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Hello everyone - I'm pleased to announce that Xenonauts 2 has now officially reached 1.0, and is out of Early Access! This is the end of a long journey and we're all incredibly excited. To celebrate, we're releasing another major content patch to accompany the launch! THANK YOU TO OUR COMMUNITY: Huge thanks go out to the many, many people who have supported the project during development. All the comments, suggestions and bug reports have really helped shape the game into what it is today, whilst the extra funds raised from Early Access sales have allowed us to add significantly more content than we had originally planned. Xenonauts 2 is a better game because of your support. If you haven't already, please do consider leaving a review for us on Steam. People pay a lot of attention to reviews when deciding whether a game is worth buying, so if you're enjoying Xenonauts 2 (or just want to say thanks to the dev team), leaving a review would really help our game find its audience! MILESTONE 7 PATCH: Today's major content patch marks the arrival of Milestone 7 on the public branches. This contains several significant gameplay updates and comes with an 8,000 word changelog that can be read below (there's a Key Content section at the top for people who just want the headlines). As this is a Milestone update, it will break saves made in Milestone 6 or earlier - however, anyone with an ongoing Milestone 6 campaign can switch to our Legacy branch to continue playing on the older version of the game. POST-RELEASE PLANS: Our 1.0 release will not be the end of development work on Xenonauts 2. For the next couple of weeks we'll be focused on ensuring the game is completely stable and trying to finish up the various smaller improvements we couldn't quite get over the line before release. If you do encounter a bug that affects gameplay, please do report it - we'll do our best to fix it as quickly as possible! Once the dust has settled on the launch, we'll start planning out our post-launch content roadmap and begin work on the modding tools for the community. The game does already support Harmony code modding, but we think it's important for the longevity of the game to make modding as easy as possible (as the numerous excellent mods for Xenonauts 1 showed). We're still not quite sure what form the post-launch content will take, but we like the idea of releasing a mixture of free updates and paid DLC content expansions. Anyway, we'll announce our plans for this when we know more. COMMUNITY LINKS Finally, if you're interested in chatting to the devs or other players, we urge people to join our Discord server or visit our forums. There's also an official community wiki for Xenonauts 2 where you can find information to help you progress through the game. I think that's everything - thanks for reading, thanks again for your support, and good luck defeating the alien invaders! -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- MILESTONE 7 (1.0 RELEASE) PATCH NOTES KEY CONTENT: New UI Background Art: we have added new background art for the Research, Engineering, Soldiers and Base Stores screens, all of which visually changes and upgrades with new technology as you progress through the game - a popular feature from the first Xenonauts that we've finally managed to implement in the sequel! Interceptor "Paperdoll": the top-down interceptor art on the Aircraft screen has been updated, and the image now reflects changes in weapons and equipment loadout as you make them. There's also additional artwork for things like the engine upgrade engineering projects for the early-game interceptors, which again helps the progression of the game feel more immersive and rewarding, Alien Praetorians: a new rank of Psyon / Sebillian / Wraith has been added in the final stages of the game. These Praetorians have new 3d models and only appear on missions where Eternals are present, and they are significantly tougher and more dangerous than normal aliens (the alien Praetorians that existed in Milestone 6 have been demoted to alien Elites, and the previous alien Elites have been demoted to a newly-created Warrior rank). Farm Map Revamp & Scout UFO Maps: this update contains a complete rework of most of the existing Farm tactical maps, making their layouts more interesting and adding a number of new or updated terrain tiles. We've also added two new Scout UFO maps to each biome, as previously there were only three maps per biome for Small UFOs (Scout / Destroyer / Observer), and they would quickly start to repeat if a player started a second or third campaign. Extended Mode: there's a new toggle on the campaign settings screen called "Extended Mode" that controls the UFO Delegation system, and therefore the number of tactical missions a player will need to run during a campaign. Tucking the UFO Delegation toggle away as a difficulty setting (as we did in Milestone 6) was a mistake, because really the system is more like Iron Man mode - an important decision that players need to be clearly prompted to consider at the start of a campaign, for which there's no "correct" choice. Improved Performance: game performance has been significantly improved in a lot of different areas, including the following: Faster loading times (for both strategy layer and tactical combat) Reduced slowdown when UFOs spawn on Geoscape at high time acceleration speeds Reduced strategy UI sluggishness, especially when spawning tooltips Explosions in tactical combat should now calculate much faster Better performance when using the Sentinel System that grants 360-degree vision AI turns in tactical combat have been sped up - both in terms of improved AI calculation time, and reducing the number of unnecessary moves made by civilians Much faster save speeds across all parts of the game, the biggest effect of which should be that autosaves should no longer lock up the game for 1-2 seconds. This will be especially obvious on Ironman mode, as the game frequently autosaves during tactical combat when Iron Man is active. Steam Workshop integration: this update contains the last of the technical work required for making mods work, including the ability to edit texture files using code mods and in-game UI for managing mods and uploading / deleting mods to Steam Workshop. Although the general-purpose mod editor tools are not yet complete, experienced modders who are familiar with Harmony code modding should now theoretically have everything they need to be able to create and distribute mods. KEY BALANCE CHANGES: The feedback from Milestone 6 was that Doomsday was too easy to avert in Phase 1, and that the plentiful Operation Points made it possible to unlock all the Supporters (and their associated bonuses) too early in the campaign. We've tweaked the Phase 1 tactical missions to make them a little less generous with Doomsday reduction, and made a couple of changes to Operation Points. First, the cost of eliminating Infiltrators now slowly increases over time - they rarely pose much immediate threat, but they will become a Operations Point sink if you leave them too long. Secondly, building new bases is now a Strategic Operation that costs 100 Operation Points. This change was as much about improving the UX as balancing gameplay, but it does also serve to remove an extra 200 - 300 Operation Points across the campaign. We think this is enough to stop Operation Points getting out of hand without going too far and completely choking the supply. On the tactical layer, we have reworked the Colossus Battlesuit and Stalker Stealth Armour as players felt both were underwhelming. The Colossus now enjoys a 20% fire cost reduction for its weapons (allowing it to use machineguns more like assault rifles), can now carry items it cannot itself use (so it can use its 100 Strength to act as an item mule for the rest of the team). There is also a researchable Automed Unit module for the Colossus that is heavy, but improves the survivability of the soldier inside. It is now much more effective on the battlefield, and much more fun to use. The Stalker Stealth Armour has been redesigned so it no longer has a "heavy" variant but has very strong stats on the "light" variant. It therefore offers 25 Armour with minimal weight and no Accuracy penalty, while retaining its cloaking field effect. This makes it much more viable, particularly for soldiers who want to maximise Accuracy - something that is more relevant as the cheapest fire mode on Sniper Rifles have been reduced in cost to allow firing twice per turn. Snipers with very high Accuracy can therefore output lots of damage if positioned correctly. The aliens have also received buffs - in Milestone 6 the elite Cleaners were actually tougher and more dangerous than the early aliens, which didn't feel right. Most aliens have now been given a 20% HP boost, with the Androns and the Sebillians instead being given 35% resistance against Kinetic and Energy weapons respectively. Mantids now make more use of their Symbiote-spawning Bio-Rifles, and receive an upgraded version that spawns two Symbiotes per shot towards the end of the game. The Psyon Mesmerise ability is now stronger as it checks against Bravery rather than Morale and, as mentioned above, there's a new rank of especially tough and dangerous Psyons / Sebillians / Wraiths that appear at the end of the game as bodyguards to the Eternals. Finally, the AI has been upgraded further. This is both a buff and a nerf - the AI is now more deadly because it is more capable of making the correct decisions in combat, but we have also implemented systems to prevent the AI "cheating". It is now much better at keeping track of what information the aliens should know, and what they should not - so there should be far fewer instances of aliens unfairly homing in on Xenonauts that they cannot see and should not know were there. This was (rightly) a big complaint for players in previous Milestones and these changes should allow more tactical play. There's many more changes than what I've written above, but anyone interested can dive into the full patch notes below! General: Commander difficulty no longer prevents the player from using Air Combat autoresolve, as the autoresolve rarely outperforms human players and the general feeling was that disabling it was simply making the Commander experience more repetitive, not more difficult. Strategy Layer: Two existing features have been moved inside the Strategic Operations system via a couple of new Strategic Operations that unlock after the ATLAS Base mission: Refresh Soldier Pool: the soldier pool would previously automatically refresh at the end of each month, but will now only refresh when the Identify Recruits strategic operation is used. This operation costs 35 Operation Points, decreasing by -1 OP per day, so players effectively still get that free monthly refresh but can also pay a little extra to refresh the pool faster if they want. This can be very useful if you need to replace heavy losses, or were just given a really bad batch of recruits to pick from! Build Base: constructing a new base is now done via a Strategic Operation that costs 100 Operation Points in addition to the existing $ cost of constructing the base. This serves as a minor Operation Points sink (they were too plentiful in Milestone 6), but the change was primarily made for UI / UX reasons. Inexperienced players sometimes didn't realise you could build new bases at all, so moving it to sit within the Strategic Operations (which represent actions you can do on the Geoscape) felt a more natural and more discoverable home. Helpfully, it also fixes the UI issue where the New Base button couldn't fit into the topbar on 16:10 screen resolutions! Supporters & Operations Points: The cost to remove Infiltrators now increases by +0.5 OP per day, capped at +100 Operations Points. Intelligence supporters reduced back to generating +1 OP per day, or +2 OP for Elites. Security Supporters now each grant -2 Panic in each region (Elite grants -4 Panic), but their Phase 1 Doomsday reduction values remain unchanged. Cleaner Agents / Soldiers now grant +25 Operation Points on completion of their Interrogation project (down from +50). Cleaner Leaders now have their own Interrogation project, which grants +50 Operations Points (previously you gained +30 per captured Leader item). Recruit difficulty now generates 10 OP per day, not 12. Mission Changes: Reduced the Doomsday reduction win rewards of all Cleaner missions by -5 each (except Abduction missions where the reward remains variable) You are now awarded the item contents of the attacking UFO if you win a Xenonaut Base Defence tactical mission, or if your base defence turrets shoot down the UFO as it tries to attack your base. Soldiers can no longer overload themselves by more than 16 weight on the pre-mission Soldier Equip screen. This is to prevent players from loading up excessive amounts of extra equipment and then dropping it all on turn 1. Fusion weapons now require Alien Fusion Weapons research in addition to the Ultradense Alloys research to unlock. Updated the Alien Fusion Weapons research text so it no longer implies human Fusion Weapons could be unlocked immediately. Aircraft engine upgrade projects reduced in cost to $350k (from $500k) for the Angel, and to $1m (from $1.5m) for the Phantom Unlocking the North America region bonus (+5 Soldier Starting Experience) now gives you an immediate free refresh of the soldier pool. Air Combat Layer: Reduced the damage on the Alenium and Fusion missiles / torpedoes, as they were too effective against late-game UFOs. The Evasive Roll cooldown of the Gemini has been increased by 0.6 seconds to 2.2 sec, which means the Gemini can now roll as often as a Phantom can. Battleship UFO side cannons can now fire immediately at the start of the battle - previously there was a 4 sec delay after the start of the battle where they were still reloading, which made the battle easier than it should be. Rush replacement cost for aircraft has been increased: the Angel went $100k to $120k, the Phantom $200k to $250k, the Gemini $250k to $500k. Gemini interceptor starting loadout now has two Armour items instead of the two Fuel Pods. Tactical Combat: Reflexes Modifier has been re-added to weapons, which modify the soldier's reflexes by values ranging from 1.25x (shotguns) to 0.5x (shields). Be aware that the system always uses the lowest value from the main and offhand weapon, so it doesn't matter which weapon is set as the active weapon when moving. Time Unit modifiers (with the exception of weight penalties) now affect weapon TU fire costs. This means that the Vanguard Armour now simply extends the move range of soldiers, rather than permitting them to fire additional shots. Conversely, the MARS Heavy Armour now only reduces the move range of the vehicle and does not reduce the number of shots it can fire. Being on a higher level than your target now grants a +0.10x Hit Chance (per level) modifier to your shots, and being on a lower level inflicts a -0.10x penalty per level. This replaces the overly complex system in older versions that would reduce the stopping chance of any intervening cover, but did not change the overall accuracy of the shot. The damage types of weapons and their effectiveness against terrain have been reworked: Kinetic weapons now do 25% of their base damage to terrain (this means their damage vs terrain has been reduced by 40%) Thermal damage has now been split into Energy damage (lasers, plasmas, fusion) and Explosive damage (rockets, demolition charge, etc). Energy weapons do 100% of their base damage to terrain. This is a reduction of about half since the previous build (Lasers in particular could clear terrain a bit too effectively), but Energy weapons still remain 4x more effective against terrain than Kinetic weapons are! Explosive weapons now do 200% of their base damage to terrain (reduced from 250% in the previous build). UFO interior walls now have 50% more HP. You can now force-fire at enemies using Ctrl even if there is a 0% chance of hitting them. You can already use force-fire to take 0% shots against terrain, so this makes the behaviour consistent. Berserking units now give reduced weight to inflicting suppression damage, which makes them less likely to waste their TU throwing flashbangs at enemies rather than performing normal attacks. Tweaked the vision-blocking and stopping chance values of certain terrain objects to improve consistency. Updated a number of trees to have cover on the upper levels as well as the lower levels. Alien Changes: Aliens are now noticeably tougher, as in previous versions they weren't much of a step up from elite Cleaners: Sebillians now have 35% Energy resistance, but 0 Armour. Androns now have 35% Kinetic resistance Most other (non-robotic) enemies have been given +20% HP Cleaner Accelerated Rifle is now called the Magnetic Rifle, and Cleaner Soldiers are always equipped with it. It is now halfway between the human Ballistic Rifle and Accelerated Rifle in terms of damage and armour penetration - the intention being that skilled players can capture them and use them as a stopgap if they are skipping Accelerated Rifles to get Lasers faster. A new rank of Psyon / Sebillians / Wraiths has been added to the game. These "Praetorians" appear on missions where Eternals are present and are tougher and more accurate than existing aliens. Because "Praetorian" was already an alien rank, the previous Praetorians have been demoted to Elites, and the previous Elites have been demoted to a newly-created "Warrior" rank. All non-melee aliens have had their Accuracy stat reduced by 10%, but on Commander the Accuracy multiplier has been returned to 1.3x (up from 1.1x). This means aliens are about 10% less accurate on all difficulties except Commander, where they are roughly 6% more accurate than in Milestone 6 (which equates to about +2% chance to hit against a soldier in cover at medium range). The Psyon "Mesmerise" ability no longer checks against Morale, as it would very rarely succeed in M6. It now checks against Bravery, using a random 100 roll against this formula: (Bravery - 25) x 2 Effectively this means soldiers have 2% resist chance against Mesmerise for each point of Bravery above 25, and they become entirely immune to Mesmerise at 75 Bravery. Psyons previously had a variant of each rank with and without armour, but these have been consolidated into a single variant with a fixed amount of armour - Soldier (10), Warrior (20), Elite (30), Praetorian (40). This change was made because all the unarmoured Psyon variants previously looked identical, which made it hard to assess the threat each unit posed. Sebillians now use a mix of LMGs and Rifles, rather than always being equipped with LMGs. Sebillians equipped with Fusion weapons now have standard grenades rather than poison grenades (as the latter are obsolete by that point in the game). Mantids now have access to an upgraded Alien Bio-Rifle in the later parts of the game. This new weapon is called the Alien Bio-Cannon, which inflicts greater damage and spawns two Symbiotes per shot. We added this because it was kinda sad that the unique Mantid weapon went away halfway through the game, particularly given the Colossus can crush Symbiotes just by walking over them! The fire costs of both of these weapons have been increased so they cannot fire more than once per turn, but their accuracy has been increased a little to compensate. A bug in the Symbiote spawning logic has been fixed, meaning "miss" shots should now reliably spawn Symbiotes. Cyberdrone / Heavy Cyberdrone now has two attack modes - the existing triple shot (80% TU) and a single shot (36% TU). This means Cyberdrones are extremely dangerous if given the opportunity to use their triple shot, but they are much less threatening if you can force them to move. Cyberdrone / Heavy Cyberdrone shields have been reworked to function like human shields - rather than granting extra Armour, they offer 100HP / 150HP extra health with a 75% blocking chance from the front (this reduces at the sides and falls to 0% from the back). We changed this because the +Armour rules for the previous shield were too complicated and didn't interact properly with explosions. Basic Cyberdrones now make blue explosions that do 50 damage, Heavy Cyberdrones have green explosions that do 75 damage (previously both had 60 damage green explosions). Zombies are now gas immune. Symbiotes can no longer be Suppressed, but can also no longer vault or climb. The base hit chance of all alien melee weapons has been increased to 70%-80%, which was generally an increase of about 10%. Reapers were already at that level, so did not receive any increase. Due to their very low Reflexes making it hard for them to hit anything, Zombies gained an additional +20% to their base hit chance. Reaper melee damage increased by 10%. Symbiote melee attack now has only a 30% chance to inflict a Bleeding Wound per 10 damage inflicted (down from 50%). Xenonaut Equipment Changes: Grenades can now only scatter half of their intended throw distance, which should make it impossible for soldiers to drop grenades at their feet when throwing more than a few tiles. Upgrading weapons now always add ~15% to their damage. Upgraded Gauss weapons now do slightly more damage, and a few of the upgraded Fusion weapons have had their damage numbers slightly tweaked upwards or downwards to better fit the rule. Suppression values for all weapons have been unified into a consistent pattern. Previously most Fusion weapons and some Laser weapons were doing less suppression than expected, but the Gauss / Fusion Shotguns were doing MUCH more Suppression than intended (almost 10x more). Shotgun short range hit bonus increased from +7.5% per tile to 8% per tile. Sniper Rifle cheapest fire mode reduced in cost from 52% TU to 48%, but Accuracy of that fire mode has been reduced from 100 to 80. This is is an overall buff to the Sniper Rifle, as it permits the weapon to be fired twice in a turn if a soldier has enough Accuracy to make effective use of the cheaper fire mode. Heavy Armour now causes a -10% Accuracy penalty (previously a flat -5 Accuracy). Except for the basic Tactical Armour, the light armour variant now grants roughly 65% of the armour of the heavy variant (previously 50%). The Guardian Armour protection upgrade engineering project now unlocks earlier - off Alien Electronics (Observer UFOs) rather than Advanced Alloys (Abductor UFOs). The upgraded armour now provides 25/38 Armour and 12 Hardness (up from 24/36 and 10). Stalker Armour now offers 25 Armour in its light variant, but has no heavy variant. This means it offers good protection for 8 Weight (and no Accuracy penalty), although it is not as protective as the heavy variant of the upgraded Guardian Armour. Enemy AI no longer considers the cloak effect of Stalker Armour soldiers when choosing their shots (they use the non-cloaked hit chance instead). This means the AI will now take more low-accuracy shots at cloaked soldiers and will therefore miss more often. Colossus Armour changes: Reflexes penalty is now a 0.5x multiplier (previously a flat -20 Reflex penalty) The TU fire cost of the LMG is reduced by 20% when carried by the Colossus. Added an engineering upgrade project that permits Colossus Armour to equip an Automed System. This functions like the Automed Module but is substantially heavier. Colossus-equipped soldiers now display all (non-module) items in the Armory, and can place them in their backpacks. However, they can still only equip LMGs and the Power Fist in their Primary and Secondary slots, and they are still unable to use grenades. Basically, they can now use their 100 Strength to carry extra equipment for the rest of the team! Power Fist item now automatically equips in the Secondary slot when the Colossus is equipped, and the secondary slot then becomes locked (displaying greyed out_ so it cannot be unequipped or replaced. Power Fist melee attack granted 40 Stun Damage, and normal Damage increased to 60 (from 50). Armour Penetration increased to 40 (from 20). C4 Charge item has been removed. This item was always meant to be superseded by the Demolition Grenade, which is why it doesn't receive any in-game upgrades and the UX for using it is so janky. We're planning to add support for timed fuses on grenades in a future update, which will allow the Demolition Grenade to fully replace the C4. Smoke Grenades now inflict 1 Gas damage rather than 1 Thermal damage, which means they no longer inflict any damage at all on gas-immune enemies. This could be particularly confusing on Veteran / Commander difficulty, as without visible damage numbers players did not know the alien had only taken a tiny amount of damage. Mission Changes: Crash Sites - increased the number of aliens inside large multi-level UFOs, and added dedicated spawn / patrol points for the middle level of Abductors / Harvesters / Battleships to minimise the chances of there being only a handful of aliens remaining once you clear the UFO ground floor. Extract VIP (escort) - the VIP will now create a body item if stunned or killed. This means you can physically pick him up and carry him to the extract area to win the mission if he becomes stunned. Extract VIP (escort) - reduced the number of enemies by 1 on all difficulties. Abduction - local forces / armed civilians no longer spawn on Abduction missions, as the fact that they look identical to the civilians the player is meant to be protecting was proving confusing for some players. Terror Sites - these now contain an average of 50% more Alenium, as we've fixed an issue that was causing each Alien Bomb in the map to only have a 50% chance of spawning. Terror Sites - aliens now start using Fusion weapons at roughly the same time that they appear within UFOs (previously they were getting them later, and some species not at all). Terror Sites - terror sites spawned from Terror UFOs that are not shot down (as opposed to "normal" sites that do not spawn from UFOs) now have an alien crew of appropriate difficulty. Previously these Terror Sites were significantly harder than they should be. Terror Sites - tier 1 Psyon terror sites (about day 180) now have one fewer Cyberdrone in them on Veteran difficulty and above. Xenonaut Base Defence - you are now awarded the item contents of the attacking UFO if you win a Xenonaut Base Defence tactical mission, or if your base defence turrets shoot down the UFO as it tries to attack your base. UOO Bridge Assault - there are now 4 alien spawners to destroy, rather than 2. The first wave of reinforcements spawned from the lifts on either side of the map has been delayed by 1 turn. Mantids with the upgraded Symbiote launcher weapon should now be more common in late-game missions, as there was a few mission types where they were almost all using standard Plasma / Fusion weapons instead. The contents of reinforcement waves now vary based on the difficulty setting. Generally we've reduced the number of reinforcements in the initial wave of reinforcements on Recruit and Soldier difficulty, and left it the same on Veteran and Commander (subsequent rounds of reinforcements remain at full strength). Cleaner Data Raid / VIP Extraction - on Soldier difficulty, the first reinforcement wave from the rear reduced to 2 enemies (from 3). On Recruit, the first reinforcement wave from the sides is also reduced to 1 enemy (from 2). UOO Bridge Assault - on Recruit and Soldier difficulties, the Andron Praetorian and Wraith Praetorian do not spawn in the first wave of reinforcements from the lifts on either side. UOO Data Raid - on Recruit difficulty, the second wave of reinforcements contains 1 fewer enemy from each of the three enemy spawn points (4 enemies at the rear, 3 at the sides). On Commander difficulty, the first wave of reinforcements contains 1 extra alien (from 2 to 3) from each enemy spawn point, as does the second wave (6 enemies at the rear, 4 at the side). When reinforcements spawn on night missions, the tiles on which they spawn are now temporarily illuminated so you can actually see them appear. Previously the camera would focus on the area, but no enemy activity could be seen in the darkness. Reworked the equipment of the local forces / armed civilians so they have a wider variety of weapon types across the different biomes. Previously almost every armed civilian on every map had a shotgun. USABILITY & CONTENT UDPATES: General: Significant performance updates have been made in various areas of the game (as already covered in the "Key Changes" section at the top of this post). Anonymised automated error reporting has been added to the game. The welcome message that appears when you first up the game allows you to choose whether this is enabled or disabled (this can also be changed in the game settings), and it would certainly be helpful if players chose to permit this! The voiceover on the intro / outro cinematic has been re-recorded with a new voice actor due to a contract issue. We think the new voice actor has done an excellent job! Added a settings option for locking the mouse cursor to the gameplay window (unless alt+tabbed). This setting is on by default. The campaign difficulty settings now have a wider array of possible values in many of the dropdowns. Although none of these are used by the default difficulty settings, they permit players more options when customising their campaign difficulty. Updated the appearance of the "tutorial notification" UI popups (e.g. how to use doors, etc) so they have proper close button and checkbox art. Fixed a large number of text strings that were not being translated when playing in non-English languages, or places where the translated text string was too long and was not displaying correctly. This should dramatically improve the experience for anyone playing a localised version of the game! Fixed the Xenopedia font displaying some accented character glyphs slightly differently from standard characters, making the text difficult to read in several non-English languages (particularly Polish). Fixed an issue where Japanese and Korean translations were displaying the Chinese variants of some glyphs due to Unicode overlaps. The Campaign Name field when starting a new game will now accept non-Latin characters. Added an icon to certain Main Menu side buttons to indicate that they open their links in new browser windows. Strategy Layer: Various UI buttons, dropdowns, sliders and arrow buttons have been updated on the Main Menu and Strategy layers to improve clarity. This updated style no longer uses the diagonal stripe visual language of the previous UI, which sometimes caused players to think buttons were disabled when they were not. Lots of screens have changed subtly, but the effect is most noticable on the settings menu and the Soldiers screen! Updated the Geoscape background art to better incorporate the Doomsday bar and the region info elements (i.e. the area around the text log at the bottom center of the screen) into the background scene. Made the colours for various parts of this a little more muted, as the new UI added in that area over the past few Milestone updates had made it too visually busy. The Doomsday bar now has a more stylized appearance. Hotkeys 1-9 have been set up for strategy navigation. Key "1" is the Geoscape, "2" is the Main Base screen, etc. A dedicated Interrogation research project has now been added for captured Cleaner Leaders. Engineering project item costs now show the quantity available in stores for all item types (previously this was only showing for Alloys / Alenium). Engineering projects now include items equipped on soldiers when displaying how many items of that type you already own. Engineering upgrade projects now have more informative descriptions that provide specific numbers for what is being upgraded. Engineering weapon upgrade projects will now show the stats tooltip for both the upgraded and unupgraded weapon. Enemy stats shown on Autopsy / Interrogation research projects now include any difficulty level modifiers (e.g. increased Accuracy). Base Stores Sell / Transfer screens now both have progress bars that visualise the available storage capacity at the selected base(s). When switching armour on a soldier, the "Jetpack" toggle state is now remembered (previously it would reset to "off" whenever the armour changed). Launch Aircraft mode now has a unique cursor to make it more obvious when that mode is active. If Operation Points fall below 0, the number is now shown in red. The soldier image on the Armory screen no longer flickers when you change soldiers. The values for aircraft range / aircraft speed / radar detection range were very inconsistent in previous versions of the game. These have now been unified and brought in line with real distances and travel times. This has resulted in the following: The fastest Geoscape time speed has been reduced by 20% to permit the other changes below, Geoscape speeds of all UFOs and aircraft have been doubled. For clarity, this doesn't affect game balance - it just means units move twice as fast across the map on any given Geoscape time setting. Aircraft now display accurate values for speed and range in the Xenopedia, on the Aircraft screen, and when in flight on the Geoscape. Base "Detection Range" on the Base screen is now called "Detection Radius", and the stated range is now much closer to real-world distances. Radar buildings on the Base screen now state their function as "Extends radar range" rather than giving a nonsensical figure for their radar range. Fixed an issue where the "Range" value on the Aircraft screen was incorrectly changing based on the current fuel level of that aircraft. Added two new "tutorial" pop-notifications that explain quality of life functionality that many newer players were unaware of: Soldier screen - added a popup explaining how to sort the various tables by header, which makes managing / recruiting soldiers much easier. Armory screen - added a popup explaining the various QOL shortcuts in the bottom left assignment panel (e.g. RMB unassign, click-and-drag to reorder team, double-click to replace soldier) Added a Close button to the Soldier Loadout selection pop-up on the Armory screen. Panic levels are no longer shown in the topbar when hovering over a region in Phase 1. Added various tooltips to the Supporter panel to better explain the system. Air Combat: Updated the position of the UFO name / hp / armour text rows in the air combat, as in many cases they were drawing on top of the UFO sprite and were difficult to read. Retreating aircraft will no longer switch targets automatically if their target is destroyed. This means they won't turn around and start flying back towards the combat area - previously this could be a problem for interceptors tasked with firing a barrage of missiles at long range and then retreating! Updated the air combat ambient sound to (hopefully) not contain an ear-splitting high-pitched whine that old people like myself apparently lack the auditory range to hear. If this doesn't actually fix the issue, please let us know! Missile / torpedo tooltips have been updated to explain that they will only fire at the targeted UFO, rather than shooting at anything within their fire arc like cannons and lances. Tactical Combat - Gameplay: Lots of long-standing issues with the line of sight / shroud system have been fixed, including: Worldspace UI elements such as the move path are no longer hidden by the shroud. Transparent objects (abduction tubes, cloaked Wraiths, etc) no longer draw underneath the shroud. Particle effects (smoke, fire, etc) no longer draw underneath the shroud. Certain types of corner tile (e.g. ATLAS Base rooms, certain cliffs) are now revealed correctly when units look at them. Terrain objects in the first tile of unrevealed shroud should no longer incorrectly show their 3D models before they are revealed. Fixed the ENDGAME stage 1 outer walls being black in some instances. You can now manually trigger a teleporter with right-click if a soldier is standing on it. This costs 4 TU. Xenonaut units will now automatically choose move paths that do not contain dangerous hazard tiles (e.g. smoke, fire, poison), provided the alternative path does not cost additional Time Units. If the safer path does cost additional Time Units, players will need to manually path around the hazards. Smoke and poison gas (but not fire) can now spawn over water tiles. Hovering over the toggle overwatch UI icon for a weapon (the little eye icon) will now show the tiles visible to that soldier. This is relevant because units can only overwatch fire on visible tiles within their own vision cone, so should make planning overwatch a little easier. Right-clicking a door to open it will now only take precedence over right-clicking to rotate a soldier if the soldier is in an adjacent tile to the door. At longer ranges, the soldier will now rotate as normal. The "range" line in the weapon tooltips now has an extra "adjacent" section that shows the total hit bonus you get with that weapon if standing next to the target. Hopefully this makes weapons easier to compare and makes the range hit bonus system easier to understand. Xenonaut Base Defence maps now have an extra tile of width between rooms, which prevents line-of-sight "leaking" from one room to another. Aliens should no longer attack mind-controlled Xenonaut soldiers. Civilian AI has been tweaked so they should be more reluctant to move near alien units when running to their next move point (note this does not affect civilians you have ordered to evacuate, who will always sprint towards the exit using the shortest possible route). Added a "Armour Hardness" value to the tactical inventory screen, as it wasn't previously listed anywhere in tactical combat. Improved the camera tracking for enemy shots at your soldier during the AI turn. This should reduce the number of times the camera doesn't appropriately focus on the targeted soldier. Thrown grenades and alien Symbiote projectiles now have a slight visual "trail" that makes them easier to see as they fly through the air. Reduced the opacity of smoke tiles on the battlefield. You now get a pop-up warning you if try to start a tactical mission with a deployment area without having moved your soldiers. Throwable items like grenades now correctly dim their sprite image when you don't have enough TU to use them (this mirrors the behaviour of items in the primary / secondary slots). The quick reload button (hotkey "R") previously only appeared if you had a full clip for that weapon in your inventory, but it now also appears if you have a partially-full clip in your inventory that contains more shots than the weapon currently does. If a weapon has no clip loaded, it instead displays "No Clip" on the fire cursor rather than a 0% hit chance percentage. Corpses now display sideways when added to the primary / secondary slot in the tactical inventory. Added an additional system to ensure you do not get the same tactical map twice in a row, closing off a (somewhat uncommon) sequence of events that could cause a repeat. The game will now notify the player if a unit is unable to reach the target tile because it is unable to climb (i.e. it's a vehicle, or is using a Shield or wearing Colossus armour). Made another row of tiles at the front of the Battleship UFO exterior walkable, making the front door more accessible. A large number of AI improvements: We've finally implemented tracking of "known" Xenonauts vs unseen Xenonauts, which means alien units will no longer have automatic knowledge about Xenonaut units that they have not yet encountered. Basically, this should reduce the amount of obvious AI "cheating", and make flanking aliens more effective. Reduced the AI "kill" bonus for certain alien species - this represents how much weighting an enemy gives to attacking a target it believes it can kill, rather than simply scoring as many hits with its weapon as possible. Practically, this means that "smart" aliens (Wraiths, Psyons, Sectons, etc) are more likely to prioritise attacks that will actually secure kills, whereas melee-only or "dumb" aliens (Androns, Sebillians) will favour the enemies that are easiest to hit (usually the closest enemies). The AI should now better plan its move back into cover after taking a shot, leading to fewer cases where it is stranded in the open. Previously it was assigning a certain portion of its TU to attacking and a certain portion to moving to cover, rather than considering both actions together. The AI should now turn to face expected danger after making a move, which should prevent examples of the AI staring into corners etc after movement. However the code has been updated so the AI will only consider "known" Xenonauts when doing this. The AI will now always replan its actions whenever it sights a new hostile unit, which should hopefully reduce the number of aliens positioning themselves in extremely vulnerable positions after unexpectedly encoutering a Xenonaut. The AI now makes better decisions when the optimal course of action is to shoot from its starting position and then make a move. Previously it would always move first and then shoot. Enemy AI no longer has access to the Bravery and Morale of your soldiers when choosing targets for Mind Control, as previously they would always focus in on the most vulnerable units and ignore those most likely to resist. Tactical Combat - Content: New 3d models have been added for the Alien Bio Rifle and the new Alien Bio Cannon weapon. All Farm biome tactical maps have been revamped (there are about 15 of them), making them more visually appealing and more interesting from a gameplay perspective. Many will be completely unrecognisable from earlier versions. All seven main biomes now have two additional Scout UFO maps, increasing the number of maps for small UFOs from 3 to 5. This should help avoid potential map repetition when players have to restart their campaign. Added a few more crash site maps to the game that weren't previously spawning due to a setup issue. Updated one of the newer Cleaner Data Raid missions to expand the size of the map, as the target building was smaller than in the other maps and it made the mission easier to win. Roof destruction "frills" have been implemented for most types of roof - these are the irregular "edge" tiles that get placed around the sides of destroyed tiles to make the destruction look more natural (as blowing a perfectly square hole in a roof tends to look a bit odd). Gauss Shotgun artwork has been updated to give it a front grip, as it was previously quite hard to tell apart from the Gauss Rifle at a glance. Symbiotes now perform a proper "hatch" animation when they spawn. Sebillian death animation now largely fits inside a single tile, which should stop the legs of dead Sebillians sticking through UFO walls. Added a couple more car variants to the urban maps. Added a 3D model for the briefcase objective item in the Extract VIP mission. BUGFIXES: General: If the default save location on a PC contains either "OneDrive" or "Dropbox", we're now redirecting the save path to be "C:\Users\<user>\AppData\LocalLow\Goldhawk\" instead, as we were getting a lot of crashes caused by cloud services locking files that the game was trying to use. Various safeguards have been added to prevent the game crashing if it cannot save. It should now always display a popup reading "Game was unable to save" but permit the user to keep playing. Fixed the game failing to load into the Main Menu on some Mac and Linux systems. Please note we still don't officially support Mac or Linux, we just did this because it was a straightforward fix that would help quite a few players! Fixed a crash that could occur if you clicked the Open Mod Folder button on the Mod Management popup when no mod existed. Fixed the Save Game UI panel scrollbar not permitting the user to scroll all the way to the bottom of the list. Fixed the typewriter sound used in the cutscenes being in the incorrect sound effect category. Fixed the Main Menu mods button having the incorrect toolltip. Strategy Layer: Fixed a very serious bug that could cause UFOs, missions or other game triggers to not spawn correctly if you were using Geoscape speed level 3 (i.e. the second fastest speed). We believe this was the cause of various issues in earlier Milestones where players did not have certain Cleaner missions spawn, or got into a situation where Battleships never started spawning, or just had the alien invasion stop entirely after a certain date. Fixed a Geoscape crash that could occur if a UFO filled its charge bar and escaped from combat, but then took lethal damage in the 2 seconds before the combat actually ended. Fixed a crash that could occur if you were able to intercept and shoot down an undetected UFO before the radar detection tick revealed it. Fixed another way of getting the Rescue Soldiers preview soldiers stuck in your dropship if you cancelled the mission preparations, which would cause a crash when you tried to use the dropship. Fixed an issue where interceptor squadrons tailing a Retaliation (Base Attack) UFO over water would sometimes not get the opportunity to attack the UFO before it attacked the base if that base had been placed close to the coast. Fixed adjacency values for new Generator buildings not showing immediately, even though the basic Power generation of the structure was added immediately. Fixed the "Panic Reduction: -10 Panic" text not updating to show the correct Panic reduction value when choosing the target for the Reduce Panic strategic operation. Fixed an issue where Abduction missions could incorrectly increase Panic if you were at low Panic levels, even if the overall mission result should have lowered Panic (the Panic reduction was being applied before the Panic increase, which caused issues as the Panic could not go below zero, and then the increase was applied to the zero). Fixed the Probe UFO not having the correct visual appearance in the air combat. Fixed the air combat camera zoom being "jumpy" rather than smooth. Fixed a couple of ways that the air combat section of the tutorial could get softlocked. Fixed the "open" sound effect playing twice when you clicked the menu button on the Geoscape topbar. Fixed the aircraft name in hangar not updating immediately after renaming an aircraft. Fixed Escape key not returning to the Geoscape on the Transfer Scientists / Transfer Engineers screens Fixed an issue where the "Critical Panic" pop-up would be shown before the Orbital Bombardment pop-up if the bombardment raised Panic in a region above 100. Fixed the Equipment hardpoints on the interceptors incorrectly displaying the "Weapon Hardpoints" label. On the Soldier Equip screen, fixed the soldier list order randomising every time you opened the popup to choose a soldier for the dropship. Fixed the Guardian armour helmet not correctly hiding hair on the paperdoll. Fixed the helmet for the upgraded Guardian armour always appearing, even when using the light variant. Fixed the Advanced Gauss Weapon engineering projects not updating their name to contain "Advanced" after the upgrade project. Fixed the "Hardness" value for the Colossus research project having an extra "f" character in the text line. Fixed the Xenopedia aircraft "range" text line to display a value consistent with the Geoscape distances. Fixed a number of soldier portraits that had hair / facial hair sticking out through the sides or top of their helmet. Fixed the "complete Quantum Teleportation research" objective showing before you have the option to actually research it. Fixed a missing word in the Waveform Analysis research text. Fixed inconsistent naming on the alien Data Cube objects in the UOO Sabotage mission briefing. Fixed the Geoscape zoom speed being dependent on framerate. It's now a consistent value for everyone. Fixed a minor judder on the Research screen when the scientist character is animating in from the right of the screen. Fixed the dropship / unassigned tabs on the side of the Armory "assigments" menu (in the bottom left) having visually similar active / inactive states, and the fixed the icons turning white when a different tab was activated. Fixed a bug where items / buildings that had been upgraded by an engineering project would always display their name in English, even if playing in another language. Tactical Combat: Fixed a crash that would occur if the game could not locate the directory where saves / settings etc are created. Fixed various small memory leaks that could potentially cause crashes during extended play sessions. Fixed a crash that could occur when picking up certain ammo types using the Colossus. Fixed various bugs with the grenade throw code that were potentially causing 100% hit chance shots to miss, or for soldiers to blow themselves up for seemingly no reason (generally this was because the throw was incorrectly hitting a ceiling). Fixed a bug where an AI unit would take no further actions that turn if a reaction fire shot was fired at them during their movement. Fixed a bug where the move-attack preview would not show the correct accuracy value when the soldier was crouched. Fixed UFO Power Cores that explode as part of the UFO crash sequence not correctly inflicting damage on the area around them. Fixed a bug where shooting into smoke would count one too few smoke tiles when calculating shot accuracy (shooting out from within the smoke cloud was calculating correctly). Fixed a bug where explosion damage did not always propagate as far as it should, as the Incendiary damage bonus was not being correctly applied when calculating overdamage. This would cause walls and other terrain objects to absorb too much explosion damage, reducing the amount of damage that would penetrate through them and damage units and terrain behind them. This also fixes the bug where explosion damage could sometimes "leak" through closed doors or walls, injuring units on the other side that should have been fully protected. Fixed the rare bug where combat shields would sometimes not visually disappear when destroyed - this was occuring if the shield was destroyed by overwatch fire in response to the soldier having thrown a grenade. Fixed a bug where attempting to change weapons when a soldier was moving would visually update their 3D model, but wouldn't change the equipped weapon in game terms - this could lead to players accidentally using the wrong weapon. Fixed the Colossus, Servitor and Heavy Servitor models not showing the crosshatch obstruction shader if obscured by a terrain object. Fixed the grenade blast radius indicator (the green tiles) not displaying properly if a soldier was throwing at a tile on the edge of cliffs. Fixed a bug where the Mantid Bio-Rifle would not spawn a Symbiote if the shot hit a tile corner rather than the center of a tile (meaning "miss" shots should now reliably spawn Symbiotes). Fixed units being able to throw grenades onto destroyed floors / roofs, despite throwing grenades at empty tiles usually being disallowed. Fixed the visual inconsistency between Smoke Grenade smoke and the smoke from the MARS Smoke Launcher. Fixed a bug in the tutorial where the final conversation was incorrectly triggering before the Xenonauts had finished fleeing from the Cleaners. Fixed the Colossus Power Fist disappearing when transitioning between Endgame part 1 and part 2. Fixed a lot of minor visual issues in a variety of different tactical maps and with a variety of different terrain tiles. Fixed a bug where destroyed shipping containers could still block throwable items like flares and grenades. Fixed a number of doors where the gameplay footprint of the opened door was inverted compared to its visual appearance. Fixed the alien base command room upper levels incorrectly having destructible outer walls. Fixed a number of terrain objects in the Alien Base biome visually disappearing when entering their "damaged" state, despite still existing in gameplay terms and therefore invisibly blocking movement / shots. Fixed a number of roofs that were not being properly destroyed and were incorrectly leaving behind walkable tiles. Fixed the spinning rings of the Singularity Core terrain object visually resetting position when changing from Undamaged to Damaged state. Fixed a pathfinding bug that could occur when attempting to move up to and then melee an enemy unit. Fixed a minor bug where alien units would sometimes end up with their weapons rotated towards the ground after firing a shot. Fixed a bug where the Pegasus dropship walls could be moved / shot through after loading a save. Fixed zombified civilians being able to "escape" the battlefield if they accidentally wandered onto the mission evac area. Fixed the Colossus doing an animation "jump" as it raised its weapon to fire it. Fixed a visual issue with the left arm of Sebillians when they fired their weapons. Fixed visual errors (dark patches) on water tiles and other lowered ground tiles on night missions. Fixed suppressed mind-controlled units regaining full TU when mind control ends. Fixed the UOO Bridge mission briefing incorrectly listing "Elliminate all hostile units" as an objective. The UOO Bridge Assault green tiles around the mainframe (which show the tiles you are trying to defend) are now always visible, not only when in line of sight. Fixed an issue where spawned Symbiotes could incorrectly be visible in the fog of war. Cyberdrones now perform an additional visual-only explosion when destroyed. Normally this cannot be seen due to the actual death explosion, but it prevents things looking silly if the Cyberdrone is killed by burst fire (as the actual death explosion can only occur after the burst has finished). Fixed the soldier role name tooltip drawing over the soldier role icon when hovering the mouse over the soldier minitabs at the top of the tactical UI. Fixed a couple of tiles that have black z-fighting issues on Linux machines.

Hello everyone - it's finally happening! Our publisher announced the release date for Xenonauts 2 and unveiled our release date trailer. I've posted the press release below for you guys to read... although there's probably not much new info there if you're a seasoned follower of the game! ---------------------------------------------------------------------- We’re very excited to announce that Xenonauts 2 is leaving Early Access and releasing as 1.0 on April 2, 2026, marking the end of a journey that has seen nearly three years of steady updates and improvements to the game. Here’s our announcement trailer: The Road to 1.0 (and Beyond) Xenonauts 2 has changed a great deal during the Early Access period, with our seven major updates adding: Four new alien races, and five new types of UFO Dozens of new research projects, and the battlefield equipment and aircraft unlocked from them The new Strategic Operations and Supporters systems for the Geoscape Our expanded Cleaner storyline, with three new unique mission types Two new unique story missions set on an alien orbital station A climactic two-part final mission and ending cutscene A complete visual revamp of the air combat minigame (and a tutorial for it!) Strategic UI art that changes and improves as you progress through the game Many, many new maps (there’s now 180+ in the game) Lots of quality of life, balance and performance improvements Although reaching 1.0 is a major milestone, it doesn’t mean our work is done – we’re planning to continue patching and improving the game after the launch (and create mod tools). The feedback and advice we’ve received from the community during the Early Access period has been hugely important in making Xenonauts 2 the game it has become, and we want to thank everyone who has supported us on this journey.

Hello! Never posted here before but longtime anonymous lurker and fan since Xenonauts 1. I recently completed a campaign of Xenonauts 2 on soldier difficulty and found I had alot to say when talking about it with a friend so I figured it would be worth sharing my thoughts here. First off, I think the game is a solid improvement over the first in pretty much every way. The campaign has much better pacing with the distinct phases of the invasion and it overall just feels tightened up. I had my doubts about the UFOs costing OPs after the first two, but honestly it worked better than I expected and contributed to that tighter game pace. There are lots of smaller areas which are improved but the better pace really feels like a big win to me. Only time it drops off is post UOO assault since you can drag your feet about doing the last mission but that issue seems endemic to the genre IME. The other thing I really liked is the tools which were added to help players come back from losses. Training, the NA region bonus, lasers being rookie friendly, modules, all good stuff. There were several times I lost multiple troops and, while it was always a setback, it never felt run ending because I had good troops waiting in the wings pretty much all the time. This has always seemed like a hard balance to strike so hats off on nailing it. All that said there are a couple small details I was surprised to not see. Mostly around colossus interactions. I was surprised that they didn't get their own heavy walking sounds, I know androns do and the colossus seems just as big/heavy as them so it felt off. That and I was surprised there wasn't a splat/crunch sound when stepping on biters, plus there were a couple times it was awkward to force them to step on the biters. Just little things ya know. I do also hope to see more custom difficulty options post-release. The new extended mode toggle implies that'll probably happen so I just wanted to add that I think that will be great to see, and personally I hope to see a project cost multiplier option so that I can recreate the feel of XCOM:EU's marathon mode. I do have some other thoughts but with 1.0 right around the corner it's a little late to be making content or balance suggestions, so I guess everything past this point is food for thought more than anything. The HEVY. I didn't use it, and skimming the forums that seems a common sentiment. Too much weight and TUs for something most soldiers can replicate with one inventory slot. I think the HEVY being a smaller single-tube secondary weapon that can launch any grenade would've worked better as it would be more versatile and not use up the precious primary slot. It would basically exist as a grenade range booster but that would at least be a good niche. But new models and animations seem like too big an ask so I get why something like that probably won't happen. Instead, I think the better solution is to make it colossus accessible. Since they can't throw their own grenades this gives them an option to do that, plus with their TU reduction on firing weapons I think they would just be able to fire three grenades with the HEVY, which I do think would be pretty good. Speaking of the colossus, I love it dearly as I did the predator before it, but I really do wish it had at least one more ranged weapon type to use. I get not giving them access to other infantry weapons, but aside from maybe the HEVY I would have loved to have seen them get a weapon or two specifically for them. Not sure what, maybe some kind of heavy rifle for anti-armour purposes? Something like precision laser stats but minus the penetration and reduced range in exchange for more generous TU costs to shoot it? Just spit balling, but would love to see something, especially since we didn't get a singularity cannon equivalent. Another thing that comes to mind is weapon identity. I was really happy to see it in this game whereas in the last everything was a linear upgrade. I really do like that lasers carved their own niche with the accuracy/recoil bonuses and recharging batteries. Between that and fusion weapons being the top tier though I found I did not use the gauss weapons all that much. The greater penetration is nice but fusion really does feel like a direct upgrade with its higher damage and improved shred. So I would like to see gauss weapons get something to help distinguish them, maybe a range bonus? 1-2 tiles for shotgun/pistol and 4-6 for the other weapons, could say something about how bullets don't lose cohesion the way energy weapons do to explain it away. Last thing that comes to mind is SMGs. When people make suggestions about them in games like this they often seem to me like they seriously overlap with shotguns. And indeed while it was cool getting access to the cleaner SMGs I never used them as they didn't really seem to fill a role. However, I think they could. Something like, make them take a secondary slot, only fire short bursts with a ~45% TU cost. Give them 8 tiles of range and give regular pistols +2 range. This would give them different range brackets and they would also favour different movement patterns so I think they would be different enough that one would not always be preferable to the other. From a standstill the SMG would get you 6 shots to the pistol's 5 but the recoil penalty means that it's not a guaranteed better result outside point blank range. All that said, I had a really good time with the game, so thank you all for your hard work!

Description: the tooltil while hovering over equipped Flares during nighttime combat shows Light Radius: ERROR: {{lightrange.value}} Weight: 6 What happened: loaded into my first civilian rescue mission (very early in the campaign, this would be my 3rd ground operation, 1st one being the tutorial escaping the base, and the second being capturing the General when we return to base). The error shows in every Xenonaut's hotbar. I didn't need to move anyone.

Yeah, noticed this as well when I was playing. The position transforms on these objects got saved into the prefab accidentall when I was making variants of said frill, it should be fixed on the next patch. I've been going through this list and more than half of it is fixed I think. The destroyed state for all roofs should function normally

After some issues with stability, performance and crashing, first time I've finished a campaign in both non ironman mode AND on Commander, glad I chose to turn it off since I could of easily had some game ending bugs multiple times without being able to reload. Definitely harder than the prior difficulties, not entirely a fan of all its changes which I'll bring up, also first time I've seen the ending cinematic, a Wraith wearing clothes was far cuter than I expected. Also experimented with some things I ignore usually like the stealth suit and fielded more Colossus than usual to see how their buff ended up. I think I enjoy Veteran difficulty more but I still enjoyed this run a lot, it just felt like it dragged more with more enemies causing longer missions and possible performance issues and no auto resolve air combat meaning every single UFO had to be downed manually. Commander Related: Biggest issue I had was the sheer amount of enemies you have to go against. Some of the maps felt overloaded and even some crashed scouts had clown car amounts of aliens, especially with terror missions where you have a good 6 or 7 enemies crammed in the same building. Excessive did really feel excessive, some missions I didn't really notice the extra 10% accuracy bonus on enemies really, suppression and smoke made it where the accuracy boost wasn't noticeable enough to matter Air combat wise, it was actually quite fun to be able to reload and practice the air game for once when not ironman but the lack of auto resolve got a tad repetitive, I wouldn't mind being able to auto resolve weaker UFOs/UFOs I've downed x number of times or delegated to just reduce it since once you get a Gemini with dual Blasters, you can do almost any ship with 0 damage with almost no difficulty, that teleporting ability is crazy good Focusing on the air game like always is the key, once I got good at doing intercepts, I was able to reliably keep most areas at extremely low panic, speedrun phantoms and missile tech and you're good, I was still using Angels filled with missiles or torpedoes against Cruisers and interceptors because you can use a Phantom or Gemini to bait the rockets to keep the rest safe while they one shot a Interceptor with 4 missiles, the extra 25% UFO damage wasn't really noticeable Tactical Changes Thoughts: Really REALLY liked the changes to Colossus armour, ENDGAME I ran 4 of them because they're that fun, they really are like tanks in that you need to support them with infantry but they fit that sort of door kicker and wall smasher role perfectly, being able to shoot and scoot or even fire multiple times while tanking reaction fire and being unable to be supressed as the first one in really helped it having it work as a end game addition to shields Colossus fists are a neat idea but they feel very lacking in power both in damage done and sound, felt like I was slapping a alien in the face rather than breaking its jaw with a power armoured punch Stalker armour I used for the first time, I like it but honestly snipers as a role are very niche with how close quarters most missions are, I'd probably use it again but it feels weird really, like I don't know where to put it in the progression, I'd like if it could be upgraded to give more ap so snipers can reposition or more movement for better scouting, reduce the cost of sniper rifles or get a 2nd tier that makes it more protective, it just feels like the odd duckling right now Definitely noticing the extra health aliens got, Mantid eating a MARS cannon wasn't expected and made some enemies take a inordinate amount of fire power to bring down considering the amount of them Campaign Thoughts: Definitely wish we more mission types, even variations like wave defence terror missions while civilians evacuate or breaking a assault on a local military base with lots of friendly support, I absolutely adore UUO 1 missions because they're both so different Mantid bio rifles early game really sting, they can overwhelm you so quickly even if they miss, especially on excessive enemy amounts The grenade launcher I never used, not even once, still seems very much not worth it to me Snipers not being able to fire twice feels poor when snipers need good positioning to be worth anything, especially from my experience that sniper rifles aren't that strong and I found that they weren't that useful vs a rifle that can burst or fire and relocate Pleased to see how far it's come nearly 3 years from EA, will be looking forward to post launch content and mod tools, I can see all sorts of cool stuff possible in the future.

Took me some three weeks but I just finished, for the first time, a full campaign in the game. Milestone 7 is stable enough that I only had minor issues with the latest builds, great progress compared to earlier milestones where I'd run into some blockers before getting to the endgame. Here's some unorganized thoughts from the playthrough. Overall, I'm very happy with the game. It's fun, it's satisfying, the pieces fit well together, it's a cohesive great experience. I had a long campaign, kept the UOO missions until the end. So I did UOO Sabotage when I already had Fusion weapons, from there it was a straight sequence of UOO Bridge Assault -> capturing an Eternal -> Endgame. Probably not quite the intended sequence but I was managing panic well enough to let me delay the UOO that much. During this run I had some real setbacks and I love that I could push through and win. I had set up a secondary base with some nice manufacturing and radars, but I lost it. Retaliation UFO coming in, damaged, so it landed not too big of an assault force but I only had a few sentry guns and rookie soldiers guarding the base. Cyberdrones were too much for privates to handle, so I lost the base. Then later, I had a terror mission go sideways. Lots of aliens (I think it might have been the bug that got fixed later), lost two soldiers, saw that ammo might be an issue, had to abort. Still got it in the end. Love the writing and can't get enough of the Chief Scientist. I'm sure some people will find him annoying but he works so well for me. It's as always super satisfying to watch some rookies get lucky and become indispensable. One of my rookies who was pretty bad and was just guarding the dropship area on a cleaner extraction mission got a couple good shots there, luckily survived a few more missions and became one of my best soldiers for the final assault. This is one of the most satisfying things in the game. The early missions with varied objectives are fun, unfortunately they're one-off and later don't happen. One thing I'd love in a DLC would be to randomize this some, even on existing maps. I really like the stage where you have various armors with different tradeoffs. Almost a shame that they all converge into the Vanguard which is just the best in every way. A Stalker-wearing jetpack sniper is a totally different soldier from a Colossus-wearing tank, but by the end it's less varied. I couldn't find a real use for breaching charges in the mid or late game. Early game they're very useful to destroy cover and expose enemies, but once you get Alenium explosives then regular grenades are enough to destroy cover, and lasers also work for that. Even moreso with later tech. Operation Endgame was a massive jump in difficulty even compared to Battleships and UOO Bridge Assault. Lots of aliens, and you have to push forward to destroy the gateways on time, all while trying not to get caught in a crossfire between the heaviest alien units. And that's just the first part, though actually it's harder than the second - part two, there's no time pressure and more cover, you can advance methodically as in an alien base. I appreciated the difficulty, it's worthy of the final mission, but it's probably too much of a jump. Mantids with bio-launchers were surprisingly hard to deal with. Bleeding wounds and then up to three of those bug critters. Ouch. In one of the earlier builds, maybe 7.2, my sodiers were still blowing themselves up with grenades indoors (UFOs, bases). By the current build that finally seems to be fixed, mercifully enough. Of all the psionic units I fought, I had a soldier get mesmerized exactly once. Eternals with their mind control are a threat (and take forever to go down to batons) but mesmerize appeared to be a non-factor. -------------- All in all, congratulations on being almost at the 1.0 release and I very much expect the game to do well. It's a very fun and satisfying take on the X-Com formula and remains different even now that squad based tactical games are more popular.

This update is also only accessible by switching to our Experimental branches (instructions on how to do so here) - although please be aware they have slower load times and worse performance than normal builds due to the extra logging they contain! Gameplay Changes: We've finally implemented a more advanced model for the AI that now keeps track of "known" Xenonauts vs unseen Xenonauts, which means alien units will no longer have automatic knowledge about Xenonaut units that they have not yet encountered. Basically, this should reduce the amount of obvious AI "cheating", and make flanking aliens more effective. Research speeds have been returned to the values found in Milestone 6. We introduced a bug a few weeks ago where each Infiltrator created would permanently boost your research speed by 5% (a copy-paste error), which meant you'd frequently run out of available research even if you'd made no particular attempt to speed up your research. This has now been fixed. Batons and Knives now have a 1.25x Reflex modifier, which means carrying them in your off-hand no longer penalises shotgun soldiers. Symbiote melee attack now has a 30% chance to inflict a Bleeding Wound per 10 damage inflicted (down from 50%). Made some performance improvements for units with 360-degree vision, as the Sentinel Module was causing lag for some players. The voiceover on the intro / outro cinematic has been re-recorded with a new voice actor due to a contract issue. Added the co-ordinates back onto the Geoscape, as it turns out some players did use them. Panic levels are no longer shown in the topbar when hovering over a region in Phase 1. Added a few more crash site maps to the game that weren't previously spawning due to a setup issue. Bugfixes: Fixed the Identify Recruits strategic operation OP cost being able to go negative, and not resetting to the standard (35 OP) price after use. Fixed the Geoscape zoom speed being dependent on framerate. It's now a consistent value for everyone. Fixed the item totals on the Engineering screen incorrectly including items "equipped" on Unassigned soldiers, which could cause projects to show that you owned more copies of that item than you actually did. Fixed the soldier paperdoll disappearing if you changed the loadout of an unassigned soldier on the Armory screen. Fixed the Power Fist remaining equipped if the Colossus Armour was stripped off a soldier when they are assigned to a dropship due to there being insufficient Colossus Armours available for them to use. (Hopefully) fixed the Colossus not showing the crosshatch obstruction shader when hidden by walls etc. Fixed aliens that have suffered an overwatch attack when moving always attempting to attack back in response, rather than finishing their planned move. Fixed an issue where spawned Symbiotes could incorrectly be visible in the fog of war. Fixed the Strategic Operation info dynamic text values displaying white, rather than using the colour-coding it had in older versions of the game. Fixed a couple more wall types in the ATLAS Base maps that were not revealing properly at certain angles. Fixed the Western Town restaurant walls being invisible in the previous dew hotfixes. Fixed a number of map issues. Fixed a couple of tiles that have black z-fighting issues on Linux machines.

bug_report_2026-04-10-20h01_gc_7.18.7_unhandled_exception_0.zipcrash_info.htmlcrash_info.json

Thanks as always for the reports! As fusion-waffle has stated, when launching the uoo mission, it will auto generate a selection of soldiers for the mission based on their ranks, which may end up not including your standard dropship loadout. As such we need a bit of clarification, whether that is the case or if the mission did start w/o the soldiers you've specifically selected for the uoo mission.

For the UOO mission, I think the soldiers teleport in & do not take the plane. My understanding is that when you click the "launch UOO raid/assault" button at the bottom centre of the geoscape screen, it takes you to an armoury screen. There is a suggested list of soldiers for the mission that is auto-filled from highest rank down (colonel, colonel, major major major, ..etc..), but then you can change which soldiers are assigned & their loadouts, before launching the mission. Do you mean that some of the soldiers who ended up in the UOO mission were not ones you chose in the final armoury screen before the mission begins, or that the list of auto-filled suggested soldiers did not match the soldiers you had assigned to your dropship?

I've played to day ~280 now and I fully agree. I can skip terror missions and manage panic with ease - even with only 2 bases with 3 planes eacb, while letting lot's of UFOs run amok around the globe, even the UUO orbit shots give me no worries. No pressure, no hurry, no dread.

Thanks, we'll look into it

Downed Battleship in Port, trying to capture an Ethereal in the top deck. To the best of my knowledge only alien left is the Ethereal. Preceding turn: Ethereal and Psyon Officer (purple) mind control 2 of my troopers. Psyon is killed. Ethereal is hit with electroshock grenades, rifles and pistols but doesn't go down. Alien Turn: Ethereal moves, receives overwatch fire from 2 troopers and collapses. Pop up: Col. "whateverTheyreCalled" is no longer under alien control. Pop up: Ethereal Commander is unconscious. Col. moves, shoots a friendly trooper... Waiting on enemy activity... waiting... waiting... lookup bug forum, look up stickied posts, write all this, recover account because haven't posted since Xeno1... still waiting on enemy activity... bug_report_2026-04-07-01h42_gc_7.18.4_user_f11_0.zip

Thanks for taking the time to post a bug report, we'll get this fixed

Yeah, I think this is the problem. The alien autopsies are only available after completing Xenobiology and Waveform Analysis might be required for that.

I'll forward this to the rest of the team so we can discuss it after the weekend. Thanks for the feedback!

Cyberdrone armour is actually made of concrete We'll get it fixed! Thanks as always

This makes me sad. Bug reported 3 years ago, survived through Early Access and now still present in Release Version (7.18.3) auto_groundcombat_turn_2_start-351.json

Yeah, I'll bring it up again and we'll discuss if we can implement this on a post release patch

Congratulations on the release, and best of luck! I hope the game is as successful as it deserves to be, it's been a pleasure and a privilege to watch it develop and mature.

This update is only accessible by switching to our Experimental branches (instructions on how to do so here). This build contains a number of minor tweaks that should not affect stability. If it's stable, we'll be releasing it onto the public branches at launch - if not, we'll be releasing 7.18.1 instead! Gameplay Changes: Added proper art for the stunned / dead VIP in the inventory (for the VIP extraction escort mission). Bugfixes: Fixed the game crashing if people pressed F9 (quickload) repeatedly. Fixed Psyon Leaders being unable to attack because the gun in their default loadout had the wrong ammo clip. Fixed some minor text display errors in Russian, Japanese and Polish.

Yeah, it's intentional in your own base.

This update is only accessible by switching to our Experimental branches (instructions on how to do so here). This build contains a number of minor tweaks that should not affect stability. If it's stable, we'll be releasing it onto the public branches at launch - if not, we'll be releasing 7.18.1 instead! Gameplay Changes: I've reviewed the stats of the aliens and tweaked various values to ensure they are sensible, and maintain progression throughout the game. Many of these are essentially cosmetic so I won't list them all out here (e.g. reduced Secton Strength from 60 to 40, which does not actually affect gameplay but does make the autopsy results look more sensible). However I'll list out the ones that do affect game balance! Psyon Officers and Leaders made significantly stronger, as visually they are a purple variant of an existing (red-armoured) Psyon rank, but they previously had much worse HP and Armour statlines than the equivalent red Psyon. Early-game Sebillians (Engineers, Soldiers and Warriors) given +5 Accuracy. They seemed a bit underpowered with 45 Accuracy given they also have Bad Eyesight that gives them -2% reduced hit chance per tile. Heavy Mentarch increased to 35 Armour (up from 25), but reduced to 120 HP (down from 145 HP). Heavy Servitor death explosion now does 60 damage (previously this was 40, which was the same as the basic Servitor). Symbiote Reflexes reduced to 40 (from 65), but their melee attack accuracy increased by +20. This change exists to make Symbiotes easier to kill with melee weapons like the Knife. Added translations for the new UI elements / tooltips etc added in the last week or so. Bugfixes: Fixed the Reaper and Symbiote Autopsy projects incorrectly listing them as having 0 Time Units. Fixed the Accuracy value on the Xenopedia Autopsy / Interrogation projects showing decimals on Veteran and higher difficulty (as we now show the accuracy modifier for higher difficulties.) Fixed the Inverse Kinematics setup on the Androns. Fixed the new Andron Warrior variant not having a corpse item.

You can only overload soldiers by +16 weight now so you can't bring massive amounts of ammo with you and drop it on turn 1. There are considerably more maps than when you played before (180?)

ha ha no problem, hopefully i made you think of the right one. this is like a bad game of charades

This is a known issue but unfortunately no fix of yet.

OK. There's also no missile arc visible in the tutorial on mouse hover over the missile icon, despite what the hint says. But that's minor. output.log.5 output.log.1 output.log.2 output.log.3 output.log.4 output.log

Supporter system needs more back and forth play. Currently, as soon as we've recruited a supporter, it's there for the rest of the game and it makes the system too linear and boring. There's one common complaint: mission variety drops after phase 1. Here's my proposal (for DLC): Every now and then, aliens commence an operation to kill our supporters. The operation consists of a group of 2-3 simultaneous missions that are available for only 12 hours. Each failed mission means a lost supporter. Used mission types could be repurposed escort VIP missions or new wave based defence missions. The idea is that you'd really struggle to complete all the 2 or 3 simultaneous missions and need to think which supporters are most expendable.

Thanks for the report! We're aware of this issue and will get it fixed, although most likely on a post release patch.

1. Basic progression is going smoothly, game builds to having real money and extra bases at notable times. Cleaner base is timed to be near Lasers and Dragonfly. 2. One possible bug from last play through, got NO survivors from Med lab or random. Over 300 days and a dozen fatalities. I would check the code. 3. Problems.. Too many upgrades too late. To much time waiting for late upgrades to gate, as well as missions. 4. About at orbital, game needs more paths and something to eat up some OP points and Money. The endgame missions aren't bad, but they take TOO long to appear and several techs are Single-mission wonders. 5. Penultimate mission is good and tense, then it devolves into "find the goober wandering around". Give us a target or at least a scanner. 6. Alien bases should be tied into OP points or $, Let us set a pace depending on how well we are doing. 7. Non-stun grenades are dang weak, Grenade launchers even more so, and VERY heavy. 8. We need a "dressing" that can STOP bleeding only, but doesn't heal. and is light enough for everyone to carry. As is, riflemen are effectively medics until the Lizards show up. And this FURTHER restricts grenades. 9. Carrying captures, and/or teamate's bodies, adds to found play drama, you want MORE of this. 10. Another reason to tie bases to OPs etc.. With limits on clean-up, resources get VERY tight at certain times. Alien Bases are the best source, but too far out of player control. 11. Reapers are TOO fast for current overwatch. 12. Last game, Harvesters came AFTER Battleships.

7.00 series. Have been on experimental almost without exception. Generally Soldier. I ran some earlier at Veteran. Usually have tweaks to money survivability etc. (one reason no survivors stood out).

This update is also only accessible by switching to our Experimental branches (instructions on how to do so here) - although please be aware they have slower load times and worse performance than normal builds due to the extra logging they contain! Gameplay Changes: Added a settings option for locking the mouse cursor to the gameplay window (unless alt+tabbed). This setting is on by default. Commander difficulty no longer prevents the player from using Air Combat autoresolve, as the autoresolve rarely outperforms human players and this was making the Commander experience more repetitive rather than more difficult. Engineering upgrade projects now have more informative descriptions that provide specific numbers for what is being upgraded. Engineering weapon upgrade projects will now show the stats tooltip for both the upgraded and unupgraded weapon. Sniper Rifle cheapest fire mode reduced in cost from 52% TU to 48%, but Accuracy of that fire mode has been reduced from 100 to 80. This is is an overall buff to the Sniper Rifle, as it permits the weapon to be fired twice in a turn if a soldier has enough Accuracy to make effective use of the cheaper fire mode. Upgrading weapons now always add ~15% to their damage. Upgraded Gauss weapons now do slightly more damage, and a few of the upgraded Fusion weapons have had their damage numbers slightly tweaked upwards or downwards to better fit the rule. Tier 1 Psyon terror sites (about day 180) now have one fewer Cyberdrone in them on Veteran difficulty and above. Bugfixes: Fixed a crash that would occur after running the Laboratory / Workshop upgrade engineering project. Fixed an AI hang that could occur if the alien mind controlled an armed civilian. Fixed a crash that would happen if the game tried to load a particular VIP Extraction map in the Arid biome. Fixed visual errors on water tiles and other lowered ground tiles on night missions. Fixed the Servitor enemy not showing the crosshatch obstruction shader. Fixed various commercial kitchen props in the Western Town restaurant not having proper destruction states. Fixed the helmet for the upgraded Guardian armour always appearing, even when using the light variant. More map / terrain fixes.

Thanks for the update! Yeah, I haven't experienced it either on my playthrough so hopefully it works fine for everyone. Let us know if you encounter anything else in the game!

following up re: this changelog entry from v7.11 which mentioned a potential fix for this issue: It is likely that the fix is good and this issue is resolved (at least in v7.12.1). This issue would often occur on my machine when using the "resources" projects to manufacture alenium or alloys. But, after an hour or so of intensive resource & armour/weapons manufacturing in a v7.12.1 campaign, I did not see this issue once. v7.12.1 Engineering screen is feeling pretty solid.

Thanks for the report! The video helped a lot in reproducing the bug as it's not reproducible from just ending the turn from the turn 9 save. Placing the soldiers in the same spots in the video allowed me to repro the bug. We'll look into this and figure out what's going on!

With two fully build adjencent labs it displayed 11 (though the math said 5+2+5), and enforced only 11. With three but the third not finished it it displayed (5+2+5+2) = 13, but was enforcing 14. So there is a bug in what it displays, a but that makes it inconsistent what it enforced, and possibly a bug in the adjecency bonus kicking in before the new construction is finished.

The 7.13.0 build recently released on the Experimental branch suffered from an issue that prevented the game loading, so we've temporarily rolled it back to 7.12.1 while we find and fix the issue. We've only been able to do this on Steam - we'll be doing the same thing on GOG in a few hours. 7.12.1 is a stripped down version of the 7.13.0 update that contains only the essential fixes, which includes a fix for the crash that was blocking Geoscape progress in 7.12.0. However, it's not a proper Experimental build and lacks the extra logging and automatic end of turn tactical saves - this shouldn't really affect gameplay, I'm just noting it here so regular testers aren't confused!

Well get it fixed asap, thanks for the report!

Thanks for the bug reports! Apologies for the unstable patch but we're working on getting the crashes fixed to put out a hotfix asap

Here are two additional high quality bug reports of hangs during AI turn in Xenonauts 2 v7.9.0 -- both accidentally submitted by players to the Xenonauts 1 bug report forum. See: (thank you @Craig & @StudentEternal !) The stack traces in player.log / output.log in these two bug reports illustrate a third kind of failure mode, distinct from @gprimosch & @PorT_Lobo's examples. Here are excerpts of the stack traces for fatal / unhandled exceptions: NullReferenceException: A fatal error occurred during Update[] - Object reference not set to an instance of an object Context: - Process:global::Artitas.Events.DeltaTimeEvent - DeltaTime Event[dT: 0.0166872] -- - Process:global::Artitas.Events.DeltaTimeEvent - DeltaTime Event[dT: 0.0166862] -- - Object reference not set to an instance of an object at Common.Boards.Address.ComputeTileIDFloor0 () [0x00001] in F:\Jenkins\workspace\X2 (Build)\release-7.x.y\Assets\Code\Libraries\Common\Code\Concepts\Boards\DataStructures\Address.cs:928 at Xenonauts.GroundCombat.AI.Layers.PositionTacticLayer.ForEachTileInRange (System.Action`1[T] tileFunc, System.Single range, System.Collections.Generic.List`1[T] entityList) [0x0003a] in F:\Jenkins\workspace\X2 (Build)\release-7.x.y\Assets\Code\Screens\GroundCombat\Systems\AI\Layers\PositionTacticLayer.cs:270 at Xenonauts.GroundCombat.AI.Layers.PositionTacticLayer.UpdatePositionTacticValues (Artitas.Entity actor) [0x00106] in F:\Jenkins\workspace\X2 (Build)\release-7.x.y\Assets\Code\Screens\GroundCombat\Systems\AI\Layers\PositionTacticLayer.cs:218 at Xenonauts.GroundCombat.AI.Layers.PositionTacticLayer.UpdateValues () [0x0000c] in F:\Jenkins\workspace\X2 (Build)\release-7.x.y\Assets\Code\Screens\GroundCombat\Systems\AI\Layers\PositionTacticLayer.cs:183 at Xenonauts.GroundCombat.AI.Layers.DecisionLayer+<>c.<CalculateValuesFromFuncs>b__38_4 (Common.AI.General.KnowledgeLayer layer) [0x00001] in F:\Jenkins\workspace\X2 (Build)\release-7.x.y\Assets\Code\Screens\GroundCombat\Systems\AI\Layers\DecisionLayer.cs:461 [ ...snip! ...] and A fatal error occurred during Update() - Object reference not set to an instance of an object Context: - Process:global::Artitas.Events.DeltaTimeEvent - DeltaTime Event[dT: 0.0166695] -- System.NullReferenceException: Object reference not set to an instance of an object at Common.Boards.Address.ComputeTileIDFloor0 () [0x00001] in F:\Jenkins\workspace\X2 (Build)\release-7.x.y\Assets\Code\Libraries\Common\Code\Concepts\Boards\DataStructures\Address.cs:928 at Xenonauts.GroundCombat.AI.Layers.PositionTacticLayer.ForEachTileInRange (System.Action`1[T] tileFunc, System.Single range, System.Collections.Generic.List`1[T] entityList) [0x0003a] in F:\Jenkins\workspace\X2 (Build)\release-7.x.y\Assets\Code\Screens\GroundCombat\Systems\AI\Layers\PositionTacticLayer.cs:270 at Xenonauts.GroundCombat.AI.Layers.PositionTacticLayer.UpdatePositionTacticValues (Artitas.Entity actor) [0x00106] in F:\Jenkins\workspace\X2 (Build)\release-7.x.y\Assets\Code\Screens\GroundCombat\Systems\AI\Layers\PositionTacticLayer.cs:218 at Xenonauts.GroundCombat.AI.Layers.PositionTacticLayer.UpdateValues () [0x0000c] in F:\Jenkins\workspace\X2 (Build)\release-7.x.y\Assets\Code\Screens\GroundCombat\Systems\AI\Layers\PositionTacticLayer.cs:183 at Xenonauts.GroundCombat.AI.Layers.DecisionLayer+<>c.<CalculateValuesFromFuncs>b__38_4 (Common.AI.General.KnowledgeLayer layer) [0x00001] in F:\Jenkins\workspace\X2 (Build)\release-7.x.y\Assets\Code\Screens\GroundCombat\Systems\AI\Layers\DecisionLayer.cs:461 [ ...snip! ... ]

Thank you for the write up, and excellent to hear you enjoyed it!

Thanks. Just to make it clear, it's almost all UFO types, not just the abductor shown in the image.

The error code mentions Win32 IO returned 112 -> Meaning that there was not enough space.

This will get fixed in the next patch, thanks for the report!

Hello everyone. While playing, I noticed that the game isn't as engaging in the later stages as it was in the beginning. Xenonauts rank are maxed out, and all the rewards have been earned. Completing missions is becoming routine. I find the large number of officers abnormal and the medal awarding in the current version of the game to be nominal. I believe that with more sophisticated micromanagement of the xenonaut squad, their rewards, and rank advancement, the game would be much more engaging. My suggestions include an even distribution of ranks within the squad relative to the total number of xenonauts, as well as more complex medal awarding criteria. I understand that the changes I've proposed are not currently relevant, as the game is not yet finished. I hope Chris and the development team will take a look at this post after the release, assuming the community supports me. Please like and comment if you find this interesting. Please note that the ranks and medals name are conditional. It is worth paying attention to the proposed ideas. ================================================ ================================================ LIST OF AWARDS FROM LOW TO HIGH: - Xenonauts Service Medal - Xenonauts Combat Wings - Xenonauts Close Combat Badges - Scarlet Heart Medal - Iron Scull Medal - Xenonauts Commendation Medal - Defense Medal - Shild of Humanity Medal - Xenonauts Distinguished Merit Medal - Medal For Bravery - Shild of Humanity Cross - Solar Medal - Star for Valor - Cross for Bravery - Solar Cross - Xenonaut Medal Of Honor ------------------------------------------------ AWARDING CRITERIA: - XENONAUTS SERVICE MEDAL For the total number of missions. 10 missions - medal. 20 missions - 1 pin to the medal. 40 missions - 2 pins to the medal. 60 missions - 3 pins to the medal - Last awarded. ---- - XENONAUTS COMBAT WINGS - Total number of enemy kills. 15 Aliens - Steel. 30 Aliens - Silver. 60 Aliens - Golden - Last awarded. ---- - XENONAUTS CLOSE COMBAT BADGES - Total number of enemy kills with melee weapons only. 10 Aliens - Steel. 20 Aliens - Silver. 40 Aliens - Golden - Last awarded. ---- - SCARLET HEART MEDAL For wounded - losing more than 50% of your health during a mission 1 wound - medal. 3 wounds - 1 pin to the medal. 6 wounds - 2 pins to the medal. 9 wounds - 3 pins to the medal - Last awarded - Hall of fame - Retirement ---- - IRON SCULL MEDAL - Sole survivor after successfully completing a mission as part of a group of at least 5 xenonauts and killing at least 1 enemies. Each repeated awarding - 1 pin towards the medal (up to 3). 4th awarding - Last awarded - Hall of fame - Retirement. ---- - XENONAUTS COMMENDATION MEDAL - Once per game - For the total number of captured enemies - only officer, engineer, scientist, navigator, commander for 10 enemies. ---- - DEFENSE MEDAL - For Base Defense - for 3 or more alien kills in a mission. 1 mission - medal. 5 missions - 1 pin to the medal. 10 missions - 2 pins to the medal. 15 missions - 3 pins to the medal - Last award. *when defending base - Medal For Bravery are not receiving. ---- - SHILD OF HUMANITY MEDAL - For successfully defending a town/city - for 6 or more enemies kills and 50% of civilians surviving in the mission. 1 mission - medal. 5 missions - bronze pin to the medal. 10 missions - silver pin to the medal. 15 missions - golden pin to the medal - Last awarded. *for defending a town/city - Medal For Bravery & Cross For Bravery & Star for Valor Medal are not receiving. ---- - XENONAUTS DISTINGUISHED MERIT MEDAL - Once per game - For capture enemies - only officer, engineer, scientist, navigator, commander with a total number of captured enemies of at least 3 in one mission. ---- - MEDAL FOR BRAVERY - For killing 3 or more enemies with only melee weapons in a single mission. Each repeated awarding - 1 pin towards the medal (up to 3). 5th awarding - letter B (for Bravery) - Last awarded. ---- - SHILD OF HUMANITY CROSS - For successfully defending a town/city - for 6 or more enemies kills and 50% of civilians surviving in the mission. 1 mission - medal. 5 missions - bronze pin to the medal. 10 missions - silver pin to the medal. 15 missions - golden pin to the medal - Last awarded. * for defending a town/city - Medal For Bravery & Cross For Bravery & Star for Valor Medal are not receiving. ---- - SOLAR MEDAL - For assaulting an alien base - after successfully completing the mission and killing at least 3 aliens. Each repeated awarding - 1 pin towards the medal (up to 3). 5th awarding - letter M (for Merit) Last awarded *At assaulting an alien base - Medal for Bravery & Cross for Bravery & Star for Valor Medal are not receiving. ---- - STAR FOR VALOR - For 6 or more enemies kills in a single mission. Each repeated awarding - 1 pin towards the medal (up to 3). 5th awarding - letter V (for Valor) - Last awarded. ---- - CROSS FOR BRAVERY - For killing 6 or more enemies with only melee weapons in a single mission. Each repeated awarding - 1 pin towards the medal (up to 3). 5th awarding - letter B (for Bravery) - Last awarded. ---- - SOLAR CROSS - For assaulting an alien base - after successfully completing the mission and killing at least 6 aliens. Each repeated awarding - 1 pin towards the medal (up to 3). 5th awarding - letter M (for Merit) - Last awarded. *At assaulting an alien base - Medal for Bravery & Cross for Bravery & Star for Valor Medal are not receiving. ---- - XENONAUTS MEDAL OF HONOR - Once per game - Sole survivor after successfully completing a mission as part of a group of at least 10 xenonauts and killing at least 6 enemies. ================================================ ================================================ LIST OF RANKS FROM LOW TO HIGH: Operative Candidate Operative 3rd Class Operative 2nd Class Operative 1st Class Senior Operative Team Leader Sergeant Master Sergeant Ensign Lieutenant Lieutenant Commander Commander Captain ------------------------------------------------ PROMOTION CRITERIA: ENLISTED RANK Operative Candidate - After being recruitment to Xenonauts - without rank designation chevron. Operative 3rd Class - after completing 2 missions or in a fortnight if there is a training center (if not overloaded) - promotion occurs automatically. Operative 2nd Class - after completing 5 missions - promotion occurs automatically. Operative 1st Class - after completing 10 missions - promotion occurs automatically. Senior Operative - subject to the promotion to this rank who has served 15 missions in the rank of Operative 1st Class - promotion occurs automatically. +1 points to overall morale if in a team during on mission. -1 points to overall morale if killed during a mission -2 points total (1+1). No bonuses to overall morale if unconscious. Team Leader - 1 of 4 Xenonauts - subject to the promotion in the rank of 1st Class Operative/Senior Operative - the promotion is made by the player. +2 points to overall morale if in a team during on mission. -2 points to overall morale if killed during a mission -4 points total (2+2). No bonuses to overall morale if unconscious. Sergeant - 1 of 9 Xenonauts - subject to the promotion to this rank who has served 10 missions in the rank of Team Leader - the promotion is made by the player. +3 points to overall morale if in a team during on mission. -3 points to overall morale if killed during a mission -6 points total (3+3). No bonuses to overall morale if unconscious. Master Sergeant - 1 of 19 Xenonauts - subject to the promotion to this rank who has served 10 missions in the rank of Sergeant - the promotion is made by the player. +4 points to overall morale if in a team during on mission. -3 points to overall morale if killed during a mission -7 points total (4+3). No bonuses to overall morale if unconscious. Ensign - subject to the promotion to this rank who has served 15 missions in the rank of Master Sergeant - the promotion is made by the player. +5 points to overall morale if in a team during on mission. -3 points to overall morale if killed during a mission or -8 points total (5+3). No bonuses to overall morale if unconscious. *After being promoted to the rank of Ensign, he takes up the position of Master Sergeant. ---- OFFICER RANK - available provided that all bases have a training center. Lieutenant - 1 of 20 Xenonauts - subject to the promotion to this rank who has served 10 missions in the rank of Sergeant\Master Sergeant\Ensign - the promotion is made by the player. +6 points to overall morale if in a team during a mission. -4 points to overall morale if killed during a mission -10 points total (6+4). No bonuses to overall morale if unconscious. *When Xenonaut promoted to the rank Lieutenant become unavailable for two weeks (as if he is undergoing training after which he will receive an officers rank). Lieutenant Commander - 1 of 21 Xenonauts - subject to the promotion to this rank who has served 10 missions in the rank of Lieutenant - the promotion is made by the player. +7 points to overall morale if in a team during on mission. -4 points to overall morale if killed during a mission -11 points total (7+4). No bonuses to overall morale if unconscious. ---- SENIOR OFFICER RANK Commander - 1 of 42 Xenonauts - subject to the promotion to this rank who has served 10 missions in the rank of Lieutenant Commander - the promotion is made by the player. +8 points to overall morale if in a team during on mission. -4 points to overall morale if killed during a mission -12 points total (8+4). No bonuses to overall morale if unconscious. Captain - 1 of 64 Xenonauts - subject to the promotion to this rank who has served 20 missions in the rank of Commander - the promotion is made by the player. +12 points to overall morale if in a team during on mission. -5 points to overall morale if killed during a mission -17 points total (12+5). No bonuses to overall morale if unconscious. **When a Commander or Captain appears in a Detachment, the player gets the opportunity to additionally promote two Xenonauts to the rank of Master Sergeant as an adjutant to a senior officer. ------------------------------------------------ THE FULL DETACHMENT CONSISTS OF 64\66** XENONAUTS (full rank roster): Captain 1x Commanders 3x Lieutenant Commanders 3x Lieutenant 3x Master Sergeants or Ensigns (+2**) 6x Sergeants 12x Team Leaders 36x Operatives

Unclear if this one is a new issue, or a dupe of existing CTD issue: I'll try reloading the before-combat autosave. edit:yeah, that worked.

I have to agree .. Aircombat: First of all there is no real pressure on global map in late game. There are just a few UFO´s you can shoot down without any real threat. Even battle ships are weak against Gemini craft. I think Gemini is just too good. Dodge should not be instant and teleport should have higher cooldown. Btw using teleport turns aircraft the opposite way which shouldn´t be the case. I would also nerf Fusion lance from 35-45 to 20-30 damage I think it should be harder to destroy Harvester and Battleship (give them more hp, armor and their weapons better range) and add more waves of UFOs (all types of them from scout to BS) on globe Tactical combat: I can agree that the most reliably challenging battle is probably UOO-1 bridge assault Psyonic attacks: I think it should not be just YES or NO but rather more frequent attack that affects morale with all the consequences. I haven´t used "focus mind" ability ever and bravery module could also be used more often then ... I can agree that Ethernal should use squad sight and duration of mind controlled soldier could last 2 turns (with conditions above) instead of 1 turn. Training system / soldier stats I am thinking about the current training system and it feels quite uniform. You can train all stats of your soldiers up to 100 and it doesn´t feel realistic or fun to me. I would train nonstop but never ever could reach Usain Bolt´s speed .... I would think of more realistic system where you can train stats of your soldiers up to 150% from their base (starting) stats (e.g. 50hp up to 75; 40 accu up to 60 etc. ) I know it feels like a nerf to the current system and you are right here but it shouldn´t be too punishing cos you can still use an extra modules (for more TU, accu, morale, strength) that might help you with some negative aspects of this change. It should also make those modules (and Colossus armor) more meaningful and choosing your soldiers could be more important than now. I also suggested earlier some items should be lighter (grenades, clips) On the other hand the worse soldier you could recruit should not have stats below 40 and all starting soldiers should have +5 stat. I would also give players a chance to recruit higher ranking soldiers if lucky (maybe 2-3 cpl., 1 sgt. in mix) for higher price (30k cpl, 50k sgt.?) later I would also cap the highest rank you can achieve just by passive training to Cpt. cos I think you shouldn´t be able to reach colonnel just by idling on base. On the other hand the soldiers should be getting 50% more XP during tactical missions. The changes above would make your starting soldier feel stronger while limiting them in late game where you can compensate their weaknesses with additional modules but game could feel a bit harder in late game ... Misc.: The highest Praetorian rank of aliens could be even stronger (e.g. androns 100 armor 200 hp,..) but would limit their numbers in UOO-1 bridge assault mission. Poison grenades couldat least destroy a bit of armor or addinga stun overtime cos they are useless once you have masks on. I think aliens should differ more and e.g. Mantids could have better LoS than humans. Smoke grenades are too strong imo. I would reduce effect from 20% > 15% and make two tiers of them basic with less AoE but lighter (weight 6>5) advanced more AoE, weight = 6 (current value)

Hi again, So, nine years gone (if you know)... I re-made the X-Division (.11c now) research tree analysis as I found nothing. reseaches.xml --> CSV --> AWK script --> .dot file --> .gml file --> yEd (graphml saved & attached) Have fun! Question to modders: There is "Researches.Dummy" a bit all around. It is unlocked by "items.Drages". It is really something in use or only for placeholder / debug reasons? If not needed, then I could clean up the graph by a lot. researches.graphml