Aaron

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 new build doesn't have quite as many new things in it as usual, but we are releasing it early so as to fix a few important issues, before we start integrating some big AI changes - during which we won't be able to do a new release for a week or so. The major fix is to aliens shooting through UFO walls - note that the aliens are still able to shoot through UFO floors; we know this is annoying but it will be fixed, the cause is just different from the shooting through walls bug. Chris and our Geoscape programmers have also been doing lots of work cleaning up the new UI, which had quite a few rough edges - I should warn you this is still a bit of a work in progress, so you may see glitches; it's OK to report these as bugs though, just to make sure we catch them. Also worth noting that I have now finished all the maps for the "crash site" style missions - so any feedback on them in the beta forum would be much appreciated. The only maps left to do now are terror mission and alien base attack mission maps. Here are the changes: Fixes: - Fixed two issues that could allow weapons to penetrate through UFO hulls (does not fix shooting through floors!) -- First was an issue to do with blocking shots that travel between diagonal tiles -- Second was an issue with the updated accuracy formula where a wall would reduce the chance to hit to zero, but then the close range bonus would override that - Fixed the way jetpack animations are displayed (they now display the full take-off/land animation before moving) - Removed the blue tint from "stunned" units - this was a debug tool, your are meant to find out by checking their corpse - Enabled an animation for healing soldiers - Jetpacks now display their take-off/land animations correctly, completing them before moving - Fixed various minor issues with props such as fences and concrete barriers - Fixed missing shotgun death animation for the basic armour type - Buildings can now be demolished while still under construction - Tiles which are flat on the ground and passable no longer go transparent when a unit stands behind them - Stunned units are no longer blue tinted - Colour corrected desert rock sprites to match mesas - Fixed bug where saving the game during the "deployment" phase of a mission could grant the player a free turn Additions - All the maps for the Desert tileset have been overhauled, with multiple new maps added to each -- There are now 3 maps each for small (light scout, scout and corvette) medium (corvette, landing ship and cruiser) and large (cruiser, carrier and battleship) map types -- Each map has more variety in randomised UFO and dropship placement -- A number of new building submaps have also been added for additional level variety -- Please give feedback on how you find them! - An animation now plays to indicate when a unit is healed - Reworked Geoscape popup alerts to match new UI style - Many adjustments and improvements to the main menu UI - Soldiers will now no longer take reaction shots that have a greater than 10% chance of hitting their comrades Balance - Continent maps adjusted so fewer Desert and more Middle East style missions spawn (previously there was too much Desert) - Alien grenades have been updated with stats more in line with other grenades, they also no longer deal stun damage 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.

I was afraid of that - we are doing some UI work at the moment, but it's not ready to be released yet, but it seems some of the code changes are messing up the soldier screen. I will try and seperate out the changes so I can release a version with only the shooting through walls fix. Aliens shooting through the floor in the UFOs is a different thing, it's on the list to fix but it won't be in the next update. EDIT: Change of plan, we are just going to do a full new build with various updated UI bits.

Two things were causing this - firstly there was an issue (probably long standing) where bullets were not properly blocked when flying between diagonal tiles. Secondly, and only recently added, the "close range" bonus was overriding the blocking chance from shots - so for example even if a wall reduced your chance to hit to 0%, the close range bonus then got added atop that and thus allow shooting through 100% block objects. I just released a hotfix for both of these.

FYI guys we have now hotfixed the shooting through UFO walls bug. That is on the list to fix, but the cause is completely different from the shooting through walls bug. We'll try to get to it asap, as it is one of the more major ones left.

We have a fix for the issue with aliens (and Xenonauts) shooting through UFO walls, so we have decided to push it right away as a hotfix. It also includes a few other fixes, mainly because they have already been committed so why not include them. Fixes: - Fixed two issues that could allow weapons to penetrate UFO hulls -- First was an issue to do with blocking shots that travel between diagonal tiles -- Second was an issue with the updated accuracy formula where a wall would reduce the chance to hit to zero, but then the close range bonus would override that - Fixed the way jetpack animations are displayed (they now display the full take-off/land animation before moving) - Removed the blue tint from "stunned" units - this was a debug tool, your are meant to find out by checking their corpse - Enabled an animation for healing soldiers

Thanks, this does sound like an odd one - anybody else experiencing it?

Thanks for reporting this - do you have a saved game from when this happened? Would make finding the problem much easier for us.

Both the aliens shooting through UFOs and the aliens spawning in objects is being looked at. Has anyone seen aliens shooting through anything other than UFO hulls?

We are looking into that one - hopefully should be an easy hotfix. Anybody seeing aliens shoot through anything except UFOs?

Thanks - I'm trying to reproduce this but each time it works fine. Are you sure you posted the correct saved game? You said you were attacking a crashed battleship, but the saved game has the Valkyrie going to a landed (undamaged) carrier.

Good catch - fixed for next version.

As the newly released experimental build 4 was mainly bug fixes, please just continue discussions here. I'll update the title. We have given grenades an additional 2 tiles of range - I did play with buffing their blast radius, but the jump from 2 -3 tiles in radius is pretty huge. See how you get on with the extra range for the moment.

As the newly released experimental build 4 was mainly bug fixes, please just continue discussions here. I'll update the title.

Don't worry, we are going to address this by showing more details of the soldiers on that screen, probably as popups over the soldiers on mouse-over - it was an oversight that we didn't include those details already.

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 are putting this build out ahead of our usual schedule because we have managed to fix one of the annoying crash bugs on the soldier equip screen; no guarantee that this will fix it for everyone, as I suspect there may be more still to fix, but the fix in this build resolved the only reproducible freeze in the equip screen that I have been able to find thus far. Additionally we have fixed the bug in the way the "crouching bonus" was being applied; now it is applied before the close range bonus in the accuracy calculation - this will greatly reduce the effectiveness of crouching in cover (the bonus itself has also been reduced). There's some other bits and pieces in there - the other notable balance change being the buff to the range of grenades (and other thrown weapons) that should give them a little more utility. Here are the changes: Fixes: - Fixed the soldier equip screen crash, which happened when certain strings on soldier role screen were too long - Fixed "crouch bonus" being applied after close-range bonus, thus making it more effective than intended - Fixed layout of aircraft equipment slots so they scale with resolution - Fixed ground vehicle screen image scaling - Fixed LOS blocking not being correctly cleared when a UFO spawn replaced a previous map prop - Fixed graphical clipping on Cruiser floor - Fixed Hunter being loaded with 50 instead of 100 rounds of MG ammo by the Geoscape - Fixed missing Precision Plasma Reload sound - Fixed drop-down menu on soldier management screen preventing assigning the soldiers at the bottom of the list to dropships - Fixed some of the damaged Carrier UFO tiles including parts of the layer above them (graphical only) - Fixed both the Buzzard and Sentinel armour using incorrect sprites/animations for a variety of weapon combinations - Fixed a couple of Town tileset civilians being missing death animations for NW directions - Fixed a rare hang that could occur on base defence missions when aliens could find nowhere to spawn - Fixed incorrect radar range being displayed when building a new base - Fixed alien grenade flight speed - Fixed missing AK47 GUI image Additions: - Added various new painted over tiles for the Xenonaut base walls - New final image for Plasma Charge - Added one new Ground Combat music track, updated others to final versions Balance: - Crouching now only grants a unit a 20% reduction in their chance to be hit, down from 40% - Re-organised starting base layout, removed one radar and added a spare hangar; centralised command centre (also applies to new bases) - Increased grenade throw range by 2 tiles - Increased chances of various types of explosive causing fires (AI now avoids them!) 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.

This happens with pistols too - they "burst fire" even though they can't. It's in the system.

How do you find the monetary reward for that? Too little, too much? The reward values I assigned the various crash sites were based on really rough calculations, so it would be good to know if they needed tweaking.

Already reported - on the list of things to fix.

This happens if your saved games are from an older version of the game which are no longer compatible with the new version - did you have Steam auto-updates turned off?

The entire mission over screen is due for an overhaul - we will replace the score with something more informative then.

This was happening before because there was a bug where aliens were just unaware they were shooting at a wall. That had to be fixed, the bad behaviour it caused was atrocious. However, getting the AI to do this intentionally is something I would like to try if we get the time.

Cool, glad you found it effective! Had the aliens actually emptied the rest of the base trying to kill you, or did you find more as you explored?

This does probably need tweaking -what we will likely do is limit its targets to Xenonauts that are within alien line of sight, or possibly just limit it to one or two units max per turn. Once the frequency of it is reduced the popup should become less annoying.

Thanks, wasn't aware of this one - made a note.

Something is definitely wrong still, yeah - we are continuing to look into it.