How to make a good tech support post

Since the time we spend replying to threads here is limited, here is a list of things you can do to help those of us who are trying to help you out.

Before you post

• Use the search function, or at least eyeball the first page of results. You are very likely to not be the only person with a problem. Check those other threads out, let us know if you are having the problem and if the fix works. Replying in the thread is a handy way for us to be sure that something is working or not and also lets us know if the problem is really widespread.
• Have you tried this with all your mods disabled? Especially, right after a patch mods can and do tend to break stuff. If it works with your mods off, there isn’t a whole lot we or UWE can do to help you because it is a problem with a mod someone else wrote. You can always try to get in touch with the mod’s author and report the bug to them. Try it on a different server and see if you can reproduce it from there. You can get rid of your mods 3 ways:
  • Unsubscribe from using the button in the workshop, through steam.
  • You can deactivate things in the mods menu by clicking on things so that the active column reads NO
  • If all else fails, you can go to %appdata%/Natural Selection 2/ and delete the workshop folder. The easiest way to get there is to press the windows button and the letter r, as in pirates, type in in %appdata%/Natural Selection 2 and press enter
    Spoiler:
• Try resetting your options file. Delete this folder: /Steam/userdata/<steamid>/4920 (resets options by generating a new options.xml the next time you start NS2)
• Be sure you downloaded all the files. Sometimes Steam for whatever reason, misses some files when downloading games. You can verify you have everything by right clicking Natural Selection 2 in your steam library > Properties > Local Files tab > Verify Intregrity of Game Cache. This should download anything you are missing. (or if you've deleted something)
• Run Techsupport.exe (located in your NS2 install directory) and attach the zip file it makes to your post. This gives us a log NS2 makes, possibly containing errors, as well as provide us with your system’s hardware and driver information so we can spot issues.

Okay, so, you have all the debug data you could ever want, you checked out the forum, you have a new, exciting, non mod related issue. What next? Clearly it is time to MAEK PAOST!

Making a post:

• Title it something informative. Posts titled things like AARRRFHGGHGH!!! or ITS BROEKD HALPS! are hard to eyeball, and don't show up in search particularly well. Naming your post something like: “Shooting onos with rifle causes you to catch fire” or “ARCs deployed in gorge tunnels can siege anywhere” make it easier for people with the same problem to talk about the problem, post logs, or offer solutions.
• Write a quick summary with reproduction steps. How did you cause the issue? For example: I was doing X when out of nowhere Y happened and now I can’t do Z anymore.
  If you got an error message please include the full text of the error. “I got an error” is sort of like yelling fix it. It makes everyone trying to help you have to track down the error spend time trying to figure out the error you are having and not spend time trying to help you out.
• Attach your Techsupport.exe zip. or provide a link to it thats hosted somewhere else. This gives us all the error messages the game had, and a pretty good idea what your system looked like at the time this happened.
• Demo Recording. Need to provide an in game demo of your problem? See this guide to record your demo.

At this point you are golden. Like woah golden. Just in case you are still reading. I am going to include a sweet sample post because, heck, why not.

Sample Post(s):
note: I am pretty sure that this is not a real problem.

When I parasite kill the Command station The game does not end

Yesterday, I finally achieved my ns2 dream and parasite killed the last command station. After such amazing success, I was confused to discover that the game was not over. Everything continued as normal until all the ips were killed and all the marines as well. It was really weird. Should killing the CC trigger the end of the game? Seems like a Bug to me.

I attached my Tech support zip.

From there it is just a matter of playing like supermodels. All the time.