The very next day I read a Kotaku Review about Natural Selection 2, which is (Almost) exactly what I was hoping for.
The game splits up to 28 players into two teams, the Marines and the Aliens. Gameplay feels a lot like Alien Vs. Predator but with an emphasis on capturing and holding different parts of the map.
The map is important because each team is given one commander to coordinate their attacks, build structures, upgrade weapons/armor/mutations and oversee the fighting from a top-down view.
An in-game voice chat works smoothly, and the player base seems full of people willing to give quick advice and help out new players. This helps a lot since the learning curve is more of a sheer cliff-face to climb up.
Anyone else play?
Ten years ago was the original NS. I missed it so much.