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EDIT - best not to download this yet. There's a game-breaking bug in it at present which we will fix tomorrow with a Hotfix. 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 contains a pretty substantial number of changes and fixes and additions. The main change for the ground combat portion of the game is the AI has been updated so that alien use grenades, and understand when and how to use them most effectively; there have also been a variety of additional under the hood AI changes that hopefully improve their behaviour in general too. For the Geoscape, I have implemented a rebalancing of the air combat mini-game and the costs of base structures. Both of these will probably seem quite harsh - Condors have taking a beating in performance and should no longer be viable in the long term and base maintenance costs have increased, so money will be tighter - adjustment to previous strategies will likely be required! I will post new balance threads in the beta forum to discuss both these changes in more detail. Fixes - Fixed game hanging on certain alien base attack missions - Aliens (or Xenonauts) are no longer able to shoot through floors or ceilings - 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 on Easy and Normal difficulty (can be disabled at game creation) - 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 and Singularity core 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.