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I was defending my base, and I stopped to get in a little extra target practice at the training facility when I noticed something about the firing range...

This update is also only accessible by switching to our Experimental branches (instructions on how to do so here) - although note they have slower load times and worse performance than normal builds due to the extra logging they contain! This is our first test build for Milestone 3, and we're releasing it to test for stability issues that may have occurred as a result of us upgrading the game to use a newer version of Unity. The new content is included but still unpolished at this stage; we'll be finishing that off and starting to test that properly next week (assuming there's no widespread technical issues as a result of the Unity upgrade). KEY CHANGES: New Content: The playable time for the campaign has been extended to 260 days (from 180 days), 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) At present we only have research text / art for some of these projects; the remainder will be finished by the end of next week. Unity 2022: We've upgraded Xenonauts 2 to run on Unity 2022, which is a much more modern version of Unity than we were previously using. We've tested the game pretty heavily at this end and fixed most of the bugs we encountered, but now we need to see how the game works on a wider selection of hardware. Please give the game a test and let us know if you encounter any issues! Borderless Fullscreen: Borderless Fullscreen mode should now be properly supported in Xenonauts 2. The monitor resolution settings are now handled natively by Unity 2022 rather than through our own code so we'd appreciate it if people can give this feature a test and see if it is working as intended, particularly if you have multiple monitors or some kind of unusual hardware setup. Faster Loading: Load times should now be reduced by about 30% across all sections of the game, and we're hoping to reduce this by another 10%-20% in Milestone 4. However, please remember that this is an Experimental build and it has lots of extra logging that slow load times - for now, this is likely to cancel out any improvements compared to the "normal" build on the default branches! We've also taken the opportunity to move the tactical mission briefing onto the loading screen, rather than showing it at the start of the mission. This gives you something to read while the mission loads, and allows you to get into the action faster once the load is complete! AI Improvements: We've spent a lot of time working on the AI for this update, improving both the general decision-making of the AI and addressing various specific issues that have been affecting gameplay like: 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. Pre-Mission Soldier Equip / Arrangement: One frequently requested feature was to add a button on the pre-mission Soldier Equip screen that allows the player to easily access the screen where they can set the positions of their soldiers within the dropship. We've now implemented this, 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. In future we may expand this system to allow autoselling items immediately after the mission, or we may add in a system where the reduced sale prices of items will increase over time (giving players an incentive not to always sell their junk immediately). Bleeding Wound Healing & Bleeding Aliens: Aliens can now suffer Bleeding Wounds when they take damage in the same way that Xenonauts do. However, each Bleeding Wound now have 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. Mission Updates & Balancing: We did a balance pass on the early game as part of our AI testing. A number of tweaks have been made to reflect the fact Convoy Ambush missions felt a little too easy, whereas the second Abduction Site mission, the Cleaner Leader Elimination missions and any early Base Defence missions felt harder than other missions. We've also made a number of changes to specific mission types: Abduction missions: Abduction missions no longer end immediately when the abduction tubes disappear; the mission will now continue until all alien forces are eliminated (effectively these are now deathmatch missions with a time-limited optional objective). This change was made because many players reported that the abrupt ending of the mission in previous versions could feel quite jarring. You still gain Alien Alloys for each abduction tube you disable, but now you also gain -1 Panic in the local region for each surviving civilian that you released. 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. Data Raid missions: These are the missions where you have to capture a certain number of Data Sticks from Cleaner computers. These have now been updated so 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. This change is unlikely to affect too many players, and was made because having a retreating soldier killed while carrying Data Sticks could completely ruin a mission. In most cases the mission will play out exactly the same as it did before. 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: 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. This gives the player clarity over which direction they need to travel at the start of the mission. 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: Many players did not appear to understand that you were expected to leave 3 free slots in your dropship on this mission, which gave you space to pick up the 3 soldiers that needed to be rescued. We have therefore added them to the dropship as "ghost soldiers" that fill those dropship slots (this means you can also view their stats prior to the mission). We've also 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: 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). 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. Duration of crash sites reduced from 72 hours to 32 hours. Medikit weight increased to 25 (from 15). Construction time of Radar Array reduced from 20 days to 15 days. Using a healing item will no longer trigger enemy reaction fire. Enabled reaction fire on the various alien melee weapons (mantids, sebillians, reapers, mentarch, zombies). Air Combat balancing: 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 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. 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). Reloading a weapon in the tactical inventory now correctly plays the reload sound. 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 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 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).

On my first game, with my first base. And the Cleaner's HQ was only revealed to me after going through the missions to get their data like you're supposed to. I can only assume that they've also been wholly unaware that our HQs were right next door to each other all along.

August has been a busy month for us here at Goldhawk. Although it's not been quite as crazy as the two weeks immediately after our Early Access launch, the last four weeks have been very intense in a different way. Expanding the Team: This is mostly because the development team has expanded significantly over the last couple of weeks. When we launched into Early Access the team here at Goldhawk was only three full-time employees (one designer and two programmers) and there's just not enough hours in the day for a team that small to run a project of this size effectively, even if you're all working evenings and weekends. In practice this has resulted in a situation where we've collected a lot of useful gameplay improvements / suggestions and bug reports from our community, but we've only been able to tackle the most urgent of those issues. This is frustrating for both the team and for the players, as the other tasks are still important things we want to fix - they're just not as important as the stuff we actually have been fixing. As the only way to make a serious dent in the task lists was to get more manpower, this month we hired one additional full-time programmer (who is actually an old friend that worked with us on the original Xenonauts) and two more highly-experienced part-time programmers. Many thanks to anyone that applied for a position on the team after reading our last update - we really appreciated seeing so many enthusiastic people reaching out to us! Furthermore, we've also hired an additional full-time level designer / QA assistant, and two part-time designers who will be helping with the level design and game design / balancing respectively. Our goal is to respond to all community bug reports within one working day, to start delivering new maps with each major update, and generally to be able to respond better to player feedback and suggestions. I've been spread WAY too thin over the past few months. Improving the Game: We've continued to improve the game over the past four weeks, adding community-requested features like the option to modify the length of mission timers and the ability to break apart / merge together airborne squadrons, plus successful fixes for the memory leaks in the game and all sorts of other gameplay bugfixes. However, work on the game has been slower than normal due to all the recruitment we've been doing - if you're a small team, it takes a lot of time to be reading through CVs and code samples / portfolios to evaluate applicants, it takes time to interview candidates, and it takes time to get employment contracts signed. And most of all, it takes time to get people set up on the project and get them up to speed on our huge codebase or to teach them how to use a complex tool like our level editor. Time spent on this will quickly pay off, but it does slow things down in the short term. This has affected Milestone 2 most badly. We're now hoping to release this onto the Experimental branches at the end of next week or the beginning of the week after. I'll also mention the loading times briefly here, as I know they are important to many people. We took a look at them earlier this month but it quickly became clear any serious attempts to speed these up would change the structure of the saves and therefore break save game compatibility. As a result, we've pushed this work back to Milestone 2 (as each new Milestone build is likely to break save games anyway, due to the significant balance changes). Community Mod Tools: One thing we did spend a bit of time on this month is the mod loader and Steam Workshop integration, which is now nearly complete. However, we've not yet started work on the official mod creation tools and it may be a few months until we do given our focus is currently on upgrading the core game. If anyone is potentially interested in helping design a GUI that hooks into our code so modders can more easily edit the game files, please take a look at this thread! Conclusion: That's it for this month's announcement. We've made decent progress but most of our time this month has been spent expanding the team so we can make faster progress in future. Thanks for reading, everyone!

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!

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

This is an update for the default Steam / GOG / Epic branches that contains all the fixes from versions 1.26 to 1.28 which have been tested on the Experimental build. The combined changelogs are shown below: Gameplay: Using shot preview move (Ctrl+Shift) no longer causes significant performance problems. Various smaller performance updates to both strategy and tactical layer (although these are unlikely to be noticable in an Experimental build due to the extra logging reducing overall performance) Added a "mission briefing" button to the Geoscape info panel for a tactical mission, which shows you the mission briefing on the strategy layer. Cleaner SMGs and Cleaner Accelerated Rifles are now recoverable and usable (by popular demand). The intro cinematic and the game mechanic popups are now enabled at the start of each campaign, regardless of whether the tutorial is enabled or not. Xenonaut Sentry Guns can now open doors, but are unable to crush objects. Reduced the spawn rate of Cleaner anomalies at the start of the game. Tooltips have been added for the various stat columns on the Soldier Recruitment panel. Snowmobiles should now explode when destroyed. Stalker Stealth Armour now displays as Gas Immune in Xenopedia. When hovering the cursor over the base icons in the top right, the base name is now displayed instantly rather than after a short delay. When hovering the cursor over a soldier in the vertical list on the dropship soldier arrangement screen, the popup showing their face / equipment is now show instantly rather than after a short delay. Key Fixes: Fixed a bug where the day 180 "Content Complete" popup was not being shown, and the game loss conditions were not triggering if you lost enough regions. Fixed a crash that could occur if you tried to begin a crash site mission when there was a wreckage site also present on the Geoscape. Fixed a bug that could cause multiple popups to spawn when intercepting UFOs or sending a dropship to a tactical mission. In both cases this could cause crashes. Fixed a crash that could sometimes occur during the alien turn if the aliens were using hovering units like Servitors. Fixed two rare crashes that could occur in the Soldier Equip pool due to corrupted Kickstarter backer soldiers. Fixed a rare crash that could occur if you built over 50 planes. General Fixes: It's no longer possible to find undiscovered Cleaner Cells / Bases / etc by clicking on a UFO or mission that has spawned near to where they are hidden. Fixed grenades / aircraft missiles not properly upgrading if you skip the Alenium project and go straight for Fusion. Aircraft will now start to immediately repair Armour after being upgraded. Fixed the tactical soldier inventory incorrectly charging TU for you to pick an item up and then put it back in the same spot. Fixed the tactical soldier inventory incorrectly forgetting to charge TU if you moved the same item multiple times. TU costs for abilities are now rounded up rather than down. This fixed some odd situations where it was occasionally better to have fewer TU. It should no longer be possible to use a jetpack to fly between rooms in the Alien Base, or to jetpack through the roof of the Dragonfly dropship. Fixed an issue where it was not possible to redirect a dropship in flight to a landed UFO site. MARS vehicles now correctly display their names in the tactical combat. Disabled the day 300 Orbital Bombardment research report (which wasn't supposed to be in the game). Psyon VIP on Cleaner Cell missions no longer reports recovering both a Stunned Psyon and a Cleaner VIP if captured alive. Stalker Stealth Armour no longer shows the hair of soldiers floating inside their helmet. Dead Cyberdrones should no longer appear to be alive again after loading a save. Fixed some terrain objects in the Xenonaut base showing a bright pink error texture when destroyed. Fixed the Boreal sawmill building roofs so they correctly disappear if destroyed. Fixed typos in the strategy tutorial, Frag Grenade tooltip, and Ballistic Weapons and Fighter Datacore research text. Fixed the Engineering recruit panel having tooltips referring to scientists instead of engineers. Fixed a text overflow issue in the soldier memorial screen. Cleaner ballistic rifles no longer have an additional 5-round burst. Bomber UFO no longer incorrectly referred to as "medum-size" in Xenopedia. HEVY now displays its damage type as Thermal on tooltips. Tactical Inventory no longer incorrectly refers to the Tactical Vest as the Belt. Rush replace on aircraft now correctly costs the listed amount of money. Fixed an issue where you could drag any type of ammo onto any weapon on the Soldier Equip screen and it would accept it. MARS now correctly displays its name in the tactical combat. Fixed some Xenopedia / tooltip typos.

With Xenonauts-2 launching into Early Access, it's time to briefly explain all the new content we are planning to add on our journey towards final release! The list below explains our priorities, but it's not exhaustive as there's also lots of small improvements planned that aren't big enough to get their own bullet point. We'll also be listening to community feedback during the Early Access period, so this list may change or expand accordingly - if you want to see something else added, please feel free to suggest it! Additional Tactical Maps Soviet Town Biome Air Combat Revamp Alien / Civilian AI Revamp Cruiser UFO Harvester UFO Battleship UFO Operation ENDGAME Ending Cinematic Alien - Androns Alien - Reaper Bull Alien - Eternal Alien Psionics Ultimate Interceptor Ultimate Dropship Ultimate Armour Fusion Weapons Hovertank Mod Tools Fullscreen Borderless Community Suggestions If you have questions about any of the items on the roadmap, please post them up for discussion as a new thread on the general forums.

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.

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!

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:

Hello everyone - we've reached the end of November, so it's time for our monthly development update. This month has been fairly intense but once again the project has made good progress. Milestone 2: The biggest news this month has been the official release of Milestone 2, our first major update since our Early Access launch. I discussed the many upgrades made in Milestone 2 in our previous update so I won't cover them again, but getting everything ready for this release took up most of the month. Our thanks go out to all the testers who were reporting bugs and giving gameplay feedback on the Experimental branches over the past couple of months, as it has been incredibly valuable! Broadly speaking, all this testing meant Milestone 2 launched in pretty good shape - but we've already patched a few major bugs and put out a fix for the funding situation being overly restrictive on the easier difficulty settings. We're continuing to monitor stability and balance issues, so please do let us know if you're encountering problems and we'll consider further patches! Milestone 3: Although Milestone 2 is barely out the door, we're already hard at work on Milestone 3. This update contains the alien Cruiser UFO, which is crewed by aliens carrying deadly Fusion weapons. If you can successfully capture one of these Cruisers, you can unlock the final interceptor and dropship aircraft, plus another tier of infantry weapons and an upgrade for the MARS that turns it into a hovertank. We'll also be continuing to work on the alien AI and the air combat, and we're hoping to add various minor community-requested features into this update too (e.g. the ability to autosell "junk" items after combat). Finally, we're expecting Milestone 3 will have significantly improved loading times compared to earlier versions of the game! Unity 2022 Upgrade: These faster load times will be happening partly because we're in the process of upgrading from Unity 5.5 to Unity 2022. We've already done the necessary technical work for this, but there's always teething issues with a major engine upgrade, so I expect we'll have to spend a couple more weeks fixing things up before things are fully back to normal. Players should see faster load times and better performance when this work is complete, along with proper support for multiple monitors and borderless windowed mode etc. It will also make development work more efficient, as the codebase compiles much more quickly etc. Finally, it'll also bring us one step closer to mod tools - as some of the work we'll be doing upgrading our internal editor tools could be re-used to create a more effective mod editor. I think I'll wrap things up there. If all goes well, we might have an early prototype of Milestone 3 ready for people to play on the Experimental branch by mid-December (if not, it'll be early January). Thanks for reading!

The "access lift" upkeep is actually the representation of the core cost for the base itself. That's why it costs so much. You can think of it as the cost to maintain the lift, ventilation, surface access entrance ways/buildings, surface security etc. Then the cost as a comparison makes more sense.

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

Milestone 2 is not yet ready for public consumption, but it is available in a rough form for people who want to help us experiment with a few new mechanics. To access the build, enter the branch password xenonautsproto and switch to the Prototype branch. However, please read the whole post before doing so! We're testing out a few new mechanics that we want to get people's opinions about before we commit to updating the UI and getting new artwork done etc. I'll spend a bit more time than normal explaining the logic behind the design decisions here, as that will hopefully allow people to tell us whether they think the changes achieve their intended goals or not. Panic: One of the biggest problems with Milestone 1 is that there's no easy way to reduce Panic in a specific region, which means that on harder difficulty settings you need to build additional bases and aircraft as quickly as possible otherwise you'll quickly reach the point where you start losing regions. Panic will now decrease by 10% in each region at the end of each month. However, the Panic reduction for shooting down UFOs has been halved from -2 to -1. This means that Panic generated from Cleaner activity or Alien Bases or failed tactical missions will dissipate more quickly, while making interceptor coverage *slightly* less beneficial (although it's still pretty strong). Note that due to a bug this is happening before the region loss check (which means you need ~110 Panic to lose a region) but we'll change this if the change is popular. Also, this change only solves half of the problem in Milestone 1, as the player still lacks a targeted way to reduce Panic in a region. However I think it's a useful first step. Funding: Funding is no longer dependent on Panic level. A region will grant you full funding (which increases as you progress down the storyline) unless you lose the region, in which case funding will fall to zero. This change was made to support some other experimental changes I've not put in this build. But it means that building a base in a region doesn't increase income as much. Previously you'd get extra funds from shooting down UFOs and completing the crash sites, but then also gain extra funding from the fact keeping Panic low in the region granted extra funding. This hopefully means it's less essential to rush to cover the whole world with your planes as soon as possible. Mission Order: The game now starts with a Cleaner deathmatch mission, which is then followed by a Secton Abduction site. The plan is to make the opening Cleaner mission a bit more exciting - potentially even a continuation of the base defence mission from the tutorial where you clear the base of the attacking Cleaners, then evacuate to your new base. But the goal is to add an extra Cleaner mission and use that as a way to introduce them better at the start of the game. We've then slightly slowed down the progression over the next three months, and in particular we've moved the Cleaner Intel Hub mission back a couple of weeks so it comes after the first UFO crash site. We're open to ideas about how we can make the Cleaner mission sequence a bit more interesting, as it seems like not everyone likes the Cleaner Network idea where the main way to advance is just to capture more Cleaner Data on missions. Feel free to throw ideas out on this topic. Tech Tree / Item Upgrades: One of the recurring discussion points on the forums is whether Accelerated Weapons are a "trap" or not, and I've attemped to make their purpose a bit more clear through some tech tree changes. Accelerated weapons are now an upgrade for Ballistic weapons - i.e. a one-off project that permanently upgrades all Ballistic weapons to be Accelerated weapons. The same is also now true for the Warden Armour, which is now an upgrade for Defender Armour which increases the protection offered. As such, I've moved Guardian Armour forward in the tech tree so it can be unlocked off Scout UFOs rather than Destroyers. This means the player is given the choice of two relatively quick and cheap upgrades at the start of the game, but are also given the option to research more advanced weapons (lasers) and armour (Guardian) within the first month. But you're also presented the option to pursue the story research, which increases your funding - so hopefully this presents the player some interesting choices in the early game to try different strategies. To stop this being overwhelming, I've moved the Dragonfly and Phantom to be unlocked off Destroyers rather than Scouts. Finally, I've tried to expand the item upgrade options. There's a project that allows you to reduce the weight of Defender Armour, and Laser Weapons now have two upgrades that provide Recharging Ammo and increased Damage respectively. Guardian Armour also has an upgrade that increases the protection it offers which is unlocked from Destroyers. I'd be interested to know whether people like these increased upgrade options. Soldier Module System: I've removed all the existing soldier "modules" which could be placed in the soldier tactical vest and these are now replaced by the following set up: Extra Armour: all armour now weighs less and offers less protection, but there's a Heavy Armour toggle in the bottom right that will increase protection at the cost of extra weight. This is designed to make the armour more flexible rather than "heavy" armour like the Guardian being useless for low-Strength soldiers. The only gameplay consideration is "can the soldier carry the extra weight?" Armour Module: you can now choose a single module from a second dropdown below the existing Armour dropdown. At the start you can either choose from a rebreather that provides smoke protection, a +3 Acc boost or a +5 Bravery boost, however almost all the modules from Milestone 1 reappear as you progress down the tech tree. Obviously the question is simply which one module you choose to use. Jetpack: as previously, the jetpack is another toggled option. I just don't think it's useful enough that anyone would ever use it if we made it part of the Armour Module list. My question here is simple - do you prefer this to the module system in Milestone 1 where your inventory was full of modules? There's scope to add extra artwork and improve the UI if people like the basic idea, but it'd be nice to know people's initial impression of the changes. However, from a design perspective there's some overlap with the Item Upgrade system above. Some of the modules could potentially be folded into upgrades for the armour (particularly the Jetpack) - although then the danger is that you have soldiers that can do everything, and once your armour is upgraded you no longer have to choose between say a +TU boost, or a +ACC boost, or health regeneration, etc. Let me know your thoughts on this setup and where you'd like to see the design go. Incomplete Balance Changes: These are further balance changes I expect to make prior to Milestone 2 reaching our main Steam branches: Panic will be checked for region loss before the -10% monthly decrease occurs. Abduction missions will not end when the timer expires. Instead, the tubes will be present for X turns before teleporting away, and you get rewards for each one you open. However all the aliens must still be eliminated for victory. Starting Cleaner mission will probably happen immediately after beginning the game, before you go to strategy (rather than being a mission you do on day 2 or so).

This caught my eye... jetpack would be extremely useful if the maps were just more vertical and being higher grounds provided more buffs. Changing accelerated weapons to being an upgrade to ballistics sounds like a good idea, but I'd like the upgrads to be weapon type specific. Similar upgrade path to armor doesn't sound like an improvement Item upgrades sound sweet. More the better. Regarding the module system, I kinda enjoy the Tetris mini game we have atm, where I need to balance my backpack between modules, weapons, grenades and other items. Changing the abduction missions to be one more "kill all aliens" mission feels a step in a wrong direction. Regarding the cleaner mission chain and progression: Gathering intel for intitial progress is fine and I love the mission (best map so far), but the daily automatic percentage gain after that feels somewhat gamey and boring. You should add more quick and simple cleaner missions where player could earn that progression instead, capture additional intel, capture and interrogate cleaners etc. I also suggested somewhere that cleaners could be added to crash site missions to clean the wreck and alien corpses. This would add a nice new dynamic to those missions where the more player waits before raiding the site, the more there would be cleaners. Avoiding these add-on cleaners could also push people to do these crash site missions at night, before cleaners arrive. Edit: Here's my initial suggestion

Hi all, To help me with Modding for Xenonauts 2 I've created a Mod Loader based on a forum post by asdfcyber (https://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/index.php?/topic/28131-first-v25-modding-impressions/#comment-192760) It uses mono.cecil to patch the Assembly-CSharp.dll and inject code that loads mods from a folder of your choosing. Essentially you run the Mod Loader exe and it'll inject the Mod Loader code if needed and then starts Xenonauts 2. It will then call a LoadMods method in the Xenonauts.XenonautsMain constructor. The repo also contains an example mod that shows how to override existing methods using Harmony (https://github.com/pardeike/Harmony) and how to format the mod so that the Mod Loader can detect it. The repo can be found here: https://github.com/38Simulated/XenonautsModding Not sure if there are that many people out there looking into modding the game, but I thought I'd post something just in case it was of any use to anyone.

I never found a good use of the grenade launcher in X2, considering that I already had the satchel charges for breaching entry and the MARs to smash past walls as a cheaper alternative. I used it to reveal enemies from buildings and break obstacles, but the inaccuracy fails in that area. As a direct fire weapon it deals considerably worse damage than grenades, and its range is terrible, leaving its utility questionable. I would like to know if anyone else finds the grenadier role effective in their game. Also, its the only weapon that does not scale with the soldier's Turn units(stays at 24/34 TU)? Is that a feature or a bug? I played GOG v1.19 for reference The rocket launcher in Xenonauts 1 served as a long-range can opener, able to deal explosive destruction from afar with the drawbacks of a single shot. I wonder why its replaced by this?

It's very frustrating how civilians act in a totally random way, getting themselves constantly shot and running always from safety into danger. It would be great if your troops could "Evac" unarmed civilians by interacting at close range with them, at which point instead of their current wandering they'll run towards the dropship and hide next to it (Instead of into alien machineguns)

I love base defense missions - in theory at least. They are tough, tense and offer nice variation between offense oriented missions. However, current X2 base defense missions are somewhat dull and one note assaults where the bulk of the conflict is often resolved in one huge, non tactical firefight in on one or two of the hangars. Here's few thoughts to improve them: Add a command room to defend like in X1 Aliens should have other objectives than to just kill all Xenonaut units like destroy rooms to disable them so the player needs to repair them later, assault command room for direct loss, kill scientists etc. to force player to be active defending them. Aliens should have few free turns at the start to better spread out. AI improvements needed of course. Room design is a bit dull and repetitive. Especially with adjacency bonuses, you often have three or four identical rooms side by side which looks fake and makes gameplay boring. On geoscape, UFO's on the base attack mission should spawn later in the wave to be more of a threat and be possibly companied with air superiority UFO's. (Same with terror and base build missions which spawn too infrequently) Thoughts?

Here's an idea, inspired by @Vitruviansquid's medical module suggestion mentioned here. Currently, medkits / advanced medkits are sufficiently small, light, and useful that I give every Xenonaut one. Do you do the same? I wonder if it would be more interesting if medkits were changed to be heavy and big -- perhaps taking up 4x5 of the tactical vest, leaving just one row for some ammo clips and grenades. This would lead to a medic role / loadout, alongside rifleman, assault, etc. There could be a new type of equipment -- bandages -- that are small and light, so more easily carried by all members of a team. Bandages could stop bleeding, but not heal any HPs. Currently I know that if a soldier gets injured, everyone's got a medkit so they could heal themselves, or be healed by a nearby buddy, so it's not really something I think about. My suggested change would lead to more interesting loadout choices and squad tactics for a player. It could also tie into the current, slightly confusing, game mechanic where dead Xenonauts are corpses, but actually have a chance to survive a mission and fully recover after a long time back at HQ. Maybe dead Xenonauts stay dead, unless someone with a medkit gets to them within x turns and uses the medkit to stabalise them, giving them a x% chance of surviving. This could lead to come very cool and heroic stories where a Xenonaut carries their "dead" comrade to the medic to get them stabalised in the nick of time. It would also make the soldier's survival more dependent on a player's actions rather than the roll of a dice (which I think is how it works at the moment?) Advanced medkits could increase the turn limit and / or percentage chance of survival. Hopefully it wouldn't be too difficult a change for the developers to make. It would make the game more difficult, but that could be balanced with a bit of thought. Perhaps these new-style medkits could heal more damage than the current ones.

If you are going to push Cleaners to be more significant part of the game, making them come and clean UFO crash sites after certain time period would also be a nice and organic way to make player choose between night and extra cleaners and also give a tangible reason for their existence. First few cleaners could be added to crash site after 5(?) hours and a couple more after 10(?) hours. Crash sites could also be "cleaned away" from geoscape instead of player being to sell it to local forces until Cleaner HQ is finally destroyed. This kind of additional organic layer of gameplay and choise would IMO add a lot to the game.

Same here - I also got TFTD first. And to be honest, the original X-Com was a little bit of a letdown afterwards, because TFTD was gloomier, stranger and more oppressive than X-Com and it had atmosphere in spades. I loved the larger levels, "light management" in deep sea or night missions and the overall Lovecraftian horror atmosphere. TFTD is my absolute nr. 1 favorite game of all the time. I even prefer the Dos original over the OpenXcom version (despite all the advantages it has): the reason is the AI. Half of the AI in the original TFTD was fully random - and this is why the creatures moved and behaved so strange, which made them feel even more "alien". In other games, especially modern ones, the "creatures" move and fight like human soldiers or a human squad, total kills the immersion for me. Another detail that the other games lack: starting in the closed sub and having to open the door is such an atmospheric beginning of a mission. One always starts there, does not know what is outside until opening it. Running down the already open aircraft in the X-Com derivatives never reaches the atmosphere and feeling of anticipation of TFTD missions (what comes close to TFTD in this regard is "Teleglitch" mission starts, but it is a totally different genre). Not to speak of the strange alien structures of TFTD, like the colonies which looked like out of a Lynch movie, loved the colors... I wonder why nobody ever recreated this absolute gem. BTW: I still have the original European version with the beautiful cover:

So, just completed Build 1 and I liked it a lot! Obviously still has work to do but in great shape. So I'm going to be posting some ideas. All are free to use, I don't want any rights or credits, etc. etc. Anyway, I love research from capturing aliens. It was so fun in XCOM, it was fun in the Firaxis games, it's just fun! It's a little bit of flavor. Obviously there's the advanced medkits and regen module, and the mentarch, but here's some more ideas. Mantid - Compound Eye Module Engineering project, tactical module grants 180 (or 120 or 270) degree vision. Cool, flavorful, fun. Not sure it's great, but hey that's where this should be. Secton - Squadsight Module Allows anyone with a Tactical Module to fire at anyone in LOS of another person with a tactical module without penalty. Could be hard to code, just my idea based off their ability. Alternatively, +3 accuracy if within 5 spaces of another person with a Secton upgraded module. Psion - Mesmer Grenades Small radius, cause non-robotics to stand up, lose all time units, and walk a few squares in a random direction. Reaper - Reaper Claws Absolutely deadly close range weapon. Like really super high damage. Bonus if it uses the idea at the end Servitor (requires EMP to allow capture) - Heal Beam Secondary weapon, lets vehicles carry a 3 range medkit that can heal other vehicles too. Cyberdrone - Cyberdisk Vehicle Floating/hovering version of the Mars rover. Bonus idea - Rather than unlocking everything for manufacturing, manufacturing the upgraded modules requires captured aliens. So more Stalker or Healing modules requires more captured Stalkers/Sebillians, Reaper Claws need Reapers, etc. Gives a good minigame for capturing, and makes capture stuff more enticing to bring. Anyway, great game. Want ot post more thoughts after I have more time to digest.

Hello everyone - we've reached the end of July, so it's time for our monthly development update. It's been an exciting month, with Xenonauts 2 finally launching into Early Access on July 18th. The launch has been a huge success, with the game selling over 40,000 copies in the past two weeks, and the whole development team is really grateful to anyone who supported us by buying a copy! Here's what we've been up to this month and what we have planned for the coming month! Critical Bugs & Performance Fixes: Almost all of this month has been spent fixing critical bugs like crashes or anything else that ruins the gameplay experience for players. We actually thought the game was pretty stable going into Early Access, but going from a pool of twenty to thirty regular testers to having tens of thousands of players exposed a LOT of issues we were previously unaware of. The last couple of weeks have therefore been rather intense, as we've had to patch the game numerous times to address these issues. Thankfully the worst of this should now be behind us; we released 1.28b on Friday which improved performance and has fixed the bulk of the critical bugs. Work continued over the weekend and we've now fixed the memory leak players have been encountering and also (finally) managed to find and fix the annoying bug where terrain objects would sometimes get destroyed but not visually update (leading to units being able to shoot or move through what appeared to be a solid object). Our immediate priority is to finish up the last couple of crashes we're aware of, and fix a couple more serious gameplay bugs - e.g. grenades missing when displaying 100% chance to hit. This should leave the foundations of the game in good enough shape to move on to other tasks. Loading Times: Once that is done, we'll be starting work on optimising the load times - hopefully this will happen towards the end of this week. There's not much more to say on this point beyond the fact that we're aware of the issue and we'll be working on it soon. Milestone 2: We're then planning to spend the remainder of the month working on Milestone 2. This will be the first major update for the game and it will involve changes to the campaign, which unfortunately means it will break save games (although you can continue to play your Milestone 1 campaign on the Legacy branches if you want). As the programmers have a lot of bugs and usability improvements to be working on, I'm planning to focus on the air combat balance and the pacing issues in the existing campaign for Milestone 2. This is likely to extend the playable time beyond 180 days but it will not introduce additional UFO types to the game - it's more likely that we'll be expanding the role of the Cleaners at the start of the game instead. The first Milestone 2 build will likely arrive on the Experimental branch in the next two or three weeks, where it will go through a number of iterations based on player feedback before being released onto the standard branches. Expanding the Team: Finally, the income from our Early Access launch means we can now expand the team to speed up development. The first positions we're looking to fill are that of a Level Designer and a Gameplay Programmer. If anyone is interested in applying, I've linked the job posts below: Level Design job post Gameplay Programmer job post Overall, July was a great month for the project and we've really enjoyed seeing people playing the game we've been working on for so long. We look forward to delivering more upgrades in August!

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

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

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

I was going to complain that you are ugly and your mother dresses you funny but that wouldn't help the game become more immersive.

In a game with aliens with human DNA, plasma weapons, paradox-free faster-than-light travel, and combat where the involved soldiers patiently wait their turn while their enemies run around, THIS is your complaint?

Yes the point blank aiming calculation could do with some work, standing next to the target with a shotgun and getting ~80% chance is just BS when in reality you couldn't miss without divine intervention... overall the current 45 degree misses etc. are kinda off putting and could be solved with a bit more refinement on the aiming calculations. And yes I also agree that kneeling down should increase accuracy, I also found it very strange that the only use for it is for cover, or in special case you can shoot over a crouched dude if the shooter is behind him and standing. Regarding that I'd like to add that not being able to shoot past teammates in adjacent squares freely regardless of stance seems kinda dumb. The squares are 1x1m or so at least, the soldiers have training, they should tell the teammate to get down etc. and not shoot before it's clear. No instead in this game they'll fire the whole burst straight at the back of the teammate standing next to them "you were in the line of fire" and not hit anything that was aimed at, after which the shot in the back character gets suppressed and kneels down out of the way.

Where the hell did you come from and took a shit out in the open here about who can say what? Some of us liked the 3x3 vehicles back in X1, what's wrong with that?

Milestone 1 Experimental has now been released on Steam and GOG. Note that this build is only available on our Experimental branch (unless you're part of our Steam Playtest, in which case you don't have to change branches at all!) so you'll need to switch over to get this update (instructions on how to do that here). If you want to continue your previous playthrough on V27, please switch to the Experimental Legacy branch. As the name implies, this build will eventually become our Early Access launch build. I believe our publishers are announcing our Early Access launch date on Monday next week, so keep your eyes out for that if you don't already own the game! Anyway, this build isn't yet finished and we'll continue to patch in content (notably updated writing, some new research art, and hopefully a few new maps for the Cleaner missions) as we approach Early Access. As usual, we'll also be working hard on fixing any bugs that people find. If you do play the game, we'd also appreciate general gameplay feedback on the difficulty curve in the Milestone 1 Balance Thread. Right now it's hard to know if people aren't talking about the balance much because the difficulty curve is pretty good, or because they're just not posting feedback. There's still time to tweak the numbers to smooth out any issues in the difficulty curve prior to our Early Access launch. Summary: Game Cut-Off: the game now cuts off after 180 days. We've done this to keep the amount of content we need to polish for the Early Access launch to a manageable amount, and the remaining content will be added back in Early Access once it's been polished to a similar standard (if you really want to play it before then, V27 is available on the legacy branches and doesn't have this cap). UFO speeds: UFOs will now change speed at semi-random intervals when flying around on the Geoscape. This means it's no longer binary whether an interceptor can catch a UFO or not; in general I've made the Angel less reliable at catching Observers and later UFOs but it still has a chance of doing so. Targeting Modes: we've added a new targetting mode for grenades and medikits which snaps to tiles, rather than whatever 3D object is under the mouse. This should make it much easier to target the intended object with these weapons. Memory Leak fixes: we've fixed a number of memory leaks in the game, which should improve performance in long play sessions. Xenopedia Updates: the entire tech tree for the playable 180 days will have research text when we launch into Early Access. I've made a decent start on this already but we'll continue to patch it in as we do hotfixes. Translation: we're still waiting for some words to come back from our translators, but next week we should be able to patch in the updated translation files so people can experience the game in German, Spanish, French, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian or Chinese. Control Changes: Strategy - on the Aircraft screen, you can now rotate soldiers while you arrange them in the dropship. RMB click will rotate a soldier 90 degrees, and you can use Q/E to rotate soldiers 90 degrees in a particular direction. Strategy - quantity arrows in various places (stores screen, hiring scientists / engineers, etc) now support RMB / Ctrl+Click to add 10 and max quantity respectively. You can also click the number itself and enter a quantity. Strategy - on the Soldier Equip screen, RMB clicking a soldier in the soldier list will unassign them from the dropship. Ground Combat - RMB clicking now deselects grenade throw mode if you have it active. Changelog - Strategy A few minor tweaks to the tech tree. Stealth Armour is now unlocked a tier earlier, coming off Alien Electronics in the Observer. It now has less Armour as a result. Also, there's now an engineering upgrade project for the Medical Center that is unlocked from the Tissue Regeneration project. By default the game is now muted when it's not selected (which only happens if you're playing in a window). You can disable this in the options if you want. Base structures can no longer be disabled, as this didn't have much functionality and means we can make the Power system less irritating and fussy. Interceptor squadrons now display a unique icon for each aircraft present in the squadron. If a UFO is detected by the Quantum Decoder, the crash site now also displays the species of the UFO. Attribute tooltips on the Soldier Equip screen now provide both a description of the stat, and show any modifiers affecting the current soldier. If you try to launch an empty dropship at a mission site, it now takes you to the Soldier Equip screen and lets you assign more soldiers rather than blocking the launch. The sort order on Soldier screen has been updated, so soldiers who cannot be used because they are wounded or in transit are sorted to the bottom of the list. Fixed some issues where units with lots of kills could get more than the +2 attribute cap after a battle. Fixed issues in Geoscape base placement when you scroll the map left / right and part of the radar preview circles disappear. Fixed a minor issue with AC aircraft labels flickering when in motion Fixed an issue where AC missiles were not making an impact sound. Changelog - Tactical Combat Cleaner Soldiers (the guys with gas masks) no longer spawn in Cleaner Cells, which makes the missions a bit easier. They only appear as reinforcements. Weapons that can take multiple ammo types (e.g. HEVY) now show their loaded ammo type in the tactical UI. Stun damage is now shown as a small yellow line on the HP bar on the soldier minitabs at the top of the screen. Reloading a weapon no longer changes the order of the fire mode tiles in the tactical UI. If the currently selected soldier in tactical combat is killed during the enemy turn, the game now selects a new soldier at the start of the player turn. The gibbed corpse items of gibbed units no longer still recover the corresponding undamaged corpse at the end of battle. Cleaner Data items now only cost 1TU to pick up from the ground, rather than 10TU. Fixed Servitors bringing dead aliens back to life with their healing ray. Fixed force fire mode being "sticky" rather than correctly responding to the key being held. Fixed grenades clipping the edges of buildings / cliffs even when they display a 100% hit chance. Fixed an issue where throwing a grenade at a mutli-tile object could sometimes allow the grenade to pass right through it. Fixed items dropped on the ground not displaying their item model after loading a save. Fixed explosives that inflict no damage (e.g. smoke grenades) destroying items that have been dropped on the ground. Fixed an issue where it was possible to drop below 0TU if you loaded your soldier with absurd amounts of gear on the strategy layer. This prevented the soldier from dropping any of the gear on the tactical layer, causing them to be stuck. Fixed an issue where the TU cost for moving an item in the inventory could get zeroed out if you moved it twice.

One of my favorite moments so far playing X2, was when a farmer with a shotgun charged into a downed alien ship (a Destroyer or Cruiser I think) and managed to blow his way through the defenders and reach the command room before getting gunned down. Absolute Mad-Lad and I hope I can still see things like that in the future hahahaha! Never posted on the forum before but much love and support to you and the team for sticking through with the development of this!

Closed Beta Build V26 has now been released on Steam and GOG. Note that this build is only available on our Experimental branch (unless you're part of our Steam Playtest, in which case you don't have to change branches at all!) so you'll need to switch over to get this update (instructions on how to do that here). This is a major update for the game that includes a lot of changes, both in terms of new content and updated balance. The changelog isn't comprehensive, particularly with regards to the balance changes! We're planning to start locking down the game to new features in preparation for Early Access now, and we'll be concentrating on bugfixes, adding new art / writing to the research tree, and creating some new levels. I'll also be making balance tweaks as required, but nothing transformative. Please let us know if you encounter any bugs in the game. There's quite a few known bugs in the tactical combat we're aware of but just haven't had time to fix yet, so I've provided a list of known bugs at the bottom of this thread - there's no need to report these bugs if you do see them. Summary: Campaign Difficulty Options: when you start a new campaign, you are now presented with a large number of options that show what each difficulty setting is changing. You can also change these manually to make your own custom difficulty setting if you want. VETERAN DIFFICULTY NOW DISABLES THINGS - e.g. units no longer show their HP above their heads, it costs TU to rotate while firing weapons, etc. It's therefore much more of a "classic" (and much more difficult) experience than Soldier difficulty. Updated Soldier Equip & Aircraft Screens: these two Geoscape screens have been restyled in their final look, along with all their child screens (like create new loadout etc). There's also been a significant number of usability changes on both screens. Cleaner Network: the Cleaner missions have changed, and are no longer linked to research. The Cleaner Intel Hub mission now spawns automatically about a week into the campaign, and once that is complete the Cleaner Network progress bar is shown. Once this reaches 100%, the Cleaner Base is revealed and can be attacked, which ends all Cleaner activity if successful. However at 100% all Cleaner activity also inflicts 50% reduced Panic so it's worth revealing the Base as quickly as possible even if you don't launch the mission straight away. You get +1% progress per day passively once the Cleaner Intel Hub is completed, but each Cleaner Data item recovered from the Intel Hub or the new Cleaner Cell missions will provide +2% progress each. Capturing the VIP alive at a Cleaner Cell provides +15% progress. Cleaner Cells: these are three optional missions unlocked as soon as the Intel Hub mission is completed. They are elimination missions where the objective is simply to kill the VIP and then return to your dropship, grabbing as much Cleaner Data as possible on the way. Destroying a Cell will permanently stop Cleaner activity in the two linked funding regions. Each of the three Cells has a unique buff - either the enemies have more powerful weapons, are better armoured, or are backed up by Sentry Guns. The Cleaner Base has all three of these buffs, but destroying the corresponding Cell will remove that buff from the Cleaner Base. Conversations & Text: I've added a number of character conversations in the early part of the game, and reworked some research text as the result of tech tree changes. I'll be adding more of both as we release the hotfixes for V27. Changelog - Strategy: General - the tech tree has been reworked quite heavily again. General - Autopsies and UFO datacore research projects now go straight into the Xenopedia without being displayed. This is mostly to prevent the player being spammed with too many popups after a mission. General - added a number of new buttons to the Main Menu that link to our social media channels and what will become the game's wiki (feel free to start filling this in if you want). General - Cleaner activity now comes in the form of anomalies, rather than just being a monthly popup. Early game anomalies are generally more subtle to fit the "secret war" theme. General - added the Smoke Launcher back into the MARS. General - weapons with ammo regeneration (e.g. Advanced Lasers) now display this on the tooltip. General - fixed the mission debrief "Aliens Killed" line not including captured aliens, which was confusing people. General - fixed various visual issues with the UI on 21:9 screens. Main Base - demolishing a building on the Main Base screen now lists the amount of money to be refunded. Engineering - projects that can only be built once now display "Unique" in their quantity field. Soldier Equip - the soldier category tabs now all have icons (with unique icons per dropship type), and all display the number of soldiers there. Soldier Equip - there's now an Auto-Fill Dropship button that means you don't manually need to assign soldiers to all empty slots. Soldier Equip - display the soldier HP in brackets after their name if not at full health. Soldier Equip - closing the Create New Loadout panel can now be done with Esc, and no longer creates the new loadout anyway. Soldier Equip - Armour attachments (like the Jetpack) now show the appropriate tooltip on hover over the button on Soldier Equip screen. Aircraft - on the dropship panel, right clicking any soldier in the list will remove them from the dropship. Left-clicking an empty slot will open the soldier assignment panel. Bugfix- you can no longer avoid a base defence mission entirely just by pressing Esc to close the "Your base is under attack!" popup. Bugfix- Cleaner Base mission can no longer be targetted by alien Resupply missions. Bugfix - fixed Strength modifiers not correctly updating the carrying capacity of the soldier. Bugfix - fixed the Recruit Soldier panel reversing the sort order every time you clicked a new heading or recruited a soldier. Bugfix - fixed the base defence turret damage seemingly not being randomised correctly. Bugfix - fixed the Base Defence squad not allowing you to assign soldiers to it in some circumstances. Bugfix - fixed a bug where items being transferred to a base would appear on the Soldier Equip screen, but then not be interactive. Bugfix - fixed various bugs with the Sentry Gun and its equipment. Changelog - Air Combat: Air Combat default speed is now setting 2, with setting 1 now being half speed. Air combat deployment area is now the frontal 180 degree arc of the UFO, rather than a full circle. Aircraft Armour is no longer instantly healed after combat, but is repaired back at base like HP. Bugfix - UI toggles like Retreat / Afterburners now visually toggle on correctly if you activate them via hotkey. Bugfix - missiles in air combat no longer sometimes hit their target instantly, rather than having to fly over to it. Bugfix - weapons in air combat (particularly missiles) no longer sometimes fire at the wrong target. Changelog - Tactical Combat: Combat shields have been updated to work like they did in Xenonauts 1. However, the shield on the Cyberdrone has not changed and still provides a directional Armour boost rather than a HP boost. Injured soldiers can now be sent into battle again, provided they are over 50% health. The Hidden Movement screen has been hidden by to popular request. Flashbangs no longer suppress through floors / roofs. Improved the pathfinding so it should reliably choose the optimal route to a location. The "Suppressed" label is no longer shown if the suppressing shot kills the affected unit. UFO doors now autoclose at the start of the turn before line of sight is updated, so you should no longer be given vision on enemies inside the UFO behind the closed doors. The camera is now locked during the enemy turn. If you're playing in a window, the camera should no longer move once you click onto another application. Weapons that are not loaded with ammo now display an empty ammo counter and their fire modes, so it's more obvious what the issue is. We now display an explanatory pop-up the first time a unit takes Stun Damage, falls unconscious, drops and objective item, and on the first night mission. There's now a visual indicator in the topbar for unconscious soldiers (so it's obvious they're not dead). Rotating towards a target is now allowed if a unit is berserking. The Cleaner Intel Hub mission now accounts for unconscious soldiers when deciding whether to automatically end the mission on successful completion. Moving items around in a soldier's inventory will no longer be free if the soldier is moving. Fixed an issue where a ring of tiles at the tops of cliffs would sometimes not appear revealed. UFO Power Core explosion on destruction is no longer quite so large. Inventory items destroyed by explosions no longer show an undamaged 3D model on the ground. Obstruction shading for neutral units like civilians is now in white rather than green. Added some new Portacabin tiles for the dockyard. Added destruction states for various terrain objects. Bugfix - fixed the annoying looping sound issue that could be triggered by hovering units. Thanks to everyone who helped us track that down! Bugfix - fixed a bug where Xenonauts outside the evacuation area could survive a mission where they were left behind. Bugfix - the Battleship UFO's hull should no longer be transparent in some circumstances. Known Bugs (which you don't need to report if encountered): There's a known memory leak in the game, which means you'll need to restart the game every couple of hours to avoid performance issues. Grenades can sometimes hit the edges of cliffs / roofs / shipping containers even when showing 100% hit chance. UFO interior is occasionally revealed in the shroud on night missions. Soldiers often contort / rotate strangely when firing weapons at very short range. The radar rings can disappear entirely when placing a new base if you scroll the Geoscape too far left or right. Blood puddles are not being hidden when you change camera level. It's not possible to crush a prop using the MARS by moving onto it, you instead have to move through it onto a free tile on the other side. The currently selected soldier will remain selected even if you end the turn and then they are killed during the alien turn. Reloading a weapon will re-order the weapon fire modes in the UI.

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!

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.

Finished up the 200 days of Milestone 2 on Soldier difficulty. The difficulty level was too easy for me, and that might affect some of my impressions but I've tried to consider that in my feedback. Overall The game feels too much like a game right now. The tempo, pace and challenge are all too proportional to the players progress. Combined with the world and player assets feeling somewhat uneventful or missing something charactful. Being largely a backdrop for the game mechanics. Its a minor thing and possibly aesthetic, but the bright and clean aesthetics of both your troops and the battlescapes also add to that lack of character feeling (I do like the artwork though). It may be player preference, but little details and mechanics which exist not solely for the gameplay or balance can add a lot to the atmosphere and immersiveness. Things like OG Xcom's black market finance system, or new xcom's battlefields feeling like you're dropping into an existing fight with carnage all about. Further to that, xenonauts 2 rarely hits that feeling of fighting against an unknown threat of superior technology. Even higher difficulties look to ramp up the challenge with ever larger hoards of aliens. It often feels like you're going toe to toe with the aliens, and with a modest amount of research and retroengineering are quickly deploying equally effective, if not more effective weaponry and tactics. Which is incongruent with the lore which tries to paint xenonauts as an underground force, operating on the skin of its boots. On to more specific points. Strategy Layer I think the pacing and interaction on the strategy layer is too sparse. UFO wave system leads to periods of intense activity followed by long periods of lulls. I think the lulls could be good to give the player breathing room but because finances are tied to UFO missions and monthly funding and there isn't a lot of player actions to take and these periods become fairly dull. The loop goes a little like this; - Player gets mission, gets resources and sells to fund engineering or basebuilding. Wait. - Monthly funding comes, engineering or basebuilding options are chosen. Wait. I also think the alien actions feel very gamey at the moment. it very much feels like the UFOs appear, and fly around waiting to be shot down. There doesn't appear to be any real agenda to what they are doing, other than gradually spawning larger and larger UFOs for the player to interact with. Not only that, but there is almost never a UFO spawn before the player can realistically engage with it. For me this detracts from the idea of an unknown threat, or superior technology and agenda. The lack of landed UFOs also misses a unique opportunistic risk/reward aspect of other titles. Basebuilding, radar coverage and funding/panic models leads to a very one dimensional approach to gameplay. The very limited resources means every base build must absolutely maximise radar coverage and there is no compensation for choosing objectively worse or interesting locations. Leading to 2-3 bases along the equator or thereabouts every game. This might be a soldier difficulty, but I also never really felt the need to consider where my base was going other than getting coverage of funding zones. There wasn't any particular area where the aliens seemed to focus that might force me to react with a base - the lack of conflict hotspots make the battle feel global but also removes player interaction with the game state. It feels like as long as you don't make dumb base location choices, you'll largely pick up most UFOs and if you have good enough aircraft you will shoot them down. Finally, Aliens don't seem to react to your actions in a noticeable fashion - like moving operations or actively reacting to xeno actions. I got 1 base attack for each base in my playthrough, no more and it seemed to occur as a random chance when a wave was spawned. Air Combat Aircombat feels OK. I don't crave a super complex air combat system for the game. It does seem a little too easy for human aircraft to shoot down UFOs with conventional weapons and UFO weapons feel very underwhelming. UFOs actions are simplistic and unresponsive to xenonaut aircraft - they don't speed up or try to reach unassailable altitudes. Different UFO behaviors could add a lot of spice to the air game. I do think that the choices for equipping fighters could be refined to provide more tactical decisions - such as torpedos/missiles leaving less loot from tactical missions or even outright destroying the UFO. Cannons could provide reliable crash sites but carry much higher risk to the fighter from UFO weaponry. There airgame balance to date has felt a bit binary - either too punishing with aircraft repair times and costs or too easy with even destroyed craft and pilots just being rebuild in a matter of days. I appreciate this is a bit of a WIP area and might expect more polish. Tactical Combat The core tactical combat feels very good. But the gameplay loop gets very repetitive. I didn't find the need to change loadouts much, or adjust strategies for different aliens. Civilians just feel like extra meatshields to reveal alien positions. Missions felt identical, a crash site, alien base or terror site all felt exactly the same - deploy from dropship, find and destroy X number of aliens. This is both an atmospheric as well as gameplay observation. A suggestion would be to have a crash site/terror mission feel like a warzone with damage and active combatants on both sides that the xenonauts are dropping in to clean up. A landing would be more like the pristine mission we have right now and alien bases should be dark, alien and terrifying. Aliens and alien weapons on the whole feel too weak. The use of magnetic weapons for early aliens working alongside cleaners is great, but the full escalation to a range of more devastating weapons should be apparent, possibly alongside the appearance of a more warlike class. It wasn't long into my playthrough that I felt totally comfortable with 2-3 xenonauts operating together could happily handle 1-2 aliens, and while increasing the number of aliens will alter that, it feeds into my overarching feeling of fighting an equal or inferior enemy. Aliens combat, other than a planned AI change, could use another pass on numbers v power. I think individual aliens should be less in number but more difficult to tackle. Human tactics like flashbang and smoke should initially have only mild success vs aliens, which could be improved with autopsies and interrogations. There is also an opportunity here to have aliens with differing levels of susceptibility to flashbangs, smoke, armour pen, thermal damage etc. This could be a mix of species or technology. I feel like the fidelity of the 3D tactical map and ability to zoom is underutilised by having most UI relevant elements text only. The appearance of the models is almost secondary - some minor variation between classes exist but its largely superficial. Alien classes should also be unknown until interrogations are complete - even the simple addition of naming the units during tactical battle I feel removes a lot of the mystery of the early game. Night missions are a real missed opportunity. I think there is a chance to make some very atmospheric missions at night. Or even strategic opportunities - maybe sebillians are terrible at range at night and have less TU. But during the day are terrifying opponents due to increased TU and resilience. Smoke grenades and flashbangs are far too reliable a disabling mechanism and combined with shields currently feel like a crutch. Doesn't matter what alien you encounter, the approach is flashbang and shoot, if you can't kill, smoke and close distance, kill or stun if possible. I find this adds a lot to the repetitiveness of the battles, with only cyberdrones and servitors requiring a slightly different strategy - although ironically for cyberdrones it's the same strategy, but with extra steps. I can't shake the feeling the game wanted that RNG - shit goes bad feeling of OG xcom but then at the same time introduced very reliable mechanics in throwing. Which to add a minor pet peeve, I find shooting accurately much easier than throwing something to the right spot further than a couple metres away so the accuracy and reliability that xenonauts throw items right out the gate is a little jarring. This also removes much of the desire for explosives. Given grenades often wouldn't kill things, it was preferable to use smoke and flashbangs which were very reliable protection from retaliation. Positives This is all to say that I've found the game really enjoyable and compelling. The story framework is there and the art and graphics so far are fantastic (I just want more!). I love the armour and weapon design and just hope either later on or via mods we can customise it just a bit. The core gameplay loop is good, only compromised by how often you go through said loop. The cleaners are a great addition with some cool missions and a great way to slowly transition to alien invasion. More hinted interaction between the two would be nifty.

Basically what the title says. after about 4 missions I feel like my soldiers can carry whatever the hell they damn well want to carry without concern. Pretty standard for one of my soldiers to have a rifle, two backup mag's, a medkit, a targeting assist, a smoke mask, a grenade, a smoke grenade, and possibly even a stun baton/stun gun and or an extra flash grenade, all while wearing heavy armor. The only exception to the rule is shields, they weigh lot it seems. My suggestion... increase time units and decrease strength for the soldiers. That way the soldiers either need to operate light to utilize their full time units or they operate with more gear but take the time unit hit to offset it. (with the average being a soldier expected to take a bit of a time unit hit as a standard) To represent this is normal for the player without making them feel like they are doing something wrong, I'd have a third colour degree. Instead of just green and then negative being red. I'd have maybe a green/yellow/red or blue/green/red colour scale. Where "underweight" with no tu penalty is the first colour, "average" weight with a small tu penalty is the middle colour, and "overweight" with a heavy tu penalty is the final colour (likely red) to discourage but not prevent, players from going that far. It's possible later gear and armor is actually heavier and I haven't gotten that far, but if the player doesn't feel good about the game balance 2 months into it, are they going to persist further in to see if it improves? Perhaps if that is the case that gear later gets heavier, add a powered exoskeleton equipment or something that can be applied (like the gas mask) to increase soldier strength or have a "stim" research or whatever to scale up strength when it makes sense to do so. Or make some story reason why the better gear isn't really much heavier perhaps. My 2 cents..

No. Micro managing your research queue by optimizing scientists between multiple projects to fight diminishing returns does indeed add major depth and interesting choices. It also makes managing research easier and more intuitive to have multiple simultaneous active projects and being able to tweak reasearch personnel freely between them if the situation calls for it or circumstances change unexpectedly .

Let it be an option in the menu to switch it on and off. That would please everyone

Yes, I think that X2 can easily be more atmospheric and immersive than X-Com with some small changes. Night missions are already really atmospheric also because of the more serious creepy music ( no "action music", it destroys atmosphere): So these night mission in wooded areas are already really atmospheric. Some small things would make the above more scary. For example: 1st rule to make an atmospheric, scary game: The enemy is "unknown". The players should not see the HP points or other states of the enemy "running around in the darkness". Strong enemies or enemies immune to certain ammunition types were so scary in the original, because you would shoot and shoot (not seeing the HP or other effect on the target), but they did not go down... that is "movie stuff" that makes a game an experience and the player also has to be more observant then, which automatically also increases immersion. And one cool thing in the original X-Com was how important the sound was in that regard: when hitting a silhouette in the darkness with the creature going down, one had to listen - was there a scream? If not it was just unconscious would either bleed out in the next turn lying there or (and that made it tense/creepy) it would get up again silently after some turn. The "unkown enemy" is the most important part and easy to achieve, no graphics changes needed, just options to turn them all off. I would prefer a simple in-game option: "always night". I did this in the original X-Com and TFTD in Dos via an edit. Increases the atmosphere a lot! I simply pretended: it is only possible to approach the crash/landing/colony/etc. site at night or "the aliens darkened the skies" (lol). BTW: I am new to the forum. Is there a way to contact the developers and discuss such ideas/suggestions/requests with them?

An idea from X-Com: Terror from The Deep is Ship missions. We already fight the Cleaners in dockyards so it is safe to assume they move equipment and personnel around using ships. So maybe Xenonauts' intel finds a particular ship is moving Cleaner equipment around and it is your job to take them down. It could be a fairly large ship carrying containers, lots of small rooms to check, civilians to save. For anyone who actually played Terror from The Deep you know that was a gigantic nightmare of a mission.

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 / Balance Changes: It is now possible to redirect aircraft squadrons that are already in flight via the Launch Aircraft panel (this also allows you to split aircraft out of airborne squadrons). Updated the AI so it will only perform attacks on units that an alien unit has seen that turn, as it was apparently previously ignoring the vision rules. This could lead to some rather unfair situations where enemies were shooting beyond vision range or throwing grenades over walls at units they had never seen. Cleaner units reduced in Accuracy from 65 down to 55 for the suited guys (Agents) and 60 for the hazmat guys (Soldiers). Accuracy for enemies on Recruit difficulty has been dropped from 85% of normal values down to 80% of normal values. Stun Gun has been buffed a little - it now does slightly more Stun Damage, has improved accuracy and holds 4 shots rather than 3. UFO Armour and Health are now shown at maximum zoom level in the air combat. Updated a number of translation languages files to incorporate various changes and fixes. Bugfixes: Fixed a couple of memory leaks that triggered each time you saved the game. Fixed players being unable to demolish base structures. Actually fixed the Geoscape multi-select dialog revealing hidden missions like the Cleaner Base. Fixed the opening cutscene and several buttons on the tactical UI ignoring the settings volume sliders. Fixed units being able to shoot through floor tiles in the Alien Base maps if they had taken damage. Fixed a calculation issue that was causing the game to generate female soldiers at a higher rate than intended. Fixed aircraft callsigns repeating before all available names had been exhausted. Fixed "War Machine" achievement triggering off the Exosuit, rather than the Colossus (which isn't yet in the game). Fixed one of the barn window types not correctly shattering. Achievements are now disabled during the tutorial. Servitor Wreckage is no longer incorrectly called Gun Drone Wreckage. Fixed various hitbox issues around the edges of the Geoscape regions so they now better match the highlighted areas.

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

I would request the Admins lock this thread, so we can discuss the game - political views have other forums to be voiced in.

I'm not a person who often talks polticics and I'm pretty neutral on many subjects, but this is not about money or about paying for anyone's defence. It's about standing beside the weaker and against the bully. It's about a world order where being bigger, wealthier and stronger is no reason to invade a smaller, poorer and weaker. It's about the priviledged always supporting the disadvantaged in every area of life - no matter how big or small the cause. I personally do it, and IMO everybody should. Turning your back when you see something bad happening is not the way to make this planet a better place. If I was homeless, hungry or poor, I would hope people gave me shelter, food or money If I was bullied in school, I would hope teachers or older students stood against the bullies. And if my country was attacked by a criminal terrorist country, I sure as hell would hope all friendy, civilized nations around the world rushed to help.

You say this alot, but I can down a 3 interceptor flight with 3 15 armor gauss phantoms reliably... 1v1 a Gauss phantom will beat an interceptor, split the engagement into 3 1v1s and it's simple. Killing 3 of them with 2 5/15 Guass armor phantoms is... harder... but can be done. I suspect you are not dodging their missiles and that is what is causing you problems. Granted.. the game doesn't really tell you they have missiles, but they do.

For me, I love being able to change my soldiers to people I know. This was such a small thing in the new XCOM games that added a lot of enjoyment for me. So in addition to just allowing changing our soldiers names, I'd love to be able to change appearance, gender, and nationality on top of the existing name change, to match people I know. I know this isn't the most pressing thing and I'm not saying this should come before major features, but I still think this is a small thing that would add a lot to the game and should be done at some point.

For the umimportant Languages (Russian and similar East-Languages) it can be written Kyiv, for all important Languages (German / English etc.) it called & written correctly Kiev.