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This hotfix addresses several more issues discovered within V25. You'll need to be part of our Steam Playtest or on the Experimental Branch to access the build. This update does break saves so if you want to continue your V25.1b playthrough then please switch over to the Experimental Legacy branch (just called "Legacy" branch on Playtest). Just a quick note to say thanks to all the new testers who have given us their thoughts on the game and reported bugs, we've been able to make a lot of changes in the past couple of days with your help. Many of them are quite minor changes but the layers of polish really start to add up over time. This may be be our last major hotfix this year, as both of our programmers are now on their Christmas holidays and won't be returning until the start of January, although I'll still be working for a few days yet so I can continue to improve balance and fix any asset-related bugs (and to be honest that's most of them these days). But please continue to post up bugs and provide feeback so we know what we need to work on when we're back! Bugfixes: Fixed a crash if you tried to produce the Vehicle Gauss Weapons engineering project. Fixed newly constructed interceptors not being equipped with armour. Fixed an issue where alien abilities did not function after loading a tactical save (including causing the Wraith accuracy penalty to be permanently active). Fixed the player incorrectly getting a massive +hit bonus against the Sebillians as a result of their poor eyesight. Fixed Sectons being able to fire their weapons significantly beyond their usual range, which was causing 0 damage on hits due to damage dropoff. Balance / Gameplay Changes: Servitors no longer self-heal. Sentry Guns can no longer use the MARS Cannon or MARS Rocket weapons, and are now correctly limited to infantry LMGs. The first Observer UFO has been pushed back one UFO wave. The crew of Observers is now a mix of Soldiers with magnetic weapons, and Elites with plasma weapons (previously it was all Elites with plasmas, which was too much of a difficulty spike). The minimum sell price of items has been increased from 25% to 40% of their original price. Each recovered abduction tube now correctly grants 5 Alloys and 3 Alenium. Previously it gave one or the other. Wraiths no longer have grenades, as these appeared to be causing crashes. We'll fix this issue in the next major build and return the grenades afterwards. The range bonus on the MARS Cannon was far too high before, and it has now been reduced to be in line with other weapons. There's now a deployment region in the starting room of the Cleaner Base. Sentry Guns can no longer gain medals. The missiles in the hangars in the Xenonaut Base defence missions now explode on destruction. Interface / Visual Updates: There's some new art for the Cleaner Headquarters research project. Attempted to fix the Farm hedgerows being visually messed up. The Geoscape pop-up that provides information on ground combat missions now contains a line for "Mission Type" The Toogle Roof button in the tactical UI should no longer disappear when toggled on in some instances The Quickload key (F9) will now hire only the most recent Quicksave (F5) from the current campaign, rather than the most recent save from the current campaign. The scientists / engineer hire screens no longer automatically hire selected staff if you navigate away from the screen without pressing the Hire button. Fixed a number of incorrect tooltips, and added several new tooltips to the Engineering screen. Updated the tooltips / engineering project descriptions for various advanced soldier modules so it's a bit more obvious what they do Updated the research project descriptions for alien interrogations Updated cliffs so that their sides should not z-fight.

This is my very first game of X2 and here's some random thoughts I wrote down while playing. Gameplay related stuff: The game feels nice and fast to play. I just feel a bit lost in the strategy layer and constantly feel like I need to make uninformed decisions that will wreck my campaign if done wrong. Not sure if it is like that in reality, but that's my gut feeling playing for the first time. Losing the game for researching and manufacturing "wrong" stuff early in the game will probably be an issue for new players. Research is super slow and if you don't build new labs and hire scientist from day 1, your are going to be screwed. On my first game I realized this too late, spending my lab time on researching alien alloys and interrogating different species, only to realize on day 25 that I should have researched aerial warfare and ablative plating or something similar to aid my air forces and at that point it seemed to be too late. I feel some additional help doing right strategic decisions might be good at least for 2 of the easier difficulty levels. Maybe head scientist could give some hints what to do, instead of just being an ass all the time? I feel like I need the game to encourage me to expand and build more bases. Like I was left wondering when is the "right moment" to build the second base. Are there any gameplay effects interrogating aliens or is it just fluff where you can spend your research time? I can't research multiple things simultaneously anymore? Do I really need to manufacture one aircraft missile at a time? Or is it one per aircraft? This might need some tutorial info? Automatic roof toggle still doesn't work. Disable roofs only when: 1. enemy units are seen inside 2. own units are inside 3. mouse cursor is inside What's with all the information displayed next to a cursor when applying first aid kit? Not fan of the visible alien health. Odd to see exact stats on autopsy report too. Maybe have a toggle for it? Also, unit health could be told more vaguely using states like: <healthy>, <slightly wounded>, <wounded>, <almost dead> or similar. In general I would prefer more "simulation" styled gameplay instead of too much gamification like simplifying suppression for example. Would love to see small things like randomly losing consciousness or accuracy after being shot, losing small amount of health when dashing through a window, needing a lot of TU's to bandage severe bleed wounds etc. Aliens using their racial abilities need some additional sound and/or visual effects for player to know something out of the ordinary is happening. Sectons' triangulation could have purple lines connect all sectons that are within the effective 8 tile range, targeting Psyons could change the reticule to purple and have 'mesmerising' text above it or something similar... Why can't I assign lightly wounded units to missions? Like who gives a shit if your toe nail is bent when humanity is at the brink of total annihilation? HUGE pile of logs broke into splinters from two pistol shots. Also other large props seemed to break too easily. Would like to cancel grenade throw, first-aid etc. with right click. Assigning new soldiers in the Launch dropship screen is too cumbersome. You need to click empty soldier space in dropship list, then click select soldier button, then click soldier and after that click the assign soldier button. It's 4 clicks for one soldier. It should be click empty slot, click soldier, done. Graphics stuff: The games feels really smooth and polished, animations, effects and destruction are super nice. (Speaking of destruction, can't I level buildings completely any more?) Geoscape map seems visually too static and "boring" for something so essential to this game. Maybe add some quick zoom-in when intercepting UFO's, starting ground combat etc. Some small animations to radar range, revealing ufo's and stuff like that... In armory screen, the chinook shadow is displayed on top of the bottom left info panel. In tactical mission there's no way to notice a door from "wrong side" of the wall. (ie. even if your soldier sees a door, but your POV is on the shroud side, you can't know there's a door unless you rotate your view) Crashed ufo's really need some fire, smoke and debris around them. Abduction maps could use some additional abduction props to make them feel more diverse. (like piles of empty abduction tubes or something) Pools of blood should be sized by the amount of damage received. It's comical to see 1hp damage and having a few liters of blood pouring out of a soldier. Lots of small issues with soldier portraits not fitting in the uniform layer properly (see through seams visible) Region panic levels need to be more prominently visible. Maybe color code the whole region with green-yellow-red with panic percentage shown inside it? Sound and music stuff: Music is just right. Superb atmosphere! Fading BG music away when going into loading screen would feel more polished than just keeping the music playing. Complete silence or maybe even add a quick loop of loading music instead? It just sounds silly having intense action or scary suspense music playing while the game is loading. Completing/failing a mission could play a small victory/lose jingle/fanfare when mission complete/failed text appears -> then fade to silence and go to load screen. I kinda miss some alert sound when a UFO is detected. Destroying a stone wall and wooden fence sound is REALLY FUCKING LOUD!!! Xenonaut units are too silent. Have them scream and shout in pain and fear. A player should feel the morale decreasing when soldiers are starting to panic. Crying and yelling mommy!! Misc. stuff: Main objective is not easy enough to notice in the bottom corner of the geoscape. Might be a good idea to have a proper pop-up whenever the objective updates too. I felt the main objectives were often too vague and left me uncertain how to proceed. At least for now it seems X1's objectives were more precise like "capture that and that live alien" etc. Intro text: "A strong correlation emerges between reported these sightings and rising international tensions..." Not a native English speaker, but this sentence must be wrong? Mission report doesn't show unit specific kill numbers. These are must IMO If an alien is suppressed and killed at the same time, "suppressed" text should not be shown Abduction mission needs 2-3 turns more time. Xenopedia is really nice Maps really need more verticality and tight spaces Overall, I had a really good time with X2 and it's definitely on it's way to being a timeless classic! Great work @Chris and staff!

I appreciate the effort made in all the base screen background images (laboratory, research etc), and while they are more than fine as they are, to be frank, they are not quite at the same level as other visual elements in this game are. I'm pretty sure you are not going to be redrawing them any more, but I made a quick test with blurring, slightly dimming and adding vignette into them and it already looks much more polished. What you think? -EDIT: You've actually already added a bit similar blur effect to the storage screen so maybe this is already planned? My version: ... and original for comparison:

Yeah, the painted screen backgrounds are of slightly variable quality in places, although I think overall the get the job done OK. Many of our new UI concepts do indeed use a blurred background, although we've only implemented it on the Stores screen thus far. This is mostly done to allow the player to focus on the UI more than to hide the painted background, though, which is why we've chosen to use an animation to transition from the full image to a blurred version. That way the player gets a flash of the full art before it blurs. My big concern with it is inconsistency, though, given the UI is more integrated with the background in some screens than others. We're probably not going to want to blur the background art on the Geoscape, the Main Base screen, the Soldier Equip screen, the Aircraft screen. So we'd only be blurring the background on just over half of them and I do wonder if that's going to seem a bit weird and inconsistent. That said, overall I do think the blurred backgrounds are an improvement on some screens, because it cuts down a lot on the visual noise and makes the UI much more readable as a result. Although you're sort of cheating there because you've also added a drop shadow to the UI, which gives it even more pop but makes everything feel less "real" because you're breaking perspective to create that layered effect. I'm very much not a fan of the vignette though. I feel like if the entire UI is now black (which it will be) you have to be very careful about not darkening or washing out the rest of the scene otherwise you're going to have a game that looks very gloomy indeed.