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V20 Stable Released!


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I hope everyone had a great Christmas! V20 Stable was released on Christmas Eve, a new version of the game that contains all the changes from the past three months of development. There's still a couple of relatively rare or minor bugs in the game we will patch out in the next week or two, but it contains a LOT of new features and is a pretty stable experience.

The biggest news is the new UI, which looks better and functions better than the old one. It also changes as the game progresses, reflecting your increasing tech level. It's certainly the most visible of the updates, but there's been a lot of other big changes. All are listed below:

Known Issues (to be patched, please do not report):

  • There's an occasional hidden movement screen hang, caused by an AI loop.
  • The end-of-mission screen has 0s for everything. This is because it is going to be replaced with an upgraded screen and scoring system shortly.
  • Soldiers sometimes come back from battle with 98% health when they have taken no damage.
  • Some of the early aliens can be rather passive at times due to an AI quirk we're working on.

Highlighted Changes:

- New UI: Every Geoscape management screen has been revamped with new graphics and usually a new layout. This a massive change and completely alters the feel of the game.

- Improved Balance: There has been a LOT of work done on the game balance, far too much to list.

- Aerial Terror Sites: These have been added to the Geoscape, and represent the aliens bombing infrastructure.

- Game Size: The game has been reduced in size from 5gb to 2gb with some image compression magic.

- New Art: There's a lot of new art in the game, particularly in the Xenopedia (captured alien art etc). Almost all the ground tiles have - been painted over now as well.

- New Maps: There's quite a lot of new maps that have been added to the game, as well as more randomisation of them.

- AI Improvements: The AI is more advanced than before and now capable of using grenades.

- New Animations: There are new animations for gibs, healing, jetpacks, Reaper attacks and some types of explosion. The gib one is particularly nice!

- Accuracy System: This has been revamped to make friendly fire less frequent and misses look less ridiculous.

- Explanatory Tooltips: If this menu option is selected, some explanation screens appear the first time you access the Geoscape, Air Combat and Ground Combat. These provide basic instruction on how to play the game.

Full Changelog (part 1):

Press the button:

V20 STABLE

Fixes:

- Fixed the problem where starting a game, exiting, then starting a new one would cause your starting base to be wrong (and then caused many other problems)

- Fixed a freeze on the Geoscape that sometimes occured when UFOs spawned and the player has lost the funding of a continent

- Fixed the number of "Unassigned" soldiers being calculated incorrectly when waiting for new hires to arrive

- Unassigned soldier category now accessible correctly when soldiers are en-route to base

- Crash when using Soldier Equip screen for secondary base with troops en-route fixed

- Updated the "dropship crashed" popup

- Fixed not being unable to scroll the GC view with the arrow keys after reaction fire, AI turn, etc. until mouse was moved

- Fixed light sources being updated during the day as if it were night (performance improvement only, no gameplay effect)

- Fixed the game getting stuck if you crouched a soldier who was in the middle of another animation

- Fixed an issue where both human and alien units could move through props if their destination was set before they revealed an obstacle in their path

- Fixed an issue where the game would sometimes display a black "TURN X" screen after loading a game

- Fixed explanatory tooltips for ground combat displaying before the GUI has properly initialised

Additions:

- Moved a large number of hard coded strings into strings.xml (For translations)

- Added a load of new tips for the loading screen

V20 STABLE CANDIDATE 1

Fixes:

- The blast from an explosion should now continue to expand past a wall if it destroys that wall (i.e. a fence won't save you from C4 anymore)

- Aircraft now correctly grant the player their sell value on decommisioning

Additions:

- New Loading Screen! It looks nice and has tips! There are a couple of presentation bugs with it we are fixing (it sometimes displays the old "TURN X" screen)

Balance:

- Reduced the quantity of Alien Alloys granted from crashed UFOs by about 50%

- Reduced the number of UFOs per wave from 4-3, to reduce the number of interceptors needed

V20 EXPERIMENTAL 8 HOTFIX 2

Fixes:

- Fixed issue where units walking through any type of gas would take "damage" from it and stop, despite it dealing no damage

- Base rooms that are under construction will now be correctly added to the map for base attack missions

V20 EXPERIMENTAL 8 HOTFIX 1

Fixes:

- Auto-saves created at the start of Ground Combat now include aliens

- UFOs shot down over water now correctly grant a relations boost to the nearest funding nation

- Camera delay after an AI unit moved/fired reduced slightly

- Fixed C4 damage being set to 20 instead of 200 (oops)

Additions:

- Injured soldiers are now indicated on the soldier equip screen

Balance:

- Funding from each nation is now capped at 2 times the starting funding level of that block (previously could be pumped to infinity)

- Victory in a Terror Mission now grants you a significant relations bonus with the nation that was attack

- Extended the length of time both Terror Mission types persist for to be between 12 and 24 hours (was previously between 3 and 12)

- Set Xenonaut/Alien accuracy bonus to 1.5x (this was already stealth-fixed in, listing here for completeness)

- Increased the speed and turn rate of higher tiered UFO weapons (they were trivially easy to avoid with any aircraft due to their long travel time)

- Turn rate of faster UFOs now increase with their speed; previously their turning circles were just too large

V20 EXPERIMENTAL 8

Fixes

- Fixed a load of incorrectly set tiles in the arctic and industrial sets

- Changed nation rating on mission end to say "placeholder" so it is less confusing until we get the new screen in

- Removed "Wraith Leader" enemy type, as there are no unique graphics for it

- Updates to Czech names to make them more correct

- Fixed: On 16:10 resolutions (and therefore also on 4:3 ones), the base screen buildings did not align correctly

- Fixed a variety of tile bugs in the Xenonaut base and Town tilesets

- Fixed instances where units killed in fire appeared to remain alllliveee

- Fixed a freeze caused by bombing run missions

- Fixed: double icon for aerial terror sites shown when reloading a game

- Pumped Reaper chance to hit to extreme levels (they were missing, which shouldn't happen)

- Sped up crouching / uncrouching /shooting animations for humans by 40%

- Removed final frame of all uncrouch animations to correct (one of several) animation glitch

- More window restyling in geoscape

- Increased Reaper movement speed and animations to match (graphical change only)

Additions

- GJ has been doing buckets of work generally improving AI behaviour; everything should benefit, but Reapers are particularly improved

- Tooltips added to the airplane equip screen, for the soldier icons and slots.

- Captured alien Analysis images added to Xenopedia

- New animated tiles for Aliens props: Fusin Reactor, Comm Array and Hyperdrive (these are cool!)

- New UFO icons for geoscape reflecting their actual size

- Added explanatory tooltip to the Ground Combat (should only show the first time you play)

- Added some new custom soldier portraits

- Reaction fire popup has been disabled (will probably return for shots that do not come from the FOW)

- General Psionic power messages now last 2 sec instead of 3 sec

- Dread messages now only last 1 sec instead of 3 sec

Balance

- Geoscape funding increase, to re-emphasise national support

-- Increased the player starting funds from $750000 to $1000000

-- Increased the funding provided by each nation by roughly 70%(!)

-- Initially all countries will provide the same funding level (may be tweaked later)

-- Tweaked relations values to compensate for geographic area (UFOs spend more time over larger countries)

- Base building changes to make them much faster to come online, though a larger initial outlay

-- Increased the cost of building a base to $500000

-- Halved Command Center upkeep from $250000 to $125000

-- Reduced Command Center build time from 20 to 10

-- Reduced Radar build time from 20 to 10

-- Reduced Hangar build time from 10 to 5

-- Reduced the building and maintenances costs of various base structures, very significantly reduced in the case of the Hangar

- UFO balance changes to make both victories and failures more pronounced

-- Approximately doubled the relations penalty caused by UFO activity over a country (including terror attacks)

-- Increased UFO attack rate during their flight, to make sure attacks actually happen

-- Very large increase in the relations benefit provided by shooting down a UFO, e.g. from 6 to 40 in some cases

-- Reduced the health of UFOs to approximately 70% of their previous values

-- Reduced auto-resolve strengths of UFOs accordingly

- Returned alien weapons back to normal ammo values, as aliens now get unlimited ammo when using them (grenades remain limited)

- Tweaked explosive behaviour of all grenades so they cannot pass through walls

- Reduced the range of alien grenades by 4 tiles

- Changed the damage type of alien grenades back to kinetic (they were too good at blasting through tiles)

- Terror Missions now have a different layout of units spawns, and different alien behaviours to make them less "defend the chinook"

- Disabled the "system damage" for interceptors in air combat

- Reduced speed of "heavy" UFO projectiles to make dodging easier

- Halved turn speed of UFOs to encourage more manoeuvring around them

- Light Scouts have, after a bloody battle, been reduced down to slightly slower than Condors

- Scouts have had their speed increased significantly, but health reduced; they will require Foxtrots to catch reliably

- Balanced other UFO speeds so that there is a gradually increasing curve, rather than two tiers

- Also changed some UFO speeds to avoid matching human aircraft speeds; now you can either catch them, or they obviously outrun you

- Slightly increased damage of Avalanche Torpedoes, as they did not conform to the rule of slightly out-damaging light fighter weapons

- Dread now reduces APs by 30% instead of 50%

- Reduced alien strength to 60 (for throwing) removed alien grenade range penalty

V20 EXPERIMENTAL 7

Fixes

- Aliens now have limited ammo again (including grenades)

- Grenades should no longer be able to be thrown through walls by aliens

- Also fixed being able to throw through diagonal tiles borders in certain instances

- Fixed hidden movement screen hiding important visible events

- UFOs now have "roof tiles" which should prevent grenades being thrown into/out of them

- Thanks to above, jetpack units should not be able to see down into UFOs from above

- Moved the active point of the Geoscape cursor - this should fix the problem where it is mis-aligned on certain resolutions

- More misc Geoscape UI improvements

- Fixed windows of the Middle Eastern house blocking line of sight

- Reposition a poorly placed Light Scout spawn in one of the desert maps

- Alien Base Communications Array now correctly unlocks the Quantum Cryptology Center research

- Fixed an instance where reaction fire could be triggered through walls/obstacles if they had not been revealed

- Eliminated about 100MB of redundant data

Additions

- New animated sprites for both alien grende types

- Modified explosion graphic for advanced alien grenade

- Ground Combat now uses same cursor as Geoscape

- New door cursor

Balance

- Alien base missions grant 25 country relation points for completion (Terror Missions don't yet, waiting a fix)

- Alien grenades first appear with Soldier level troops and above (you won't see them at the start of the game!)

- Alien strength increased from 50 to 100 to let them throw grenades further

- Alien grenade damage increased (likely to insta-gib an unarmoured soldier)

- National relations bonus from shooting down UFOs is now a flat rate, rather than steadily increasing (the rest of the system doesn't scale that way)

V20 EXPERIMENTAL 6

Fixes

- Fixed game hanging on certain alien base attack missions

- A large number tweaks, fixes and improvements to the Geoscape UI and related windows

- Throwing grenades will no longer be blocked if there is an obstacle above the line of sight to a target

- Increased Xenopedia font size

- You should no longer be able to throw grenades into a building by throwing them at the upper floors

- Fixed Battle Rifle displaying Plasma Pistol Xenopedia article

- Fixed crouching bonus back to 80% (it was reset to 60% accidentally)

- Tweaks to the blocking tile layout of Scouts and Landing Ships to fix issues with jagged edges, incorrectly sorted hull etc...

- Fixed barn roof displaying incorrectly when viewed from the side

- Deleted some duplicate unused tree sprites

- Updated target point tile to be a little easier to read in the editor

- Fixed minor visual issue with garage door open state

- Fixed Chinook exit for vehicles being blocked on a particular desert map

- Fixed an instance where you could instantly lose by placing your base on a city near another city

- Fixed issue where throwable items rendered on all levels

Additions

- Added explanatory tooltips to tutorialise various screens to the player (Can be disabled at game start)

- Introduction of additional AI behaviours for aliens

-- Aliens should now throw grenades

-- A large number of tweakable values for aliens have been introduced in aiprops.xml

- New animated sprite for the Singularity Core

- Added new dropship images behind Xenonaut soldiers on the soldier equip screen

- Finally snapped and fixed the awful transit van drop shadows

- Added Xenopedia image for Alien Armour Plating

Balance

- General update to air combat balance - too many changes to list individually, but generally:

-- Ranges of starting aircraft reduced, so the Condor now has quite short legs!

-- Speeds of aircraft and UFOs adjusted to encourage progression, Condors will have trouble catching UFOs reliably

-- Damage of Xenonaut weapons adjusted: 2 heavy missiles now always do slightly more damage than the equivalent 2 light missiles + gun

-- UFO health adjusted in line with the damage changes so that earlier weapons have an increasingly tougher time against later UFOs

-- Turn rates of various craft adjusted to encourage more manoeuvring around larger UFOs in air combat

-- Radar ranges of Xenonaut aircraft adjusted so they now progress from small to larger on later long range craft

-- Maintenance costs of all aircraft set to a flat rate of $100000 per month for fighters, $50000 for dropships - no increase for later craft

-- Auto-resolve rebalanced to take into account all of the above

-- Build cost of Mig31 increased to 200000, as the above changes gave it a bit of a buff

-- Reduced Refuelling time of aircraft by about a third

-- Increased re-armament time from 30 to 60 minutes

- Also rebalanced the maintenance costs of base buildings from around 10% of the cost of the building to 25%

- Introduced a build time for new bases, and significantly increased the maintenance cost of command centre

- Updated mission scores so that ground combat missions no longer provide national relations boosts (the relations boost now comes from shooting down UFOs)

- Xenonaut grenades increased in blast radius from 2-3

- The shaded tiles for grenade blast radius now indicate tiles that receive at least 50% of the grenade damage, up from 25%

- Base defense turrets now do far more damage than previously, but have a lower chance to hit

- Stun grenades now do a small amount of stun on impact

- Stun gas now deals twice as much stun damage (also investigating a bug where this may not be getting applied properly)

- Made many alien props slightly tougher, as in many instances a stray shot could have destroyed them outright

- Alein grenades do incendiary rather than kinetic damage (making them better at destroying props)

- Difficulty setting changes: UFOs now have 75% HP on Easy, and alien invasion speed is now at 75% / 100% / 120% / 150% for the 4 levels

- Tweaked AP cost of alien grenades

- Normalised speed of various projectiles

V20 EXPERIMENTAL 5

Fixes

- Fixed two issues that could allow weapons to penetrate through UFO hulls (does not fix shooting through floors!)

-- First was an issue to do with blocking shots that travel between diagonal tiles

-- Second was an issue with the updated accuracy formula where a wall would reduce the chance to hit to zero, but then the close range bonus would override that

- Fixed the way jetpack animations are displayed (they now display the full take-off/land animation before moving)

- Removed the blue tint from "stunned" units - this was a debug tool, your are meant to find out by checking their corpse

- Enabled an animation for healing soldiers

- Jetpacks now display their take-off/land animations correctly, completing them before moving

- Fixed various minor issues with props such as fences and concrete barriers

- Fixed missing shotgun death animation for the basic armour type

- Buildings can now be demolished while still under construction

- Tiles which are flat on the ground and passable no longer go transparent when a unit stands behind them

- Stunned units are no longer blue tinted

- Colour corrected desert rock sprites to match mesas

- Fixed bug where saving the game during the "deployment" phase of a mission could grant the player a free turn

Additions

- All the maps for the Desert tileset have been overhauled, with multiple new maps added to each

-- There are now 3 maps each for small (light scout, scout and corvette) medium (corvette, landing ship and cruiser) and large (cruiser, carrier and battleship) map types

-- Each map has more variety in randomised UFO and dropship placement

-- A number of new building submaps have also been added for additional level variety

-- Please give feedback on how you find them!

- An animation now plays to indicate when a unit is healed

- Reworked Geoscape popup alerts to match new UI style

- Many adjustments and improvements to the main menu UI

- Soldiers will now no longer take reaction shots that have a greater than 10% chance of hitting their comrades

Balance

- Continent maps adjusted so fewer Desert and more Middle East style missions spawn (previously there was too much Desert)

- Alien grenades have been updated with stats more in line with other grenades, they also no longer deal stun damage

V20 EXPERIMENTAL 4

Fixes

- Fixed the soldier equip screen crash, which happened when certain strings on soldier role screen were too long

- Fixed "crouch bonus" being applied after close-range bonus, thus making it more effective than intended

- Fixed layout of aircraft equipment slots so they scale with resolution

- Fixed ground vehicle screen image scaling

- Fixed LOS blocking not being correctly cleared when a UFO spawn replaced a previous map prop

- Fixed graphical clipping on Cruiser floor

- Fixed Hunter being loaded with 50 instead of 100 rounds of MG ammo by the Geoscape

- Fixed missing Precision Plasma Reload sound

- Fixed drop-down menu on soldier management screen preventing assigning the soldiers at the bottom of the list to dropships

- Fixed some of the damaged Carrier UFO tiles including parts of the layer above them (graphical only)

- Fixed both the Buzzard and Sentinel armour using incorrect sprites/animations for a variety of weapon combinations

- Fixed a couple of Town tileset civilians being missing death animations for NW directions

- Fixed a rare hang that could occur on base defence missions when aliens could find nowhere to spawn

- Fixed incorrect radar range being displayed when building a new base

- Fixed alien grenade flight speed

- Fixed missing AK47 GUI image

Additions

- Added various new painted over tiles for the Xenonaut base walls

- New final image for Plasma Charge

- Added one new Ground Combat music track, updated others to final versions

Balance

- Crouching now only grants a unit a 20% reduction in their chance to be hit, down from 40%

- Re-organised starting base layout, removed one radar and added a spare hangar; centralised command centre (also applies to new bases)

- Increased grenade throw range by 2 tiles

- Increased chances of various types of explosive causing fires (AI now avoids them!)

V20 EXPERIMENTAL 3

Fixes

- Fixed crash on Xenonaut loadout screen

- Fixed a pair of bugs which, together, were causing aliens to try to shoot at Xenonauts through walls

- A large number of small refinements for various parts of the Geoscape UI

- Fixed Fury carrying 2 Singularity Torpedos

- Mag Precision no longer named Mag Carbine

- Fixed overloaded soldiers being unable to pickup/move items in their inventory

- Fixed formatting error in aerial terror popup

- Reworded base attack briefing text slightly to make the "size" string make sense

- Fixed wording on the Heavy Plasma Rifle research description

- Added description for alien precision plasma

- Added strings for living Reaper captives

- Added description for Scimitar tank

- Set correct strength for combat and assault shields

- Fixed typo in Heavy Plasma Xenopedia entry

- Fixed type preventing Alien Sniper Plasma Xenopedia entry appearing

- Fixed formatting issue preventing alien reactor research from displaying

- Fixed typo in alien anti-gravity entry

- Fixed issue with display of Scout door

- Fixed missing strings for Alien Battle Rifle and Advanced Grenades

Additions

- Animated "gibbed" sprites when humans or aliens are kill by an overdamage weapon (explosives, mainly).

- New roles: Scout, Shield and Rocketeer

Balance

- Doubled Hunter MG ammo

- Morale tweaked, and now incorporates morale loss via injury and suppression; should mean individuals panic more often

- Tweaked shotgun suppression up slightly

- Increased range on short range alien weapons slightly to improve their ability to suppress

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Full Changelog (part 2):

Press the button

V20 EXPERIMENTAL 2

Fixes

- Soldier ranks were not being passed from the Geoscape to the Ground Combat

-- This meant all soldiers were conmsidered to be "privates" by the game (even though names were displayed correctly)

-- This fix has had a significant effects on the morale system!

- Fixed hang during alien turn when aliens tried to move through a blocked doorway

- Fixed research button being disabled if you had the maximum number of scientists

- Fixed number of sicentists/engineers not being limited by lab/workshop space

- Jetpack troops now display their shadow on the ground tile beneath them

- Updated Xenopedia font size to scale better at small sizes

- Fixed Reaper transformation animation to not be gigantic

- Fixed LOS not being updated when opening a door

- Reapers now make a more Reaper-y attack sound (previously was stun baton)

- Fixed the map randomisation system so it didn't break if a tile set had only one map (affected later terror missions)

- Fixed pistol sometimes being loaded with incoreect number of shots

Additions

- All the maps for the Middle East tileset have been overhauled, with multiple new maps added to each

-- There are now 3 maps each for small (light scout, scout and corvette) medium (corvette, landing ship and cruiser) and large (cruiser, carrier and battleship) map types

-- Each map has more variety in randomised UFO and dropship placement

-- A number of new building submaps have also been added for additional level variety

-- Please give feedback on how you find them!

- New soldier role icons (at last!)

- The new Arctic props (snowy barrels, crates) have been painted over

- Aerial terror sites now have a popup explaining the consequences for mission failure

- Added shrubbery blocks and wrecked tank props for the Middle East

Balance

- The morale system has been completely rebalanced, units should be more likely to panic individually than in large groups

-- The top ranked Officer on a mission grants a bonus to the starting morale of each soldier, which is then subtracted if that officer dies

-- When a Xenonaut dies, it will apply a morale penalty to all other Xenonaut soldiers within 20 tiles, based on the dead soldiers rank

-- When a soldier experiences a "morale event" (panic, fleeing etc...) they will now get a small boost to their morale in order to "stabilise" them

-- If a Xenonaut is within 8 tiles of another Xenonaut they will get a morale boost based on the rank of the other soldier (stacks for up to 2 nearby soldiers)

- Some initial AI changes (expect more and better to come soon too)

-- Reduced minimum accuracy for considering a shot by the AI from 35% to 10% accuracy (helps encourage aliens to shoot at you)

-- Slightly reduced the priority of non-Xenonaut soldiers for alien targetting

-- Removed the large penalty that was placed on any plan that involved an AI alien staying in the enemies LOS (probably a contributor to timid alien behaviour)

- Aerial terror sites are now spawned by bomber missions instead of ground attacks, making them much less common

V20 EXPERIMENTAL 1

Fixes

- Fixed positions of Moscow and Warsaw

- Fixed various problems with soldier names

- Fixed hopefully the last oversized sprites (Sentinel and Wolf armour with various weapons)

- Fixed soldiers killed on base attacks not being removed from dropship

- Fixed crash when sending out a partially repaired aircraft with 0% fuel

- Fixed EMP damage not being applied to robotic units

- Fixed problems with various tiles in the desert/props tileset

- Fixed Reaper Analysis project name displaying incorrectly

- Fixed certain Xenopedia project not displaying stats

- Fixed combat shields being hidden when used with the alien plasma pistol or various types of grenade

- Fixed various incorrectly set tiles in the barn tileset

- Fixed the "Rapid Fire Lasers" Xenopedia info not displaying

- Fixed incorrect alenium transfer cost

- Fixed a variety of problems with the way the Cruiser UFO submap was put together

- Fixed inconsistent "crushable" property on various farm props

- Reduced footprint of Valkyrie drop pod area to prevent issues with spawning in buildings (and to fit it in certain maps!)

- A crouched target is now harder to hit both when shooting at it directly or hitting it via scatter (previously crouching only affected scattered shots)

- Fixed AI being unable to target vehicles

- Fixed a variety of minor bugs with tiles in the Arctic tileset

- Geoscape music randomisation should now be more random

- Can no longer create a saved game with no name

- UFOs attack a random target in air combat (instead of always the first aircraft in a squadron)

- Interceptors no longer burn their fuel extremely fast when loitering over a landed UFO

- Fixed injured soldiers recovering using their maximum HP, instead of their adjusted max HP

- "Killed" soldiers that were revived at mission end are no longer listed as KIA

- Terror mission UFOs no longer appear on the map once they reach their target city

- "UFO secured" no longer displayed at the end of a successful base defence mission

- Melee attacks can no longer be made through walls

- Final mission: Fixed mission repeating, fixed victory not registering correctly, added placeholder victory screen

Additions

- Implemented new Geoscape UI style!

-- This is a huge change and a work in progress, so expect lots of bugs and presentation problems!

-- Every screen in the Geoscape portion of the game replaced, with completely new art and revised layouts

-- Base screen updated with new art for all structures, and blueprint style art for buildings under construction

-- Background artwork for various screens wil automatically change as advanced technologies are researched

-- The soldier equipment screen is still using the old background for the moment, new one coming later

- Fairly major changes to accuracy and shooting system:

-- Accuracy percentage displayed on crosshair should now be unequivocally the real chance to hit the target

-- The game performs a single test on this percentage, if it comes out as a hit then the bullet will now always hit and never be intercepted by props etc...

-- If the game rolls a miss, then the bullet is completely prevented from hitting the original target

-- The missed shot then scatters at random around the original target (including hitting the ground tile the target is in, without hitting the target itself)

-- The scattered shot also has a chance to hit other units, however there is a negative penalty applied to hitting them meaning it is now less likely to hit units by accident

-- NOTE: A consequnce of this is units can perform reaction fire "through" each other, and they will sometimes hit comrades doing so. This will be fixed.

- Improved the way accuracy information is communicated to the player

-- If a prop is in the line of fire it is highlighted in red and shows the percentage penalty it will apply to the shot

-- If there are multiple props in the line of fire then only the one with the highest blocking chance (the one used in the accuracy calculation) is highlighted

-- The stopping chances of other props are shown in grey for informational puposes

-- Multi-tile objects will now only display their accuracy penalty once

-- All tiles from a multi-tile props are now correctly ignored when shooting over them while standing adjacent to them

- All the maps for both the desert/props and Arctic tilesets have been overhauled, with multiple new maps added to each

-- There are now 3 maps each for small (light scout, scout and corvette) medium (corvette, landing ship and cruiser) and large (cruiser, carrier and battleship) map types for each tileset

-- Each map has more variety in randomised UFO and dropship placement

-- A large number of new building submaps have also been added for additional level variety

-- Please give feedback on how you find them!

- Jetpacks have received a major update in functionality

-- Jetpack units can now hover in the air, they do not always have to land as previously

-- Flying units cannot attack, react or perform any other combat action until they land again

-- If a flying unit is killed it is immediately destroyed along with carried items

- Overhaul of UFO AI for the Geoscape

-- UFOs now pick a target nation at random, then spawn over that nation, which should help reduce the prevalence of attacks on poor old Australia

-- UFOs that pick a specific target (terror attacks, base supplies etc) should now fly a slightly more circuitous route so they are harder to pick out from normal UFOs

-- Scout UFOs should now explore a bit more randomly

-- Implemented a randomised variation of the interval between UFO waves, so they are much less predictable now

- Aerial terror attacks

-- Ground Attack missions now have a chance to spawn "aerial terror sites" (this will actually change to Bombing missions in future versions)

-- These must be dealt with quickly, or the aliens will lay waste to the area causing a heavy national relations penalty

- Added ability to hand off crashed UFOs to local forces for airstrike

-- This allows the player to essentially skip very repetitive missions (or ones they are not able to tackle)

-- The penalty for doing so being that the Xenonauts will not recover any alien technology

-- A cash bounty is provided by the nation the UFO crashed in equal to about half of the value of UFO + crew if it had been cleared in ground combat

- Implemented Radar stacking so that building additional radars at a base increased the range of radar coverage, instead of the detection chance (range increases offer diminishing returns for each new radar, and caps at 3)

- Used a PNG optimise tool to compress sprite size for unit animations; saved around 3GB of disk space (!!!)

- All grenades and explosive charges should now have correct animated images for when they are thrown and on the ground

- Painted over tiles for remaining alien base rooms (Red Andron, Green Sebillian rooms and vents)

- Many new painted over tiles for Xenonaut base

- Added new animated art for Buzzard jetpack (Sentinel and Harridan jetpack animations coming later)

- New animation for Reaper attack (still a bit buggy, couldn't figure out why in time for this build)

- A popup has been added to list the items retrieved from shot down UFOs that do not spawn crash sites (i.e. fighters and bombers)

- Implemented new soldier carrying capacity formula; BaseCarryingCapacity (20kg) + 10% of soldiers strength stat

- New Assault Shield image

- Added new tiles and submap for the Quantum Cryptology Center

- Heavy Plasma Rifle renamed to simple "Heavy Plasma"

- All research descriptions for the Xenopedia are now complete (please report any missing ones if you find them)

- New tiles and submaps for the Advanced Laboratory and Advanced Workshop, these replace the Lab/Workshop when you research the "Base Upgrade" tech

- Various visual improvements and tweaks to the style of popup windows on the Geoscape

- New tile art for Plasma and MAG base defence turrets

- Huge improvement to rendering speed on night maps (and alien bases), hopefully this should resolve any issues people on lower end machines have (please report them if not)

- Xenonaut interceptor cannon based weapons now automatically upgrade, as with missiles

- Implemented the Plasma Charge, which automatically replaces the C4 Charge when plasma explosives are researched

- Stun grenade/rocket blasts now have the correct colour of gas on detonation

- New Xenopedia images for Alien Electronics, Directional Thruster Array, Alien Alloy Hardening

- The combat shield now also has a chance to block shots coming in at 45 degree angles from the direction it is facing (but the chance to block is lower)

- Implemented different vission cones for different Xenonaut armours: Predator has a narrow 60 degree cone, Sentinel has a 360 vision cone (caused by science)

- Added "Berzerk" psionic power to Caesan Officers and Leaders (causes targeted unit to go bezerk)

- Assault Shields now automatically replace Combat Shields

Balance

- Tweaks to morale system to make it more likely individuals will panic, rather than the entire team at once (these changes are preliminary, bigger ones to come)

- Tweaked jetpack movement AP values to discourage over-use of level changing when pathfinding

- Tuned MG/Heavy weapon recoil to make them more worthwhile for lower stat soldiers

- Dropships have slightly extended range, and more advanced dropships are faster

- Increased civilian line of sight from 14 to 18 (in line with other units) to improve their behaviour

- Increased pistol magazines from 6 to 9

- Increased hitpoints of combat shields and advanced shields to 200 and 400 respectively

- Increased radius and coverage of stun smoke to 4 tiles

- Introduced rearm delay for aircraft, which is a flat delay they must wait before re-launching after any mission in which they use weapons

- Alien weapons now have a significant accuracy penalty when used by Xenonauts

- Incendiary damage multiplier increased (this causes props to take more damage from explosives) to 400% (not as crazy as it sounds [maybe])

- Increased damage of C4 and the new plasma charge

- Decreased armour mitigation of Heavy Plasma from 50 to 25

- Decreased armour of vehicles by about 30%

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I'm a little confused. We had v20 HF 1,2,3,4,5. and now v20.

Where did this come from? :)

The build version scheme they've been using is this: Experimental, followed by Stable Candidate, followed by Stable each sharing an overall version (20) and getting their own patch/increment labels. It can be a bit confusing, but actually relays a lot of info by telling us the purpose behind each build (general progress, polish, and play respectively).

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Okay, so this v20 is the latest? Good.

Now then, why are my men shooting each other, and only having half TU at the beginning of their turn?

In all my hours of play I have never had this happen before.

Update: Reloaded and see it's that panic system, the first thing I modded out in Xcom-EU.

Now I am going to have to search for a 'no panic' mod for Xeno. I just can't be doing with of this panic thing, make's no sense to me, the aliens don't have to do anything, my men gun down each other.

Edited by Moonie
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So, after Xenonauts, I guess you'll be looking at a Terror from the Deep version called Xenonauticals? ;)

Kidding. The game has been rock solid for me and I really enjoy the upgrades like being able to set the soldier "kit" load-outs and placement within the chopper.

Question: After the monthly report from the various nations, is there a way to view it again? I am probably missing it.

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So, after Xenonauts, I guess you'll be looking at a Terror from the Deep version called Xenonauticals? ;)

Kidding. The game has been rock solid for me and I really enjoy the upgrades like being able to set the soldier "kit" load-outs and placement within the chopper.

Question: After the monthly report from the various nations, is there a way to view it again? I am probably missing it.

There is currently no way to view that screen other than month end.

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Dropships have slightly extended range, and more advanced dropships are faster]

You're kidding, right? How can you have extended the range - they already can circumnavigate the ENTIRE PLANET with one load of fuel. The game seems balanced on the air economy. Fine, but you keep making the air game super easy unrealistic. First with the never-die fighters now with unlimited dropship fuel.

How can this still be called a Strategic Planetary Defense Simulator in good conscious....or maybe I'm wrong and you're going fix dropship fuel?

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I agree it is confusing. There should be more experimantal builds and no Stable release candidates since the word Stable is confusing.

We had stable candidate 20 with the different versions and hotfixes, and now we have a stable release because the changes have been ratified and the thing doesn't crash any more. It's pretty standard when you're doing PROGRUMMIN', it's just that usually there are a) less candidates and b) no candidates released to the public because that's what the QA team is for.

Edited by Assoonasitis
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You're kidding, right? How can you have extended the range - they already can circumnavigate the ENTIRE PLANET with one load of fuel. The game seems balanced on the air economy. Fine, but you keep making the air game super easy unrealistic. First with the never-die fighters now with unlimited dropship fuel.

How can this still be called a Strategic Planetary Defense Simulator in good conscious....or maybe I'm wrong and you're going fix dropship fuel?

It's a game. Besides, the how do you know they aren't getting mid-air refueling? Anyway, there are a lot of game play considerations that make it difficult to not have dropships with huge range. Originally the Chinook had very limited range, but it was increased due to the problems. The first one being the number of bases, dropships, and soldiers it would take to cover the entire globe if the range/speed was realistic. Also, probably GH might be better off calling it the "mission transport." In real life it would probably be a C-5A with the chopper loaded inside using mid-air refueling for the longest leg, followed by a chopper flight from a airbase/airport close to the actual mission location.
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Bugs discovered so far in this stable release :

- C4 wasn't able to break a simple house wall while a bullet did

- A character got stuck on a barrels item after entering a house with a closed door, the barrels weren't discovered.

- Impossible to switch to the deployment team on the soldier preparation panel. I can click "unassigned", but the only way to return to "Charlie team" is to get out then back of that screen.

- Sometimes, windows won't allow a full view of what's behind them : the soldier's view stops much closer to its normal view distance.

- Firing three bullets through a closed window gives 100% failure, and will eventually destroy the wall instead of breaking the window and shoot through.

- The 98% health bug

- Paris/France is wrongly located.

Edited by OzoneGrif
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- Sometimes, windows won't allow a full view of what's behind them : the soldier's view stops much closer to its normal view distance.

- Firing three bullets through a closed window gives 100% failure, and will eventually destroy the wall instead of breaking the window and shoot through.

- The 98% health bug

I seem to remember a time when you could fire through windows easily, it no longer seems to work as it use to, no idea why not.

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The one thing I've really been wondering for and waiting for, release-wise...

When will the final mission/victory condition be implemented (if it's not already in)? I guess it will probably be put in last and determine which release is the final/'retail' release but basically, I admit this is the one thing I've been meaning to wait for.

As much fun as an arcade / endless mode might be, I admit I've been waiting for the story / beatable mode (though the main difference between the two is probably only the presence of an unlockable game winning mission via research & built items and, maybe, a couple of extra missions if relevent).

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