Skitso
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Posts posted by Skitso
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So in phase 1 when the game over state is still tied to the doomsday level, if you check the funding report, it tells about alien victory if 2 regions are lost, which is confusing at that part of the game as the whole mechanic of losing regions and panic is not even introduced yet.
Tied to this, mouse hovering regions show panic 50/100 in the top screen popup even in phase 1, when panic has not been even introduced to the player yet
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20 hours ago, Chris said:
Hello everyone - as we're now a few days into June, it's time for our regular update on what we were working on last month!
New Assets:
We've added a lot of new assets to the game over the past month. The most notable of these are the new 3D models and animations for the alien Sebillian and Cyberdrone units, and while the visual improvement is hopefully clear from the screenshot below, the Cyberdrone in particular also benefits from having proper animation set (e.g. movement / shooting) rather than just being a static lump of floating alien amour. The various ranks of alien are also a bit more distinctive now; again this is most obvious with the two Cyberdrone variants!
Work is currently continuing on more of these new alien models. Both the Heavy Mentarch and the Heavy Servitor units are currently just palette swaps of the corresponding basic unit, but we're aiming to have distinct designs and 3d models for both in place before Milestone 6 releases.
Further progress was also made in other areas too. We finished another research illustration this month, leaving three remaining (one of which is already in progress). The inventory tile artwork and 3d model for the recently-introduced Alien Bio Rifle is nearly finished. We've added some new sound effects to some of the aliens to help make them more distinctive, and we finished up our level design work on the updated Tropical biome and started adding various new tiles and maps to the new Soviet Town biome.
Aircraft Paired Slots:
One of the major goals for Milestone 6 is a refresh of the air combat that improves the visuals and polishes the gameplay. The first part of this has been to improve the UI on the Aircraft screen, so we can use our new "paired slot" system to replace the existing "Hardpoints" system (the blue numbers on the aircraft weapons that previously sat alongside the Weight values). This work is now complete.The Hardpoint system reflected the size of different weapons, with each aircraft having up to four hardpoints and missile / torpedo weapons filling one and cannon / lance weapons filling two. Rather than represent this numerically, we can now pair weapon slots together to produce a linked double slot. Putting a cannon / lance into a paired slot will fill both of the linked slots, while missiles and torpedoes only fill a single slot - effectively the same system as before, but much easier to understand.
This change is also beneficial from a design standpoint, as it gives another method of differentiating interceptors. For instance, we may decide to give the basic Angel interceptor four weapon slots, with only two of them being paired together - this would limit the plane to only being able to carry a maximum of one cannon / lance. More advanced aircraft could have two sets of paired slots, allowing them to carry dual cannons. These extra options should help with the balancing work we'll be doing as part of the air combat refresh!
Bugfixes:
Once again, we ended up spending significant amounts of time last month on bugfixes. We released five more stability hotfixes for Milestone 5 last month, fixing a lot of crashes and other gameplay problems - including several annoying bugs we'd been trying to track down for several months, plus a number of older bugs that predated Milestone 5.Our work on Milestone 6 also includes bugfixes, and one of our programmers spent rather a lot of last month doing the painstaking job of tracking down the numerous places in the game where text was not being properly translated and figuring out why. Hopefully we'll be finished with this by the end of next week and non-English users will have a fully localised Milestone 6.
Modding:
Our technical director spent some time fixing the remaining issues with our mod loading system last month, so it's now possible to create and share "mod packs" that modify the game files. The Mod Loader panel on the Main Menu screen will now read and apply these mods correctly. From a purely technical standpoint, we can now officially say that Xenonauts 2 supports modding.Additionally, we've added support for code injection - basically, mods that can change the code of the game itself (e.g. one user has been experimenting with changing the game code so flight paths on the Geoscape follow the realistic curvature of the Earth). There's now a proper C# framework for doing this, and the process is integrated with the mod packs so that Steam Workshop will be able to distribute these mods once enabled. We'll be creating some documentation and an example project for this system in the next couple of weeks.
However, it would still be misleading to claim that Xenonauts 2 is a genuinely moddable game right now - we won't start work on the official mod editor until after Milestone 6 is complete, so modding the game remains painful and difficult due to the format of the JSON files we use to store data. It'll still be a few months until most users can start making mods!
Milestone 6:
So when will Milestone 6 actually arrive? Sadly, it's still hard to say. Milestone 6 contains a lot of small / medium sized tasks, and the much larger task that is the update to the air combat. We've made good progress through all the smaller tasks, but we've not yet begun work on the core parts of the air combat refresh. We'll have a better idea of how long it'll take to complete once we get started on it, which we're hoping to do in the next two weeks.Of course, that timeline may slip if more hotfixes are needed for Milestone 5. While I think prioritising stability has been the correct decision, it has unfortunately sucked programmer time away from working on the planned new content. Thankfully, the number of bug reports has started to drop off recently - hopefully that's an indication we've dealt with most of the bugs and can switch focus to Milestone 6, but we'll just have to wait and see.
I think that's plenty for this update. Thanks for reading!
That's a lot of incoming content, very impressive! Any idea if the new updating base background images and BG musics are finding their way into MS6?
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8 hours ago, Chris said:
Coooool looking assets, very nice!
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30 minutes ago, Chris said:
Have you got earlier saves from the campaign, perhaps? One from before the mission?
Even a save from the mission itself might be useful. Either you already had 5 Symbiote corpses in your base stores before the mission began, or for some reason the game has sent the corpse items to your base stores instantly after the mission.
I probably do. I'll get back to you, but not before tomorrow I'm afraid.
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1 hour ago, Kouki said:
Looked into this a bit and found that you already had a symbiote corpse in your base stores when the pop-up happened. Was this the first time you've collected the symbiotes in this campaign save or did you encounter them earlier on?
I'm pretty sure that was the first time I encountered symbiotes.
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On 5/29/2025 at 2:50 PM, Skitso said:
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Reduce tension's instant doomsday reduction feels unrealistic and gamey.
- Make it reduce doomsday gradually until it's cooldown is over instead.
I feel the killing of infiltrators shouldn't be instant either. It should feel like commencing a high stakes operation which would take like from 3 to 8 days for some operators to carry out. Isolated infiltrators could be 1-2 days faster to kill and guarded might take 1-2 days longer. Stuff like this would reduce the feeling of just clicking red tiles to grey.
Speaking of infiltrators, should supporter states be called isolated/guarded like infiltrators are? I suppose them being fearful/eager would make more sense in this context instead. Region panic could then define how many of the regions supporters are fearful or eager to join Xenonauts.
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Reduce tension's instant doomsday reduction feels unrealistic and gamey.
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1 hour ago, Kouki said:
Thanks for taking the time to provide a save, unfortunately this is not reproducible on my end. Can you consistently reproduce this on your machine?
EDIT: Was able to reproduce this on my Steam copy, we'll look into this. Thanks as always Skitso!Great, thanks!
Were you able to confirm the other bug too? (the one where the symbiote autopsy becomes available before the Skyhawn returns to the base)
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Cleaner convoy mission reward is -20 doomsday and money. I would rather have just the money from it. Make the cleaner misson rewards more diverse.
Spawn more missions, where player can choose what to take (missions would be available only for few hours so you'd have time to do only few of them, plus this would also force player to do more night missions)
- If you need money, you can run more convoy missions
- If you need to deal with doomsday, run cleaner VIP or abduction missions
- If you need more elite soldiers, run soldier rescue missions
- If you need operation points, run cleaner intel missions
- If you need more supporters, run escort VIP missions
Sure, all missions could give some tiny panic/doomsday reduction, but with this system, you'd give the player more agency and the game would feel a lot more dynamic.
I would love it if the geoscape looked more like this:
This would make me plan my fly routes and manage the time - what I need at that point, what is most important and where I can get in time: My doomsday is really high, there's two missions that lower it close to each other in Europe, maybe I need to take those... hmm, but I have operation points to handle it too, so maybe I'll tackle the convoy and escort VIP missions that are close to each other in Australia instead to get more cash and a free supporter. Oh, but I lost a bunch of soldiers in last mission so should I go rescue 3 experienced soldiers from south America? But it's so isolated, that there's no time to take other mission then.... Planning this like this would make the geoscape gameplay SO much more compelling.
You could even add more mission types in later DLC's to add into this gameplay loop: (I love DLC's that add more layers to the main game)
- Kill the infiltrator (remove one infiltrator without spending OP)
- Save a research/engineering team (wave defense mission with a reward of +scientists/engineers)
- Alien convoy (Same as cleaner convoy but against aliens for alenium/alloys reward)
- etc..
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6 hours ago, Chris said:
If you get a reproducible case for the issue, please attach it. We've not found one yet.
Here you go:
- Load the provided save.
- Day 85 at 14.20:51 (probably unrelated) Notice how symbiote autopsy becomes available before arriving back to the base. (this is a separate bug)
- Day 85 at 21.00:53 (probably unrelated) Notice how psyon autopsy becomes available only after arriving back to the base. (this is correct)
- Tissue regeneration should complete in ~21 hours now, so just wait for that.
- Day 86 at 18.00:41 you'll get a new projects available popup (before getting a completed research report):
6. Close the popup and you'll be greeted with a new completed research report:
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1 hour ago, Chris said:
If you get a reproducible case for the issue, please attach it. We've not found one yet.
Sure, it's easy as it's the only way I'm getting them.
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Oops, this is a double post. Sorry for the confusion.
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Xenonaut movement doesn't stop when noticing a new enemy.
Reproducing steps:
- Load the provided save
- Move the marked Xenonaut next to the door.
- Notice how the enemy is spotted through the window when the Xenonaut turns before starting to move
- Xenonaut completes movement order instead of stopping when spotting the enemy
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If I remember correctly, this issue was meant to be fixed some time ago, but either it's not, or the issue has worked it's way back into the game.
How to reproduce the issue:
- Order a unit to move (the longer the better)
- While the unit is moving, edge scroll the camera away from the moving unit
- Notice how the camera snaps back to the moving unit as soon as you've edge scrolled the camera far enough for the unit to not be visible on the screen.
EDIT: reseting all settings to default didn't help
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If I remember correctly, this issue was meant to be fixed some time ago, but either it's not, or the issue has worked it's way back into the game.
How to reproduce the issue:
- Order a unit to move (the longer the better)
- While the unit is moving, edge scroll the camera away from the moving unit
- Notice how the camera snaps back to the moving unit as soon as you've edge scrolled the camera far enough for the unit to not be visible on the screen.
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- Security Supporter that gives -1 panic per region per month seems a little weak compared to other supporters.
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Skipping entirely (or failing) a VIP extraction mission has a measly penalty of +10 doomsday. For such a hard mission with no other rewards than -20 doomsday, it's too low.
- Make the penalty at least a + 20 doomsday and add some operation points either for completing the mission or as a collectibles during the mission for me to even consider doing it.
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Stun gun doesn't feel like it's worth it. I get that with baton you need to get up close to the target, but it's just so much more reliable to use.
- Stun gun needs more stun damage/better accuracy/lower TU cost to feel like an upgrade.
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Reduce tension's instant doomsday reduction feels unrealistic and gamey.
- Make it reduce doomsday gradually until it's cooldown is over instead.
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Having the game's first UFO crash site being auto generated on the other side of the globe isn't that satisfying.
- Maybe force first scout UFO's to spawn around players fist base.
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Capturing cleaner VIP gives a reward of 30 OP, which seems quite low, compared to hacking a computer which grants you 10 OP.
- Cleaner VIP missions should act like alien bases as in being permanent missions that generate doomsday continuously until cleared. Reward would be stopping the doomsday damage and optionally getting OP's from capturing the VIP/computers.
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3 hours ago, Chris said:
Fair enough, we'll consider splitting ambient out into environmental too. If it's simple we'll probably do it quickly, if not then it'll be something we'll do if we have time for it at the end of development.
For what it's worth, I do agree with @gG-Unknown on the volume setting issue.
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16 minutes ago, Kouki said:
EDIT: Need the save specifically for the ufo (the water one is easy to reproduce)
Sorry, no save for this.
Ufo is 1 leveled (scout) so it's not that. It seemed the hull reveals itself with day rules and I've seen this issue quite a lot in night missions so I can send you a save next time I see it.
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On 2/10/2025 at 12:11 PM, Kouki said:
Thanks, we'll look into this.
This issue is still present in night time missions.
Edit: another issue seen in the image is that the UFO hull is revealed too early in night missions. No one sees the UFO but it's still visible.
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8 hours ago, Chris said:
To be clear, the alien crews don't re-randomise to have other races after a battle like was happening previously. However, casualties suffered by the aliens are still reset after a battle to prevent the missions being cheesed.
If it's easy to implement, the game should definitely save the remaining alien numbers. Cheesing could be avoided by aliens launching base resupply missions right after the aborted alien base mission. This would feel a lot more dynamic and player would be given a chance to prevent the base getting filled with new aliens.
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7 hours ago, Chris said:
- Alien Base missions will no longer re-randomise the map and aliens present if you abort a mission and return to that same particular base.
Great improvement!
Now you could really push alien base enemy numbers higher as players are able to make multiple assaults there.
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Hopefully you'll use the new soviet town biome to add some additional variety to cleaner intel mission too, which is currently western town only. Now that you have 2 urban tilesets, it might be wise go utilize them in more mission types in general?
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Images alone do no good finding the cause of this issue. We need saves, lot's of saves. Probably a save from each turn from the beginning of the mission.
Edit: @gG-Unknown
Double post
in Xenonauts-2 Bug Reports
Posted · Edited by Skitso
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