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Firstly, if you do not know how to access the experimental branch on Steam, please read the instructions (and warnings!) in this thread. All saved games from earlier versions (including experimental versions) are incompatible, attempting to load them will cause problems. As it has been a while since we've done a new experimental build this one has quite a few changes. The biggest ones are probably the changes to the reaction fire system, the new terror site maps, changes to AI behaviour (so many they have their own changelog section!) and a significant improvement in the speed of alien turns. The new loading screen also makes a return (hopefully working better now!). Not much in the way of balance changes, but that will probably change for the next build. Also please keep an eye out for any "black square" tiles during ground combat in this build - this is a side effect of the compression algorithm we ran of the tile images. I think I got them all, but if you see any just post them up in the experimental bugs forum and I'll fix them. Fixes: - Fixed Reapers not being properly centred on the camera when moving/attacking - Right clicking on the Ground Combat UI no longer also causes units to turn - Fixed cash getting drained when trying to build an item with only 1-2 available engineers - Equipping Predator armour will no longer destroy already equipped incompatible weapons - Fixed various instances of incorrect UFO placement on new Light Scout maps - Alien missions can no longer occasionally be detected before they spawn - Fixed Barracks and Stores screen backgrounds not upgrading - Fixed potential saved game corruption when a soldier had a corpse in their inventory - It is now possible to apply a medical kit to a stunned soldier - The force fire (Ctrl) mode should now highlight units in preference to terrain - Finally, a proper fix for the soldiers coming back from battles with 98% health! - Androns now leave scrap metal when over-killed, instead of a human corpse - Added spectres for crouched Reaper animations - Changed weapon order in armoury panel so it is consistent between weapon tiers - Using a Fury to intercept an aircraft no longer displays the Auto-resolve option - Using Singularity Torpedoes now depletes the players stock of them - UFOs that grant items immediately on destruction (fighters, bombers) no longer do so if over-killed - Compressed more game tiles, saving a few hundred more megabytes of disk space Additions: - Re-introduced new loading screen - Reduced the length of time the alien turns take by removing various hidden delays, as much as a 60% reduction - Added all new Terror Site maps for the standard Town set. -- There are now 3 maps for each of small, medium and large Terror sites -- Aliens are distributed in these maps further from the player spawn, which means they are less "rushy" - The latest aircraft missile/cannon type should now always be added to all interceptors on unlock - Implemented multipliers for Xenonauts aircraft speed/range per difficulty level (small differences for now) - Enabled new reaction fire system -- Units can now keep taking reaction shots (losing initiative with each) until out of TU or until their initiative drops below that of their target - Added inventory corpse tiles for Harridan and Wraith rank variants - Updated Autoresolve images for the air combat - Added interrogation images for the aliens - Adjusted "Bezerk" unit target selection - Fixed Ground Combat UI sometimes crashing after loading AI: - AI will now end turns looking in the direction they predict to be attacked from - Civilians and friendly soldiers should no longer enter UFOs - AI is no longer afraid of smoke - Units will get into cover if they run out of AP to shoot - Turn costs now taken into account in pathfinding - Re-introduced ProbabilisticSearch, which allows the AI to guess where enemies might be (less psychic now) Balance: - Re-added elevated soldier starting stats (they were accidentally removed) - Soviet Town tileset expanded to cover more of the planet (will now be a more generic "cold city" tileset) Please post your comments on the build here. If you encounter any bugs please post them in the experimental build sub-forum of the bugs forum.

Removing the ground combat loading screen caused more issues than anticipated. We've made some more fixes, and released a new Stable Candidate. You can thank Giovanni for most of this work! Changes: - Saving games should no longer cause a CTD, or corrupt the save. - Missions should now autosave correctly. - Briefing screen is back. - Soldiers should have their LOS back at the start of a mission. - Singularity Torpedo Xenopedia entry now correctly appears with the Fury research. Please let us know in this thread if there are bugs. At this point we're unlikely to be doing any more fixes before Christmas, so if this build is unstable we'll just revert the branch to V20.8 Hotfix 3. However, if it does prove stable we'll roll the build out to the Stable branch so everyone can enjoy the new features over the festive season. Have a great Christmas and a happy new year!

As there are still bugs in our "reverted" version (Candidate 3), we're trying a new tack. This is Candidate 2 with the loading screen stripped out and some new bugs fixed: - There should no longer be a CTD when you open the inventory system - Soldiers will no longer be Wounded on arriving at base - Removal of loading screen should remove the CTD on loading people had previously, plus speed up mission load times. Let us know if you find bugs in the game as we would *really* like to have V20 Stable released soon so we can all go back to enjoying the festive season!

Anyone who's been following the forums over the past couple of days will know we've been having problems with our Stable Candidates so far. A mysterious CTD is occurring for some users on load, but the development team are finding very hard to reproduce and fix. We spent most of yesterday trying to fix this but with no luck, and now the team has officially shut down for Christmas, it's the weekend, and we're meant to have V20 Stable out already, we've decided to roll back to an earlier featureset. Changes: - The new Ground Combat loading screen has been disabled. - The "wounded soldier" notifications on the Soldier Equip screens have been disabled. As we believe these two changes caused all the major bugs in the previous versions, we think this will leave a stable build that we can hopefully release as V20 Stable. The loading screen and wounded soldier notifications will return in the next experimental build (possibly introducing a major new feature in a Stable Candidate build was a bit optimistic). Let us know if you encounter any CTDs or other major bugs in this version in this thread, please! The build is a bit of a code splice so it's possible that will have caused further problems...but I hope not.

Firstly, if you do not know how to access the experimental branch on Steam, please read the instructions (and warnings!) in this thread. All saved games from earlier versions (including experimental versions) are incompatible, attempting to load them will cause problems. We have resolved the major bugs discovered in the candidate from yesterday, and included a few fixes too. If all goes well this build will be pushed directly to the main Steam branch in the next few days. Fixes: - Fixed the problem where starting a game, exiting, then starting a new one would cause your starting base to be wrong (and then caused many other problems) - Fixed a freeze on the Geoscape that sometimes occured when UFOs spawned and the player has lost the funding of a continent - Fixed the number of "Unassigned" soldiers being calculated incorrectly when waiting for new hires to arrive - Unassigned soldier category now accessible correctly when soldiers are en-route to base - Crash when using Soldier Equip screen for secondary base with troops en-route fixed - Updated the "dropship crashed" popup - Fixed not being unable to scroll the GC view with the arrow keys after reaction fire, AI turn, etc. until mouse was moved - Fixed light sources being updated during the day as if it were night (performance improvement only, no gameplay effect) - Fixed the game getting stuck if you crouched a soldier who was in the middle of another animation - Fixed an issue where both human and alien units could move through props if their destination was set before they revealed an obstacle in their path - Fixed an issue where the game would sometimes display a black "TURN X" screen after loading a game - Fixed explanatory tooltips for ground combat displaying before the GUI has properly initialised Additions: - Moved a large number of hard coded strings into strings.xml (For translations) - Added a load of new tips for the loading screen Please post your comments on the build here. If you encounter any bugs please post them in the experimental build sub-forum of the bugs forum. Please use the beta forum for in-depth discussion of the current Geoscape and Ground Combat balance, but feel free to post brief opinions here too. Also it is my last day in the office today, so have a good holiday everyone and I will see you all in January!

Firstly, if you do not know how to access the experimental branch on Steam, please read the instructions (and warnings!) in this thread. All saved games from earlier versions (including experimental versions) are incompatible, attempting to load them will cause problems. This build is our candidate for promotion to the main Steam branch tomorrow, unless we find anything show stopping. This is shorter than our usual testing time for a candidate, but this build has been up since last Friday with only relatively minor changes and so is looking good. Really the main feature is the new loading screen, as introducing other major changes might risk introducing instability. Fixes: - The blast from an explosion should now continue to expand past a wall if it destroys that wall (i.e. a fence won't save you from C4 anymore) - Aircraft now correctly grant the player their sell value on decommissioning - Fix to prevent grenades (and jetpack soldiers) from flying over the walls in Xenonaut/Alien bases Additions: - New Loading Screen! It looks nice and has tips! There are a couple of presentation bugs with it we are fixing (it sometimes displays the old "TURN X" screen) - Sentinel armour now has animated sprites for when using the jetpack - All remaining wall tiles for the Xenonaut base have been painted over, have damage states etc... Balance: - Reduced the quantity of Alien Alloys granted from crashed UFOs by about 50% - Reduced the initial number of UFOs per wave from 4 to 3, and the maximum number from 8 to 6 Please post your comments on the build here. If you encounter any bugs please post them in the experimental build sub-forum of the bugs forum. I will post new threads in the beta forum shortly for in-depth discussion of the current Geoscape and Ground Combat balance, but feel free to post brief opinions here too.

Firstly, if you do not know how to access the experimental branch on Steam, please read the instructions (and warnings!) in this thread. All saved games from earlier versions (including experimental versions) are incompatible, attempting to load them will cause problems. This new build contains a large set of fixes and improvements across the board, there hasn't really been a particular focus to it. Probably the most important fixes are for a crash related to Reapers and another related to Bombers. The biggest changes are further work going into the balance for the Geoscape - Air combat has been softened again, and national funding has been increased to make up a bigger portion of your income. Terror missions have also been re-worked with different spawn locations and behaviours for aliens, which might prove quite a change so feedback on that appreciated. I'm afraid there is a KNOWN ISSUE with this build which we have not had time to fix, but is quite easy to ignore if you know about it: The "autosave" created at the start of a ground combat mission is for some reason not saving the locations of alien units; this means if you load an autosave from ground combat it you will immediately be able to win the mission (ripe for abuse!). Normal saved games work fine. Please just work around this for the time being by making a save at the start of ground combat missions yourself - we will hotfix as soon as possible, but wantd to get this build out in the time for the weekend for everyone to play. Fixes - Fixed a load of incorrectly set tiles in the arctic and industrial sets - Changed nation rating on mission end to say "placeholder" so it is less confusing until we get the new screen in - Removed "Wraith Leader" enemy type, as there are no unique graphics for it - Updates to Czech names to make them more correct - Fixed: On 16:10 resolutions (and therefore also on 4:3 ones), the base screen buildings did not align correctly - Fixed a variety of tile bugs in the Xenonaut base and Town tilesets - Fixed instances where units killed in fire appeared to remain alllliveee - Fixed a freeze caused by bombing run missions - Fixed: double icon for aerial terror sites shown when reloading a game - Pumped Reaper chance to hit to extreme levels (they were missing, which shouldn't happen) - Sped up crouching / uncrouching /shooting animations for humans by 40% - Removed final frame of all uncrouch animations to correct (one of several) animation glitch - More window restyling in geoscape - Increased Reaper movement speed and animations to match (graphical change only) Additions - GJ has been doing buckets of work generally improving AI behaviour; everything should benefit, but Reapers are particularly improved - Captured alien Analysis images added to Xenopedia - New animated tiles for Aliens props: Fusin Reactor, Comm Array and Hyperdrive (these are cool!) - New UFO icons for geoscape reflecting their actual size - Added explanatory tooltip to the Ground Combat (should only show the first time you play) - Added some new custom soldier portraits - Reaction fire popup has been disabled (will probably return for shots that do not come from the FOW) - General Psionic power messages now last 2 sec instead of 3 sec - Dread messages now only last 1 sec instead of 3 sec - The Dropship Equip screen now shows you the role and weapon of a soldier if you mouseover their portrait, and will highlight the icon of the soldier in question on mouseover too. Balance - Geoscape funding increase, to re-emphasise national support -- Increased the player starting funds from $750000 to $1000000 -- Increased the funding provided by each nation by roughly 70%(!) -- Initially all countries will provide the same funding level (may be tweaked later) -- Tweaked relations values to compensate for geographic area (UFOs spend more time over larger countries) - Base building changes to make them much faster to come online, though a larger initial outlay -- Increased the cost of building a base to $500000 -- Halved Command Center upkeep from $250000 to $125000 -- Reduced Command Center build time from 20 to 10 -- Reduced Radar build time from 20 to 10 -- Reduced Hangar build time from 10 to 5 -- Reduced the building and maintenances costs of various base structures, very significantly reduced in the case of the Hangar - UFO balance changes to make both victories and failures more pronounced -- Approximately doubled the relations penalty caused by UFO activity over a country (including terror attacks) -- Increased UFO attack rate during their flight, to make sure attacks actually happen -- Very large increase in the relations benefit provided by shooting down a UFO, e.g. from 6 to 40 in some cases -- Reduced the health of UFOs to approximately 70% of their previous values -- Reduced auto-resolve strengths of UFOs accordingly - Returned alien weapons back to normal ammo values, as aliens now get unlimited ammo when using them (grenades remain limited) - Tweaked explosive behaviour of all grenades so they cannot pass through walls - Reduced the range of alien grenades by 4 tiles - Changed the damage type of alien grenades back to kinetic (they were too good at blasting through tiles) - Terror Missions now have a different layout of units spawns, and different alien behaviours to make them less "defend the chinook" - Disabled the "system damage" for interceptors in air combat - Reduced speed of "heavy" UFO projectiles to make dodging easier - Halved turn speed of UFOs to encourage more manoeuvring around them - Light Scouts have, after a bloody battle, been reduced down to slightly slower than Condors - Scouts have had their speed increased significantly, but health reduced; they will require Foxtrots to catch reliably - Balanced other UFO speeds so that there is a gradually increasing curve, rather than two tiers - Also changed some UFO speeds to avoid matching human aircraft speeds; now you can either catch them, or they obviously outrun you - Slightly increased damage of Avalanche Torpedoes, as they did not conform to the rule of slightly out-damaging light fighter weapons - Dread now reduces APs by 30% instead of 50% - Reduced alien strength to 60 (for throwing) removed alien grenade range penalty EDIT: BONUS BALANCE FEATURE - I didn't realise this change made it in, but it did at the last minute: we have implemented a global accuracy buff to both Xenonauts and Aliens of 50% This is controlled by a new set of variables in weapons_gc at the top, and is intended to let us quickly test the feel of major accuracy changes. You will shortly also be able to tweak cover values globally, but that is not working right now. Please post your comments on the build here. If you encounter any bugs please post them in the experimental build sub-forum of the bugs forum. I will post new threads in the beta forum shortly for in-depth discussion of the current Geoscape and Ground Combat balance, but feel free to post brief opinions here too.

Firstly, if you do not know how to access the experimental branch on Steam, please read the instructions (and warnings!) in this thread. All saved games from earlier versions (including experimental versions) are incompatible, attempting to load them will cause problems. We had to pull the previous experimental build because there were serious issues with the AI. It has taken us longer than we would have liked to fix those, but in the mean time we have made enough progress that we feel it is worth promoting this update to a full new build. There are more refinements to alien grenade use in this build (such as the exciting: aliens don't just throw them all the time oh god). Also an important change to UFOs that should prevent lots of the weird behaviour that resulted from them not having a logical "roof". We think we have managed to crush the "cursor offset" bug that's been annoying users of certain resolutions (particularly after alt-tabbing). I've listed the changes from build 6 below here too, in case you missed them. New changes from build 7: Fixes - Aliens now have limited ammo again (including grenades) - Grenades should no longer be able to be thrown through walls by aliens - Also fixed being able to throw through diagonal tiles borders in certain instances - Fixed hidden movement screen hiding important visible events - UFOs now have "roof tiles" which should prevent grenades being thrown into/out of them - Thanks to above, jetpack units should not be able to see down into UFOs from above - Moved the active point of the Geoscape cursor, this should fix the problem where it is mis-aligned on certain resolutions - More misc Geoscape UI improvements - Fixed windows of the Middle Eastern house blocking line of sight - Reposition a poorly placed Light Scout spawn in one of the desert maps - Alien Base Communications Array now correctly unlocks the Quantum Cryptology Center research - Fixed an instance where reaction fire could be triggered through walls/obstacles if they had not been revealed - Eliminated about 100MB of redundant data Additions - New animated sprites for both alien grende types - Modified explosion graphic for advanced alien grenade - Ground Combat now uses same cursor as Geoscape - New door cursor Balance - Alien base missions grant 25 country relation points for completion (Terror Missions don't yet, waiting a fix) - Alien grenades first appear with Soldier level troops and above (you won't see them at the start of the game!) - Alien strength increased from 50 to 100 to let them throw grenades further - Alien grenade damage increased (likely to insta-gib an unarmoured soldier) - National relations bonus from shooting down UFOs is now a flat rate, rather than steadily increasing (the rest of the system doesn't scale that way) Changes from Experimental build 6: Fixes - Fixed game hanging on certain alien base attack missions - A large number tweaks, fixes and improvements to the Geoscape UI and related windows - Throwing grenades will no longer be blocked if there is an obstacle above the line of sight to a target - Increased Xenopedia font size - You should no longer be able to throw grenades into a building by throwing them at the upper floors - Fixed Battle Rifle displaying Plasma Pistol Xenopedia article - Fixed crouching bonus back to 80% (it was reset to 60% accidentally) - Tweaks to the blocking tile layout of Scouts and Landing Ships to fix issues with jagged edges, incorrectly sorted hull etc... - Fixed barn roof displaying incorrectly when viewed from the side - Deleted some duplicate unused tree sprites - Updated target point tile to be a little easier to read in the editor - Fixed minor visual issue with garage door open state - Fixed Chinook exit for vehicles being blocked on a particular desert map - Fixed an instance where you could instantly lose by placing your base on a city near another city - Fixed issue where throwable items rendered on all levels Additions - Added explanatory tooltips to tutorialise various screens to the player (Can be disabled at game start) - Introduction of additional AI behaviours for aliens -- Aliens should now throw grenades -- A large number of tweakable values for aliens have been introduced in aiprops.xml - New animated sprite for the Singularity Core - Added new dropship images behind Xenonaut soldiers on the soldier equip screen - Finally snapped and fixed the awful transit van drop shadows - Added Xenopedia image for Alien Armour Plating Balance - General update to air combat balance - too many changes to list individually, but generally: -- Ranges of starting aircraft reduced, so the Condor now has quite short legs! -- Speeds of aircraft and UFOs adjusted to encourage progression, Condors will have trouble catching UFOs reliably -- Damage of Xenonaut weapons adjusted: 2 heavy missiles now always do slightly more damage than the equivalent 2 light missiles + gun -- UFO health adjusted in line with the damage changes so that earlier weapons have an increasingly tougher time against later UFOs -- Turn rates of various craft adjusted to encourage more manoeuvring around larger UFOs in air combat -- Radar ranges of Xenonaut aircraft adjusted so they now progress from small to larger on later long range craft -- Maintenance costs of all aircraft set to a flat rate of $100000 per month for fighters, $50000 for dropships - no increase for later craft -- Auto-resolve rebalanced to take into account all of the above -- Build cost of Mig31 increased to 200000, as the above changes gave it a bit of a buff -- Reduced Refuelling time of aircraft by about a third -- Increased re-armament time from 30 to 60 minutes - Also rebalanced the maintenance costs of base buildings from around 10% of the cost of the building to 25% - Introduced a build time for new bases, and significantly increased the maintenance cost of command centre - Updated mission scores so that ground combat missions no longer provide national relations boosts (the relations boost now comes from shooting down UFOs) - Xenonaut grenades increased in blast radius from 2-3 - The shaded tiles for grenade blast radius now indicate tiles that receive at least 50% of the grenade damage, up from 25% - Base defense turrets now do far more damage than previously, but have a lower chance to hit - Stun grenades now do a small amount of stun on impact - Stun gas now deals twice as much stun damage (also investigating a bug where this may not be getting applied properly) - Made many alien props slightly tougher, as in many instances a stray shot could have destroyed them outright - Alein grenades do incendiary rather than kinetic damage (making them better at destroying props) - Difficulty setting changes: UFOs now have 75% HP on Easy, and alien invasion speed is now at 75% / 100% / 120% / 150% for the 4 levels - Tweaked AP cost of alien grenades - Normalised speed of various projectiles Please post your comments on the build here. If you encounter any bugs please post them in the experimental build sub-forum of the bugs forum. I will post new threads in the beta forum shortly for in-depth discussion of the current Geoscape and Ground Combat balance, but feel free to post brief opinions here too. EDIT: I just pushed a minor fix to prevent aliens running out of ammo in ground combat

We have just released the next stable build of Xenonauts - V19 - onto the main branch of the game on Steam! This is a major milestone, as it marks the fist update of the main branch since we launched on Steam 3 months ago. This update will be applied automatically for everyone who pre-ordered the game, including those of you who have opted-in to the experimental branch. We specifically kept the length of time between updates of the main Steam branch quite long because whenever we do deploy an update like this you will no longer be able to load saved games made with the older versions of the game. If you were in the middle of a game before this update and would like to continue it, I've made arrangements so you can do so - please see this thread. I would however recommend you try the new version as soon as you can, as it is a dramatic improvement over our initial Steam build. As this build is such a big step forward we would really like to hear as much feedback on it as possible from as many people as possible - even (and especially) if you have not been closely following the development of the game and the experimental builds. Please post any feedback you might have in the beta forum - and if it's specifically about game balance, there are two sticky threads at the top of that forum for discussing those aspects of the Geoscape/Ground Combat. In the future we are going to continue releasing experimental builds as we were before now, however expect a delay of a few weeks before the first of these goes up as we have quite a bit of code for the new Geoscape UI to merge across and test. I am going to post a complete change list for this new build, but need to do it across multiple posts to work around the forum character limit (it's a big list of changes!).

Firstly, if you do not know how to access the experimental branch on Steam, please read the instructions (and warnings!) in this thread. All saved games from earlier versions (including experimental versions) are incompatible, attempting to load them will cause problems. This build is simply an update to the last stable candidate with all the fixes we have made over the last few days. There will probably be a couple more bug fixes tomorrow morning, but those are likely to be the only changes before we promote to Steam. Here's the changelist: Fixes - Fixed a crash when a soldier threw both a stun grenade and smoke grenade in the same turn - Fixed un-detonated grenades not being preserved on save/load - Disabled aircraft relocation when not in Ready status (refuelling, repairing, airborne..) - Resync'd all remaining animation sprites for Wraiths, Reapers and Praetors - Check on setting a new objective: avoid setting an objective which was supposed to come before the current one - Geoscape reset view to normal on game loading - Fixed several issues with aircombat autoresolve: -- Applied the recent crash fix to the autoresolve code (was only applied to normal combat) -- Fixed incorrect interceptors status being displayed on the dialog when player won -- Fixed player escort craft not being sent to recovery state Additions - Xenopedia updates Balance - UFO fighters/light scouts will now no longer try to evade cannon fire - Increased accuracy of civilians from 20 to 50 (this may have been causing the bug where they refuesed to shoot) - Re-enabled recoil on machine gun type weapons; this causes an accuracy penalty if your soldiers strength is below the recoil number. Starts at 65 and goes up to 75

Firstly, if you do not know how to access the experimental branch on Steam, please read the instructions (and warnings!) in this thread. All saved games from earlier versions (including experimental versions) are incompatible, attempting to load them will cause problems. This build is our candidate for promotion to the main Steam branch next week, unless any show-stopping bugs are found. It is mainly bug fixes, the most notable being that we think we have fixed the "cheating AI" bug where aliens could use more TUs while suppressed than they should have access to. Balance wise not a lot has changed, aside from the tweak to the economy to de-emphasise crash site loot versus national funding; there's also a few air combat changes aimed at making Foxtrots less able to deal with fighters. If all goes well and no major bugs have appeared by tomorrow afternoon, then I will post a "warning" thread in this forum to let Steam users who are still on the main branch know (via the RSS feed in the launcher) that their saved games will be invalidated come this time next week when we promote the new build to the main branch. The V18 Stable build will be made available as a "legacy" branch for people who want to finish their saved games on it. Here is the changelog: Fixes - Fixed AI "cheating" to get more TUs when suppressed. The specific problem was if they had the AP for any type of shot they could upgrade it to burst fire for "free" - Fixed relocating wounded soldiers causing saved game corruption - Trying to change the equipment of soldiers at a secondary base should no longer cause a crash - Equipping Predator armour no longer destroys equipped incompatible weapons (they are just un-equipped) - Rocket launchers should now be loaded when equipped from loadout - The correct sets of aliens should now be loaded for all UFOs (no more empty Battleships/Carriers!) - Another fix for air combat against escorted UFOs that fixes "zombie" fighters and a crash - Much better distribution of aliens in alien base missions, far fewer of them will spawn in command rooms - Line of site blocking smoke grenades now also block accuracy 100% (this fixes aliens reaction firing through smoke) - Praetor leaders should now correctly spawn in Battleships - I spent an agonising day manually fixing, re-timing and re-aligning each and every Andron animation (only 6 more races to go...) - Jetpack troopers should no longer be able to fly down through sloped roof buildings on farm maps - If base defenses shoot down a UFO, the popup should no longer be non-dismissable - Fixed a manufacturing issue that allowed you to get multiple items for the cost of one item - You can now transfer items of 0 value (Aircraft guns etc...) - Fixed crash on later Terror Sites (caused by missing Valkyrie dropship landing area) - Changed several of the larger farm props to be crushable by vehicles - Alien/Civilians now face different directions on mission start, rather than all NW - Alien bases now correctly contain a base core that can be recovered and researched (also grants some Alenium/Alloys) - Internal fix to spectres so that when the damaged state has 0 HP it is considered an "invulnerable" state, rather than being skipped - Airborne soldiers should not be able to stop/shoot in midair (reaction fire still stops them, jet packs due for an overhaul later anyway) - Alien inventories were not preserved when loading a saved game (no immediate effect, but important for alien grenades to be implemented) Additions - Large number of final painted over tiles for alien bases, including damaged/destroyed versions - Final alien drone autopsy images - The Geoscape UI now has an "objective" to guide players one what they should try to do next - New style of Geoscape icons (only partially finished thus far) Balance Ground Combat: - Reduced AP cost of Hunter MG to 30, slightly increased damage and increased suppression significantly - Increased Hunter rocket count from 4 to 8 (the rockets are stacked like matroshka dolls, before anyone says anything) - Reduced spread radius of smoke grenades from 4 to 3, and reduced the longevity of smoke clouds - The alien heavy plasma rifle has been given 50 armour mitigation to boosts its performance versus later Xenonaut armours - Hypervelocity weapons have all been disabled; long term they may be re-enabled, but they were taking too much dev time right now - Sniper rifles have received a 25% damage increase (to counter the loss of HV properties) Geoscape: - Increased the initial funding provided by backer nations by about 50% - The value of recoverable alien technology reduced by 50% - Reduced speed and turn rate of Xenonaut aircraft torpedoes - Reduced aircraft evasive roll cool down to 1 second (from 4) - Increased range and damage of alien fighter missiles, but reduced turn-rate Please post your comments on the build here. If you encounter any bugs please post them in the experimental build sub-forum of the bugs forum. I will post new threads in the beta forum shortly for in-depth discussion of the current Geoscape and Ground Combat balance, but feel free to post brief opinions here too. UPDATE: Just did a small patch to fix starting out with a pre-built Hunter.

Firstly, if you do not know how to access the experimental branch on Steam, please read the instructions (and warnings!) in this thread. All saved games from earlier versions (including experimental versions) are incompatible, attempting to load them will cause problems. This build is simply an update to the last stable candidate with all the fixes we have made over the last few days. Here's the changelist: Fixes - Fixed crash when opening the soldier inventory while stood over a militia corpse - Fixed crash when ending a mission with smoke/gas present in the level - Fixed Geoscape crash that could happen once Battleship UFOs started appearing - Fixed rare bug with aliens being killed by reaction fire could appear to be still alive - Smoke grenades will no longer detonate C4 on the ground - Fixed and synchronised animations for Caesans, Sebillians and Harridans (if you see any of these that still look incorrectly timed let me know please!) - Reset animation delays on alien weapons to match desired animation rates - Correctly set pivot values for damaged variants of a few alien base wall sprites - Fixed order of names in the Geoscape popup when Xenonaut aircraft are intercepted - Fixed small patch of missing ground texture on one Corvette Farm map - Fixed ability to double level stength Balance - Reduced farmer shotgun damage (was unintentionally too high) - Reduced weight of combat shields to 3 - Increased suppression power of light drone weapon - Stun grenades now no longer cause stun damage on detonation, instead all stun damage is caused by the gas they release - Increased range and field of fire on Xenonaut interceptor cannons to make them more generally viable weapons - Removed armour ratings from some of the larger UFOs (they were not behaving as expected, and weren't needed anyway) - Adjusted the air combat auto-resolve scores for Xenonauts heavy missiles so they are now worth 0 against UFOs capable of evading - UFO fighter missiles now have a significant auto-resolve score value (previously 0) when resolving against non-evasive Xenonaut craft i.e. Foxtrots - Slightly reduced door opening AP from 15 to 12 - Enabled burst fire on alien heavy plasma shotgun (have fun)

Firstly, if you do not know how to access the experimental branch on Steam, please read the instructions (and warnings!) in this thread. All saved games from earlier versions (including experimental versions) are incompatible, attempting to load them will cause problems. There are quite a number of changes in this build, and lots of long standing bug have been vanquished. The downside of this is all the changes are likely to have introduced new (hopefully minor) issues we have not found yet, so be on the lookout and please report any new problems you encounter. The fix for aliens trying to shoot through walls in particular is pretty hot off the presses and required a fairly large set of changes, so look out for other untoward AI behaviours. In terms of balance changes most of the focus has been on ground combat - a major overhaul has been made on both Xenonaut vehicles and the carbine (now shotgun) weapon type. I wanted to more Geoscape economic changes but just ran out of time, perhaps next week - the one (rather big) geoscape change I did make was doubling the length of all research projects; this may seem extreme but the intention is to introduce a bit of pressure in the science side of the game, where before now it was very easy to complete every project quickly without having to choose between two you might want. Here is the changelog: Fixes - Fixed aliens attempting to shoot through walls(!) - Fixed crash when intercepting escorted UFOs - Fixed a couple of incorrectly set sight ranges: Androns are now 18, Sebillians 16 - Increased ground combat damage variance from +/- 20% to 50% (this may seem high, but original XCOM had the equivalent of 100%) - Increased TU cost of opening doors from 4 to 15 to discourage door open/close abuse - Fixed certain explosives props (Alien reactors were one) which exploded when hit by even a single point of damage; they now take much more punishment to destroy - Fixed throwing grenades inside a multi-storey UFO being blocked in certain circumstances (this still needs more work to prevent throwing grenades between floors etc...) - Fixed alien corpses (primarily Androns) changing into Caesans on save/load - Tweaked Cruisers submap to prevent ground props from sometimes being left inside the UFO - Fixed jagged edges of scout UFO ground overlay - Fixed reloading in the inventory screen not costing any TUs - Fixed crash bug related to non-set human civilian corpse items - Fixed inventory graphics for a few edge case corpse types e.g. drones and dead civilians - Fixed doors in the alien base becoming "locked" when damaged (See additions for a feature inspired by this however) - Fixed Buzzard armour + ballistic shotgun having incorrect sprites - Set various sloped roof tiles as solid blocks, this is to prevent some strange behaviour when they interact with jet pack troops - Fixed some tiles in alien base command rooms being being missing - Fixed Xenonaut vehicles not triggering the "hide UFO hull" function when they can see the UFO interior - Vehicles now correcly face their target when firing at something they were not initially facing - The fog of war will now be updated immediately for the relevant units whenever a piece of terrain they can see is destroyed - The lighting in alien bases should now be much more consistent, and wall based lights are all set to be destructible (remember certain rooms are intended to be dark) - FPS counter is now only displayed in debug mode Additions - All the maps for the Farm tileset have been overhauled, and multiple new maps added -- There are now 3 maps each for small (light scout, scout and corvette) medium (corvette, landing ship and cruiser) and large (cruiser, carrier and battleship) map types -- Each map has more variety in randomised UFO and dropship placement -- A number of new farm submaps have also been added for additional level variety -- This represents the standard style we are going to use for all tilesets going forward, so please give feedback on how you find them! - Animated flare ground sprite - A large number of newly painted over tiles have been added for the Soviet town and alien base - Battleships now have external teleporter panels providing two alternate entrances to the ship - Huge number of new soldier names, nationalities and backgrounds added (Chris had a lot of fun doing all this data entry so please send him ideas for more soldier names, he'll love it) - Xenonaut vehicles now have long range headlights during night missions, helping make them a bit more useful - Alien bases now include strong locked doors which can be blasted through, usually allowing shortcuts - There is another new structural feature of aliens bases, but I'd rather people find it for themselves Balance - Xenonaut vehicles significantly buffed -- Vehicles all reduced to baseline 100 HP, but armour values vastly improved (60, 90, 120 for Hunter, Scimitar, Hyperion respectively) -- Vehicles are still highly vulnerable to incendiary weapons (the alien Plasma Cannon being the main one) -- Vehicle laser/plasma/MAG weapons are now single shot, area of effect weapons that do decent damage, a great deal of suppression and cause overdamage -- Vehicle ammo load for above weapons reduced to 10 -- Vehicle sight range increased to 20 -- Vehicle AP increased (tiers go: 70, 85, 100) -- Vehicle weapons now have new projectile/explosion graphics where needed - The "carbine" class of weapon has been totally reworked into a "shotgun" class -- They are now a more direct upgrade to the normal ballistic shotgun in terms of range and damage -- Additionally all shotguns now fire multiple small "pellets" per shot, instead of the original single powerful shot -- Damage, magazine size, TU costs etc... have all been rebalanced taking into account the above -- The names of the carbines have all been updated to be "XXX Shotgun" (if you spot one I missed let me know please) - Sniper rifles no longer benfit from the "close range" accuracy bonus - Alien races now have different vulnerabilities to suppression, Sebillians are 50% resistant to it and Androns and Reapers are outright immune - Smoke from smoke grenades now blocks line of sight (still also reduces accuracy of shots through it) - Armour degradation increased from 10% to 25% (that means armour loses strength equal to 25% of the damage it blocked) - Xenonaut soldier armour buffed slightly to account for above change - Increased alien count in light scouts from 4-6 to 6-9 - The light from flares and the smoke from smoke grenades is no longer "trapped" inside a prop if they should land on one - All ground tiles now take twice as much damage (60 up from 30) before they switch to damaged/destroyed state (this is graphical only) - Alien sniper rifles have been rebalanced so they now do less damage but have a very high armour mitigation, so later armoured troops cannot ignore them! - The alien heavy plasma rifle has been converted into a shotgun style weapon, for a little more variety - The alien battle rifle has received a large damage buff, as it was too weak for the very late stage of the game it showed up in - Grenades (except flares, flashbangs and smoke) now detonate at the end of the turn they were thrown in (so you can escape a bad throw!) - All human weapons have had their damage increases across various tiers smoothed out somewhat, this has generally resulted in slightly lower damage for plasmas and slightly higher damage for MAGs - Reapers will now appear in Sebillian UFOs performing ground attack missions instead of Harridans, this should make them much more common - Stun grenades/rockets now produce more gas, but the gas is slightly weaker and disapates faster - The length of all research projects has been DOUBLED (this might seem insane, but the intention is to find the limit at which length of research becomes untenable so we can balance down to the sane number from there) Please post your comments on the build here. If you encounter any bugs please post them in the experimental build sub-forum of the bugs forum. I will post new threads in the beta forum shortly for in-depth discussion of the current Geoscape and Ground Combat balance, but feel free to post brief opinions here too.

Firstly, if you do not know how to access the experimental branch on Steam, please read the instructions (and warnings!) in this thread. All saved games from earlier versions (including experimental versions) are incompatible, attempting to load them will cause problems. The main improvement in this build is an implementation of the new style of alien bases; these are now vastly easier to produce, and a lot more interesting inside - unfortunately due to a bug only the smallest base type is accessible in the game right now, but any feedback would still be appreciated. The other big change is a large accuracy boost to pretty much all of the ground combat weapons, so expect increased lethality in battle. Other changes include air superiority UFOs no longer being able to lock your fighters in a loop until they run out of fuel and UFO doors in ground combat missions having been re-worked so they are now breach-able. Our focus for the next build will be mainly fixing bugs, as we want to release a new stable version to Steam shortly - to help us make sure it is a bug free as possible, please remind us of any really annoying long standing bugs in this thread. Here is the changelog: Fixes - When viewing a UFO hull with an open door from any layer above it, you can no longer see the ground under the UFO through the door - Fixed destroyed sprites re-appearing in some cases after reloading a save - Fixed issue where a mission might unexpectedly abort when you clicked on "save" (!!!) - Fixed various crashes on the Geoscape when intercepting multiple enemy UFOs at once (including when autoresolving against them) - Fixed error preventing Xenonaut base building upgrades unlocking correctly - Air superiority UFOs will no longer "combat lock" Xenonaut craft by repeatedly re-engaging it in a loop, instead if a Xenonaut craft escapes them once they will be unable to re-engage it for a short time - Fixed Corvette supply runs having no aliens defined - Fixed air superiority UFOs getting stuck if they lost their target - Fixed Geoscape dialogue boxes sometimes not setting their dimensions to accomodate the information they displayed - Fixed aliens sometimes spawning in walls/props in alien bases - Flares now immediately update the players line of sight without requiring a unit to move or turn to update the LOS - Fixed sprites inside a UFO being displayed on top of the hull - Fixed hypervelocity weapons being unable to aim in diagonal directions (they are now re-enabled) - Hypervelocity weapons should no longer ignore cover, and their chances to hit are calculated in the same way as normal weapons Additions - Added special dialogue for when a Xenonaut aircraft is intercepted by an enemy UFO (you cannot disengage from the fight) - Alien bases have been completely reworked. There is now different layout for small, medium and large bases and they also have some special rooms indicating the type of aliens in the base. (Unfortunately a bug causes only small bases to spawn right now, but you can at least see the new style) - Related to above; Alien base maps are vastly easier to make, now you simply place a preset room in the map editor then place door props wherever you need them on it, and hook it up to corridors - New ground damage tiles! 9 variants of both damaged and destroyed overlays which are randomly selected - Flares now display an animated sprite on the ground where they land (current sprite is just a placeholder) and play a sound effect - The doors on UFOs have been completely reworked. They now support manual opening/closing, no longer auto-close and are also destructible - When you mouse over a soldiers icon on the ground combat "quick select" bar it will now highlight the soldier in green and also display their name, portrait and role. If you click the icon to select the soldier it will center the screen on them. - New map frame for the Geoscape (first part of the new UI style, so it might not fit in right now) - Various Xenopedia updates Balance - If a Xenonaut aircraft escapes from an alien air superiority flight, then the UFOs will be unable to re-attack them for a short time - Implemented a new baseline accuracy level for all ground combat weapons, both Xenonaut and alien. In general accuracy has improved to a significant degree, which leads to deadlier combat - Reduced the number of alien troops present in alien base attack missions, small ones have 12, medium 18 and large 24 (each base also has a handful of non-combatant aliens as fodder) - Scout UFOs now appear earlier in the invasion in order to provide some variety with light scouts - The value of heavy missiles in the air combat auto-resolve calculation when against evasive UFOs is now 50% their normal value (was 0%) - Stealth shotgun buff Please post your comments on the build here. If you encounter any bugs please post them in the experimental build sub-forum of the bugs forum. I will post new threads in the beta forum shortly for in-depth discussion of the current Geoscape and Ground Combat balance, but feel free to post brief opinions here too.

Firstly, if you do not know how to access the experimental branch on Steam, please read the instructions (and warnings!) in this thread. All saved games from earlier versions (including experimental versions) are incompatible, attempting to load them will cause problems. The main new feature of this build is the first implementation of the air combat auto-resolve; now this is very much work in progress so expect to see bugs and imbalance in it - you shouldn't get stuck, because if worst comes to worst you can play the air combat manually. Additionally I have made some quite significant balance improvements to the kinds of UFOs that show up throughout the invasion, and the types and number of aliens appearing in ground combat missions. Finally there's been some pretty important balance changes to Xenonaut equipment - armour has been buffed in general, grenades are now shorter range and cause overdamage and close range weapons should be more effective. Also, we may make another updated experimental build after this one as there were some cool features we couldn't quite get in, but after that we want to release a new stable version to Steam - to help us make sure it is a bug free as possible, please remind us gently of any really annoying long standing bugs in this thread. Here is the changelog: Fixes - NOTE: there was a bug with hypervelocity weapons in this build, but to avoid delaying it I have just disabled the hypervelocity property on any weapons that had it (not a permanent change, it will be back when fixed) - Fixed (fingers crossed) the "Hidden Movement screen always on bug". If this still happens, please report it. - Fixed being able to see inside/outside of UFOs through their hulls (this does not fix aliens trying to shoot through walls, however) - Fixed a few city and country names not displaying correctly and causing crashes - Fixed the Wraith analysis description being displayed as the project title - Fixed crash at the end of ground combat related to inventory problem - Fixed Harridan support units missing sprites - Fixed Harridan officers having no weapon - Fixed aliens leaving invisible, un-pathable "trail" during Xenonaut base attack missions - Fixed various UFOs spawning GC missions with no aliens - Vehicle projectile speeds should now match infantry weapon counterparts (visual only) - Fixed crash after aborting Xenonaut base defence mission Additions - Alien breaches in Xenonaut bases now have alien style tiles - You will now lose the game if a certain number of territories fall to the aliens, based on difficulty level: Easy = 7, Normal = 6, Veteran = 5 and Insane = 4 - Air combat auto-resolve function enabled; the aircraft and weapon scores that determine win/loss are still preliminary, so bear with us while we balance them. There are also some bugs such as auto-resolving vs groups of UFOs and air superiority fights skipping the auto-resolve dialogue - New Geoscape message box style - Alien sniper rifles use pistol projectile to make their fire appear more distinct from the other plasma weapons - Final Reaper and Praetor autopsy images - Added several new props for the new species specific alien base rooms Balance - Extensive rebalance of Geoscape UFO forces throughout the alien invasion -- Scouts and Landing Ship UFOs will now appear throughout the entire game to help train rookies -- Much more variety of UFOs, there will always be at least 2 main types available -- Reduced the rate at which non-crashsite UFOs (fighters, bombers) spawn - Reduced the frequency of alien attacks on Xenonaut bases by about 50% - Refuelling rate for interceptors increased from 0.12 to 0.2 - Implemented monthly maintenance costs for all aircraft at 20% of initial cost - Implemented monthly maintenance costs for base buildings at 10% of construction cost - Reduced cost of new Xenonaut base down to 250000 - Extensive rebalance of the composition and number of aliens spawning in every UFO and Alien base -- Alien numbers now randomised to make missions a little more individual -- Generally, you can expect up to 50% more aliens than previously in a UFO -- Better use of Passive (lurking), Defensive (UFO bound) and Command (UFO command room bound) aliens -- Larger UFOs now have proportionally more aliens on the defensive inside them -- Alien bases should now be much more busy, though they are sometimes affected by the note below -- Unfixed bug: it seems later UFOs/bases do not always load the correct set of aliens; please report this if you see it - Close range accuracy bonus increased from +8 per tile to +15 to encourage closer engagements - Grenades now cause overdamage, meaning they will destroy the equipment an alien was carrying - The various types of Xenonauts armour all now provide an extra 10 points of damage protection (e.g. Jackal now 30 up from 20) - Heavier armours (Jackal, Wolf and Predator) now no longer have a signt range reduction - Alien battle rifle damage increased from 70 to 100 (but 20 armour mitigation removed) - Base grenade throw range reduced by 3 tiles - The extra TU required to vault low walls has been reduced to 6 from 12 - Stun grenades made slightly more effective (both initial blast and gas) - Flashbang stun damage halved - Reduced range of sniper rifles down to 25 (both human and alien) - Sniper rifles now cost an extra 10 TU per tier to fire - Reduced range of some drone weapons down to 20 - Xenonaut stats progress has been capped at a single point for each stat per mission - Final mission has been tuned a bit in terms of layout and alien numbers; still very rough but should be more playable (remember most of the art in that mission is placeholder) Please post your comments on the build here. If you encounter any bugs please post them in the experimental build sub-forum of the bugs forum. I will post new threads in the beta forum shortly for in-depth discussion of the current Geoscape and Ground Combat balance, but feel free to post brief opinions here too.

Firstly, if you do not know how to access the experimental branch on Steam, please read the instructions (and warnings!) in this thread. All saved games from earlier versions (including experimental versions) are incompatible, attempting to load them will cause problems. This new build focuses on fixes, content build out and usability improvements. The major new feature is the introduction of interceptor recovery - this is a new system intended to reduce the sting of aircraft loss during the air combat phase of the game, and is described more fully in the change log below and in this thread; we know this one is a bit of a controversial change, but please give it time. If you want to discuss it in any great depth please do so in the Geoscape balance thread in the Beta forum. Here are is the changelog: Fixes - Removed duplicate reaction fire modifiers on some weapons - Updated continent masks on Geoscape to match ground and remove graphical artifacts at high zoom - Geoscape cities updated, existing cities repositioned where needed and new ones added - Air combat missiles now have extra fuel so they can catch retreating/turning UFOs more reliably - Animated sprites will now display properly after loading a saved game - Alien Crew is picked on creation of UFO, rather than on GC mission start, to avoid save/load exploit - Fixed UFO sometimes flying away from a ground combat mission in which the aliens were defeated - Fixed F-17 missile and gun arrangement of the aircraft screen Additions - When Quantum Cryptology Center is built the player can now see more detailled information about UFOs - Crashed Carrier and Battleship art added (all UFOs now have damaged art) - Updated Harridan autopsy art - Added GUI images for vehicles laser/plasma/mag weapons - All research projects now have preview text (first draft) - Human base attacks no longer require a scout mission locating a human base to target it; instead a random base is picked with a bias towards the older bases (older bases are more likely to be attacked) - New game system: Interceptors which are shot down in air combat are no longer outright destroyed, they instead perform a crash landing and are recovered to their base 72 hours later (at which point they must be still repaired) - Soldier inventory management screen has been redesigned to be a non-fullscreen window - Expanded Ground Combat damage numbers, now colour coded and also display healing (green) and stun (blue) damage - Soldiers wil now use burst fire in reaction shots. If they have both single and burst modes, they will use a burst if the target is within 10 tiles - New Alien base tiles for both Sebillian and Andron themed rooms (work in progress, only partially implemented and still need new floors etc...) - Many new Alien props (most not implemented yet) - Few new props for Soviet archive buildings - Various new and tweaked tiles for the final mission Balance - Aircraft now repair/refuel using a percentage instead of a static value; interceptors with more HP/fuel will no longer take longer to repair/refuel than ones with less - Burst fire now only causes stat advancement at the same rate as single fire (previously it was double the rate) - Grenades can now have negative or positive modifiers to throwing range; flares can be thrown 5 tiles further and C4 5 tiles shorter - Grenade throw cost reduced to 20 TU, Flares down to 10 TU - Alien Heavy Plasma changed to single shot only, damage increased to 100 and range reduced to 10 - Layout of final mission tweaked and improved Please post your comments on the build here. If you encounter any bugs please post them in the experimental build sub-forum of the bugs forum. I will post new threads in the beta forum shortly for in-depth discussion of the current Geoscape and Ground Combat balance, but feel free to post brief opinions here too.

Firstly, if you do not know how to access the experimental branch on Steam, please read the instructions (and warnings!) in this thread. All saved games from earlier versions (including experimental versions) are incompatible, attempting to load them will cause problems. The main focus of this build, and the reason we put it out ahead of the normal biweekly schedule, is to fix the major crash bugs introduced in the last experimental build. However, we have also included a range of new features, fixes and improvements including some nice UI helpers for the ground combat and the introduction of differentiated stats between the alien races. Here are is the changelog: Fixes - Fixed crash when attacking Alien bases - Fixed crash after winning multi-UFO air combat battles - Player should no longer be able to throw grenades through the roof or floor of building/UFO - Fixed internal issue to do with line of sight logic after save/load - Camera during AI turn should no longer focus the "hidden movement" screen on the location of the "hidden" movement - Camera should also not jump around so erratically when following shots (more camera changes to come, not done yet!) - Removed ability to shoot through certain walls in the Landing Ship - Game will now also remember the single/burst firing mode selected on a per soldier basis - Fixed some research projects being mis-categorised (e.g. Jackal armour under "Equipment") - Reaper attacks no longer use the Psionic attack sound/graphic (new effect is just a placeholder for now) - Fixed Soviet town terror site being missing a Valkyrie spawn location - Fixed damaged Scout UFO hull position Additions - Medical kits now display the current/max health of the target soldier on their crosshair - Grenade trajectories completely reworked so player can now throw them over large obstacles - Aiming grenades/explosives in the GC now displays a radius indicating areas that receive at least 25% of the full damage from the explosion - Rapid-fire/Pulse projects for laser, plasma and MAG weapons have been combined into a single larger project - Reaper Alphas now have a different colour scheme to differentiate them from regular Reapers Balance - Caesan Psion troops now show up in UFOs from Corvette onwards - Psions have been reduced in stats to make them fit in with earlier tiers of troops better, they have the "fear" and "hallucination" psionic attacks - Caesan Leaders now have the "fear" and "mind control" powers, while officers have "fear" and "hallucination" - Introduced race specific differences between alien types in ground combat -- Caesans have better reaction shot chances, and earlier Psionics as above -- Sebillians are lightly armoured, have more AP and worse reaction shot chances -- Androns have very high bravery, and are heavily armoured (Androns will eventually be outright immune to suppression) -- Harridans are more accurate in general, and have exceptionally good chances for reaction fire - Due to the above changes, human rifles, precision rifles and the heavy weapons all now have some level of armour penetration power - Gas grenades now cause less stun damage per turn, and less initial stun damage. The gas they produce is also less opaque, so reduces accuracy less than a normal smoke grenade - Stun rockets do slightly less initial damage, and also had their gas damaged reduced along with the stun grenades above - Stun batons had a significant stun damage buff, from 55 to 80 - Air combat light missiles now turn more slowly, which should prevent them hitting evading UFOs in head/tail on intercepts - Carbines and shotgun have had their TU costs for non-burst fire modes reduced by 5 to make them a little more useful in mobile work - C4 now does slightly more damage, has a wider blast radius and a larger suppression radius Please post your comments on the build here. If you encounter any bugs please post them in the experimental build sub-forum of the bugs forum. I will post new threads in the beta forum shortly for in-depth discussion of the current Geoscape and Ground Combat balance, but feel free to post brief opinions here too.

We have now released V18.51, which is intended to mostly be a collection of stability fixes / AI improvements, but invariably a few new features have found there way in there too. I'm really hoping this build is stable, as I want to have a stable build we can use for balancing while I crack on with getting the improved UI and the like implemented. At present, the status is: Desura standalone version: available for download Desura client version: available for download Right, onto the changes: NEW FEATURES: Sounds: we now have snow and sand footstep noises (lots of tiles without footsteps have been fixed), and we have redone the weapon fire sounds for laser, plasma (alien and human) and MAG weapons too. They sound a lot better. AI functional: There's still a bug in the AI, but as far as I'm aware it's a relatively minor one. The aliens should now be able to see your troops and shoot them, but not also see them through solid objects. Xenopedia: A few more updates to this. I'm down to the last ten projects now, nearly there. BUGFIXES: Launcher video disabled to prevent launcher crashes. Dreadnoughts have properly been removed from the game, solving the crashes associated with them. Valkyrie-related crashes fixed. If final alien is killed by reaction fire, the game no longer crashes. Combat shield crashes fixed. Geoscape mouse cursor should no longer flicker. Alien Sniper Plasma no longer has a duplicate that unlocks Alien Plasma Cannon research. Various tile sprite fixes (including Xenonaut Base walls no longer being destructible) As mentioned above, if the game is relatively stable then we'll stick with this build and use it for balancing (Aaron has a big balance patch ready) while I get to work on the new UI and so.

We have just released Build V18.5. This is basically V18.4 with an AI patch, some stability fixes and a little more content. The Standalones are available on Desura already - get them here, if you are logged into the Desura site. I've also taken a leap of faith and released V18.5 to the branch releases (still awaiting authorisation), as they've not been updated since V18 HF1. Let's hope there's no game-breaking bugs in it, eh? CHANGELOG: File Compression: We have disabled the texture atlases for this build, so loading times will be slower. However, the white tile bug was caused by insufficient engine memory being available, so I'm hoping that removing the texture atlases will cure this. Let me know if it works. AI Patch: The AI has had another update. The aliens are now better at decision making, and will thus now shoot at your units when you would expect them to do so. This means they will punish your mistakes far more, and the game is much better for it. I'd say the AI is now as good as, if not better, than the AI in the original game (edit - it emerges this is perhaps not the case). Again, if you disagree then let us know why. Xenopedia: I've nearly finished all the non-UFO and non-autopsy research descriptions now, and I've run a spellcheck on it. There's still areas of inconsistency in it which will be addressed later, but we're getting there. New Shrike art too. Bleed Icon: Soldiers who are suffering from bleeding now have a blood drop icon on their soldier portrait. Automatic Finish: The missions now end immediately when the final alien is killed. Combat Shield: This is back in. BUGFIXES: Crash bug on loading a mission has been fixed Right-clicking with a vehicle weapon no longer causes a crash. Renaming the "Rifleman" soldier role no longer causes a crash when new soldiers are hired Mission score is now correctly added to the nation relations score after a mission Smoke no longer propagates incredibly slowly. Ridiculous Geoscape square cursor replaced with arrow one. Opening soldier inventory over an Alien Battle Rifle no longer crashes the game. Alien Base missions now have alien spawn points set correctly, so they don't all spawn in the Command Room. Downed UFOs can no longer be detected as flying UFOs after being shot down. Hopefully this will be a much more stable experience than V18.4. The AI should make a big difference to the game too.

This is the proposed Steam stable build. The only updates that will be made to it are bugfixes and small balance changes or animation updates (made to the XML files). This code has been branched completely from the main trunk now and will also form the basis for the new demo that will come when we launch on Steam. For now it is only the standalone. Please give it a try, because I want to roll it out to the Desura branches quickly but just need confirmation it is stable first. Any bug reports would be much appreciated, particularly crash bugs or things that make the game unplayable. The Standalones are currently awaiting authorisation by Desura. CHANGELOG: The biggest change is that we've started using the texture atlases and file archives again. This should reduce ground combat load times by about 50%, and also reduce the file count of a full install of the game from about 140,000 files down to 38,000 (we can't get on Steam with 140k). I've given it a quick test and it seems to work, BUT it needs a proper check. If any images are not displaying, please tell me - this will be because of the file archiving. The UFO datacores should be working and should unlock technology correctly again. There's now a UFO Analysis research project for each type of crashed UFO - a bit like an autopsy for the alien races. This pops up automatically. We will add them for the UFOs that don't leave crash sites too, but not for this build. Various updated animations and fixed tiles. Also some newly-painted prop art for the Middle East and Town tilesets. When you click on an alien spotted icon in the ground combat, they are now highlighted in red for a second. Cover walls (i.e. waist high walls) are no longer turned invisible by a unit's transparency aura. Large props are now turned invisible by a unit's transparency aura. If a unit is crouching and fire their weapon, the projectile is offset downwards by 20px instead of coming out of their faces. Smoke and suppression no longer propagates through walls (but an open window will allow it to spread as if the wall were not there). Hypervelocity has been disabled for this build. There's an issue in the accuracy code where a hypervelocity weapon will always display 0% chance of shooting over a prop if it does not cause enough damage to shoot through it if it were to hit it (the calculation doesn't consider that the unit might shoot around it instead it). If a soldier is assigned a new role, he will automatically also be assigned the default loadout of that role. There is now a Comms Array in an alien base. Recovering it will allow you to build the equivalent of the Hyperwave Decoder. Light Scouts can now Evasive Roll and contain one more alien in crash sites. UFOs should no longer chain-lock a slower interceptor if you try to run away. Now they will lose interest after an interceptor has retreated once. There are more Xenopedia descriptions than there were before, and a few pieces of new art. Various other small bugfixes. Changes that will be made before the final build: The launcher video is going to be disabled, as it still causes some people issues with startup. The Buzzard Scatter Laser and Sebillian Elite sprites will be updated to fix Giganto Soldier and keep the Elite consistent with the other Sebillians. I am going to be working on the Xenopedia in the hopes of having that (provisionally) done for the Steam version. The only other thing that might make it into an update is an AI update to make the aliens a bit less passive.

Build V18.3 has been released. The current status of the build is as follows: Standalones are awaiting authorisation on Desura. It appears to have been authorised for the Premium branch but not the Standard branch. Auto-updater versions will follow if it is confirmed to be free of major bugs I have named this build V18.3 to avoid confusing people who ended up with Hotfix 2 from the forums or with V18.1 due to Desura's peculiar numbering system. Because it takes so long to upload / authorise, we've made more changes since we started uploading it. There will be a hotfix patch today that will improve balance, and will likely be incorporated into the branch release. Overall, I've not been able to sit down and play the game much CHANGELOG: The "replace" function now works for research projects, automatically scanning all units for the item to be replaced and updating it with the new one. This has been used for the Advanced Medipack and the advanced aircraft missiles and explosives. Disappearing equipment bug associated with wounded soldiers should be fixed. Trying to use a loadout that contains an armour which cannot be equipped (e.g. you don't have any of them) will no longer crash the game. Weapon fire paths for shots now turn orange beyond the operational range of the weapon (where accuracy and damage drops off) Teleporters should be working again. Shift + click will now override TU reserve settings for soldier movement The interceptable C-17 transport plane has been removed from the game. It was a neat idea but it caused too many problems to be worthwhile; now item transfer simply occurs with a 24 hour time delay. This will fix several crashes. There's a bit of new art for the Foxtrot and Saracen, and for the vehicles too (though the latter will look much better with the new UI) Ferret should no longer occasionally disappear when destroyed Stunning an alien no longer produces two corpses Aircraft now fly from base to base when told to transfer (they are not interceptable). Dropships should now appear in the tech tree. Previously I'd forgotten to include a recoverable item. Aliens now have somewhat shorter sight ranges. It's still longer than human sight ranges, but less so. This means the Hunter also has a reduced sight range (but it is still longer than most aliens). (EDIT - actually, this isn't in the game. It'll be in the hotfix). Rate of alien alloy recovery increased a bit Marauders no longer incorrectly cost $7.5m each Vertical movement with jetpack now costs 2APs per square instead of 6APs A few sprite updates including fixing the giganto soldier with Buzzard and Precision Laser C4 is now incendiary damage From Hotfix 1 & 2, included in this release: Aliens should no longer spawn inside solid objects. Scimitar is now correctly a 3x3 vehicle instead of 4x4. CTD when you walk through smoke is removed. Grenade throw mode no longer disappears when you mouseover an alien. Grenades should no longer occasionally just disappear when you try to throw them. The auto-generated crashsites now no longer make the radar ranges on the Geoscape disappear. UFOs are a bit less aggressive now. Only the air superiority missions will actively try to shoot down your aircraft. When you click "Go To Aircraft / Vehicle" after you've built a new one, it now takes you to the specific unit just built rather than just to the general screen. Ctrl key is no longer incorrectly "sticky" on screens with quantity arrows, so they'll only max the quantity if you actually have Ctrl held when you press the button rather than having pressed it at any point before the click. Hopefully the aliens shooting through solid walls issue should be fixed Hopefully the invisible civilian issue should be fixed UFO walls and floors should no longer disappear on loading a save game Landing ships should no longer sometimes be empty when shot down The two auto-generated crash sites in the first week should no longer be empty There should be less freezes in the Hidden Movement screen The Chinook range has been extended a bit, so hopefully it now should have global range You can no longer "scan" a UFO with the crosshair to reveal aliens inside it from outside Incendiary damage (most explosives except grenades deal incendiary damage) now do double damage against terrain, but normal damage against units...so rockets are better at clearing terrain now! Also, will be moving all of the existing sticky beta Balance Discussion threads into the "Old Thread" section and creating new ones. Now I'm back from holiday and the game is (hopefully) much more stable than pre-hotfix V18 was, we should be able to act on the points of discussion more easily. Please play the new version, report any major bugs, then post summaries of your opinions (whether new or previously posted) if they are still valid in the new build.

Build V17.91 has been released. This post will be updated as things progress. At present: The auto-updater versions are available for Premium Pre-Orderers. There's a glitch affecting the Standard branch which I'm trying to resolve. The standalone versions are available on Desura (probably best to download these). The Mac / Linux versions will be ported if the build proves stable (V17.9 did not) This is mostly a stability update, rather than one that adds a bunch of new features. I'm not convinced the auto-updater is working properly so please try the standalone if possible, or in your bug reports at least mark which version you are using. Here's the changelist: BUGFIXES: Launcher load-up crash should be fixed. If it is still crashing on loadup, you can use the -novideo tag as a workaround (we'll see if we can put together a batch file for you guys to use). You can now save / load the game on the Geoscape. You can now save / load the game on the Ground Combat. When you load a Ground Combat save game, all the men and aliens are no longer crammed in the top left corner of the map. When you load a Geoscape game, you no longer get the "new technology available" popup. Hidden Movement should correctly show projectiles now, so your troops will no longer be gunned down without you being able to see it. Corvettes and other large UFOs no longer give ludicrous amounts of alloys when captured. You can no longer place base buildings outside the base grid area. The Sebillian Light Scouts still aren't spawning crew, despite my best efforts to fix it. As a result, I've disabled all Sebillian Light Scouts, so all Light Scouts will have Caesan crew (none of which should be empty). UPDATES / BALANCING: Overlay tiles are now supported. This means the car parks around all of the drosphips have been removed and their shadows will overlay onto whatever terrain they are placed on. There are a few new maps. The Western Town terror site has been updated significantly, and the Soviet Town terror site now has a work in progress map. Alien bases also have a map now. There's a new Corsair interceptor Xenopedia image. The rocket sprite has been replaced with a smaller and better version. The sight ranges of Caesan aliens have been reduced by 1 to 19. This is one greater than a soldier wearing Basic Armour, but 1 less than a Hunter armoured car. All alien weapons have received a 10 point accuracy deduction. The Alien Plasma Rifle has been reduced to 0 mitigation, so it will usually not 1-shot a soldier wearing Jackal combat armour (though it should still instakill a soldier with Basic armour). The Jackal has been reduced in cost to $40,000. Shotgun range reduced by 1 to 7, damage increased to 65 and mitigation reduced to 0. This is a net increase to its close-range firepower. The "kinetic" resistance of Hunter and Jackal armour has been boosted significantly. This makes your armoured car and Jackal-armoured troops much less vulnerable to early-game friendly fire damage, but still just as vulnerable to alien plasma fire (which uses "energy" resistance). Finally, it should be noted that this build does not use any kind of compression so is about 135,000 files. I'm pretty sure that either our file archiving system or or tile atlases have caused a lot of the texture issues in the last build, and I'm wondering if they may also be behind our invisible civilian bug. Therefore this build is uncompressed and we'll see how that affects these issues. In terms of balancing, I've not done too much of that this week. So once the Corvettes start arriving, my current balancing runs out and you're on your own. From what I understand, the Desura guys are at GDC so I don't know if authorisation is going to be particularly quick.

Just to let everyone know that there is going to be another update planned this week. For this, we'll be making a concerted effort to improve stability in this new build. There's quite a lot of crash bugs and various save / load problems in the current build which we're working on fixing up. I figure by this point all the fixes will just carry across into the beta given it's so close, so it's hardly going to be wasted effort and should let people play far enough into the game to have more useful comments on balancing. There'll also be a number of new maps and improved balancing, and hopefully somewhat improved AI. I'm also going to release this one without file compression, either in the texture atlases or the in-game archive files (so it'll be a full 130,000 tiles again). I suspect these are behind a lot of the issues with broken tiles or invisible civilians etc. If the problems persist when the file compression has been removed, we'll know they are genuine problems with the code rather than the packaging of it. I'm letting everyone know about this in advance in case people are having massive issues with the game for some reason - a new version should be out around Friday that should fix most of these issues.

Version 17.9 of the Xenonauts Alpha has been released. The detailed status is below, which will be updated as it progresses through the various systems - I'm posting this now because there's about 6 hours of uploading to go and I'm going home: Windows Desura client versions are available on Desura Windows standalone versions are available on Desura Mac / Linux versions will be ported across when it is confirmed that the build is stable This build is NOT beta. It is a significant update but we're still missing a number of features before we can call it beta - I will list these features in another post so you know what we'll be working on. The changes and improvements are listed below: 1) Updated Launcher: We have put the new launcher in the game. This looks much more professional than our old one, and has a number of new features: Cross-Platform Compatible: All versions of the game will now have a launcher. Previously the poor Mac guys didn't get one (making it difficult to change resolutions). RSS Feed: You no longer have to keep checking our forums to see if a new release is out, as the launcher has an in-built RSS feed for this forum. Save Game Location: You can change the save game directory of the game using this button. Disable Stat Tracking: Xenonauts collates anonymous stats on all players so we can use it for balancing purposes. If you don't want it to do this, you can now opt-out with the tickbox. Crimson Dagger novella: Under the "Extras" tab, you can find Lee Stephen's prologue novella, Xenonauts: Crimson Dagger. AA disabled: Anti-aliasing used to be on by default in the old launcher, and it is now disabled. This has no real positive effect, but on small (laptop) screens it made the Geoscape look horrendous. If this affected you, it is now much sharper. Sweet Title Animation: The alien fleet orbiting menacingly above Earth is now animated. Feel the fear in real-time. 2) New UFOs: The game is still not fully balanced for you to play to late game, but we have final landed UFO graphics in place up to the sixth UFO type (although the hand-painted floor is not yet done for that one). The final UFO will follow in the next build, along with the first damaged versions. The later ones are seriously, seriously big. 3) Wall Transparency: There's now a 2-tile transparency aura around all Xenonauts and visible aliens, which should make it much easier to see enemies. It's not infallible as it doesn't work for props at the moment, but it should be much better than before. 4) Updated Research: There have been updates to the research tree: The Xenopedia is now a Geoscape pop-up rather than the full-screen thing it was before Jackal armour and Hunter armoured car are now researchable (Hunter at the same time as the MiG, Jackal from the Alien Plasma Pistol) A lot of the research descriptions have been updated. I think all the early-mid game projects have research descriptions now, the only ones that don't are those in danger of being merged. There's a number of new or updated Xenopedia images, including the first three autopsy images. These are proper guts everywhere stuff, just like the original. There's now a pop-up after each research project is completed, telling you about anything new unlocked and giving you a link to the research screen. There's also a pop-up when new workshop projects become available as a result of a research project finishing. 5) Improved AI: There's been some boost to the AI, so aliens should be better at taking cover now. We're not far from a big improvement, but GJ can't turn on the planning layer yet because there's a crash bug in it that he can't find. Hopefully in the next build the code will all be done and it'll just be ongoing behaviour tweaks. 6) Rendering: We've ripped out and replaced the previous rendering algorithm, which was struggling with multi-tile objects and would cause incorrect draw order in some cases. The new one should fix this. Took a while to sort that, sadly it's a sort of invisible thing but believe me when I say it's a big improvement. 7) New sprites: I've done a lot of rendering recently. We've added new civilians to the Soviet Town tileset, and added female civilians to both types of terror site. I've also re-rendered about 95% of all of the Caesans and put them in the game. Previously their sprites had inconsistent lighting from the different directions and had some setup issues; these should now be resolved. 8) Maps: Didn't make as much progress on this as I hoped, but I've added 2 new maps for the Light Scout to each tileset. There'll be many more in the next version / beta. Also, we've harmonised the dropship maps across all of the different tilesets. As a result, all the dropship maps are currently in a parking lot whatever the tileset. This is a temporary thing until we get some code in place to let us overlay the dropship shadows on whatever ground is underneath it, which will be in place in the next build. 9) Usability Improvements: We've made a lot of improvements to the usability of the game. This is not an exhaustive list, just what I can think of off the top of my head. Also, there will be plenty more of these before beta. Geoscape: Alien Invasion research is already in progress when you start the game Second tileset world mask in place, letting us have some randomisation of tileset even if UFOs are shot down in the same area each time "Go to XXXX" pop-up windows on completion of vehicles or aircraft Soldier Equip screen selects the dropship category rather than Unassigned by default The F-17, MiG-31 and Chinook aircraft have been renamed to their Condor, Foxtrot and Charlie designations respectively. This is consistent keeping with later technology designations. When an aircraft reaches a waypoint, the notification now also has a "Return To Base" button. Ground Combat: Reserved TUs can now be used to shoot with. This is an optional toggle in the options, but is set to allow shooting by default. The Alien Spotted graphics have been updated to look slightly better. Also, the icon for an alien that has been spotted by the team but is out of the current soldier's LOS is now orange, rather than 60% transparency red. This should make it clearer. Grenade Selector (right click on grenade quickslot) now closes correctly when you click on a grenade to select it, rather than having to right-click on the quickslot again to close it 10) Balance Changes: We've done quite a bit of balancing, though this is only limited to the first couple of months (there's been too many bugs or issues recently for me to get too far into it). More will follow next build. Geoscape: All difficulty settings are now identical. I don't want there to be any discrepancy in the game balance that could be caused by difficulty settings at this stage (we'll balance them later). Aforementioned Hunter / Jackal made researchable, so are no longer starting items. Starting cash reduced to $500,000 Starting soldier squad reduced to 10 men Monthly maintenance and salary costs reduced Starting monthly funding much reduced Workshop build costs and build times much reduced Workshops / Laboratories have 15 working space, Living Quarters now hold 35 people Bases are now 6x6 tiles instead of 7x7 Invasion / Air Combat: Longer between UFO waves Missiles achieve lock much faster, so they are effectively able to fire from longer range Cannons now correctly fire at anything that enters their fire arc, rather than having to achieve lock first Scout UFOs are now Small, while Light Scout UFOs are Very Small. Thus you can tell immediately whether to deploy a Condor or a Foxtrot against them. Foxtrot no longer made of glass. Cooldown reduced on evasive roll for both alien and human side, making alien fighters more adept at dodging missiles Scout UFOs slower than before, now the same speed as Condors (but a lone Condor will not defeat a Scout) Ground Combat: Accuracy penalty for moving and shooting with heavy weapons increased to 50% from 25%. This makes sniper rifles less overpowered as they are much less mobile than before. Machinegun ammo a lot heavier than before, 3kg instead of 1kg. Aliens have much better stats then before, with the Non-Combatants in particular getting a major boost. Should be more frequent spawning of aliens outside the UFOs now. 11) Bugfixes: We've fixed a few bugs too. Not an exhaustive list: Game no longer crashes if you're not connected to the internet. Wages / maintenance no longer deducted before your new funding arrives at month-end. Reaction fire should no longer interrupt actions / animations (so reaction fire should not stop burst fire after one shot etc) Soldier Roles now remember armour correctly. Base defence turrets upgrading correctly again Clicking on the Xenopedia description text no longer makes it turn orange I think that's it. We'll post up a list of what we're working on for the beta in a separate post. Enjoy!

I've put this together as a one-stop shop for the release history, because I got sick of trying to work out what was fixed when (if indeed it had been fixed!). So hopefully searching this thread first may answer some questions (i.e. "Have they fixed XXX yet?"): use the Search Thread option top right of this post, or CTRL-F......... Note #1: All content below has been sourced either from: Desura>Xenonauts>Changelog or The Announcements and Progress sub-forum and are therefore all Chris's words.... However, any mis-associations of content to the wrong version are likely mine! Note #2: This is NOT a bug reporting thread. Posts like "Air combat still not fixed in 14.1" or whatever belong in the Bug reports sub-forum