BlackObsidian

One of the changes listed for V8.9 was the raising of the GUI off the bottom of the screen to allow you to scroll down without going either side of the interface - this doesn't work despite there being an obvious gap at the bottom of the screen.

Wow - this is soooo much more stable than the earlier builds and I've managed to play all the way through to the end of the tech/manufacturing tree for the first time. Nice one Chris

Night missions are still being generated out of synch with the time of day your troops land; seems to be less frequent than earlier builds but I've still had several when I've timed it to land in the middle of the day and it still generates a night mission.

Nope not the alien ones - I think eventually they are meant to be usable on the battlefield in emergencies (with big accuracy, etc penalties) but not routinely equipped by your soldiers or kept in base armouries. There may be a later human version to be researched, but not in the alpha build.

The last available research projects in V8.9 are the Scatter Laser and Pulse Laser. I started researching them both, but when the scatter laser completed I got a Xenopedia entry saying 'not included in this build' and the pulse laser project, nearly complete, also disappeared from the research queue. Also, the soldier and vehicle scatter laser can be manufactured after research and the vehicle-borne one can be equipped (with proper updated Hunter graphic on the vehicle equip screen) but you get a CTD if you attempt to deploy it to group combat. All completely reasonable given its not meant to be in the build, but thought I'd point it out.

Same here, had to use Alt+F4 to get out of ground combat.

I noticed the xenonaut aircraft have started having odd speed variations in combat, particularly Migs: In all combat the F-17 starts at 2000kph, and goes up to 3000kph when afterburners are triggered. However the Mig always starts at 2600kph but then immediately drops (to 2300kph when fighting a scout, 1800 with fighters and 1200 with corvettes). If you then switch afterburners on, the Mig shoots up to 3900kph and overtakes everything else. I thought this might be to match ufo speed to avoid the 'suicidal overtaking' issue in earlier builds but makes little sense on the Mig at long range, and I'm not sure the afterburner speed should be anywhere near that high (3900kph is somewhere above Mach 3 at sea level and Mach 4 at higher altitude...). Separate but similar issue: at the start of some engagements with a single UFO fighter, all xenonaut aircraft start at 0kph and accelerate up rather than the usual starting speed. Seems to happen randomly without any obvious trigger or pattern.

Again not sure if this is a bug but struck me as more noticeable in this build than the past: When starting two early research projects (think it was alenium and alien alloys) I allocated 30 scientists to one, which went immediately to 'excellent' progress, and 8 to the other, which only went to 'poor' progress. Despite the difference in scientist numbers the one with 8 scientists progressed through 'good' to 'excellent' and finished pretty much the same time as the one with four times the researchers. Hoes does research progress work? Is it a linear process or are there diminishing returns from adding more scientists? Either way, showing progress as 'excellent' when the project is still weeks from completion is a bit misleading.

You also need Alenium, which unlocks UFO power source (once you capture one), which then unlocks laser weaponry. Its basically the end of the tech tree in the current build.

Not really a bug but more of an inconvenience: When laser weapons have been researched, they appear under a separate tab on the soldier equip screen. Unfortunately until you manufacture at least one of each the weapon stats do not appear in the top right box when clicked on, in the same way that the conventional weapons do. This makes comparing the benefit from the new weapons to the old impossible until you have already made them. Also, the previously report accuracy stat glitch on laser weapons (12,000% accuracy for precision laser for example) is still there in V8.9.

After researching laser weapons I went into the workshop screen and added a couple of each laser weapon to the manufacture queue, but only allocated my technicians to the top two projects. After exciting to the geoscape I immediately got popup messages saying several projects had been suspended due to insufficient funds (even though I had about $10mil in the bank). Went back into the workshop screen, noticed I now had no money, used the 'm' key to top back up to $10+ million, exited again and saw the money drain away in a flash. When I went back into the workshop and either added a single technician to each project or deleted the unresourced ones from the queue, the problem went away. Weird!

Laser weapon xenopedia entry refers to a universal laser battery as ammo for laser weapons, but the workshop screen refers to it as 'laser cell'.

Wolf armour when equipped with sniper rifle is missing in V8.9

I like it, the style is definitely an improvement over the clinical current version. One thing though - is the manage research screen going to have any visual representation of the project or just text? I think not being able to actually see what you've recovered (or to have some sketch image for hypothetical projects) prior to getting the research completed xenopedia page is a loss over the current design.

I definitely prefer the actual UFO art over the red top view. What would be even cooler was if there was an overlay highlighting UFO weapons, weakpoints or similar that appeared once the UFO type or UFO weapon projects had been researched. It wouldn't need to have any significant impact on air combat but it would enhance the feeling that your combat pilots had increasingly more info as research progresses.

Nice - clear and gives you a good idea of what's coming so you can decide whether to fight or run. Having the UFOs in red makes sense during combat but perhaps on here they should appear as they would be seen visually?

Wow the bug with the civilians is really annoying, third crash in an hour Any ETA on a hotfix Chris?

The research project for laser weapons not appearing even when you have researched all the right pre-requisites is a known bug; has happened to me twice now. Haven't encountered problems finding a plasma pistol to start the research tree off though - what difficulty are you playing on Okim?

Outstanding, thanks Chris

Welcome, and let us all know if there is more we can do to get them fixed quicker...

Or perhaps have them with more vague descriptions until the pre-requisites have been researched, much like the 'alien artifact' descriptions found in XCOM before the item was researched.

I had a similar CTD while switching to the equip soldier tab in the base view, but also couldn't reproduce it from a save made immediately before.

True, but I understand its generally helpful if existing bugs are reconfirmed after every version change.

This still occurs in V8.6, and it also caused a CTD for me when it happened.

The first items that should be available for manufacture are the laser weapons and wolf armour, which are at the end of the available tech tree in the current build and require a few more projects completed than the ones you listed.