Chris
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Posts posted by Chris
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On 12/14/2024 at 11:19 PM, Paul Clarke said:
Update: I have tried reloading the mission a couple of times, but encounter the same bug each time. The tactical mission will not load past 90%.
Thanks. We're aware of this bug and we're working on a fix at the moment.
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On 12/15/2024 at 12:11 AM, Raycan said:
Keeps crashing when advancing time in Goescape every time I load my ironman save.
bug_report_2024-12-15-00h37_st_5.0.0_unhandled_exception.zip bug_report_2024-12-15-00h37_st_5.0.0_unhandled_exception_1.zip bug_report_2024-12-15-00h37_st_5.0.0_unhandled_exception_2.zip bug_report_2024-12-15-00h45_st_5.0.0_unhandled_exception.zip bug_report_2024-12-15-00h45_st_5.0.0_unhandled_exception_1.zip bug_report_2024-12-15-00h45_st_5.0.0_unhandled_exception_2.zip bug_report_2024-12-15-00h52_st_5.0.0_unhandled_exception.zip bug_report_2024-12-15-00h52_st_5.0.0_unhandled_exception_1.zip bug_report_2024-12-15-00h52_st_5.0.0_unhandled_exception_2.zip bug_report_2024-12-15-00h55_st_5.0.0_unhandled_exception.zip bug_report_2024-12-15-00h55_st_5.0.0_unhandled_exception_1.zip bug_report_2024-12-15-00h55_st_5.0.0_unhandled_exception_2.zip iron_man-281.json
Thanks - yeah, we can reproduce this crash, we'll take a look at it today!
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16 hours ago, CheekyCT said:
Crash log after game crashed when loading a save.
Thanks, we'll take a look!
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5 hours ago, ral1169 said:
The soldier extraction mission crashed when loading the tactical mission after clicking on Commence Tactical Battle button. Complete exit of game.
bug_report_2024-12-14-09h07_wn_5.0.0_unhandled_exception.zip
Thanks. This file just contains the crash logs rather than any save, so I can't test this myself - but looking at the logs, it seems to be saying that it can't find a save game it's expecting to be able to find. I'm not sure if that caused the original crash, but it means the crash reporter can't find anything to attach.
The file path looks like you've got OneDrive enabled? Is there anything unusual about your setup? Is OneDrive maybe deleting / moving things?
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12 minutes ago, Warie_W00kie said:
CTD when soldier transport land on site. The game will hang at 90% when I attempted to load the "before mission autoload". Reproduced when I utilized "raise funds" strategic operation and recruited the funds supporter in NAM before sending the transport. Not sure which one of these two (or both) triggered the crash. The abduction will load properly if I don't spend the OP points.
bug_report_2024-12-14-12h24_wn_5.0.0_unhandled_exception.zip user_raised_funds_and_nam_funds_up-1.json
Weirdly I can't reproduce the crash from that save you've attached - it loads into the mission fine for me if I let the dropship fly over. Is that the case for you? Do I have to do anything else to make it crash?
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19 hours ago, svidangel said:
Unsure if text or actual code error, but Supporter: Research and Supporter: Engineer both say -5% Research project duration. Does not match the flavor text.
Thanks. Yeah, this is purely a visual bug but I'll get it fixed for the next patch,
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It took slightly longer than hoped, but we got there in the end.
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We've released the first "prototype" build for Milestone 5 on our Experimental branch (instructions on how to access it here).
Milestone 5 introduces several major new mechanics to the Geoscape and adds significant amounts of new content to the tactical combat. All limits on playable time have been removed from the campaign, and it is now possible to unlock and complete the final mission in order to win the campaign.
This is currently a rough prototype build of Milestone 5 which is fully playable, but likely to contain bugs and missing content (e.g. some missing research art / research text, some placeholder UI, no victory cinematic, etc). We will be releasing regular updates for Milestone 5 while it remains on the Experimental branch, and it will only be released on the standard branches once we have added the remaining content into the game and we are happy with stability and game balance.
TL;DR - this build contains a lot of upgrades but is unfinished. If you're not interested in being a tester, you'll enjoy this update a lot more if you wait until it appears on the main Steam / GOG branch!
KEY CONTENT:
- Battleship UFO: the Battleship is the final alien UFO. It is extremely powerful in the air combat and is a large multi-level UFO with a large crew of the most elite aliens defenders in the tactical combat - successfully capturing one therefore provides the player vast quantities of Alloys and Alenium!
- Operation Endgame: it is now possible to unlock Operation Endgame and complete the campaign with a high-stakes assault on the alien high command. We made this a two-part mission in homage to the Cydonia mission from classic X-Com, and we created an entirely new set of terrain tiles for the first part!
- Supporter System: each of the six funding regions on the Geoscape now contains four Supporters, representing important VIPs in the local area. Each Supporter provides your organisation with a permanent bonus when recruited (there are five types of Supporter), and a unique Region Bonus is also unlocked if all the Supporters in a region are recruited. However, UFO missions can also cause Supporters to fall under alien control - becoming Infiltrators, who slowly raise Panic in the local area until you assign the resources required to eliminate them. This system makes the Geoscape much more engaging, giving the player far more choice about their playstyle.
- Strategic Operation: the same currency used to recruit Supporters can alternatively be used on Strategic Operations, which provide an instant benefit such as an injection of cash or a shipment of alien materials. Importantly, this also gives players a method of quickly reducing Panic in a specific region - something many players have been requesting for a long time.
- Invasion Phases: the campaign has been divided into five different phases that better explain the progression of the invasion, with some phases introducing or removing new mechanics to reflect the changing alien invasion strategy.
- New Missions: two new tactical missions set on an alien orbital station take place towards the end of the game, adding more mission variety to second half of the campaign.
- New Aliens: there's a couple of new alien units - the Eternal (the alien leader unit), and a small melee creature with a limited lifespan known as the Symbiote which certain enemies can fire at Xenonaut units as a form of living weapon.
- Civilian Evacuation: civilians on tactical missions can now be interacted with to order them to evacuate. Doing this will cause them to run towards the evacuation zone (next to the Xenonaut dropship) and leave the map - assuming no aliens kill them on the way!
KEY BALANCE CHANGES:
- Doomsday / Panic: Individual regions do not suffer Panic in the first couple of months of the campaign. Instead, there is a single global "Doomsday" counter which must be kept below 100. This is mostly for narrative reasons, but in game design terms it gives the player more time set themselves up before needing to worry about keeping Panic down in each individual region.
- Base Regional Pricing: Xenonaut bases now vary in price between $500k and $1.5m depending where in the world you place them, with the optimal locations in terms of radar coverage (e.g. North Africa / Middle East, Latin America, etc) being more expensive. This means there are more viable strategies in terms of base placement, and also means new players end up with more starting funds if they unwittingly place their first base in a "bad" location.
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UFO "Delegation" System: once the player has completed two crash sites for a specific UFO type, enough data has been gathered about that particular UFO to allow local military forces to take over future crash sites of that type. The Xenonauts are given a permanent increase in monthly funding, but the player is expected to claim the cash bounty on any future Crash Sites of that type rather than manually completing the mission - ignoring this will increase Panic by damaging relations with the local region (who want the alien materials from the Crash Site for their own purposes).
- This system has been added because it was very difficult to balance the game when some players complete only a single Crash Site for each specific UFO type, whereas others would fight every single UFO crash site they create (even if they find it grindy and repetitive) simply because the extra money / resources generated by doing so made it the optimal way to play the game. The new Panic penalty means there's now costs as well as benefits associated with fighting more than two Crash Sites of a particular type - but the penalty isn't *that* big and is limited only to a single region, so in some cases it can still be worthwhile.
- 50%-150% Damage Randomisation: in Milestone 4 weapons (both human and alien) inflicted between 50%-200% of their Damage value when they hit the target, but this has now been reduced back down to 50%-150%. This makes armour a bit more effective at stopping units being instantly killed by a single enemy hit.
Strategy - Full Gameplay Changes:
- As covered in the Key Changes section above, we've added several new strategic mechanics such as Strategic Operations, Supporters, and the Invasion Phase system. Additionally, the Base Regional Pricing and UFO Delegation system significantly change the game balance.
- It's worth highlighting that the "Reduce Panic" strategic operation can be used on lost regions, and if you reduce Panic below 100 and keep it there then that region will rejoin the Funding Council.
- A new "Geoscape Timer" UI element has been added, which tells you how many days until your next Funding Report and any upcoming narrative event (usually relating to the end of the current Phase).
- The Campaign Victory / Campaign Loss screen has been updated with proper artwork, flavour text and music. The full campaign stats (e.g. total aliens killed, etc) are now shown for both victory and loss.
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The introduction of Phases (see Key Changes section) has led to a rebalance of some parts of the invasion:
- As mentioned in the Key Changes section, Doomsday has replaced Regional Panic for the first couple of months of the campaign.
- The initial "Cleaner" stage of the game is now a bit shorter and contains fewer missions overall, so each campaign now only contains one of the following mission pairs - Rescue Soldiers / Convoy Ambush, and VIP Extraction / VIP Elimination.
- Monthly funding is much lower at the start of the game, but increases significantly once Phase 2 begins.
- Infiltration UFO missions no longer cause Panic, but instead convert neutral Supporters into Infiltrators that generate Panic each month. Infiltrators can be eliminated by spending Operation Points.
- Alien materials are now more plentiful in the second half of the game.
- Item sale prices that have fallen (as a result of selling those items) now regain some of the lost value at the end of each month.
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A few changes have been made to the tech tree:
- Research speed is 10% faster on Soldier and 20% faster on Recruit
- Research project durations have been decreased by 10%-20% for projects in the second half of the game on all difficulties.
- Removed the Alien Officer Interrogation and Alien Leader Interrogation placeholder plot research, and replaced them with plot-related research related to UOO-1.
- The second-stage Corpse Analysis engineering projects have been removed, meaning there is now a single Corpse Analysis that grants +20% damage for each alien species.
- An (expensive) engineering project has been added to upgrade the speed of Angel interceptors to match that of Phantom interceptors.
- An engineering project has been added to improve the protection of Guardian Armour (unlocked by researching Alien Plasma Weapons). As both Stalker Armour and Colossus Armour are somewhat specialised, Guardian Armour remains the mainline armour for quite a while!
- Added an upgraded variant of the Stun Baton called the Electroshock Baton (unlocked from Advanced Stun Weapons research).
- The Quantum Laboratory and Nanotech Workshop upgrades now require Alien Electronics in addition to completion of the Cleaner Base mission (meaning they arrive a couple of months later).
- The research projects for Cleaner Autopsy and Cleaner Interrogation now autocomplete, as they are rendered redundant before most people complete them. The Cleaner Corpse Analysis engineering projects have been removed entirely for the same reason.
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The power consumption of various base structures has been rebalanced. The quick summary is:
- Power consumption of many buildings has been slightly increased, including the Hangar and Living Quarters (which previously did not require power).
- Power production of the Access Lift and the basic Generators has been reduced (Alenium Generators remain unchanged). Your starting base now contains an additional Generator to compensate.
- The overall effect of this is that new bases can only construct a single Hangar and Radar with the power from the Access Lift, and expanding the base further requires construction of additional Generators.
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There's been some minor updates to the air combat:
- Torpedoes are now faster and Missiles are now slower, so the Torpedoes will hit the target first if both are fired at the same time (usually desirable because they are very effective at destroying Armour, allowing subsequent Missile hits to inflict higher damage).
- The weapons on the Cruiser / Abductor UFOs now do reduced damage and have smaller fire arcs.
- Evasive Roll now travels a consistent distance whatever speed the air combat is set to.
Tactical Combat - Full Gameplay Changes:
- The Civilian Evacuation system allows you to click on a civilian from an adjacent tile, which causes them to path towards the evacuation zone near the dropship as quickly as possible. This does not cost TU to use. Note that evacuating civilians will try to sprint past any threats they encounter, so make sure their escape route is safe!
- Building roofs are now destructible. Units / objects will fall down to the level below if the floor beneath them is destroyed, and if they land on another actor / object then they both will be stunned or destroyed.
- Sloped building roofs now correctly block line of sight and shots / throwable objects from all angles,
- Units now only rotate to face their attacker after taking damage on the enemy turn. Having it occur in the player turn could cause frustration, as soldiers hit by enemy reaction fire would rotate towards their attacker and sometimes be left without enough TU to complete their planned actions.
- Suppressing a unit now reduces their Reflexes by 50%, which makes them easier to hit with melee weapons.
- Performing melee attacks on hostile units now grants attribute progress towards improving Reflexes.
- Mind Control is now properly broken if the alien is killed or stunned.
- Hay now costs additional TU to move through, and is crushed the first time any unit moves through them. This penalty does not apply if the unit doing so is Crushing (e.g. vehicles, Colossus Armour).
- You can now set a move path to an obstructed tile that contains a unit or a terrain object under the shroud, although unit movement will end once the obstruction is revealed (this prevents players "scanning" the shroud to identify what is there).
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Alien Changes:
- Eternals have been added to the game on Battleships and inside the largest Alien Bases.
- Psyon "Mesmerise" ability can now only be used once per turn by each Psyon.
- Some Mantids now carry Symbiote Launchers, which fire eggs towards their enemies that hatch into Symbiotes - small, aggressive melee aliens that only live three turns,
- Sebillians now carry LMGs instead of Rifles, and some been issued with a special type of grenade that spawns large clouds of poison gas.
- Wraith soldiers now have a 30% chance of spawning with a grenade.
- Wraith Cloaking Field is now disabled by stun damage (as well as normal damage).
- Cyberdrone weapon is now an AOE weapon that fires 3 explosive shots (damage per shot has been reduced).
- Androns and Cyberdrones should no longer seek cover, nor back off if facing large numbers of hostile units.
- Androns should no longer crush alien doors when moving around UFOs / alien bases.
- Cleaners are no longer hostile to civilians / local forces on certain map types.
- AI units of all kinds should no longer clump together quite as much as before.
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Weapon Changes:
- The maximum deviation on a missed shot is now 10 degrees. As well as looking more realistic, this makes the HEVY more effective.
- A couple of bugfixes related to the way corners (e.g. walls, doorframes) and fire arcs are treated for missed shots have made the HEVY less likely to blow up the user unexpectedly.
- Cleaner Accelerated Rifle now has identical stats to the Accelerated Rifle.
- Demolition grenades now spawn smoke and fire on detonation.
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Usability Changes:
- Pressing R will now reload your weapon.
- The tactical combat camera now returns to its previous position after the enemy turn has been processed.
- The currently selected soldier now displays with orange shading if obstructed by cover, rather than green. This makes it much easier to see which soldier in the dropship is currently selected.
- Ambush maps now reveal the position of all enemies during deployment, so you can better choose where to deploy your soldiers.
- Added camera scroll from the target soldiers to the rest of your team at the start of the Rescue Soldiers mission.
- Scrolling between soldiers in the tactical inventory can be done using up / down, as well as left / right (this mirrors the Soldier Equip screen).
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UI Improvements:
- We've added an "abort mission" button to the tactical combat UI, as not everyone was aware you could access it through the Esc menu.
- The soldier minitabs along the top of the tactical UI now also display the secondary weapon if the primary weapon is a combat shield.
- Mind controlled units remain in the topbar minitabs (but cannot be interacted with, as if the soldier was dead).
- On missions with a pre-battle deployment phase, the "Commence Mission" button no longer softlocks the game for a couple of seconds after pressing it.
- On Data Raid missions, if you return all the soldiers to the dropship without having sabotaged enough computers for the mission to count as a victory, the game will now spawn a pop-up telling you this and asking if you want to end the mission anyway.
- Updated the Data Raid objective text to be slightly clearer about how many computer desks need to be interacted with for victory.
- Added tooltips to the post-mission debrief screen for the soldier promotion icon, and the soldier kills icons.
Visual / Audio Updates:
- Fix various kinds of minor visual issues in lots of different tactical maps.
- Added various new terrain tiles for the tactical combat. These are mostly alien tiles related to the new missions (e.g. Operation Endgame, Battleship UFO, the alien orbital missions, etc) but there's some visual updates to the Farm biome and a new oil pumpjack prop for the Desert biome.
- Added new 3d models for the Wraiths, including entirely new designs for the heavily-armoured elite Wraiths.
- Added Soldier Equip screen paperdoll artwork for the various advanced MARS / ARES weapons.
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Added new or updated sound effects for:
- Ambient sounds for various tactical biomes and strategic UI screens
- Winning or losing a tactical mission
- Accelerated and Gauss weapons
- Alien Fusion weapons
- MARS / ARES / Sentry Gun movement and death sounds
- MARS / ARES rocket turret weapon
- Dropships now have a new take-off sound when launching on the Geoscape (instead of sounding like jet fighters).
Bugfixes:
- Fixed another rare multi-threading crash related to saving the game.
- Fixed several issues where the game could crash when moving inventory items (both on the Soldier Equip screen and the tactical inventory).
- Fixed a crash that could occur if you accidentally killed The General in ATLAS Base with an explosive weapon before he had been revealed from the shroud.
- Fixed a crash that could (rarely) occur on enemy overwatch fire.
- Fixed zombies incorrectly spawning two Reapers when stunned, which could then cause a crash in some circumstances.
- Fixed an issue where a teleporter would still trigger if a unit ended a move on it due to their move being interrupted (e.g. by spotting an alien, or because of enemy reaction fire).
- Fixed a bug where most of the crew of Harvester UFOs were not spawning (the ones that were meant to be inside the UFO).
- Fixed some abduction missions loading incorrect map variants with too few abduction tubes.
- Fixed a bug where soldiers would sometimes not carry out move actions even though the UI tells you there are enough TU to do so.
- Fixed a pathing calculation issue where the game would sometimes tell you a soldier lacked enough TU to reach a tile, but would then recalculate and allow a longer movement if you chose a different tile.
- Fixed some pathfinding issues for jetpack-equipped soldiers, where the game was incorrectly claiming a "path cannot be found" if the soldier did not have enough TU to reach the spot (rather than showing how far the unit could move).
- Fixed pathfinding incorrectly calculating costs for units with Crushing making moves that involved crushing multiple objects.
- Fixed interrupted soldier moves not always reimbursing the player with the correct number of TUs.
- Fixed an issue where units would sometimes not turn if attacking as part of a move >> shoot preview action, leading to their arms facing a completely different direction to their torso.
- Fixed some (but not all) instances of shroud drawing over materials with transparency, such as the glass parts of alien abduction tubes etc.
- Fixed an issue where fleeing aliens would often flee directly towards your units.
- Fixed an issue where the shroud would sometimes not be revealed on certain tiles, even if a unit walked into them.
- Fixed some displayed "hit chance" labels being offset when passing through certain types of smoke.
- Fixed some displayed "hit chance" labels being offset in certain camera circumstances.
- Fixed the issue where destroying a shipping container would often not destroy the ladder attached to it.
- Fixed an issue where certain dropped items could not be picked up.
- Fixed destroyed splinters of wood hovering in the air after destroying certain sawmill walls.
- Fixed a UI bug where selecting soldiers on the Manage Soldier screen would cause the Training Capacity bar to decrease.
- Fixed the Ultimate Power achievement (all Colonels in a squad) being unlocked if you play a base defence mission containing only Sentry Guns.
- Fixed the Psyon Mesmerise triggering incorrectly when a "missed" shot from an explosive weapon kills the Psyon.
- Fixed an issue where in some circumstances the UI would show the fire mode icons for the medikit on top of the normal fire mode icons for a pistol in the other hand.
- Removed a duplicate soldier role icon.
- Fixed an issue where thrown grenades would sometimes get stuck in mid-air and explode on the wrong tile (or leave flares floating in mid-air.)
- Fixed EMP Damage and Stun Damage numbers incorrectly being shown on Commander difficulty, when normal damage numbers are not.
- Fixed the tooltip for the Stalker Armour showing the linked tooltip for the Wraith Cloaking Field, not the human equivalent.
- Fixed the Colossus tooltip not having enough space to display the various effects.
- Fixed Soldier Equip screen item comparison issues that caused the currently equipped weapon to display error text instead of its ammo capacity.
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20 hours ago, Melee said:
Description: Funding balance is off by one after monthly funding report.
What Happened: Had funding balance of $92,415 and received $2,204,486 from funding report, totaling $2,296,901. Balance after funding report was $2,296,900.
![[m4.27.0] Funding calculation.png](https://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/uploads/monthly_2024_12/m4_27.0Fundingcalculation.thumb.png.379fe9f41f9ffd628096a6e3214cec94.png)
Thanks. I'll log it, but I'm giving this bug the lowest priority our system allows
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6 hours ago, Skitso said:
Lab art looks like a nice improvement. Good work there!
Talking about the wall of text... waiting eagerly for the patch notes.
Ugh, I'm not looking forward to doing that. I've literally got over 600 completed tasks to sort through, and that doesn't include most of the balancing work I've done...
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Hello everyone - it's time for the November development update for Xenonauts 2. Read on to see what we were working on last month!
Milestone 5 Prototype Update:
November was a productive month for us. All the core systems for Milestone 5 are now complete and we're currently in the process of testing the initial prototype, which we'll hopefully be releasing onto the Experimental branch later this week.As always, the first Experimental build for a new Milestone is likely to be a pretty rough experience - although all the major new gameplay mechanics are present there'll probably be a lot of bugs, balance issues, and missing pieces of content that need to be patched in. If you'd rather have a more polished experience then it'd be best to wait until the final version of Milestone 5 arrives on the standard branches early next year!
Before we move on, I just want to be clear - although players will be able to unlock the final mission and complete the campaign once Milestone 5 is out, this will not be the final update for Xenonauts 2. We still want to add more polish to the game, so we're planning another major update before final release (likely focusing on usability / visual improvements / AI & game balance / modding / etc rather than adding additional game mechanics).
The Testing Process:
Most of our work this month has been addressing the numerous gameplay and stability issues encountered in our testing. Each new batch of fixes has allowed us to play further into the game, and we're currently testing the last month or two of the campaign (so fighting Battleships and doing the final mission).So far we've been doing "strategic" playthroughs that involve auto-winning the tactical battles for speed (the average campaign is 30+ missions), but once we confirm it's possible to complete a "strategic" playthrough we'll shift to playing a full campaign including the tactical missions. Most game-breaking stability / balance issues tend to occur on the strategy layer, so hopefully this will go smoothly - but whether we release the prototype this week as planned really comes down to how many issues we encounter.
One major benefit of this testing is that all of these campaign playthroughs have given us plenty of opportunity to playtest and iterate the new strategy mechanics. We actually found the first iteration of the new Geoscape mechanics weren't quite as engaging as we'd hoped, so we expanded them a bit more and came up with something stronger!
Updated Geoscape Mechanics:
I personally think the updated Geoscape mechanics are a major improvement on what we have before, giving the player more things to interact with and a wider selection of possible strategies without being too overwhelming.Players now gain a certain number of Operations Points per day (representing the off-screen work carried out Xenonaut agents), which can be spent on Strategic Operations or recruiting Supporters. Strategic Operations provide powerful instant effects, such as allowing the player to reduce Panic in a specific region or receive some extra cash / alien materials. They are not the most efficient way to spend Operations Points, but can still be very useful in the right circumstances!
Each of the six funding regions contains four Supporters, which represent key figures in the local government who can become aligned with either the Xenonauts or the Aliens. If they fall under Alien control and become Infiltrators (usually caused by successful Infiltration UFO missions), they will generate additional Panic in the local region each month - but if convinced to join the Xenonauts they will instead slightly reduce Panic in that region each month and provide a permanent bonus to your organisation.
Additionally, each region has a unique "region bonus" that is unlocked if you recruit all the supporters in that region (e.g. the North America bonus improves the quality of your starting soldiers, while the Soviet Russia one reduces your upkeep costs, etc). However, most regions also contain a single Elite Supporter who provides double the bonus of other Supporters of the same type; prioritising recruiting these Elite Supporters from the various different regions can be an alternative to racing towards a specific region bonus.
Although I think these additions work well, my own personal opinion only counts for so much - we'll be really interested to hear what the community think of the new systems once the prototype is out!
Other Additions:
We also had time to work on a few miscellaneous things this month. Firstly, the tactical combat now properly supports objects falling, so we've been able to enable destruction on building roofs. Explosions can now collapse these and cause units and items to fall onto the level below.The illustration work is now complete on the updated Research screen background art (see above), and this month we'll be creating the "advanced" versions of this that are unlocked as you progress through the game and gain access to more advanced technology.
We're continuing to revamp the visuals of some of the weaker parts of the tactical combat. We started work on some new models for the Sebillian aliens, and we've also updated the appearance of quite a few assets in the Farm biome. Neither of these updates are currently present in Milestone 5 but both should be patched in before we finalise it.
We've made some further AI improvements and written some custom AI for the new missions added in Milestone 5, one of which is a wave defence mission. A few updated sounds have been added to the tactical combat for the new Biter alien, and also some new unique movement sounds for the MARS / ARES / Sentry Gun vehicles.
We also set up the proper Game Over screen for the various types of victory and loss. The final victory cinematic isn't ready yet, but the new UI has unique art / text / music / campaign stats / etc so still it's a lot more atmospheric than the plain popup you got in earlier versions of the game.
I think that covers everything. Well done for reading the wall of text, and hopefully we'll have a prototype ready to play in the next few days!
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Hello everyone - as we're now into the early days of November, it's time for an update on what we were working on during October. The short answer is this: we made good progress in several areas last month, but frustratingly slow progress in one key area that delayed the Milestone 5 prototype.
Milestone 5 / Strategic Improvements:
Our main focus is still on getting our Milestone 5 prototype into a state where we can release it for public testing. We were hoping that would happen last month, but we weren't able to make enough progress on the new strategy mechanics. There were a few reasons for this, but the main one was that we continued to find new bugs that needed fixing after the Unity editor update I discussed in our previous update.Thankfully, in the second half of the month we were able to better focus on implementing our new Supporter system. This system places four VIPs in each funding region who can be recruited as Supporters by the Xenonauts to provide your organisation a variety of strategic bonuses (more funding, faster research / engineering, etc) or turned into panic-generating Infiltrators by the aliens. If you can recruit all of the Supporters in each region, you also unlock a special regional bonus.
The Supporter system itself is now mostly functional, but we're still unsure how long it'll take us to connect it to the other game systems. For instance, the new Doomsday Counter system that is now active in the early stages of the game also ties into the Supporter system (with alien Infiltrators generating enemy Doomsday progress, and Xenonaut Supporters slowing it). We will also need to update the Infiltration UFO missions to turn neutral VIPs into Infiltrators if successful (where previously they simply generated Panic like other types of UFO mission), etc.
Given what happened last month I'm not going to make any promises about when the Milestone 5 prototype will be out - I'll just say we're working hard to get it into the hands of testers as quickly as possible (we should be able to release the first testing builds as soon as these strategic updates are complete).
New Missions:
Milestone 5 adds various new missions - crash sites for the Battleship UFO, the two-part final mission (Operation ENDGAME), and two unique new plot missions that take place on an alien orbital station (which appear around the point Cruiser UFOs start appearing).The Battleship assets and crash site maps were completed some time ago, and this month we finished the final art assets and map setup for both halves of the Operation ENDGAME mission. The first mission on the alien orbital station is also at quite an advanced stage, with the custom art assets for that map now complete, but there's still further work to be done on the second orbital station mission. Thankfully, this shouldn't cause delays - most of the remaining work is custom art assets, and we don't need the visuals to be final for the Milestone 5 prototype builds.
Alien Updates:
Last month we added a new type of alien to the game, the Biter. These small insectoid aliens are more of a living weapon than a proper new species, as certain alien units can fire them towards enemy units - at which point they will charge towards nearby hostiles and try to bite them to death. Biters will expire within a few turns of spawning and have very low HP, but a pack of them can still pose a threat - particularly against units equipped with weapons that cost a lot of TU to fire (e.g. sniper rifles).We also continued to make changes to our existing aliens to better differentiate them from one another. The main cannon on a Cyberdrone no longer acts like a giant plasma rifle, but is instead now a blast weapon that can inflict major damage across a large area (although it is now less likely to instantly kill a heavily-armoured soldier). We'll be finishing up some changes to the Mantid and Sebillian weapons this month too, which I'll explain next month.
Illustrated UI Backgrounds:
One of the coolest features in Xenonauts 1 was that the illustrated backgrounds of the strategic UI screens would upgrade as you progressed through the campaign, showing the way the new technological developments you had unlocked were changing your organisation - by the end of the game, the all characters had futuristic uniforms and the rooms were full of sci-fi equipment. Lots of players thought this really helped immerse them in the game.Although implementing this in Xenonauts 2 involves repainting our existing (perfectly fine) UI background art, we've decided the feature is cool enough that we've found some extra budget for it. Handily, all the programming for this feature has already been finished, so as soon as the new artwork is done we can just slot it straight into the game. We started the sketch work for the new Research screen background last week, and hopefully you'll be able to see some results either in the Milestone 5 prototype or next month's development update!
I'll leave the update there for this month - thanks for reading, and hopefully we'll have some good news on Milestone 5 in the coming few weeks!
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24 minutes ago, jackbou said:
But it doesn't seem like there's anything to post, and the production team is working Milestone 5
There's going to be a production update later today - I just didn't get around to it on Friday and then it was the weekend.
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20 hours ago, herebeweeb said:
Sometimes, when using the shift+click to make a soldier move then attack, the soldier will move, turn to one side then back very quickly, then attack. That turn around consumes TU and the soldier is unable to complete the attack. This seems to happen consistently in some situations. I don't know exactly what are the steps that triggers this.
The following picture shows the soldier and move I make. Using a quicksave before the move, he will consistently move to the spot, turn to the right, then back at the alien very quickly. Sometimes he will not complete the attack, but more often than not he does complete the attack. The attached bug report is after doing the shift+click in a instance where the soldier did not complete the attack.
a situ
Thanks, that's a very helpful bug report. I can reproduce the issue from that save you provided so we'll get this fixed.
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This is a small stability update for Milestone 4, which fixes a bug that can cause random crashes on both the strategy and tactical layers of the game.
Although we are now fully focused on preparing our upcoming Milestone 5 update at the moment, please do continue to report any crashes or other serious bugs you encounter - we'll continue to patch Milestone 4 if necessary.
Bugfixes:
- Fixed a crash linked to soldier / aircraft items becoming corrupted. However, this crash would not occur at the point where the item was corrupted, instead happening at the end of a tactical mission or the start / end of an air combat (and possibly also on the Armory soldier equip screen). Hopefully this fix will significantly reduce the number of seemingly random crashes experienced by players!
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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!
Although we're almost entirely focused on Milestone 5 at the moment, we're releasing another small hotfix for Milestone 4 because a recent community bug report allowed us to finally track down and fix a stability bug we'd been trying to fix for a while.
Bugfixes:
- Fixed a crash that was linked to soldier / aircraft items becoming corrupted. The crash would not occur at the point where the item was corrupted, and would usually happen at the end of a tactical mission or the start / end of an air combat (possibly also on the Armory screen). Hopefully this fix will significantly reduce the number of seemingly random crashes experienced by players!
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4 hours ago, Michael Curtis said:
I have tested the hit chance and it is far off, lower than reported. I have not tested burst shots, only single shots. after 100 attempts all hit chances are near half of what they say they should be.
I attacked a UFO in south america aiming at attacking my base in Africa, I killed the fighters but the UFO got away, I intended to attack it again with my africa force when it got in the radar range, but as soon as the UFO got away in South America, the base attack commenced. It teleported to africa!
When I have a guy kneeling in front of a low cover, and I use a standing guy behind him for attacking. The standing guy frequently hits the low cover in front of my kneeling guy. I guess the bullets teleport through people kneeling!!
also low cover in between a target and the shooter is way over valued, shooting 6 feet away from low cover at a 12 foot tall alien 30 feet away should not hit the low cover in front of you 40 percent of the time, unless the secret weak point of the alien is it's feet.
Thanks for the feedback. To answer your points individually:
1) I'm happy to take a look at a couple of save games if there's specific shots you've tested repeatedly (please also ensure you've got "Reset Seed" checked when testing a save). We can see the random rolls in our logs and generally when this happens its just because of random variance - but as I said, I'm happy to check the rolls match the numbers displayed in the UI.
2) Yeah, if that's happened then it's definitely a bug. Please can you attach a save game where we can see it? (details on how in the sticky at the top of the forum)
3) Yeah, that's intentional. You can shoot over adjacent cover (including crouching soldiers), and if you can shoot over it then it's ignored for the hit calculation and so we also disregard it from the miss shot paths. If you don't do that, you get units shooting through windows from 20cm away hitting the windowframes etc.
4) It's not a flat 40% chance of hitting the intervening cover - it reduces the chance to hit against the target by 40% / 0.4x. So if you've got a 50% chance of hitting them, that hit chance goes down to 30% (so only a raw 20% reduction). None of the aliens are taller than 8 feet or so either (and most are around 6 feet), so I think 40% is reasonable in most cases.
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3 hours ago, cwamartin said:
Hi everyone,
I have been playing X2 regularly since the pre-release came out and just wanted to give the devs some thoughts about gameplay and to hear what others players think.
First, it is, on the whole, really great and I am enjoying it very much. I like the new missions (i.e. the ones not available in X1), I like how the game looks and the new UI. I like the way armour works in X2, and I like the tweaks to the weapons (such as advanced lasers, for example). I have even come to like the fact that on Veteran level I have to play the air game manually - something which I have never done previously) and am now enjoying what is for me a new part of the game. I also like the fact that you can customise the difficulty levels.
So within the context of this being a really enjoyable game, here a a few suggestions/thoughts on things I would change to make it even better!
This is a trivial thing, but in the air game dialogue box that first comes up with the various options (Commence Combat, Tail etc.) in the standard encounter the autoresolve option appears on the top line, but if you encounter fighters and get the reduced options, the autoresolve is on the bottom line. The number of times I have - out of habit - accidentally clicked manual combat when I intended to pick the autoresolve option...!
A couple of rants on hit and miss percentages...:
- I get that random numbers are random numbers but it is ridiculous to regularly miss 70% and 80% chances to hit three or even four times in a row!
- Grenades: again, I get that if the change is less than 100% then all kinds of things can happen but is it really likely that soldiers will drop grenades on the tile in front of them or even two tiles in front of them quite so regularly?!
Terror Missions: these go from being almost unwinnably tense at the start as the aliens quickly surround the dropship (which is good, I am OK with that) to almost unbearably tedious at the end as you have to search the whole map for the few remaining aliens. I realise that X1's solution of revealing all the aliens after 20 turns could make it too easy at the end, but surely there is something that could be done? What about a device that could be researched and engineered so that it could detect alien life and give a direction if nothing else?
Also, still on Terror missions, what about an option to have the alenium bombs detonate after a given (high!) number of turns so that the Xenonauts have to find and deactivate by removing the alenium or whatever?
Finally, what about a repair option for the MARS/ARES units in combat? Again it could be researched and engineered maybe mid-game after a certain amount of technology had already been developed, and it could work similar to the medikit in that it would not do a full repair but only repair up to half the damage received. You could even have damaged units taking a certain amount of repair time at base (similar to injured soldiers) rather than instantly returning to full health. You could also have an option to speed up the repair as there is for the interceptors.
Just some thoughts!
Colin.
Thanks, glad you're enjoying the game. I think you make a good point about the squadron intercepted / interception popups on the Geoscape, they should have the same button arrangement on them (and we can just disable the buttons that can't be used when enemy fighters attack you). I'll change that for Milestone 5.
For the Terror missions, this is actually an AI issue and co-incidentally we were discussing it this morning. Basically what's happening is that aliens go into "combat mode" as soon as they sight an enemy unit, but this includes civilians and local forces too, so on Terror maps most aliens become hyper-aggressive right at the start of the mission because there's so many civvies around. Hopefully it'll be fixed in Milestone 5, with them going back to "normal" behaviour once they've killed the civilian.
The grenade miss stuff we'll take a look at. I'm not that happy with the current grenade behaviour either.
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On 9/28/2024 at 12:30 PM, Skitso said:
I started a thread about the issues I have with the cover system few weeks ago where I wrote this:
"While I think the cover system Xenonauts 2 currently has is elegant and works fine, there's one critical issue that really brings the tactical game down.
The issue is that you don't need to use a cover to be in cover. It's completely irrelevant if you are hunkering behind a waist high concrete wall or if the said concrete wall just happens to be in between you and the shooter. It just doesn't make sense and makes tactical choises too easy. It just doesn't matter that much where you move your units, as there's almost always some cover in the line of fire (which means you are as good as in cover anyways)
Proposition: kneeling next to a cover provides double kneeling buff, kneeling without a cover might also need to be debuffed so players really feel the need to find a cover."
Any comment regarding this?
I don't really want to get into a long discussion about it in this thread, but I'm not sure I see the problem? I think the XCOM system is pretty dumb where an object only offers protection if you're within a meter of it.
If the shooter and target are in a straight line, it doesn't actually matter where the cover is along that line in terms of how much of the target is obscured. Broadly, the reason you'd want to get closer to it (both in the game and in real life) is because then the object offers protection from incoming shots in a much wider angle than if you were several meters away from it (when it's only good from attacks from directly in front of you). But that's already modelled in the game, I know the current system isn't perfect but I think it works pretty well within the limitations of an abstracted / non-3d system.
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With September over it's once again time for our monthly Xenonauts 2 development update. Here's a quick rundown of the things we've been busy with this month!
Milestone 5:
Although we've continued to release hotfixes for Milestone 4 this month, our focus has been Milestone 5. If all goes well, we should (hopefully) have an early prototype of this update ready for testers to play later this month.Milestone 5 is taking a long time because we're making quite a few changes. Aside from the Phase system mentioned in the last update, we're also going to be testing a "strategic operations" system that gives the player more control over the Geoscape and opens up a greater number of strategic gameplay options.
Essentially, the player gets a certain amount of "operation points" each day that can be spent on one-off missions to provide benefits (e.g. lowering Panic in a region, gaining an immediate cash injection, etc) or can be used to recruit Supporters in Geoscape regions who provide passive bonuses (e.g. increased monthly funding, reduced research / engineering times, etc). If you recruit all the Supporters in a region, you also gain a powerful Region Bonus for your organisation.
Our goal for this system is to add a bit more strategic depth to the Geoscape, and provide players a way to reduce Panic in regions where they do not have aircraft or radar coverage. Choosing which types of Supporter and / or Region Bonuses players want to pursue should hopefully provide players some interesting strategic choices - we're looking forward to seeing what people think when they get to play it!
New Missions / Terrain Tiles:
Milestone 5 is intended to include the complete sequence of story missions, allowing players to play the entire campaign from start to finish. We've therefore been working on the final mission, creating some unique terrain tiles to reflect the setting in which it takes place. Similarly, we've also created some unique tiles for the areas where the player will encounter the alien leader species, the Eternals (the bridges of Battleship UFOs, and the command centers of the largest alien bases).We're also attempting to address feedback about mission variety becoming a bit stale towards the end of the game by adding two new story missions into the later stages of the campaign. These center around an orbital station the aliens have constructed high above Earth. This gives us an isolated environment where aliens outnumber humans, which is helpful because the presence of large numbers of enemy reinforcements means we can once again make use of some mission types that stopped making sense after the defeat of the Cleaners.
We're still experimenting with these missions, but again we're hoping to have a basic version of them in the Milestone 5 prototype.
Other Updates:
We've also added various smaller systems to the game this month. Firstly, Xenonaut bases now cost varying amounts ($500k - $1.5m) depending on where they are placed. This means there's fewer places where placing a base is objectively a bad decision; the locations with optimal radar coverage are now also more expensive. It's worth bearing in mind this also affects the first base, meaning you'll have more starting funds available if you choose a cheaper location.In the tactical combat, we've added support for alien weapons capable of spawning clouds of (poison) gas on impact. This should allow us to equip certain alien species (probably Mantids) with weapons that behave a little differently from other alien units, while also making items such as the Rebreather a bit more useful.
As you can see at the top of the screen, we've also continued to add new artwork to the game - the image above being tied to the Phase system and the updated storyline.
Updated Game Editor:
Over the last couple of updates I've mentioned our Game Editor upgrade, which is the first step towards having working modding tools for Xenonauts 2. Although work on the final modding tools won't start until after Milestone 5 is complete, this editor upgrade is now largely complete and will act as the foundation for our mod tools.That's it for now, I think - I had a few more smaller things I wanted to talk about, but this update has run long already so I'll leave it here. We'll post another development update once the Milestone 5 prototype is ready to play!
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On 9/5/2024 at 4:03 AM, odizzido said:
That's nice artwork there. And having possible changes to the geoscape sounds pretty good. If your ideas work out that would be pretty cool.
There is another of these types of games that was always pretty buggy and iffy, but had some fun concepts and that's the UFO:Aftermath/aftershock series. In aftermath there was the alien biomass growing across the planet mid way through you had to push back which was pretty nice....and in aftershock there was the whole resource linking game on the geoscape which could be optimised and provided reasons to go on missions beyond them just being there.
I know this is kinda outside your design, but I just wanted to mention the idea of changing how the accuracy works in this game again. I don't recall reading anything saying it has changed since 2021 when I play tested a little so I wish to illustrate my ideal system and I will hope you consider trying it out. I think it would significantly increase my enjoyment of the game. Now enjoy my MS paint skills:
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I just wanted to say I understand why you did things that way you did in the first game....but I was very much hoping that since you're on a 3D engine now you could give it a little bit more of a realistic solution
Yeah. That's the Valkyria Chronicles / Phoenix Point accuracy system, right? We tested it way back in the olden days of early X2 and we didn't like it. Any time you're basing hit chances on the actual 3d collision meshes of 3d objects rather than an abstracted "cover value", cover values because unpredictable.
Everything works fine if you're shooting in a straight line - shots are more accurate if you're closer, less accurate if you're further away. But unless you're in a world made of cubes, taking one step to the left or right can dramatically affect the shot hit chance because an irregular part of one of the intervening objects (like a branch on a tree) may be added or removed to the fire path. Same is true for crouching, it can have a dramatic and unpredictable effect on hit chance.
The problem is that this means that every soldier move involves using the preview mode to search half a dozen nearby tiles for the best hit chance on a particular enemy. Whereas in an abstracted system you know getting closer increases hit chance, and "flanking" to negate cover increases hit chance, and you can very easily deduce the pros and cons of moving to any given tile. The current system isn't perfect by any means but it is much snappier than a 3d system.
Also, the final image you linked isn't quite right - the game only uses only the highest cover value from all intervening cover to prevent that problem occurring.
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On 9/25/2024 at 12:31 AM, Milo9099 said:
I changed the permission on the the file. you should be able to download it now.
Thanks. I've taken a look at this and it's actually a very simple fix - you've started the Laser Battery project in your third base, but you've got no engineers there so it never completed and it's just sat there. If you cancel it there you can finish it at your main base instead.
We'll have to add some kind of warning to prevent players getting into that situation in the first place though, so this was still a useful bug report.
EDIT - actually, there already is a "no engineers at this base" warning, so I think this one may be on you
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We've now released another small stability fix for Milestone 4 to the public branches while we continue to work on Milestone 5. Please do report any further bugs or stability issues as we will continue to release additional hotfixes if necessary.
Bugfixes:
- Fixed a rare crash that could occur if a unit was killed during the enemy turn.
- Mesmerise will no longer trigger if a shot from the HEVY Launcher misses the target Psyon, but the blast kills the target anyway.
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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!
Bugfixes:
- Fixed a rare crash that could occur if a unit was killed during the enemy turn.
- Mesmerise will no longer trigger if a shot from the HEVY Launcher misses the target Psyon, but the blast kills the target anyway.
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[V5.0.0 - Geoscape] CTD on First Xeno-Initiative Funding Text
in Xenonauts-2 Bug Reports
Posted
Thanks. Sadly there's no info in the crash dump because there's an unrelated issue with Iron Man mode breaking the error reporting system, but we're working on fixing several Geoscape crashes at the moment and hopefully yours was one of them!