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This update is also only accessible by switching to our Experimental branches (instructions on how to do so here) - although note they have slower load times and worse performance than normal builds due to the extra logging they contain! This contains a few additional fixes for 1.27 before it (hopefully) goes out on the main branch. Gameplay Changes: Fixed all types of ammo appearing under the "Equipment" tab of the soldier equip screen. It's no longer possible to find undiscovered Cleaner Cells / Bases / etc by clicking on a UFO or mission that has spawned near to where they are hidden. Added a "mission briefing" button to the Geoscape info panel for a tactical mission, which shows you the mission briefing on the strategy layer. Tooltips have been added for the various stat columns on the Soldier Recruitment panel. Fixed an issue where it was not possible to redirect a dropship in flight to a landed UFO site. Snowmobiles should now correctly explode when destroyed. Cleaner ballistic rifles no longer have an additional 5-round burst. Tactical Inventory no longer incorrectly refers to the Tactical Vest as the Belt. Stalker Stealth Armour now displays as Gas Immune in Xenopedia. Bomber UFO no longer incorrectly referred to as "medum-size" in Xenopedia. HEVY now displays its damage type as Thermal. When hovering the cursor over the base icons in the top right, the base name is now displayed instantly rather than after a short delay. When hovering the cursor over a soldier in the vertical list on the dropship soldier arrangement screen, the popup showing their face / equipment is now show instantly rather than after a short delay. Fixed a text overflow issue in the soldier memorial screen.

This update is also only accessible by switching to our Experimental branches (instructions on how to do so here) - although note they have slower load times and worse performance than normal builds due to the extra logging they contain! Gameplay Changes: The intro cinematic and the game mechanic popups are now enabled at the start of each campaign, regardless of whether the tutorial is enabled or not. Cleaner SMGs and Cleaner Accelerated Rifles are now recoverable and usable (by popular demand). Xenonaut Sentry Guns can now open doors, but are unable to crush objects. TU costs for abilities are now rounded up rather than down. This fixed some odd situations where it was occasionally better to have fewer TU. Reduced the spawn rate of Cleaner anomalies at the start of the game. Key Fixes: Fixed a pathfinding crash that had been introduced in 1.26, which usually crashed during the AI turn but also could affect the player. Fixed a bug that could cause multiple popups to spawn when intercepting UFOs or sending a dropship to a tactical mission. In both cases this could cause crashes. Fixed a crash that could occur on the Soldier Recruitment panel due to a corrupted Kickstarter backer soldier. Fixed a bug where the day 180 "Content Complete" popup was not being shown, and the game loss conditions were not triggering if you lost enough regions. General Fixes: Fixed grenades / aircraft missiles not properly upgrading if you skip the Alenium project and go straight for Fusion. Fixed the tactical soldier inventory incorrectly charging TU for you to pick an item up and then put it back in the same spot. Fixed the tactical soldier inventory incorrectly forgetting to charge TU if you moved the same item multiple times. It should no longer be possible to use a jetpack to fly between rooms in the Alien Base, or to jetpack through the roof of the Dragonfly dropship. MARS vehicles now correctly display their names in the tactical combat. Disabled the day 300 Orbital Bombardment research report (which wasn't supposed to be in the game). Psyon VIP on Cleaner Cell missions no longer reports recovering both a Stunned Psyon and a Cleaner VIP if captured alive. Stalker Stealth Armour no longer shows the hair of soldiers floating inside their helmet. Dead Cyberdrones should no longer appear to be alive again after loading a save. Fixed some terrain objects in the Xenonaut base showing a bright pink error texture when destroyed. Fixed the Boreal sawmill building roofs so they correctly disappear if destroyed. Fixed typos in the strategy tutorial, Frag Grenade tooltip, and Ballistic Weapons and Fighter Datacore research text. Fixed the Engineering recruit panel having tooltips referring to scientists instead of engineers.

Played to the end of the Early Access content, on Veteran difficulty. BUGS: - Boundaries are not set up correctly in many areas, especially ceilings. - The grenade launcher weighs more with smoke rounds loaded, despite explosive rounds weighing more. - The "Assign selected soldier" button in the armory has the "Dismiss selected soldiers" tooltip associated with it. - Chemical tanks don't update their graphic once they explode. - The pillars in the base defense mission look like cover, but aren't. - Picking up a fallen soldier doesn't remove the graphic of their fallen body. When you set the soldier down, the graphic of their fallen body doesn't move to where you placed them: the placed soldier is invisible. You can still revive the fallen soldier by using a medkit on their invisible body. - Shield soldiers don't lose their visually equipped shield when it's placed on the ground, they only lose it when they switch to another weapon. - When you right-click to add items to a soldier's loadout in the armory, right-clicking too fast will only add one item. - The effects of non-destructive grenades go through walls. That might be intended behavior. - Grenade effects go through the floor of the UFO to hit units below. - Moving a jetpacker to a square then moving another person to that square will result in both occupying that square. - Jetpackers discovering enemies doesn't interrupt movement. - The extra TU from exosuits can't be used to throw a second grenade, despite having enough TU available on the UI. - The "next soldier" command doesn't go through soldiers 1-12 in order. I'm happy to see some of the other bugs I found addressed in the patch notes. FEEDBACK: Civilians could use some self-preservation instincts and we should be able to send them off the battlefield once they're rescued. We should be able to push civilians out of the way or swap positions with them for a TU cost. Shield soldiers should be able to run through the floor-to-ceiling windows in office buildings. The Xenopedia could use a search function. Soldier stats and training should be added to the Xenopedia - I couldn't remember where to find info on how Progress Points worked. Soldiers being completely unable to move after getting revived is harsh, especially since all their items are on the ground. Then the warning that the revived character "has not acted this turn" adds insult to injury. Please give them some TUs, like 1/3, and start them crouched instead of fully standing. New research becoming available is less satisfying than in other X-Com style games since swapping to the new shiny invalidates all progress made on the old shiny. Game is a little too reliant on suppression, bring back the androns. The grenade launcher should be renamed to a rocket launcher because it fires rockets that continue forward when the shot misses its target. A grenade launcher should have grenade-like scatter on a miss, especially since thrown grenades have that scatter pattern. WISHLIST: A tooltip stating that personnel and planes incur upkeep the second they're contracted, whereas buildings only incur it once they're completed. Alternatively, nothing should incur upkeep until it's completed. Scroll speed and animation speed toggles in options. Faster animations and better sounds for jetpacks. By default, they feel sluggish. A satisfying soldier landing sound, especially in exosuits, would feel cool. Please let us engage enemies from the air with jetpacks. "Long War" game option to give us a little more time to use the current tech tier's tools before progressing to the next tier. As is, it's perfect for Early Access. More vehicles! Taking a scout car or a tank on a mission was what separated the Xenonauts experience from the X-Com experience. The smaller form factor isn't cutting it, bring back 2x2 or 3x2+ vehicles soldiers can hide behind. More reasons to do night missions. Additional range for C4, even if it's only a few tiles. Having to run up to the wall, place the C4, run out of the blast radius, then press the button is comparable to demo charge TU costs. 15 weight should do more. POSITIVES: Game is well-balanced. Having to triage finances and research keeps you in a position of always wanting more. Art, music, UI add so much. Amazing work. Game gives you the tools you need to succeed. If you can't get a shield guy through a wall, blow it up! So many improvements over X1. Good to see units take turns overwatching instead of everyone overkilling and potentially shooting allies.

Thanks. I appreciate you taking the time to write it all out. I've skimmed this but will read it properly next week when I start work on our next balance patch. Being able to revive soldiers is intentional, so I think the point raised is a sensible one. Not having any TU at all is a wee bit harsh given they've got no equipment.

I think it would be nicer for the story to be fighting cleaners first, it can build suspense, I think, and the smash-and-grab mission feels like a scrappier start (as well as demonstrating that there are more mission types than in X1/X-COM). You could keep your preferred research order by contriving a mission that drops some of the required materials. Here are some ideas: the existing data mission, but have a crate of alien materials somewhere in the building that is added as an objective after you open a couple of computers (one of your soldiers notices something on the computer screen) (I think this option is most fun) or the cleaners are in the process of cleaning up a UFO crash site (there are no aliens left and not much UFO, so suspense is maintained) or without new art assets you could have us catch the cleaners as they're transporting some alien materials (a normal map with a big truck on it) or the existing data mission but have a message after the mission saying that the data identifies a small cache of alien materials that you automatically collect

I'm playing on 'normal' and am a veteran of Xcoms from Microprose days, Firaxis, and the Altar series. The difficulty is way off. From the outset aliens one shot soldiers that are behind cover, its right to lose a good few in the early game meatgrinder but the chance of a wipe is too high and the benfit of cover too low and the likelihood of a soldier surviving is way too low - damage reduction in cover might work, or just less accurate enemies overall by a fraction but getting a good start means too much save-scumming, and load/save times are high which is offputting. Once you progress (I'm currently burning thru aliens with Gauss + 3rd tier armour) teh aliens skills or armour or accuracy dont seem to scale well, and you quickly overtake them anbd teh game gets much, MUCH easier. Having enemies later on scale in some way scale better with the survivability / survival rate of squads might help & also encourage people to allow a few cannon fodder to die without endless tedius load/save loops.

hello, I am wondering, if there could/will be an unmanned aerial platform as well (for recon or attack). The MARS ugv is very good and the UAV would be so much useful for recon/combat on the battlefield.

Don't know how to reproduce. Loaded game and a bunch of tiles were black. Screencap and 2 saves with issue attached. Will experiment. auto_groundcombat_turn_3_start-189.json quick-28.json

There shouldn't really be abilities that take exactly 50% TU for that reason - they should cost either 49% or 51% (or however far you need to go to avoid this happening). Grenades for example cost 51% to throw so no soldiers should ever be able to throw two in one turn.

It's not intentional, no. It's going to be fixed when we do the AI revamp during Early Access.

So your solution is to just have the current half-assed / boring game mechanic in game just because making it better and more interesting with more tactical depth, some people might not get to experience it? IMO this is the same thing with any content in the game, flesh it out and make it proper. After that, it's a question of balancing it out to make it work. I think the base defense missions are currently rather boring as it doesn't tie in the overall geoscape strategy at all and the consequences are too binary: you either win and lose nothing or are defeated and lose everything. @Chris any thoughts on this?

I agree 99% but one quick note: remember that ideally you should be able to recover from a party wipe or half-wipe later in the game. Otherwise the entire game becomes save-scum and ironman is pointless. So buffing the aliens too much in midgame just because a full-strength party would steamroll them would come at the expense of being able to eke out a meager victory with an under-strength party. Also IDK if you've ever played past a point where you lose multiple guys in one turn... but it gets wild as everyone panics and flees with their weapons dropped all over the place. There is a definite "cock-up cascade" effect in X2 that makes party-wipes a danger to even high-powered low-difficulty parties. No judgies! I've savescummed like a mofo, especially in the early game. Wow that is good to know but, honestly, if it's going to be like that I would rather wipe out alien invasion by formatting my hard drive Thanks, Chris! I appreciate your hard work! I'm playing on Soldier. I tend to get wordy (hazard of being a writer), but I didn't exactly mean it's the only way to play and continue the game. I'm saying that, if you play any other way than the one I described, then you're going to very likely (not 100%) be on the verge of losing at least 2 regions to panic by end of content. So the game as a whole isn't broken - just the air combat is janky and the panic mechanic is a bit unbalanced. A critical factor in how screwed you are is how often you get the Global -10 Panic from the hostage rescue mission. I did my first run with gradual base-building up to three, with three wings of 3 angels. Reached end of content with 1 region collapsed and 3 in danger of collapse. I had almost saved my collapsing region from 100 panic, but it got knocked back to 100 by an undefeatable end-of-month 3-interceptor killing spree. I did my second run with a second base at the end of the first month, with three wings of 2 angels, one phantom. Reached end of content with 2 in danger of collapse. In my third run I built BOTH secondary bases at the end of the first month, building up to 1 wing of phantoms and 2 wings of angels. 100% focused on interceptor tech. I'm close to end of content and none of my regions are close to collapse: 53/16/30/49/18/47 at Day 228. So I didn't technically "lose" the first two games, but I would have certainly lost if panic had increased at the rate it was already going as the game continued. Especially when [spoiler]UFO's start nuking major cities[/spoiler]. If somebody else did better, then I'd be extremely interested to know how the heck they did - considering that AFAIK the only panic reductions aside from dogfights are from hostage rescue.

I don't know about some of these ideas, it would piss me off greatly if my so-called smart scientists died running around like they have an IQ of 60, and it delays my research. So I am opposed to that, unless the scientist AI is way better and they actually hide or run the hell away from danger and not run around like a chicken with its head cut off. Same with base rooms getting damaged. If the base attack is too costly / risky, I think the optimal strategy will just to be to build a lot of base defenses, and then most people who know what they are doing will never even need to fight in the base at all, negating the dev work on this except to punish newbies.

That would be sweet (a drone you control on the map, not a UAV high up like in Modern Warefare). Would not help for buildings, but for outside could help a lot, an could get shot down, so not entirely OP or without risk to use.

A drone

You just send two squads... One engages from each side (manual figth mode) to trim off one each then barrel rool your way to freedom. Second squad you can autobattle and wipe up the last. Sometimes you kill only one in the first battle, then do the second one in manual mode. Or, arm yer Phantoms with rockets not cannons...

No. Flat surfaces work only, some roofs, not all.

If an alien vessel/craft has been shot down would it not be better having different breach points for entry or even exit for aliens rather than front door as if the alien is a great pilot

Did you even read what I wrote? I am complaining that there are almost no differences between difficulties when it comes to tactical battles. I am replaying the game on lowest difficulty (Recruit), and the battles are just as hard as they were at Soldier. Enemies do same amount of damage, their defenses doesn't differ either (HP/armor) and I have a hunch that there are a same amount of them in the docks mission as there were at Soldier (I will try to confirm that later, I lost drive to play this game anymore). Reinforcements behave the same too. Number of rounds to complete the objective is exactly the same too. The only thing I found different between the Soldier and Recruit is that at Recruit, enemies can actually miss sometimes. From my observation it feels like they have 75% accuracy with any gun and any range. At Soldier difficulty this was nearly 90%. I am losing over half of my team in every mission, and that is with the unrealistic 25% chance of "resurrection" after completing the mission (Recruit difficulty setting). And I need to reload each mission at least 5-10 times - because I lose too many soldiers too early from enemies flanking me (or in night from enemies I can't see, but they can see me despite they use hazmat suit in night lol). Only after I know where enemies are I can finish the mission with losing only half of my team lol. Sadly the game is way too hard and the super long loading doesn't make that any better. I completely lost mood to play further after I got into mission with flying oneshotting drones with 150hp and the reptilian ufos with crazy accuracy against my units. In 3 turns I was already in deep shits and about to lose half of my team from flanks, on top of that my soldiers were missing that big flying drone like it was a fly... Not fun experience sorry.

Foxtrot and F-17 are enough for Terror carrier. F-17 shoots down anti missiles and Foxtrot shoots torpedoes. You may lose some Foxtrots but that's war. After shooting down Terror carrier, "something" happens as you might expect. Asierus is useless because lack of anti missile. Sebillians ARE affected by smoke, at least for X-Division. Too long time since playing vanilla.

Is it intended behavior that MARS rocket explosion splashes through floors? I'm not sure if its all floors, but at I noticed this on abductor.

also stun grenades ať 1st floor stun own soldiers on the floor below. Encountered in multiple ufo crash missions.

I appreciate you are being humorous, but its easy to forget, but soldiers and vehicles cost maintenance. Each soldier is $10k pcm , and the MARS is $5k. So although the initial recruitment costs are lower the ongoing maintenance is $250k pcm for the rookies (ignoring costs for living quarters) vs. $5k for one MARS. Even having to rebuild the MARS once per month its still cheaper. So even on the cost basis MARS is still better

I believe it gives you just one warning, a box comes up saying you will lose all progress and ask if you really want to change research. This is definitely not an intuitive thing. The Research you already have done should at least jump start you when you return. Maybe lose a % of current project, for each other pproject you start before returning.

I agree with most things said here already. If the thing wasn't so freakishly heavy (no pun intended) eating up so much carry-capacity it might have been be worthwhile, but at the moment I don't see any use for it outside niche applications or just using it for the heck of it. Almost anything it can do, something else can do better: normal frags grenades are better at fragging/weaking groups because you can lob them over obstacles in an arc instead of dealing with direct LOS normal smoke grenades are better if precise covering of a vulnerable soldier is important, again because of the indirect arc MARS is better at opening walls, both with driving and firing rockets, I had never issues with its accuracy because even a rocket-miss will often breach the walls you wanted anyway because of the huge blast range soldier guns and the MARS cannon are better at pure damage output against single targets, especially accelerated and laser weapons you have to be (even more compared to guns) super careful to not have missed HEVY shots hit your own soldiers or their cover, which means the grenadier always has to be at the front where you rather need fast attack/overwatch/heavy armor type soldiers So far I can think of only 2 situations where a HEVY would shine compared to other options: Cover your retreat with massive amounts of smoke by firing multiple smoke nades with a grenadier in 1 turn thanks to the fixed TU firing cost Chip away at tight groups of enemies in terror maps (Reapers that just created zombies), the urban terror maps seem to be a bit more suitable for this with their LOS being pretty open shooting across streets That being said a MARS could theoretically do both situations better if you would specc it for it (take the smoke launcher option, use rockets on enemies instead against their cover), but considering how good the offensive weapon systems on the MARS are I don't think you want to sacrifice using them for that. EDIT: But then again a MARS is 250K and for that price you can get 25 expandable Rookies with a HEVY each, so there is that

Ignore that idiot Alienkiller. Soldiers increase by surviving missions and/or getting kills. Here is the official wiki. https://hoodedhorse.com/wiki/Xenonauts_2/Xenonauts_2_Official_Wiki There is also the "Archives" you see on the main menu. Goodluck Commander!

For breaches I use either the grenadier, MARS or the C4 (in cases where I know where the alien is hiding) to break the wall and attack a building with assault soldiers. What I´d love to see though, would be satchel charges (lighter than C4, ballistic damage, proximity fuse ideally), that would make the game much more fun - to set traps ot to cover parts of the map, where Xenonaut forces are weaker. For breaches I use either the grenadier, MARS or the C4 (in cases where I know where the alien is hiding) to break the wall and attack a building with assault soldiers. What I´d love to see though, would be Claymore mine (lighter than C4, ballistic damage, proximity fuse ideally and a short destructive cone in the front arc), that would make the game much more fun - to set traps ot to cover parts of the map, where Xenonaut forces are weaker.

You can solve the issue by making it a research option after Alleneum done to build a "breaching charge" one use will make a soldier sized "door" in the hull. IT should be something you need to make special for the tougher shell of the UFO.