Chris
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The difference between teleporters and the UFO door example is there's no situation where a player playing the game in a non-cheesy way would need to close the UFO front door.
There's quite a few situations when a player might want to use more than one teleporter in a turn. For example if you have a soldier on the ground floor of a 3-level UFO, and you want to move up two levels to reach the bridge. Or if you go through a teleporter accidentally (or it goes a different place than you were expecting), and want to go back through it. Or even if you go through a teleporter and find a lot of aliens on the other side - in every other situation you can retreat your soldier by just running back around the corner, or through the doorway you used. Preventing that via teleporters (i.e. guaranteed death for that soldier) would make a lot of less hardcore players VERY angry, I'm sure. No matter how much the MARS costs.
Making the game frustrating for the majority of players to stop a cheese tactic only used by experienced players wouldn't be a smart thing to do. We either need to find a solution with fewer downsides than "one teleport per turn", or the solution needs to be redesigning the various maps so that the teleporters are in smaller rooms that have limited sight lines instead, and you have to go through doors to breach the command rooms instead. But I'm not sure how much work the latter is; we may not have enough time to revamp lots of maps prior to release.
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Hmm, no, having actually watched the clip this time (Twitch wouldn't let me log in before) I don't really know that this is something that needs "fixing". It's not that dissimilar to cheesing a doorway or a building corner really. The Andron got to reaction fire after it was attacked the first time so it's not like the player was able to avoid attacks.
The issue with making this strategy less effective is exactly what the player said in the video - "I don't know what to do here, the Andron is unsuppressable". The danger is that command rooms become a place where people are guaranteed to take casualties whatever they do. Setting it so teleporters are effectively one-way trips would do that, I think.
It's easy enough to add a TU cost to using a teleporter (the new manual activation mode already has a TU cost) but I don't think that would fix the problem, as I don't think it would have changed the behaviour of the guy in the video at all. Really the only advantage he's gaining here is ensuring his team are safe from enemy attack during the AI turn, and while that is an advantage it does mean the AI will be able to reaction fire during the next turn as soon as a unit attacks.
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On 2/12/2026 at 12:44 AM, gG-Unknown said:
I have found perfect example of Whack-a-mole issue.
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2694823663?t=00h41m22s
I highlighted the issue several times already, include suggested solution. Make sure that the new trigger use a rule "one teleporting per turn at max" See my previous post in this thread.
The trick is based on mechanic of reaction fire, as long as teleported soldier keep enough TU he is safe.
I em highlighting it again, by video, to make sure we get rid of this toxic type of gameplay.
Hmmm. I think the issue here is that the fix is as bad as the problem. Yes, it's possible for experienced soldiers to abuse the teleporters. But setting a limit of one teleport per turn is going to affect a lot of players who aren't abusing the teleporters, who would just be confused and frustrated by the artificial limitation - and there's likely to be a lot more casual players who are affected than there are experienced players who want to cheese the teleporters.
I'm not sure that this issue is a huge priority really, but I guess a better solution would just be to give a large Reflexes penalty to any soldier who uses a teleporter more than once a turn. That would make any teleport-cheese soldier very vulnerable to reaction fire but not affect players who are playing normally.
Do you actually see that sort of behaviour happening much?
EDIT - actually, I misunderstood the problem in this post. See my second post for a proper reply.
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On 2/6/2026 at 8:59 PM, realitii said:
I just completed the game on soldier difficulty, and it took me about 30 hours to do so.
I never played the original xcom games or the first Xenonauts, but I did play XCOM 2. I knew that the XCOM sequel was very different in spirit to the original games, and Xenonauts 2 seemed interesting.
The tactical layer is easily the best part of the game. I loved (and hated) how destructible the environments were, and the TU system is a clear upgrade over the fixed action economy in XCOM 2. Throughout the game, I experimented with multiple squad setups and weapon types. I was pleasantly surprised that each of the weapons felt effective - I didn't feel like I was forced into a single meta build to survive the game. Early game, I used shield units supported by rifles and shotguns. Mid game, I transitioned from shields/shotguns to lmgs and more rifles. After a particularly awful night terror mission, I ended up bringing snipers in subsequent missions to deal with units sitting at long range behind cover. End game composition was 8 rifles, 2 lmgs, and 2 snipers.
Shields were really helpful in the beginning, but fell off mid game. Ultimately, aliens left alive deal damage. Killing them is the best form of damage reduction, not using a shield. In addition, I got very comfortable using smoke grenades - especially if I had really bad RNG with my accuracy in a round. I found that LMG colossus xenonauts were really good at clearing rooms, and few things are as satisfying as deleting a sebillian point blank with a %50 x 10 spread from my plasma lmg.
Rifles are just excellent for most situations, and I really valued that versatility. Snipers aren't always necessary (e.g. alien bases), but they are sometimes necessary to deal with long range threats efficiently. I was initially annoyed by damage variability, but I got used to it. However, if you gave me a module (e.g. Aim Assist Module) that removed that volatility at the expense of average damage for round, I'd take it. I'd strongly prefer a rifle that always does 90% damage than one that usually does 50-150% damage - even if the latter does more damage on average.
Damage falloff over range is tuned too aggressively for sniper rifles.
Equipment was pretty straightforward. I used smoke, stun, and the cover destruction grenades (I forget what it was called). I never used grenades as a damage dealing tool, so I never used frags. Early in the game, I frequently had grenades land at my feet by bouncing off cover. This was the biggest reason I save-scummed. The only other note I'll make here is the end-game module that lets your units see with 360 degree vision cone - I had massive performance issues moving those soldiers around the map. Having 360 field of view would be nice, but I didn't use those modules because of the lag they caused.Alien variety was fine. I think the only alien I really struggled with throughout the game was the sebillian. They were always priority targets due to their lmg spray - not even because it necessarily killed my xenonauts directly. Even if they missed a xenonaut, they usually destroyed their cover. Any other aliens would then get a free shot at the now-vulnerable xenonaut. In addition, their regeneration essentially negates overwatch shots. Unless you catch a sebillian in multiple overlapping overwatch nets, they would usually eat the hit - kill one of your units - and then regen that lost health back. I'd estimate that at least half of my soldier deaths were to sebillians - directly or indirectly. Just to be clear, I am not advocating any changes to the balance of Sebillians; they're just scary lol.
Map variety was very limited. Mission types are even more limited as the game progresses.
I did 30 missions throughout that play through, and like 10 of them were crashed UFOs on a farm. That may be a slight exaggeration, but it certainly felt very repetitive.
While losing soldiers was pretty common (every other mission), I only came close to losing a tactical mission once - due to time constraints making me play aggressively.
Throughout the game, I felt that partial cover was ineffective. My crouched xenonauts sitting at moderate range (10-15 tiles) were usually one-tapped behind partial cover, and even if aliens missed (miraculously) - they would destroy the partial cover for the next alien. This was a really big reason why I leaned on shields early game. However, even though I lost plenty of soldiers - it never felt run ending. This game is far more lethal than XCOM 2, but soldiers are far more replaceable.
The best way to prevent alien fire was sitting behind full cover/smoke at angles that forced aliens to walk through multiple overwatches to fire. Most of the time, they won't bother.On the strategic layer, if you are intercepting UFO's and winning missions - doomsday/panic just isn't a serious problem. The interception mini game was interesting at first, but the hundreds of interceptions throughout the campaign grew somewhat tedious. I leaned on auto-resolve towards the end, which I think may be too generous. The biggest problem I faced in the strategic layer were the UFO waves that would bait out your interceptors so that troop transports could land on your bases. I did lose one of my secondary bases at the end of the game to this mischief. However, at that point, I was swimming in cash so it was only a minor inconvenience. At higher difficulties, I expect to invest more into batteries in my bases to prevent this.
At some point, I anticipate replaying this game on Ironman Commander for the challenge. I really enjoyed it, and I will definitely be back to try out future milestones. Thank you for making such a wonderful game <3
Thanks for the lengthy writeup, and apologies for the slow reply (as the poster above alluded to, we've been pretty busy recently). It's great to hear you had a good experience with the game, and most of the issues you raised (particularly the grenades-at-feet and 360-degree vision slowdown) are issues we'll hopefully be looking into prior to the final launch of the game.
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4 hours ago, gG-Unknown said:
I have a save on turn 0, landing.
user_day_185_terror_site_manual_save-33.rar
There was a lot of civ, none survived, it is possible that 2 aliens were killed by civ so I didnt see them.
Number of aliens should be related to the map size.
Mayby that soviet town design is full of small buildings and walls so it feel like a larger than it actually is. Result playing Soviet town is = empty feeling. I cant remember how many opponents I get in M5 in terror missions but it felt more intense.
On top, It was a night mission, so I expected I will be demolished, but I get only two hits. ( OR perhaps I m just insanely good tactician, LOL, and this complain is nonsense.)
Anyway, The bombs are not there that is for sure.
Thanks. Yeah, the bombs being missing is a bug that we can fix. You're right that too few aliens have spawned in your mission - there's only 12 when it should be 14. We'll look into why that happened.
The Soviet maps may well be denser than the Western Town equivalents, that's something I'll keep my eye on when I play a bit deeper into the game. Someone playing on Soldier or Recruit difficulty would have far fewer aliens in the map so it's possible the maps are just too big right now (or there's too few aliens).
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8 hours ago, gG-Unknown said:
it is a second terror mission on Veteran diff. Day 185, see the opponents numbers. On top their HP and armour is weak. Difficulty setting is totally off.
On top no bomb present on map, so I didt get alenium LOOT !
On top, on the after mission report, I do not see mission reward. Where is panic ? Why did I made an effort ? do not know ... satisfaction zero.
Thanks. Do you have a save game from the mission? It's much easier for us to debug any problems if you provide one. The lack of bombs is probably due to there being an error in the map, but unfortunately I can't tell what map you played from a screenshot of the post-mission debrief.
There should have been 14 aliens in that mission on Veteran so again would be useful to see a mid-mission save game to see whether they all spawned correctly or not.
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Hello everyone - hope you all had a good Christmas! We've now reached the end of January, which means it's time for another development update. It's unusually long because it covers both December and January!
Milestone 7 & Full Release:
We're almost entirely focused on our upcoming Milestone 7 update these days. As many readers already know, this is the update that will become our full 1.0 release when Xenonauts 2 leaves Early Access. We're not yet ready to confirm our planned release date, but we've locked in an internal target and our publisher (Hooded Horse) will be making the full announcement once the trailer and marketing are ready to go!We'll hopefully be releasing the first version of Milestone 7 onto the Experimental branches for testing next week. I've just finished writing up the 5,000-word changelog for the initial Experimental release, and there's already a lot of good stuff in there - despite having a shorter development cycle than Milestone 5 or 6, it should still be a fairly chunky update. We're looking forward to sharing it with everyone.
However, the Experimental release is subject to stability - we're currently working on fixing some critical bugs that make the game unplayable, so unfortunately we don't yet know if there are other game-breaking bugs lurking deeper into the campaign. If there are, we may need to push the release back while we address them. Fingers crossed for next week, though.
Strategy UI Backgrounds & Interceptor Paperdoll:
I'm pleased to say the updated interceptor art on the Aircraft screen is now fully implemented, which means you see the aircraft art update and change as you customise the loadouts of the planes. The updated strategy UI background art that upgrades and changes as you progress through the research tree should also be complete for the Experimental release next week, as we're now working on the last variant of the final UI screen.I think these updates will be the most noticeable part of the update for most people - they sound like small things when written out, but I think they do a lot to make the game feel more reactive and immersive.
Performance Optimisation:
A large chunk of programming time over the past couple of months has been spent on improving the performance of the game, and we've made substantial improvements in a lot of different areas - faster loading times on strategy and tactical combat, reduced slowdown on the strategy layer when UFOs spawn on the Geoscape, improved AI turn times during the tactical combat, and speed improvements that should stop explosions and autosaves locking up the tactical combat for 1-2 seconds (the autosave improvements will probably make Iron Man mode feel a lot better).There are a few other areas we wanted to optimise, but we're on a tight schedule so we'll be moving onto other tasks instead (unless community feedback suggests there are still serious performance problems in particular areas). Unfortunately, the downside of all these improvements is that optimisation work frequently introduces bugs to the game - indeed, it's part of the reason for the critical bugs we're currently working on fixing. Ironing out any of these newly introduced issues is going to be an important part of the Milestone 7 testing cycle.
Praetorians & Alien Bio-Cannon:
We've now finished adding a new rank of elite Psyons / Sebillians / Wraiths that appear on the hardest missions, acting as bodyguards for Eternals. The 3d models for these "Praetorians" have now been completed and set up in the game, and we've finished the big reshuffle of alien ranks required to make this happen (as "Praetorians" already existed in the game, we've had to demote the existing Praetorians to be Elites, and the existing Elites to be a newly-created "Warrior" rank).We've also finished setting up an improved version of the Mantid Alien Bio-Rifle, which is the weapon that spawns Symbiotes that previously disappeared halfway through the campaign because it posed little threat to heavy armour. The new Alien Bio-Cannon does increased damage and spawns two Symbiotes per shot, meaning Symbiotes will continue to appear throughout the campaign. This is especially fun because the Colossus can crush Symbiotes by walking over them in the same way that vehicles can!
Farm Maps & Additional Scout UFO maps:
We felt that the Farm biome maps were noticeably weaker than the others, in terms of both visuals and map layout. We've therefore reworked this biome as part of Milestone 7, revisiting and redesigning all of the Farm maps and incorporating a number of new terrain tiles that we were working on towards the end of last year. We're most of the way through this process, with just the Ambush and Extract VIP maps left to complete.We've also created an additional two maps for each biome for Scout UFOs, as previously each biome only had three maps shared between the three smallest UFOs (Scout, Destroyer, Observer). Although this was 21 possible maps across the seven biomes, players who restarted their campaign would inevitably start to see map repeats (especially if they did it more than once). The 14 new maps are currently at the draft stage, but we're expecting to get them fully completed in the next four to six weeks.
Smaller Tasks:
We've also worked on a lot of smaller tasks over the past two months. I won't go into detail on them, but I know there will be community members happy to read about things like the return of weapons having Reflex Modifiers, the addition of a new Interrogation project for Cleaner Leaders, the ability to manually activate teleporters when your soldiers are stood on them, and making being on a higher / lower level than your target give a more straightforward hit chance increase / decrease in the tactical combat.Mods & Steam Workshop Integration:
Finally, we've spent a bit of time this month doing the last remaining technical tasks on modding support. Previously our solution did not support the loading of replaced assets (e.g. edited textures, etc), but Milestone 7 will have functioning support for this. Additionally, we've implemented Steam Workshop integration and created the UI required to generate new mod manifests and upload the files to Steam.This means that any modder familiar with Harmony code modding should theoretically have everything they need to create and distribute mods with the release of Milestone 7. Unfortunately, the average modder will probably need to wait for our Mod Editor tool to be completed - and that's likely to be pushed back to a post-release update, as right now it makes sense for us to focus all our attention on polishing the game content prior to launch. Now the technical foundations of mod support are complete, building the tools themselves will hopefully be fairly straightforward.
And that's everything - as always, thanks for reading. We'll write another update at the end of the month, and hopefully we'll see some of you testing the Milestone 7 before then!
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1 hour ago, gG-Unknown said:
we want to avoid vertical stacking of smoke too. // that is sad. Majority of players consider it as a bug, worth to announce, but you see it as intended feature. We had similar conversation yesterday.
partially because stacked smoke would be extremely hard to see through and navigate in general, // I have asked several times, make smoke less thick. Smoke visual should be an information for player not actual hindrance. partially because when shooting up / down a level you'd get into situations where a bullet passing through a single ground-level tile might end up hitting both the ground floor smoke and the upper level smoke (which would be very confusing for a player), / I dont see any problem here. and partially because the smoke particles look a littlle strange hovering in mid-air. // perhaps you need two types of smoke item, one anchored to the ground, second which is a mid-air-smoke so it is properly attached to top of the ground smoke. It can also be quite difficult to figure out where a smoke tile actually is if it's not on top of a ground tile due to the perspective of the camera. // no, see the sentence before
There is long time bug/feature (several times announced as bug in bug section with zero response) that smoke do not spread on water. Are you going to fix it or keep it as "intended" ?
The players don't spend 40+ hours a week developing Xenonauts 2, so they don't understand why particular features are set up in particular ways. That means they don't properly understand the trade-offs involved in many of the things they're asking for - players are great at finding problems, but rarely very good at suggesting solutions. Sometimes I'll find a few minutes to explain why we made a particular decision, but the problem is you always want to debate my posts and suggest much more complex solutions to everything, and then tell me my ideas are bad if I disagree with you.
Look, it's fine to make suggestions (smoke is already going to be less thick in Milestone 7 based on your suggestion), and it's fine to report things that you think are bugs (yes, smoke not spawning on water is a known bug that's on our to-fix list), but none of the points you've raised above are valid counter-arguments for why smoke should be stacked.
If you want less transparent smoke, why would you want to allow it to be stacked? If smoke is transparent enough to be clearly visible against all terrain types, layering two of them on top of each other (let alone three) would make them largely opaque. Hiding them on upper levels like you previously suggested just makes things even worse, because then people wouldn't know they were there when trying to plan shots or pathing with jetpacks.
You might not see a problem with a soldier on a roof shooting through four tiles of smoke and seeing the shot calculation applying the smoke penalty six times, but I can. There'd be plenty of other players coming on here telling us the game was broken if we did implement it.
The fact a smoke tile exists on a higher tile doesn't mean there's necessarily a smoke tile below it to connect to. Smoke despawns randomly, and terrain objects like walls could affect smoke propagation and lead to "floating" smoke spawning in any situation. Fundamentally the problem is that without a drop shadow it's very hard to judge positions of any object that's not on level 0 when you have an isometric grid like this (the bug with "floating" units on top of hidden shipping containers was another good example of this), and you can't have drop shadows on a floating object. It only becomes obvious where the object is relative to the battlefield when you rotate the camera. Plus, the artist who did our particles did his work years ago and isn't available for freelancing any more, so we can't just make more smoke particles unless we go through an entire hiring and onboarding process that would be expensive in terms of both time and money.
So there's a lot of reasons why we don't want smoke stacked. Hopefully that makes the decision make more sense to you.
I read your suggestions and comments, and sometimes there's useful stuff in there which we incorporate into the game. Other times your ideas aren't useful. I don't have time to reply to many posts, and I don't really have time to argue with you. Ultimately you're just going to have to trust that the development team are the best people to make decisions about fixes and features, because we're the people who are most familiar with the game design and the project setup and what is possible within it (even if we don't explain all of it to you).
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4 hours ago, PeterRibbit said:
Why not? are we talking smoke on lvl1 and lvl2 and lvl3 or multiple stacks of smoke on lvl1 (which yes would be the buggiest-case scenario)
I do remember some graphical oddness (with smoke getting in the way of playervision but not soldiervision) on levels above the one I was looking at when using smoke on multiple levels of a Harvester UFO. So I can see how smoke on level 2 and 3 could be graphically annoying and therefore undesired.The game already prevents multiple stacks of smoke spawning on the same tile, but we want to avoid vertical stacking of smoke too.
It's for several reasons - partially because stacked smoke would be extremely hard to see through and navigate in general, partially because when shooting up / down a level you'd get into situations where a bullet passing through a single ground-level tile might end up hitting both the ground floor smoke and the upper level smoke (which would be very confusing for a player), and partially because the smoke particles look a littlle strange hovering in mid-air. It can also be quite difficult to figure out where a smoke tile actually is if it's not on top of a ground tile due to the perspective of the camera.
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We've released the first version of Milestone 7 on our Experimental branch (instructions on how to access it here).
Standard disclaimers - this is an early experimental build, so it's likely to be unstable and will probably have balance issues. Because of the extra logging in experimental builds, it'll also have worse performance than standard builds. Additionally, not all of the planned Milestone 7 content is in place yet. Basically, please only play this if you're prepared to encounter (and ideally report) problems - if you're looking for a smooth and stable experience, please wait for the full Milestone 7 release!
Please also be aware that save games often end up getting broken due to bugfixes in the early days of an Experimental build (although we do try to avoid it where possible). If you're likely to find that frustrating, it'd be best to wait a couple of weeks for things to settle down before you dive in.
KEY CONTENT (SO FAR):
- New UI Background Art: there is now new background art for the Research, Engineering, Soldiers and Base Stores screens, which visually changes and upgrades with new technology as you progress through the game - a popular feature from the first Xenonauts that we've finally managed to implement in the sequel!
- Interceptor "Paperdoll": the top-down interceptor art on the Aircraft screen has been updated, and the image now reflects changes in weapons and equipment loadout as you make them.
- Alien Praetorians: a new rank of Psyon / Sebillian / Wraith has been added in the final stages of the game. These Praetorians have new 3d models and only appear on missions where Eternals are present, and they are significantly tougher and more dangerous than normal aliens (the alien Praetorians that existed in Milestone 6 have been demoted to alien Elites, and the previous alien Elites have been demoted to Warriors).
- Farm Map Revamp & Scout UFO Maps: this update contains a complete rework of most of the existing Farm tactical maps, making their layouts more interesting and adding a number of new / updated terrain tiles. We're also in the process of adding two new Scout UFO maps to each biome, as previously there were only three maps per biome for Small UFOs (Scout / Destroyer / Observer), and they would quickly start to repeat once players began their second or third campaign.
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Improved Performance: game performance has been significantly improved for Milestone 7 - although remember these will be less obvious on the Experimental branch due to the extra logging! The improvements cover a lot of different areas of the game, including the following:
- Faster loading times (for both strategy layer and tactical combat)
- Reduced slowdown when UFOs spawn on Geoscape at high time acceleration speeds
- Reduced strategy UI sluggishness, especially when spawning tooltips
- Explosions in tactical combat should now calculate much faster
- AI turns in tactical combat have been sped up - both in terms of improved AI calculation time, and reducing the number of unnecessary moves made by civilians
- Much faster save speeds across all parts of the game, the biggest effect of which should be that autosaves should no longer lock up the game for 1-2 seconds. This will be especially obvious on Ironman mode, as the game frequently autosaves during tactical combat when Iron Man is active.
- Steam Workshop integration: this update contains the last of the technical work required for making mods work, including the ability to edit texture files using code mods and in-game UI for managing mods and uploading / deleting mods to Steam Workshop. Although the general-purpose mod editor tools are not yet complete, experienced modders who are familiar with Harmony code modding should now theoretically have everything they need to be able to create and distribute mods.
BALANCE CHANGES:
Strategy Layer:-
Two existing features have been moved inside the Strategic Operations system via a couple of new Strategic Operations that unlock after ATLAS Base:
- Refresh Soldier Pool: the soldier pool would previously refresh for free at the end of each month, but will now only refresh when the Identify Recruits strategic operation is used (50 Operations Points cost, 3 day cooldown). I think this is easier to understand, and makes it easier to recover if you sustain heavy losses on multiple missions in the same month.
- Build Base: constructing a new base is now done via a Strategic Operation (100 Operations Points cost, no cooldown), which is in addition to the existing $ cost of constructing the base. This change was primarily done for UI / UX reasons, as the Strategic Operations represent actions you can do on the Geoscape and building new bases naturally sits within that. It also serves to clearly flag the ability to construct new bases to inexperienced players, and fixes a UI issue on 16:9 screens where there was not enough space for the Create New Base system in the topbar.
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Supporters & Operations Points:
- The cost to remove Infiltrators now increases by +0.5 OP per day, capped at +100 Operations Points.
- Intelligence supporters reduced back to generating +1 /+2 OP per day.
- Security Supporters now each grant -2 Panic in each region (Elite grants -4 Panic), but their Phase 1 Doomsday reduction values remain unchanged.
- Cleaner Agents / Soldiers now grant +25 Operation Points on completion of their Interrogation project (down from +50). Cleaner Leaders now have their own Interrogation project, which grants +50 Operations Points (previously you gained +30 per captured Leader item).
- Recruit difficulty now generates 10 OP per day, not 12.
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Mission Changes:
- Reduced the Doomsday reduction win rewards of all Cleaner missions by -5 each (except Abduction missions where the reward remains variable)
- You are now awarded the item contents of the attacking UFO if you win a Xenonaut Base Defence mission, or if your base defences shoot down the UFO as it tries to attack your base.
- Reduced the number of enemies in the Extract VIP cleaner escort mission by 1 on all difficulties.
- Heavy Armour now causes a -10% Accuracy penalty (previously a flat -5 Accuracy).
- Soldiers can no longer overload themselves by more than 16 weight on the pre-mission Soldier Equip screen. This is to prevent players from loading up excessive amounts of extra equipment and then dropping it all on turn 1.
- Aircraft engine upgrade projects reduced in cost to $350k (from 500) for the Angel, and $1m (from $1.5m) for the Phantom
- Unlocking the North America region bonus (+5 Soldier Starting Experience) now gives you an immediate free refresh of the soldier pool.
Air Combat Layer:
- Reduced the damage on the Alenium and Fusion missiles / torpedoes, as they were too effective against late-game UFOs.
- Rush replacement cost for aircraft has been increased: the Angel went $100k to $120k, the Phantom $200k to $250k, the Gemini $250k to $500k.
Tactical Combat:
- The effectiveness of Combat Shields is now affected by the difficulty level. On Veteran and Commander, they no longer block every shot from the front (90% block chance on Veteran, and 80% block chance on Commander). This change has been made because having a guaranteed source of protection from alien attacks can be a little too strong in the hands of experienced players.
- Reflexes Modifier has been re-added to weapons, which modify the soldier's reflexes by values ranging from 1.5x (shotguns) to 0.5x (shields). Be aware that the system uses the lowest value from the main and offhand weapon, not the value of the currently active weapon.
- Being on a higher level than your target now grants a +0.10x Hit Chance (per level) modifier to your shots, and being on a lower level inflicts a -0.10x penalty per level. This replaces the overly complex system in older versions that would reduce the stopping chance of any intervening cover, but not change the overall accuracy of the shot.
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The damage types of weapons and their effectiveness against terrain have been reworked:
- Kinetic weapons now do 25% of their base damage to terrain (this means their damage vs terrain has been reduced by 40%)
- Thermal damage has now been split into Energy damage (lasers, plasmas, fusion) and Explosive damage (rockets, demolition charge, etc).
- Energy weapons do 100% of their base damage to terrain. This is a reduction of about half since the previous build (Lasers in particular made clearing terrain a bit too easy), but Energy weapons remain 4x more effective against terrain than Kinetic weapons are!
- Explosive weapons now do 200% of their base damage to terrain (reduced from 250% in the previous build).
- UFO interior walls now have 50% more HP.
- You can now force-fire at enemies using Ctrl even if there is a 0% chance of hitting them. You can already use force-fire to take 0% shots against terrain, so this makes the behaviour consistent.
- Berserking units now give reduced weight to inflicting suppression damage, which makes them less likely to waste their TU throwing flashbangs at enemies rather than performing normal attacks.
- Tweaked the vision-blocking and stopping chance values of certain terrain objects to improve consistency.
- Updated a number of trees to have cover on the upper levels as well as the lower levels.
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Alien Changes:
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Aliens are now noticeably tougher, as in previous versions they weren't much of a step up from Cleaners:
- Sebillians now have 50% Energy resistance, but 0 Armour.
- Androns now have 50% Kinetic resistance
- Most other (non-robotic) enemies have been given +20% HP
- Cleaner Accelerated Rifle is now called the Magnetic Rifle, and Cleaner Soldiers are always equipped with it. It is now halfway between the human Ballistic Rifle and Accelerated Rifle in terms of damage and armour penetration - the intention being that skilled players can capture them and use them as a stopgap if they are skipping Accelerated Rifles to get Lasers faster.
- A new rank of Psyon / Sebillians / Wraiths has been added to the game. These "Praetorians" appear on missions where Eternals are present and are tougher and more accurate than existing aliens. Because "Praetorian" was already an alien rank, the previous Praetorians have been demoted to Elites, and the previous Elites have been demoted to a newly-created "Warrior" rank.
- Psyons previously had a variant of each rank with and without armour, but these have been consolidated into a single variant with a fixed amount of armour - Soldier (10), Warrior (20), Elite (30), Praetorian (40). This change was made because all the unarmoured Psyon variants previously looked identical, which made it hard to assess the threat each unit posed and led to player confusion.
- Sebillians now use a mix of LMGs and Rifles, rather than always being equipped with LMGs.
- Sebillians equipped with Fusion weapons now have standard grenades rather than poison grenades (as the latter are obsolete by that point in the game).
- Mantids now have access to an upgraded Alien Bio-Rifle in the later parts of the game. This new weapon is called the Alien Bio-Cannon, which inflicts greater damage and spawns two Symbiotes per shot. We added this because it was kinda sad that the unique Mantid weapon went away halfway through the game, particularly given the Colossus can crush Symbiotes like a vehicle!
- Cyberdrone / Heavy Cyberdrone now has two attack modes - the existing triple shot (80% TU) and a single shot (36% TU). This means Cyberdrones are extremely dangerous if given the opportunity to use their triple shot, but they are much less threatening if you can force them to move.
- Cyberdrone / Heavy Cyberdrone shields have been reworked to function like human shields - rather than granting extra Armour, they offer 100HP / 150HP extra health with a 75% blocking chance from the front (this reduces at the sides and falls to 0% from the back). We changed this because the +Armour rules for the previous shield were too complicated and didn't interact properly with explosions.
- Zombies are now gas immune.
- The base hit chance of all alien melee weapons has been increased to 70%-80%, which was generally an increase of about 10%. Reapers were already at that level, so did not receive any increase.
- Enemy AI no longer has access to the Bravery and Morale of your soldiers when choosing targets for Mind Control, as previously they would always focus in on the most vulnerable units and ignore those most likely to resist.
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Aliens are now noticeably tougher, as in previous versions they weren't much of a step up from Cleaners:
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Xenonaut Equipment Changes:
- Grenades can now only scatter half of their intended throw distance, which should make it impossible for soldiers to drop grenades at their feet when throwing more than a few tiles.
- Shotgun hit bonus increased from +7.5% per tile to 8% to turn.
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Colossus Armour changes:
- Reflexes penalty is now a 0.5x multiplier (previously a flat -20 Reflex penalty)
- The TU fire cost of the LMG is reduced by 20% when carried by the Colossus.
- Added an engineering upgrade project that permits Colossus Armour to equip an Automed System. This functions like the Automed Module but is substantially heavier.
- Not yet implemented: Colossus-equipped soldiers now display all (non-module) items in the Armory, and can place them in their backpacks. However, they can still only equip LMGs and the Power Fist in their Primary and Secondary slots, and they are still unable to use grenades. Basically, they can now be used to carry extra equipment for the rest of the team!
- Power Fist item now automatically equips in the Secondary slot when the Colossus is equipped, and the secondary slot then becomes locked so it cannot be unequipped or replaced.
- Enemy AI no longer considers the cloak effect of Stalker Armour soldiers when choosing their shots (they use the non-cloaked hit chance instead). This means the AI will now take more low-accuracy shots at cloaked soldiers and will therefore miss more often.
- C4 Charge item has been removed. This item was always meant to be superseded by the Demolition Grenade, which is why it doesn't receive any upgrades and the UX for using it is so janky. We're planning to add support for timed fuses on grenades in a future update, which will allow the Demolition Grenade to fully replace the C4.
- Smoke Grenades now inflict 1 Gas damage rather than 1 Thermal damage, which means they no longer inflict any damage at all on gas-immune enemies. This could be particularly confusing on Veteran / Commander difficulty, as without visible damage numbers players did not know the alien had only taken a tiny amount of damage.
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Mission Changes:
- Crash Sites - increased the number of aliens inside large multi-level UFOs, and added dedicated spawn / patrol points for the middle level of Abductors / Harvesters / Battleships to minimise the chances of there being only a handful of aliens there.
- Abduction - local forces / armed civilians no longer spawn on Abduction missions, as the fact that they look identical to the civilians the player is meant to be protecting can be confusing.
- UOO Bridge Assault - there are now 4 alien spawners to destroy, rather than 2. The first wave of reinforcements spawned from the lifts on either side of the map has been delayed by 1 turn.
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The contents of reinforcement waves now vary based on the difficulty setting. Generally we've reduced the number of reinforcements in the initial wave of reinforcements on Recruit and Soldier difficulty, and left it the same on Veteran and Commander (subsequent rounds of reinforcements remain at full strength).
- Cleaner Data Raid / VIP Extraction - on Soldier difficulty, the first reinforcement wave from the rear reduced to 2 enemies (from 3). On Recruit, the first reinforcement wave from the sides is also reduced to 1 enemy (from 2).
- UOO Bridge Assault - on Recruit and Soldier difficulties, the Andron Praetorian and Wraith Praetorian do not spawn in the first wave of reinforcements from the lifts on either side.
- UOO Data Raid - on Recruit difficulty, the second wave of reinforcements contains 1 fewer enemy from each of the three enemy spawn points (4 enemies at the rear, 3 at the sides). On Commander difficulty, the first wave of reinforcements contains 1 extra alien (from 2 to 3) from each enemy spawn point, as does the second wave (6 enemies at the rear, 4 at the side).
- When reinforcements spawn on night missions, the tiles on which they spawn are now temporarily illuminated so you can actually see them appear. Previously the camera would focus on the area, but no enemy activity could be seen in the darkness.
- Reworked the equipment of the local forces / armed civilians so they have a wider variety of weapon types across the different biomes. Previously almost every armed civilian on every map had a shotgun.
USABILITY & CONTENT UPDATES:
General:
- Significant performance updates have been made in various areas of the game (as already covered in the "Key Changes" section at the top of this post).
- Anonymised automated error reporting has been added to the game. The welcome message that appears when you first boot up Milestone 7 allows you to choose whether this is enabled or disabled (this can also be changed in the game settings), and it would certainly be helpful if players chose to permit this!
- The campaign difficulty settings now have a wider array of possible values in many of the dropdowns. Although none of these are used by the default difficulty settings, they permit players more options when customising their campaign difficulty.
Strategy Layer:
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Hotkeys 1-9 have been set up for strategy navigation. Key "1" is the Geoscape, "2" is the Main Base screen, etc.
- A dedicated Interrogation research project has now been added for captured Cleaner Leaders.
- Engineering project item costs now show the quantity available in stores for all item types (previously this was only showing for Alloys / Alenium).
- Engineering projects now include items equipped on soldiers when displaying how many items of that type you already own.
- Enemy stats shown on Autopsy / Interrogation research projects now include any difficulty level modifiers.
- When switching armour on a soldier, the "Jetpack" toggle state is now remembered (previously it would reset to "off" whenever the armour changed).
- The Colossus Power Fist weapon now appears under the Weapon tab in the Armory, not the Equipment tab.
- Launch Aircraft mode now has a unique cursor to make it more obvious when that mode is active.
- If Operation Points fall below 0, the number is now shown in red.
- The soldier image on the Armory screen no longer flickers when you change soldiers.
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The values for aircraft range / aircraft speed / radar detection range were very inconsistent in previous versions of the game. These have now been unified and brought in line with real distances and travel times. This has resulted in the following:
- Geoscape speeds of all UFOs and aircraft have been doubled. For clarity, this doesn't affect game balance - it just means units move twice as fast across the map on any given Geoscape time setting.
- Aircraft now display accurate values for speed and range in the Xenopedia, on the Aircraft screen, and when in flight on the Geoscape.
- Base "Detection Range" on the Base screen is now called "Detection Radius", and the stated range is now much closer to real-world distances.
- Radar buildings on the Base screen now state their function as "Extends radar range" rather than giving a nonsensical figure for their radar range.
- Fixed an issue where the "Range" value on the Aircraft screen was incorrectly changing based on the current fuel level of that aircraft.
Air Combat:
- Retreating aircraft will no longer switch targets automatically if their target is destroyed. This means they won't turn around and start flying back towards the combat area - previously this could be a problem for interceptors tasked with firing a barrage of missiles at long range and then retreating!
- Updated the air combat ambient sound to (hopefully) not contain an ear-splitting high-pitched whine that old people like myself lack the auditory range to hear. If this doesn't actually fix the issue, please let us know!
- Missile / torpedo tooltips have been updated to explain that they will only fire at the targeted UFO, rather than shooting at anything within their fire arc like cannons and lances.
Tactical Combat - Gameplay:
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Lots of long-standing issues with the line of sight / shroud system have been fixed, including:
- Worldspace UI elements such as the move path are no longer hidden by the shroud.
- Transparent objects (abduction tubes, cloaked Wraiths, etc) no longer draw underneath the shroud.
- Particle effects (smoke, fire, etc) no longer draw underneath the shroud.
- Certain types of corner tile (e.g. ATLAS Base rooms, certain cliffs) are now revealed correctly when units look at them.
- Terrain objects in the first tile of unrevealed shroud should no longer incorrectly show their 3D models before they are revealed.
- Fixed the ENDGAME stage 1 outer walls being black in some instances.
- You can now manually trigger a teleporter with right-click if a soldier is standing on it. This costs 4 TU.
- Xenonaut units will now automatically choose move paths that do not contain dangerous hazard tiles (e.g. smoke, fire, poison), provided the alternative path does not cost additional Time Units. If the safer path does cost additional Time Units, players will need to manually path around the hazards.
- Smoke and poison gas (but not fire) can now spawn over water tiles.
- Hovering over the toggle overwatch UI icon for a weapon (the little eye icon) will now show the tiles visible to that soldier. This is relevant because units can only overwatch fire on visible tiles within their own vision cone, so should make planning overwatch a little easier.
- Right-clicking a door to open it will now only take precedence over right-clicking to rotate a soldier if the soldier is in an adjacent tile to the door. At longer ranges, the soldier will now rotate as normal.
- The "range" line in the weapon tooltips now has an extra "point blank" section that shows the total hit bonus you get with that weapon if standing next to the target. Hopefully this makes weapons easier to compare and makes the range system easier to understand.
- Xenonaut Base Defence maps now have an extra tile of width between rooms, which prevents line-of-sight "leaking" from one room to another.
- Aliens should no longer attack mind-controlled Xenonaut soldiers.
- Civilian AI has been tweaked so they should be more reluctant to move near alien units when running to their next move point (note this does not affect civilians you have ordered to evacuate, who will always sprint towards the exit using the shortest possible route).
- Added a "Armour Hardness" value to the tactical inventory screen, as it wasn't previously listed anywhere in tactical combat.
- Improved the camera tracking for enemy shots at your soldier during the AI turn. This should reduce the number of times the camera doesn't appropriately focus on the targeted soldier.
- Thrown grenades now have a slight visual "trail" that makes them easier to see as they fly through the air.
- Reduced the opacity of smoke tiles on the battlefield.
- You now get a pop-up warning you if try to start a tactical mission with a deployment area without having moved your soldiers.
- Throwable items like grenades now correctly dim their sprite image when you don't have enough TU to use them (this mirrors the behaviour of items in the primary / secondary slots).
- The quick reload button (hotkey "R") previously only appeared if you had a full clip for that weapon in your inventory, but it now also appears if you have a partially-full clip in your inventory that contains more shots than the weapon currently does.
- If a weapon has no clip loaded, it instead displays "No Clip" on the fire cursor rather than a 0% hit chance percentage.
- Corpses now display sideways when added to the primary / secondary slot in the tactical inventory.
- Added an additional system to ensure you do not get the same tactical map twice in a row, closing off a (somewhat uncommon) sequence of events that could cause a repeat.
Tactical Combat - Content:
- New 3d models have been added for the Alien Bio Rifle and the new Alien Bio Cannon weapon.
- All Farm biome tactical maps have been revamped (there are about 15 of them), making them more visually appealing and more interesting from a gameplay perspective. Many will be completely unrecognisable from earlier versions.
- All seven main biomes now have two additional Scout UFO maps, increasing the number of maps for small UFOs from 3 to 5. This should help avoid potential map repetition when players have to restart their campaign.
- Updated one of the newer Cleaner Data Raid missions to expand the size of the map, as the target building was smaller than in the other maps and it made the mission easier to win.
- Roof destruction "frills" have been implemented for most types of roof - these are the irregular "edge" tiles that get placed around the sides of destroyed tiles to make the destruction look more natural (as blowing a perfectly square hole in a roof tends to look a bit odd).
- Gauss Shotgun artwork has been updated to give it a front grip, as it was previously quite hard to tell apart from the Gauss Rifle at a glance.
- Symbiotes now perform a proper "hatch" animation when they spawn.
- Sebillian death animation now largely fits inside a single tile, which should stop the legs of dead Sebillians sticking through UFO walls.
- Added a couple more car variants to the urban maps.
- Added a 3D model for the briefcase objective item in the Extract VIP mission.
BUGFIXES:
General:
- Fixed the Save Game UI panel scrollbar not permitting the user to scroll all the way to the bottom of the list.
- Fixed the typewriter sound used in the cutscenes being in the incorrect sound effect category.
Strategy Layer:
- Fixed a crash that could occur if you were able to intercept and shoot down an undetected UFO before the radar detection tick revealed it.
- Fixed an issue where interceptor squadrons tailing a Retaliation (Base Attack) UFO over water would sometimes not get the opportunity to attack the UFO before it attacked the base if the base had been placed close to the coast.
- Fixed the "Panic Reduction: -10 Panic" text not updating to show the correct Panic reduction value when choosing the target for the Reduce Panic strategic operation.
- Fixed an issue where Abduction missions could incorrectly increase Panic if you were at low Panic levels, even if the overall mission result should have lowered Panic (the Panic reduction was being applied before the Panic increase, which caused issues as the Panic could not go below zero, and then the increase was applied to the zero).
- Fixed the "open" sound effect playing twice when you clicked the menu button on the Geoscape topbar.
- Fixed the aircraft name in hangar not updating immediately after renaming an aircraft.
- Fixed Escape key not returning to the Geoscape on the Transfer Scientists / Transfer Engineers screens
- Fixed an issue where the "Critical Panic" pop-up would be shown before the Orbital Bombardment pop-up if the bombardment raised Panic in a region above 100.
- Fixed the Equipment hardpoints on the interceptors incorrectly displaying the "Weapon Hardpoints" label.
- On the Soldier Equip screen, fixed the soldier list order randomising every time you opened the popup to choose a soldier for the dropship.
- Fixed the Advanced Gauss Weapon engineering projects not updating their name to contain "Advanced" after the upgrade project.
- Fixed the "Hardness" value for the Colossus research project having an extra "f" character in the text line.
- Fixed the Xenopedia aircraft "range" text line to display a value consistent with the Geoscape distances.
- Fixed a number of soldier portraits that had hair / facial hair sticking out through the sides or top of their helmet.
Tactical Combat:
- Fixed a crash that could occur when picking up certain ammo types using the Colossus.
- Fixed a bug where the move-attack preview would not show the correct accuracy value when the soldier was crouched.
- Fixed UFO Power Cores that explode as part of the UFO crash sequence not correctly inflicting damage on the area around them.
- Fixed a bug where shooting into smoke would count one too few smoke tiles when calculating shot accuracy (shooting out from within the smoke cloud was calculating correctly).
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Fixed a bug where explosion damage did not always propagate as far as it should, as the Incendiary damage bonus was not being correctly applied when calculating overdamage. This would cause walls and other terrain objects to absorb too much explosion damage, reducing the amount of damage that would penetrate through them and damage units and terrain behind them.
- This also fixes the bug where explosion damage could sometimes "leak" through closed doors or walls, injuring units on the other side that should have been fully protected.
- Fixed the grenade blast radius indicator (the green tiles) not displaying properly if a soldier was throwing at a tile on the edge of cliffs.
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Fixed units being able to throw grenades onto destroyed floors / roofs, despite throwing grenades at empty tiles usually being disallowed.
- Fixed the visual inconsistency between Smoke Grenade smoke and the smoke from the MARS Smoke Launcher.
- Fixed a bug in the tutorial where the final conversation was incorrectly triggering before the Xenonauts had finished fleeing from the Cleaners.
- Fixed the Colossus Power Fist disappearing when transitioning between Endgame part 1 and part 2.
- Fixed a lot of minor visual issues in a variety of different tactical maps.
- Fixed a bug where destroyed shipping containers could still block throwable items like flares and grenades.
- Fixed a number of doors where the gameplay footprint of the opened door was inverted compared to its visual appearance.
- Fixed the alien base command room upper levels incorrectly having destructible outer walls.
- Fixed a number of terrain objects in the Alien Base biome visually disappearing when entering their "damaged" state, despite still existing in gameplay terms and therefore invisibly blocking movement / shots.
- Fixed a number of roofs that were not being properly destroyed and were incorrectly leaving behind walkable tiles.
- Fixed the spinning rings of the Singularity Core terrain object visually resetting position when changing from Undamaged to Damaged state.
- Fixed a pathfinding bug that could occur when attempting to move up to and then melee an enemy unit.
- Fixed a minor bug where alien units would sometimes end up with their weapons rotated towards the ground after firing a shot.
- Fixed a bug where the Pegasus dropship walls could be moved / shot through after loading a save.
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2 hours ago, gG-Unknown said:
Spread smoke as expected in volume, then check camera position and do not show stacked smoke tiles. Do things properly. I see certain patternt in bugs and issues, it looks to me, that lots of coding and "solutions" are result of previous fake or mockups.
If problems were as simple to fix as you seem to think they are, they wouldn't be problems.
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13 hours ago, PeterRibbit said:
I had a soldier throw a smoke grenade over a hill in a desert map, to land on the edge of the hill at a low % but on detonating it didn't generate any smoke at all. I reloaded and confirmed it wasn't a flashbang or other kind of grenade. I haven't been able to replicate that bug, but I did find another oddity while testing:
Smoke grenades thrown to level 2 product smoke only on level 2, while smoke grenades thrown to level 1 will produce smoke on neighboring level 2 areas as well. While this might be intended behavior (smoke rises?), it may also be a bug.
To replicate this, have a soldier throw a smoke grenade onto a patch of elevated ground and also onto a patch of low ground near the elevated ground. The smoke grenade on elevated ground will only generate smoke on elevated ground (left), while the smoke grenade on low ground will have its full effect (right).
Yeah, this probably isn't ideal - but I'm not sure it's worth too much time to try and fix it. What we don't want is multiple stacks of smoke stacked on top of each other, but as you say ideally the smoke should fall down to the ground if thrown on the level above. I'll check with the coders how much time it'll take to fix and we'll balance it against other issues in terms of priorities.
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3 minutes ago, gG-Unknown said:
I am sure that in last two years it doesnt.
However, if you merge civilians with reward and civilians without reward into one number it only adds confusion.
In many cases, player is asked to save civilians ( I am sure the Operation lady on first Terror mission makes a specific request) but there is no reward. Is it bug , or intended , or underdeveloped ?
There shouldn't be any civilians on abduction missions except those in the tubes. It's a bug if there are.
I thought the civilians did something on the Terror mission regarding Panic but I'm not completely sure. I'll check with the coders.
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1 hour ago, gG-Unknown said:
That idea will certainly add confusion.
Example
- MG has clip for 30. I have one spare full clip.
- after one long burst I reload ( there is a UFO breach so I want to be ready, )
- next round I will see that reload is not available, (30 in weapon, spare clip in backpack has 20)
- next round I will shoot a normal burst and see that reload is not available,
- next round I will shoot a normal burst and see that reload is not available,
- next round I will shoot a normal burst and see that reload is available (15 in weapon, spare clip in backpack has 20)
Confusion granted.
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Better logic :
For reload always use the most full clip available.
Modify reload button so it shows number of shells in upcoming reload. : 32 [25]
Green colour use TU, Blue colour use shells.
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This reload button modification would help add proper shotgun/gr.louncher reload.
As you may know, these two weapon has no clip, but independent shells which are manually loaded one by one into the buffer inside the weapon.
To simulate this, we need two reload buttons:
Shotgun example ( at this moment I would I pretend that shotgun reload costs is 32)
1. Reload weapon to the full button, it counts the missing shells in the weapon, and re-count TU accordingly so it dynamically changes cost of reload based on missing shells.
Then for full reload of shotgun we get several options : 32[8] l 28[7] | 22[6] | and so on.
2. Dedicated button to add one shell : 4[1] it is always the same. No variants here.
Result of this feature is impresive, weapons start to behave like expected. The cost per shell could be cranked up a bit, so price per shell rises. But soldier could better use his TU and is not removed from ffiredight when he (Partially) reload. So reloading style, add another flavour to weapon usage. It creates different handling weapon with clips VS weapon with buffer.
Yes, but what you're asking for there is quite a significant feature that requires changes to the game logic, UI, UX and potentially weapon design. It's an interesting idea, but it's multiple days of work to implement and test, and probably more given it'll probably interact with existing systems and cause bugs that need additional time to fix.
My solution is a 30-minute contained fix that improves the current situation with no real disadvantages. I don't personally see people getting confused if the reload icon disappears when the reload action wouldn't cause them to end up with more bullets in their gun.
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On 1/30/2026 at 8:52 AM, Michael Curtis said:
Friendly in save missions exit map, then in summary are listed as not survived.
Thoughts, the game counts alive friendly on map at end, even if some leave map while undamaged.
Thanks, yeah. This is a bug and we're looking into it.
On 1/30/2026 at 12:02 PM, gG-Unknown said:There could be misunderstanding.
Current after-battle report shows "Civilian saved" line, but this line has no connection to civilians saved from Abduction tubes.
Also, there is no reward for those civilians who are saved and listed in this line.
It is under-developed part of game, not bug :=)
The game used to correctly include the abduction civillians in the calcution, I'm pretty sure. We must have changed something that broke it at some point.
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On 1/31/2026 at 10:37 PM, clr100 said:
During this one mission one of my two snipers would not reload using "R". I could reload manually by moving the mag in the backpack to the rifle, but it would only reload up to 2/3 instead of 3/3. This continued through end of mission. Zip file attached.
Yeah, this is because you don't have a full clip in your inventory for the weapon - you must have previously unloaded that clip or something. At present the game only supports quick reloading if you have a full clip in your inventory.
We'll update the logic so it will show the reload function as long as you're carrying a clip containing more shots than your weapon currently has.
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20 hours ago, gG-Unknown said:
Description says :
There are some mistakes on the current description AND unfortunate description style in general. Cloud producing grenade provides TWO damage actions,1. on impact (on the tooltip desc.) 2. on cloud inhale (is missing). Same issue suffer Smoke grenade :
Damage one stun is some kind of a placeholder and it makes issues on Cleaner Soldier with masks. They take this one stun dmg ! (but they dont inhale smoke from cloud, which powers are not listed on tooltip)
Anyway, back to Poison grenade, it is haunted by issues.
1. it says 15dmg >> not true, it makes 10dmg
2. it says -3dmg armour >> not true, it makes -2
3. it do not say nothing about shield but it takes 10 armour from shield
4. if cloud takes armour from shield then it do not take from armour (is it an artificial form of hard gas which somewhat bounce off the shield while shield is consumed a lot ? just joking.
)
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Uff, that is a lot. It is nice that you have developed a 2 phase grenade style, I like it, but it is a mess currently.
1. Make a proper(bigger) Tooltip which separates Impact effect and Cloud effect so player can see whole ruleset
2. Keep consistency, Tooltip must show valid numbers.
3. Shield carrier should get -2 from armour AND -2 from Shield. e.g. cloud must be applied on armour AND shield evenly
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The next part of bug report could be considered as feature request or fix depend on point of view :
Poison cloud (or any cloud weapon) purpose is area denial weapon but currently do not work like that.
Gas mask is mandatory equipment. Even on first mission, everyone get mask, for a simple reason, smoke is the best weapon player has. (well, there is also another style, put automed for everyone so stun damage is deleted every turn, so automed work as a gas mask. I believe that, Automed is broken.) As result, poison dmg HP is applied only on casual or new players. It means, the only effect which usually hit the a player is armour destruction.
To make poison cloud work properly as area denial weapon, I would recommend Set Blast and Cloud effects like this :
Blast:
Dmg >> 10
Armour >> -2
Cloud: ( each tile of walking Through cloud makes half damage of the blast, and it is applied on the end of turn)
Dmg >> 5
Armour >> -1
This way, player is forced to move out of cloud, it creates tactical challenge ! Currently after the poison explode, there is no reason why player would move out off gas. That is the problem.
On top,
Best would be :
- make mask On/Off Device in tactical
- OR easy solution, add "armour" on gas mask, so it can be consumed by poison gas !
This way player could start with mask, then mask wear off and he could finally inhale as intended.
This way, mask comes into play as variable, currently it is just dead weight mandatory item.
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On top. Alien Grenades are valuables which player should be looking for.
- Lets assume that overloading soldier issue is solved, then player can focus at weight management again. Now any surplus resource is welcome bonus. Player has suddenly a reason to search dead bodies for a loot, suddenly has a reason to use inventory screen >>> the new action, the new gameplay, the new loop which add to players option list
- As officially supported equipment, alien grenades should get status - same as Cleaner accelerated rifles - shows in armoury, not junk, but sellable.
So I think the poison grenade tooltip is correct. The explosion effect from the grenade suffers drop-off just like normal grenades do, so you're probably seeing reduced damage values because the grenade didn't land on the tile where your soldier is standing.
Similarly, the issue with the shield taking damage from the initial explosion is because the initial explosion is chemical rather than gas damage (some acidic fragmention explosion from the grenade, rather than from the poison gas itself). So the shield is affected by that in the same way it is affected by normal explosion damage. If it were set to be gas damage, it would bypass the shield completely (but would be negated if the unit had a gas mask). I think having it as chemical damage is best.
Yes, in an ideal world the gas mask would be an on/off item but we don't have time to add support for that right now. Giving it health is an interesting idea. I don't know how much work that is, but again I suspect we're probably not going to have time to implement it prior to release as we're working on quite tight timescales. But that might be something we add post-launch.
I'm not sure if we want to add armour destruction to the poison gas. To me, that doesn't really make sense - that's the one thing you wouldn't expect poison to damage. I think for now I'm happy to leave it so that poison gas doesn't really affect rebreather soldiers, and in future I think giving rebreathers HP would give the effect you want.
BTW alien grenades weren't ever meant to be usable equipment, and this is going to be fixed in Milestone 7.
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17 hours ago, gG-Unknown said:
I catched one landed Observer, then I shot one. Then I get message "Observer delegated"
Is it correct that landed UFO counts towards The Delegated limit ?
I thought that landed UFO are bonus, now I feel like I am robbed by one crashed UFO mission.
Yeah, that's intentional. Why do you feel robbed? You get more rewards for a landed UFO than for a crashed UFO.
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On 1/19/2026 at 3:50 PM, gG-Unknown said:
Almost a year since I started this topic.
STILL NO CHANGE
Grenade Luncher is a random weapon, designed to be used only in save scum play-style.
Koki has been trying to reproduce this for a while now and we can't do it at all. If you encounter issues like this again then please provide saves, because videos aren't that helpful when it comes to fixing them.
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10 hours ago, Funpad said:
I've played through the game 2 times. To the point where my next step UOO-1 assault. I have researched alien electronics in both games but can not advance to Gauss weapons or Exosuit armor. Is this a bug or am I missing something? I have no more research available.
Thanks for the report. This is intentional though - they were moved further back in the tech tree in Milestone 6 and they now unlock from Advanced Alloys, which is one UFO later than before.
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3 hours ago, ThatDanishFellow said:
Can't upgrade Missile Battery. I upgraded to Laser it didn't register it, so now any further upgrades are impossible because it says I need the laser upgrade first, which isn't available anymore since I already did it... though all my batteries are still normal missile batteries.
See screenshot. They're greyed out and yet laser upgrade isn't an option.
One potential reason why this can occur is if you accidentally started the engineering project at a secondary base, as the project won't complete and then won't be available to start in your primary base. So if you've got extra bases I'd just quickly check it's not sitting in their engineering queues.
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35 minutes ago, gG-Unknown said:
Apparently, AI behave differently than you assume :
https://www.twitch.tv/videos/2677714055?t=00h28m34s
I will make an post in the balance thread. Shield is (was) signature play style of Xenonauts series which makes it different to other similar games. It would be shame if it fades out.
As I've said, best to discuss this in the balance thread. Feel free to @ me so I see the continuation of the conversation.
I'll ask the coders to look into it, but to me what the AI is doing there is breaking line of sight from all the Xenonauts that are looking at it before attacking, because that means it won't take loads of reaction fire after it attacks.
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14 hours ago, gG-Unknown said:
Win by holding UFO for 3 turns looks like a great idea, until I find it cuts my loot very strange way. Only corpses are missing. Is it correct ?
If I capture UFO, 3 Sebilians stay in a barn but I get all their weapons they have.
If I found them in a barn, and kill them personally , I get their weapons AND their bodies.
Which means, if I win by holding UFO, we make some kind of deal with aliens, they hand over weapons and walk away ?
What is your thought ?
You're right, yeah. This is a bug - if an alien survives you shouldn't get their weapons either.
We'll log it as a bug but it's quite a low priority one.
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On 1/17/2026 at 2:51 PM, --oliver-- said:
Personal Thoughts @ (X1) X2
Taking reference to Lighterius „very long review“post, I take a chance of my own impressions of X1 and X2
To clearify things right from the start a word about myself.
As 40+ I am more about experience and immersion than of challenge. I like to enjoy and only have a slightly interesst in hardcore difficulty. Like in X1 so here in X2 I took the time to tweak a little bit. Please excuse this cicumstance.
I played the original XCOM-the enemy unknown (Ufo defense)(ger) and XCOM -tftd a lot and later the openXcom versions. So I was very exited when I stumbled across Xenonauts 1, back in 2019. Quite some time after its release but better late than never.
Over half a decade later I keep X1 in great memory. I had ton of fun, playing excessively for some time.
What prevented me from playing XCOM 2012, ist the „doomsday clock“-thing. Seems quite popular these days. But I never liked to be in hurry. Surely, there should be a plot in game, which is leading to a certain goal. But I prefer to do it my way. Depends how strong your game is shaped from this mechanic.
However. X1 is an amazing game and I think i does an overwhelming good job. taking the Spirit of the old XCOM and put in modern times.
About X2. There are some moments I which I got the feeling back from X1 in 2019. It just hooked me again. But there are some different and new eperiences. Some good some mehh.
Starting a new game:
I really like the options to build your custom game experience. Easy to hardcore. Suits eveyone I think.
Operation Points:
As for now, dec25 jan26, I think their invention was a good idea. Ads a little layer to the complexity. Where do I spend my points on? A new option to influence the game. The passive generating I think, is also the right way.
What is questionable for me is the reduce of 100/125 points if I do a crash mission and dont let the land/state do it. I think the amount is quite a lot.
On the other hand, NAM, EUR, LAM, SU, ASI, AFR 6x4 options, after a while you have everything archived.
This whole idea would be better if it had effects in the long run. Respectively more usage of OP till the end of them game.
As for active generating OP, maybe some special missions which are more difficult or different to the classic combat missions. Larger maps or somethig else.
Ressources:
Depends. Scarcity is a challenge. If your interested in a harder difficulty, its okay.
If you are not forced to finish the game at for example Day 325, then you have plenty of time to earn ressources. If one likes to build, research and taste every little piece of it, thats okay.
Both should be possible.
Soldiers:
The rising through the ranks of soldiers is a great idea. But earning could be a little slower or harder. And more variaty in the buffs of the different ranks and medals.
About Soldiers Accuracy, I had one of the woodlouse/bugs direct next to my soldier. Sometimes misses 2 shoots close up. Maybe there is room to inprove gameplay on this point. I think it is to unrealistic.
Same for the Stun-batton. Missing an Enemy, I dont know. The resitance of an enemy to fall unconscious, is okay. Some a tougher some ar weaker.
Soldier Health/Death: A razor with two edges. On one side, it is challanging to have even experienced soldiers dying. On the other hand frustrating. Really difficult. Maybe better to put them out of action instead of dying an elite soldier. Would be a good way to pic up both sides, I think. Keep the randomness of damage, but with only disabling the vetereans for the rest of the mission, etc.
Soldier Jetpack:
Likewise a good idea. First I did not exactly know if I like not beeing able to fly, but now I think its (very) good, only to „jump“ onto roofs and not to fly endless.
Tanks:
I like them. Could be more of it.
Aircraft:
Generally I miss the variatiy of X1. I liked to have more steps and options while I was progressing through the game. The more to play with, is always fun.
More aircrafts, for example, means more even progression, still to the late game. More steps you have to keep the game interessting in the long run.
More managemend, one has to weigh more carefully whether this or that.
Air modules:
Also a great idea. But like Lighterius mentioned. The large amount of fuel, they already have, makes an additional fueltank obsolet. But, maybe, reducing the fuel means more ufos are escaping, which will increase loosing the game. Precise tweaking necessary.
Air Combat:
I think it has definetly improved over X1. Like it. Felt easier more convenience to get into it. Back in X1 felt more angular, awkward.
Reasearch:
What I felt during the game, was some emptiness. I can not remember exactly how it was in XCOM, UFO, X1 but sometimes I felt; quiestioning myself, is it broken? Is there missing something? A little bit of to fast in progressing through the game towards the exit. In the older games it felt more of a longer walk.
Unique things to build:
Took a moment before I got it. The alternative would be to earn, hunt for ressources which you would of course need – and you have not to place orders manually. Build once an your done. I take this as comfort.
Final Thoughts:
I am a big friend of freedom of the player. I like to weigh up different strategies. Possibilities.
Of course, jumping in a game and having thousands of options at once, is definitive a bad idea. But progressing throught the game, evolving and growing up with options feels natural. If done like this, you dont feel overwhelmed. So I would enjoy to have a ton more of complexity. More research, more upgrades, more, more, more.
I specially would like to have more extensive possibilites during combat. The more the game allows you or gives you the possibility to win by your own smartness. It feels so rewarding, to win a combat more by tactical intelligence than by raw power.
Hope you find it interesting to read and got food for thought or discussion.
I am looking forward about whats to come in the future.
Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate you taking the time to write it out!
Xenonauts 2 January 2026 Monthly Update!
in Monthly Development Updates
Posted
While adding a TU cost to the teleporter is probably the simplest solution to implement, I'm still not convinced it actually fixes the problem. Or not fully, at least. Even if you made teleporting cost 25% TU, you'd still only need to do two tiles of movement in total to step onto the teleporter, go up and shoot at an alien, then teleport back down and move one tile to free the pad up.
So that's 50% TU + 6TU of movement. It'd make teleport cheesing less effective, but you'd still have something like 40-45% of your TU free to attack with, right? An experienced player would still be able to cheese the game using that.