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Perfect, thanks very much. I won't be able to confirm until I've spoken to the coders but this might be enough to finally fix the bug, as it looks to me like we can reproduce the corruption occuring via the tactical saves. Fingers crossed!

Even at the risk of sounding like a broken record, I have to once again criticize tactical maps we currently have in X2. Many of them still feel like shooting galleries instead of real places. Maps need more: Verticality Visual story telling. Have the map itself say something about what has happened. Does this place feel like a real place or a map in a game? Larger, more interesting buildings with many floors. More urban maps. (tends to be more interesting than a random jungle) Variable pacing: large open areas -> tight close quarters. Better "paths" through an area with sense of progress. Need of surveying the area -> Seeing an alien in a third floor window - how can I get there? Completely different map layout styles within a single biome so they wouldn't feel so samey. Having more complex maps will really benefit the game by giving players more interesting scenarios to play through. I checked the old X1 maps I made back in the day. You can maybe see and feel the vibe in these screenshots I'm looking for:

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!

Recently I had some spare time to play X2, it's been about 3 months of game time so far, and I wanted to share my thoughts: - I hate that "hidden movement" screen and would love to get rid of it, if something happens in the shroud I wouldn't be able to see it anyway, so there's no reason for it, and it sometimes obstructs things my soldiers are able to see; - I would really appreciate if game wouldn't move my camera on its own in tactical, at least when it's my turn - not when new enemy is discovered, not when I try to target something, not ever - just let me handle that; - we should have access to menu all the time, even during enemy turn (now "Esc" doesn't do anything when it's enemy turn, but we can eg. hit F9 to quickload and it will work); - it would be nice to be able to move camera around during enemy turn too; - I guess some kind of a minimap in tactical would be nice, or ability to zoom out (and maybe zoom in somewhat more too), or both; - when targeting an enemy, it would be nice if some description could be shown (their race, stats and abilities if we know them), like it now shows accuracy modifiers; - it would be nice if visible ememies icons were different for each alien race etc., kinda like in new XCOM; - I don't think nearby units (let's say less than 5 tiles away) should get suppressed by friendly fire at all, unless maybe when they are accidentally hit; - soldiers in tactical all look the same - I guess they have different faces, but they are to small to notice, and when they wear helmets you can't really see their heads anyway - maybe they could have eg. coloured stripes across their arms, backs and helmets to distinguish them at least a little? - on a similar note, they could use different body models for males and females - I know that in heavy armour it wouldn't look that much different, but still; - just a flavour, but I think tactical armour should actually have at least 1 armour, if it offeres no protection at all it's hard to call that thing an armour; - in air combat, I find it hard to associate each fighter with its control panel, planes are just labeled "0", "1" etc. (btw. I'd start that from 1 not from 0, but I'm no programmer), and in their control panels on the right are only their callsigns - I know it's 0 on the top, 1 below it and so on, but why can't planes just be labeled by their callsign instead of numbers? - also, it would be nice if active plane panel was highlighted somewhat more obviously, right now it's not that clear at a glance, at least for me; - sound effects for destruction of some objects are way to loud and game freezes for a few seconds when a wall or a fence or something gets destroyed, the worst was blowing up a gas station, it froze my game for like 30s; - at the begining of the game everything runs pretty much smoothly (minus those destruction effects), but after several weeks of game time I get those occasional stutters, when game becomes unresponsive for several seconds from time to time, it just randomly happens no matter if I'm doing something or not; - I'd like to have an option to target different body parts of my enemies, eg. like in Jagged Alliance 2, when you can aim at legs, torso and head with different hit chance and possible effects; - I think research times should be a little shorter, and especially when it comes to interrogations - they shouldn't take something like two days; - I guess it's too late for it now, but I think a geoscape would be much better if it actually was a sphere, not a cylinder (so we could go over the poles etc.). Edit: one thing I forgot - after building second base, whenever I go to engeneering, soldier, hangar etc. screens, it loads those from that second base, even though they are empty, like that second base is now my default main base.

There you go. @Chris. Hopefully these help you squish the bug. 590975979_allsavesbeforecrash.zip

@SkitsoTurns out this bug is almost certainly an example of this annoying bug. You don't happen to have all your old saves from that campaign still, do you?

These are rank symbols inspired by the insignia on the Xenonauts uniforms from the title screen. Install using the mod launcher. new_rank_images.zip

re-uploaded the mod due to the hack