Talgor

Yep, just confirming, that did fix it. Game starts normally now, new features are in place. Yaay.

That's actually it, I had several versions so I renamed the zips xce-028 and xce-030, I didn't even notice it copied this name to be the mod directory's name. Wow, I have to admit that it did not occur for me to think about the mod manager being so strangely made... ZIP filenames as a critical component... ick. I'm sure it'll work once I rename that, going to try it later. Thanks for the advice!

In this house, we do not use Steam! ...so do I need to copy all the stuff manually somewhere? What about the balance and settings things? Is the mod manager just a glorified unzipper? How does it all work? ;

No... the installation instructions specifically say to copy only the exe files. I assumed the mod system would know to look for the others under the mod folder. If not, what's the point of installing it with the mod system?

Tried this with both 0.28 and 0.30. I downloaded X:CE 0.28 (and later 0.30), installed it as instructed (install using mod manager, copy executables to replace originals) and I get the X:CE version number in the launcher to indicate it's running the correct exe. However, when I try to start the game itself, there's just a brief dark flash (presumably the game window being created) and then immediately a crash with no error message. Using 32-bit WinXP, Xenonauts 1.09.