like ex_hive and ex_orbital. These improvements prompted widespread adjustments to the balance of others weapons and classes, specifically affecting the StormBolter and the Carnifex.
Beta 6.0 adds 2 new maps, ex_hive_city by Nqss and ex_orbital by Nic2 and Typheron. A new timer has been added to the player's HUD in order to help players stay informed of their progress in “against the clock” missions. ex_hive_city, ex_thunderhawk and ex_spacehulk have been updated to make use of the new timers. Many of the existing maps have been polished to provide better atmosphere and game play, particularly ex_digsite, ex_lycantium and ex_ichar_iv.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the people that have contributed to Exterminatus and participated in playtesting tests leading up to this release.
Future Plans
I had planned to offer another feature poll, sadly we no longer have enough developers or testers to finish any more features. Future developments of EX will therefore be on an ad-hoc basis, oriented around polishing the existing features toward a final 1.0 release. Naturally i'll still be incorporating contributions as they occur.
I hope you'll find more team members for the features you have in plans. Wish you all the best! :)