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Hello everyone - we're now into March, so here's our regular update on what we got done during February! Milestone 5 Progress: As always, our focus has been on getting Milestone 5 ready for public release. I said in the last update that we're hoping to do this in March and we're still on track for that, although the exact date depends on how smoothly the bugfixes go over the next few weeks - we're expecting mid-March if all goes smoothly, and late March if we run into issues. In coding terms, a lot of this month was spent ironing out gameplay / stability issues and tidying up some loose ends regarding new features added in Milestone 5, so although our programmers have done a lot of work there's not much in the way of exciting new headline additions for me to talk about here. However, we did find a few days to improve the shooting path calculations in the tactical combat so the permitted fire paths better match what the player would expect, particularly around doorways and corners, as community feedback suggested this area needed more polish (turns out the system had a couple of subtle bugs that needed fixing). Writing & Art: Last month was a big month on the writing front - the writing in the game is now largely complete. This means that all research projects now have research text, the phase briefings have been revised, more tactical missions have introductory character conversations, and there should be a more consistent narrative thread running throughout the whole game. Hopefully it's now much clearer why all the factions in the game are acting the way they are. Finishing this allowed us to send all the new game text off for translation, and we should have localised text in Milestone 5 in the next week or two (which was one of the main barriers to the public release). We've added some new illustrations to the game over the past month, most of which are just adding flavour art to the new UI popups related to the new Geoscape mechanics in Milestone 5. In our recent 5.13 Experimental update we also added unique illustrations for three of the five strategic operations (which should make it easier to tell them apart) and we're expecting to have the remaining two done shortly. Community Suggestion Review: Once Milestone 5 is done we'll be starting work on Milestone 6, which should be our final major update before then 1.0 launch. Alongside the last remaining features on our roadmap (Air Combat Revamp, Ending Cinematic, Soviet Town Biome, Mod Tools) we've been reading through the many, many community suggestions that have been posted on Steam, our Discord and our forums during the Early Access period. We're now reviewing all these suggestions as a team and looking at which ones we can include in Milestone 6. Although we can't add every suggestion to the game, there's a lot of good ideas here and we want to thank everyone who has given us feedback and suggestions during development - we may not always have responded immediately, but we did read them all eventually! That's everything for this update - thanks for reading, and hopefully we'll have a big announcement in the next few weeks about the public release of Milestone 5!

We'll create a Milestone 5 STABLE balance thread where this can be discussed. We can gather a bunch of opinions and then do a proper balance pass in a week or two.

I tried changing the signup question a few days ago but it didn't help. I've actually just turned off new registrations entirely for a bit. The problem with having new posts require verification is that so many bots are spamming the forum that posts from anyone who isn't a bot would be completely lost and I'd have hundreds of spam posts to sort through each day. I'll re-enable registrations some time next week. Maybe the spam campaign would have stopped by then. If not, we'll have to think again.

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! This is the first "release candidate" build for Milestone 5, and if we don't encounter any major issues then we'll release it to the standard branches next week as the Milestone 5 STABLE version. Please do report any bugs you encounter so we can make an informed decision about stability! Gameplay Changes: The strategy layer should now be properly deterministic, so if you load a save and choose not to reset the game seed then events should play out the same way every time. This may prove useful for tracking down some of the more elusive strategy bugs! Cursor snapping to the top of objects (cliffs, shipping containers, etc) has been disabled. In a future update we'll enable it for cliffs only, as it worked great on cliffs but not so well with the shipping containers. Outer walls of alien bases are now indestructible again, as we ran into quite significant problems trying to add the earth tiles to the upper levels of the alien base maps. Units now suffer 25% max HP damage, and 10% max HP in Stun Damage for each level they fall after the floor beneath them is destroyed. Minor adjustments to the invasion to make retaliation / resupply / construction / terror UFOs a bit stronger. There should also be fewer Destroyers once Observers and Abductors start spawning. Added artwork for the UOO-1 Sabotage and UOO-1 Bridge Assault research projects. Further translation updates. Bugfixes: Fixed a crash that would occur after a Xenonaut base is destroyed if there was an aircraft present that was repairing itself. Fixed a crash in the soldier inventory screen if the user was playing in Polish and activated a particular tooltip. Fixed a number of connected line of sight issues - e.g. shroud not revealing correctly, doors sometimes disappearing entirely when opened, soldiers stopping movement even when not revealing an enemy, etc. Fixed a bug where newly built bases would incorrectly start with only 1 of certain infinite quantity items (advanced aircraft missiles, advanced aircraft armour, etc). Fixed the Doomsday Counter tooltip showing incorrect values for the number of active supporters. Fixed open barn doors not correctly blocking vision etc. Fixed an issue with Mind Control that meant Psyons were using it less frequently than they should have. Fixed the outer walls of the UOO Bridge Assault mission being destructible. Fixed some shipping containers not displaying the units stood on top of them when the camera was at ground level. Fixed the Geoscape map not wrapping correctly on rightward movement. The War Machine achievement now correctly reads "Equip a soldier with Vanguard armour" for all translated languages.

Yeah, but remember Xenonauts 2 already isn't a game you can complete in a couple of hours. If you're assuming that each mission takes only 15 mins (which is a bit of stretch once you get past the early missions) then that's still 8.75 hours for a campaign spent just on the tactical map. Realistically each campaign is an absolute minimum of 10 hours, and for a lot of people it's in the 15-20 hour region. It's already a long game, even if you win your first campaign - much longer than the first game was. However once the mod tools are out I can almost guarantee someone will immediately make a longer and expanded version of the campaign and everyone will be happy. The type of people who like Long War are a pretty small subset of the people who buy these types of games, but they're hugely overrepresented in terms of the active community and people who are interested in making mods!

Just so everyone is clear - the plans for the air combat are not massive gameplay changes. It's bringing in the new UI and the tutorial, which will keep the same basic mechanics but will make everything look much more polished. There's going to be a few smaller changes to the mechanics but they're minor ones. We're obviously not going to cut out the air combat. It's connected to loads of other parts of the game; it'd probably be more work to remove it than to finish it.

Hi, I don't know about anyone else but I actually quite enjoy those early game missions where my soldiers are working with just ballistic weapons and dealing with smaller UFOs. To me the game moves on too quickly past that; given that you can safely skip magnetic weapons and can do alienium research quite early it seems like no time until I am attacking larger UFOs with my troops armed with laser weaponry. Could there be an option to slow things down for people like me?! Maybe each new UFO type would only appear after two months instead of one? Research projects could also take a little longer. I do actually really enjoy playing this game and am not one of those people who are rushing to get to the endgame and defeat the aliens - I enjoy the campaign as it goes along and would be happier for it to take longer! Many thanks

...totally destroyed I'm 47 years old and I played UFO EU when I was a kid. I vividly remember moments when the game surprised me: I'd load on UFO crash site, and then I'd automatically win because the UFO was so damaged that the crew was already dead... Or sometimes, only one enemy would survive... It may be unusual & very random, but I felt like the game was truly alive and well-thought-out. For the occasion, I looked at some old screenshots of "UFO" and I feel the magic of the game design again. It was sparkling and with almost more details, like the alien bases with plants, the mountains, deserts with dunes, more houses with several floors, there was more relief, the fire that spread much more it was strategic, etc. I like Xenaunots and I would love to relive those moments again. Is this in your plans ? Thank you in advance.

Thanks for the bug report, it looks like the civ remains mind controlled even though the Psyon it was linked to has died, we'll look into it and get it fixed

Milestone 5 has finally been released on our public branches and is ready to play! Please be aware that this update will break saves, and if you would like to continue playing your Milestone 4 campaign then you'll need to switch back to the older Milestone 4 version on our Legacy branch (instructions on how to do so here). Developer Commentary & Key Changes This is a major update to the game which introduces several new Geoscape mechanics that add more depth and choice to the strategic layer, and also adds significant content to the end of the game (e.g. two new types of alien, a new UFO, three new plot missions, etc). It is now finally possible to unlock Operation Endgame and complete the campaign - something we'll further improve in Milestone 6 when the ending cinematic arrives! After that, we'll spend some time polishing and hunting bugs before launching into 1.0! We're likely to do a balance pass on Milestone 5 in a few weeks, so if you've got opinions on the game balance please let us know in the dedicated Milestone 5 STABLE Balance & Feedback thread (there's also a few specific questions in there we're asking for player feedback on, such as squad sizes, the Colossus Armour, Wraith camouflage, etc). Please do report any bugs you encounter in the bug reporting subforums, as we'll be watching them closely to ensure we fix any issues as quickly as possible. Finally, I just want to thank anyone who tested Milestone 5 while it was on the Experimental branch and gave us feedback / reported bugs - we really appreciate your help! KEY CONTENT: Battleship UFO: the Battleship is the final alien UFO. It is extremely powerful in aerial combat and is a large multi-level UFO with a large crew of the most elite alien defenders in the tactical combat - successfully capturing one therefore provides the player vast quantities of Alloys and Alenium! Operation Endgame: it is now possible to unlock Operation Endgame and complete the campaign with a high-stakes assault on the alien leaders. We made this a two-part mission in homage to the Cydonia mission from classic X-Com, and we created an entirely new set of terrain tiles for the first section! Supporter System: each of the six funding regions on the Geoscape now contains four Supporters, representing important VIPs in the local area. There are several different types of Supporter that can be recruited by spending "Operation Points", each of which provides your organisation with a permanent bonus when recruited. Additionally, recruiting all the Supporters in a region also unlocks a unique Region Bonus. However, alien activity can also cause unrecruited Supporters to fall under alien control - becoming Infiltrators, who slowly raise Panic in the local area until you assign the resources required to eliminate them. Strategic Operations: the same "Operation Points" can also be used for Strategic Operations, which provide an instant benefit such as an injection of cash or lowering Panic in a specific region. The value of these operations increases with time (resetting after use) - for example, the Raise Funds operation normally grants +$500,000, but this value increases by +$10,000 for each day since it was last used. Invasion Phases: the campaign has been divided into five different phases that better explain the progression of the invasion, with some phases introducing or removing new mechanics to reflect the changing alien invasion strategy. New Missions: two new plot-related tactical missions set on an alien orbital station take place towards the end of the game, adding more mission variety to second half of the campaign. One of these is an entirely new mission type - wave defence. New Aliens: two new alien units have been added - the Eternal (the alien leader caste), and a small melee creature with a limited lifespan known as the Symbiote which certain enemies can fire at Xenonaut units as a form of living weapon. Civilian Evacuation: civilians on tactical missions can now be interacted with to order them to evacuate. Doing this will cause them to run towards the evacuation zone (next to the Xenonaut dropship) and leave the map - assuming no aliens kill them on the way! Mind Control: several types of alien are now capable of psionically Mind Controlling your troops for a short period of time. Bravery and Morale help defend against these types of attack. KEY BALANCE CHANGES: Doomsday / Panic: Individual regions do not suffer Panic in the first phase of the invasion. Instead, there is a single global "Doomsday" counter which must be kept below 100. This is mostly for narrative reasons, but it also means the player has more time before needing to worry about keeping Panic down in each individual region (so building a second base becomes less urgent). Base Regional Pricing: Xenonaut bases now vary in price between $500k and $1.5m depending where in the world you place them, with the optimal locations in terms of radar coverage (e.g. North Africa / Middle East, Latin America, etc) being more expensive. This means there are more viable strategies in terms of base placement, and also means new players end up with more starting funds if they unwittingly place their first base in a "bad" location. Panic & Lost Regions: Lost regions will now re-join the Funding Council if their Panic level is below 100 when the funding report arrives at the end of the month. It's worth noting here that the Reduce Panic strategic operation can be used on lost regions! 50%-150% Damage Randomisation: In Milestone 4 both human and alien weapons inflicted between 50%-200% of their Damage value when they hit the target, but this has now been reduced back down to 50%-150%. This makes armour a bit more effective at stopping units being instantly killed by a single enemy hit. Explosion Drop-Off: Explosion damage now falls off linearly from 100% (explosion tile) to 50% (outer edge of explosion), instead of inflicting full damage right to the very edge of their blast area. Destructible Roofs: Destructibility has been enabled on building roofs, along with falling and fall damage for objects / units standing on them (unless they have a jetpack). Reinforcements Move: Enemy reinforcements now spend 50% of their TU on movement after they spawn, and then go into overwatch. Previously they would stay clumped on their spawn point and be easy prey for explosives. Strategy - Full Gameplay Changes: The strategy layer should now be properly deterministic, so if you load a save and choose not to reset the game seed (by default it does reset) then events should play out exactly the same way every time. This might be useful for tracking down some of the more elusive Geoscape bugs! As covered in the Key Changes section above, we've added several new strategic mechanics such as Strategic Operations, Supporters, and the Invasion Phase system. Additionally, the Base Regional Pricing and UFO Delegation system significantly change the game balance. A new "Geoscape Timer" UI element has been added, which tells you how many days until your next Funding Report and any other upcoming events. The Campaign Victory / Campaign Loss screen has been updated with proper artwork, flavour text and music. The full campaign stats (e.g. total aliens killed, etc) are now shown for both victory and loss. Items now regain part of any lost sale value at the end of each month. The introduction of Phases (see Key Changes section) has led to a rebalance of some parts of the invasion: A global Doomsday counter has replaced individual Regional Panic values for the first three months of the campaign. Monthly funding is much lower at the start of the game, but increases significantly once Phase 2 begins. Infiltration UFO missions no longer cause Panic, but instead convert neutral Supporters into Infiltrators that generate Panic each month. Infiltrators can be eliminated by spending Operation Points. Alien materials are now more plentiful in the second half of the game. Added more Construction / Terror UFO missions to the timeline. These are UFO missions that will spawn alien bases or terror sites if not shot down. Failing a terror site now causes -35 Panic rather than -20 Panic. Various updates made to the tech tree: Research speed is 10% faster on Soldier and 20% faster on Recruit Research project durations have been decreased by 10%-20% for projects in the second half of the game on all difficulties. Added a number of new narrative research projects at the start of the game: The Cleaners, Waveform Analysis, and General Autopsy / Interrogation (depending on whether you capture him alive). Added a number of research projects at the end of the game. Some of these are related to the Battleship UFO, but most are the plot-related research required to complete the game. The placeholder plot research from older versions of the game (Alien Officer Interrogation / Alien Leader Interrogation) have been removed. The second-stage Corpse Analysis engineering projects have been removed, meaning there is now a single Corpse Analysis that grants +10% damage for each alien species. Interrogation research now also grants +10% damage against that species, giving a cap of +20% damage (previously +35%). Engineering projects have been added to upgrade the speed of Angel interceptors to match that of Phantom interceptors, and to upgrade the speed of Phantom interceptors to match that of Gemini interceptors. An engineering project has been added to improve the protection of Guardian Armour (unlocked by researching Alien Plasma Weapons). As both Stalker Armour and Colossus Armour are somewhat specialised, Guardian Armour remains the mainline armour for quite a while! Added an upgraded variant of the Stun Baton called the Electroshock Baton (unlocked from Advanced Stun Weapons research). The Quantum Laboratory and Nanotech Workshop upgrades now require Alien Electronics in addition to completion of the Cleaner Base mission (meaning they arrive a couple of months later). The research projects for Cleaner Autopsy and Cleaner Interrogation now autocomplete and grant extra Operations Points, as the Cleaner damage bonus becomes obsolete before most people complete them. The Cleaner Corpse Analysis engineering projects have been removed for the same reason. Engineering construction times increased on Gemini / Pegasus aircraft, and on Gauss / Fusion weapons. Various updates made to the power consumption of various base structures: Power consumption of many buildings has been slightly increased, including the Hangar and Living Quarters (which previously did not require power). Power production of the Access Lift and the basic Generators has been reduced (Alenium Generators remain unchanged). Your starting base now contains an additional Generator to compensate. The overall effect of this is that new bases can only construct a single Hangar and Radar with the power from the Access Lift, and expanding the base further requires construction of additional Generators. Various updates made to the aircraft and air combat: Xenonaut aircraft no longer consume fuel when fighting in the air combat (they still consume it flying on the Geoscape). The fuel mechanic rarely came into play during the air combat itself, and when it did it mostly seemed to frustrate people (or cause confusion by making autoresolve fail unexpectedly). Using Afterburners in the Air Combat now blocks that aircraft from firing weapons. However, you can use evasive roll while using afterburners. Torpedoes are now faster and Missiles are now slower, so the Torpedoes will hit the target first if both are fired at the same time (usually desirable because they are very effective at destroying Armour, allowing subsequent Missile hits to inflict higher damage). Evasive Roll now travels a consistent distance whatever speed the air combat is set to. Weapons now have a minimum fire range in the air combat, correcting for the fact that weapons actually fire from the center point of all aircraft / UFOs. This doesn't really affect Xenonaut interceptors, but it should make a big difference against large UFOs with powerful frontal weapons - these would sometimes fire when interceptor flew across the middle of the UFO, instantly causing massive damage that could not be evaded. Increased the acceleration values of all aircraft in the air combat, as they were set to about 10% of their intended values (which made aircraft speed up far too slowly). Cruiser UFOs now have a slightly lower top speed, as Phantoms could often struggle to catch them. The weapons on the Cruiser / Abductor UFOs now do reduced damage and have smaller fire arcs. The Interceptor UFO now has 20 Armour instead of 2 Armour, and has a much higher turning rate / turn acceleration. All UFOs should now regenerate 1 Armour per hour on the Geoscape if damaged but not destroyed in combat (previously they would regenerate HP but never repair their damaged Armour). Various usability / UI changes: Geoscape: Slightly increased the range of dropships to ensure they can reach anywhere in the world, as there were a few places you could put your base where it was not possible to reach certain missions. Base Stores: The "Sell Junk" button is now disabled if there's no junk to sell. Base Stores: Completing the Corpse Analysis engineering projects will now mark the appropriate corpses as "junk" items. Soldiers: Added injured / wounded text colouring on the soldier list. Xenopedia: Updated various autopsies to better display the weapons of units with integrated weapons (e.g. Mentarch). Tactical Combat - Full Gameplay Changes: The Civilian Evacuation system allows you to click on a civilian from an adjacent tile, which causes them to path towards the evacuation zone near the dropship as quickly as possible. This does not cost TU to use. Note that evacuating civilians will ignore any hostile units they encounter, so make sure their escape route is safe! Open doors now act as physical objects that block movement, vision and shooting. Units will automatically close open doors that are interfering with their move path. Suppressing a unit now reduces their Reflexes by 50%, which makes them easier to hit with melee weapons. Various fixes and updates have been made to the shooting mechanics in an attempt to reduce the number of instances where shot paths seem to pass through solid walls or travel at unrealistic angles through doors / corners etc. Sloped building roofs now correctly block line of sight and shots / throwable objects from all angles. All building roofs are now destructible, and units / objects will fall down to the level below if the floor beneath them is destroyed. Units suffers 25% of their max HP in damage for each level they fall, and 10% of their max HP in Stun Damage. Any unit they land on will be immediately knocked out. Units now only rotate to face their attacker when damaged during the enemy turn. Having rotation occur in the player turn could be frustrating, as soldiers hit by reaction fire would rotate towards their attacker and sometimes be left without enough TU to complete their planned actions. Performing melee attacks on hostile units now grants attribute progress towards improving Reflexes. Hay now costs additional TU to move through, and is crushed the first time any unit moves through them. This penalty does not apply if the unit doing so is Crushing (e.g. vehicles, Colossus Armour). Capturing the command room in an alien base now reveals the entire map. This now correctly triggers automatically at the start of each turn, rather than needing the player to move / rotate a soldier before it updates. Various updates to aliens: Eternals have been added to the game on Battleships and inside the largest Alien Bases. These powerful alien units have a number of different abilities, including Mind Control. Mind Control is now active on Psyon Officers, Psyon Leaders and Eternals. The chance of success is based on the Psi-Strength of the alien and the Bravery and Morale of the defending soldier, with the attack being more difficult with greater distance. The attack always occurs in the alien turn, and if successful then the aliens will take control of your soldier for one turn. Mind Control is broken if the alien responsible is killed or stunned. Psyon "Mesmerise" ability can now only be used once per turn by each Psyon. Killing a Psyon providing a Psionic Triangulation link to a Secton now suppresses the Secton, rather than causing a morale break (e.g. flee / panic / berserk). This should be easier to understand, and should provide the player more tactical benefits due to Suppression also removing 50% TU the following turn. Some Mantids now carry Symbiote Launchers, which fire eggs towards their enemies that hatch into Symbiotes - small, aggressive melee aliens with low HP and a lifespan of only three turns. Pistols are particularly useful against them due to their low TU costs. Sebillians now carry LMGs instead of Rifles, and some been issued with a special type of grenade that spawns large clouds of poison gas. Wraith Cloaking Field is now inactive by default, and activates if the Wraith takes damage. It then deactivates again if the Wraith takes damage, and so on. The defence bonus per tile has increased to 3 per tile (from 1.5 per tile). This should make Wraiths a bit easier to deal with - but more importantly, it should now be possible to distinguish between different ranks of Wraith on the battlefield. Wraith Cloaking Field is now disabled by stun damage (as well as normal damage). Wraith soldiers now have a 30% chance of spawning with a grenade. Cyberdrone cannon is now an AOE weapon that fires 3 explosive shots (damage per shot has been reduced). Androns and Cyberdrones should no longer seek cover, nor back off if facing large numbers of hostile units. Androns should no longer crush alien doors or walls when moving around UFOs / alien bases. Cleaners are no longer hostile to civilians / local forces on certain map types. AI units of all kinds should no longer clump together quite as much as before. Alien units should hopefully be a bit less aggressive on Terror Missions, as we fixed a bug where seeing dead civilians would trigger them to think they were in active combat. Various updates to weapons and armour: Increased the Accuracy penalty from wearing heavy armour from -3 to -5 for most armour types (and -2 to -3 for Warden) The maximum deviation on a missed shot is now 10 degrees. As well as looking more realistic, this makes the HEVY more effective. A couple of bugfixes related to the way corners (e.g. walls, doorframes) and fire arcs work for missed shots have made the HEVY less likely to unexpectedly blow up the user. All thrown grenades now have 2 tiles less range. Smoke grenades of all types now generate a substantially larger cloud of smoke. Demolition grenades now spawn smoke and fire on detonation. Cleaner Accelerated Rifle now has identical stats to the Accelerated Rifle. Knife reduced from 8 weight to 6 weight, base accuracy increased from 60 to 65. Various UI / usability changes: Settings: There's now an option in the settings to force the camera to return to its previous location or move to the currently selected soldier once the AI turn is finished. Tactical: Pressing R will now reload your weapon. Tactical: We've added an "abort mission" button to the tactical combat UI, as not everyone was aware you could access it through the Esc menu. Tactical: The soldier minitabs along the top of the tactical UI now also display the secondary weapon if the primary weapon is a combat shield. Tactical: Mind controlled units remain in the topbar minitabs (but cannot be interacted with, as if the soldier was dead). Tactical: You can now set a move path to an obstructed tile that contains a unit or a terrain object under the shroud, although unit movement will end once the obstruction is revealed (this prevents players "scanning" the shroud to identify what is there). Tactical: The currently selected soldier now displays with orange shading if obstructed, whereas all other friendly units display in green. This makes it much easier to see which soldier in the dropship is currently selected. Tactical Inventory: Scrolling between soldiers can now be done using up / down, as well as left / right (this mirrors the Soldier Equip screen). Tactical Inventory: You can now click outside the inventory panel to accept the changes and close the panel. Mission Debrief: Added tooltips to the post-mission debrief screen for the soldier promotion icon, and the soldier kills icons. Various updates to different mission types: Ambush / Cleaner Base / Base Defence: Pressing the "Commence Mission" button at the end of the pre-mission deployment phase no longer softlocks the game for a couple of seconds. Ambush: These missions now reveal the position of all enemies during deployment, so you can better choose where to deploy your soldiers. Data Raid: If you return all the soldiers to the dropship without having sabotaged enough computers for the mission to count as a victory, the game will now spawn a pop-up telling you this and asking if you want to end the mission anyway. Data Raid: Updated the objective text to be slightly clearer about how many computer desks need to be interacted with for victory. Abduction: Updated objective text so the "Eliminate all hostile combatants" line is now marked as complete if all enemy units are eliminated before the mission ends. Rescue Soldiers: Added camera scroll from the target soldiers to the rest of your team at the start of the mission. Terror Site: We've thinned out the number of spawn points around the dropship on most Terror maps. The underground military base tileset now has pillars on the rock cave wall corners that block vision. This should helpfully clear up some of the line-of-sight issues in the ATLAS Base and the Cleaner Base missions. Visual / Audio Updates: Fixed various kinds of minor visual issues in lots of different tactical maps. Added various new terrain tiles for the tactical combat. These are mostly alien tiles related to the new missions (e.g. Operation Endgame, Battleship UFO, the alien orbital missions, etc) but there's some visual updates to the Farm biome, new Alien Singularity Core and Alien Antigravity Generator models inside the UFOs, and a new oil pumpjack prop for the Desert biome. Added new 3d models for the Wraiths, including entirely new designs for the heavily-armoured elite Wraiths. Added Soldier Equip screen paperdoll artwork for the various advanced MARS / ARES weapons. Alien Magnetic LMG now has the correct 2D art, and has a new a 3d model that matches it. The MARS / ARES "Plasma Cannon" is now correctly called the "Fusion Cannon", and should have green rather than blue artwork and should fire green projectiles. MARS Smoke Launcher now has a sound / projectile / visual effect that is more appropriate for a smoke launcher. Alien grenade projectiles now match their artwork. Added artwork for the Andron Praetorian corpse. Updated inventory artwork for the Reinforced Shield. Updated preview artwork for Fusion Grenade engineering project. The landed variant of the UFO Scout no longer has a low-res hull texture compared to the crashed variant. Removed a duplicate soldier role icon. Added new or updated sound effects for: Ambient sounds for various tactical biomes and strategic UI screens Winning or losing a tactical mission Accelerated and Gauss weapons Alien Fusion weapons MARS / ARES / Sentry Gun movement and death sounds MARS / ARES rocket turret weapon Dropship take-off sound on the Geoscape Bugfixes: General: Quickload and the Continue Campaign button now both reset the game's random seed, which is default behaviour on the Load Game menu. If you've previously been testing the randomness of shots using Quickload and getting the same result every time, this bug was why! Fixed the "Ultimate Power" achievement (all Colonels in a squad) being unlocked if a single Colonel was present on the team, or if you play a base defence mission containing only Sentry Guns. The War Machine achievement now correctly reads "Equip a soldier with Vanguard armour" for all translated languages. Strategy: Geoscape: Fixed a crash that could occur if a UFO destroyed an undefended Xenonaut base that had soldiers / personnel / items midway through being transferred to it. Geoscape: Fixed a rare multi-threading crash related to saving the game. Geoscape: Fixed the map not wrapping correctly on rightward movement. Base Management: Fixed the Laser / Gauss / Fusion base defence turrets not having a tooltip. Soldiers: Fixed a UI bug where selecting soldiers would cause the Training Capacity bar to decrease. Soldier Equip: Fixed several issues where the game could crash when moving inventory items. Soldier Equip: Fixed the ammo capacity tooltip being broken when comparing items on the Soldier Equip screen. Soldier Equip: Fixed the tooltip for the Stalker Armour showing the linked tooltip for the Wraith Cloaking Field, not the human equivalent. Soldier Equip: Fixed the Colossus tooltip not having enough space to display the various effects. Soldier Equip: Fixed the colour-coding for wounded / injured soldiers in the bottom left soldier list, as it was getting out of sync in some situations. Base Stores: Fixed a crash that would occur if you tried to sell a MARS / ARES. Base Stores: Fixed the MARS / ARES incorrectly having a $0 sell value. Tactical Combat: Fixed a crash that could occur if you accidentally killed The General in ATLAS Base with an explosive weapon before he had been revealed from the shroud. Fixed a crash that could (rarely) occur on enemy overwatch fire. Fixed a rare crash that could occur if an offscreen bullet hit something while the camera was still trying to pan over to track it. Fixed zombies incorrectly spawning two Reapers when stunned, which could then cause a crash in some circumstances. Fixed an issue where a teleporter would still trigger if a unit ended a move on it due to their move being interrupted (e.g. by spotting an alien, or because of enemy reaction fire). Fixed a bug where most of the internal crew of Harvester UFOs were not spawning, leaving the UFO largely undefended. Fixed some abduction missions loading incorrect map variants with too few abduction tubes. Fixed a bug where soldiers would sometimes not carry out move actions even though the UI tells you there are enough TU to do so. Fixed a pathing calculation issue where the game would sometimes tell you a soldier lacked enough TU to reach a tile, but would then recalculate and allow a longer movement if you chose a different tile. Fixed some pathfinding issues for jetpack-equipped soldiers, where the game was incorrectly claiming a "path cannot be found" if the soldier did not have enough TU to reach the spot (rather than showing how far the unit could move). Fixed pathfinding incorrectly calculating costs for units with Crushing making moves that involved crushing multiple objects. Fixed interrupted soldier moves not always reimbursing the player with the correct number of TUs. Fixed an issue where units would sometimes not turn if attacking as part of a move >> shoot preview action, leading to their arms facing a completely different direction to their torso. Fixed some (but not all) instances of shroud drawing over materials with transparency, such as the glass parts of alien abduction tubes etc. Fixed an issue where fleeing aliens would often flee directly towards your units. Fixed an issue where the shroud would sometimes not be revealed on certain tiles, even if a unit walked into them. Fixed some displayed "hit chance" labels being offset when passing through certain types of smoke. Fixed some displayed "hit chance" labels being offset in certain camera circumstances. Fixed the issue where destroying a shipping container would often not destroy the ladder attached to it. Fixed an issue where certain dropped items could not be picked up. Fixed destroyed splinters of wood hovering in the air after destroying certain sawmill walls. Fixed the Psyon Mesmerise triggering incorrectly when a "missed" shot from an explosive weapon kills the Psyon. Fixed an issue where in some circumstances the UI would show the fire mode icons for the medikit on top of the normal fire mode icons for a pistol in the other hand. Fixed an issue where thrown grenades would sometimes get stuck in mid-air and explode on the wrong tile (or leave flares floating in mid-air.) Fixed EMP Damage and Stun Damage numbers incorrectly being shown on Commander difficulty, when normal damage numbers are not. Fixed the bodies of aliens that had been killed on impact in a Harvester Crash Site being placed on the empty mid-level of the UFO. Fixed there being an invisible and indestructible tile on the bridge of the Harvester that blocked shooting and movement. Fixed the move+shoot preview calculating TU costs slightly wrong on Soldier or Recruit difficulty if soldier rotation was part of the shot. Fixed the crashed Observer UFO hull not having a drop shadow. Fixed pressing "C" to crouch causing the wrong soldier to crouch if you were hovering over one of the soldier minitabs at the top of the screen. Fixed Cleaners attacking civilians on the Rescue Soldiers mission. Fixed Sebillian regeneration being visible in the fog of war. Fixed units being able to activate alien / cleaner consoles through solid walls. Fixed spacebar selecting the next soldier not working for several seconds after pressing C to crouch a soldier. Fixed a bug where the Large / Small body size hit chance modifiers were only causing a tiny effect. Fixed a bug where loading a tactical save could make UFOs briefly appear with black boxes and shroud errors. Fixed the Servitor pausing for too long before playing their attack animation.

So I've went on the UOO-1 sabtoage mission. The briefing says. Grab the crystals for +1 day. Destroy something to get +5. Now the question is - what are the cannon power rings, and why aren't they mentioned in the objective list during the mission? Additionally. As you can see I've got 17 computers (not sure if that't max I got - god knows what the discount Gatekeeprs destroyed), but I've got 22 of days reset. That means 17 from the disks and 1 from the ring, which I don't know what it is, because the game doesn't show what to destroy. From out of the ordinary I've destroyed 2 of those: But if those were the things I should have got 27 days of reset. Also the game says MAX I could get 35 days So can someone provide - what are those power rings, how many are there and how many total disks there are too. If max delay can be 35 and I've got 17 disks then it means there should be 20 disks and 3 rings. Or maybe again the descriptions are misleading. And why minimum is 5 when the game says grab at least 10 disks for success? If 10 is success (which is the minimum) and minimum reduction is 5, so again debriefing is not telling everything right.

Hello there, thanks for taking the time to post about your bug here. We've made a fix for this bug quite awhile ago, but the fix isn't out on the public branches yet as it's on milestone 5, which is currently on our experimental branch. You can access the experimental branch anytime if you wish to (I'll link a guide below), but saves from milestone 4 are not compatible with milestone 5 due to the changes and added mechanics in milestone 5.

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! This is the third Milestone 5 STABLE "release candidate" build. If this build proves stable than we'll shortly be releasing it onto the public branches for all of our users to play. We're currently not aware of any further crashes in the game that need fixing, so please do report any stability issues you encounter! Bugfixes: Fixed a crash that could occur loading into certain tactical missions from the Geoscape. Fixed all remaining instances of doors misbehaving - usually this was alien doors that closed and had to re-open every time a new soldier moved through them. If you see any further instances of doors not acting normally then please report them as bugs because as far as we're aware, they're all now fixed! Fixed the UFO hulls not appearing after you loaded a save (this was fixed as soon as a soldier moved and vision updated). Hopefully fixed an instance where the "Complete UOO Sabotage mission" objective would not be hidden. Fixed the fire looking a bit strange.

Alien Poison Grenade Alien Fusion Grenade Both grenades could be picked up on mission, and used. Yes, Aliens could be killed by alien gas grenade. They are interesting bonus for player who can manage kill opponent quickly. (before alien throw it) For some reason, (bug ?) both grenades are flagged as "junk_for_sell" Make it consistent, options : FIX a] add flag on grenades "not_useable_by_player", then keep "junk_for_sell" flag as it is now. Easy fix but dull. FIX b] keep grenades usable for player, then remove "junk_for_sell" flag. Also make sure that alien grenades are available in armoury. Amount of alien grenades available in armoury is equal storehouse. e.i. alien grenades are not unlimited resources as other grenades. I would prefer FIX b] Thanks

Regarding alien grenades, I agree with gG here. From a gamer perspective, picking up alien grenades and using them against aliens adds to fun factor. Can't see it breaking balance in any meaningful way. And regarding balance in single player game, fun factor is always much more important than perfect balance. Same with the gas mask, agree with gG. It needs to have negative effects to have any meaningful gameplay (choice). It should reduce viewing distance, TU and accuracy to balance it out. Having a grenade styled button for it where player can activate/deactivate it with few TU's is needed. When you add more toxic fumes/smoke to crashed UFO's it all balances out nicely. EDIT: Haha, just noticed you proposed exactly the same thing for gas masks in your quote (the on/off button, negative effects etc). Great minds think alike!

I asked for this already. Crashed UFO need opponents which are wounded or even bleeding. An alien with 200HP and unstoppable bleeding could bleed 40 turns. Nice thing is, that a bloody trace of his steps help humans to find it. Another variant is aliens without weapons, the serious crash is chaos, therefore some aliens do not have a range weapon (it is lost somewhere), perhaps just one grenade, fists and tooth. Another variant is, alien is scared, it is easy to make turn him into to panic. Just one shot nearby and he start to run like headless chicken. Similar can be done with suppression, some alien after UFO crush can be easily suppressed, or they are suppresed on start of the round with chancee 1:3. Or they are suppressed when they see humans, soooo many options. As you say, Those small things randomly applied make game feel alive. Currently, when UFO crach you meet an army of brave and healthy clones, on top fully kitted. That feels a bit rigid.

After battle table need to use distinct colours 1. Survived use same colour as Wounded Status Survived must be clear different to anything else. Those are the dead but revived. Those have to shine above all. FIX : For sake of consistency, Use similar scale (shades) of red colour as you use for wounded soldiers in Armoury screen. It means, injured soldiers are light pink, wounded orange, survived red 2. On top, the gray hatching pattern as background of health status makes information UNREADABLE ! I dont understand your graphic language, it looks to me that someone has an idea, then push it everywhere no matter what. You also ue same Gray hatching pattern in armoury as background for items makes all items loose details, looks horrible. You also use this toxic pattern as background for button like crouch(tactical panel), which is the exact opposite of visual standard. I mean, standard since Xerox invented GUI in about 1980 says : If it is gray, with low contrast it means "not readable = not active". Your GUI designer is truly revolutionary. He said, fuck it - I make the revolution - gray and low contrast means active now. OMG. FIX: Would you be so kind, make your game READABLE, remove all those gray hatching background from active buttons AND info panels AND item background? Thank you a lot.

No, they won't. Although we'll keep Milestone 5 available on the legacy branches so you could finish a Milestone 5 campaign if you wanted to.

Since the forum is overrun by bots, i thought it would be a good idea to increase the security checks to have new users posts being verified by staff before being shown to other people. This includes X1 and X2 threads.

The joys of being old as dirt is getting to see all the things you love crumble to dust...nobody makes games with love anymore, it's all about the cash grab. (I am by NO MEANS pointing that at GHI, btw)

When research is completed, you get the prompt to start new research, so you into research and select something else, and only when you come back to the geoscape do you get the report for the thing you just finished researching. That's backwards. When the research is done, the first thing that should pop up is the report, then prompt you to research something else. It's been the same in all the v5.x builds I've tried, I assumed it would be fixed but apparently not.

Units on higher floor are invisible if camera is not set on that level. I'm pretty sure this has been a "forever issue", but reported it just in case. This issue is tied to a larger issue with how roofs and other vision blocking elements currently work. I've discussed this earlier with @Chris via Discord and he then commented it's a work in progress and that my explanations about the issues and possible solutions for it were a "fair point" and that "he'd need to think about it". I also posted a suggestion regarding this in the Discord suggestions: https://discord.com/channels/702822278148390983/1347171088056062023

This should be a priority fix. Cursor changing elevation automatically (for example around shipping containers) causes wrong commands and is highly annoying.

Building roofs shouldn't be removed if any tile is revealed inside as it's currently implemented. I would suggest auto-removing the roof only if: visible enemy is inside the building my own units are inside the building mouse cursor is inside the building toggle roof button is disabled Also, stacked shipping containers should be all visible all the time unless: visible enemy is behind them my own units are behind them mouse cursor is behind them toggle roof button is disabled This would be the default behaviour. The system proposed here is logical in a sense that, as long as roofs are toggled on (default mode) the roofs are all on and you'll see a realistic "birds eye view" of the battlefield unless there's something critical to see that is inside a building. It's also visually more pleasing to see full buildings than a huge black area just because one of your units sees a square meter of emplty floor from a window. Also, regarding the container part: this will remove the issue where you either can't see the enemy on top of the container or the enemy floats in the air as the container is not seen, which both are sub-optimal. All height levels and all roofs/containers etc. should be visible if roofs are toggled on (default). One can always hover with cursor or use the roof toggle button if you need to see / plan something, while critical stuff like units and enemies auto-remove roofs. Simple and logical. And the same logic should be applied to dropships and UFOs too. If there's nothing important to see inside, why not show your beautiful hull graphics instead? ...and you can always remove the roof with mouse hover or roof toggle button if you need to see inside. I'm pretty sure this is how things worked in X1 too... or at least in it's CE version. And to further justify the mouse hover, it's a quite established mechanic to remove roofs and other FOV blocking elements in other games too like Diablo, Fallout, Baldur's Gate etc., so I'm confident it's gonna work perfectly like this.

5.16 Introducing doomsday from day 0 right after you place your first base feels wrong. It's fine to give some high level lore about it at that point, but especially when there's no gameplay mechanics involved yet (it just stays at 0), it's just confusing and serves no point. Doomsday progress bar and more detailed information regarding it should be introduced at the same time with infiltrators at day 5. Phase intro texts are unskippable. I think it would also be better for the phase intro text to appear all at once and not slowly like the dialogues. Supporter info should mention about it being an infiltrator and show the negative effects it has and not the buffs it would normally grant. Check the quick mockup below. Camera is still force tracking my moving units!! Is it intended that the doomsday daily change can go negative? For some reason I find this image below quite hilarious: I just never thought Alenium was these huge crystal formations, but rather some sophisticated microscopic substance that can be extracted from alien tech. If 26pc of Alenium looks like that, I find it odd that we never see these comically huge yellow crystals in any UFOs or alien bases...

I really enjoyed my experimental branch playthrough. I haven't clicked on "Launch Launch Operation Endgame" yet in order to play more tactical missions with my lads and lasses and the amount and frequency of UFOs still feels great at this state, with phases of days when nothing would happen and then the occasional three days with five UFOs in the sky at the same time - I dig it. Feels neatly organic and unpredictable and the claim-bounty feature doesn't make it feel bad to miss out on crash sites because there's sometimes too many at a time to get to them all with only one dropship. In my stable branch playthrough quite a while back, it seemed to happen the air superiority UFO squads would line up better with the aliens trying to do something big, like a terror mission or base building (might have been random chance) - I reckon the aliens could put more to hunt down our interceptor squadrons or keep interceptors as seperate squads near a big ship instead of as part of their air combat entity, so they can engage human interceptors while the main ship continues doing it's thing. Would like to build a seventh base ^^ I like the supporter/infiltator/OP system a lot. Not entirely sure if it helps too much with the cash/resource management but I appreciated how much this alleviates some of the early and mid game struggles. Still missing an RPG-type weapon, let alone a high-tech version with waypoints - I wouldn't even mind if it took a whole turns worth of TU to reload - but the grenade launcher, as much as I like that one too, simply doesn't cut it late game, doing some 40 dmg on an armoured alien even with the fusion explosives upgrade. The hover tanks do a much better job at terrain destruction and their accuracy at range (at least with the range finder equipped) seems well tuned as well, the risk of missing the mark gradually increasing at larger distances. I like those as well. Actuator might be better suited as a checkbox like jetpack and heavy armor as a 2x2 module in the backpack/belt makes having more strength near useless as the character runs out of place to put anything that the additional strength could carry and there's already too many more useful modules to put in there. I concur with the folks who pointed out that the different weapon families are too similar and agree that "shotgun" doesn't seem right for things like a laser. Even if it's meant as a short-range/scatter blaster kind of weapon - additionally, the squad member icon weapon schematic is near identical to a rifle - a sniper rifle is way easier to tell apart. Point blank misses which hit a different adjacent tile at wild angles still feel odd, almost comical. Two cases of wanting to use a ten short volley of a fusion mg to remove an piece of cover only for the first shot to obliterate it yet all following 9 shots turning into puffs of particles in thin air instead of hitting what's behing the no longer existant cover. More chaos/environmental destruction/fires/smoke/debris inside crashes UFO and more damage and crash impact traceson their hulls would be highly appreciated. It would look awesome it they would really get torn open when hit by fusion torpedos or the hulls deformed from impact on the ground, maybe even whole sections separated and the near-by terrain scorched or on fire where the UFO slid over, or UFOs crashed into buildings, tearing them apart and setting them ablaze. The bullet holes on the UFO hulls look good, the scratchy splashes not quite so much. Dig the layout of the late game, large UFOs. Small ship hangar in Alien base is an awesome room. Dig it. Missing music in alien base missions on occasion though the environmental noise track has s nice feel to it too to set a mood. Dig the fusion weapon designs. Despite longer range, Fusion Lance still seems weaker than Gauss gatling, maybe mostly on account of it being a heavier payload. Footstep stomps on Colossus armour are great. In general, the Colossus and Vanguard suits look fantastic in-game and in-menu.

Typo. It was 150 before, not 100.

You need to un-select the auto-selected planes if you want to send out a squadron from a different base. It's somewhat unintuitive.

Thanks for the report! Yeah, there's currently a bug on mind control on 5.15, we're working on getting it fixed

Injured soldiers are supposed to show white if healthy, pink if slightly hurt and red if badly hurt. It used to in v4, but in v5 it seems randomly inconsistent. See attached screenshot -- one soldier with 15% health is appropriately red, but another with 10% health is white. In another case 63% and 86% are pink but 76% is white.

Not everything that isn't visually perfect is AI art. Lots of artists work with photobashing, where they grab photo references and paint over them. If they're pulling together multiple photos then the vanishing points often don't match (and even the best artists often get the vanishing point wrong anyway, as they're only human). In the second image the dubious vanishing point is forced by the UI. There's a few suspicious things with the first image that I'll speak to the artist about, although I'm not necessarily convinced AI is responsible. I doubt either of the other two have any AI in them from what I've seen of the WIP versions.

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! Changes: Fixed a crash that would occur accessing the Soldier Equip / Base Stores / Aircraft Equip screen after you'd completed a Corpse Analysis engineering project that marked the corpses as "Junk". Unfortunately, we can't fix corrupted saves here - you'll need to revert to a previous save from before you completed the Corpse Analysis project. Fixed an issue where Biters could spawn on the other side of walls from the impact point. Fixed the Aerial Warfare project not giving a "project available" popup when it is unlocked. Fixed the Pegasus doors misbehaving. Fixed the colour-coding for wounded / injured soldiers in the bottom left soldier list on the Soldier Equip screen, as it was getting out of sync in some situations. Fixed the Rush Replace aircraft button having unreadable black text rather than white. Updated the styling of the Doomsday counter tooltip to make it a bit more readable. Added artwork for the Andron Praetorian corpse.

We're working towards getting this patched out, should be fixed on the next hotfix! And, thanks, it's always good to hear people enjoy the game!

With no description at all of what problem(s) you encountered? Are all these reports for the same problem? This makes it very hard for the developers to know what you're reporting. Please provide a description of what the problem is. If there are different bugs, please create different bug report threads with a useful description and only the relevant zip file attached.

Hi, I am getting the same problem - bug report attached. BTW, many thanks for the ongoing work, the game is really coming together nicely! bug_report_2025-03-06-16h20_st_5.14.0_unhandled_exception_0.zip

Thanks for the bug reports! We're working towards getting the armory crash fixed asap!

Thanks for the bug report. We'll take a look and see what's causing it to crash

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 unique art for the first two strategic operations (Raise Funds, Reduce Tensions). We've made a number of fixes / updates to the shooting mechanics, which should hopefully reduce instances where shot paths seem to pass through solid walls or at unrealistic angles through doors or around corners etc. Open doors now act as physical objects that block movement, vision and shooting. Units pathing through an open door (not an open doorway) will automatically close it so they have a clear move path. Weapons now have a minimum fire range in the air combat, which compensates for the fact that weapons actually fire from the center point of all aircraft / UFOs. This shouldn't have much of an effect on Xenonaut interceptors (basically their weapons can no longer attack if the target is past the nose of the interceptor), but it should make a big difference against large UFOs with powerful frontal weapon - previously these would fire as soon as an interceptor flew across the centerpoint of the UFO (usually because the interceptor overshot when approaching from behind), dealing massive instant damage that was impossible to evade. Completing the Corpse Analysis engineering projects will now mark the appropriate corpses as "junk" on the Base Stores screen. The Panic bar is not shown on the Geoscape region info pop-up in Phase 1 any more. It appears in Phase 2 when the Panic mechanic is introduced. The Capture Resources / Eliminate VIP mission briefings now correctly refer to bonus Operations Points, rather than Doomsday decreases. The Cleaner Leader on the Eliminate VIP mission now grants 30 Operations Points if stunned and captured alive. Cyberdrones should actually now be unable to perform reaction fire. Alien Magnetic LMG now has a 3d model that matches the 2D art. Bugfixes: Fixed a crash that could occur after killing an alien unit that mind controlled your soldier. Fixed a crash that could occur after the UOO-1 Sabotage mission. Fixed a rare crash that could occur if an offscreen bullet hit a target while the camera was still trying to pan to track it. Fixed a bug where strategic operations could get stuck in the cooldown state. Fixed a bug where AI units would go into "combat mode" on sighting a dead enemy unit. We think fixing this may help address the alien units in terror missions being incredibly aggressive, as those maps contain lots of civilians and even a dead civilian would trigger the alien to think it was in active combat. Fixed a bug where certain aliens (e.g. Psyons, Reapers) had issues climbing ladders, sometimes ending up hovering in the air or stuck inside walls. Fixed the wage expense for scientists / engineers being incorrect on the Hire Scientists / Engineers screen after having unlocked the appropriate region bonuses. Fixed the Phase 4 timer ("UOO-1 Completion") being set to finish at the wrong point. Fixed some non-functional teleporters in one of the Cruiser UFO map variants. Fixed one of the Battleship UFO map variants having missing internal walls in one section of the Battleship. Another attempt at fixing the issue where enemy units are revealed when you move a unit in the deployment phase before the Cleaner Base mission. Fixed the "release captured civilians [x/10]" objective always being ticked in an Abduction mission, rather than only becoming ticked when you'd opened all the tubes. Fixed Cleaner reinforcements getting stuck in one of the boreal VIP extraction map. Fixed a number of visual issues with the white walls in the UOO-1 Bridge assault mission. Fixed the alien grenades and MARS Smoke Launcher having projectiles that did not match their art.

Before you add morre gases, Gas mask should get an overhaul towards SITUATIONAL defensive counter measure. Otheerwise, Current mask is just a weight in the inventory. No gameplay, you either sacrifice the weight or not, that is all. If you add more gases, include enviromental (rooms) then gas mask turns into a mandatory weight in backpack. No gameplay. Proposal : Mask is ON-OFF equipment controlled by an icon in the grenade area. Soldier could have a mask in the inventory then take it on - off baseed on situation. Mask ON gives bonus - safe against gas, reduce radioactive dmg from burning UFO engine, Mask ON give penalty - reduced sight range -2 tiles, reduced accuracy 1% per tile, reduced Reaction stat by 10% These are quite severe penalty, so player have to balance, what is less harmful. Set mask on or offf ? Decision is SITUATIONAL. Set mask on / off costs 20% TU

Then don't penalize for non rescued civilians. Like I said, set X amount of civilians that qualify for success. Like in XCOM you clearly did not need to rescue everyone and you weren't penalized for deaths unless there were too many casualties. . In X-COM you also didn't need to rescue everyone, heck you'de be happy to save anyone, all it mattered was being positive on the score. Ah typical. Save scummer talks about balance. You obviously missed the point of what I was trying to say.