Chris

Milestone 2 will shortly be moving to the Experimental branches, but for now we're still testing it on the Prototype branches while I finish updating the in-game text to reflect the new mechanics and lore. Hopefully this will therefore be the final Prototype build for Milestone 2. You can access the Prototype branches by using the password "xenonautsproto" in Steam. Gameplay Changes: Significant rewrites to the tutorial conversation and opening conversation so the lore now makes sense with the gameplay updates. The Commander is no longer a character, and has been replaced by The General - the previous commander of the Xenonauts. Reworked the invasion timeline so Mimics now act as escort craft, and Air Superiority missions (and therefore Fighter UFOs) are more common. Fighter UFOs now look different to Mimics. Monthly funding for players increased, and cost of new bases has been reduced from $750k to $500k. Upkeep cost on aircraft and base structures has been increased by 50%. Rebalanced the soldier Armour values. Heavy armour variants now double the protection offered, but triple the weight. Warden is now a little bit stronger, and Guardian Armour is a bit weaker. Angels now only have three equipment slots, not four. Torpedoes now do substantially increased damage. Aircraft armour now offers more protection. All manufactured aircraft equipment now sells for less than it costs to build. Tier 1 weapons / armour reduced in cost from $100k to $50k. Made month 1 Eliminate VIP mission slightly easier. Capturing an enemy alive no longer unlocks their autopsy, but completing the interrogation does so. Fixes & Updates: Fixed a crash when selecting the MARS in the deployment phase before Ambush / Base Defence missions. Fixed an AI crash during the alien turn. Fixed the tutorial getting locked part-way through and being impossible to complete. Fixed the Cleaner Data Raid mission terminating as soon as you pick up the last USB stick, rather than when you get back to the dropship. Fixed dead soldiers sometimes surviving even when the player has a 0% survivial chance. Fixed the Exosuit being invisible in the Soldier Equip screen. Fixed some visual issues with the Guardian on the Soldier Equip screen. Fixed the Phantom equipment slots being misaligned, and two of them not counting towards the Weight limit on the plane. Fixed the Ambush mission sometimes not having any enemy combatants in it. Fixed aliens and humans being revealed if they are stunned when the player does not have line of sight on them. Added support for back layers on for armour on the Soldier Equip screen, allowing us to fix the "holes" in the collars. Set up the journalist VIP on the VIP Extraction mission to have the appropriate portrait / clothes. Fixed the new recovered items (shown in orange) being sorted to the bottom of the list on the mission debrief screen, rather than to the top. Fixed a couple of visual issues with the Alenium Reactor props on the base defence missions.

I'll give this a proper read later, as I might close this thread and open a new one due to the upcoming patch containing a heavy rework of the balancing. Couple of quick comments though: 1) I really don't think there's space for any more armour in the tech tree, as you're already given one by almost every type of new UFO. Personally, I thought being able to remove the Defender Armour as an item (without actually removing it as an option) was one of the best things about adding this Heavy Armour checkbox! 2) @Grobobobo Missiles really should be competing against torpedoes, as they also have long range but are able to hit any target (unlike the torpedo). But I guess if a pair of missiles doesn't have enough firepower to take down an enemy escort UFO from long range then it's not actually worthwhile bringing them over another cannon, as you'll always have to close into short range to finish it off anyway.

We're just finalising some stuff at our end. Turns out supporting modding (or, rather, supporting the community making mods) requires more at our end than we thought. But we're nearly done with the extra stuff.

Appreciate the replies. Some more responses: If you've encountered the Ambush mission bug where the enemy units don't spawn, it'd be great if you could provide a pre-mission save. It happened to me once but I assumed it was Unity being weird because I was editing entities while playing, but if it's a real bug then we need to get that fixed. Good points about the armour progression. The Guardian is definitely a bit too good at the moment, especially in its lighter version. I think for now I'm simplify things so the Light version has 50% of the armour of the Heavy version, but only 1/3 of the weight. Let's try the following values: Tactical = 6/12 Armour (Defender had 12 in Milestone 1) Warden = 8/16 Armour (Warden had 20 in Milestone 1) Guardian = 12/24 Armour (Guardian had 30 in Milestone 1, but was much heavier and cost more Alloys) Stalker = 9/18 Armour (had 18 in Milestone 1) Yes, we'll probably experiment with putting in some kind of upgrade for Angels so they can move at the speed of the Phantoms, but it'll cost significant Alenium. But I am aware that managing planes that fly at different speeds is a major pain in the ass. I've had a look over the aircraft weapons and I've significantly increased the damage on torpedoes, because they were hugely underpowered relative to missiles given how easy they are to dodge and how much they weigh. I'll also buff the basic aircraft armour to give 8 Armour rather than 5. @Grobobobo I'm curious why you're not using missiles in your aircraft loadouts? In 2.05 they're much better than torpedoes, aren't they? I think I will take the fourth slot off the Angel. The only potential item you'd lose is a missile, if you decided to go for a 4x missile loadout on the Angel. Every other loadout I can think of has the fourth item as a Fuel Pod. Having an item that increases radar range could be interesting, yeah.

Thanks. To answer a few questions: Yes, in Milestone 3 we'll consider what new mission types we can add to try and keep the mission variety going once the Cleaners have been removed. It's not as easy given the logical setup (the humans are the ones likely to be getting reinforcements over time, not the aliens) but hopefully we can figure something out. Yeah, it makes sense to put the ATLAS base mission where the tutorial base is, that's a good point. What do other people think about the Warden? There's actually a slight error in the balancing atm, which I've now fixed - the Heavy tactical armour should offer 8 Armour in total (not 9), which is the same as the basic variant of the Warden. The heavy variant of the Warden increases this to 13 Armour. I think that feels about right to me; the Warden is either the same protection with a lot less weight or extra protection with the same weight. The reason why Accelerated Weapons are built individually is it's nice to have a steady drip of new items to build after every mission. I tried with both the Accelerated and Warden items being upgrades, but it made the early game boring as you frequently went more than one mission without improving your team. Is the problem the manufacture time? That can be reduced if needed. The Mimics are likely to have an expanded role as we continue to balance Milestone 2. Part of the reason for introducing them is that we can use them as escort craft in the early stages of the game, when two Fighter UFOs would be way too dangerous for the player. The hugely increased costs of the interceptors is a deliberate decision (although it might need more tweaking). The idea is that the player should have fewer planes at the start of the game, and that basic UFOs are balanced against one or maximum two aircraft. It's only in the midgame where you'd be fielding full squadrons, and even then a couple of Phantoms might be able to do the job of a full squad of Angels (particularly as you only have to pay for two sets of equipment). In Milestone 1 it is too easy for the player to win the air war, and part of that is because planes are too cheap. Although starting values are lower, monthly funding does increase significantly as you make progress in the plot. So the idea is to have a bit of a curve - early game building a second base and another interceptor should ideally be doable if players focus on that alone, but focusing on soldier equipment and training rooms / medical centers, or more scientists etc should be alternatives. And then as funding increases after a few months it'll be easier to start getting more air cover up across the world. I don't know if people feel that works, though? Might be interesting to make new bases a little cheaper, and maybe base structures a little cheaper too, but then increase upkeep costs on buildings and aircraft? That would make initial expansion easier, but make covering the whole globe in your forces a bit slower. The air combat values can certainly be balanced more. But is the existing system too restrictive? If we used those values you could get almost everything on even the starting interceptors, and then there's nowhere for the Phantom to go beyond numerical upgrades. I feel like there's a decent variety of loadouts for the starting Angel as is. I'm actually tempted to reduce the Angel to having three slots, because it feels like part of the problem is that players naturally want to fill all the slots but the Angel just doesn't have the carrying capacity to do it (but it'd be overpowered if it did).

Yeah, it is only for Steam users right now because it's simpler for these quick build tests. It should be out as a proper experimental build for GOG users to play by the end of the week though.

Glad that you’re finding it easier to read!

Thanks. I’ll check the tutorial tomorrow then. For the rescued soldiers, was there space in the dropship? You should get a notification telling you to leave space in the dropship to bring them back. If you don’t, they’ll be listed as KIA.

This is another update to our early test build for Milestone 2. The purpose of this build is to get feedback on the gameplay mechanics before we commit to updating all the lore / writing, and adding any new artwork required to support the new features and changes. We've therefore released the game onto our new Prototype branches rather than our Experimental branches, as we only want people playing the build who have read this post and understand what the build is for! You can access the Prototype branches by using the password "xenonautsproto" in Steam. Changes: Fixed the crash that would occur around day 75, when Alien Resupply missions would begin to (potentially) spawn on the Geoscape. Fixed a crash when you tried to do the tutorial. Fixed the Heavy Armour version of the Warden having an incorrect visual appearence in the tactical missions. Fixed the Wraith Corpse Analysis project incorrect unlocking off the Sebillian autopsy research.

This is an update to our early test build for Milestone 2. The purpose of this build is to get feedback on the gameplay mechanics before we commit to updating all the lore / writing, and adding any new artwork required to support the new features and changes. We've therefore released the game onto our new Prototype branches rather than our Experimental branches, as we only want people playing the build who have read this post and understand what the build is for! You can access the Prototype branches by using the password "xenonautsproto" in Steam. Changes: Game now boots into Main Menu as normal, rather than straight into strategy. Aircraft weapons such as Torpedoes and Laser Lances should no longer cause a crash on the Soldier Equip screen once constructed. Hopefully fixed the issue where civilians look like purple-headed Xenonauts. There's now a "Reset Item Moves" button on the tactical inventory screen, and a new line that shows the current TUs of the soldier. Improved the way items stack when dropped on the ground by a dead combatant.

It's a bit unrelated to inventory size; the reason is so that any soldier can wear the most modern armour in the lightest variant rather than weak soldiers being unable to wear say Guardian Armour in any form. It also avoids the issue where the protection offered by the insert is unrelated to the armour it is placed in, which meant it could be relatively too weak on advanced armours and too strong on basic armour. It also means we can give the player more overall options with fewer actual suits of armour; having the first 100 days contain the Tactical Suit, Defender Armour, Warden Armour and Guardian Armour was slight overkill. Now it's just Tactical Suit >> Warden >>> Guardian, which is clearer and more manageable. If carry capacity ends up being too generous as a result I'd have thought we could just make modules larger to compensate.

I'm now locking this thread as there's a new thread for the new Milestone 2 Prototype build (v2.03), which you can find at the link below. Thanks to everyone who provided feedback on this!

You can read about how to access this build and what changes are in it in this thread here: This thread is for people to post up their opinions on the game balance or the new features, or any issues they encounter.

Hi everyone - we've just released an early test build for Milestone 2. The purpose of this build is to get feedback on the gameplay mechanics before we commit to updating all the lore / writing, and adding any new artwork required to support the new features and changes. We've therefore released the game onto our new Prototype branches rather than our Experimental branches, as we only want people playing the build who have read this post and understand what the build is for! You can access the Prototype branches by using the password "xenonautsproto" in Steam. Changes: We've made a lot of gameplay changes since Milestone 1, and quite a lot since we put Milestone 2.02 out for testing two or three weeks back. Here's a few of the key features to look out for: The gameplay period is now 200 days instead of 180 days. This increase comes from expanding the opening phase of the game, where the player is taking on the Cleaners. We've involved the Cleaners more in the early storyline, tried to make them more threatening, and added more Cleaner missions. The story is now that the previous Commander was sent to present evidence of the alien invasion gathered by the Xenonauts to various world governments, but returns to base with an army of Cleaners and attempts to shut down the Xenonauts (which leads to the events of the tutorial and the loss of the original base). The first mission is now to reclaim the old base for long enough to gather all the research data and supplies needed to continue the fight at the new base. I explain this here because none of this is currently well-explained in the game. There's several new types of Cleaner mission, including an Ambush mission where you're attacking a Cleaner convoy and get to set up anywhere in the map prior to the mission, and a VIP Rescue mission where you're bringing a VIP back to the dropship to rescue them. Additionally, the Cleaner Cell and Cleaner Intel Hub missions are now just regular mission types that you may or may not encounter during the game. Note that right now there's only one test map for each of these missions. There's a new type of UFO in the early game called the Probe. This is unmanned and doesn't create a crash site, and exists just to give a few relatively easy air encounters before the manned UFOs start turning up. Each type of soldier armour now has a Light and Heavy variant, controlled by a checkbox. The heavy variant weighs more but offers more protection. This system replaces the Armour Insert soldier module, and the Defender Armour is now just the heavy variant of the basic Tactical Suit. There's now a rebreather module that makes you gas / smoke immune. Interceptors now have four Equipment slots that can hold any type of weapon or item, and each plane has a Weight and Weapon Bay limit that governs how much that plane can carry. This gives you more overall freedom about the equipment loadouts you can choose for your aircraft. All equipment (whether weapons or passive items like Armour) have a weight, and the plane cannot exceed their Weight capacity. Weapons fill a certain number of Weapon Bays, and each plane has 4 bays. Cannons and Lances fill two bays, Missiles and Torpedoes fill one bay (passive items don't fill a bay). This is to prevent the player taking more weapons than the UI can support. UFOs have been slightly rebalanced, but we'll be doing more of that in the next week or two, Monthly funding is tighter overall, as the game now takes longer so there's more monthly paydays given to the player during a campaign. Aircraft are more expensive, and their equipment is now manufactured individually rather than being global upgrades. It'd be great if you could test the game and let us know if you encounter any bugs or major balance issues, and also let us know what you think of the new mechanics. If all goes well we'll then be able to release Milestone 2 onto the Experimental branches and start polishing it up soon! Feedback should go in this thread:

Yeah, this will be fixed in the next update!

This is a stability update for the default Steam / GOG / Epic branches that contains all the fixes from the 1.32 versions which have been tested on the Experimental branch. This should be the final update to Milestone 1 as all future fixes and feature improvements are being rolled into Milestone 2 (assuming there's no unexpected critical bugs in this version). Changelog: Fixed a crash that would occur if you try to detonate C4 that had been placed in a saved game. Fixed an issue in the tutorial where a soldier did not have enough TU to fire their shotgun a second time. Fixed an issue where missiles would sometimes not fire in air combat if you had activated the Afterburner at the start of the battle. Game no longer creates an Iron Man save when exiting the game (even if you're not playing Iron Man). Swapping weapons on the Soldier Equip screen now also swaps out the associated ammo for these weapons. Tooltips are now dismissed when you start dragging an item (e.g. on the soldier equip screen). Camera now correctly moves up / down when watching an AI unit climbing a ladder during the alien turn. Quantum Array now correctly shows the additional information on visible UFOs immediately after loading a save. Units attempting to shoot adjacent walls should no longer contort themselves like a pretzel to do so. Cleaner Accelerated Rifle no longer drops to 0% Accuracy as soon as it goes beyond maximum range, unlike other weapons. C4 should no longer show 0/0 ammo. Fixed issues with the following achievements, which should now be possible to earn: First Contact Counterfire Unfriendly Fire Future Warfare

Hmmm, are you getting the Experimental and Stable release threads confused? Every Stable release contains all the fixes from all of the Experimental builds with the same number (e.g. 1.33) so obviously every bug gets listed twice for that reason. Sure, there's one or two bugs where the fixes don't work and we need to re-fix them in the next patch but that only makes up like 1% of our total bugfixes.

Yes, this is one of those things where theoretically X2 will allow modders to do a lot more than they could in X1, but it just depends on how effectively we can give the user access to our development systems (and whether users can learn to use them effectively, because they can be pretty complex at times). The tiles for the X-Com style destructible UFOs are still in the game, by the way. If we can manage to find a way to give modders access to the level editor then there's no reason why you have to use the premade UFOs.

Thanks everyone. There seems to be enough interest for us to go ahead with the project, and we're just in the process of doing final tests on the mod loader functionality. Solver is also part of this mod tool project (although he's not posted here) and he's investigating the logistics of getting a standalone editor to run based on the DLLs that are shipped with the game - which would make life a lot easier for everyone, as nobody needs to go near Unity to work on these tools. So hopefully we'll pull something more formal together this week and invite everyone interested to take a look. @Charon yes, you make a good point about modders needing to be involved in the design process. This was part of my plan, but we needed to check first whether there were programmers interested. I'm not sure if there needs to be a formal process for that though; I think as soon as people start using the tools there'll be organic requests for new features and feedback on how the UI could be improved. These tools are likely to be something that are heavily iterated on based on modder feedback. This somewhat also touches on the points made by @drages but the purpose of this initial mod tool is simple mods, and it is intended for people who have very little knowledge of programming or anything else. It should be a single program people can install on their computer and then use it to change the values in the game, and it should spit out a mod that can be easily uploaded to Steam Workshop. To my understanding (although I'm not a coder), the "modular mod" system exists in Xenonauts 2 but is handled automatically this time around. The focus is ease of use. Unfortunately, this tool is going to have limitations. The big one is the ability to add new assets to the game, because Unity locks all its assets away in Asset Bundles and a standalone program can't add new things to these Asset Bundles. At least initially, this standalone editor simply won't be able to add new art to the game in any form - e.g. if you want to create a new weapon, it has to pick from artwork that already exists in the game files. That said, this is something that can be addressed. One solution is to create a second more powerful mod editor for advanced users that works as a Unity plugin, which would allow the users to do anything that the developers can do, including making new maps etc. But this requires the modder learns (or already knows) Unity, as well as there being some technical / licensing hurdles we need to overcome. It's also possible that a standalone tool could be written that hooks into Unity and adds new artwork to Asset Bundles without the user having to have any Unity knowledge. There might be other options, too. But a lot of this depends on the skills of the programmers taking part, and how much time they're willing to put into the project. But these are discussions best had once the simple tools are in progress and people have a better idea of scope and what is / is not possible within our framework.

Thanks for all the feedback, everyone. I've now reverted prototype to the latest Experimental version while I work on the next Prototype build based on this feedback, as the bugs were taking up quite a bit of our time.

This update is also only accessible by switching to our Experimental branches (instructions on how to do so here) - although note they have slower load times and worse performance than normal builds due to the extra logging they contain! This is a small patch for 1.33 that fixes a couple more minor bugs related to the C4, and should (finally) have all our achievements working properly. Changelog: Fixed issues with the following achievements, which should now be possible to earn: First Contact Counterfire Unfriendly Fire Future Warfare You should now be able to place C4 freely. In the previous version you could not place it until you had moved a soldier. C4 should no longer show 0/0 ammo. EDIT - pushed out another update for that build, as I'd forgotten to push the commit that fixed the achievements in the previous build. The new build is still called 1.33b for the sake of convenience.

I've released a patch for this branch that fixes the unlimited selling of the Accelerated Weapons and the crash bug. I'll do proper patch notes once we start putting this build on the Experimental branches. Funding increases throughout the game as a result of completing plot research, so it should increase throughout the game as you make progress. Having six bases at the start of month 2 is way ahead of way the player should be so it makes sense for your income to be negative at that point. But I'm not sure how well balanced the game is in the mid-game with the new income model tbh, that might need some tweaks.

I should have mentioned this earlier, but if we did keep the new module system then we’d get art done for each armour / module combination. But one of the reasons we’ve done these test builds is there’s no reason wasting time and money on it if the system isn’t as good as the previous system. However, this new system could actually have much better art than the old system because if there’s only one module you can reflect that on the soldier paperdoll.

It's interesting reading people's abstract thoughts on the changes, but I'd really like to hear from people who have actually played the new version - particularly when it comes to the updated module system, or the way that the item upgrades now work. Those systems often feel much different in practice to how they sound on paper, which is why I've created a build where people can test them out and see. Regarding the Cleaners - they exist to keep the alien invasion secret. If you've followed their story you'll know the world governments actually already know about the aliens, and have already had some contact with them. Governments just don't realise that Earth is effectively already under attack because the organisation tasked with protecting Earth against invasion (EXDEF/ the Cleaners) is under alien control and is telling the various governments that everything is fine, while in the background quietly eliminating anyone who tries to say different or organise any kind of resistance to the invasion. And if they can stir up panic so the world governments are more concerned with fighting each other than paying attention to alien activity, so much the better. Perhaps it needs better explanation within the game, but I don't think there's any logic holes with their aims.

Yeah, so this (or something very much like it) is something else we're considering - but then we do run the risk of creating the problem you outlined in your previous, in which almost every mission type could potentially have a timer and then they all start to feel the same.