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Having higher ground is one of the most basic advantages one can have in combat. As far as I know, it's not simulated in this game at all. As you can see in the (amazing) image below, the unit on the roof has 50% cover just by being higher, while at the same time having a 100% vision to the unit on the ground level. Being higher up should also reduce the amount of cover smaller props like rocks and fences provide on lower levels.

It's now the end of October and time for our regular Xenonauts 2 development update. Here's what the development team has been busy with this month! Milestone 2: Our main focus this month has been Milestone 2, which is undergoing testing on the Experimental branches. This is now feature complete - we're concentrating on bugfixes and balance changes while we wait for a few more maps / art assets / research texts to be completed. We're expecting to be able to release it onto the default Steam / GOG branches a couple of weeks from now, about halfway through November. Milestone 2 contains a lot of updates, including several new types of tactical mission, a new UFO type, and some significant changes to the early part of the campaign to expand the role of the Cleaners (there's more details about this in our previous development update). Air Combat Rebalance: One thing worth mentioning in more detail is our rework of the air combat. We've implemented a more freeform equipment system for Xenonaut aircraft and then rebalanced the air combat itself so it rewards skillfully maneuvering your aircraft in a similar way to the original Xenonauts, while also trying to remove a few of the more abusable tactics (e.g. it's no longer possible to continually use evasive roll to circle-strafe around an enemy). This means the overall balancing pass has touched almost every part of air combat. We've tried to create distinct identities for all the different types of weapons you can fit on your interceptors, make the different UFOs pose different challenges to the player, and added some new UFO weapons and aircraft equipment to increase variety. Of course, many people prefer to simply autoresolve the air combat - and this is one of the ongoing balance issues we're aware of in Milestone 2. Making the game playable for people who only use autoresolve has led to the air combat being a little too easy for people who use only manual autoresolve, so we're going to be working to fix that over the next week or two. AI Improvements: We've also started upgrading the AI this month. We begun by focusing on the civilian AI, as they currently don't behave in a very realistic way - as MANY players have noticed! I'm not sure if we'll have a patch ready for Milestone 2, but if not then we should have noticeable improvements in place for Milestone 3. Additionally, many of the issues we've found with the civilian AI were caused by problems with the general AI model - which means fixing them will make the aliens a bit smarter too! Loading Times & Unity Upgrade: Another thing we've been actively working on is improving loading times, with the eventual goal of reducing load times by roughly 50%. The good news is that we're making steady progress here, but the bad news is that players are unlikely to see any improvements until Milestone 3. This month we experimented with stripping some further data out of our saved game format and found this sped up loading times by 25%-30% on our current (very outdated) version of Unity. However, when we tested this change in a more modern version of Unity, we found something interesting: load times were sped up by 25%-30% even if we disabled our change. It turns out recent versions of Unity have optimised that part of their loading process already. As upgrading Unity will also bring a lot of other improvements to the game (e.g. better performance, proper support for borderless window mode, etc), we're planning to do that as part of our plans for Milestone 3. In the meantime, we're working on multithreading as a way to deliver the remaining ~25% loading time reduction. Conclusion: Although there's plenty of smaller things I could talk about, I'll end things here. I think we've had a productive month overall, and personally I've particularly enjoyed seeing progress towards fixing some of the largest remaining problems raised by players at launch (slow loading times, bad civilian AI, the air combat needing more work). As always, thanks for reading - I'll write another post next month!

For the record, this is an observation first, complaint second. If the devs decided to make xenonauts 2 easier to cater to the lower skill players, that's fine by me, It's a good decision. You're gonna upset a lot of players by making a game uncompromisingly difficult, and most of the time, to appease the """hardcore""" playerbase you just need to make the game appear difficult. The skilled players are probably just gonna make a overhaul mod that caters to them, it's a compromise FiraXCOM went with, and it's a good compromise. I've recently replayed xenonauts 1 on insane, and it hit like a whiplash. The game is so much harder it's really hard to compare. Seriously, playing X2 on Commander is like playing x1 on normal. There are so, so many important mechanical changes between the titles that I've felt like were overlooked, I'm gonna try to list the most important ones from most impactful to least: 1. LOS distance This is by far the biggest fundamental change. Both games have an average effective weapon range of 20, but while in xenonauts 2 the soldier view range is 26, in xenonauts 1 it's 17. On top of that, in xenonauts 1 most of the alien sight range is 18, higher than xenonauts and well within the rifle range. This is massive, especially since the AI often abuses that fact. In x1, getting accurately shot from line of sight is very common, to the point where you have to paranoically smoke every possible angle the enemy can shoot you through. In xenonauts 2, it's switched. unless the aliens came out of a building, you will see them before they become a threat, and now YOU out-LOS them, because of sniper rifles. That makes overwatching in an open field a really effective strategy, especially since SR's no longer have a reaction fire penalty. The longer LOS is a good change, but it heavily benefits xenonauts. 2. LOS Symmetry In xenonauts 1, there were some corners where a unit could see a different unit, but not the other way around. This could be used by both sides, but heavily benefited the aliens, first because of longer LOS, and second because catching an experienced soldier off-guard is a lot more rewarding than catching an alien off guard. In x2 sight is symmetric, which again, makes the game easier. 3. Alien AI I mentioned earlier that in x1 aliens abused the hell out of their LOS advantages, but in general they were a lot more defensive. Alien AI in x1 makes you sometimes think they're cheating (they're not, but their sight advantages make them look like they do), and in general they camp a lot more, making them a lot more difficult to kill. in x2 they practically run in the open. X1 aliens sometimes were suicidal too, but only if they were sure that they could kill at least 1 of your soldiers. This is already in a roadmap to be changed, but it's still currently a significant factor towards a difficulty decrease 4. Alien damage in xenonauts 1, on insane the first enemy you fight deals 66 average damage. In xenonauts 2, the first enemy you fight deals 25 damage. Granted, armor values in xenonauts 1 are higher, but not that much higher. While in xenonauts 2 a soldier can still be one shot, in xenonauts 1 a soldier is usually one shot. Also, alien rifle does not currently have a burst function, meaning that they rarely suppress your soldiers outside of servitors, and making parking ballistic shields at melee range towards them a viable strategy. But even if they had it, burst in x1 is a lot better than burst in x2, but that's another topic. 5. Air game That's a huge topic on its own, but to avoid making an even bigger wall of text, let's just say that with the newest version x1 air game is significantly harder than x2, despite the foxtrot nonsense. UFOS damage your funding a lot more, they outspeed your basic interceptors much faster, and you have to actually sometimes maybe do some maneuvering. In x2 you can just facetank almost everything now with basic angels. 6. Cover destruction It's a lot easier to destroy cover in x2 than it is in x1. Too easily in my opinion, the aliens just can't hide from you at all. This is also a good place to mention that throwables in this game cost less to throw, and can be thrown further, and more accurately. 7. Training center Xenonauts 1 units were deceptively not that replaceable. If your soldier died, you had to replace it with a private, and privates freaking sucked, sometimes weren't even able to carry the full gear. (until you get predator armor, which is a win condition) In xeno 2, you can easily train your soldiers up so they catch up to your own guys. Too easily too be honest, I think the training is too effective at its job, by mid game you have many 90-100 TU monsters. I think the diminishing returns from the training center should be increased. 8. Shot preview This can appear as just a QOL, but being able to triangulate reliably if a shot from that position has clear LOS or not makes you significantly more lethal against aliens, In xenonauts 1 you had to practically guess, and a lot of times you were wrong, and when you were wrong you paid for it dearly. Sometimes you thought you were safe behind cover when it turned out the alien had a flanked shot, and sometimes you thought that position was a flank, when it actually wasn't. Now you don't have to take a risk like that. 9. Vehicles Xeno 1 vehicles sucked, MARS is amazing, and you can have TWO of them mid game. Enough said. 10. Alien abilities I know that xeno 2 has a lot more alien abilities, but nothing it has compares to xenonauts 1 psionics, not even the new wraiths. To make it fair, there are areas where xeno 2 is harder: 1. Higher enemy count In xeno 1 the first mission contains 3-5 aliens, it's much more in xeno 2, but it doesn't compensate for the difficulty because they are a LOT less threatening individually. 2. Timed missions A common complaint, but once you get used to it, the significantly longer LOS distance allows you to move quicker without being shot to death, so they're still more than manageable. It's also worth noting that just because a game is more difficult, it doesn't mean that it's better. Xenonauts 2 is an overall better title than Xeno 1 despite the major difficulty drop, a lot of difficulty Xeno1 wasn't designed that well, and made the game tedious to play on insane. Xeno 2 is a lot more fun in its gameplay, it's just that a lack of challenge takes away a lot of spice from the game. A lot of the changes that make the game easier make the game better, but if the game is intended to be about as hard as xeno 1, It should have a bunch of balance passes.

Giving First aid doesn't currently have much gameplay depth and lacks interesting choices to make. There's two main issues: -Firstly, first aid kits are too small, weight too little and have infinite capacity, so almost everyone can carry one into a battle and heal as much as needed with it. -Secondly, TU cost of giving first aid is set too low, so even critically wounded units can be healed quickly while surrounded by enemies. My suggestions: -Make first aid kits heavier and larger so carrying one is a clear choice. I'd love to have to make a separate medic role. -Make stabilizing bleeding more demanding. Like 30TU per bleed wound or similar. (It'd be cool to have like multiple medics trying to stabilize a badly wounded soldier before bleeding to death.) -Make healing and stabilizing bleeding wounds separate actions. -Make healing cost more TU's. Like 1HP per 1TU. -Let me choose how much I want to spend TU's when healing. (If I remember correctly X1 had this already) -Receiving first aid should cost the same amount of TU's that giving it takes. -First aid kits shouldn't be infinite. (Another good reason for a medic role that could pack multiple first aid kits. One first aid kit should be enough for healing like 120HP. Removing one bleed wound would cost 30HP. So with one first aid kit one could for example remove 2 bleed wounds and still heal 60HP. Or remove 1 bleed wound and then heal 90HP. -Maybe add a separate small medkit that can only be used to remove one bleeding wound. (Single use)

Hello Will, thanks for posting about the bug! We'll look into the issue and check whether it's a unique bug or something that we've already fixed before. However, even after we fix the bug, I'm afraid you won't be able to continue on the campaign because the most recent versions of the game (2.08) is incompatible with saves from older versions of the game due to the amount of content added since 1.33b was released.

I've been playing the Milestone builds, and of course I'd played a fair bit of earlier builds, but the Milestone builds do feel much more mature and are also the first time I've gotten past the early midgame, so it seems like a good time to provide some renewed feedback. I've seen a lot of what others have posted, so I'll omit points that have already been brought up many times unless I have additional insights to share. Mostly staying away from balance, too. All in all, well, I can't stop playing in the evenings and I'm particularly impressed with how much gameplay has improved over X1 thanks to mostly small changes. Cleaners People have said the Cleaner arc is short, and after reading those comments, I understand. They featured more prominently in earlier builds but aren't so visible in the EA build after all. Design-wise, getting rid of the mandatory Cleaner base attack was the right choice, but it can lead to the Cleaners coming out of nowhere seemingly. You attack the Intel Hub without a good background on who they are and then most of their story comes after you eliminate the organisation entirely. I strongly suspect the flow of the Cleaner story can be improved with some fairly minor changes. They should appear in the first mission (the alien research site) alongside aliens. This will create a memorable moment for the player (who are these secret service type guys? why are they attacking me, are they with the aliens?) and provide an opportunity for the appropriate research text to show up early, giving some background. Then the player would be going into the Intel Hub to face a familiar enemy. Especially recovering a Cleaner body from the first mission would make a difference. As things are now, you're almost certain to only get the Cleaner autopsy done after destroying their HQ, because the Intel Hub and the Cells end with you escaping, so you don't recover any bodies unless you drag them yourself. A lot has been said about the difficulty of Cleaner Cells, to the point where it seems a couple negative Steam reviews appeared in frustration at the missions. These two missions aren't unfair to experienced players but they do show up fairly early and can feel unfair to new players. It's pretty undeniable that there is a difficulty spike. The Cells are harder than the Intel Hub or HQ missions, and they're harder than crash sites or even terror missions in that phase of the game. While there's been some focus on the timed reinforcement aspect, I'm not so sure that is the main problem, though of course adjusting reinforcements/timers per difficulty is a good idea. Much of the difficulty of the Cells seems to stem from a high initial enemy count. The Cell Cleaners are tougher than most other enemies in this phase, they have burst weapons and either decent damage or good armour. Removing even one Cleaner from the initial map would go a long way - the Cells don't need radical changes as much as they need fine tuning. The other difficulty component is that you need to locate the VIP. Which is a bit weird with metagaming effects. The first time you play, you need to spread out a bit and look for the VIP. The second time you play, you know where the VIP is so you can follow the optimal tactic of heading straight for the main building, blowing open walls and finishing the VIP off with a MARS rocket salvo or something similarly explosive. In the Cleaner HQ, the objective area should display what boosts you're getting from killing the cells, like "Cleaner Cell destroyed - defender armour weakened". This is as a reminder and as a confirmation to the player of what specifically has been accomplished. Air Combat Since air combat is going to get another pass, I'm not going to go into the actual combat mechanics now but rather some adjacent points. There's a strange metagaming issue with damaged UFOs, which X1 also has. During a UFO wave, as UFOs go in and out of radar range, I can remember if I e.g. destroyed a particular UFO's armour if I remember the ID. I torpedoed UFO-5 so it has no armour any longer? Okay, then the next time I get a contact, I'll know if it's the same one by checking if it's UFO-5 or UFO-6. But it's unclear if I'm supposed to do this. Same issue with UFO types really, if I engaged it and know it's a Destroyer, subsequent clicks will still say Unknown. One fairly straightforward solution could be to remember which UFOs have been engaged by a squadron and, for any such UFO, show its type and perhaps damage status. I can't help but feel that the existence of the Dynamic UFO HP option is weird and suggests an issue. It's very strange for the same UFO to get weaker or tougher depending on how many planes I engage with. No idea what to do with this, but my intuition is that the best balancing tool is fuel. If you're sending three planes where one would do, in theory you should be wasting fuel and thus be in a worse position to respond to a subsequent threat. And related to dynamic HP, I've complained before that the auto-healing of UFOs is very much a black box. Maybe the mechanic has its place but it needs to be more clear. Compared to X1, there's the excellent move of making UFOs occasionally slow down so that it's possible to catch a faster UFO with a slower plane if you get lucky. This makes another mechanic from X1 appear awkward - if your squadron runs out of fuel, they have to go back to base, but they're limited to the lowest-fuel plane. In X1, I didn't mind, but in X2 it really feels like it'd make sense to split squadrons in-flight in such a situation, with e.g. Angels returning to base and Phantoms continuing. Bases and Teching There are a few surprising moments in the tech tree. One example is, if you skip Accelerated Cannon (engineer build) for planes, and go for the much superior Laser Lance, when eventually research Heavy Gauss, you'll see the engineering project to build the Gauss Cannon (whatever it was called) and suddenly discover it needs Accelerated Cannons first. This is surprising because of the inconsistency, normally each weapon tier is independent and also thematically we're building a new type of gun, not upgrading the previous one. Starting a new base, you can assign buildings to be constructed before the access lift is complete. That is a good change but it's not even hinted at anywhere, you have to discover it by accident. The Training Center, along with the whole training mechanic, is too much of a black box. I do see the training capacity but that's all. How fast are my soldiers getting attribute progress? How much has training contributed overall? Which attributes? Are all my soldiers training? I did not find anywhere to see those. Base upgrades (Alenium generators, Quantum labs, etc) may be easy to miss for players who don't expect those. Perhaps a tooltip in the main base view if an upgrade is available? Hover over a generator and it might say "Alenium Generator upgrade available in the Workshop". I find base storage confusing right now. Why are mission items not sold automatically? Not sure if there's still a reason for this. There was in earlier builds but now, unless I'm mistaken, there is no reason ever to hold on to an item you got from a mission. Research unlocks automatically when relevant and items are never used in manufacture. Then the only thing storage adds is confusion potential, exemplified by how "when can I sell Cleaner Data?" is one of the most common progression questions. Combat missions Ground combat, the meat of the game, is of course excellent overall, with significant improvements compared to just a few months ago. I really like the various alien abilities, they feel like a successful return to classic X-Com style, which is probably the main reason combat feels better than earlier this year. A strange thing I noticed is that terror missions feel a lot easier in X2. In X1, I'd always be afraid of them, they were, well, a terror. Just like in the original game. X2 terror missions are easy but I cannot quite figure out why, they're mechanically the same as X1 after all. Some contributing factors could be that aliens always prioritise civilians (making civilians powerful meat shields), that Reaper AI in particular is dumb (they're not sneaky and so are easier to deal with) and that the terror maps have many explosive props (if a gas station shows up, that's almost cheating, a well-placed shot blows the entire area up). Base defence missions are always a highlight for me. Some AI issues clearly present but very good stuff overall, though they could be improved by having a few more interactive props. It's a Xenonaut base, it is the perfect place for that. An explosive gas balloon in the workshop, some equipment in the lab that explodes with EMP damage, a container that starts leaking smoke if damaged in the storage room. The fights would feel more epic plus interactive props are always fun. Also, the Access Lift tile is very uninteresting. Aliens aren't coming from it anyway so ideally I'd give it a complete makeover with a rename to Command Center, but the existing tile could be improved by at adding some sandbags to hide behind. Stun damage is difficult to balance but it's currently not there. I've repeatedly knocked enemies out without meaning to. The general rule that stun bar above HP bar means unconscious is good but some tweaks are needed. One idea is to require an actor to have just received stun damaged to fall unconscious, and disallow unconsciousness on HP damage. This is to prevent a situation where you shoot an alien, not dealing enough damage to kill but enough to knock them out. Being knocked out from a shotgun to the face is weird. Related to stun, stun guns need a clearer role. They're currently fully useless. Miscellany Tutorial tooltips - the overdamage explanation seems to pop up the first time an actor dies via overdamage, which is very likely to be a civilian from alien fire. Should probably be only if you kill via overdamage instead. Yes I tried the tutorial mode. Tutorial tooltips - I cannot figure out what triggers the "adjacent soldiers can open doors" explanation but I got it during the alien turn and that probably shouldn't happen. We need soldier flags back on the UI! Servitors are mostly referred to as gun drones, except the initial research text. Missions with reinforcements could really use a visible timer, like the abduction missions have. Soldiers can path through burning tiles and even kill themselves by doing so. A corner case with laser machine guns. If I fire a 10-round burst and a 3-round burst, that takes my ammo down to 7/30. Then the game won't let me fire a 10-round burst because there's not enough ammo. Makes some sense but I'd prefer to be able to force-fire anyway if I use ctrl. Using a medkit can cause reaction fire, it should probably be exempt. It's highly counterintuitive that winning a terror mission doesn't reduce panic in the region.