Chris
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Posts posted by Chris
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On 8/3/2024 at 4:01 PM, Bernie22405 said:
This is how it has always worked in the game, at least in how I play. Reducing the automed by 80% makes about as much sense as taking any of the top weapons and reducing them by 80%
I don't really agree. The Advanced Medikit is the improved version of the Medikit, and it's better for full healing. The Automed Unit didn't exist in the first game and is designed to stop units bleeding out - very frequently a unit takes a hit and just doesn't have enough TU to get to a medikit before they die from bleeding wounds. That won't happen if you have an Automed Unit, and if your soldier is only lightly wounded you can just let the regeneration heal them.
In its previous incarnation the Advanced Medikit was pointless, because the Automed Unit was much better in basically every way. Reducing it to 15HP of regeneration still means nobody would ever use the Medikit, because it'll still heal pretty much any wound in 3-4 turns. Is the fundamental issue here is you don't want to have to carry both items, but you want the benefits of both?
Reducing a gun's damage by 80% would make it totally pointless, but it's not like the Automed unit doesn't still have a role.
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6 hours ago, ThatDanishFellow said:
So, I simply want to say thanks for making this game.
I've sought after the experience I had as a child when I was playing UFO Enemy Unknown and I've never been able to satisfy that same feeling I had, playing that game... that is, until Xenonauts 2 came unto my radar.
I hope you keep up this amazing work and continue adding to extend the campaign.
Thanks again.Thanks, nice to hear it's brought back those memories
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This update is also only accessible by switching to our Experimental branches (instructions on how to do so here) - although please be aware they have slower load times and worse performance than normal builds due to the extra logging they contain!
Changes:
- Units now only rotate when suffering damage during the enemy turn. This avoids situations where soldiers lack the TU needed to complete their planned move after taking damage from enemy overwatch fire, as they need to turn back to face the direction they want to travel.
- Transfer item quantities are now preserved when you switch the destination base on the Transfer Items screen.
Bugfixes:
- If the game cannot write to the save directory, it should now display an error screen instructing you how to set a new save path rather than just crashing.
- Fixed a crash on the Geoscape when certain types of missions spawned.
- Fixed a bug where soldiers could lose a few TU after having their movement interrupted when spotting an enemy (they were being charged for the full planned rotation, but only rotate as far as was necessary to spot the alien).
- Fixed an issue where soldiers on roofs / higher levels could often not find a valid move path if they were being ordered to move more than 10 tiles.
- Another attempt at fixing the bug where the combat shield was not being correctly hidden when destroyed.
- Made the abduction tubes slightly shorter, so they fit within the shroud of a single tile.
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Hello everyone - with July finished, it's time for us to give our monthly developer update on what we've all been working on here at Goldhawk.
Milestone 4
Although we released Milestone 4 last month, we've continued to patch it with bugfixes and balance updates. As many players found the game too punishing, we've been making the lower difficulty settings a bit more forgiving - and there's another update incoming (it's currently being tested on the Experimental branch) that will reduce the accuracy of enemies. Thanks to everyone who has given us feedback, and we'll continue to monitor it while we work on Milestone 5.Fixing bugs has also been relatively time-consuming this month. With many new players coming from both Tacticon and the recent Steam sale, we've been received a lot more bug reports than normal and we've made fixing them our priority (we released our 21st patch for Milestone 4 today). Some of these were obscure stability bugs, but many were small gameplay issues - e.g. yesterday we were fixing a bug where soldiers could lose 1 or 2 TU when their rotation was interrupted by spotting an enemy. Continuing to iron out these sort of small annoyances should improve the experience for everyone.
Unfortunately, a large influx of new players combined with Milestone 4 being overly difficult and having some stability issues when first released means our Recent Reviews on Steam aren't as positive as they were previously. If you are enjoying the game and haven't left a review, please think about doing so - and if you've left a negative review, just know we're working hard on improving the game and we hope you'll give Xenonauts 2 another shot once it leaves Early Access!
Air Combat UI
One of the parts of the game we're working on for Milestone 5 is the air combat, with a particular focus on the visuals and the tutorial. This month we've done some initial work conceptingthe final UI style for the air combat, and even though we're still exploring the visuals (so please don't read too much into the information in the concept!) we thought we'd share it with you.The other area of the air combat that we'll be working on for Milestone 5 is the air combat section of the tutorial, as a lot of players bounce off the interception minigame because the game currently doesn't even explain the controls. Hopefully a better tutorial and improved visuals will allow more users to enjoy that section of the game.
It's probably also worth mentioning that the Geoscape UI is also not yet final (which is why it still looks so similar to the first Xenonauts), and we'll be tackling that once the Air Combat is done.
Rescue Civilians
Another system we implemented in Milestone 5 this month was the ability to order civilians off the battlefield, as many members of our community have been requesting this since our Early Access launch. The system is simple - soldiers can order adjacent civilians to evacuate with a right-click, which causes the civilian to run back towards the player's dropship where they can flee off the map edge.By default civilians will skulk around the map and avoid enemies, but once they have been ordered to evacuate they will simply sprint as quickly as possible towards their evacuation zone. Make sure you have cleared a path for them if you want them to live!
Game Editor / Modding Tools
The final major system we've been working on this month is our internal game editor. Our Unity 2022 update means we've now got access to much more powerful plugins, which means we can replace our creaky old game editor with something that has better performance and more functionality.Why are we mentioning this? Not only will this allow us to work faster, but the game editor is also going to serve as the foundation for our mod tools. Once the work on our internal tools is complete we'll hopefully have taken a significant step towards having a working community mod editor.
That's everything for this dev diary. Thanks for reading, and we'll see you next month!
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On 7/30/2024 at 12:22 AM, obas said:
game crushed after I tried to produce alenium and alien alloy. the moment production completes, game crushed
bug_report_2024-07-30-01h51_st_4.18.0_unhandled_exception.zip
Hey - thanks for the bug report. It looks like you've hacked your game to increase your money, right?
That tends to introduce bugs and we can't really offer support to players who are doing that (you can always increase the starting / monthly funds in the campaign settings if you want more money without the risk of bugs).
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On 7/28/2024 at 10:17 AM, gG-Unknown said:
Can you fix the information on After-Mission briefing panel that way, it changes " Killed in Action" vs "Missed in Action" accordingly ?
e.i. when soldier is left behind (dead, unconscious, whatever), then After Mission briefing panel should say MISSED IN ACTION, not KILLED IN ACTION as it is now.
Best would be, add (spawn) a dog-tag to the place where soldier is turned into red pudding, so he can get properly KIA by returning his dog-tag home.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dog_tag
All this support my previous recommendation:
KIA - honour + xp_recycle
MIA - shame
Thanks
Yeah, we'll get the text to show MIA when appropriate.
EDIT - actually, there's a discussion to be had about when MIA should be shown. I think if the soldier is confirmed dead then he's shown as KIA even if his body isn't recovered at the end.
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1 hour ago, Bernie22405 said:
I thought it was my job as mission commander to decide what equipment my troops need for a mission? Where does "supposed to" come in on that?
If automed is only going to heal 20% of what it used to heal, for an unspecified number of turns, then I want a medkit for the heavy healing and automed becomes a bandaid dispenser to take care of bleeders that need all their movement points that turn to not become toast. They might still have heavy damage to heal on the next turn but at least they won't bleed out after getting out of Dodge.
Yeah, this is the idea. The automed module is valuable because it'll heal bleeding wounds immediately without costing TU (although it'll eventually heal units back to full health if you wait long enough). But you'll still want a few proper medikits around to quickly heal soldiers who have been badly hurt.
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18 hours ago, Xeferah said:
It might be. I'm gonna do some tests this evening, see if I can get soldiers to turn on just spotting enemies. For shots I'm sure off, but I think it was also just on spotting enemies, but I'm gonna test that this evening.
Actually, I did find a bug - thanks for flagging it up. It seems like if a rotation reveals an enemy then you get charged the TU for the entire planned rotation, even though the soldier will stop turning at the point they spot the enemy. This can cause you to lose a few extra TU.
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On 7/26/2024 at 4:20 PM, ih8nixon said:
Problem:
Phantom interceptors have a base armor of 5. After air combat this armor won't be replenished during the aircraft's is repair and rearm.
Phantom's equipment [Fusion Lance] [Fusion Lance] [Fuel Pod] [Empty]
Work around: During aircraft and repair phase I can equip 'Reinforced Plating' on the plane. Then the armor will start to replenish. Once the level of armor is above 5 I can unequip the 'Reinforced Plating' and the plane will have its base armor as 5/5.Haven't tried with the Gemini yet.
Thanks - do you have a save I can look at? Was this campaign started in 4.19?
Do you remember if this plane has done anything unusual in its lifetime? Has it been shot down, or transferred to another base, etc? Basically there's a hidden item on the plane that has provides the regeneration that has somehow become unequipped, and I need to figure out how.
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3 hours ago, Xeferah said:
I'm still trying to find an exact replica, but I can confirm for sure that units turn when they get hit during running. Will try to create a good example in-game with screenshots.
Ah - yeah, units will always rotate towards the target if they take damage (X-Com games have always done that). Is that what the issue is?
Because that's a slightly different issue to units turning when they spot enemies. That would be definitely be a bug. The issue above is a design question, really. I guess maybe we could limit that to only occuring during the enemy turn.
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15 hours ago, Ziran said:
Well my next mission was abduction vs the "wraith" (ghostly blue soldiers, my first encounter with them). It was basically mission impossible. I abandoned this game and will wait for future patch to try again. The wraith did not have super reaction fire but they were sniper like accurate and deadly (they were carrying rifles when I looked at one dead body). Combined with dispersed nature of abduction points, tight time limit it was not a mission one could win.
Again, without a save there's not much I can do here. Either some weirdness has happened because I changed the difficulty-level accuracy modifiers and it's caused a bug in existing campaigns, or you're finding the game much harder because you've increased the number of aliens in the game (or you've just had a lot of bad luck). But I can't tell without loading a save from your campaign. The damage numbers for the alien weapons are unchanged, and their accuracy has been reduced overall.
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6 minutes ago, Ziran said:
The aliens are utterly ludicrously accurate with their weapons now in tactical battles of 4.20. Particularly starting in month 3. They also reaction fire with absurd frequency. It is making the tactical battles almost unplayable. The damage has also appeared to have increase across the board for all aliens and soldiers (by at least 50%). The patch notes implied alien weapons were nerfed. I think you got the polarity wrong with your changes as they were massively buffed. I liked the balance of tactical battles better before these changes.
It is very common now for sniper to shoot an alien way across the screen (20+ tiles) only for the wounded alien to return fire and insta kill sniper as reaction fire (no such thing as alien sniper rifle that I have seen yet in loot just cleaner SMG and magnetic rifles)
The destroyer UFOs (month 3) appear to be nerfed somewhat. A single angel interceptor with basic equipment now usually downs one with 5-10% HP left.
I have not reached month 3 before 4.20 but starting then we also get UFOs flying in pairs which a single angel cannot handle.
The grenade launcher is not completely useless now and I have successfully taken it for outside battles. Its capability of indirect fire is actually almost necessary now since shooting full HP alien results in death by reaction fire.
In my 4.20 game I have taken increased enemy soldier population and 125% funding (from base soldier difficulty). I am starting to regret this decision as every battle is a bloodbath now with swarms of aliens that shoot nuclear bullets with 0.001MOA accuracy. I had some battles where I lost 6 out of 9 soldiers (particularly timed ones where I have to rush and take risks)
The only outright bug (small UI one) I noticed is that in save game screen if there are enough saves to fill up the screen you cannot scroll down all the way to the bottom. The name of the last save is always cut of by half. Notice attached screen shot. I highlighted the problem save in yellow.
What version of the game are you comparing the accuracy to? Milestone 4.16/4.18?
Do you have a save from one of the battles where the aliens are making crazy accuracy shots?
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This update is also only accessible by switching to our Experimental branches (instructions on how to do so here) - although please be aware they have slower load times and worse performance than normal builds due to the extra logging they contain!
Balance Changes:
- We've re-applied a couple of balance changes that were meant to be included in the 4.19.0 patch, but didn't actually made it in! (see below)
- Secton Psionic Triangulation ability now grants +30 Accuracy when active (previously +50).
- Automed Module now heals +5HP a turn (previously +25HP). It is therefore still excellent for healing Bleeding Wounds, but it does not make Medikits completely redundant.
Bugfixes:
- Fixed a bug where soldiers and equipment were incorrectly being recovered after losing a mission (which could cause soldiers to survive the battle despite their corpses being outside the dropship / recovery area).
- Fixed a purple error texture on the damaged state of some of the sandbags in the ATLAS Base map.
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23 hours ago, Skitso said:
I have reported this issue some while ago. Check here:
We looked at that and it seems like the user right-clicked just after the alien was spotted, which is what caused that soldier to turn and lose TU.
There's not much we can do about that, really. If we blocked clicks for a period after an interruption people would have problems with the game not feeling responsive.
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On 7/24/2024 at 10:55 AM, Xeferah said:
This is most likely intentional, but for my gameplay I started to notice it getting annoying: I use the preview mode to determine how to run and what weapon to use, which fits exactly within my TU budget. And while the soldier is running, he spots and enemy and stops in it's tracks (so far, so good) and then TURNS to the enemy! But now I have to spend TU to turn back, which leaves me with not enough TU to finish the planned action.
Spotting the enemy and stopping, that's fine, but please let the character not turn automatically, as it can sometimes really screw up the planned action.On 7/24/2024 at 11:21 AM, Skitso said:I've noticed this too. Definitely not intended.
Thanks. This isn't intentional and should be reported as a bug if you can figure out what's happening.
Basically, interrupting a movement by spotting an alien should never cost you TU. Your soldier shouldn't rotate towards any aliens it spots, and it shouldn't need to anyway - by definition they already should be facing towards the alien when they spot them. So something is going wrong here.
I'll ask Koki to take a look at it too, but if you guys find a reproduction case or have screenshots / saves then let me know.
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This update is also only accessible by switching to our Experimental branches (instructions on how to do so here) - although please be aware they have slower load times and worse performance than normal builds due to the extra logging they contain!
Balance Changes:
- Accuracy values for all aliens has been reduced by roughly 10% overall, and enemy Accuracy modifiers have been reduced to 0.8x on Recruit difficulty (from 0.85x), and increased to 1.3x on Commander (from 1.2x). Overall, this means enemies have roughly the same Accuracy on Commander difficulty, roughly 10% less Accuracy on Soldier and Veteran, and 15%-20% less Accuracy on Recruit difficulty.
- Wraith Accuracy has been reduced by a little more than the other aliens, as their base Accuracy was so high.
- Secton Psionic Triangulation ability now grants +30 Accuracy when active (previously +50).
- Automed Module now heals +5HP a turn (previously +10HP). It is therefore still excellent for healing Bleeding Wounds, but it does not make Medikits completely redundant.
- Cleaner Accelerated Rifle is no longer slightly more accurate than the human equivalent.
- One Cyberdrone has been removed from the early Psyon terror sites / retaliation missions (so you now face 1 Cyberdrone on Recruit / Soldier, 2 on Veteran, and 3 on Commander.
Bugfixes:
- Fixed a bug where certain mechanical units would not disappear correctly when killed (most frequently enemy Sentry Guns in the Cleaner Base).
- Fixed a bug where the Combat Shield would sometimes not disappear visually when destroyed.
- Fixed the Servitor playing a human injury sound.
- Fixed the Servitor's body not disappearing when destroyed.
- Fixed an issue where tooltips would spawn more quickly than they should in some situations (which could be quite annoying).
- Fixed interceptor evasive roll travelling further than intended if time was set to pass at 2x speed.
- Fixed a UI issue where it was possible to unintentionally transfer soldiers back to their own base.
- Fixed a bug where you could sometimes be unable to rotate the camera after loading a save.
- Fixed an issue on one of the Dockyard maps where there were some missing concrete walls on the water edge tiles.
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50 minutes ago, Xeferah said:
I'm not convinced that commander does not need some minor tweaks though. I mean, sometimes soldiers die in 1 hit when an enemy shoots through 5 tiles of smoke, while being crouched. Now I'm sure that one tile of smoke reduces aim by 20%, so 5 tiles should be -100%. Add in the fact that even with the best armor, it's still possible to get 1-shot, this does not add a "fun" layer to the game. Sure, it happens, but it happens often. Not once every 10 battles, but more like once or more per battle, especially with sectiods and psyions. It even happened with wraiths one time, through 5 tiles of smoke. It could be a bug of course, but I think it has to do with the multiplier on commander (125% aim modifier).
I think the calculation does something like this: aim at 100%, commander difficulty brings it to 100 x 1.25 = 125. Add in sectoid +50 bonus, now it's 175 aim. Add high cover at 40% and 5 tiles of smoke and you are still left with a 25% chance to be hit. Is this intentional, or should the calculation be like this:
100% aim, add +50 bonus, now at 150 aim. Add 40% cover and 5 tiles of smoke, that's 10% chance to hit. Commander difficulty would bring it to 10 x 1.25 = 12,5% chance to be hit.
I'm just curious, which one is correct and is it intentional? I see some alien shots where I think "This is bullshit", but I'm not sure if it's intentional.Yeah, Commander may need some changes too. But given it is still clearly possible to win the game on Commander (even using only 12 soldiers apparently), I don't want to nerf the top-end experience without having played it much myself. So I'll hold fire on that for now.
However, the accuracy bonus affects the base stat of the alien - sectons only have like 45 Accuracy now. So it'd be 1.3 * 45 = 58.5, plus 50 for Psionic Triangulation gets you to 108.5, multiplied by whatever fire mode is being used on the weapon. Then you take off cover and smoke. So the values aren't quite as high as you're saying - but Psionic Triangulation may still need a bit of a nerf anyway. +50 might be a bit excessive.
As for the shooting paths, the cone is slightly wider than perfectly diagonal when shooting around a corner. It's just a quirk in the way the tile grid works.
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You've got to remember that difficulty settings have a multiplicative effect on the amount of balancing required. Pretty much every mission has 3 or more alien species / teams that could spawn for them, and there's four different difficulty settings already. That means there's 12 possible ways that mission can be experienced already, and it's very difficult to stay on top of it as is - it seems like Sebillians are relatively quite a bit weaker than Wraiths, for example.
If you add three settings for the troop numbers you can bring to battle, you're talking about nearly 40 possible configurations for a single mission.
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On 7/19/2024 at 7:01 PM, cerwad said:
Ok i managed to reproduce it twice.
My guys are on their third mission in a row.
The bug report is at the end of the second mission (third mission impending)
What i have confirmed : Ammo and armor replenished if partially used (for ex a shield at 50 hit points in the next mission has 160 hit points)
The grenades seem to disappear but from the wrong guys. For example :
Lauren Brown at end of mission :
Lauren Brown start of third mission 2 more grenades and 1 smoke :
Before :
After : 2 more grenades and one smoke
But some guys start with less grenades that they had for some reason
And the HP are wrong ! Lauren did not take more damage after the screenshot but she lost 25 HP at the start of the third mission why ?
Thanks. Yeah, the game doesn't save the state of specific items - so if a shield or armour survives the battle, it has full HP next battle again. That's not idealy, but it's quite a major thing to add to the game and it's probably not worth the trouble.
The grenades and ammo being redistributed isn't a bug exactly, as the system just collects all the items at the end of the battle and distributes them around your soldiers as fairly as possible based on what you left the base with. But I'll ask the programmers how possible it is to try and remember the existing loadouts so we just share out the items recovered from dead soldiers, and don't actually take items off the surviving soldiers to give to their friends.
As for the HP loss, it's because soldiers become wounded on the strategy layer equal to the lowest HP level they suffered in battle (if you keep it as the maximum HP level, they'll never end up badly wounded). But I'll see if maybe we can apply this only when they return to base rather than immediately.
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We've now released another stability fix for Milestone 4 that fixes several more crashes / hangs. If you encounter further issues, please continue to report them and we'll continue to fix them for you.
We've also been collecting player feedback since our balance patch last week, and it seems the general opinion is that the game is remains a little too hard - with the most common issues being that aliens feel too accurate, and a few specific missions (such as early Psyon / Wraith terror missions) just have too many enemies. We'll be releasing another balance patch to address this soon - but these changes will be felt more on the lower difficulty settings, as we believe Commander difficulty should remain a challenging experience.
Changes / Bugfixes:
- Fixed the issue in the tutorial where the Cleaners were sometimes not reaching their intended positions, causing the tutorial to fail.
- Fixed a crash that could occur due to enemy overwatch fire.
- Fixed an AI hang that could occur during enemy overwatch fire.
- Fixed an AI hang that could occur during the AI turn during enemy movement.
- Fixed a crash that could sometimes occur on the Geoscape when transferring items / staff / aircraft between bases.
- Another attempt to fix the reinforced shield engineering project not unlocking correctly (from Ultradense Alloys).
- Fixed an instance where grenades would sometimes not explode when thrown, which would happen if the soldier rolled a miss and they scattered into an invalid location.
- Fixed some flickering walls on one of the Cleaner Data Raid maps.
- Fixed some issues with demolition grenades not showing their fire tiles correctly when targeting fences.
- Added updated translation files for most non-English languages.
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Again, thanks for the feedback everyone. I'll probably be making another round of balance tweaks for 4.19, mostly looking at the overall enemy accuracy levels on everything but Commander and maybe making that first terror site a bit less dangerous when facing Psyon or Wraith teams.
I'll bear the other feedback in mind for Milestone 5, as we're a bit limited in terms of what we can change as part of a hotfix for Milestone 4.
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On 7/21/2024 at 10:08 AM, gG-Unknown said:
soldier miss 20 tiles, shoot under his own feet to explode himself
Chriss, would you be so kind and reveal mechanics of scatter ?
table, formula whatever. For grenades, grenade lunchers, and reguler direct fire.
Thanks
Thanks. I think I've already explained this once, but it's pretty straightforward - the game rolls to hit based on the hit chance shown on the cursor. If you hit, the shot goes where indicated. If you roll a miss, the shot will deviate so it doesn't hit the intended target. The maximum deviation is about 40 degrees in each direction, so it goes within an 80 degree arc from the front of the soldier. If that miss shot encounters a prop along the path, it rolls to see if it hits is based on the stopping chance of that prop - and if it hits it, then the grenade stops and explodes on the previous tile.
That's probably what's happened in the attached video, although I'll have to check a bit to see. I think it missed and scattered through the tree clump to the right, which it hit, so the grenade fell to the ground and exploded. If that's what happens, the bug is that the treeclump should have been discarded as adjacent cover and you shouldn't be able to hit it.
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This update is also only accessible by switching to our Experimental branches (instructions on how to do so here) - although please be aware they have slower load times and worse performance than normal builds due to the extra logging they contain!
Changes / Bugfixes:
- Fixed an AI hang that could occur during enemy reaction fire.
- Fixed a crash that could occur when transferring aircraft between bases.
- Fixed an instance where grenades would sometimes not explode when thrown, which would happen if the soldier rolled a miss and they scattered into an invalid location.
- Another attempt to fix the reinforced shield engineering project not unlocking correctly (from Ultradense Alloys).
- Updated the Spanish and Korean translations.
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7 hours ago, dskamper said:
crashed while in geoscape wasn't doing anything
Thanks - do you have any save games / logs we can look at? (details on where to find them here)
Does the crash keep happening, or were you able to play further into the game after the crash happened?
Milestone 4.21 STABLE Released!
in Xenonauts-2 Releases & Patch Notes
Posted
We've now released another stability fix for Milestone 4 that fixes several more bugs and balance issues (mostly related to enemy accuracy being too high). We'll continue to collect player feedback and bug reports and tweak / fix things as necessary while we work on Milestone 5.
Balance / Gameplay Changes:
Bugfixes: