Aaron
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Posts posted by Aaron
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Firstly, if you do not know how to access the experimental branch on Steam, please read the instructions (and warnings!) in this thread. All saved games from earlier versions (including experimental versions) are incompatible, attempting to load them will cause problems.
As it has been a while since we've done a new experimental build this one has quite a few changes. The biggest ones are probably the changes to the reaction fire system, the new terror site maps, changes to AI behaviour (so many they have their own changelog section!) and a significant improvement in the speed of alien turns. The new loading screen also makes a return (hopefully working better now!). Not much in the way of balance changes, but that will probably change for the next build.
Also please keep an eye out for any "black square" tiles during ground combat in this build - this is a side effect of the compression algorithm we ran of the tile images. I think I got them all, but if you see any just post them up in the experimental bugs forum and I'll fix them.
Fixes:
- Fixed Reapers not being properly centred on the camera when moving/attacking
- Right clicking on the Ground Combat UI no longer also causes units to turn
- Fixed cash getting drained when trying to build an item with only 1-2 available engineers
- Equipping Predator armour will no longer destroy already equipped incompatible weapons
- Fixed various instances of incorrect UFO placement on new Light Scout maps
- Alien missions can no longer occasionally be detected before they spawn
- Fixed Barracks and Stores screen backgrounds not upgrading
- Fixed potential saved game corruption when a soldier had a corpse in their inventory
- It is now possible to apply a medical kit to a stunned soldier
- The force fire (Ctrl) mode should now highlight units in preference to terrain
- Finally, a proper fix for the soldiers coming back from battles with 98% health!
- Androns now leave scrap metal when over-killed, instead of a human corpse
- Added spectres for crouched Reaper animations
- Changed weapon order in armoury panel so it is consistent between weapon tiers
- Using a Fury to intercept an aircraft no longer displays the Auto-resolve option
- Using Singularity Torpedoes now depletes the players stock of them
- UFOs that grant items immediately on destruction (fighters, bombers) no longer do so if over-killed
- Compressed more game tiles, saving a few hundred more megabytes of disk space
Additions:
- Re-introduced new loading screen
- Reduced the length of time the alien turns take by removing various hidden delays, as much as a 60% reduction
- Added all new Terror Site maps for the standard Town set.
-- There are now 3 maps for each of small, medium and large Terror sites
-- Aliens are distributed in these maps further from the player spawn, which means they are less "rushy"
- The latest aircraft missile/cannon type should now always be added to all interceptors on unlock
- Implemented multipliers for Xenonauts aircraft speed/range per difficulty level (small differences for now)
- Enabled new reaction fire system
-- Units can now keep taking reaction shots (losing initiative with each) until out of TU or until their initiative drops below that of their target
- Added inventory corpse tiles for Harridan and Wraith rank variants
- Updated Autoresolve images for the air combat
- Added interrogation images for the aliens
- Adjusted "Bezerk" unit target selection
- Fixed Ground Combat UI sometimes crashing after loading
AI:
- AI will now end turns looking in the direction they predict to be attacked from
- Civilians and friendly soldiers should no longer enter UFOs
- AI is no longer afraid of smoke
- Units will get into cover if they run out of AP to shoot
- Turn costs now taken into account in pathfinding
- Re-introduced ProbabilisticSearch, which allows the AI to guess where enemies might be (less psychic now)
Balance:
- Re-added elevated soldier starting stats (they were accidentally removed)
- Soviet Town tileset expanded to cover more of the planet (will now be a more generic "cold city" tileset)
Please post your comments on the build here. If you encounter any bugs please post them in the experimental build sub-forum of the bugs forum.
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No, it is essentially a "win" button to help you get out of sticky situations.
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Can't reproduce this - any more details?
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It was an incorrectly set tile - fixed it for next version, thanks!
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As said, the rockets and other explosives should be better with the latest experimental (and shortly the stable version) since we were able to re-introduce the 4x damage multiplier on explosives against props.
Also grenades should certainly be able to be thrown over obstacles - we took quite a while implementing that; is it not working in some way?
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Sorry about the saved games guys, that wasn't intentional - I've just pushed a quick hotfix that should let you load your V20 Stable saved games again.
Alien numbers should not have changed in this version - remember that when a UFO is shot down the occupants can be killed, so the numbers you will see in a crash site are significantly less the maximum defined for each UFO in the various UFOcontents files.
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Both are fixed, though I forgot to list the Alien Accuracy Penalty one - added now. The other is covered by:
- Fixed issue where the accuracy for aliens shooting was based on strength
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This hotfix addresses a number of issues with the V20 Stable build that we put out over the holidays, and should hopefully clear up the worst of the issues.
Please note: We are ONLY pushing this to the Experimental Branch on Steam for the moment, if it proves to be reliable after a few a days then we will go ahead and promote it to the main branch.
Here's the change list:
Fixes:
- Units above walls can now see over them (applies to both jetpack infantry and units in structures
- Incendiary damage bonus to props is no longer applied against units too
- Units now leave their "gibbed" sprite behind after being killed by overdamage weapons
- Units now always play the correct animation when dual wielding weapons
- Capturing a landed UFO will now grant you the national relations bonus assigned to that UFO type
- Fixed aircraft waypoints not always drawing
- Sell/Transfer button on stores screen now displays correctly
- Style changes to soldier equip screen buttons
- AI should now shoot stunned enemy units, so you cannot save men by knocking them out
- AI should no longer try to attack through doors
- Fixed issue where the accuracy for aliens shooting was based on strength
- Fixed missing C4 animations for Wolf and Jackal
- Vault, death and injury animations sped up by 40%
- Fixed soldiers being healed up to 98% only
- Aliens will now generally be facing the dropship on mission start
- Fixed column ordering in the soldier management screen
- Time acceleration is now reset to 5 seconds when closing the interceptor dialogue
- Fixed Alien Fusion Reactor displaying incorrect Xenopedia entry
- Soldiers should now receive the correct penalty for going over their carrying capacity
- Fixed UFO supply run missions causing a crash if the base they were to supply was destroyed
- Removed sticky Ctrl key for various add/remove buttons in the base management screens
- Fixed a crash that would occur if you pressed escape while placing a building
- Fixed alpha channel on the main menu clipboard
- Fixed Alien weapon accuracy penalty being applied to aliens!
Additions:
- New dust cloud animation is played when props are destroyed to smooth the visual transition
- The space bar now only functions as a time-stop toggle on the Geoscape, rather than centring the camera
- All free scientists/engineers are automatically assigned to a new project
- Air Combat auto-resolve percentage victory chance is now displayed
- Mouse wheel and keys now let you scroll through the soldier list in the soldier equip screen
Also I am back, Happy New Year all!
EDIT: I accidentally did not update the saved game number in the initial build of this, which meant previous saved games would disappear. I hotfixed this at about an hour ago so those saved games should show up again.
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How would people feel if different aces tended to have different numbers i.e. Caesans tended to show up in smaller numbers, but Sebillians were a bit more of a swarm (with appropriate stat change to compensate, of course)?
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I'm back in the office now. A few answers to some of the questions I've seen throughout the thread:
I would like to put in a system to show the status of interceptors on the map, rather than forcing the player to faff about with the launch screen - here is a little mockup I did some time ago, should be fairly self-explanatory. Also a popup telling you aircraft are ready with a time freeze might be useful, yeah.
Also landed missions aren't really working very well right now - it is quite hard to get them, because of Chinook speed etc... but we now have some control over how long missions stay landed, so I will look into tweaking that. I feel like there should be a pretty big reward in terms of Alenium/Alloys for catching a UFO on the ground, compared to a crash site - right now it is double-ish, but I'm thinking even more than that.
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As there are still bugs in our "reverted" version (Candidate 3), we're trying a new tack. This is Candidate 2 with the loading screen stripped out and some new bugs fixed:
- There should no longer be a CTD when you open the inventory system
- Soldiers will no longer be Wounded on arriving at base
- Removal of loading screen should remove the CTD on loading people had previously, plus speed up mission load times.
Let us know if you find bugs in the game as we would *really* like to have V20 Stable released soon so we can all go back to enjoying the festive season!
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Firstly, if you do not know how to access the experimental branch on Steam, please read the instructions (and warnings!) in this thread. All saved games from earlier versions (including experimental versions) are incompatible, attempting to load them will cause problems.
We have resolved the major bugs discovered in the candidate from yesterday, and included a few fixes too. If all goes well this build will be pushed directly to the main Steam branch in the next few days.
Fixes:
- Fixed the problem where starting a game, exiting, then starting a new one would cause your starting base to be wrong (and then caused many other problems)
- Fixed a freeze on the Geoscape that sometimes occured when UFOs spawned and the player has lost the funding of a continent
- Fixed the number of "Unassigned" soldiers being calculated incorrectly when waiting for new hires to arrive
- Unassigned soldier category now accessible correctly when soldiers are en-route to base
- Crash when using Soldier Equip screen for secondary base with troops en-route fixed
- Updated the "dropship crashed" popup
- Fixed not being unable to scroll the GC view with the arrow keys after reaction fire, AI turn, etc. until mouse was moved
- Fixed light sources being updated during the day as if it were night (performance improvement only, no gameplay effect)
- Fixed the game getting stuck if you crouched a soldier who was in the middle of another animation
- Fixed an issue where both human and alien units could move through props if their destination was set before they revealed an obstacle in their path
- Fixed an issue where the game would sometimes display a black "TURN X" screen after loading a game
- Fixed explanatory tooltips for ground combat displaying before the GUI has properly initialised
Additions:
- Moved a large number of hard coded strings into strings.xml (For translations)
- Added a load of new tips for the loading screen
Please post your comments on the build here. If you encounter any bugs please post them in the experimental build sub-forum of the bugs forum. Please use the beta forum for in-depth discussion of the current Geoscape and Ground Combat balance, but feel free to post brief opinions here too.
Also it is my last day in the office today, so have a good holiday everyone and I will see you all in January!
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New build is out - Stable Candidate 1! - but the changes are relatively minor so let's just keep this thread going.
The relevant changes are:
- Aircraft now correctly grant the player their sell value on decommissioning
- Reduced the quantity of Alien Alloys granted from crashed UFOs by about 50%
- Reduced the initial number of UFOs per wave from 4 to 3, and the maximum number from 8 to 6
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New stable candidate build is up, but no real ground combat changes so I'll just update the title of this thread and we can carry on.
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Firstly, if you do not know how to access the experimental branch on Steam, please read the instructions (and warnings!) in this thread. All saved games from earlier versions (including experimental versions) are incompatible, attempting to load them will cause problems.
This build is our candidate for promotion to the main Steam branch tomorrow, unless we find anything show stopping. This is shorter than our usual testing time for a candidate, but this build has been up since last Friday with only relatively minor changes and so is looking good.
Really the main feature is the new loading screen, as introducing other major changes might risk introducing instability.
Fixes:
- The blast from an explosion should now continue to expand past a wall if it destroys that wall (i.e. a fence won't save you from C4 anymore)
- Aircraft now correctly grant the player their sell value on decommissioning
- Fix to prevent grenades (and jetpack soldiers) from flying over the walls in Xenonaut/Alien bases
Additions:
- New Loading Screen! It looks nice and has tips! There are a couple of presentation bugs with it we are fixing (it sometimes displays the old "TURN X" screen)
- Sentinel armour now has animated sprites for when using the jetpack
- All remaining wall tiles for the Xenonaut base have been painted over, have damage states etc...
Balance:
- Reduced the quantity of Alien Alloys granted from crashed UFOs by about 50%
- Reduced the initial number of UFOs per wave from 4 to 3, and the maximum number from 8 to 6
Please post your comments on the build here. If you encounter any bugs please post them in the experimental build sub-forum of the bugs forum. I will post new threads in the beta forum shortly for in-depth discussion of the current Geoscape and Ground Combat balance, but feel free to post brief opinions here too.
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@Mooton, thanks for the detailled post.
Both Wraiths and Dread are things we know are annoying, and are thinking of way to deal with them. For Wraiths we are probably going to force the teleport to be the final action of their turn. For Dread we might limit it only to soldiers who are alone (i.e. no friendlies within X tiles nearby). Those changes should allow you to counter both things, if you are careful.
I think some of your assumptions about the strength of various things in the game are a bit off though:
Weapons that regularly do 70 damage to jackal armor instead regularly do 0 to wolf.I doubt this is the case as the Jackal is 35 armour, and the Wolf is 65 - the damage difference is 30 at most.
Rather than an elite being 5 times harder to kill than a non-combatant, make them closer to 3 times.In terms of HP that really isn't the case - a Noncoms generally start with 80, and Elites max out at 200; that's a big jump but not a multiple of 5. I guess you probably mean overall lethality, but if so I'm not sure how you arrived at such specific numbers.
I definitely think I will reduce the number of doors in bases though, yeah.
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You seem aware this is not a bug, so why post it here?
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It's best not to think too hard about the realism implications of the XCOM formula - I see the advantage of the Xenonauts organisation as its global reach and information collection capacity, rather than any martial prowess. National militaries are hobbled because they are only going to be recovering the alien artefacts that they could shoot down in their own territory, and therefore would miss pieces of the "puzzle" the Xenonauts are able to solve in order to manufacture technologically superior weapons.
I think it would be an interesting project to take a more grognardian approach to an XCOM game - a Paradox style "Hearts of Alenium" or some such - where you are controlling vastly more military gear, and the game is about managing that grand strategic aspect rather than ground combat (Oh, think of the fun: AWACs vectoring Tomcats to intercept a wing of UFO bombers, Akula submarines tracking UUOs through the Marianas Trench etc...). That's not this game, though.
I don't think we should put some "gotcha" penalty on the airstrike monetary values - however randomising the value of them a bit would make sense.
I think I might take a Meier-ian approach to rebalancing the Alenium/Alloys received in the build later today, and see if you guys cry uncle.
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Losing funding initially is the intention. At the opening of Xenonauts the world is supposed to be in crisis - aliens are invading! Your job is first to stabilise the situation, and then to go on to beat the enemy - not to take an already stable situation and putter along to inevitable victory.
@legit1337: If you are escorting Foxtrots with Condors then their range will be limited to that of the Condor, as squadrons cannot be split. Foxtrots by themselves should have quite a bit more range than the standard radar range, and they themselves carry powerful radars to help them chase down lost contacts.
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@Solver, if ground missions grant you the majority of the national relations bonus, how do we make sure players don't end up grinding repetitive missions just in order to grind national representation? The way the game is structured means there are always vastly more UFOs than you should ever do ground combat missions - should we slash the number of UFOs to only 1-2 in wave every 2 weeks?
The fact that you had basically forgotten Alenium and Alloys exist suggest to me the problem lies there, not somewhere else.
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The guy who posted before me literally said exactly that.
You don't even mention both Alenium and Alien Alloys in your post as advantages of doing ground combat, which either means you've just forgotten them, or they are so abundant you don't consider them a limiting factor. If that's the case that is an issue that needs to be addressed, as those two resources are meant to be a big driving factor in the need to do ground combat missions. Ideally they would provide us with a perfectly linear way of controlling up the pressure the player is under to go on missions.
Do people find this to be the case? Do you ever feel strapped for the two alien resources? Do you just not need them for anything?
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Any chance of a save so we can reproduce it easily?
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Thanks, this is known and related to the AI - not that high priority tbh.
Air combat question
in Xenonauts General Discussion
Posted
You will in a way, check out Xenonauts\assets\aircombatimages\autoresolve_fury.png if you want to spoil it.