The Natural Selection 2 Website has word that build 162 of the Natural Selection 2 beta is now available on Steam for those who have preordered Unknown Worlds' upcoming action/strategy sequel. A new NS2 Build 162 Patch Video offers patch notes in an unusual format, and the update also mentions some under the hood changes: "This build also includes several weeks of work rewriting the physics and collision systems to yield better performance and support for multi-threading. Our new physics/collision system is also designed to give us better control over the shapes the game uses to detect bullet hits, melee attacks and movement. This is something we're hoping to take advantage of in the next patch." A change list follows.

• Optimized physics/collision detection
• Fixed server memory leak when the server was restarted while clients were connected (thanks endar)
• Fixed bug where clients wouldn't receive a message when the server shutdown
• Added auto-save support to the Cinematic Editor
• Fixed Lua errors not properly printing out the call stack information in the log
• Fixed bug where the Observatory could scan before it was built (thanks Enceladus)
• Fixed bug where the healing radius for the Crag wasn't displayed (thanks Enceladus)
• Fixed bug when a structure gets recycled or destroyed that a running upgrade is lost (thanks Enceladus)
• Fixed bug where the Umbra button was not usable with a Mature Crag (thanks Enceladus)
• Fixed bug where a Mature Whip was not recognized as valid for researching melee upgrades (thanks Enceladus)
• Added Shared.GetDataFromUrl function to retrieve data from an Internet URL
• Added a section overview to the in-game profile display