Chris

Yes, but only for big events. We've only used it once to date which was for when we announced the free builds slightly less than a year ago. We'll use it for Kickstarter announcement, Early Access launch, final release etc ... but it's not one we plan to frequently spam updates to.

Afraid not, no.

Nope, no catastrophes have occurred - although progress has perhaps been slower than we'd like (although there's nothing new there). We'll likely resume the public builds soon-ish but there's some cool stuff being cooked up at the moment and I'm not keen to reveal it until it's good and ready, as there will be more of a "wow" factor that way

Yeah this does actually look pretty good - I'm also a bit envious that they apparently have a team of 50 people working on it. It's gonna be a fairly big budget production by the looks of it.

Be interesting to see how that pans out. If it doesn't generate a lot of complaints when the game is released I might consider moving to a similar system for future games - but in general I've always thought that people want to be able to properly evaluate their options before making a decision, rather than having to eyeball it (and then hope that the reality in the game logic actually matches up with what the player's eyeballs are seeing).

Ideally you want a scenario where you don't start in control of the whole world, with an obligation to defend it. It's pretty limiting, particularly when you also have to include things like interceptors and UFOs because otherwise you'd be straying too far from the core tenets of the series. I think an X-Com game (talking about mechanics here rather than setting - it could easily be a fantasy game, for example) where you're exploring, expanding your territory and upgrading your base without having to worry about an air layer would potentially be cool. There's all sorts you could do. Adding in survival elements would be a lot of fun, but again doesn't really make sense in Xenonauts given you're a large military organisation and shouldn't need to worry about whether there's enough food to go round etc.

Yeah, if the audio isn't working then best get a refund for it (assuming you've also tested it without the community edition, that is). Unfortunately, it's not an issue I've ever encountered before so I can't really give you any useful suggestions as to how you could fix it. Sorry about that.

Mostly it's because making this sort of game is super-expensive because of all the content involved in it. It wouldn't make sense for us to spend all that money unless we know there's a decent audience out there that will buy the end product, so we (and others) have stayed relatively true to the original formula thus far. But hey, after X-2 we'll have a re-usable engine that we've already paid for. That should mean it won't be prohibitively expensive to develop more X-Com like games with different settings etc.

One of the problems is that there's not really that many variables you can actually control with a soldier - they've got a few stats, but a bonus that gives them +5 Accuracy or +10 HP isn't really very exciting because it doesn't really change the way they play. It's possible to code unique rules (e.g. a soldier can only fire a single shot per turn) but it seems a bit weird when compared to how the rest of the game works, although it would be less out of place in the Firaxis XCOM games where the soldiers have activated "superhero" powers. I guess a game like Jagged Alliance 2 gets it working in a few situations - e.g. certain crazy mercs will autofire their weapons when you've given them an order to take an aimed shot - but there's not that many situations where you can do that sort of thing. It also makes more sense when the unit is a developed character rather than a (metaphorically) faceless soldier like they are in Xenonauts.

I think that sounds like a lot of work to cater to players who lack a certain amount of self-discipline

Thanks. Yes, we'll be leaving it as late as possible for this (hence all the free builds etc).

Thanks for the suggestion, but dogs are a bit of a pain to put in the game even if we wanted to do so - they'll need an entirely new set of animations etc given they're not humanoid. There's also the question of where they fit into the tech tree given they don't have weapons and so forth - potentially they could be a low-tech early version of the XCOM SHIV or something maybe, but right now there would be a lot of things that would need to be worked out if we wanted to put attack dogs in the game. Yeah, I'd like to put proximity explosives back in the game as they were lots of fun in X-Com. We'll see where the tech tree takes us with regards to biological upgrades, and maybe soldier training and a "stealth mode" at the start of the mission might be considered too. But with the exception of proximity grenades that's all stuff that is "nice to have" that we'll consider once the core game is playable and fun!

This version of Xenonauts 2 is a free public test build, released free because it is still an early build and we don't yet think we can justify charging for it; full details on where to get the build can be found in this thread. This is a hotfix for our previous release; the new features in that release are listed here: https://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/index.php?/topic/14510-xenonauts-2-version-0140-public-combat-test-released/ CHANGELOG: Fixed the "screen flipping" issue that caused people playing on lower graphics settings to have the game display inverted. Fixed some random crashes linked to changing the graphics settings of the game. Fix Reapers not having weapons, so being unable to attack. Fix a number of alien animation issues, most noticeable on the Psyon drone. Aliens no longer have visible outlines when hidden by the shroud during the alien turn. Xenonauts no longer occasionally turn invisible when the aliens start performing actions. Disable developed debug commands (e.g. pressing "T" no longer refills your unit's TUs etc) Hopefully this will bring V0.14.0 to a fully playable state, but please let us know if you're experiencing any further issues!

Looks like another hotfix is going to be needed - there's a problem on lower graphics settings where the screen ends up being inverted, plus some other issues too. We'll hopefully put out a patch today or tomorrow at the latest.

Yes, this definitely needs to be put in a tutorial.