hdewulf

No specific action provokes the crash but the nature of the crash is always the same. I begin the next ground combat mission in the attached save game. At some point, the screen freezes but the mouse continues to move, and when I click, I hear the click sound. I can also hear movement sounds, as if it's the friendlies' turn. But no further gameplay is possible. I've tried waiting up to 10 minutes. I have to force-quit. Jim.json

Seems to be when I try to move a soldier to a location that's one tile beyond his movement range, he moves, and then the screen flashes, and he's back at his starting position with no TUs left. Has occurred four or five times this build, but I can't reproduce it reliably.

No idea what the trigger conditions are - sorry. When the "Alien Overwatch" message is displayed, the interface seems to cycle/flash at high speed. It's still possible to send instructions to soldiers if you click enough times, and after a fairly large number of flashes, the alien shoots, and it all sorts itself out.

First air combat new game, light scout against Condor 1. Condor 1 destroyed. Immediately appeared back at base with 0 health. Mission Launch Control says: recovering 63H. 2ndary "bug" - could be a behaviour: ballistic aerofoil aircraft develop lift by travelling at speed. When left on autopilot to attack a targeted light scout, the aircraft slowed to almost zero speed and hovered in front of it shooting! This seemed a little silly

I have to download via Desura since I don't have reliable enough internet to download >4Gb without resume. As such I've taken most updates up to now via Desura, and used the options in the Desura update dialog boxes to reinstall. From about 17.5 onwards the game got less stable and more buggy with every new release. So yesterday (after again failing to download a standalone), I cleaned out the Desura AND the savegame folders manually, and hunted down all references to them, and to Xenonauts, anywhere in my system. I then relaunched the game from Desura, and went away to mix some concrete (really true, but wholly unrelated). The download took all day, and the installation took more than half an hour. However, I was able to play for two hours last night without a single crash, and the only real bug was (still) not being able to enter some interiors and the only niggle was aliens shooting their own spaceship from the inside (in spite of which, their tactics seem to be vastly improved). So before you post a bug, make sure you have a clean install.

If you can pronounce Xavier "Exsavior", then I can pronounce Xenonauts "exsaynonowts" !

I always ensure that a couple of my XNs have stun batons for dealing with the local ground forces.

A fair question; since both spellings are considered correct and current, it may be regional or a family thing, but the most likely is an accident of how it was spelt the first few times he encountered it - since it isn't a hugely commonly used word. Curious thought: the spelling "artefact" is itself an artifact. Additional thought: the shorter OED gives arti as US spelling and arte as UK spelling, and those folks like to keep matters simple, rather like the Chicago Manual of Style. However the words artifice and artificial (the latter of which is the most used of the three words) are both given as preferred spellings in UK English. This is probably the reason why "artifact" is gaining ground on "artefact". It's probably best not to get me started. The fact is that for these kinds of issues, it's best to nominate someone on the dev team who arbitrates, and go with what they chose for no reason other than that is what they chose. Otherwise the argument is never-ending.

Nope. The chosen spelling is the least common in both countries. I have a growing list of US/UK differences that are commonly believed but which are actually false. Many are caused by the spellchecker in MSWord which does horrible things like insist -ise is UK and -ize is US when (statistically, and for at least the last 200 years), -ize is more common in both.

I edit books (www.densewords.com), and since I love this game, I thought I might be of some use in this discussion. I've added some remarks to some entries where it seems helpful. Comment: this usage of "allow" (and also of "enable") is considered poor style in a technical manual. Generally reworking a paragraph to avoid "allow" results in a clearer and more conceptually accurate explanation. However using "allow" in the context of a fictitious situation improves the sense of authenticity. Technical manuals are full of this kind of lazy vaguery! The aliens have "units" that are combatants and "units" that are non-combatants. As such the distinction is important even though it seems a little queer at first reading. The original is technically grammatically correct, and much more elegant English, however the correction is rather more natural. Compounding like this is becoming increasingly common, especially in Aus English but more and more in US English also. It seems to be a fashion that comes and goes; UK English spent much of the 18th century combining words and much of the 19th re-separating them. This example however is one where most ESP (English speaking people) seem to resist compounding, because of the "shs". I'm not Russian and I absolutely notice this. It's one of those little realism details that I really like in this game. Plus, I had an Olga who I got quite attached to until she was killed in a friendly fire incident. I renamed her to Olya. This is one of those cases where we apply a rule known as "who cares?" The rule is less flippant than it sounds: if you use the spelling "artifact", nobody will think there is an error and everyone who knows the word will understand. If you use the spelling "artefact", a very small minority will think you are trying to make a distinction (the modern spelling arrives at about the same time that that the meaning "object left behind by a previous culture" was acquired) and you have selected the wrong spelling. A rather larger number, possibly even a majority, will think there is an error. The rule is called "who cares" because if you use one spelling, nobody will complain, whereas if you use the other, many will, even though you are technically not wrong.

played via Desura. W7 64bit no compatibility settings applied Easily reproduced. Let me know if you want a savegame: 3 Crashsites active. Cleared the first one and suffered one dead xnt (friendly fire incident) and two injured. Instead of returning to base, moved directly on to the next crash site. Dead xnt resurrected with no gear except armor; injured xnts fully healed but with the amount of ammo they had at the end of the previous mission. Deliberately killed both the same and a second xnt in the second mission AND had someone else pick up their dropped gear. Instead of returning to base went to the third crash site. Dead xnts resurrected. Those who had picked up the gear still had it. Dropped it. Resurrected guys picked it up. NOTICED that if you check the personnel screen when returning from a near-disastrous mission, xnts listed on the mission report screen as KIA are listed as WOUNDED 17 DAYS until the Chinook gets home. Related?

Same version, same issues.

Chris, I'm a professional literary editor and SF is one of my specialist areas. If you want some FREE editing and correction of any game strings (like those research descriptions), let me know. Keen to contribute.