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Xenonauts: Community Edition 0.27


Solver

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This is X:CE 0.27, ready to be loved.

Installation:

As of 0.27, X:CE is now on Steam!

If you have Xenonauts on Steam, just right-click the game and from the Betas tab select the Community branch. Steam will update.

To install manually, download X:CE 0.27 from the downloads section. Then run the game, and install the downloaded file as a mod from the mod tools. Then go to assets/mods/xce, and copy Xenonauts.exe (and other executables if you want them) to the top level folder of your game installation. If the launcher prompts you to overwrite anything, say yes.

After that, it's strongly recommended that you install X:CE settings also (this is automatic on Steam), otherwise several important features will be disabled.

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The full changelog is as always in the changelog thread, but here are the highlights.

LOS / LOF changes

The main feature of 0.27 is that line of sight and line of fire have received a lot of changes and now work much better. This applies in particular to two things - first, visibility and shooting around corners, and second, 3D line of sight. A soldier standing in the middle of a roof will no longer be able to see an alien standing on the ground just by the wall, for example.

In general, the entire system should feel much more natural now, with less of a disconnect between your expectations and what your soldiers actually can see/hit. Here's leaning around a corner:

[ATTACH]5324[/ATTACH]

You can also now use the Toggle Roofs button to get a 3rd state, where everything on the ground gets hidden, which is handy to look around buildings and so on.

groundview.png

Together with this, bugs concerning night vision should also be resolved. No more invisible aliens in visible tiles, strange alien alerts and other issues.

Morale / psionics fixes

Fleeing and berserking should now work as originally intended. Some more cases of fleeing being stopped have been fixed, and berserking will no longer always target a unit.

Mind control no longer lets the aliens use the mind controlled soldier on the same turn. Instead, the soldier will be left with 0 TUs for one turn, and then be under alien control with full TUs for one more turn. This corresponds to the game designer's desires that there should be some kind of protection against mind control.

The range of mind control has been boosted slightly.

Default loadouts

The default starting loadouts for Xenonaut soldiers should now be more sane. In particular the Rifleman/Assault loadouts used to be quite poor. Now the loadouts are probably a lot closer to what most people use.

Also, a new default soldier role has been added. It's the Specialist role, which is a Rifleman who carries a C4 charge and a rocket launcher in the backpack, at the cost of skipping a medkit and some grenades by default.

Other changes

There are also other changes.

All soldiers should now have their flag shown in ground combat, including the custom pre-order soldiers. There are also no more placeholder flags, Soviet troops display a flag of USSR instead of Russia, etc. Custom soldiers display the best possible flag, so there are a few mismatches in cases where the custom soldier has a nation that did not exist at the time - mostly this means Russian custom soldiers that will show up with the Soviet flag.

There are now cover indicators! When moving soldiers, indicators will appear showing directions from where the soldier is going to be protected by cover (green) or blocked completely (red). Note that they indicate directions of protection, but not quality of cover. A 10% cover wooden fence and a 75% cover cinder block will show up as green.

cover.png

Stunned soldiers will now keep bleeding and won't leave a bloody spot on the ground like killed soldiers do.

Fixed a rare CTD in air combat when clicking a weapon but the fighter does not have a target.

A notification now shows up in the event log when a plane has been fully refueled and rearmed.

fighternotification.png

Editors

This build also includes the GC Editor (debugger) and map/submap editors, updated for 0.27. This means anyone who wants to use the GC editor to test their mods can now do so also with X:CE.

Edited by Solver
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Faster alien turns (skipping hidden animations) has been disabled again for 0.27, as it's been reported that in rare cases it causes the game to lock up. I've never seen the problem myself, and as such it's difficult to do anything about the problem. It would be very useful if somebody could provide more information about the problem.

This [ATTACH]5346[/ATTACH] small mod will enable the feature again, and additionally it will enable end turn autosaves. The autosaving should make it easy to restart the game from right before the problem occurred (after possibly removing this mod again to turn off the feature). As such, it should be rather safe to install this mod and help test the feature.

The autosaving could also provide a save for reproducing the problem (note that you need to copy it out before ending any turn in the game, or it will get overwritten). I would be interested in such saves. Even if for some reason the problem does not repeat when trying again with the save (maybe it will be possible to spot a pattern that'd help to identify the problematic action/situation that causes the problem).

skiphiddenanimations.zip

skiphiddenanimations.zip

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I don't suppose you could fix the fighters so they always re-arm before they re-fuel? It's stupid to have a partially fueled fighter on the ground getting even more fuel when an alien ship is approaching your base and what you really need are weapons. The number one priority of the ground crews should be to get some missiles under the wings THEN fuel up the fighter. You should also remove the minimum fuel allowed for take off restriction. If it even has 10% fuel you should able to launch it.

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I thought the order was deliberately made that way by the developers to prevent rapid aircraft relaunch. At least, it should be added only as mod-able option; air dominance on the vanilla is already too easy to begin with.
I don't think that's true. What was nerfed was how quickly they can refuel and rearm in general not the order. If you look at the official Xenonauts programming changes list you'll see that this was supposed to be done, but they ran out of time before it was completed (if the online "to-do" list still exists.) This change wouldn't really change the balance much as it really only helps you if there is a UFO very close to your base and you have fighters that normally couldn't launch immediately due to lack of weapons (but still have some fuel on board.) I can only think of one occasion where this would have saved my base, but nonetheless I believe this is truly how it should be done. Edited by StellarRat
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Right, that was a deliberate decision to avoid a few planes doing all the missions.
I don't see that happening. If you have weapons, but take off with little fuel you aren't going to be able to do much except in the area right around your base. Bear in mind that your fighter will still be delayed by loading weapons, so it's really a limited change. I also wouldn't be opposed to still requiring a minimum of 50% fuel to launch even though I think it's silly.
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Unless someone can confirm to me that Chris had planned the switch, I won't switch it around by default, but the order of rearm/refuel, as well as the minimum fuel for takeoff, can easily be options.
If you still have the link to the web based bug reporting and enhancement system Goldhawk had online you can still see it there.

https://trello.com/b/kxjRG3md/xenonauts-work-tracker

Third item down on the Programming - Geoscape column.

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9 minutes to find a the original plan by Goldhawk. I have no counterarguments.
Good. Now get to work. ;)

I do realize that some rebalancing might be needed. It's possible Goldhawk would have had to rebalance too once the change was in place, but since they didn't get that far it never came up.

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With the fast Foxtrots, their rearm time is usually the limit on what they can do. Not fuel. I am pretty sure that rearm-first would allow Foxtrots to run one extra sortie during most UFO waves.

There are other ways to limit the number of sorties. For example by reducing the range of torpedoes, which is IMO too long, and which is what allows Foxtrots to fly missions with impunity. If the range was reduced, Foxtrots would either possibly take some damage, or spend more time maneuvering, which would both limit theirs sorties. I think that would be a good way of handling this, if somebody would take the time to balance it.

Note that the fact that this is listed in the work tracker does not necessarily mean that it was planned to happen, I think it's more like a list of items to check (for example, there's a ground combat item about making aliens susceptible to panic, which I find to be nonsense).

Edited by llunak
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Why do you say that? I think they could panic in the old game and they had morale too. I think Chris was planning to add alien morale, but again he ran out of time.

Have you ever played OG on (real) superhuman? Attacking any larger UFO was actually rather boring, because by the time soldiers got to officers, they were already scared like hell because of all those many goons having been killed and were just wandering unarmed on the bridge. It didn't add anything to the game, only took from it, and I don't quite see what it would add to Xenonauts either. It also doesn't fit Xenonauts lore-wise - the aliens are supposed to be fearless.

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Have you ever played OG on (real) superhuman? Attacking any larger UFO was actually rather boring, because by the time soldiers got to officers, they were already scared like hell because of all those many goons having been killed and were just wandering unarmed on the bridge. It didn't add anything to the game, only took from it, and I don't quite see what it would add to Xenonauts either. It also doesn't fit Xenonauts lore-wise - the aliens are supposed to be fearless.
No, I never did. I could see where balancing would be necessary. The units I could see being affected by morale would be Caesans, Praetors, Wraiths, and Harridans. The rest are either mechanical or unlikely to ever be fearful of anything. Edited by StellarRat
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