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Are these still the same as before i.e. they disappear on re-loads, can't be raided, lose you money etc? If so, I'll stop now as they've appeared and I can't seem to do much with em. Ta.

Build V17.6 is released. This is not beta (that will be V18), but includes several new features that take us another step closer. At present: The standalones have been uploaded to Desura and are available for download. The auto-updater version is uploaded and available for download. Linux versions are available as standalone downloads on Desura. Mac versions are available as standalone downloads on Desura. This post will be updated as we progress on this. For the Mac version, the sadly latest version of OSX is causing us compatibility issues. Our current build and even builds of the game that previously worked on Mac are no longer functioning. This is caused by a texture-loading issue in the game. We are working on fixing it, but we’re unsure of whether it will be viable. We’ll make a decision on this when we have had a chance to evaluate the issue fully. If we decide to abandon the Mac version, we’ll provide a full refund to anyone who wants one. This won’t be our preferred course of action – not only is it going to cost us money, but it’ll rob us of future sales and likely bar us from being in a Humble Bundle in future too. But we’ll keep you posted. - This is now resolved and V17.6 works fine on Mac. Anyways, here’s the details of the changes: AI Update: there has been an AI patch. This is not the long-awaited Deep Blue-esque master AI patch, but you should notice the difference (basically, the aliens now actually try and kill your guys). I know this has taken a long time to materialise but we should be making good progress on the AI now. The improved intelligence here is as a result of the aliens having their decision code in place, so they can and are analyse the battlefield situation and reacting to it. Their decisions are still crude; everything else now is just tweaking this and adding higher-level co-ordination so it works better. GJ’s writing an article on it too, which should explain in more detail what has been put in and what happens next. That'll be due some time this week. UFOs: Aaron has been working on the new UFO models, and we’ve put the wall-hiding system into operation. This is not perfect yet, but you can see it in action in this build. The Light Scout has been set for all maps with the final (landed) model and the final floor. There are still bugs in the system. There are visual issues with the doors and the props inside the UFO (it's an issue with multi-tile rendering basically)…but once those are ironed out, it should look awesome. You may see Middle East maps that contain the placeholder UFO models and layouts. These won’t work perfectly yet either. You might find the scale of some of the later UFOs fairly impressive though! We’ll have the UFOs sorted out by beta. We’re not that far away on that front. Research tree: I’ve been working on the Research Tree, on and off. I’ve written about 45 of the research project descriptions now, with another 30 or to go. The entire research tree should be in this build, but the mid-to-late game has not been balanced at all. A lot of the end-game equipment is actually worse than the stuff that came before it for that reason. Wait till beta before pushing too deep into the game. Logging: The automated data logging should now work, hopefully. The “disable logging” switch will be in the new launcher, which will be in the next build. Bugfixes: Hopefully V17.6 will be the most stable of the V17 series builds, with the Geoscape crash being fixed...but as always, we'll have to wait and see!