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Hello everyone - hope you all had a nice June. As we're now into the start of July, it's well past time for our monthly development update. Milestone 4 Released: We released our Milestone 4 update onto the default Steam / GOG / Epic branches last week, which was a rather substantial update to the game. Most of our efforts this month simply went into patching and tweaking Milestone 4, so this is going to be a much shorter update than normal. Anyway, we want to give a big shout out to everyone who helped us out by testing the experimental versions and reporting bugs or giving feedback, as your assistance really helps improve the quality of our updates! We've continued patch Milestone 4 post-release to fix the handful of bugs that made it past our testing, and also to add a few bits of missing content (such as the text for handful of research projects that didn't quite meet the original deadline). We'll continue this as long as necessary to fix any remaining stability issues, but in general the game seems to be stable for most players. This means we're now ready to turn our attention to our next big update. Milestone 5: Milestone 5 is going to be our most important update so far - the goal is to allow the player to unlock and complete the final mission, meaning you will be finally able to play the entire game from start to finish. However, this won't be the last update for the game before we launch out of Early Access, as we'll still be releasing at least one additional Milestone update afterwards to further polish and improve the game. Unfortunately, Milestone 5 is likely to have quite a long development cycle - it's likely to be an even larger update than Milestone 4 was, and will likely include most of the remaining gameplay-related items on our roadmap and revamping the second half of the story. That means there's going to be quite a lot of content for a small team to generate! Rather than try to talk in detail about plans that haven't yet been finalised, I think the most sensible thing is just to finish this update here. Next month's update should be a lot more exciting, as we should have some solid progress towards Milestone 5 that we can show off!

Our Milestone 4 update to Xenonauts 2 has now officially been released! This update will break existing saved games, but if you want to keep playing your existing campaigns please switch to our Legacy branches where Milestone 3 is still available (instructions on how to do so here). We will be monitoring bug reports closely over the next couple of weeks, and we'll investigate and hotfix any issues raised by the community - so please do report any bugs you encounter! Developer Commentary & Key Changes This update is a big one - it adds a new UFO, a new alien race, a new suit of Xenonaut soldier armour, many new maps, and probably the largest update to the game balance since the game released. It is still not yet possible to complete the campaign (that's planned for Milestone 5), but the game now contains every UFO type except for the Battleship! Please let us know what you think about the game balance in Milestone 4 in the dedicated Milestone 4 Balance & Feedback thread, as we'll be considering community feedback while we work on Milestone 5! Harvester UFO The Harvester is the sixth largest of the seven UFO types that can create Crash Sites, with only the Battleship (which is arriving in Milestone 5) being larger and more powerful. It is primarily a transport craft that replaces the Abductor UFO on most mission types, but in addition to the normal beam weapons it also fires homing missiles similar to those used by the Observer UFO. In the tactical combat it has two interior variants and can hold a sizeable crew of well-equipped elite aliens. Androns Androns are robotic alien soldiers with a lot of Armour but average Hit Points that accompany Wraith crews on Terror Sites and on Abductor-class UFOs and above. Although they are very tough, they are vulnerable to EMP damage or anything that can break their armour. Androns were in some of the (pre-Early Access) Kickstarter builds of Xenonauts 2, but their original models / animations didn't look particularly good and they had integrated arm-cannon weapons that were difficult for players to identify. We're much happier with the updated models and animations, and since the new Androns carry weapons in the conventional manner it's now much easier to spot which ones have Fusion weapons! Colossus Battlesuit The Colossus Battlesuit was originally intended to be the "ultimate" Xenonaut soldier armour, but we subsequently decided it would be better to swap it with the Exosuit (which has now been renamed the Vanguard Battlesuit). The hulking Colossus is therefore the first (and most primitive) iteration of battlesuit technology, offering excellent protection but suffering from several major limitations that do not affect the more advanced Vanguard. In gameplay terms, the Colossus offers very high Armour and grants the user 100 Strength, but reduces the wearer's Vision Range by -3 tiles and their Reflexes by -20. It is also only able to wield Machine Gun-type weapons, and cannot use grenades or equip modules. When the Vanguard becomes available, the Colossus can be upgraded in the Workshop to further improve its Armour. The idea is that a handful of Colossus suits could remain viable in the final stage of the game, where they can be used as specialised heavy assault units. Game Rebalance We've completely rebalanced the strategy layer and the UFO crews for Milestone 4 to respond to player feedback. There were frequent complaints that Milestone 3 was too stingy with funding once you got past the midpoint of the campaign, making it difficult to build the advanced interceptors required to defend the world. This should now be fixed, and funding is now once again linked to regional Panic - but most events that affect Panic (both positively and negatively) now also have a small global effect on Panic. This means Panic will not rise so quickly in undefended regions if you are doing a good job of protecting other parts of the world. Interceptor equipment is now available in unlimited quantities once researched (with engineering projects globally upgrading these items into improved versions once researched). The community feedback from Milestone 3 was overwhelmingly that having to build individual weapons and armour items for your aircraft felt too heavy on the micromanagement, but we also found that it discouraged many players from experimentating with different aircraft loadouts. This change should therefore give players more freedom to experiment with different tactics in the air combat. Finally, we've also smoothed out the difficulty curve for both the air combat and the tactical combat, as there were several spots where it could feel rather unfair. To maintain the challenge in the later stages of the campaign, we've rebalanced the alien mission crews and added more powerful "heavy" variants of several existing units like the Mentarch, Servitor and Cyberdrone. You can see from the full changelogs below that we've changed a LOT of things - in general, we think Milestone 4 should be a better balanced and more enjoyable player experience than previous version of the game were! BALANCE CHANGES: Strategy: Added Harvester UFO. Added Colossus Battlesuit soldier armour. This offers excellent protection, 100 Strength, and the ability to smash through walls like a vehicle. However, it also reduces the wearer's Reflexes and Vision Range, and can only wield certain weapons. Added Sentinel Module, which grants soldiers 180-degree vision cones. Added Reinforced Shield, which is the final upgrade for the Combat Shield and Assault Shield. Added Energy Knife weapon, which is an upgraded version of the Combat Knife. Added new Corpse Analysis engineering projects for the Servitor, Cyberdrone and Andron enemies. 50% of your funding is now modified by the Panic score in local regions, and shooting down UFOs now grants a small global Panic reduction in addition to the larger local Panic reduction. This restores the link between funding and managing Panic levels, but ensures you do not need to immediately rush interceptor coverage across the whole globe on higher difficulty settings. The invasion has been tweaked so that the player needs to run fewer missions in the first couple of months of the campaign. The appearance of Scout UFOs and Destroyer UFOs has been moved forward slightly, and the Cleaner Base is discovered a little later. This means the time spent using each tech tier of equipment is spread more evenly. Base structures are now more expensive in general, and the Medical Center and Training Room are now much more expensive. Aircraft now take longer to build and are more expensive, and have reduced fuel range on the Geoscape. However, their equipment is cheaper (see below) and they now refund 50% of their construction cost when sold. Aircraft equipment is no longer individually constructed in the workshop. Starting equipment and weapons are unlimited quantity, and these can be globally upgraded to higher tiers via engineering projects. Two additional placeholder plot objectives added to the campaign: capture an alien officer, and capture an alien leader. These will be replaced in Milestone 5, but for now they just increase monthly funding when completed. You no longer pay upkeep costs on aircraft that are still under construction, or queued in the engineering project list. Air Combat: We've tweaked the stats of several UFOs downwards to account for the fact they appear a little earlier in the game. Hunter-Killer missiles on the Observer and Abductor now inflict less damage, and are slightly less maneuverable. The difficulty modifier (set on the Campaign Settings) was previously broken, but will now correctly increase / decrease the damage inflicted by UFO weapons. Fixed a bug where the autoresolved air combat was previously still using the UFO HP / Armour modifiers based on the number of interceptors used (making UFOs easier if you had 1 plane, and harder if you had 3). Tactical Combat: Added new Andron alien units, plus more powerful variants of existing units in the later stages of the campaign (Heavy Mentarch, Heavy Servitor, Heavy Cyberdrone, and Reaper Alpha). Melee weapons no longer have a 100% hit chance against aliens. The base hit chance of melee weapons is about 60%, and this is increased or decreased based on the difference between the attacker's Reflexes and defender's Reflexes (so the hit chance against inanimate objects remains 100%). Additionally, performing melee attacks on hostile targets now grants progress points towards increasing Reflexes. You can no longer heal enemy units, as this allowed players to get into several potential crash situations. As they cannot be healed, unconscious aliens no longer suffer damage from any Bleeding Wounds they have prior to being stunned. The civilian / local forces turn now occurs before the alien turn, which means it's now possible for the local forces to heroically save your troops from being killed by aliens. Stunned Xenonaut soldiers equipped with an Automed Unit will now automatically revive themselves when it triggers at end of turn. MARS and other robotic units no longer suffer Accuracy reduction due to injury. ARES now has 100HP instead of 80HP. This means it has the same base HP value as the MARS, but it has stronger armour which makes it tougher overall. Various updates made to the alien invasion: The aliens in each UFOs / ground missions have been updated to improve consistency. There are now three main alien races (Psyons, Sebillians, Wraiths) with different supporting units for each species - although in Alien Base missions you can encounter enemies of any type. Abduction missions now contain Cleaners as well as aliens until the Cleaner HQ is destroyed. The number of aliens is reduced if Cleaners are present, but overall the missions get slightly easier once the Cleaner HQ is destroyed. The aliens in the Cleaner HQ mission no longer have Plasma weapons unless it's past day 120, as this was unlocking the corresponding tech earlier than expected. Various updates made to weapons and armour: Stalker Armour cloaking field defensive bonus reduced from -2 Accuracy to -1.5 Accuracy per tile. Non-sniper weapons now generate a bit more of their hit chance from proximity, meaning they have a higher hit chance at close range (generally about +10%) but a lower hit chance at long range. Pistol - range reduced from 12 tiles to 10 tiles but short range bonus increased from 2.25% to 4%, and accuracy multiplier reduced by 5% on each fire mode. Overall this makes the pistol more deadly, but at the cost of 2 tiles of range. Shotgun - range reduced from 10 tiles to 9 tiles but short range bonus increased from 6.25% per tile to 7.5% per tile. Slight nerf to firing costs, which have increased to 30% and 43% (from 28% and 40%). Rifle - increased short range bonus by 0.5% per tile for 20 tiles, decreased Accuracy multiplier by 5% on each fire mode. Machineguns- significantly buffed as they no longer lose Accuracy after the soldier has moved for the first time each turn. Same changes to short range bonus vs Accuracy multiplier as the Rifle. Sniper Rifle - this weapon has not changed. HEVY Launcher - this weapon has been significantly buffed. It is now an arc-fire weapon rather than a direct-fire weapon and now has a maximum range of 25 tiles, which makes it significantly stronger (unless you're indoors where the ceiling limits the range). The scattering on missed shots has been updated to ensure they don't always catch the target in the blast area, but it's still much more likely to happen than when it was a direct-fire weapon. Combat Knife - increased damage by 10%, and reduced its weight so it is no longer heavier than the pistol. Stun Gun - reduced the suppression to 15 (from 23) Various updates made to specific aliens: Androns have been added to the game. These formidable robotic alien soldiers have very high armour but relatively low HP, cannot be suppressed, and appear as support units for Wraiths on Terror missions and inside larger UFOs. Wraith "Cloaking Field" ability now reduces the shooter's Accuracy, rather than inflicting a flat penalty on overall Hit Chance. This means Hit Chance gained from proximity is unaffected by Cloaking Field, and weapons with a naturally low hit chance per shot (e.g. machineguns) are no longer disproportionately affected compared to single-shot weapon types. Wraith HP values have been reduced by 20%. Sebillian Time Units increased to 75 (from 60), and Reflexes increased to 50 (from 25). Psyon Officers and Psyon Leaders are now equipped with a Psi-Amp weapon, which acts like a Plasma Pistol Pistol but completely ignores armour. We'll likely expand this in Milestone 5 so Bravery or Morale offer some kind of defence against it. Various updates made to specific missions, generally to improve the rewards offered or make time limits a bit less punishing: Alien Base missions are now always treated as night missions. The spawn regions on Ambush missions have been reduced by 3 tiles, so you can't spawn quite as close to the Cleaner convoy. The soldiers you are rescuing in the Rescue Soldier missions are now each also carrying a Briefcase of Money item (value: $50,000). All Abduction missions now have a base duration of 7 turns (the first mission previously had 6, all others had 8) Eliminate VIP missions now have 2 turns longer before enemy reinforcements arrive, and they now give a $200k rewards for victory. VIP Extraction missions now have 1 turn longer before enemy reinforcements arrive, and have 1 fewer enemy. They also now give a $200k reward for victory. Cleaner Base mission now awards 50 Alloys and 50 Alenium on completion. Cleaner reinforcements now spawn with 50% Time Units, instead of zero Time Units. Cleaner reinforcements now escalate more quickly, with subsequent waves of reinforcements coming 3 turns after the first reinforcements and having twice as many enemies (this is to discourage people from spawn camping them). GAMEPLAY / CONTENT CHANGES: Strategy: General: Added a new "bug reporter" tool which you can access by pressing F11. This will create a .zip file which contains all recent logs and saves, and can easily be attached to any bug report on the Discord or our forums to ensure we have all the information we need to find the issue. General: Added a small checkbox on the tactical mission loading screen that sets the game to auto-launch into the tactical combat once loading is complete (rather than waiting for you to press Begin Mission). The checkbox setting is persistent between missions. General: Added a significant number of new sound effects to various parts of the strategy layer. General: Added art for the Probe UFO and Nanofabrication research projects. General: Added a black background to the strategy UI that will be revealed if people play on ultra-ultra-widescreen monitors (i.e. anything more than 21:9 aspect ratio). Geoscape: Funding Report expanded to show the "base funding" value for each region, plus the funding modifier driven by the Panic level in that region. Any missions / research projects that increase monthly funding now list values as increases in terms of base funding (the amount you'll actually get at month end varies based on the Panic in each region). Geoscape: After completing a Corpse Analysis engineering project which unlocks further engineering projects, the popup now offers to take you to the Engineering screen rather than the Research screen. Geoscape: Added a kill count for each soldier on the post-mission debrief screen (each kill shown as an alien skull) Base: Added the building tooltip to the constructable buildings list. Base: The Training Rate value now shows decimals where appropriate, as each Interrogation increases the rate by 0.5. Base Stores: Alien Psi-Amp, Alien Grenades and Alien Advanced Grenades are now marked as Junk item for sale purposes. Research: Fixed the Xenopedia entry for the Scout UFO incorrectly reporting it was Evasive. Aircraft: The generic soldier icons on the dropship soldier arrangement screen have now been replaced by soldier role icons, which should make it much easier to tell your soldiers apart. Aircraft: Increased the size of the aircraft hardpoint equipment menu so you can see more available items at once. Aircraft: When viewing a dropship, the soldier list now increases in size as the dropship capacity increases (rather than a scrollbar being added). Aircraft: The "Choose Aircraft Name" panel now has a cancel button, and can be closed by pressing Esc. Aircraft: Updated the tooltip on button confirming aircraft relocation. Soldier Equip: Injured soldiers and wounded soldiers now use different colours, making the two states easier to distinguish between. Soldier Equip: Right-clicking a soldier in the Unassigned soldier list will now automatically assign them to an available slot in the dropship (i.e. the inverse of the right-click fast unassignment you can do on the list of soldiers assigned to a dropship). Soldier Equip: Updated the tooltip on the Select Soldier button shown on empty dropship slots. Soldier Equip: Fixed the Vanguard (Exosuit) light / heavy armour paperdoll variants not being consistently positioned. Soldier Equip: The "War Machine" achievement now unlocks from equipping the Vanguard Battlesuit rather than the Colossus. Soldier Equip: When players attempt a second mission without the dropship first returning to base, surviving soldiers receive equipment using the round robin method (assuming there is not enough to go around). Previously the first soldier would take all items set in their loadout, then the second would take all the items in their loadout, etc - which would cause problems if there wasn't enough items to go around (e.g. the first soldier would be issued mulitiple ammo magazines, but the last soldier wouldn't even get one to load into their weapon). Soldier Equip: Several updates to make soldier planned loadouts (i.e. the loadouts of soldiers that aren't in the dropship) more intuitive and useful: A pop-up message is now generated if you assign new soldiers to the dropship and the base stores does not have enough items to fill their planned loadout (which leads to soldiers not having some items equipped). Item quantities on the Soldier Equip screen now display as "X / Y" where X is the number currently in the base stores, and Y is the total number you own (including any equipped on your soldiers). You can now drag items into planned loadouts even if the base stores contains 0 of those items. Air Combat: Tthe first interceptor is now automatically selected when you begin a battle. The rotation arc for UFO weapons that are capable of rotating is now displayed. Hovering over either Evasive Roll button now displays a "ghost" plane that shows where the interceptor will end up. Different UFOs / aircraft may now have different cooldowns for evasive roll. The sizes of UFOs in the air combat has been updated to improve their relative scale. Tactical Combat: Almost 40 new maps have been added to the game (~30x Harvester Crash Site maps, 5x Alien Base maps, 1x Cleaner Base map, 1x Cleaner Data Raid) Further improvements have been made to the AI. Additionally, armed civilians should no longer be interested in going inside UFOs. Disabled various doors from autoclosing (UFO doors, alien base doors, blast doors in Xenonaut / Cleaner bases) as a temporary fix for the issue where the visual open / closed state of doors gets out of sync with their actual open / closed state. Cover objects with walkable floor tiles on top (shipping containers, caravans, buses, etc) are now linked in terms of destruction, which means destroying the object will remove the walkable tiles. Units stood on these tiles will fall to the ground. The Toggle Roof button is now functional and the visual behaviour of roofs has changed. Now roofs are shown by default, and will hide automatically when a soldier gains vision over any tile inside the building (previously roofs would always be hidden if you had the camera at level 1). After clicking the Toggle Roof button, the roof visibility will be forced on. Updated the way mouse targeting works when units are on top of objects that you cannot go inside (e.g. cliffs, shipping containers) so that you don't have to move the camera up to their level to click on them. Updated the camera behaviour when enemy reinforcements arrive - it now scrolls through any newly spawned enemy units. Updated the camera behaviour at end of turn when bleeding wounds, regeneration or the Automed Unit is being used - the camera will now scroll through all affected units in turn and show any healing or damage effects. When in grenade / medikit targeting mode, the game will no longer preview the portrait / stats of other soldiers when you hover over their minitabs at the top of the screen (because doing this cancelled the grenade / medikit use). Soldiers marked as "done" for the turn in the tactical combat now have a green tick below their minitab. The minimum hit chance required for units to perform overwatch is now 10% and soldiers will not fire their weapons at targets beyond the maximum range of their weapon (which would inflict reduced damage). Improved the auto-pathing when using a melee / heal item on a target several tiles away, so it correctly finds the shortest path and doesn't get confused by intervening walls. Improved the path prediction code to prevent situations where the move path would show soldiers being able to move a shorter distance than they were actually able to. Abduction tubes now play the teleport animation and teleport sound when they disappear midway through an Abduction mission due to the timer expiring. Climbing a ladder now plays footstep sounds. Melee attacks now occur more quickly after the player clicks the attack button. Sped up Mentarch firing animation. The Valkyrie dropship now has side doors which automatically open as units pass through them (this does not cost TU). As they have windows, they do not block vision - but they do stop alien reaction fire hitting soldiers still inside the dropship! Stopped open Xenonaut Base / ATLAS Base blast doors triggering the shut door icon, which blocks other click commands. All walls within the Abductor UFO are now destructible. Optimised the cabbage fields in the Farm maps Various small visual updates: Updated 3d models for the basic Secton and Wraith aliens, and new models for the human Fusion Pistol, Fusion Shotgun and Fusion Sniper Rifle. Updated environment art for the command room in the ATLAS Base mission, adding a proper command table and wall screens that better resemble those on the main menu artwork. Updated the art on the Fusion Charge so it glows fusion green rather than plasma blue. Slightly updated the Gauss Shotgun art so it's easier to differentiate at a glance from the Gauss Rifle. Retextured all the various roller doors in the game, and removed all the static roller doors in the Western Town and replaced them with roller doors that can be opened. Fixed z-fighting issues with some of the ATLAS base corridor tiles and the fog of war shader. Fixed some alignment issues for the wall corner tiles in the Xenonaut Base / ATLAS Base map Fixed a visual issue on one of the Western Town petrol station buildings BUGFIXES: Strategy: Geoscape: Fixed the mission information UI incorrectly displaying some dummy information if you have built a Quantum Array. Geoscape: Fixed an issue where redirecting an aircraft in flight would not spawn the multi-select box if you clicked a target in close proximity to another possible target. Geoscape: Fixed some issues to do with the UFO take-off process that should help avoid the situation where a UFO spends days flying around the map while repeatedly taking off and landing. Geoscape: Aircraft icon no longer disappears if aircraft circumnavigates the map more than once in a single direction Geoscape: Fixed clicking-and-holding to move map while in base construction mode acting placing the base when you release the mouse. Geoscape: Fixed the nightshadow not extending all the way to the bottom of the map. Geoscape: Destroyed Xenonaut bases no longer prevent the player building another base nearby. Research: Fixed in-progress research projects not showing a duration if the remaining time was between 23 and 24 hours. Base Stores: Fixed pressing Esc on the Transfer Items screen not returning to the Geoscape like it does on other strategy UI screens. Soldiers: Fixed there being spots in the Soldier list where the mouse scrollwheel would not allow you to scroll the list. Soldier Equip: Guardian "Heavy Armour" module now correctly remembers whether it was enabled or disabled when changing armour (like the heavy armour modules for other armours do). Soldier Equip: Fixed wounded soldiers in the dropship visually having no armour while travelling back to base. Soldier Equip: Fixed the flicker that would occur in the bottom left list before you access the screen for the first time. Soldier Equip: Fixed this screen starting with the the Equipment tab selected in the Armory, not the Weapons tab. Soldier Equip: Fixed custom loadout names not having a maximum length (now limited to 20 characters). Soldier Equip: Fixed players being unable to save loadout changes if all they changed was toggling the Heavy Armour toggle on / off. Aircraft: Fixed the soldier HP bar that is shown on hover on the Dropship soldier arrangement screen showing inconsistent values when you switch between soldiers. Aircraft: Fixed the inverted keybinds when scrolling through different aircraft. Aircraft: Fixed a bug where the topbar would be hidden if you built a new base and then went directly to the Aircraft screen. Misc: Fixed a few strings that were not being correctly translated. Air Combat: Fixed a crash in the air combat that could occur if you accidentally right-clicked on one of the Evasive Roll buttons. Fixed the air combat maps sometimes containing aircraft deployment regions that don't disappear when the battle begins. Fixed the Air Superiority achievement not unlocking correctly if you were using air combat autoresolve. Tactical Combat: Fixed grenades sometimes not inflicting any damage on terrain when they hit the middle of a large object (such as a clump of trees). Fixed an issue where the you would get vision into the UFO at the start of the turn if the door had started open, even though it then automatically closed itself. Fixed the Western Town restaurant interior walls appearing black on some systems. Fixed the adjacent cover system not correctly disallowing other adjacent cover of similar stopping value. Fixed unconscious civilians / local forces being treated as dead in the mission debrief. Fixed unconscious soldiers with bleeding wounds not taking bleed damage. Prevented the player from healing an unconscious unit if there is another unit stood on their tile, as that would lead to two units occupying the same tile. Fixed another example of soldiers being able to occupy the same tile and get stuck inside each other. Fixed an AI issue with Reapers preventing them from attacking in some circumstances. Wraith active camo ability is no longer reset to being active when loading a saved game. Secton Psionic Triangulation glowing eyes can no longer be seen in the shroud in some circumstances. Secton Psionic triangulation no longer incorrectly triggers off other Sectons in some circumstances. Fixed Psyon Mesmerize incorrectly triggering if a shot misses, hits an explosive object and kills the Psyon. Fixed some mission types not generating autosaves on the first turn. Fixed an AI hang that could occur when an alien unit capable of crushing walls encounters a unit on the other side of the wall Fixed an issue where zooming in / out using the keyboard keys could be too fast if you held down the keys. Fixed some ladders on some of the new Polar maps not being climbable. Fixed the unpathable cliffs on the Polar extraction / ambush maps. Fixed some misaligned road tiles in one of the Cleaner Data Raid missions. Fixed several issues with the Ambush mission trucks having incorrect loot amounts in certain maps. Fixed the large 4x2 oiltank not being correctly removed when destroyed. Fixed being able to see dead bodies inside the crashed UFO in the shroud before the UFO itself becomes visible. Fixed the abduction tubes on Abduction missions being visible in the shroud. Fixed TU reserve mode being left enabled on a weapon after a panicking soldier drops it Fixed TU reserve mode being visually disabled after enemy overwatch occurs Fixed an issue where a teleporter doesn't trigger due to enemy reaction fire occuring as a unit steps onto a teleporter, but the camera still moved up to the higher level as if it had. Fixed an issue where recovering the body of a dead soldier wouldn't also recover the equipped armour on that body (this only applies on lower difficulty settings where armour is not destroyed on death). Fixed the Cleaner reinforcements coming one turn too early for the linked conversation on the Cleaner Data Raid missions. Fixed an issue where the three "On Mission" soldiers would get permanently stuck in the dropship after returning to base if you flew to a Soldier Extraction mission site, then aborted the mission and returned to base. Fixed the camera panning from the dropship objective to the spawn position of your squad on VIP extraction missions also incorrectly happening after loading a save game. Fixed instances where units suffering TU penalties due to insufficient carrying capacity would also have their weapon TU fire costs reduced. Fixed pressing Esc while hovering over an enemy in tactical combat not opening the game menu. Fixed missions incorrectly ending immediately when spawned enemies still remain alive (e.g. Reapers spawned from Zombies). Fixed some flickering on the Cruiser UFO's hull dropshadow. Fixed an issue with the landed Abductor hull that allowed you to see through the hull and reveal the interior from certain angles. Fixed zombified civilians / local forces soldiers not using the zombie animations. Fixed the damaged particles on the yellow power generators displaying strange visual effects when targeted. Fixed abduction tubes continuing to play their humming sound even if they had teleported away due to the mission timer expiring. Fixed freed civilians on Abduction missions not being counted in the post-mission Debrief line about surviving civilians. Fixed VIPs being given flares in night missions. Fixed the teleport animation being visually stretched.

Are any other alien races going to have grenades? Smoke, flash, gas, incendiary and other grenade types would certainly spice up the game.

If you want sebillian to have poor eye sight, decrease their accuracy but have them heal a lot more per turn. // keep accuracy, but reduce spot range even more, from minus 3 up to minus 5. If you want wraith to be sneaky snipers, double their cloaking field effect, but cut the armor in half. // perhaps make wraight same advantage against Humans like humans agains Sebilian. Make cloaking effect reduce acc AND lower spot range same as for sebilian minus 5. If you want mantid to be skittish, halve their HP but add their numbers // agree that not all oponents must be bullet sponge. What is mantid advantage ? Speed of movement ? Perhaps they should walk for 3 TU instead of 4TU. Low HP but higher armor due to natural carapace? (this would be nice opponent for melle) If you want andron to be unstoppable terminator, add more armor but reduce TU // I am not sure about it. they are not exactly bad. Dont change to much numbers at once. If you want cleaners to be normal humans, make them not shoot civilians and try to preserve their own life more actively // YES ! If you want cyberdrone to stand out as a fearsome tank, change it's weapon to AOE or burst. Make it throw 5 grenades randomly around it per turn. Something different than just a different color, singular plasma bolt. // reaction shot which hit our throw-ables ? (it neutralize grenades in range) These are just quick ideas to drive my idea home. I think more oponent should use a toxic grenades (a new exclusive type) so player see more value in re-brether . Especially cleaners with gas mask should use some toxic AOE attack. Grenades are dangerous in hands of AI, so perhaps, each gas-mask cleaner can have just one toxic grenade ?

Just had an idea to add variation to crash site maps. It should be quite easy to switch UFO crash location and Xenonaut drop zone location endwise so each map could be played with the original layout or in a reverse layout. I just played with the idea rotating the map and imagined playing it the other way and I couldn't even recognize the map and it felt nice and fresh.

This is most likely intentional, but for my gameplay I started to notice it getting annoying: I use the preview mode to determine how to run and what weapon to use, which fits exactly within my TU budget. And while the soldier is running, he spots and enemy and stops in it's tracks (so far, so good) and then TURNS to the enemy! But now I have to spend TU to turn back, which leaves me with not enough TU to finish the planned action. Spotting the enemy and stopping, that's fine, but please let the character not turn automatically, as it can sometimes really screw up the planned action.

I might be wrong but iirc it's because the tooltip spawn delay settings didn't reset properly when moving from one button to another, so it'd end up showing up even though you've just hovered the cursor over it

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! Balance Changes: Accuracy values for all aliens has been reduced by roughly 10% overall, and enemy Accuracy modifiers have been reduced to 0.8x on Recruit difficulty (from 0.85x), and increased to 1.3x on Commander (from 1.2x). Overall, this means enemies have roughly the same Accuracy on Commander difficulty, roughly 10% less Accuracy on Soldier and Veteran, and 15%-20% less Accuracy on Recruit difficulty. Wraith Accuracy has been reduced by a little more than the other aliens, as their base Accuracy was so high. Secton Psionic Triangulation ability now grants +30 Accuracy when active (previously +50). Automed Module now heals +5HP a turn (previously +10HP). It is therefore still excellent for healing Bleeding Wounds, but it does not make Medikits completely redundant. Cleaner Accelerated Rifle is no longer slightly more accurate than the human equivalent. One Cyberdrone has been removed from the early Psyon terror sites / retaliation missions (so you now face 1 Cyberdrone on Recruit / Soldier, 2 on Veteran, and 3 on Commander. Bugfixes: Fixed a bug where certain mechanical units would not disappear correctly when killed (most frequently enemy Sentry Guns in the Cleaner Base). Fixed a bug where the Combat Shield would sometimes not disappear visually when destroyed. Fixed the Servitor playing a human injury sound. Fixed the Servitor's body not disappearing when destroyed. Fixed an issue where tooltips would spawn more quickly than they should in some situations (which could be quite annoying). Fixed interceptor evasive roll travelling further than intended if time was set to pass at 2x speed. Fixed a UI issue where it was possible to unintentionally transfer soldiers back to their own base. Fixed a bug where you could sometimes be unable to rotate the camera after loading a save. Fixed an issue on one of the Dockyard maps where there were some missing concrete walls on the water edge tiles.

I'm fine with super accurate triangulation shots. I think it's just a case of making the triangulated shot look and sound like a special ability to communicate better why it connected through the smoke and cover.

Changing the soldiers number? when the game still missing some content? no. Just don't built the last dropship if you don't need it (yet?) like me.

My latest alien base mission was so laughably easy that it made me think of reasons why aliens were so predictable and easy to kill. I took a look at classic xcom for comparison, and I immediately understood the issue. Alien bases (and UFOs) in Xenonauts are way too confined where every room and corridor is closed off by auto-closing doors. Look at this beautiful, complex, labyrinthine design, where you can be constantly ambushed 360 degree: And notice these beautiful silhouettes of things just outside of your FoV. I love it.

In tactical combat, I would like to see the killcount of my soldiers for this mission and in total (i.e. in the inventory menu) When in geoscape mode and an enemy ufo shows up and I choose intercept, the screen shows up where I can choose which aircrafts I want to use. Deselecting aircrafts by clicking on the picture would be really great (right now I have to click the correct aircraft in the list below) I would like to have saved loadouts for interceptors similar to my soldiers (already suggested it, i think it would be so much qol especially in the later game)

And there is also a series of "Civilization" games, where the number of units in need of player control can reach several hundred. And that's not to mention dozens of cities.

Evidently, you're not a fan of turn-based wargames then. As an example take the old Steel Panthers series, first from SSI and then later Steel Panthers: World at War from Matrix Games and now Slitherine. That game premiered in the early 90s (I was one of the first reviewers) and still has a huge following today. Some turns don't take minutes or even hours, they take days and can involve a hundred units or more. That game was very much a commercial success and there are dozens more that I can think of like it.

I feel the biggest issue the game currently has regarding the BGM is that it plays way too much. My ears get tired when there's constant non-stop music. No matter what is going on, there's music. Please let us hear a bit of silence here and there. Loading screens for example could be good pallette cleansers. Goldhawk shouldn't be afraid of using silence in general as a device in creating mood and ambiance. Chris and Aleksi promised we'd get more music before the game is done. Hopefully we'll get more silence and moody ambience tracks that don't get so repetitive so quickly.

This is a very small update for our recent Milestone 4 Stable release which fixes another crash, and adds some more research text. Fixes & Changes: Fixed a crash that could occur when trying to commence certain Terror Site missions (due to a corrupted dishwasher tile that appeared in certain maps). Added research text to the Harvester UFO Xenopedia project.

Or they could release a map editor, so you could do your magic

It'd be nice to have a quick dialog cutscene when the player gets the first visual contact to a UFO crash site to make it feel a more special moment. Currently the game doesn't even register it in any way and it makes it feel totally mundane. Add some fear of unknown and awe of humanity seeing something so unbelievable the very first time. You could add similar dialogs every time a new UFO type is found to describe it a bit.. add a bit of mystery and flair to raiding them. There needs to be a dialog when an alien you need to capture is found. Generally speaking, the dialog cutscenes pretty much just stop coming after the Cleaner arc is finished, making the rest of the game lose a lot of flair. I'd love to see them at the beginning of every new mission type: terror, alien base etc.

Stun gun - nerf to 15 combined with low acc makes this weapon useless. Keep 15 stun but add some acc (5-10%) Knife - reduction weight is positive step but it is still too heavy. Knife weight shout be in range of < half_of_ pistol ; pistol_ammo_clip > therfore new knife weight should be 2-5 units - current knife has only one type off attack. that needs to be improved. introduce slash attack (TU cheaper 10%, acc bonus about 15%, slight dmg nerf 10%, so slash has same damage as knife did in milestone 3). introduce stab attack (slight dmg +5%, it causes bleed 10dmg, so stab has +15% damage as compared to milestone 3). introduce throw attack (range 5, dmg equal to slash attack, an desperate option) I think, knife should be reasonable secondary weapon, where slash is fast reliable attack suited for finishing opponent. dmg/TU ratio is lower(not efficient) but one usage is significantly cheaper than firearm. Therefore soldier can not afford second fire, but can afford slash. ------------- I like soldiers are dying a lot. That gives proper desperate feeling of whole fight. The problem is, difference between veteran and new_hired soldier is too much. Which means, people rather save scum than experience loss. Here is a better system : when trained soldier die, then a new soldier on recruit screen is added, the newly added soldier has half experience of dead veteran. Therfore, later in game player can see quite capable recruits, which means a snowball effect of dead veteran therfore low performance recruit in next mission therfore more dead bodyes is lowered. On top, a new mechanic promoting saving bodies is introduced. Soldier who is KIA become "recycled" into better recruit (see above). Soldier MIA are not. Therfore player has gameplay reward/mechanic to bbring back dead soldiers from raid mission to home, to keep morale high, to appear experienced recruit. This mechanic need to be introduced by help tootips or perhaps better Operation_center lady.

I played this new update!. Before I speak my suggestions. I come to congratulate the developers for increasing the campaign time, as it was possible to enjoy the game more and test almost everything in the game. Second, if there are any concordance errors in my text. Since I'm using google translate, I don't speak or write in English. Well, let's go!. I'm going to put it in the order that I'm remembering. !. Basic skill trees. Seriously interesting to have a skill tree. Where it interferes with the development of the base or several bases. For example, place up to three levels for each skill. For example: Base maintenance cost reduction lvl 1 - 10, lvl - 20%, lvl 3 - 30% Reduction of the salary of the personnel of scientists, soldiers and engineers Lvl 1 - 5%, Lvl 2 - 10%, Lvl 3 - 15% Aircraft repair speed Lvl 1 +10%, Lvl 2 + 20%, Lvl 3 + 30% (Many times my planes were badly damaged and I couldn't attack the alies and they roamed all over the map. Without me being able to interfere.) Aircraft maintenance cost reduction Lvl 1 - 10%, Lvl 2- 20% Lvl 3 - 30% Soldiers' rest speed Lvl 1 +10%, Lvl 2 + 20%, Lvl 3 + 30%(. , I believe I have to put a system where soldiers get tired during missions and this affects performance such as accuracy and time units) And alien bases should appear sporadically on the map. It should be in infinite mode like the ships That would be interesting in the middle to the end of the game. It has missions where you can find stock of aliens with money and some material from them. Well, I had a hard time at that point. There comes a time when the payment of the continents or the lack of alien material hinders the development of the game. Missions at night, soldiers are affected, at night. But aliens don't have the same problem. A lot of times they see me, I don't. Especially that reptilian alien. He sees poorly from afar, and this should affect him more Alien that hypnotizes. I was on a mission and put 5 soldiers on surveillance. The 5 soldiers missed the shots and he hypnotized all of them and then they killed each other, one shooting the other. Seriously interesting to limit this to, at most, hypnotizing two soldiers per alien Mission to search for specific alies. Seriously interesting, in the polls. For example, the Mantoid, he only showed up on one mission and didn't show up again and I couldn't research the ballistic test on his body. Then you could limit this type of search to once a month in the game. And you can choose which alien you can look for Alien champions. It would be nice to have heroes of all races except Hunter. Ai has a special mission to hunt them down. It would be nice to have three heroes per race. And that would have consequences, for example. By defeating the alien champion, the aliens decrease the amount of attacks or make them furious. So you could have a lottery system, 50% of them reduce attacks and 50% of them attack more for a week If alien planes pass near the bases, it would be nice to have the option to activate the anti-aircraft batteries and shoot them down. As a result, it takes two to four days to recharge the batteries, leaving the base vulnerable to intrusions When you destroy an alien base. It can have consequences, decrease the alien attacks or increase them for seven days Armor!. You've greatly lowered their resistance. I, with the best armor available, am taking deathmatch hits. Better take a look at that. Increases at least 3 points of armor in each When any continent is in the midst of 100 days of panic, the missions of kidnapping and terror. It no longer appears. You have to review that. Because sometimes planes are being repaired and we can't prevent them from losing a continent due to lack of mission Kill counter. I like to play with as many aliens on the map as possible. But sometimes I lose count of how many I've killed on my mission. It would be nice to add in the bottom corner, the amount of enemies killed during the mission. To have a better control of how many enemies you have. When the aliens attack the base and the defense battery, it destroys all the alien ships. I should leave materials. Even if it was a small amount I believe that's all I remember. If you have any other suggestions, I'll come back here.

@Chris these monthly posts are something I very much look forward to reading as they come out and as I haven't commented prior to this, I thought it best to reach out and give you my gratitude. I just wanted to say massive thank you for all the hard work and everything you guys are constantly putting into the game, it shows that it's a real labour of love. I'm a massive fan of the UFO Defence & Terror From The Deep, although I don't have many hours logged into the games themselves, I have watched streamers play them from hundreds of hours (mainly Lewis & Ben from the Yogscast) and I can't wait for them to play your game once its fully released. Now you have reached Milestone 4, I have decided to start playing myself and I'm absolutely loving it. Both my wife & I play it co-operative making all the decisions together and find we just lose track of time playing! I do have a couple of question if I may? Firstly, will there ever be an option for controller support? I know lots of people will instantly say that I don't deserve to play these types of games by mentioning the dreaded 'C' word, but as my wife & I play this our living room connected to the TV and viewed/played from the sofa, it makes for using a keyboard and mouse slightly tricky. Obviously I know this is probably unlikely, as I'm sure the majority of your target audience is playing at a desk, but it's worth an ask! Lastly, due to playing this from the sofa (about 2~3m away from the TV) it is very hard for us to read the dialog/information boxes. Would you consider adding an option for a larger sized text? Thank you so much for your time and I eagerly await to see the progress as it rolls out every month, keep up the fantastic work! All the best, Jay & Elz

I sent my team to do a mission On their way back they had enough time to hit a landed abductor so i sent them there without getting back to base first (only a few hours were remaining) I was really (pleasantly) surprised to see that they all had their armor, ammo and equipment back. I don't think this should happen their equipment should not replenish itself midflight. The wounded stayed wounded though.

I also noticed a big lack in funding, so I started a new game. In the first month I had 4 labs and 4 engineering. Those 4 engineering really save me here, and I intend to expand that to much more soon. I hope to use one base for a massive 4 x 4 (=16) engineering, and see how that works with income :-) So far, I'm on day 109, have 250K in cash, have two additional bases that both have a hangar and a radar array. My main base has: - med bay - 3 hangars - 2 generators - 5 engineering - 4 labs - 6 living quarters - 1 storeroom - 1 shaft Engineering produces $2625 per hour, which is 1.89M a month if they are idle. So yeah, IMO, rush those labs and engineering.

You've got to remember that difficulty settings have a multiplicative effect on the amount of balancing required. Pretty much every mission has 3 or more alien species / teams that could spawn for them, and there's four different difficulty settings already. That means there's 12 possible ways that mission can be experienced already, and it's very difficult to stay on top of it as is - it seems like Sebillians are relatively quite a bit weaker than Wraiths, for example. If you add three settings for the troop numbers you can bring to battle, you're talking about nearly 40 possible configurations for a single mission.

money is probably still too tight for having a large number of soldiers to fill those drop ships. But i still like having lot of soldiers, so keep the numbers high is good for me.

This is relevant to xenonauts 2 as I am starting to have the fears that same thing will happen to me as with firaxis xcom1/2 (xenonauts 1 was awesome I finished it multiple times and as result of faith in developer I bought xeno2 full price in early access which is ideal for developer). Firaxis xcom1 was awesome I finished it multiple times (that is like a medal of honor for a game). When xcom2 came out as result I bought it right away for full price. Then I installed it played maybe one month of campaign. Then I stopped playing and eventually uninstalled it never to be installed again. I had an I quit moment why ?. I will try to puzzle it out as by all accounts it was even better then xcom1. I should have went bananas for it but I did not. Which means when xcom3 comes out I will not buy it right away at full price. If I buy it at all it will be late on deep discount (as I still have xcom2 to play through. Why buy next one ?). Lets answer easy question first. Why do we wait to buy games (often years) and get them on deep discount (80-95%) ?. Why you developers have trained us to do it repeatedly and often. I have 389 games in my steam account. I have 631 games in GOG account. That is 1020 games total I legally own (most at deep discount). Assuming 1 week to finish each game (it often takes much more) that is 20 years worth of games. I fully expect to be dead before that so I have a lifetime supply of games right now. So it takes alot for me to buy new one as I do not actually need them and are unlikely to ever use them. Of those 1020 games 90% I have never even installed once (seriously). Most of the rest I installed looked at the complicated interface screen and said F this and uninstalled it (guess whose developer games I will not be buying in future). I literally only finish around 2 games per year and the super games I finish multiple times its more like 2 per decade (in last 10 years those would be xenonauts1 and Starcom: Nexus). So the moral of the story is pay attention to the first minutes of your game experience (have super smooth onboarding process. Fantastic intuitive UI and NO BUGS). That is where you are going to loose most of your customers and it will be difficult if not impossible to get them back later. Here is a good video by Josh Strife Hayes that explains those "I quit" moments I encountered so often. Worth its 15m length in gold pressed latinum: Also if I play your game I will generally only try it once (cept those 2/decade). That means if you put out a buggy game that is the only version of it I will ever see (that you fix it later does not matter. Its too late) and it will color my future view of developer (i.e. not buy from them at all). I am taking a huge risk playing buggy early access version of xeno2 as it could very well wind up the only version I will ever see and sour my view of developer. I am already starting to see this as I did not bother to finish my xeno2 campaign past day80. I am also starting to get that man its too complicated feeling about it let me play something simpler. Now the hard question why I quit these games early (as in install, load it up once look at interface and nope out). The big offenders are overcomplicated games. Lousy or overcomplicated UI interface. Early buggy game. IT/connectivity issues in case of online games. You need to have super smooth first hour of playing your game. Absolute top notch onboarding. Do not expect your users to read any user manual (Professionally I wrote a lot of technical manuals and my experience is people do not read them at all even one page unless everything else has failed and they cannot get a hold of me personally. And we are talking life and death stuff not some mild entertainment). If your game/UI is not intuitive that is a huge red flag. Make your tutorial fun and engaging (xeno2 is ok but way too onrails I kinda did not like it). Tooltips are your friend. Do not expect that you can show some screen with one page full of text and people will actually read it (I skipped alot of those in xeno2). Break it into small manageable chunks that are context specific. Ideally that popup should be at most one paragraph and pop up exactly when needed. Also have a way to review previous ones because sometimes we are not in a mood to read. In case of xcom2 I think it was just too complicated (more than xcom1) and I realized this early on and drifted off. The same thing happened to me with Witcher 1/2/3 (and 3 is considered excellent) Played The division 2 some recently. The shooter part was awesome but the developers saddled the game with extremely frustrating jumping, pixel hunt at night elements. They were so bad I eventually quit and removed the game permanently from my steam account. Guess if I will ever buy another UBISOFT game ?. I played Anarchy Online MMO. But few years ago they botched steam integration badly and never fixed it. So when I bought $20 colonist pack it never arrived in my funcom account. The "help" was an automated joke. Guess what I permanently removed that game from my steam account (including $20 pack). Stupid me then tried another funcom mmo then as it is so different from others. Secret world legends. That went slightly better but the developers must have been fans of Arthur Conan Doyle and tried to make every mission a Sherlock Holmes level of convoluted puzzle (they failed horribly btw). Some of these quests were so bad that even with full spoilers I could not complete them (and once I got to one such uncompletable disaster that blocked my main story quest it was game over since access to higher zones was gated by this story quest). That game is now gone from my steam account too and funcom is consigned to hell where it belongs. And then there is the grand daddy offender of them all. Darkest dungeon (which broke my habit of save scumming in xeno1/2 since loosing soldiers is so mild in comparison to what DD did to me) 1) Did you go to guantanamo bay cuba just to get waterboarded. Did you think it was the best experience ever ? 2) Do you enjoy being randomly kicked in the nuts by strangers for no reason whatsoever ? 3) Do you REALLY hate yourself ? If you wholeheartedly answered YES to all 3 question Darkest Dungeon is the game for you. It was not for me. Guess which game I did not buy later (hint: Darkest Dungeon 2). So do not make your game too punishing on normal difficulty levels. Save that for the hard difficulty so the masochists can get their fun too without ruining it for the rest of us.

Great ideas both.

Did you check these qol ideas:

damn it, seems to be reacuring. Edit: Guess i should have uploaded the save, sorry. A workaround was to trigger the enemies overwatch with a soldier. bug_report_2024-07-13-05h07_gc_4.16.0_unhandled_exception.zip

I ran the Steel Panthers support site for Matrix Games for 12 years. During those 12 years, Matrix Games produced 3 add-on campaigns for the game that each sold over 200,000 copies, and the SPWaW community itself added a community-created campaign that won several awards. The community, when I retired and handed it over to someone else to manage in 2013, had more than 55,000 active participants and players worldwide and was even arranging group tours of WWII battle sites. The point I'm making here is that your particular viewpoint of what makes for a good game is not the be-all/end-all of successful game development. It's not an invalid viewpoint but neither is it the sole viewpoint. Other players can and do have different criteria on what makes a game good.

Tested again. No crash. Just my pc doing some weird crash i guess.

Thanks for the feedback everyone, it's really useful stuff. I'm making some balance changes as a result of this feedback which will arrive in the next hotfix, and there's plenty of things to think about for Milestone 5 too. The Wraiths doing less grenade spam is already out on the Experimental branch. I agree about the missions in the second half of the game being a bit repetitive, but that's something we'll be looking at in Milestone 5. I'll be tweaking a number of weapons in the upcoming hotfix, and making advanced Xenonaut armour offer a bit more protection. I'm also going to set Xenonaut funding to passively increase by +$20k per region per month (so +$120k per month total), which should help the mid-to-late game funding situation being so tight.

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 & Fixes: We've removed grenades from all types of Wraith except Wraith Leaders and Wraith Officers, as the AI is now clever enough to know how effective grenades are and was using them too often. In a future update we'll add a small chance that other types of Wraith can also spawn with a grenade, but it'll remain a small chance. Fixed another lockup that could occur during the AI turn. Fixed weapons in the tactical inventory backpack not being able to be moved to the equip slot or be dropped on the ground. Fixed grenade throw mode sometimes getting stuck displaying a 0% hit chance. Fixed an AI bug that could sometimes cause AI units to move to a good attacking position and then just not fire their weapon. Fixed an issue with the Harvester UFO on Dockyard maps where certain interior tiles could end up not being walkable (these were shipping containers by incompelely deleted by the UFO when it spawned). Fixed the Fusion Lance engineering project not being cancellable. Fixed a white square briefly appearing when assigning soldiers on the Soldier Equip screen.

I disagree on the shotgun beeing to strong. When you start a mission you dont know exactly how the map design looks like, so bringing shotguns maybe risky if you end up on open terrain. Even if the terrain fits, you take a lot of risk by going close quarter combat. There may be more aliens around the corner, not just the one you want to blow away with your shotgun. In my opinion, if you are willing to to expose yourself by going in with a shotgun, it should be so strong, that it kills, otherwise why bringing a shotgun... Maybe try playing missions without save/reload if one of your soldiers misses an important shot. I agree on More ufos First terror missions too difficult Stun guns too weak Wraiths need some tweaking to be less frustrating (Grenades especially) Missions too front loaded (partly, I experienced missions with 3 cyberdiscs simultanously later in the mission)

Doesn’t one of the UI sliders already allow this?

Ah yeah, didn't notice that the screenshots were taken on day one, my bad. Btw this crash should be fixed on 4.13, if it still happens do let us know!

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 research text for the Ultradense Alloys and Biosurvey Array research projects. Sentinel Module now has a 360-degree vision arc (and the item tooltip reflects this). Added a death sound for the Servitors so they no longer scream like humans. Bug reporter tool will now delete excess Xenonauts 2 crash zips if you have more than 25 on your machine. Bugfixes: Fixed a hang on the AI turn that could hardlock the entire game. Fixed Secton eyes always glowing purple when the unit is moving, even if Psionic Triangulation is not active. Fixed an issue where moving items in the soldier inventory could lead to "ghost" temporary duplicate items being created, which could cause crashes if interacted with. Fixed replacing a weapon on the soldier equip screen not also updating the ammo clips if the weapon in question was an upgraded Laser. Fixed the game incorrectly showing the "quicksave completed" popup if you quicksaved with another pop-up open (as that will prevent the quicksave being made). Fixed multi-shot UFO weapons in the air combat (e.g. on Cruisers) continuing to fire the remainder of the burst even if you pause the game, or destroy the UFO. Fixed a bug where the player was not being given notifications when alien units suffered a morale break and panicked, fled or berserked if they were not directly in the vision cone of a Xenonaut soldier. This "fixes" a bug where suppressed Sectons were still performing overwatch fire - what is actually happening here is that they're suffering a morale break after the death of a nearby Psyon and are berserking, but the game wasn't giving a notification.

We need a No 7 in background

I was meant to join the team and do the magic officially, but I just couldn't manage it on top of my day job, family etc. in the end unfortunately. EDIT: thanks for the nice thought though.

I wanted to check when one of my soldiers died from the casualty list, but it has only the date of death, while the geoscape only tells the sequential day number. A small thing, but could you maybe add the date to the geoscape view too? You could easily fit it under the day counter.

Just stopping by to say that assault and shield units are super useful and I'd even say, in places almost OP.

Hello! The new assets and engine features in X2 look great, but one small detail makes the graphics look worse than they are: it is the strong aliasing effect of the "visibility limits" (even the original X-Com in the 1990s looked better in that regard). A small change could maybe greatly increase the look and get rid of the aliasing. The concept is very simple, just cut the "black squares" in half at edges (left is how it is now, right with the "antialiasing": IMHO: it looks much more "modern" and the graphical assets can shine on the right. The aliasing on the left image (as it is now in-game), make it look dated and like an ancient game. Thanks for considering the suggestion (and I think a better looking game will also sell better)! Detail (just the black squares marked in red were changed, nothing else):

Awesome, congratulations and great work! Chris, a couple of asks / recommendations: 1 - aircraft pilots could have a skill tree / experience bar too, so that they improve as they shoot down more alien ships. 2 - add the option in tactical battles to use AI so that the squad gets controlled by computer, this would be a super cool concept, I think many players will enjoy it. Thank you.

Yes, I always like and remember your suggestions - so I went back to your thread with the "less uniform shading" suggestion and used your screenshot as a basis to present another small idea to the developers. Hope that it is ok, we all have the same goal: improve the game... I understand that Goldhawk's resources are limited, this is actually the reason why I came up with this small idea: it would have quite an impact on the presentation while being just a small change (getting rid of the aliasing of the black "visibility limit" squares). The right image with a preview of the idea looks much more natural to me: Your more complex idea of different "darkness levels/shading" would be great though. My only complain when it comes to X2 is that X-Com: Terror from the Deep from 1995 had more atmospheric graphics than X2 from 2024. X2 has everything it needs gameplay-wise already, but graphics and sound could be better in terms of "atmosphere" with just some small additional details (as you pointed out in your "sound thread" some time ago). I wished the financing goal "atmospheric effects" (rain, fog, etc.) would have made it! Some X2 drawings have such a nice atmosphere: But in-game this "dark atmosphere" is mostly gone. The alien colonies and other structures for example: they are a little too clean and not scary in X2! They should be darker and maybe filled with fog and glowing elements, etc. "Terror from the Deep" was so great in that regard: it took the mechanics of the original X-Com and "injected" an immensely atmospheric presentation with a lot of "alien strangeness" and scary stuff:

Reclaim Territory you lost should be possible but to balance this, just make it harder as normal missions. To get no chance to do this is a real downer.

With Xenonauts-2 launching into Early Access, it's time to briefly explain all the new content we are planning to add on our journey towards final release! The list below explains our priorities, but it's not exhaustive as there's also lots of small improvements planned that aren't big enough to get their own bullet point. We'll also be listening to community feedback during the Early Access period, so this list may change or expand accordingly - if you want to see something else added, please feel free to suggest it! Additional Tactical Maps Soviet Town Biome Air Combat Revamp Alien / Civilian AI Revamp Cruiser UFO Harvester UFO Battleship UFO Operation ENDGAME Ending Cinematic Alien - Androns Alien - Reaper Bull Alien - Eternal Alien Psionics Ultimate Interceptor Ultimate Dropship Ultimate Armour Fusion Weapons Hovertank Mod Tools Fullscreen Borderless Community Suggestions If you have questions about any of the items on the roadmap, please post them up for discussion as a new thread on the general forums.

Even in the original X-Com, building more bases always felt like it was just another place to store radars, hangers, and whatever you ran out of room for back home. I've been thinking back to other games let you build multiple bases around the world and fill them how you like and the one that I enjoyed the most came from Endgame: Singularity. While in that game you're an AI that goes from renting server time, to building warehouses, to labs, to camouflaged bases. Each with their own set of bonuses and debuffs, prereqs and research enablers. Translating that mechanic would look something like your typical starting military base. Perhaps even having it on the surface to start. Researching the alien engine from your first UFO would unlock a catapult for your airships. "We can't activate the reactionless fields outside of laboratory conditions, but we can convert our hangers to support those conditions. While the range is only line of sight outwards, it will give our fighters and dropships a boost on launch. Incidentally this also enables to launch any vessel we want without a runway, finally enabling us to run an entire war from underground. At the very least, a few feet of rock will completely protect us from the aerial attack runs we've been seeing." With the hyperwave decoder, you'd be able to shield a new, smaller base from detection and get a chance to evacuate a base before it comes under attack. "Until now, we were unable to determine what the aliens use for sensors. Certainly they don't use radar or range finders, I imagine we're at least smart enough to hear their pings if they're done in a more conventional medium. With the discovery of hyperwaves, however, we finally have a way to listen and they have much to say. All of it encrypted beyond belief. Thankfully, our own experiments have given us some insights into hyperwave pings and it should be easy enough to disguise a complex military base as nothing more than stone, assuming the base is small enough and built from the ground down in the required acoustic shape." By figuring out the shields of the later ships, you'd be able to build a larger base which can't be destroyed by the orbital laser and, importantly, gives you a ten day respite from city destruction the first time they try. "Right now, we're a hard target surrounded by easy prey. Though the aliens certainly won't give up their efforts to stop us, at the least, we've bought ourselves some time." Alien alloy reforging would let you build a base underwater, making it completely safe from outside attack. "Perhaps the most remarkable feature is that it self-seals under even the lightest pressures. The days of leaks and wall maintenance are over, so long as you don't mind the colour. Alien paint has yet to be discovered and I don't have the time to invent it, perhaps after the invasion I'll find a way to keep my lab white without worrying about repairs every time something explodes. Speculation aside, the applications of alloy reforge are uncountable and of special note to some of my MarineLab colleges, we'll be able to construct underwater labs (and bases) which not even UOO-1 can breech." Singularity fields (like the naked singularities from Xenonauts 1) would enable tiny labs with massively increased research speeds. "The equipment maintaining it would be too sensitive to allow anyone untrained inside, but with a space to work without fear of detection or oversight, we can perform the high energy research that we've been missing since the targeted destruction of all our particle accelerators." Plasma weapons research would unlock magma bases for cheaper, faster, and less resource intensive manufacturing and otherwise be a base with unlimited energy. "More an equation than a device, the aliens have been using the energy of the plasma itself to keep their rounds contained. Indeed, this equation applies to anything hot enough that with even the tiniest paramagnetic imprint and like all equations, it can be reversed. With just the right starting conditions, we can turn the mantel of the earth itself into a nearly endless battery. The heat of the magma would power the internal cooling and anything else we can bring along. Those engineers have been asking me to find a way to run an arc furnace full time and I can honestly say I've outdone their request." And finally, an end game base when you research the drives powering the largest UFOs. "They have their base in the skies. It's time to make ours."

Wait a minute. So how did Germany and Poland got into the EU? If I remember correctly that in the new setting as planned by Chris, the Warsaw Pact still exist to this day. So I’m assuming that Germany is still divided between the GDR and FDR while Poland is still in the socialist camp.

This is one argument that I never undestood. That a common sense strategy is bad. It's like saying that puling a trigger on a gun to shoot people is boring because it's such an obvious thing, so everyone does it. There is an old saying, amateurs talk about Tactics, Experts about Strategy and true Master about logistics. War IS logistics. There's a reason Roman armies were so good - they had excellent logistic chains. How would you even define expansion? Globe coverage? Advancement? Discovery? Now I'm just rambling here, but I'm not really sure what IS the problem or if it IS a problem at all. There could certainly be ways around it. Start with a base on each continent? Have reduced/no penalites from continents without a base in the early stage, with some expected expansion goals you are expected to meet (you have a goal of 1 new base by the end of month 2, for example), or else you face penalties. Kinda works like a timer as well.

I think you should be able to choose the what a base after the main one specializes in through choosing the central hub of it to be either a mechanic center, a big research lab or a hangar control tower. A recon base should just be a borrowed aircraft carrier after gaining enough favor with a faction. Less build slots, but is much more mobile. An undersea base should be a cool DLC if Goldhawk wanted to support the game further down the line.