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  1. Hello everyone! April is now over and it's time for our monthly Xenonauts 2 progress update. Milestone 4: We've now done the bulk of the work on Milestone 4 and we've started internal testing on the updated campaign. Assuming there's no major issues we'll probably be releasing an early version of the build to the public early next week to get feedback - but initially this will be on our Protoype branches, as the build is currently too rough even for the Experimental branches. After a couple of weeks of polish the build should migrate to the Experimental branches, and hopefully into full public release on the normal Steam / GOG / Epic branches by the end of the month. Aside from the headline features for the build (Androns and the Harvester UFO for the aliens, the Colossus Battlesuit for the humans) we've got a long list of changes that should continue to improve the usability, balance, performance and stability of the game! Sound Design: Last month we brought an experienced sound designer onto the team to work on the game audio, as earlier in development we hadn't had the time and funds to give it the attention it deserved. Audio is sometimes an unappreciated part of game development, as the benefits of good sound effects can be quite subtle but are nonetheless very important. This month we've updated the strategy UI, creating nicer sounds for the standard click / hover / error actions and then adding new clips so give subtly different feedback for different actions a click can cause (like confirming an action, closing a window, opening a tooltip, etc). There's still a bit more work to be done on the UI sounds, but after that we'll be moving onto the tactical combat sounds and trying to give the different alien species a bit more character. As a side-effect of this process, we've also noticed various places the game didn't have sound but needed it. Some of these are already fixed in Milestone 4, e.g. now Medikits and the Automed Unit play a sound when healing a unit, and melee weapons play a sound if they miss the target. Levels & Environment Art: As Milestone 4 contains over thirty new maps, we've also brought on a fulltime freelance environment artist to help us improve the variety and quality of our tactical environments. We worked on an assortment of smaller tasks last month ranging from improving the ATLAS Base command room assets (wall screens and the command table) to fixing up some of the assets for the Alien Base maps, but once those were complete we began to focus on the Farm biome. Our plan is to add some new terrain objects and update some of the ground textures for the Farm to try and make the maps feel a bit more like a real agricultural environment, and then we'll be moving onto the Tropical biome to do the same thing (as there's not really enough tiles to do the inhabited areas of the Tropical maps properly right now). Once that's done, we'll be able to move onto our final biome - the Soviet Town terror maps! Alien Crews: This month we updated the crews for all the various UFOs / alien ground missions to ensure there was a steady escalation of new enemies throughout the campaign. The addition of Androns means we now have enough units to group the alien races together, so each species now has a dedicated secondary support unit and a terror unit. As part of this task we've added "heavy" variants of the Mentarch, Servitor and Cyberdrone that are tougher and have more powerful weapons, which start appearing towards the end of the campaign. We'll be adding new artwork and 3D models for these units in the next month or two. General Improvements: We've also made an assortment of improvements to other parts of the game. The air combat now supports weapons that are capable of shooting down missiles and we've added a new late-game escort UFO that provides an alternative to the alien Interceptor. We've added support for transferring scientists and engineers between bases. We've added a new soldier module that gives soldiers a 180-degree vision arc. We've made further improvements to the loading times, added many small usability features, and added various small new bits of content to the game. So overall it's been a busy month for us, with lots of good progress made. Thanks for reading and we'll hopefully have Milestone 4 in your hands soon!
    8 points
  2. Hello everyone - it's time for the November development update for Xenonauts 2. Read on to see what we were working on last month! Milestone 5 Prototype Update: November was a productive month for us. All the core systems for Milestone 5 are now complete and we're currently in the process of testing the initial prototype, which we'll hopefully be releasing onto the Experimental branch later this week. As always, the first Experimental build for a new Milestone is likely to be a pretty rough experience - although all the major new gameplay mechanics are present there'll probably be a lot of bugs, balance issues, and missing pieces of content that need to be patched in. If you'd rather have a more polished experience then it'd be best to wait until the final version of Milestone 5 arrives on the standard branches early next year! Before we move on, I just want to be clear - although players will be able to unlock the final mission and complete the campaign once Milestone 5 is out, this will not be the final update for Xenonauts 2. We still want to add more polish to the game, so we're planning another major update before final release (likely focusing on usability / visual improvements / AI & game balance / modding / etc rather than adding additional game mechanics). The Testing Process: Most of our work this month has been addressing the numerous gameplay and stability issues encountered in our testing. Each new batch of fixes has allowed us to play further into the game, and we're currently testing the last month or two of the campaign (so fighting Battleships and doing the final mission). So far we've been doing "strategic" playthroughs that involve auto-winning the tactical battles for speed (the average campaign is 30+ missions), but once we confirm it's possible to complete a "strategic" playthrough we'll shift to playing a full campaign including the tactical missions. Most game-breaking stability / balance issues tend to occur on the strategy layer, so hopefully this will go smoothly - but whether we release the prototype this week as planned really comes down to how many issues we encounter. One major benefit of this testing is that all of these campaign playthroughs have given us plenty of opportunity to playtest and iterate the new strategy mechanics. We actually found the first iteration of the new Geoscape mechanics weren't quite as engaging as we'd hoped, so we expanded them a bit more and came up with something stronger! Updated Geoscape Mechanics: I personally think the updated Geoscape mechanics are a major improvement on what we have before, giving the player more things to interact with and a wider selection of possible strategies without being too overwhelming. Players now gain a certain number of Operations Points per day (representing the off-screen work carried out Xenonaut agents), which can be spent on Strategic Operations or recruiting Supporters. Strategic Operations provide powerful instant effects, such as allowing the player to reduce Panic in a specific region or receive some extra cash / alien materials. They are not the most efficient way to spend Operations Points, but can still be very useful in the right circumstances! Each of the six funding regions contains four Supporters, which represent key figures in the local government who can become aligned with either the Xenonauts or the Aliens. If they fall under Alien control and become Infiltrators (usually caused by successful Infiltration UFO missions), they will generate additional Panic in the local region each month - but if convinced to join the Xenonauts they will instead slightly reduce Panic in that region each month and provide a permanent bonus to your organisation. Additionally, each region has a unique "region bonus" that is unlocked if you recruit all the supporters in that region (e.g. the North America bonus improves the quality of your starting soldiers, while the Soviet Russia one reduces your upkeep costs, etc). However, most regions also contain a single Elite Supporter who provides double the bonus of other Supporters of the same type; prioritising recruiting these Elite Supporters from the various different regions can be an alternative to racing towards a specific region bonus. Although I think these additions work well, my own personal opinion only counts for so much - we'll be really interested to hear what the community think of the new systems once the prototype is out! Other Additions: We also had time to work on a few miscellaneous things this month. Firstly, the tactical combat now properly supports objects falling, so we've been able to enable destruction on building roofs. Explosions can now collapse these and cause units and items to fall onto the level below. The illustration work is now complete on the updated Research screen background art (see above), and this month we'll be creating the "advanced" versions of this that are unlocked as you progress through the game and gain access to more advanced technology. We're continuing to revamp the visuals of some of the weaker parts of the tactical combat. We started work on some new models for the Sebillian aliens, and we've also updated the appearance of quite a few assets in the Farm biome. Neither of these updates are currently present in Milestone 5 but both should be patched in before we finalise it. We've made some further AI improvements and written some custom AI for the new missions added in Milestone 5, one of which is a wave defence mission. A few updated sounds have been added to the tactical combat for the new Biter alien, and also some new unique movement sounds for the MARS / ARES / Sentry Gun vehicles. We also set up the proper Game Over screen for the various types of victory and loss. The final victory cinematic isn't ready yet, but the new UI has unique art / text / music / campaign stats / etc so still it's a lot more atmospheric than the plain popup you got in earlier versions of the game. I think that covers everything. Well done for reading the wall of text, and hopefully we'll have a prototype ready to play in the next few days!
    7 points
  3. We've released the first "prototype" build for Milestone 4 on our Experimental branch (instructions on how to access it here). Please be aware this build is rather rough and exists mostly to help us track down bugs while we finish working on the new content we're adding for this Milestone. To make this easier, we've added a new bug reporter tool which you can access by pressing F11 - this automatically creates a zip file containing the game logs and recent saves so you can easily attach it to a forum / discord bug report, ensuring we always have all the information we need! Summary of Changes: This update has added content to the end of the campaign (which we're still working on), and made a number of improvements to usability and game balance based on player feedback from Milestone 3. As you can see from the changelog below, there's been quite a few changes - and I'm in the process of testing and revising the new game balance. Please let us know what you think so far - in general money should be more plentiful, and I think things should feel smoother and better balanced up until when Abductors start spawning. The strategy layer has had more testing than the tactical combat so far so please let us know about any difficulty spikes you encounter. We've created dedicated feedback threads for the game balance, and also for stupid AI behaviour. If you see the AI doing any clearly suboptimal moves, please post a save file and a quick description of the issue in that thread so we can adjust it to behave better. New Gameplay Content: Harvester UFOs now appear at the end of the campaign. These are large and heavily-armoured transport UFOs with two different interior layouts and sizeable crews, but contains significant amounts of Alloys and Alenium. Only the Battleship (due in Milestone 5) is larger and more powerful! Androns have been re-introduced into the game with new models and animations. These formidable robotic alien soldiers have very high armour but relatively low HP, and appear as support units for Wraiths on Terror missions and inside larger UFOs. The Colossus Battlesuit is now available for the player to build. This is unlocked from the Harvester, and provides the highest Armour level in the game as well as a Strength boost and the ability to walk through walls. However, it has several disadvantages - it cannot use modules, is limited to carrying only machineguns, and has shorter sight ranges compared to other armours. It is therefore very powerful in an assault role, but needs to be accompanied by soldiers with different equipment that can make up for its shortcomings. At present this armour is relatively similar to the Predator from the first Xenonauts (except it has shorter sight range, rather than a narrower vision cone), and we'll be considering how we can make it more distinct - community suggestions on this topic are welcome! We've added a large number of new maps, including: ~30 large Crashsite maps across all biomes that will be used the new Harvester UFO 5 new Alien Base maps (2 small, 3 medium) 1 new map for the Cleaner Base mission 1 new map for the Cleaner Data Raid missions We're testing a new escort UFO called the Defender which is similar in strength to the Interceptor UFO, but behaves differently as it is designed to engage at long range. We're currently unsure if we're going to keep it or not, so let us know what you think of it. Added Heavy Mentarch, Heavy Servitor, Heavy Cyberdrone, and Reaper Alpha variants of existing units to the later stages of the campaign. These have improved stats. but only the Reaper Alpha currently has a unique model (we're working on the others). Added a new "Sentinel Module" that soldiers can equip (unlocked from Harvesters), which gives them 180-degree vision cones. Added the Reinforced Shield, which is the final upgrade for the Combat Shield and Assault Shield. Added the Energy Knife weapon, which is an upgraded version of the Combat Knife (unlocked from Alien Electronics). Added new Corpse Analysis engineering projects for the Servitor and Andron enemies. Visual / Audio Updates: The Probe UFO now has unique artwork both in the air combat and on the associated Research projects. The unarmoured Sectons that appear in the first mission (and subsequently inside UFOs) have been retextured. Wraith noncombatants have been retextured, and now have a basic jumpsuit uniform rather than being naked. The command room in the ATLAS Base mission has been visually improved, with a proper command table and wall screens that better resemble those on the main menu artwork. Added new models for the human Fusion Shotgun and Fusion Sniper Rifle weapons. Added art for the Nanofabrication research project. Added new art for the Servitor wreckage item. Added improved weapon silhouettes for ballistic / accelerated weapons (these are used in the little minitabs at the top of the tactical UI). Added a number of new sounds to the game: Complete refresh of the existing strategy UI sounds Added pick up / drop sounds for different item types that are used when you are moving items around in soldier inventories, or switching weapons in the tactical combat Added heal sounds for when various healing items are used (medikit, automed unit, servitor auto-heal ray) Added sounds for a melee weapon miss Abduction tubes now play the teleport animation and teleport sound when they disappear midway through an Abduction mission due to the timer expiring. Balance Changes - Strategy: 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 storyline now takes a bit longer to resolve (over the same number of missions). This means the time spent using each equipment tech tier is more even, rather than having lots of missions fighting with the Warden and Accelerated weapons and then being rushed through the later equipment tiers. Funding has been rebalanced so now 50% of your funding is 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 managing Panic levels and your funding, but ensures the player is not obliged to immediately rush interceptor coverage across the whole globe on higher difficulty settings. Base structures are now more expensive in general, but the Medical Center and Training Room are now much more expensive. The logic here is that these structures are upgrades that improve your soldiers and make tactical combat somewhat easier; it should be a decision whether a player builds them early or instead puts that money towards new interceptors / radar coverage. Two additional plot objectives added to the campaign: capture an alien officer, and capture an alien leader. These unlock research projects that advance the plot and raise funding when complete. 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 have a sell price of 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. 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. We've also fixed two bugs that will change the balance of the air combat: The difficulty modifier (set on the Campaign Settings) was previously broken, but will now correctly increase / decrease the damage inflicted by UFO weapons. 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). Gameplay Changes - Strategy: We've 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 (it'll also prompt you about this after a crash). Several updates to make soldier planned loadouts on the Soldier Equip screen (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. If players attempt a second mission without returning to base, equipment is now re-issued to all surviving soldiers in the squad in a round robin method (using everything recovered from the mission site). Previously the first soldier would take all items set in their loadout, then the second, etc - which would lead to issues where there weren't enough ammo magazines for later soldiers to load their weapons, while the first soldier had several extra in their belt. 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. Injured soldiers and wounded soldiers now use different colours in the Soldier Equip screen, making the two states easier to distinguish between. Added the building tooltip to the Main Base screen building list. 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. 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). The "Choose Aircraft Name" panel now has a cancel button, and can be closed by pressing Esc. Updated the tooltip on the Select Soldier button shown on empty dropship slots on Soldier Equip screen. Updated the tooltip on button confirming aircraft relocation. Air Combat - the first interceptor is now automatically selected when you begin a battle. Air Combat - the rotation arc for UFO weapons that are capable of rotating is now displayed. Air Combat - hovering over either Evasive Roll button now displays a "ghost" plane that shows where the interceptor will end up. Air Combat - different UFOs / aircraft may now have different cooldowns for evasive roll. Air Combat - the sizes of UFOs in the air combat has been updated to improve their relative scale is correct. Air Combat - this now supports weapons that can shoot down missiles Bugfixes - Strategy: Fixed the air combat maps sometimes containing aircraft deployment regions that don't disappear when the battle begins. Fixed the flicker on the Soldier Equip screen that would occur in the bottom left list before you access the screen for the first time. The 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). Fixed the soldier HP bar that is shown on hover on the Dropship soldier arrangement screen showing inconsistent values when you switch between soldiers. 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. Aircraft icon no longer disappears if aircraft circumnavigates the map more than once in a single direction Fixed wounded soldiers in the dropship visually having no armour while travelling back to base. Fixed the mission information UI incorrectly displaying some dummy information if you have built a Quantum Array. Fixed clicking-and-holding to move map while in Geoscape base construction mode acting placing the base when you release the mouse. Fixed the Geoscape nightshadow not extending all the way to the bottom of the map. Destroyed Xenonaut bases on the Geoscape no longer prevent the player building another base nearby. Fixed there being spots in the Soldier list where the mouse scrollwheel would not allow you to scroll the list. Fixed the inverted keybinds when scrolling through different aircraft on the Aircraft screen. Fixed a bug where the Aircraft screen topbar would be hidden if you built a new base and then went directly to the Aircraft screen. Fixed pressing Esc on the Transfer Items screen not returning to the Geoscape like it does on other strategy UI screens. Fixed the Soldier Equip screen starting the the Equipment tab selected in the Armory, not the Weapons tab. Fixed custom loadout names not having a maximum length (now limited to 20 characters). Fixed a few strings that were not being correctly translated. Fixed incorrect proportions on Canadian flag. Balance Changes - Tactical Combat: Melee weapon hit chances no longer 100% by default, and are now affected by Reflexes. The base accuracy of melee weapons is about 60%, and this is increased or decreased based on the difference between the attacker and defender's Reflexes (the Accuracy stat is not a factor in the calculation). This means attacking inanimate objects always has a 100% hit chance. Most weapons now have an increased hit chance at very short range, as weapons now gain more of their accuracy from proximity rather than soldier Accuracy. Generally the hit chance is about +10% higher at point blank than it was previously, which should make burst fire more effective. Rifle / LMG - increased short range bonus by 0.5% per tile for 20 tiles, decreased Accuracy multiplier by 5% on each fire mode (-3% hit chance at 60% Accuracy) Shotgun - range reduced from 10 tiles to 9 tiles, short range bonus increased from 6.25% per tile to 7.5% per tile (makes it slightly more effective within 5 tiles, slightly less effective beyond 5 tiles - but relatively minor overall) Pistol - short range bonus increased from 2.25% to 3% over 12 tiles, and accuracy multuplier reduced by 5% Sniper - these weapons are unaffected. 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. VIPs no longer gain flares in night missions. 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 misisons 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 specific weapons: LMGs no longer lose accuracy after the soldier has moved for the first time each turn Reduced the weight of the knife so it is no longer heavier than the pistol. Reduced the suppression on the Stun Gun from 23 to 15 Various updates made to specific aliens: Wraith "Cloaking Field" ability now reduces the shooter's Accuracy, rather than inflicting a flat penalty on overall Hit Chance, and Hit Chance from close range bonus is not affected. This change means that weapons with a naturally low hit chance (e.g. burst fire weapons) are no longer affected much worse than high-accuracy weapons, and the player can still negate the effect by getting closer to the Wraith. Psyon Officers and Psyon Leaders are now equipped with a Psi-Amp weapon, which acts like a Plasma Pistol Pistol but completely ignores armour (which also means it does not damage 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 treated as night missions. All Abduction missions now have a base duration of 7 turns (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. The soldiers you are rescuing in the Rescue Soldier missions are now each also carrying a Briefcase of Money (value: $50,000). Cleaner Base now awards 50 Alloys and 50 Alenium on completion. Gameplay Changes - Tactical Combat: 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. Moved the civilian / local forces turn to be before the alien turn, which means it's now possible for the local forces to save your troops from being killed by aliens. Local forces should no longer be interested in going inside UFOs. 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. 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. 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. Soldiers marked as "done" for the turn in the tactical combat now have a green tick below their minitab Added a kill count for each soldier on the post-mission debrief screen (each kill shown as an alien skull) 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! Climbing a ladder now plays footstep sounds. Melee attacks now occur more quickly after the player clicks the attack button. 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. 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. Stopped open Xenonaut Base / ATLAS Base blast doors triggering the shut door icon, which blocks other click commands. 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 Sped up Mentarch firing animation. Optimised the cabbage fields in the Farm maps. Bugfixes - Tactical Combat: Fixed the Western Town restaurant interior walls appearing black on some systems. Fixed the alien base doors sometimes appearing open / shut when they are not. 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 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. Fixed being able to heal alien units (this allowed players to get into a few situations that could allow crashes). 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.
    7 points
  4. Hello everyone - as we're now into the early days of November, it's time for an update on what we were working on during October. The short answer is this: we made good progress in several areas last month, but frustratingly slow progress in one key area that delayed the Milestone 5 prototype. Milestone 5 / Strategic Improvements: Our main focus is still on getting our Milestone 5 prototype into a state where we can release it for public testing. We were hoping that would happen last month, but we weren't able to make enough progress on the new strategy mechanics. There were a few reasons for this, but the main one was that we continued to find new bugs that needed fixing after the Unity editor update I discussed in our previous update. Thankfully, in the second half of the month we were able to better focus on implementing our new Supporter system. This system places four VIPs in each funding region who can be recruited as Supporters by the Xenonauts to provide your organisation a variety of strategic bonuses (more funding, faster research / engineering, etc) or turned into panic-generating Infiltrators by the aliens. If you can recruit all of the Supporters in each region, you also unlock a special regional bonus. The Supporter system itself is now mostly functional, but we're still unsure how long it'll take us to connect it to the other game systems. For instance, the new Doomsday Counter system that is now active in the early stages of the game also ties into the Supporter system (with alien Infiltrators generating enemy Doomsday progress, and Xenonaut Supporters slowing it). We will also need to update the Infiltration UFO missions to turn neutral VIPs into Infiltrators if successful (where previously they simply generated Panic like other types of UFO mission), etc. Given what happened last month I'm not going to make any promises about when the Milestone 5 prototype will be out - I'll just say we're working hard to get it into the hands of testers as quickly as possible (we should be able to release the first testing builds as soon as these strategic updates are complete). New Missions: Milestone 5 adds various new missions - crash sites for the Battleship UFO, the two-part final mission (Operation ENDGAME), and two unique new plot missions that take place on an alien orbital station (which appear around the point Cruiser UFOs start appearing). The Battleship assets and crash site maps were completed some time ago, and this month we finished the final art assets and map setup for both halves of the Operation ENDGAME mission. The first mission on the alien orbital station is also at quite an advanced stage, with the custom art assets for that map now complete, but there's still further work to be done on the second orbital station mission. Thankfully, this shouldn't cause delays - most of the remaining work is custom art assets, and we don't need the visuals to be final for the Milestone 5 prototype builds. Alien Updates: Last month we added a new type of alien to the game, the Biter. These small insectoid aliens are more of a living weapon than a proper new species, as certain alien units can fire them towards enemy units - at which point they will charge towards nearby hostiles and try to bite them to death. Biters will expire within a few turns of spawning and have very low HP, but a pack of them can still pose a threat - particularly against units equipped with weapons that cost a lot of TU to fire (e.g. sniper rifles). We also continued to make changes to our existing aliens to better differentiate them from one another. The main cannon on a Cyberdrone no longer acts like a giant plasma rifle, but is instead now a blast weapon that can inflict major damage across a large area (although it is now less likely to instantly kill a heavily-armoured soldier). We'll be finishing up some changes to the Mantid and Sebillian weapons this month too, which I'll explain next month. Illustrated UI Backgrounds: One of the coolest features in Xenonauts 1 was that the illustrated backgrounds of the strategic UI screens would upgrade as you progressed through the campaign, showing the way the new technological developments you had unlocked were changing your organisation - by the end of the game, the all characters had futuristic uniforms and the rooms were full of sci-fi equipment. Lots of players thought this really helped immerse them in the game. Although implementing this in Xenonauts 2 involves repainting our existing (perfectly fine) UI background art, we've decided the feature is cool enough that we've found some extra budget for it. Handily, all the programming for this feature has already been finished, so as soon as the new artwork is done we can just slot it straight into the game. We started the sketch work for the new Research screen background last week, and hopefully you'll be able to see some results either in the Milestone 5 prototype or next month's development update! I'll leave the update there for this month - thanks for reading, and hopefully we'll have some good news on Milestone 5 in the coming few weeks!
    6 points
  5. 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!
    6 points
  6. Took the time to start a new playthrough with 3.40 just to feel how the difficulty and balance feels after latest changes. Here's my random thoughts. I played with veteran difficulty with increased starting funds. Start of the game and plot might not make much sense for the players that have disabled or skipped the tutorial. Maybe add a text box or dialog scene at the beginning of the game that summarises events that are otherwise told in the tutorial. Most game tutorials don't have any story content, so people might really miss out here. I had a Cleaner VIP mission very early in the game (first or second cleaner mission, right after the first abduction) and it felt really difficult. I tried to push forward as fast as I could while looting one side building for extra intel and I had no business trying to capture the VIP. There's just too many cleaners and the time limit is too tight. It's way more difficult than any other cleaner missions while they should be about the same IMO. Reduce enemies and add one or two more turns. Also, might be a good idea to force the mission to spawn later and/or be one time persistent mission. It has no business being that tough so early in the game. New jungle (escort) maps are way too clutterd and dense. Makes them difficult and annoying to play. Soldier progression feels spot on now. Cleaner mission repetition annoys me still. Had a second (too tough) VIP mission before even one intel gather. I'd gladly have it the other way around: 2 intel gathers and then a VIP mission. Would make more sense difficulty curve, progression and story wise too. Resources were quite well balanced but even with the increased starting funds I had, I felt the money was a bit tight. Alenium/alloy seemed fine. I hate to build basic air weapons. Why is the logic different than with troop weapons? Air game felt too punishing after day 100. I only had three angels with laser lancers and needed to transfer them around the globe to try to keep panic down. It didn't end well. I would have needed at least 2 more airplanes at that time but had no means funding them and their weapons. Also, as I need to complete a destroyer crash site before I can research Ufo Hull plating and only then I can research Phantom and after that, I still need to build and arm them. This all takes like a month or more and by that time, destroyer waves have raised the panic to 90-100 at least in some regions. AI still leaves a lot to be desired: They waste a lot of TU's moving back and forth for no reason, don't stay put when in optimal positions, don't take multiple shots when close to a clear target, but move into shroud instead and take a quick snapshot from there etc. AI doesn't seem to be aware of where each side's frontlines are, so they often move into unoptimal locations behind my lines. My third abduction at day 87 was brutal. Wraiths and servitors in dock biome and I just had to save scum my way through it. Waaaay too difficult. Huge difficulty spike. After the Cleaner HQ is destroyed, the game starts to repeat itself and becomes somewhat boring. The plot to reveal Cleaner HQ has so cool progression that when it's finally resolved, I feel the game starts to become stale. It might be a good idea to introduce some similar large scale objective for the player to strive towards a month or so after the Cleaner HQ so advancing the plot wouldn't feel so linear and predictable where you just shoot bigger and bigger ufos down. Mid/late game needs cleaner style mission variety too. Make alien base similar mission objective as cleaner HQ with multi-tiered proggression maybe? Civilian turns take too long. Do they all need to move so much and every turn? Do we need to have a civilian turn at the end of the mission when all the enemies are dead and we could just call it a day? End of mission screen should also show changes in panic and the amount of broken/lost gear Shotgun civilians are still super aggressive and raid ufos completely fearlessly. Abduction missions start to annoy me - too much repetition. Maybe after completing a few, unlock an abductor alien base mission where you need to rescue already abducted people or something instead. Other that that, the game felt good. Somewhat buggy, but still great fun.
    6 points
  7. We've released the first "prototype" build for Milestone 5 on our Experimental branch (instructions on how to access it here). Milestone 5 introduces several major new mechanics to the Geoscape and adds significant amounts of new content to the tactical combat. All limits on playable time have been removed from the campaign, and it is now possible to unlock and complete the final mission in order to win the campaign. This is currently a rough prototype build of Milestone 5 which is fully playable, but likely to contain bugs and missing content (e.g. some missing research art / research text, some placeholder UI, no victory cinematic, etc). We will be releasing regular updates for Milestone 5 while it remains on the Experimental branch, and it will only be released on the standard branches once we have added the remaining content into the game and we are happy with stability and game balance. TL;DR - this build contains a lot of upgrades but is unfinished. If you're not interested in being a tester, you'll enjoy this update a lot more if you wait until it appears on the main Steam / GOG branch! KEY CONTENT: Battleship UFO: the Battleship is the final alien UFO. It is extremely powerful in the air combat and is a large multi-level UFO with a large crew of the most elite aliens defenders in the tactical combat - successfully capturing one therefore provides the player vast quantities of Alloys and Alenium! Operation Endgame: it is now possible to unlock Operation Endgame and complete the campaign with a high-stakes assault on the alien high command. We made this a two-part mission in homage to the Cydonia mission from classic X-Com, and we created an entirely new set of terrain tiles for the first part! Supporter System: each of the six funding regions on the Geoscape now contains four Supporters, representing important VIPs in the local area. Each Supporter provides your organisation with a permanent bonus when recruited (there are five types of Supporter), and a unique Region Bonus is also unlocked if all the Supporters in a region are recruited. However, UFO missions can also cause Supporters to fall under alien control - becoming Infiltrators, who slowly raise Panic in the local area until you assign the resources required to eliminate them. This system makes the Geoscape much more engaging, giving the player far more choice about their playstyle. Strategic Operation: the same currency used to recruit Supporters can alternatively be used on Strategic Operations, which provide an instant benefit such as an injection of cash or a shipment of alien materials. Importantly, this also gives players a method of quickly reducing Panic in a specific region - something many players have been requesting for a long time. Invasion Phases: the campaign has been divided into five different phases that better explain the progression of the invasion, with some phases introducing or removing new mechanics to reflect the changing alien invasion strategy. New Missions: two new tactical missions set on an alien orbital station take place towards the end of the game, adding more mission variety to second half of the campaign. New Aliens: there's a couple of new alien units - the Eternal (the alien leader unit), and a small melee creature with a limited lifespan known as the Symbiote which certain enemies can fire at Xenonaut units as a form of living weapon. Civilian Evacuation: civilians on tactical missions can now be interacted with to order them to evacuate. Doing this will cause them to run towards the evacuation zone (next to the Xenonaut dropship) and leave the map - assuming no aliens kill them on the way! KEY BALANCE CHANGES: Doomsday / Panic: Individual regions do not suffer Panic in the first couple of months of the campaign. Instead, there is a single global "Doomsday" counter which must be kept below 100. This is mostly for narrative reasons, but in game design terms it gives the player more time set themselves up before needing to worry about keeping Panic down in each individual region. Base Regional Pricing: Xenonaut bases now vary in price between $500k and $1.5m depending where in the world you place them, with the optimal locations in terms of radar coverage (e.g. North Africa / Middle East, Latin America, etc) being more expensive. This means there are more viable strategies in terms of base placement, and also means new players end up with more starting funds if they unwittingly place their first base in a "bad" location. UFO "Delegation" System: once the player has completed two crash sites for a specific UFO type, enough data has been gathered about that particular UFO to allow local military forces to take over future crash sites of that type. The Xenonauts are given a permanent increase in monthly funding, but the player is expected to claim the cash bounty on any future Crash Sites of that type rather than manually completing the mission - ignoring this will increase Panic by damaging relations with the local region (who want the alien materials from the Crash Site for their own purposes). This system has been added because it was very difficult to balance the game when some players complete only a single Crash Site for each specific UFO type, whereas others would fight every single UFO crash site they create (even if they find it grindy and repetitive) simply because the extra money / resources generated by doing so made it the optimal way to play the game. The new Panic penalty means there's now costs as well as benefits associated with fighting more than two Crash Sites of a particular type - but the penalty isn't *that* big and is limited only to a single region, so in some cases it can still be worthwhile. 50%-150% Damage Randomisation: in Milestone 4 weapons (both human and alien) inflicted between 50%-200% of their Damage value when they hit the target, but this has now been reduced back down to 50%-150%. This makes armour a bit more effective at stopping units being instantly killed by a single enemy hit. Strategy - Full Gameplay Changes: As covered in the Key Changes section above, we've added several new strategic mechanics such as Strategic Operations, Supporters, and the Invasion Phase system. Additionally, the Base Regional Pricing and UFO Delegation system significantly change the game balance. It's worth highlighting that the "Reduce Panic" strategic operation can be used on lost regions, and if you reduce Panic below 100 and keep it there then that region will rejoin the Funding Council. A new "Geoscape Timer" UI element has been added, which tells you how many days until your next Funding Report and any upcoming narrative event (usually relating to the end of the current Phase). The Campaign Victory / Campaign Loss screen has been updated with proper artwork, flavour text and music. The full campaign stats (e.g. total aliens killed, etc) are now shown for both victory and loss. The introduction of Phases (see Key Changes section) has led to a rebalance of some parts of the invasion: As mentioned in the Key Changes section, Doomsday has replaced Regional Panic for the first couple of months of the campaign. The initial "Cleaner" stage of the game is now a bit shorter and contains fewer missions overall, so each campaign now only contains one of the following mission pairs - Rescue Soldiers / Convoy Ambush, and VIP Extraction / VIP Elimination. Monthly funding is much lower at the start of the game, but increases significantly once Phase 2 begins. Infiltration UFO missions no longer cause Panic, but instead convert neutral Supporters into Infiltrators that generate Panic each month. Infiltrators can be eliminated by spending Operation Points. Alien materials are now more plentiful in the second half of the game. Item sale prices that have fallen (as a result of selling those items) now regain some of the lost value at the end of each month. A few changes have been made to the tech tree: Research speed is 10% faster on Soldier and 20% faster on Recruit Research project durations have been decreased by 10%-20% for projects in the second half of the game on all difficulties. Removed the Alien Officer Interrogation and Alien Leader Interrogation placeholder plot research, and replaced them with plot-related research related to UOO-1. The second-stage Corpse Analysis engineering projects have been removed, meaning there is now a single Corpse Analysis that grants +20% damage for each alien species. An (expensive) engineering project has been added to upgrade the speed of Angel interceptors to match that of Phantom interceptors. An engineering project has been added to improve the protection of Guardian Armour (unlocked by researching Alien Plasma Weapons). As both Stalker Armour and Colossus Armour are somewhat specialised, Guardian Armour remains the mainline armour for quite a while! Added an upgraded variant of the Stun Baton called the Electroshock Baton (unlocked from Advanced Stun Weapons research). The Quantum Laboratory and Nanotech Workshop upgrades now require Alien Electronics in addition to completion of the Cleaner Base mission (meaning they arrive a couple of months later). The research projects for Cleaner Autopsy and Cleaner Interrogation now autocomplete, as they are rendered redundant before most people complete them. The Cleaner Corpse Analysis engineering projects have been removed entirely for the same reason. The power consumption of various base structures has been rebalanced. The quick summary is: Power consumption of many buildings has been slightly increased, including the Hangar and Living Quarters (which previously did not require power). Power production of the Access Lift and the basic Generators has been reduced (Alenium Generators remain unchanged). Your starting base now contains an additional Generator to compensate. The overall effect of this is that new bases can only construct a single Hangar and Radar with the power from the Access Lift, and expanding the base further requires construction of additional Generators. There's been some minor updates to the air combat: Torpedoes are now faster and Missiles are now slower, so the Torpedoes will hit the target first if both are fired at the same time (usually desirable because they are very effective at destroying Armour, allowing subsequent Missile hits to inflict higher damage). The weapons on the Cruiser / Abductor UFOs now do reduced damage and have smaller fire arcs. Evasive Roll now travels a consistent distance whatever speed the air combat is set to. Tactical Combat - Full Gameplay Changes: The Civilian Evacuation system allows you to click on a civilian from an adjacent tile, which causes them to path towards the evacuation zone near the dropship as quickly as possible. This does not cost TU to use. Note that evacuating civilians will try to sprint past any threats they encounter, so make sure their escape route is safe! Building roofs are now destructible. Units / objects will fall down to the level below if the floor beneath them is destroyed, and if they land on another actor / object then they both will be stunned or destroyed. Sloped building roofs now correctly block line of sight and shots / throwable objects from all angles, Units now only rotate to face their attacker after taking damage on the enemy turn. Having it occur in the player turn could cause frustration, as soldiers hit by enemy reaction fire would rotate towards their attacker and sometimes be left without enough TU to complete their planned actions. Suppressing a unit now reduces their Reflexes by 50%, which makes them easier to hit with melee weapons. Performing melee attacks on hostile units now grants attribute progress towards improving Reflexes. Mind Control is now properly broken if the alien is killed or stunned. Hay now costs additional TU to move through, and is crushed the first time any unit moves through them. This penalty does not apply if the unit doing so is Crushing (e.g. vehicles, Colossus Armour). You can now set a move path to an obstructed tile that contains a unit or a terrain object under the shroud, although unit movement will end once the obstruction is revealed (this prevents players "scanning" the shroud to identify what is there). Alien Changes: Eternals have been added to the game on Battleships and inside the largest Alien Bases. Psyon "Mesmerise" ability can now only be used once per turn by each Psyon. Some Mantids now carry Symbiote Launchers, which fire eggs towards their enemies that hatch into Symbiotes - small, aggressive melee aliens that only live three turns, Sebillians now carry LMGs instead of Rifles, and some been issued with a special type of grenade that spawns large clouds of poison gas. Wraith soldiers now have a 30% chance of spawning with a grenade. Wraith Cloaking Field is now disabled by stun damage (as well as normal damage). Cyberdrone weapon is now an AOE weapon that fires 3 explosive shots (damage per shot has been reduced). Androns and Cyberdrones should no longer seek cover, nor back off if facing large numbers of hostile units. Androns should no longer crush alien doors when moving around UFOs / alien bases. Cleaners are no longer hostile to civilians / local forces on certain map types. AI units of all kinds should no longer clump together quite as much as before. Weapon Changes: The maximum deviation on a missed shot is now 10 degrees. As well as looking more realistic, this makes the HEVY more effective. A couple of bugfixes related to the way corners (e.g. walls, doorframes) and fire arcs are treated for missed shots have made the HEVY less likely to blow up the user unexpectedly. Cleaner Accelerated Rifle now has identical stats to the Accelerated Rifle. Demolition grenades now spawn smoke and fire on detonation. Usability Changes: Pressing R will now reload your weapon. The tactical combat camera now returns to its previous position after the enemy turn has been processed. The currently selected soldier now displays with orange shading if obstructed by cover, rather than green. This makes it much easier to see which soldier in the dropship is currently selected. Ambush maps now reveal the position of all enemies during deployment, so you can better choose where to deploy your soldiers. Added camera scroll from the target soldiers to the rest of your team at the start of the Rescue Soldiers mission. Scrolling between soldiers in the tactical inventory can be done using up / down, as well as left / right (this mirrors the Soldier Equip screen). UI Improvements: We've added an "abort mission" button to the tactical combat UI, as not everyone was aware you could access it through the Esc menu. The soldier minitabs along the top of the tactical UI now also display the secondary weapon if the primary weapon is a combat shield. Mind controlled units remain in the topbar minitabs (but cannot be interacted with, as if the soldier was dead). On missions with a pre-battle deployment phase, the "Commence Mission" button no longer softlocks the game for a couple of seconds after pressing it. On Data Raid missions, if you return all the soldiers to the dropship without having sabotaged enough computers for the mission to count as a victory, the game will now spawn a pop-up telling you this and asking if you want to end the mission anyway. Updated the Data Raid objective text to be slightly clearer about how many computer desks need to be interacted with for victory. Added tooltips to the post-mission debrief screen for the soldier promotion icon, and the soldier kills icons. Visual / Audio Updates: Fix various kinds of minor visual issues in lots of different tactical maps. Added various new terrain tiles for the tactical combat. These are mostly alien tiles related to the new missions (e.g. Operation Endgame, Battleship UFO, the alien orbital missions, etc) but there's some visual updates to the Farm biome and a new oil pumpjack prop for the Desert biome. Added new 3d models for the Wraiths, including entirely new designs for the heavily-armoured elite Wraiths. Added Soldier Equip screen paperdoll artwork for the various advanced MARS / ARES weapons. Added new or updated sound effects for: Ambient sounds for various tactical biomes and strategic UI screens Winning or losing a tactical mission Accelerated and Gauss weapons Alien Fusion weapons MARS / ARES / Sentry Gun movement and death sounds MARS / ARES rocket turret weapon Dropships now have a new take-off sound when launching on the Geoscape (instead of sounding like jet fighters). Bugfixes: Fixed another rare multi-threading crash related to saving the game. Fixed several issues where the game could crash when moving inventory items (both on the Soldier Equip screen and the tactical inventory). Fixed a crash that could occur if you accidentally killed The General in ATLAS Base with an explosive weapon before he had been revealed from the shroud. Fixed a crash that could (rarely) occur on enemy overwatch fire. Fixed zombies incorrectly spawning two Reapers when stunned, which could then cause a crash in some circumstances. Fixed an issue where a teleporter would still trigger if a unit ended a move on it due to their move being interrupted (e.g. by spotting an alien, or because of enemy reaction fire). Fixed a bug where most of the crew of Harvester UFOs were not spawning (the ones that were meant to be inside the UFO). Fixed some abduction missions loading incorrect map variants with too few abduction tubes. Fixed a bug where soldiers would sometimes not carry out move actions even though the UI tells you there are enough TU to do so. Fixed a pathing calculation issue where the game would sometimes tell you a soldier lacked enough TU to reach a tile, but would then recalculate and allow a longer movement if you chose a different tile. Fixed some pathfinding issues for jetpack-equipped soldiers, where the game was incorrectly claiming a "path cannot be found" if the soldier did not have enough TU to reach the spot (rather than showing how far the unit could move). Fixed pathfinding incorrectly calculating costs for units with Crushing making moves that involved crushing multiple objects. Fixed interrupted soldier moves not always reimbursing the player with the correct number of TUs. Fixed an issue where units would sometimes not turn if attacking as part of a move >> shoot preview action, leading to their arms facing a completely different direction to their torso. Fixed some (but not all) instances of shroud drawing over materials with transparency, such as the glass parts of alien abduction tubes etc. Fixed an issue where fleeing aliens would often flee directly towards your units. Fixed an issue where the shroud would sometimes not be revealed on certain tiles, even if a unit walked into them. Fixed some displayed "hit chance" labels being offset when passing through certain types of smoke. Fixed some displayed "hit chance" labels being offset in certain camera circumstances. Fixed the issue where destroying a shipping container would often not destroy the ladder attached to it. Fixed an issue where certain dropped items could not be picked up. Fixed destroyed splinters of wood hovering in the air after destroying certain sawmill walls. Fixed a UI bug where selecting soldiers on the Manage Soldier screen would cause the Training Capacity bar to decrease. Fixed the Ultimate Power achievement (all Colonels in a squad) being unlocked if you play a base defence mission containing only Sentry Guns. Fixed the Psyon Mesmerise triggering incorrectly when a "missed" shot from an explosive weapon kills the Psyon. Fixed an issue where in some circumstances the UI would show the fire mode icons for the medikit on top of the normal fire mode icons for a pistol in the other hand. Removed a duplicate soldier role icon. Fixed an issue where thrown grenades would sometimes get stuck in mid-air and explode on the wrong tile (or leave flares floating in mid-air.) Fixed EMP Damage and Stun Damage numbers incorrectly being shown on Commander difficulty, when normal damage numbers are not. Fixed the tooltip for the Stalker Armour showing the linked tooltip for the Wraith Cloaking Field, not the human equivalent. Fixed the Colossus tooltip not having enough space to display the various effects. Fixed Soldier Equip screen item comparison issues that caused the currently equipped weapon to display error text instead of its ammo capacity.
    5 points
  8. 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.
    5 points
  9. May has been another month of progress for Xenonauts 2. We released the first experimental version of Milestone 4 a couple of weeks ago, an update which brings a lot of new improvements and features to the game. You can read the initial (very long) changelog here, but our work isn't complete yet - we'll be continuing to add new content and fix bugs until we feel the update is ready for general release on the standard Steam / GOG / Epic branches. As always, we greatly appreciate the feedback from members of our community who have played the new version. This help has been invaluable in finding and fixing bugs, and ironing out problems with the game balance. We've got most of the stability issues under control now, which means it's a good time for anyone interested in playing the Experimental build to dive in - and please let us know any thoughts or issues with the game balance in the dedicated Milestone 4 Balance thread! Campaign Balance & Stability: Over the last month we spent a great deal of time playing the campaign in an attempt to get the game balance into reasonable shape before the Experimental release. This seems to have paid off, with the update getting a positive reaction from the community so far. There's not really space to go into specifics about what we've changed (we've tweaked the numbers in a LOT of different places), but the overall difficulty progression and campaign pacing should feel smoother than in previous versions. We've also spent a lot of time fixing bugs. Most of the crash bugs in Milestone 4 have now been fixed, and we're continuing to work through fixes for the other bugs introduced by the new content. In addition to this, we've been working through our backlog of historical bugs (some of which date back to the original Early Access launch), and we've now fixed quite a few of the more serious historical issues too. New Content: We added new content in a few areas last month. Our new sound designer provided a number of new sounds for various parts of the game, such as the soldier equip screen where moving weapons and equipment in soldier inventories previously played no sound. There's now unique sounds for picking up and putting down all sorts of items (also played when switching weapons in the tactical combat), which makes the screen feel much more satisfying to use. We've also added some new 3D models for certain alien variants, some of the human Fusion weapons, and some new terrain pieces for the Farm and Tropical biomes (although these won't appear in the game until Milestone 5). Our level designer has also continued to create new maps for the game; I think we're getting to a pretty good place in terms of map variety now. As per usual, we've added a number of small usability features too - but there's too many of those to list, and individually they're not that exciting. Hopefully you'll notice one or two when you next play the game though! Finally, there's a new bug reporting tool in Milestone 4 that makes it easier for players to report bugs, which can by accessed by pressing F11 and appears automatically after a crash. This just provides a handy zip file of all the files we need to track down bugs, which should make squashing the remaining bugs in the game more straightforward! Conclusion: Our priority for this month is to finish up Milestone 4 and push it out for general release - although we're exactly sure when this will happen, because a lot depends on what feedback we get from our testers and how many bugs we need to fix. However, we'll let everyone know as soon as we're able to set a launch date!
    5 points
  10. Hello everyone - hope you all had a good Easter! It's time for our monthly update on the progress we've made on Xenonauts 2. Milestone 3 Patches: A lot of our time has been spent fixing bugs in Milestone 3 recently, with five patches being released in the last month. Many of these issues were minor problems caused by our Unity 2022 upgrade, but there's also been fixes for various older bugs and some improvements made to the foreign language translations of the game too. These updates should have collectively improved player experience quite a bit. One highlight was finally finding a fix for a long-standing bug that turned the screen black whenever any unit fired a weapon. This bug only affected a small number of users and there was a workaround (disabling the "camera shake" setting), but it made the game basically unplayable for anyone who did not know that - so it's definitely a relief to have it fixed! New Maps & Environments: We've also been hard at work on the content for Milestone 4, and the new maps needed for the largest UFO crash sites are the biggest component of this. These are progressing well - we're aiming to have 3 large maps per biome when Milestone 4 comes out, and we're about 80% of the way there now. In addition to this, the update will also contain numerous new Alien Base maps that were made the previous month. Furthermore, a new environment artist contractor has joined the team to help us improve our existing environments and eventually finish off the Soviet Town biome that we plan to add to the game before final release. We've already updated the command room in the ATLAS Base map so it more closely resembles what we have in our artwork (with a command table and proper wall screens), and now we're working on some underground earth textures for use in the Alien Base maps. I'm planning on using these to address one of the gameplay issues with the Alien Base maps - that all the walls are indestructible (even the ones between rooms). Under this new setup all walls will be destructible, so it'll be possible to destroy both internal walls and the external ones around the edge of rooms. Doing this will reveal the earth tiles behind the walls, and these themselves will also be destructible. This should allow more realistic gameplay where powerful weapons and explosives will be able to gouge holes in the walls, and theoretically it would also allow players to dynamically "mine" through the earth and breach other rooms if they sufficiently powerful weapons. Be aware this idea is still at the testing phase so I can't promise it will definitely work as planned... but all our testing so far looks good! Alien Visual & Audio Improvements: Our updated Androns have now been finished and will be marching into battle against humanity in Milestone 4. We've also retextured the basic Sectons, as these are the first aliens that new players encounter but previously had fairly basic textures. We're currently retexturing the Wraiths so their basic non-combatants have a simple military uniform rather than being completely naked, and this month we'll be creating an additional Wraith variant with heavier armour that will appear towards the end of the game. We're also in the process of hiring a contract audio engineer to improve the game's sound design in general, which will include creating some new sounds for the aliens to try and give them a bit more character (like new injury / death sounds, or unique footsteps etc). Smaller Improvements: We've also completed several small features this month that were requested by the community. Firstly, the dropship screen (where you can position your soldiers within the dropship) now shows the soldier role icons on the green soldier tiles, making the process much more straightforward than it was previously. Secondly, we've finally got "destruction linking" working properly, which allows us to have walkable tiles placed on top of large multi-tile objects like shipping containers and have them remove themselves if the underlying object is destroyed. This means there's now a lot more objects in the game that allow you to land on top of them and walk around (shipping containers, caravans, buses, certain fuel tanks, etc), and fewer cases of aliens mysteriously standing in mid-air on invisible tiles. Work was also done on the end of turn camera, which now better shows regeneration healing and Bleeding Wounds damage on any visible units at end of turn. We also rewitten the item assignment logic that occurs after a completed mission, because players were getting some strange loadout problems when running a second mission with the same dropship (some weapons not starting with a clip loaded, etc), which was just down to the primitive way in which the game assigned items to your soldiers if there wasn't enough to equip the whole squad. Finally, a surprisingly popular request was an upgrade for the basic Combat Knife weapon that is available for your soldiers, so we've designed an upgraded Energy Knife that will unlock off Alien Electronics and should allow the weapon to remain relevant for much longer. Conclusion: That's everything for this month - lots of smaller tasks that together represent good progress on the project. Hopefully we'll have an early version of Milestone 4 out for testing on the Experimental branch later this month!
    4 points
  11. I had a very similar feelings when I played version 3.2.0 recently (got no time yet to try 3.3.0 and 3.4.0) - last time I played the whole 200 days was 2.0.9. Played at veteran. I agree with all of what Skitso wrote. A few remarks below: Cleaners - at the start it is very interesting to have a "human" opponent with some alien missions, but I would like to see the Cleaners interfering with the alien missions, like "cleaning" parties, say after turn 10, cleaner reinforcements would show up and try to destroy the human player to "protect the secret and clean the area" and the destrction of cleaners could be postponed to later in the game. The combined threat of cleaners and aliens at once would be intimidating. The air combat feels different - more demanding now with the homing drones and defensive turrets on some of the UFO´s. Angels are almost no use after day 90 or so, Phantoms are a must, but very expensive. Also to be able to comfortably win every air combat, at least 3 fighters were necessary, in later stages even 3 phantoms with fusion weaponry (2 with missiles and lances, third with torpedoes and missile) What I disliked about the air combat is the new interceptor model - Genesis. The model looks ridiculous (resembling a dragon drawn by a kid... sorry if I am being too honest here, but the model from X1 was really cool with the forward swept wings - now the game uses the same icon during combat, but the model (picture and model in hangar) just looks terrible and small. Pleeeeease, change it.... The previous model resembling su47 was much better. If you added some alien features to the same model it would look just fine... Same goes to the advanced transport Pegasus - a flying box - the model seems too small to the carrying capacity, i kind of feel they should be bigger to fill the space in the hangar a bit more to feel more robust.. It would be perhaps cool if the Pegasus had an upper level - soldiers in the upper level with the tanks on the bottom level. Soldiers with jetpacks could exit the ship from the upper level or there would be the big door on the lower level. Or perhaps a ramp that would descent downwards (similar to skyranger in UFO: EU) Just a thougt.. Economy is also tighter than before - most of the times I had to think what to build and what to skip as the money were very tight - building a solid airforce and good equipped ground force was challenging. 6 bases were a dream never coming true. 2 bases with troops with another one with planes was all I could manage to build until end of the scenario (last UFO appeared around day 380 or so) In general, the game feels solid, there was a lag in the jungle missions, some minor bugs here and there (may be my old PC having hard time only), but the overal feeling was good. The loading times improved a bit as well I believe. The repetition of the missions is a bit annoying. The maps need more levels (high buildings, undeground levels etc). There couls be more mission variety - search and rescue of downed planes (in case UFO downs a military plane or defense of a military base/installation would be nice for example) Well done devs, Looking forward to the next build! P.S. pleeeeease again, better genesis model...
    4 points
  12. Yeah, we can't really add any more vertical space. The only possible space is the right hand side of the soldier role line; I guess with icons we could maybe have an indicator for it. Something like this:
    4 points
  13. Hello everyone - hope you all had a great Christmas and a happy new year. January is now over, so it's time for an update on what we worked on! Milestone 5: Work is continuing on Milestone 5 over on our Experimental branch. This month we released three stability hotfixes for Milestone 5, and we've spent the last three weeks working on a major gameplay update (5.8.0). Our initial plan was to release this a couple of weeks ago, but some of the changes we're making break existing campaigns and we wanted to avoid doing that more than once. We've therefore rolled the changes into one big patch which should be coming out on the Experimental branch in the next few days (hopefully tomorrow). Our goal is to lock down Milestone 5 so the translators can begin work translating all the new text later this month, which will allow for a final public release of Milestone 5 early next month. Mind Control: The first new addition is the alien psionic ability Mind Control, which has been granted to Psyon Officers, Psyon Leaders, and Eternals. This formula takes into account the psionic strength of the alien versus the Bravery and Morale of the defending soldier, with greater distance making the attack easier to defend against. This should make alien Eternals a bit more intimidating than before, as they have very high psi-strength! As we've experimented with several iterations of Mind Control since our original Kickstarter, for clarity - the older alien "Mind War" ability has been removed, and the Psyon Mesmerise ability no longer has a chance to Mind Control the attacker on a critical fail. The new Mind Control ability is the only way the aliens can take control of your soldiers. Strategic Operations / Supporters: We've also expanded the Strategic Operations and Supporters systems to address feedback about the choices becoming predictable after a few hours of play. Strategic Operations now become more effective each day they are not used - for example, the Raise Funds operation usually grants $500,000, but this increases by $10,000 for each day the operation is not used (once used, the value resets back to the default value). Supporters have also been tweaked slightly. Each supporter now has a "protection level" value that controls how expensive it is to interact with them - if they have high protection the cost of recruiting / eliminating them is increased by 30%, whereas if they have low protection then the cost is reduced by 30%. This value changes every 10 days, with supporters having a 50% chance of being in a normal state and 25% each for high / low protection. The purpose of these changes is to make these systems less static. Instead of just waiting until you have 150 Operations Points so you can recruit a new Supporter, the player might now want to evaluate which Supporters are lightly protected and which Strategic Operations look good value. Writing: Over the past week or two I've been working on the plot-related writing, which has become a bit disjointed since the introduction of the plot-related missions and the Phase system in Milestone 5. We have added several new early-game research projects to ensure that the player is better informed about why the aliens are acting the way they are with regards to the invasion (mostly better explaining the limits within which they are operating), and also who the Cleaners are and why they acting the way they do. Later in the game, I've added research text to the various projects related to UOO-1 and we've also added little intro conversations to those missions as well. I'm currently working on the research text and intro conversations for Phase 5 and Operation ENDGAME, which are the last remaining placeholder research reports in the game. I'm hoping to have that completed this week. Early Game Rebalance: Finally, we spent a fair bit of time this month fixing some of the balance issues reported by people in the feedback threads we provided, so thanks to anyone who contributed to those whether on Steam, Discord or our official forums. One of the most common pieces of feedback was that the early game (i.e. Phase 1) felt too compressed, so we have extended this by an additional month (up to three months) and moved the Cleaner Base mission forward from early Phase 2 to the end of Phase 1. We'll be doing another pass on game balance after we release 5.8.0, as it's quite likely that the additions from earlier in the post will affect the balance. Please keep the feedback coming and we'll do our best to improve the gameplay as we finish up Milestone 5 for general release! That's it for this month - I'll write another update next month!
    3 points
  14. Overall, I'd like to preface that I liked the game quite a bit, having finished the campaign on Veteran preset with a few changes to Soldier difficulty (no Increased accuracy on aliens, visible health) It took about 50 hours with save scum, recorded campaign time was 41.4 hours The strategy was to start in Europe at 1,250k cost (Closer to Kyiv on Kyiv - Budapest line to capture more of Africa and Soviet Union in radar coverage), get additional lab, training center, living room and go from there. The highlight of Milestone 5 is the addition of Operation Points and Supporters to regions. The system feels really powerful, providing buttons that immediately resolve player's problems, including problems with resources. As resources are now somewhat limited due to 2 UFOs cleared per Type I found myself somewhat constrained in Alloys and Alenium, but barely constrained in money once the full funding kicked in. Overall, I'd say we have too much money coming in, especially with Supporter bonuses and regional perks. Alenium is less of a problem and alloys are the most constraining To continue on the campaign report, third science lab was at start of month 2 and eventually I managed to get a second base in US (750k+200k Hangar+500k radar + Mig for it) before end of 2nd month, but afterwards, the money flow was easy. On Day 91, i had the fourth lab and once the full funding kicked in, I focused on building up bases and planes for them, including a second training center in Month 4. I found myself alloy constrained to build more Phantoms and Geminis, but once all bases had 2 Gemini, the resource constraint was solved. Second workshop was created around month 6, when Gemini became available. For spending OP, i focused on Europe figuring out that improved training rate is rather important to have better soldiers, then focused on US to finish forming the squad around months 4-5 Gameplay-wise, the Cleaners period is definitely too short. It doesn't detract from hunting the aliens, if anything, I'd be quite happy to see an expansion to this and I'm surprised the aliens don't continue using cleaners after the cleaners HQ has fallen. I imagine, aliens would find ways to using humans in their bases in some way, no? Same with Infiltrator advisors, it appears, if the player is too good and intercepts the UFOs effectively, aliens fail to place more infiltrators. I've had one added only once, which feels just too little. I'd be quite happy to see missions to get that infiltrator captured - like we had with Cleaners VIPs. I have to say that currently, gaining and spending OPs feels too gamey - you only get OP from a counter per day and the system is self-contained and gives the players only bonuses For buying supporters with OP, it raises the question of Xenonauts having separate relations trackers with each region and regions giving out requests for specific items? Provide equipment or tech, dead or alive aliens, our VIP is threatened by alien infiltrators > pls save them. That would give OPs points in a better way then just a number of points each day. Lastly, it feels like there should be a base building that would allow focusing on relations strategy as part of the game instead of just getting numbers going up. Taking out computers from cleaners bases doesn't provide OP points, which is strange, we are directly unlocking their activity which is something that feels like OP-related material. Btw, it feels like there is only one edge case when spending 100 OP to get 20 Alenium or 40 Alloys or 500k money is useful, when we can spend 60/80/100 on a UFO mission and get much more of each resource, plus funds from the loot in one go. Maybe the numbers of resources provided should go up as countries around the world get more (based on the number of UFO sites passed to them or just based on time)? Ground combat: Squad build was 2 shielders, 3 assaults, 3 rifleman, 1 sniper on Chinook > 2 shielders, 4 assaults, 4 rifleman, 2 snipers on Dragonfly > 4 shielders, 4 assaults, 4 rifleman, 4 snipers with Pegasus Form 2 or 4 teams and sweep the surroundings, clearing out aliens. Assaults are the most immediately useful and powerful as shotguns can one-shot everything short of Cyberdisks. Not sure if bug, but Androns only started appearing for me once I made the first UOO incursion mission and without them, Wraiths and Psyons feel heavily lacking in tough enemies. 5.7.0 change to Wraits, admittedly, made them only easier to deal with Armored enemies are too easily solved by demolition packs, demos completely outclass grenades - should weigh more (8 or 10) and have smaller explosion and throw radius. Each soldier was carrying two concussions grenades and two demos, at least one smoke grenade. Frag grenades, I used only twice across the whole campaign, which feels wrong. Most soldiers were always in heavy armor, with the most useful armoring method being upgrading to Warden, then to Stalker, then to Exo. The penalty for Heavy armor seems a bit on the low side as with increasing accuracy for soldiers from training, it lead to just accepting the minor penalty. I didn't find a use for Colossus armor and MG weapon as both are too limiting I didn't find a use for the Grenade Launcher I didn't find a use for Auto-med, as more grenades are more useful I didn't find a use for Psi-shield as Psionics is not working at the moment. I didn't find a use for Mars/Ares as their stats are too weak, especially Ares, though their armor is super-high, but being alloy constrained forced me to choose soldiers first. Please consider allowing, one/two free Mars/Ares slots on Dragonfly or Pegasus respectively so that players would be incentivized to construct/deploy them? The combat feels to have the following phases: Surrounding sweep where half of aliens are, then UFO entrance with a couple of guards to clean up, then clearing the top room and the last one is what makes least sense to me There is no real urgency, nothing prevents setting up perfect breaches, especially on story missions like UOO assault and final mission. Spawn tables feel a bit mixed with alien scientists being out in the open (too eager to get their claws on on the material so to say?), instead of inside their respective UFO rooms and no Psyon or Wraith Engineers on their respective UFOs. UOO assault (the second UOO mission) is really-really easy in the teleporter phase - 3 soldiers on each side were able to clean each wave, but the big one, then I added one more soldier on each side and the side teleporters weren't used, which would force me to spend some TUs on moving between rooms. It is okay to make the mission more challenging by allowing aliens to portal to either of 7 (yes, including the initial one) rooms and forcing the player to spend one/two soldiers out of 16 at that point to block addition teleports via some sort of consoles. I.e the soldier has to stand there and spend 75% of TUs to activate the console to prevent even more from porting in. The Harvester (third floor) and Battleship (fourth floor) both show a dark floor that can't be accessed, I initially thought it to be a bug, but seems this is by design. The Battleship's layouts are strange and admittedly, I really dislike the top floor - unless there are wall-breaking robots, it is super-easy to breach the command room as i've said. Btw, could you please consider updating Androns to have wall-breaking move as an ability, instead of constant. It is really immersion breaking to see them walk and destroy walls when there is a door one tile next to it. I imagine the aliens are like - it's the xenonauts, break out the Androns and deal with structural walls missing later, but frankly, it's just amusing at first and then immersion-breaking for me. Please consider making end-game aliens a bit more unfair than right now, my soldiers died only to the randomness of the damage roll which feels worse then my own poor judgement. Shouldn't they have launchers, explosives and so on? The damage rolls being reduced to 50-150 is nice, but please consider going to 75%-125%, there is still too much swing to my understanding. I'd be really happy to see Psionics to be greatly expanded, making Sectons/Psyons and Rulers more powerful. No cases of mind-controlling soldiers so far, and Mind-war wasn't that strong (only halved movement) Please consider adding stationary turrets to all alien bases and big UFOs, so that they would be a significant defense and roadblock point around which the aliens could rally and have a defense. Mentarchs are described as having energy shielding, so maybe some sort of regenerating armor that is resistant to explosives is okay to add to tougher alien vehicles and/or soldiers? Air combat: The air combat hasn't changed that much as no techs were added to it, but developing air defense on Veteran+ has changed. As we don't have as much money at the start. we have less bases and Migs, and we still get Phantom and Marauders/Gemini techs rather quickly so there is no time to build-up Mig force. This immediately changes the value of the MIG engine upgrade - the upgrade is less effective when you have at most 2/3 Migs compared to when you have 6+. It's still a good investment, but to make it better, I suggest considering spacing out Phantoms and Marauders further and maybe changing Gauss Cannons to be less effective overall, especially against armor. It would also be a nice change if the Engine upgraded increased Mig's Payload by one so that they could carry two lasers Phantoms might be a good idea to appear around Observers/Abductors and giving them techs that put them at current tech level after having downed at least one Fighter Gemini seem like a good tech to appear around Cruiser/Harvesters era, after having downed at least one Interceptor as a pre-requisite. Most likely, Harvesters as those unlock best armor. Gauss cannons reign supreme against anything up to Harvester and it's very easy to get into Cruisers blind spot and down them. Overall, Cruisers don't feel to be a strong air combatant despite their supposed role as such, adding missiles from Interceptors (or equivalents) to them, might make them more challenging and interesting. End-game we still want to have Two Gemini armed with Fusion cannons and best armor plating as end-game pre-set for each squadron. Putting a Gauss cannon + two Fusion torpedoes leads to too much damage taken against single Harvester/Battleship and they can't have one Fusion Lance + Two torpedoes + armor. Without the armor, the plane takes too much damage and usually isn't repaired to 100% before next sortie I'd like to ask for a review of current air superiority missions - it's too easy to snipe the 3 attackers - just position as close as possible to one side and attack from there. Do a barrel roll immediately to evade the initial missile, watch how the alien "superiority" fighters are mowed down by twin cannons on Phantom or Gemini. As a possible solution - positioning the middle UFO to the back would prevent this tactic being as cheap. Please also consider spawning at least double the current Air superiority missions to draw out and exhaust player's air forces, so that having more planes would be of some use. Overall, I'd like very much to have an expanded air war component in the game with pilots being their own characters too, instead of being attached to the plane and would require living space and have their own roster. Right now, air combat is a means to having ground combat, so it's serves its function, but I really wish we had a more developed AC as that's something I'd like to play even more than GC - with AWACS/ECM packages, actual dynamically formed squadrons (Current Air combat window doesn't check if there are allied planes in the vicinity), more powerful UFOs, escorts and missile play, including alien air attacks on our bases. Thank you very much for the game.
    3 points
  15. It's the end of the year and time for our monthly Xenonauts 2 development update. A quick one this time, though, as I'm currently on holiday! Milestone 5 Release: The biggest news this month is that we released the initial Milestone 5 prototype on the Experimental branch on the 13th December. Although we did a lot of internal testing prior to releasing the prototype, it still ended up being very unstable (probably because we were still adding new features the night before release). As the studio closed for Christmas on the 20th Dec, we then worked long hours to try and get the prototype into a more stable state before the holidays. After five hotfixes (including a festive Christmas Eve update) we managed to deal with most of the critical issues, leaving the prototype in much better shape. However, we're already aware of a number of bugs that we need to look at in January. We'll also be adding a lot more content to Milestone 5 next month - as mentioned in previous updates, the initial prototype contains quite a lot of placeholder assets that we need to finish or replace before Milestone 5 is released on the standard branches. Thanks once again to everyone who has taken the time to report bugs or give us feedback. If anyone wants to offer further thoughts, we've created an official Milestone 5 feedback thread that can be used to keep it all in one place. UFO Delegation: One change in Milestone 5 proved controversial, which was the "UFO Delegation" feature. Basically, this is triggered after completing two Crash Sites of a particular UFO type, and it gives you a permanent monthly funding increase - but also imposes an Operations Point cost if you complete further Crash Site missions of that particular UFO type (there is a lore justification for this, but for the sake of brevity I won't explain it here). We introduced this change because the player shoots down a lot of UFOs during the course of the game, and unfortunately there's two opposing (but equally valid) playstyles regarding the Crash Sites produced. The first group of players will happily fight every single tactical mission that spawns on the Geoscape, which can easily be 30+ Crash Sites over the course of a single campaign (making the game much longer). The second group of players is happy to fight one or two Crash Sites of a particular UFO type to see the new content and unlock the associated research, but find it repetitive to do more than that. It's extremely difficult to balance the game to account for both these playstyles, as it either ends up too easy for the people who like to complete every Crash Site (as they have way too much money / resources) or too tedious and grindy for the people who prefer to complete only one or two per UFO (as they're forced to complete every crash site to avoid money / resource shortages). The delegation system was our attempt to support both sides by reducing the potential rewards for fighting lots of identical Crash Sites - players can still do it if they choose, but they gain less of an advantage than they did previously. We've already listened to community feedback on this point (the Operations Point cost was previously a Panic penalty) and we'll continue to do so. Much like we added options for people who wanted to disable turn timers on tactical missions, if necessary we're prepared to add an optional "extended" mode that fully removes delegation and is balanced around the player completing every Crash Site. However, this won't be possible until the game balance for the "normal" campaign is locked for final release in Milestone 6, as keeping an additional game mode updated while balance is still in flux would take up lots of development time. So if you see people getting upset about this topic, please point them at this post. I think most people will find the new system an improvement overall, but we'll continue to support those who would prefer to play without it. Conclusion: That's everything from me. The first of us will be back at work on Thursday and we'll be at full strength on Monday 6th, so expect the patches and updates for Milestone 5 to resume next week. I'd like to close by thanking everyone for your support during 2024 - this game genuinely wouldn't be possible without our community. I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and have a happy New Year!
    3 points
  16. Come on Milestone 5 My proudest faith Vivid in the eyes of the sweeper Tears were flowing inexplicably I vaguely remember the fusion cannon And the powerful Gemini Interceptor The aliens are all repulsed I don't get tired from staying up all night
    3 points
  17. I really think the doomsday phase is over too quickly and changes to the cleaner arc are for the worse. The whole doomsday mechanic is great and combining it to what we had before (regarding the cleaners) would have been great. Especially if earning operation points was somehow tied to completed missions or side objectives (computer hacking?) instead of flat daily income. Current cleaner arc feels way too linear with seemingly no player agency. Not sure how the cleaner progression system works under the hood, but it feels fully scripted and tied to the game calendar. This all ties into my top 1 issue of the MS5, which is that the game feels too rushed. Less cleaner missions and crash sites mean less xp and this causes difficulty to ramp up fast. New tech comes available so fast that I've barely even had time to test something when it's already becoming obsolete and every new mission is against new tougher aliens. Let the invasion simmer a bit from time to time and allow players to enjoy their new tech against lower tier enemies without penalizing them from playing the game (crash site delegation). 25 panic per crash site is harsh! Maybe make in incremental for subsequent crash sites like 10 > 20 > 30 or make it cost operation points instead of panic?
    3 points
  18. With September over it's once again time for our monthly Xenonauts 2 development update. Here's a quick rundown of the things we've been busy with this month! Milestone 5: Although we've continued to release hotfixes for Milestone 4 this month, our focus has been Milestone 5. If all goes well, we should (hopefully) have an early prototype of this update ready for testers to play later this month. Milestone 5 is taking a long time because we're making quite a few changes. Aside from the Phase system mentioned in the last update, we're also going to be testing a "strategic operations" system that gives the player more control over the Geoscape and opens up a greater number of strategic gameplay options. Essentially, the player gets a certain amount of "operation points" each day that can be spent on one-off missions to provide benefits (e.g. lowering Panic in a region, gaining an immediate cash injection, etc) or can be used to recruit Supporters in Geoscape regions who provide passive bonuses (e.g. increased monthly funding, reduced research / engineering times, etc). If you recruit all the Supporters in a region, you also gain a powerful Region Bonus for your organisation. Our goal for this system is to add a bit more strategic depth to the Geoscape, and provide players a way to reduce Panic in regions where they do not have aircraft or radar coverage. Choosing which types of Supporter and / or Region Bonuses players want to pursue should hopefully provide players some interesting strategic choices - we're looking forward to seeing what people think when they get to play it! New Missions / Terrain Tiles: Milestone 5 is intended to include the complete sequence of story missions, allowing players to play the entire campaign from start to finish. We've therefore been working on the final mission, creating some unique terrain tiles to reflect the setting in which it takes place. Similarly, we've also created some unique tiles for the areas where the player will encounter the alien leader species, the Eternals (the bridges of Battleship UFOs, and the command centers of the largest alien bases). We're also attempting to address feedback about mission variety becoming a bit stale towards the end of the game by adding two new story missions into the later stages of the campaign. These center around an orbital station the aliens have constructed high above Earth. This gives us an isolated environment where aliens outnumber humans, which is helpful because the presence of large numbers of enemy reinforcements means we can once again make use of some mission types that stopped making sense after the defeat of the Cleaners. We're still experimenting with these missions, but again we're hoping to have a basic version of them in the Milestone 5 prototype. Other Updates: We've also added various smaller systems to the game this month. Firstly, Xenonaut bases now cost varying amounts ($500k - $1.5m) depending on where they are placed. This means there's fewer places where placing a base is objectively a bad decision; the locations with optimal radar coverage are now also more expensive. It's worth bearing in mind this also affects the first base, meaning you'll have more starting funds available if you choose a cheaper location. In the tactical combat, we've added support for alien weapons capable of spawning clouds of (poison) gas on impact. This should allow us to equip certain alien species (probably Mantids) with weapons that behave a little differently from other alien units, while also making items such as the Rebreather a bit more useful. As you can see at the top of the screen, we've also continued to add new artwork to the game - the image above being tied to the Phase system and the updated storyline. Updated Game Editor: Over the last couple of updates I've mentioned our Game Editor upgrade, which is the first step towards having working modding tools for Xenonauts 2. Although work on the final modding tools won't start until after Milestone 5 is complete, this editor upgrade is now largely complete and will act as the foundation for our mod tools. That's it for now, I think - I had a few more smaller things I wanted to talk about, but this update has run long already so I'll leave it here. We'll post another development update once the Milestone 5 prototype is ready to play!
    3 points
  19. Shots go through a lot of things all the time. The trajectory is just a visual approximation. That said, shield bearers should provide considerably higher block value than a normal soldier (20%)
    3 points
  20. Hello everyone - with July finished, it's time for us to give our monthly developer update on what we've all been working on here at Goldhawk. Milestone 4 Although we released Milestone 4 last month, we've continued to patch it with bugfixes and balance updates. As many players found the game too punishing, we've been making the lower difficulty settings a bit more forgiving - and there's another update incoming (it's currently being tested on the Experimental branch) that will reduce the accuracy of enemies. Thanks to everyone who has given us feedback, and we'll continue to monitor it while we work on Milestone 5. Fixing bugs has also been relatively time-consuming this month. With many new players coming from both Tacticon and the recent Steam sale, we've been received a lot more bug reports than normal and we've made fixing them our priority (we released our 21st patch for Milestone 4 today). Some of these were obscure stability bugs, but many were small gameplay issues - e.g. yesterday we were fixing a bug where soldiers could lose 1 or 2 TU when their rotation was interrupted by spotting an enemy. Continuing to iron out these sort of small annoyances should improve the experience for everyone. Unfortunately, a large influx of new players combined with Milestone 4 being overly difficult and having some stability issues when first released means our Recent Reviews on Steam aren't as positive as they were previously. If you are enjoying the game and haven't left a review, please think about doing so - and if you've left a negative review, just know we're working hard on improving the game and we hope you'll give Xenonauts 2 another shot once it leaves Early Access! Air Combat UI One of the parts of the game we're working on for Milestone 5 is the air combat, with a particular focus on the visuals and the tutorial. This month we've done some initial work conceptingthe final UI style for the air combat, and even though we're still exploring the visuals (so please don't read too much into the information in the concept!) we thought we'd share it with you. The other area of the air combat that we'll be working on for Milestone 5 is the air combat section of the tutorial, as a lot of players bounce off the interception minigame because the game currently doesn't even explain the controls. Hopefully a better tutorial and improved visuals will allow more users to enjoy that section of the game. It's probably also worth mentioning that the Geoscape UI is also not yet final (which is why it still looks so similar to the first Xenonauts), and we'll be tackling that once the Air Combat is done. Rescue Civilians Another system we implemented in Milestone 5 this month was the ability to order civilians off the battlefield, as many members of our community have been requesting this since our Early Access launch. The system is simple - soldiers can order adjacent civilians to evacuate with a right-click, which causes the civilian to run back towards the player's dropship where they can flee off the map edge. By default civilians will skulk around the map and avoid enemies, but once they have been ordered to evacuate they will simply sprint as quickly as possible towards their evacuation zone. Make sure you have cleared a path for them if you want them to live! Game Editor / Modding Tools The final major system we've been working on this month is our internal game editor. Our Unity 2022 update means we've now got access to much more powerful plugins, which means we can replace our creaky old game editor with something that has better performance and more functionality. Why are we mentioning this? Not only will this allow us to work faster, but the game editor is also going to serve as the foundation for our mod tools. Once the work on our internal tools is complete we'll hopefully have taken a significant step towards having a working community mod editor. That's everything for this dev diary. Thanks for reading, and we'll see you next month!
    3 points
  21. I agree the game starts to get too easy when you get the final landing ship and 16 units. Even 12 is a lot. I'm not sure I want to have dynamic alien numbers @Xeferah proposed above, but larger UFOs certainly need a lot more aliens to keep the challenge levels high enough. I think part of the issue is that the game doesn't require me to adapt and learn new tactics to survive. I can keep playing almost exactly the same way from mission one to all the way through the game. This not only makes the game too easy, but unfortunately also too repetitive and - dare I say - a tad boring going through the mid-game. Enemies are the same, they use same AI routines, tactics and weapons (only numbers get higher) through out the game, mission objectives stay the same, and the game only scales it's numbers up. Levels and UFOs get larger, there's more aliens with more health that cause more damage. Meanwhile I also get more units that have more health and cause more damage, so in the long run, everything stays pretty much the same. Even the maps are pretty homogenous layout wise regardless of the biome or how far in the game you are. In X1 each biome felt more distinct with their own unique traits. (Some being very open while some were really cramped etc.) To up the stakes, aliens need more than just higher numbers. They need new weapons (burst, aoe, incediary, poison, wall penetrating, long range grenades, slow seeker missiles etc.) new tactics and AI with new tricks and special skills (psi, flying, teleporting etc.) to really force me to adapt my playstyle and to keep me on my toes. Currently I alresdy know pretty much what to expect, even when I raid a new UFO class or meet a new enemy type. @Chris, this is important to get right. EDIT: I agree Reapers are good for nothing and not scary at all.
    3 points
  22. So, I simply want to say thanks for making this game. I've sought after the experience I had as a child when I was playing UFO Enemy Unknown and I've never been able to satisfy that same feeling I had, playing that game... that is, until Xenonauts 2 came unto my radar. I hope you keep up this amazing work and continue adding to extend the campaign. Thanks again.
    3 points
  23. As @Chris told us in his latest monthly update: "Sound Design: Last month we brought an experienced sound designer onto the team to work on the game audio, as earlier in development we hadn't had the time and funds to give it the attention it deserved. Audio is sometimes an unappreciated part of game development, as the benefits of good sound effects can be quite subtle but are nonetheless very important." So Goldhawk is going to revamp some (all?) existing sound effects and also add some new ones while they are at it. This is of course very exciting, so let's make a list of sounds we want added or improved. Remember that UI and alien units sounds are already on the list. Needs better sfx: Human injury and death sounds Weapon sounds Needs new sfx: UFO ambiance (low frequency humming around and inside UFO's) Alien base ambiance (low frequency humming or something eerie and alien) Panicing units' screaming and crying Alien machinery proximity sfx (like abduction tubes, teleports, terror bombs etc.) Psionic effect sounds (mesmerize, psionic triangluation etc.)
    3 points
  24. Are any other alien races going to have grenades? Smoke, flash, gas, incendiary and other grenade types would certainly spice up the game.
    3 points
  25. 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 ?
    3 points
  26. 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.
    3 points
  27. 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.
    3 points
  28. 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.
    3 points
  29. You should be able to reclaim lost territory, or that is the point, as you would always lose the overall games, If their is a fight back you need to see the effect, and not just the consequences...!!!
    3 points
  30. Any conflict over territory, should have the ability to reclaim, other wise there is no point in it...!
    3 points
  31. 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! Broken Save Compatibility: This build contains some changes to the tech tree, so save games from 4.7.0 and earlier are not compatible with this update. If you'd like to continue playing 4.7.0 then it is available on our Experimental Legacy branches (or on GOG you can manually switch to an older build). Gameplay Updates: The Exosuit is now called the "Vanguard Battlesuit", and has updated research text that reflects the fact is is now the ultimate armour. The "War Machine" achievement now unlocks from equipping this rather than the Colossus. The Aerial Warfare research project now unlocks an "Aircraft Missiles" engineering project that grants unlimited quantities of the basic missiles and torpedoes, as many players did not realise earlier versions of Milestone 4 gave these items immediately on completion of the research. We've updated the click detection in the tactical combat so UFO hulls no longer block clicks, as it could sometimes be difficult to select soldiers near the UFO in earlier versions of Milestone 4. The cabbage field assets that were causing FPS drops have now been fixed (properly this time). We've also made some performance improvements to the tropical jungle tree clumps. New / improved game assets: Added new research text for the Colossus battlesuit. Added corpse analysis projects for the Cyberdrone. Added new artwork for the Andron and Cyberdrone corpses. Updated the Andron idle animations to look more robotic. Updated the animations for the Colossus battlesuit to make it look more robotic, and made some minor improvements to the model. Added a sound effect when you decomission an aircraft. Balance Changes: Wraith seemed disproportionately strong compared to the other alien races, so their HP values have been reduced by 20% and their Cloaking Field now reduces Accuracy by -1.5 per tile (rather than -2). Colossus now sets the user to 100 Strength, rather than giving them a +25 Str bonus. Mentarch Corpse Analysis II and both Andron Corpse Analysis projects now require fewer corpses to complete. Weapon balancing: HEVY Launcher 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). The scatter for missed shots has been updated to ensure they don't always catch the target in the blast area, particularly when shooting at long range. Slightly increased the fire costs on the shotgun (28% TU to 30%, and 40% to 43%). Reduced the range of the pistol from 12 to 10, but boosted hit bonus from +3% per tile to +4% per tile. It's therefore more accurate within 10 tiles, but less accurate beyond that. Bugfixes: Fixed several crashes related to Cyberdrones being killed. Fixed another crash related to throwing grenades. Fixed new suits of Colossus armour built after the Colossus Upgrade project still being the old non-upgraded Colossus version. Fixed Andron Praetorians not having visible weapons, having too little armour, and incorrectly looking like the basic Androns. Fixed the game playing some strange "weapon equip" sounds after throwing a grenade. Fixed research projects not showing a duration if the remaining time was between 23 and 24 hours. Fixed the Air Superiority achievement not unlocking correctly if you were using air combat autoresolve. Fixed the Angel incorrectly having an (oversized) F-16 icon in the air combat. Fixed another indestructible wall inside the Abductor UFO. Removed references to the integrated grenade launcher on the Colossus, as it can't actually use grenades,
    3 points
  32. 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! 4.6.0 Reversion & Save Compatibility: We released 4.6.0 on Friday and decided to revert back to 4.5.0 roughly 12 hours later due to stability issues in the save / load system. This update fixes those stability issues and will allow players to continue campaigns from 4.5.0, but unfortunately any saves from 4.6.0 will be broken (which they likely were anyway). Nonetheless, if anyone really wants to continue playing 4.6.0 then they can do so on our Experimental Legacy branches. Due to the reversion, these patch notes also contain the changes that were originally made in 4.6.0. Gameplay Updates: Added research text for the Andron Autopsy research project. Expanded the Funding Report so it shows the base funding level for each region, plus the modifier based on the region Panic. All research projects and missions that increase funding now list these values in terms of base funding (the amount you'll actually get varies based on Panic). UFOs now have a limit on the number of times they can land in a single mission, and fixed some issues to do with the take-off process that should help avoid the situation where a UFO spends days flying around the Geoscape while repeatedly taking off and landing. 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). Androns and other robotic enemies should now play an appropriately mechanical gib animation if they suffer overdamage. Updated the "construct building" sound on the Base screen. Added a sound effect when launching an aircraft onto the Geoscape. Balance Changes: Colossus Armour now reduces the wearer's Reflexes by 20. Sebillian Time Units increased to 75 (from 60), and Reflexes increased to 50 (from 25). Andron Strength increased to 80 (from 50), Reflexes decreased to 25 (from 50), and TU decreased to 55 (from 60). Stalker Armour cloaking field defensive bonus reduced to -1.5 enemy Accuracy per tile (from -2 per tile). You can no longer complete the Fusion Lance or Shielded Plating aircraft upgrade processes without completing the earlier projects in the sequence (making them consistent with the other aircraft upgrade projects). Bugfixes: Fixed a crash in the load / save system (fix for a bug introduced in 4.6.0). Fixed a crash in the air combat that could occur if you accidentally right-clicked on one of the Evasive Roll buttons. Fixed a crash in the tactical combat that would occur if you pressed Esc while hovering over a grenade tile. Fixed another crash that could occur during the AI turn. Fixed the Abduction mission on day ~55 incorrectly spawning twice. Fixed a visual issue on the soldier equip screen where items in the Primary / Secondary would appear doubled when equipping a new loadout (fix for a bug introduced in 4.6.0). Fixed alien / Cleaner weapons being loaded with duplicated ammo clips, making their weight incorrect if you picked them up in the tactical combat. Fixed the You Sunk My Battleship achievement not unlocking after shooting down a Battleship UFO (which won't arrive until Milestone 5). Fixed some indestructible walls in the Abductor UFO. Fixed an issue with a climbable cliff on a Polar map being too close to a building and causing the pathfinding to think units could walk through the air onto a building roof. Fixed some animation issues with the unarmed Colossus armour.
    3 points
  33. 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 Updates: Added extra logging to help us try and fix the issue where people are unable to place the initial base, as we're still trying to diagnose why this is affecting some people. Right-clicking a soldier in the Unassigned soldier list on the Soldier Equip screen will now automatically assign them to an available slot in the dropship (this is the inverse of the fast right-click unassignment you can do when viewing the list of assigned soldiers). There's now a sound effect when soldiers change armour or equip the jetpack / heavy armour modules on the Soldier Equip screen. Updated inventory pick up / drop sounds for the HEVY, Stun Baton and Combat Knife. 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. Updated the text on the Crash Report panel shown when you start the game up after a crash (previously it was incorrectly showing text from the Bug Report panel, which is similar but not the same). The Bug Report / Crash Report panels now limit the size of Unity crash logs in the zip files to a sensible size. Balance Changes: Added another wave of UFOs to the second month as there were long periods without any spawns. Fixed aircraft armour not being available in unlimited quantities. Battleships have been stripped out of the game after the campaign times out at day 320. They'll be arriving properly in our next major update! Bugfixes: Fixed the AI overwatch hang linked to Wraiths. Fixed a crash that could occur when arranging soldiers in the dropship prior to the Rescue Soldiers mission. Fixed a crash that could occur when attempting to dismiss soldiers. Fixed the Energy Knife not appearing in the Armory, but appearing in the base stores as a transferrable item (this also fixes a crash on the Stores screen due to transferring an infinite quantity item). Fixed Phantom / Gemini integrated aircraft armour not repairing (unless you also had an additional armour item equipped on the aircraft). Fixed an issue with the landed Abductor hull that allowed you to see through the hull and reveal the interior from certain angles. Fixed some incorrect information being displayed in the bottom right Hit Chance element for melee attacks. Alien Grenades and Alien Advanced Grenades are now marked as Junk item for sale purposes. Updated the Aerial Warfare research project text to reflect missiles / torpedoes are now free, rather than needing to be constructed. Fixed a typo in the Cleaner Agent interrogation text. Fixed a visual issue on one of the Western Town petrol station buildings.
    3 points
  34. Hello, I always equip my shield with stun guns and therefore had some alive aliens but I found it currently counter-productive in early games as I was lacking 1 corpse for the engineering task and can't use the alive monster to finish it. So will it be possible to kill one or had an option to use alive aliens to finish testing the weapons on them or is it too cruel to think of using them as living bullet tester ? And speaking about capturing alive, will there be a non lethal weapon on MARS or ARES units ? Thanks for the game so far.
    3 points
  35. I'm starting to enjoy the game quite a bit but I can't help but feel a bit concerned regarding how rudimentary and poor the game's logic still is when it comes to what it considers as cover. See the image below, my soldier is aiming over some waist high objects at a Cleaner. The box is next to him so the game goes "Ok, you're good there, no way that's blocking the shot oh but what's this? There is a waist high wall adjacent to that box and you are NOT next to it therefore, it might block your shot". It's just a bit frustrating that even with the game's upgrade to 3D from X1, though obviously an immense improvement, there is still stuff like this that just doesn't make any sense and pulls me out of the experience. If the Cleaner in the image was crouching then maybe I'd see why there'd be a chance for the shot to get blocked but he's standing up 2 feet away from my soldier and he's completely exposed from the torso up, the box nor the wall should count as cover. Are there any improvements or fixes being worked on for things like this? Or is it just going to be something I have to put up with as long as I play this game? I think a basic fix would be to somehow take into account distance and whether or not the target is crouched behind partial cover objects. It might already work like this, I don't know, but I think waist high objects should only provide half their cover bonus if the target is standing, just to alleviate the issue a bit (So that in the situation depicted in the image below for example, there would at least only be a 20% chance of the shot getting blocked rather than a whopping 40%). When it comes to the distance, I think waist high objects' cover bonus should vary highly depending on the distance between the shooter and the target. Obviously if I'm standing next to their cover, it should work as it does now, no way the shot is getting blocked. But I don't think it needs to immediately be considered a full low cover block the instant there is an extra tile in the way. It should be like a 5% chance for the shot to get blocked, then increment that slowly the larger the distance. I think overall that would make low cover way more interesting and also only reserve shots blocked by low cover in those types of situations as utter catastrophes rather than common occurrences. (With the stuff I've mentioned here, the situation below would make the waist high wall a 2.5% chance that my shot gets blocked, 5% divided by 2 due to the target standing). I hope this feedback makes some sense and I hope I didn't come off as too presumptuous, I'm not a game dev of course so maybe you guys have some good reasons for why things work the way they do but I personally feel like the changes I've mentioned above would make the game way more satisfying and "logical". Thanks for taking the time to read!
    3 points
  36. Hello everyone - we've reached the end of the month, so it's time for another progress update on Xenonauts 2! Milestone 3 Release: The biggest news in February was the release of Milestone 3, which launched in conjunction with a Steam promotion and contained many significant upgrades and improvements to the game. We were concerned there might be stability issues arising from our migration to Unity 2022, but in general the release went smoothly. This is in no small part due to the many people who helped us by testing the build on the Experimental branch, so a huge thankyou for that! However, most of our time over the past couple of weeks has still been spent fixing bugs reported by the commmunity. Over the past couple of weeks we've released a couple of patches onto the Experimental branch, and if testing doesn't reveal any further bugs then we'll release them onto the main Steam / GOG branches some time next week. Milestone 4 Planning & Harvester UFO: Our next big update will be Milestone 4, which we're expecting to have ready for early testing on the Experimental branch in roughly six weeks. This will be another major content update centered around the introduction of a new UFO, in this case the Harvester - the penultimate alien craft in the game (the Battleship is the largest UFO and is due in Milestone 5). We're therefore already working on the content necessary for this. Aside from the obvious work required for adding and balancing a new UFO, there's quite a bit of extra work required here because the Harvester is so much larger than the Abductor and Cruiser UFOs that it requires an entirely new set of maps. We're aiming to have three new maps per biome for this UFO, which means a total of about 25 new maps will also be added in Milestone 4. Androns & Updated Aliens: Milestone 4 will also see the re-introduction of the Andron alien race. We removed these prior to our Early Access launch because the models and animations looked pretty bad, but we've now created a new set of models / animations for them. I think they've come out well, and are now some of the best-looking aliens in the game. In gameplay terms these remain heavily armoured, fearless robotic enemies, but unlike in previous incarnations they now carry standard alien weapons (either rifles or machineguns) rather than having an integrated cannon arm - this makes it much easier for players to gauge how much threat any Andron unit poses, because you can now actually see the gun they're using. We're also likely to revisit a few of the existing aliens before Milestone 4 arrives and either retexture them or update their animations, as some of the aliens definitely look better than others right now! Colossus Battlesuit: The most important research project unlocked off the Harvester is the Colossus Battlesuit, the "ultimate" suit of armour available to the player, so this is something else we'll be looking into this month. We want this to be a powerful asset that offers exceptional protection, but not something you want to equip on literally every soldier in your team - so it needs some disadvantages to go alongside its strengths. I've not yet decided exactly how this will be done yet, so hopefully we'll have more details for you in the next update once we've had a chance to test some of our ideas! That's all from me for now. As always, thanks for reading, and I'll be writing another update at the end of next month!
    3 points
  37. I'd like to have few improvements to the end of mission stats screen. Alloys and alenium should be in their own paragraph under Recovered materials above the Recovered items we have now. Changes in panic levels should also be on display. The effects of your actions are often left a bit vague. Unit specific kill numbers.
    3 points
  38. 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! Balance Changes & Gameplay Updates: Added an additional five waves of UFOs after the game content ends, so players have more time to experiment with their new equipment if they want (unfortunately this change may only take effect for new campaigns created in 3.0.10 onwards). The "ghost" soldiers that are added to your squad on the Soldier Rescue mission will now fill empty slots in your dropship if possible, rather than always going in slots 7-9. The extraction region for the dropships is now a bit more generous - it includes the side doorways etc, rather than only counting the interior of the cargo hold. Bugfixes: Attempted to a fix an immediate lockup some players were getting when booting up the game. Fixed doors being opened under the shroud incorrectly being visible again. Fixed the conversation not triggering when you see The General for the first time in the ATLAS Base mission. Fixed players on non-1080p screens potentially getting duplicate radar circles when placing new bases towards the edge of the map. Fixed players being able to assign wounded soldiers to the dropship via the assignment menu that is generated when double-clicking an empty dropship slot. Fixed players being able to bypass the dropship vehicle limit using the same assignment menu mentioned above. Fixed the green deployment tiles still being present if you loaded a save game from Turn 1 in a mission that has a deployment phase. Fixed the heal animation from the automed unit (and possibly also Sebillian regeneration) being incorrectly offset. Fix text rows displaying much smaller / larger than intended when clicking and dragging them (e.g. in the engineering queue, or a soldier in the dropship soldier list) unless you were playing on a 1080p screen.
    3 points
  39. Our Milestone 3 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 2 is still available (instructions on how to do so here). This initial version of Milestone 3 is an "developer" build with additional logging that causes slower performance and occasional flashes of red debug text while you play. We'll switch back to a normal "release" build without this extra logging by the end of the week. We've decided to do this because we want to ensure anyone suffering issues from our upgrade to Unity 2022 can easily provide us the information to fix them - we'll be watching the forums / discord / Steam forums carefully for feedback and bug reports, so please let us know if you encounter any bugs or other problems! As we've made a LOT of changes to the game in this update, I'll start by highlighting the most important improvements here with a little developer commentary. New Content: Additional content is always nice, and Milestone 3 contains the new Cruiser UFO which unlocks a lot of new technology for the player to play with! Although is still not possible to complete the campaign (that will be Milestone 5 as there's two more UFOs yet to come), the playable time for the campaign has been extended significantly. The playable time for the campaign has been extended to 260 days (up from 180 days in Milestone 2), during which time the Cruiser UFO will begin to spawn. This contains or unlocks several new pieces of content: Cruiser UFO (with two interior layout variants) Alien Fusion Weapons Xenonaut Fusion Weapons The Gemini interceptor The Pegasus dropship The ARES (an improved version of the MARS) Unity 2022: Players have been requesting two major improvements that were struggling to deliver on our outdated version of Unity - faster load times, and proper support for borderless windowed mode. We therefore upgraded to Unity 2022 so we could give you those things in Milestone 3! Borderless Fullscreen mode should now be properly supported in the settings menu. The monitor resolution settings are now handled natively by Unity rather than through our own code so please report any strange behaviour as a bug so we can look into it (particularly if you have multiple monitors or some kind of unusual hardware setup). Load times should now be reduced by about 30% across all sections of the game, we're hoping to reduce this by another 10%-20% in Milestone 4 (NOTE: this won't be apparent for the next few days, as all the extra debug logging from a "developer" build cancels out the improved loading speed). The tactical mission briefing is now also shown on the loading screen, rather than at the start of the mission, which gets you into the action faster once the load is complete! AI Improvements: Many players found the primitive AI in earlier versions of the game a bit immersion-breaking or easy to exploit. We've made significant AI upgrades in Milestone 3 that mean enemies should be more intelligent and civilians should be less suicidal. We're continuing to work on this, but personally I think a major improvement is already visible. We've upgraded the general decision-making of the AI, and also addressing various specific issues including: Civilians are now much less suicidal. Melee units (especially Reapers) should make better decisions. AI units will no longer just stand in fire / smoke until they die or pass out. The AI will now open doors even if the tile on the other side is blocked by another unit, allowing them to shoot at Xenonauts camping doors. Cleaner reinforcements will now act more aggressively on most maps, and move quickly towards your dropship / extraction area. Bleeding Wound Healing & Bleeding Aliens: Community feedback suggested it was unfair that aliens did not suffer bleeding wounds like Xenonauts did - so now they do (although Sebillians heal them immediately). We've also added a heal chance to all Bleeding Wounds, so they're no longer a guaranteed death sentence if there's no Medikit nearby. Aliens now suffer Bleeding Wounds when they take damage in the same way that Xenonauts do. However, each Bleeding Wound now has a 25% chance of healing and disappearing after it inflicts damage at the end of the turn. Unconscious units will now also continue to suffer damage from any bleeding wounds they suffered while conscious, and may die as a result. Usability Improvements: Although Milestone 3 was focused on adding new content, we also added a couple of usability features that were frequently requested by the community to make soldier management and item management easier. Pre-Mission Soldier Equip / Arrangement - we've added a button on the pre-mission Soldier Equip screen that allows easy access to the screen where you can set the positions of your soldiers within the dropship, allowing you to easily switch back and forth between these screens prior to launching a dropship. "Sell Junk Items" button - we've also added a button on the base stores screen that will set all "junk" items (e.g. items that are not used in research / engineering projects) to sell at maximum quantity. We're likely to expand this system in future. Abduction missions: Abduction missions have been updated to address player concerns. They are now explained better, and no longer end immediately when the timer expires - but the Panic gain or reduction of the mission is now tied to the number of freed civilians, so the result should feel less arbitrary (now the civilian AI is improved, you're also expected to protect the civilians and you will get reduced rewards if they die). Abduction missions no longer end immediately when the timer expires and the abduction tubes disappear; the mission will now continue until all alien forces are eliminated (effectively these are now deathmatch missions with an additional time-limited objective). The timer on abduction tubes has been reduced by 2 turns (from 8 turns to 6 turns). There's now a teleport animation when the tubes disappear. You still gain Alien Alloys for each abduction tube you disable, but the Panic increase or reduction from the mission depends on how many of the 10 civilians you rescue: If you don't attempt the mission at all, you get +20 local panic +2 panic for each civilian remaining in an abduction tube when the timer runs out and the tubes teleport away -2 panic for each civilian freed from an abduction tube that survives the mission +0 panic for a civilian freed from the tube who is killed before the end of the mission Data Raid missions: These are the missions where you have to capture Data Sticks from the Cleaner office. Relatively minor changes here, just some UI improvements and a tweak to the objectives that means if a soldier carrying Data Sticks is killed you don't necessarily have to send another soldier to recover the Data Sticks from their body if you don't want to (this was mostly done for reasons of lore consistency). Victory is triggered off the number of computers you have interacted with (i.e. sabotaged), rather than how many Data Sticks you have brought back to the dropship. We've added a new UI element for this mission that shows how many Data Stick items are being carried by each soldier. The objectives now show how many turns remaining until the enemy reinforcements start appearing. Enemy reinforcements timer reduced by 1 turn, unless the mission is encountered in month 1. Extract VIP missions: The changes made to the Extract VIP mission have all been around player convenience; making it more obvious where you need to go and when the enemy reinforcements will be arriving, etc. At the start of the mission, the camera shows the empty dropship you are trying to reach before panning to the starting positions of your soldiers. The VIP is now automatically added to your team at the start of the mission (rather than the player having to click on them). The VIP now has 50 TU rather than 40 TU. Enemy reinforcements timer reduced by 1 turn (from 9 to 8) The objectives now show how many turns remaining until enemy reinforcements start appearing. Soldier Rescue missions: Not all players understood that you were expected to leave 3 free slots in your dropship on this mission so you had space to pick up the 3 soldiers that needed to be rescued. To make this more obvious, we've added placeholder soldiers in the dropship that fill these slots (this also means you can view their stats prior to the mission). Added "ghost" soldiers to the dropship when launching towards the Soldier Rescue mission. Updated the logic about which soldiers are recovered if the player does not leave those 3 free slots in their dropship. The game will now always pick living soldiers over dead soldiers (irrespective of their origin), and will prefer your existing soldiers to those you are supposedly trying to rescue. Eliminate VIP mission: On Eliminate VIP missions, the camera will now pan to the VIP and show a message reading "VIP Sighted" when you see the target. It will also show a "VIP Eliminated" or "VIP Stunned" message at the appropriate points. The objectives now show how many turns remaining until enemy reinforcements start appearing. MINOR BALANCE CHANGES: Soldier Progression: We found that soldiers were becoming too strong too quickly in previous builds and this problem was just getting worse as we extended the length of the campaign. We've therefore taken several steps to slow down soldier progression a little: Starting values for soldier attributes are now capped at 65 (previously 70) Starting soldiers are now Privates rather than Corporals. Reduced the speed at which soldiers gain combat experience to about 60% of the previous level. The training speed of the Training Room has been halved (both the starting value and the gain from completing Interrogation projects). However, the soldiers you can rescue on the Soldier Rescue missions now have +3 to all their base stats, in addition to the +3 to all stats they get for being a Sergeant rather than a Private. Strategic Layer Balancing: Duration of crash sites reduced from 72 hours to 32 hours. Reduced the completion time of the initial research project, so you can now begin work on the new research immediately after winning the ATLAS Base mission. Delayed the first possible alien retaliation mission, as it would frequently spawn in the same wave as the first Destroyer (meaning the player had often just fought a battle when it happened and had a damaged squad). Reduced the number of Cleaners in the Cleaner Base to make it a bit more manageable if you manage to unlock it early. Wraith Destroyers now contain 1 fewer enemy. Increased Alloys gained from Observers, Abductors and Cruiser UFOs by 50%. Increased Alenium / Alloys gained from Alien Base missions by roughly 100%. Warden Armour now requires 6 Alloys to build (up from 4). Accelerated Weapons now require more Alloys to build, with the most expensive weapons requiring 6 (up from 4). Laser weapons now require more Alloys and Alenium to build, with the most expensive requiring 6 of each (up from 4). Swapped the Alloys and Alenium cost of advanced building upgrades; these generally now require twice as much Alenium as they do Alloys. Construction time of Radar Array reduced from 20 days to 15 days. Training Center building increased in cost from $250k to $350k. Doubled the duration of Corpse Analysis II engineering projects. Tactical Combat balancing: It is no longer possible to see doors opening or closing under the fog of war, as this made the position of alien units very obvious. These doors will now only visually update when one of your units sees them. Sectons now trigger their Psionic Triangulation accuracy bonus from being near Psyons, not by being near other Sectons. However, if the Psyon is killed (and no other Psyon is nearby) the Secton will now immediately panic and lose all remaining TU. Using a healing item will no longer trigger enemy reaction fire. Medikit weight increased to 25 (from 15). Reaper Zombies now have 70HP (up from 40HP). Mentarch can no longer crouch or be suppressed. Slight Accuracy reduction on MARS Cannon weapons. Alien melee weapons can no longer gib units through overdamage. Enabled reaction fire on the various alien melee weapons (mantids, sebillians, reapers, mentarch, zombies). Air Combat balancing: Alien missiles in the air combat now have a 0.35x damage against units that can do evasive roll; this means alien Fighters and alien Interceptors are now a bit weaker when autoresolving air combat battles. Reduced construction cost of missiles / torpedoes by 20% Reduced upkeep for Angel from $100k to $75k per month Reduced upkeep for Phantom from $150k to $120k per month Bomber UFO weapons updated. The main cannon now fires faster and destroys armour more quickly, and the secondary weapon now has a much smaller fire arc but can rotate to cover the rear and sides (but not the front) of the UFO. Unescorted Bombers are therefore now weaker against agile planes like the Phantom, but keeping away from the rotating turret can be more challenging if there are escort UFOs present. Destroyer UFO increased to 200HP (from 175). Fighter UFO turn rate increased by 50%. Fighter Cannon armour destruction increased to 2-5 (from 0-3). Abductor UFO increased to 275HP (from 250). Abductor Cannon range increased by 10%, armour destruction increased from 1-3 to 3-5, and reload time reduced from 0.75 sec to 0.5 sec. Projectile speed slowed down by 33%. Alien Interceptor Missiles armour destruction increased to 3-7 (from 0-4). MINOR GAMEPLAY / CONTENT CHANGES: Added a number of new maps for Terror Sites / ATLAS Base / Cleaner Data Raid / Convoy Ambush / Rescue VIP missions. Added new 3D models for the Cleaner Accelerated Rifle, Accelerated Shotgun, Accelerated LMG, Alloy Shield, Stun Gun and Stun Baton. Added new 2D inventory tile art for the melee knife and the HEVY Smoke Rounds. Added Fusion weapons to the game. For any Kickstarter backers who saw the old incarnation of these weapons, we've updated the designs of the Shotgun and LMG and also given each weapon a unique ammo battery design. Added proper melee animations for the Mantid and Sebillian units. Units now play an injury sound and injury animation when struck with a stun weapon that does not inflict damage. Soldiers should now hide their carried weapon when performing their ladder climb animation. It is now possible to use any combination of uppercase and lowercase letters in soldier / aircraft / base names. Moved a check that was preventing a player launching an empty dropship from the Launch Aircraft screen to the pre-mission Soldier Equip screen instead (i.e. after you've had a chance to fill the dropship with soldiers). Stopping chance 0% objects are no longer highlighted on the fire path. Added a basic sort order system to the soldier loadout profiles. Units that can crush terrain now do not crush an open double door when they pass through it (most noticable inside UFOs and in Alien Base missions). The MARS now shows a custom "cannot interact" cursor when hovering over a mission objective item (like a computer desk) that soldiers can interact with but vehicles cannot. Double clicking an empty slot on the Soldier Equip screen will bring up the soldier assignment menu directly, so you don't need to select the slot and click the button any more. Clicking a weapon in the soldier inventory on the Soldier Equip screen will select it in the Armory, allowing you to add more ammo quickly (let us know if this ends up being annoying). Set the large rock mesas in the Polar and Desert maps to be significantly tougher, and added proper destruction states to the Polar one. Updated the Soldier Equip screen so items in the inventory and in the base armory panel now both have a slight highlight on mouse hover. There's now a small animation when soldier pawns switch places in the dropship (on the Aircraft screen), which makes it easier to understand what's happening. Added tooltip description text to the Stalker Armour and Exosuit Armour. Improved the performance for the Farm cabbage fields, as some players were experiencing FPS drops there. Updated the sort order on several items in the soldier armory and in the base stores so things are grouped more sensibly. Abduction tubes and the various Stealth unit shaders (Wraiths / Stealthsuit) no longer draw under the shroud. Security guards in the dockyards now have little hats so they don't look quite so much like Cleaners. BUGFIXES: Fixed a crash that could occur if you tried to run a building upgrade project when having a large number of buildings (most commonly occurred with the Gauss Battery Upgrade project). Fixed a bug where the text on UFO information pop-ups was not being displayed for users playing in Chinese / Japanese / Korean. Fixed a bug where Unassigned soldiers are not showing certain items on their paperdoll image on the Soldier Equip screen (jetpacks, MARS weapons, etc). Fixed soldiers sometimes not being removed from the dropship even when reduced to below 50% HP Fixed a bug where the Autofill Dropship button on the Soldier Equip screen could bypass the dropship vehicle limit. Fixed reloading a weapon in the tactical inventory not playing the reload sound. Fixed the tactical camera getting stuck at a weird angle if you were halfway through rotating it and something else tried to take control of the camera (sighting an enemy, etc). Fixed a bug where Senty Guns were incorrectly showing on the Soldier Equip screen in secondary bases (they should only appear before Base Defence missions, as that's the only time they can be used). Fixed a bug where the soldier paperdoll could get blurred if a certain combination of items were equipped. Fixed a bug where the soldier portrait could disappear on the dropship soldier arrangement screen. Fixed the Autofill Drosphip button not appearing immediately if you used RMB to unassign a soldier from a full dropship. Fixed the bug where grenades could get stuck displaying a 0% hit chance. Fixed a bug where units could stand in mid-air at the top of a ladder. Fixed a bug where you could place two soldiers into the same destination tile if one of them was using a jetpack. Fixed a bug where unconscious units could not be revived with a medikit, Fixed a bug where the shoot/move preview hit calculations was not accurately updating the value for Wraith Cloaking Field based on the new soldier location being previewed. Fixed a bug where TU values could end up with a decimal point after a Berserk action. Fixed a bug where suppressing an enemy unit with reaction fire would not stop them finishing their planned movement. Fixed a bug where crouching during the pre-battle deployment phase on cerrtain missions cost TU, and did not refund it if you stood up. Fixed a bug where the crouch keyboard shortcut ("C") did not work during the pre-battle deployment phase. Fixed a bug where the combat shield was not disappearing after being destroyed. Fixed a bug where certain weapons could not be picked up from the ground after being dropped. Fixed certain objective items (mostly the computer desks) being incorrectly rotated in some situations. Fixed the Bleeding Wounds counter being displayed vertically if the unit has more than 10 Bleeding Wounds. Fixed the open door mouse cursor remaining active on the menu if you press Esc while hovering over a door. Fixed a visual issue where the green deployment area tiles could sometimes remain after the end of the deployment phase. Fixed throwing a grenade / flare onto the roof of a building causing windows on the floor below to shatter. Fixed some visual issues with the restaurant sign in the Western Town terror maps. Fixed a number of bugs with the Ultimate Power achievement (bring all Colonels to a mission). Fixed a few types of aliens not correctly showing the red obstruction shading when they are hidden behind an object. Fixed a minor issue with fire paths where shooting round corners was more permissive if you were shooting through an adjacent unit. Fixed a typo in the Electroshock Pistol name. Removed some incorrect tooltips from the Mod Manager panel.
    3 points
  40. 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! Unfortunately this update breaks saves from prior to the previous build (3.0.5). We do try to avoid this happening where possible but sadly it is sometimes necessary with Experimental builds! Gameplay Changes: Updated some of the Abduction missions so now they all give +20 Panic if you fail / ignore them, and the Panic reduction is always based purely on how many civilians you rescue. Slightly reduced the Accuracy on the MARS Cannon weapons, with the cheapest fire mode having a greater Accuracy reduction but also a slight reduction in TU fire cost. You now get a small notification when an AI unit dies from bleeding damage (as it wasn't always obvious what happened). Alien melee weapons can no longer gib units through overdamage. There's now a small animation when soldier pawns switch places in the dropship (on the Aircraft screen), which makes it easier to understand what's happening. Bugfixes: Fixed some players suffering extremely long load times. Fixed a crash that could occur performing certain movements with a jetpack. Fixed the tutorial not booting up properly. Fixed cancelling a research project causing it to be temporarily duplicated in the project list. Fixed an issue where wounded soldiers (below 50% HP) would be incorrectly classed as injured (above 50% HP), and allowed to remain in the dropship. Fixed several places where shelf tiles were incorrectly blocking movement in the Data Raid office maps, and one place where a parking bay was blocked by an invisible lorry. Fixed the ATLAS Base mission conversation when you spot The General not being triggered correctly. Fixed the tracks on the MARS continuing to spin after it stopped moving. Fixed the MARS sometimes remaining visible after being destroyed. Fixed the deployment zone green tiles sometimes remaining in place for the whole mission instead of disappearing. Fixed Wraiths flickering when running. Fixed occasional white flashes as the soldier portrait images loaded in on the tactical UI. Fixed the Autofill Drosphip button not appearing immediately if you used RMB to unassign a soldier from a full dropship. Fixed the Custom difficulty button on the New Campaign screen not being highlighted when you used custom campaign parameters. Fixed the base navigation menu not updating correctly when you change base. Fixed a typo in the Electroshock Pistol name. Fixed the objective item indicator on the tactical UI soldier minitabs having the incorrect tooltip, and being unable to display double-digit numbers. Fixed the date of death on the Soldier Memorial Screen using the language detected from your operating system location, not the language set in-game.
    3 points
  41. The whole Cleaner arc seems like a missed opportunity with the cool new Doomsday mechanic and all. It just doesn't work very at the moment where I can just use 50op every third day to keep it from rising. Op's regenerate so fast it makes the doomsday clock almost completely trivial. (Unless you really mess up multiple missions) It'd be so cool to have a proper Cleaner phase where the game constantly spawns cleaner themed missions where player could choose which missions to take. Each mission would grant different rewards but the player wouldn't have time to do them all. Missions could give rewards like: OP points (new mission type) Doomsday clock reduction (Abduction) New recruits (soldier rescue) Money (ambush) Cleaner intel towards HQ reveal (Intel gather) Remove infiltrator (VIP elimination) Gain a supporter (VIP escort) There could be simultaenous pack of 2-5 missions spawned every week with only 24-48h response times so the player really needs to think what rewards are needed and what missions can be reached in time. These missions could have smaller scale and easier difficulty to encourage player to save time by chain missions together without returning to base. This would add another gameplay layer of time optimization and would also solve the forever-issue of no one playing night missions.
    2 points
  42. That's just the Guardian armour - it unlocks off Destroyer UFOs / UFO Hull Plating research.
    2 points
  43. There's going to be a production update later today - I just didn't get around to it on Friday and then it was the weekend.
    2 points
  44. We've now released another stability fix for Milestone 4 that fixes several more bugs and balance issues (mostly related to enemy accuracy being too high). We'll continue to collect player feedback and bug reports and tweak / fix things as necessary while we work on Milestone 5. Balance / Gameplay Changes: Units now only rotate when suffering damage during the enemy turn. This avoids situations where soldiers lack the TU needed to complete their planned move after taking damage from enemy overwatch fire, as they need to turn back to face the direction they want to travel. 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 +25HP). It is therefore still excellent for healing Bleeding Wounds without spending TU, but a few Medikits are now required if you want to heal badly wounded soldiers quickly. 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. Transfer item quantities are now preserved when you switch the destination base on the Transfer Items screen. Bugfixes: If the game cannot write to the save directory, it should now display an error screen instructing you how to set a new save path rather than just crashing. Fixed a bug where soldiers could lose a few TU after having their movement interrupted when spotting an enemy (they were being charged for the full planned rotation, but only rotate as far as was necessary to spot the alien). Fixed a bug where soldiers and equipment were incorrectly being recovered after losing a mission (which could cause soldiers to survive the battle despite their corpses being outside the dropship / recovery area). Fixed an issue where soldiers on roofs / higher levels could often not find a valid move path if they were being ordered to move more than 10 tiles. 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. Fixed a purple error texture on the damaged state of some of the sandbags in the ATLAS Base map. Made the abduction tubes slightly shorter, so they fit within the shroud of a single tile.
    2 points
  45. 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.
    2 points
  46. 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.
    2 points
  47. Thanks. We'll worry about what happens after release once we get there though
    2 points
  48. I'm up to 932 hours of watching lizards and flying brains shoot my poor troops as they try to save the world. My appreciation to the developers & supporters; the game has continually improved, and some of the tactical User Interfaces are the best I've seen. My main wish at this point is for civilians to head for the chopper area as opposed to running back into buildings I know contain aliens, etc. Really breaks suspension of disbelief. I can see an occasional panicked civilian heading towards the known enemy, but it would usually make much more sense for civilians to hide in buildings or try to stay behind troops or head for the chopper for a hoped-for ride.
    2 points
  49. Hello everyone - this month's update covers both December and January, as I was out of the office over new year. We've all returned refreshed from our Christmas break and we hope you all had a good festive season too! Milestone 3: The biggest piece of news is that Milestone 3 is out on our Experimental branches for testing, with the goal of releasing the final version of Milestone 3 onto the default Steam / GOG / Epic branches on February 19th. There's an extensive changelog for Milestone 3 which you can read here, but this new build ticks off a number of content items on our roadmap: the Cruiser UFO, both alien and human Fusion Weapons, the third interceptor aircraft and third dropship aircraft, plus the ARES (an upgraded hovering version of the MARS). We're currently hotfixing the game on a daily basis to remove crashes and AI hangs encountered by our community, and we'll be focusing on smoothing out the game balance once the worst of the bugs are dealt with. Unity 2022 - Load Times & Borderless Fullscreen: The biggest single task we've completed on over the past couple of months has been upgrading to Unity 2022, which Milestone 3 now runs on. This has been quite disruptive, but worthwhile - the update has enabled us to reduce load times by ~30% across all parts of the game, and we're hoping to further improve that to a ~50% reduction in the coming months. The game now also properly supports Borderless Fullscreen mode, allowing you to freely Alt-Tab without issues (something a LOT of people in the community had been requesting). Players should encounter fewer issues with multi-monitor setups than before too. The upgrade should also help speed up development somewhat. I won't bore you with the technical details, but code compiles much faster in 2022 relative to our older version and there's much more powerful debug tools available, so we'll collectively be spending a lot less time twiddling our thumbs while we wait to test our work. AI Upgrades: The other major task we've been working on is AI improvements. The AI now has access to more information about the battlefield around it, and it's making much more sensible decisions in combat about where to position its units and how to attack. However, we're still keeping a close eye on the AI because further tweaks or bugfixes may be required - even minor issues in the AI settings can cause AI units to do bizarre things in certain situations. But the good news is that these issues should now be easy to fix, and it's just a case of testing the game enough to find them all. Specific AI improvements have been also made to the civilians (who were famously suicidal in older builds) and for melee aliens like Reapers, which had been struggling to attack effectively. New Assets: As well as the new content I already mentioned has been added for Milestone 3, we've been adding lots of new maps to the game and have also added a significant number of new 3D models for various soldier weapons that had previously been using placeholders. The research art for the new research projects is also largely complete and should be finished by the 19th. We're also starting to work on updates that won't appear until Milestone 4. Kickstarter backers will remember pre-Early Access versions of the game contained the Andron alien race, but they were removed due to issues with their models and animations. The updated Androns have now been designed and are in the process of being modelled up so we can reintroduce them in future. This is part of a wider task to create additional variants of existing aliens. The Wraiths in particular don't have enough 3D model variants to represent their different ranks, so we've designed a more heavily armoured Wraith variant that will appear in the later UFOs, and also designed a proper uniform for the basic "civilian" Wraith you encounter acting as a pilot or engineer inside UFOs (currently they just appear naked). Conclusion: Overall, it's been a productive couple of months for the team despite the disruption of the Christmas holidays. The Unity 2022 upgrade and the AI upgrades were both large tasks so it's nice to have them done, and I think Milestone 3 is going to be another significant upgrade for the game - once testing has ironed out all the kinks. Thanks for reading, and please let us know if you encounter any bugs or issues when playing on the Experimental branch!
    2 points
  50. @Chris, I experienced the same bug again. This time I have the final turn save. Hope this helps! After completing the mission, Elias Saarinen is in the Skyhawk with 37% health. auto_groundcombat_turn_11_start-373.json auto_strategy_after_combat-94.json
    2 points
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