Xenonauts V1.04 Released!

[Korpah]

This patch is being released first on the Experimental Branch. There will be another patch in a couple of days, too, which address some of the other ground combat crashes we're still working on (teleporter crash etc). V1.05 is therefore likely to be the final version of the game.

We've also reworked the funding on the easier difficulty settings a bit, as there's been a lot of feedback on this issue both here and on the Steam forums. We said we weren't planning on making any more balance changes but we've made an exception for this issue as new many players really seem to struggle with the economy.

FIXES:

• Soldier Equip screen crash bug is fixed!

• We've disabled the game's stat tracking module - I thought we'd done this months ago when the tickbox was removed from the launcher, but apparently not. This may prevent some of the extremely long load times occurring.

• The Loss screen should display when you lose the game, rather than freezing the game up (for real this time).

• The final mission no longer crashes when you escape with your final soldier, making victory a little more climactic...

• Aliens should now be able to attack your secondary bases as well as your primary base.

• There are no longer crashes associated with the Fury using its Singularity Torpedo.

• Heavy Drones no longer crash the game if destroyed while against the edge of a map.

• Shock batons no longer show a tiny picture of a shotgun in their reload slot

• Some mis-set tiles (impassible damaged doors etc) have been fixed

• Some Xenopedia / strings typos fixed

BALANCE:

• Funding damage inflicted by UFOs now scales with difficulty - 0.5x / 0.75x / 1x / 1.25x on Easy / Normal / Veteran / Insane

• Alien invasion escalation (i.e. the speed at which older UFO types are replaced by newer designs) has been sped up on Easy and Normal, so it is not much different to Veteran.

• Funding events occur twice as often but do half as much funding damage as before.

• Air Superiority missions are back, so Ground Attack missions have been nerfed slightly.

• Alien bases now have a 100% chance of discovery every 5 days, rather than a 20% of discovery. This should stop them invisibly ruining your game with their continual funding drain if you repeatedly fail the detection check.

• Ground combat missions on shot-down UFOs now give more Alien Alloys

• Ground combat missions should give about 20% less money

• Airstrike reward values increased

• National funding multipliers reduced a little

The intention is that Veteran difficulty stays at relatively the same difficulty with regards to funding, but with slightly more Alloys made available and the pressure to do every single mission being reduced (i.e. the results of Airstrikes and a ground combat mission have been more closely aligned).

Normal and Easy difficulties have been made easier, as it is now harder to lose nations to UFO activity. The alien invasion escalation has been sped up too, as it was making the game more tedious instead of less difficult. The invasion is now nearly as fast as on Veteran but you'll have more resources to deal with it.

very good news! think ill restart my current campaign

[zolobolo]

The CTD with final mission first door is still present (though not mentioned on the change list so it figures )

I have also noticed - that almost all ground attack battleships swoop by on the map without landing. If I understand correctly, we cannot shoot down these birds else we loose that juicy singularity core inside its belly, but the things simply refuse to land

I was also wondering is it obvious what the relation bonus for air strike and successful ground combat is? It might me mentioned somewhere but I didn't notice - I can see that GC is almost always better due to spoils of alenium and alloy as well as experience and tech for research so though: the relationship bonus is only in case of air strike or much larger but this is not clear. The funding changes seem to be tied to the relationship and are only affected directly by shooting down the UFOs

[John Smith]

Omg, this all sounds like amazing increases!

I know you guys have been hard at work, and I really thank you for all the work you've put into the game and all the suggestions we made; also, dose extra maps you included n stuff!

This game is really awesome.

Your updates seems amazing!

[ventuswings]

Very nice!

Please, not 100% on Veteran or higher.

I like to have to send my planes manually over land to search for Alien bases.

Just make sure that if a plane flies above an alien base, it's discovered

If it's difficult to differentiate detection chance across difficulties, I think ~50% chance of discovery might be a good compromise.

[spacebug]

Wait, you made insane even harder, by giving 25% more funding damage? Damn, now i have to re-start my playthrough, or else it would not get the full difficulty... (yes, i like the pain. )

[sage]

That's intentional. The problem is that it's not very intuitive because of the way it's displayed. It's supposed to simulate someone leaning around a corner and firing. If you want to be safe always stand one tile further back from a corner than you think you need to.

It doesn't simulate any such thing -- an Alien can shoot a soldier, but the soldier can't shoot back?

If what you're suggesting were true, both would be able to shoot each other. It's almost like this works differently for soldiers vs. aliens.

[sage]

We may look again at the LOS, but we'll only do it when everything else is done and the game is otherwise finished. Messing with the LOS usually causes havoc and I'm not risking delays / instability by doing so.

That's fair. I'm not actually certain that this is a LOS issue now, since the alien IS spotted; it's just that it can't be shot at directly, but it can shoot back effectively. Is there something different in the code about how the alien 'can shoot' check is made vs. player?

[StellarRat]

It doesn't simulate any such thing -- an Alien can shoot a soldier, but the soldier can't shoot back?

If what you're suggesting were true, both would be able to shoot each other. It's almost like this works differently for soldiers vs. aliens.

Yeah, it does. Because there are cases where you can lean around the corner and shoot someone, but they can't hit anything but your arm, weapon or maybe half your head while they are fully exposed to your shot. You'd have to look for Chris' explanation. It's in a thread somewhere. And, no, there is no difference between alien and human LOF checks. You can do the same to them under the right circumstances. Now, it is possible there is also a bug somewhere. Edited June 10, 2014 by StellarRat

[INinjaMango]

''The final mission no longer crashes when you escape with your final soldier, making victory a little more climactic...''

I had just happened to experience this bug on my first run through of the game. Very disappointing and I'm very glad it's fixed!

[sage]

Yeah, it does. Because there are cases where you can lean around the corner and shoot someone, but they can't hit anything but your arm, weapon or maybe half your head while they are fully exposed to your shot. You'd have to look for Chris' explanation. It's in a thread somewhere. And, no, there is no difference between alien and human LOF checks. You can do the same to them under the right circumstances. Now, it is possible there is also a bug somewhere.

That still doesn't make sense. If what you were describing were the case, the corner-shooter should have *cover*, but not be effectively invulnerable. What I'm seeing is that sometimes (but not every time) the corner shooter is invulnerable.

The corner-shooter is going to be vulnerable both when the lean around the corner to acquire a target, then shoot and vulnerable to high velocity rounds penetrating interior walls. This would be simulated by a % penalty to hit.

[StellarRat]

That still doesn't make sense. If what you were describing were the case, the corner-shooter should have *cover*, but not be effectively invulnerable. What I'm seeing is that sometimes (but not every time) the corner shooter is invulnerable.

The corner-shooter is going to be vulnerable both when the lean around the corner to acquire a target, then shoot and vulnerable to high velocity rounds penetrating interior walls. This would be simulated by a % penalty to hit.

I agree that it's not a perfect system. I'm sure Chris can explain how it works far better than I can. Anyway, the point is that it doesn't show you what's happening very well right now and so people think it's broken, but it's actually working like it's supposed to. The intention was to fix weird blocking situations where the target appeared to be standing out in the open, but you couldn't hit it because a piece of cover "touched" its tile even though the cover didn't actually appear to be in front of the target. Edited June 10, 2014 by StellarRat

[kabill]

That still doesn't make sense. If what you were describing were the case, the corner-shooter should have *cover*, but not be effectively invulnerable. What I'm seeing is that sometimes (but not every time) the corner shooter is invulnerable.

The corner-shooter is going to be vulnerable both when the lean around the corner to acquire a target, then shoot and vulnerable to high velocity rounds penetrating interior walls. This would be simulated by a % penalty to hit.

There's no 'corner cover' in game, though. All props have a stopping chance, which is the % chance a prop will block a shot. Walls have a 100% block chance, but if the line of fire doesn't actually cross over the wall, then it provides nothing, even if the shot is only just possible.

Basically, corner cover is all or nothing, depending on the angle of the target. It's not perfect, but in the game as is there's no way for it to be different and it would be difficult to add in anyway (best solution would be to draw a LoF to all of the subtiles occupied by the target, applying a penalty for each LoF which is blocked. But it's not going to happen now, anyway!).

[INinjaMango]

Spoilers lurk:

I also encountered a bug that told me I'd completed the mission successfully at seemingly random intervals during the final mission, and also when I destroyed the two artefacts before I had completed the mission objective it told me the mission was successful. Just thought I would report this on this thread since I didn't know where else to put it.

[sage]

Basically, corner cover is all or nothing, depending on the angle of the target. It's not perfect, but in the game as is there's no way for it to be different and it would be difficult to add in anyway (best solution would be to draw a LoF to all of the subtiles occupied by the target, applying a penalty for each LoF which is blocked. But it's not going to happen now, anyway!).

While this seems kind of janky at best for a tactical game (there are other ways this could be abstracted with good effect), it still doesn't explain what I'm seeing -- which is that Line-of-Fire is not bidirectional. The system you're describing should basically allow / disallow shooting between two squares, regardless of the direction of fire. That doesn't appear to be the case.

[Dead Dread]

"Line-of-Fire is not bidirectional" that is correct, and it isnt suppose to be bi-directional. Chris explains how it works in this thread, and perhaps a similiar explaination should occur in the manual/quickstart guide;

http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/10028-LOS-Explanation?p=110642

[kabill]

While this seems kind of janky at best for a tactical game (there are other ways this could be abstracted with good effect), it still doesn't explain what I'm seeing -- which is that Line-of-Fire is not bidirectional. The system you're describing should basically allow / disallow shooting between two squares, regardless of the direction of fire. That doesn't appear to be the case.

Dead Dread is right.

Basically, the system works by taking the *best* part of the shooter's tile to the centre of the target. That creates asymmetrical lines of fire and produces the 'shoot around corners' effect. On the other hand, there do seem to be occasional issues when the LoF isn't symmetrical even when it should be (I've posted plenty about this in the past), but I'll be honest and say that I've not really seen this come up at all playing recently, so overall it seems to be a pretty minor issue.

As for corners: the game was never designed with corner cover in mind. The ability to shoot around corners at all is a very recent thing (and was kind of a side effect of trying to solve another issue anyway, to the best of my knowledge) and I have doubts about how easy it would have been to include in the first place given the engine (I think the idea I posted above is actually probably the only way it could be done with any level of accuracy). So yes, while it's not ideal, the engine was never especially suited for it and it's something that's never going to change in any case.

[sage]

"Line-of-Fire is not bidirectional" that is correct, and it isnt suppose to be bi-directional. Chris explains how it works in this thread, and perhaps a similiar explaination should occur in the manual/quickstart guide;

http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/10028-LOS-Explanation?p=110642

Thanks for the link. It's illogical (IRL all of Chris's examples would happily be able to blaze away at each other; a shooter would simply position themselves to be able to fire effectively and be covered - center mass is not a criteria for being able to shoot) and a bad game play decision to boot (bad means it seems to often result in unpredictable outcomes, e.g. my eye tells me I'd be in cover and be able to shoot, but in fact I'm neither in-cover nor shooting). Bummer.

(edit for clarity)

[StellarRat]

Thanks for the link. Bummer.

What the link doesn't show you is the situation where the alien is plainly standing out in the open and you can't shoot him because your LOF crosses a tiny piece of a tile that offers 100% cover. Mind you not the cover itself just a tile with cover drawn partly in it. That's what the current system corrects. It was even more unintuitive than what we have now and occurred way more often.

Like I said your best bet is to stay one tile back from the corner of any building or opening unless you're prepared to fire. If you use that rule of thumb you shouldn't have too much trouble with getting unexpectedly shot. Personally, I haven't had any issues since I started doing that.

Edited June 10, 2014 by StellarRat

[PRiME]

Still seems to be a crashing problem on final mission. Reloading savegame after crash fixes it.

[OzoneGrif]

a bad game play decision to boot (bad means it seems to often result in unpredictable outcomes

It totally makes sense... When a soldier hide behind a corner, he will shot by leaning against the wall and over the edge. This new way to target allows shooting through windows in a very realistic way, much better than before. Actually, I would never go back to the old system where you always had to expose your men to do basic shots or grenade throw.

[Larus]

Still seems to be a crashing problem on final mission. Reloading savegame after crash fixes it.

Loading the save (or the autosave) before you open the gate also helps to prevent the crash from happening in the first place. I don't know why but I generally still have these strange first round crashs even after a clean installation. I can't help myself but thinking that it has something to do with the LOS of my guys and the one of aliens since the LOS apparently gets refreshed after loading the game.

[Tiktaalik]

I guess then if 1.05 is expected to be the final version of the game my hope of an intro video are dashed.

Still it feels so nice to be playing a finished product of something I've been looking forward to for several years.

Wonky LOS fix?

I've repeatedly run into problems with wonky line-of-sight killing my troopers. The most common case is that my trooper can't shoot an alien that it CAN see; but the alien CAN shoot the trooper. This seems to always happen where there's a corner involved.

After playing through half-a-dozen tactical battles and having more than half of my casualties due to this, I rage-quit, and haven't been playing. But that's a bummer, because the game seems really good other than that!

This plagued me so much that I completely re-thought my strategy for engaging with aliens. Basically whenever I see an alien that I can't actually shoot at, I retreat. I couldn't quite work out if it was a bug or a feature.

Edited June 10, 2014 by Tiktaalik

[Larus]

Loading the save (or the autosave) before you open the gate also helps to prevent the crash from happening in the first place. I don't know why but I generally still have these strange first round crashs even after a clean installation. I can't help myself but thinking that it has something to do with the LOS of my guys and the one of aliens since the LOS apparently gets refreshed after loading the game.

Ok just tested it, the crash in the final mission when you open the gates and the crash in the first round in general ONLY happen when you use a Valkyrie. Can it be that the LOS of the aliens and/or my guys has been alterated to prevent an immediate reaction fire from the aliens?

If yes would I try to disable it. It might prevent any further first round crash and is probably not necessary when the aliens have only 50% of their TU anyway.

[Nethris]

Great changelist overall!

A bit surprised to see the alien base detection change, and I liked searching for them with planes. I thought they were already easy to detect just by watching in between waves and seeing funding drop 1k per day on some continent. But I suppose that people who aren't aware of that may have hidden bases for way too long.

Giving the player info they need to react to, but making them go digging to find it is generally not a great design. UFO attacks generating reports on the geoscape here is massively better than having to repeatedly go check the graphs in the original XCOM to see where aliens were active for instance, as it cuts out a ton of tedium otherwise present in "optimal" play.

Having to search for bases is a very interesting idea, but a slow funding drain that's visible but not announced isn't a good way to handle it. A visible warning that an alien base is suspected to be present in X region, or replacing the funding drain with occasional attacks in that general area with text stating that there was no airborne alien presence and that local forces want XCOM to search for the source might be more interesting. However, changing the auto-detect to 100% is just an XML file change rather than something that needs development and testing.

Speaking of which, if you want to have the old mechanics, go change it locally! Looking at it, I'm pretty certain it's alienBaseDiscoveryChance in gameconfig.xml, under the <!-- ALIEN BASE AUTOMATIC DISCOVERY --> header. You can set auto-detection to be as unlikely as you want.

While this seems kind of janky at best for a tactical game (there are other ways this could be abstracted with good effect), it still doesn't explain what I'm seeing -- which is that Line-of-Fire is not bidirectional. The system you're describing should basically allow / disallow shooting between two squares, regardless of the direction of fire. That doesn't appear to be the case.

As has been said, that's intentional in the current system. Not necessarily ideal by any means, but center to center LoF made it hard to use 100% cover because you severely limit your own firing angles, and letting the LoF system target corners of the target made most cover very limited in usefulness as it could be shot around if the attacker was even slightly to the side, at which point the cover does almost nothing. Personally I've found I can usually use one or more of suppression, explosives, wall destruction via lots of bullets, and not leaving any soldiers in places the alien has a good shot at to handle situations like that. Sadly "the shot should be about as hard as it looks" takes a pretty complicated ruleset and careful tweaking to even come close to.

The biggest issue here is that as far as I know this LoF stuff isn't mentioned in-game, and glancing through the quick-start guide I'm not seeing it there either. The full explanation probably just belongs in the manual you're trying to get together, but it would be helpful for the quick start guide to mention that units have some freedom in where they fire from, often allowing them to shoot around cover close to them without return fire being able to, or something to that effect.

Oh, and I think LoS is still more or less center based rather than matching LoF? There's certainly shots I can take where that soldier can't see the alien despite facing the same direction they use to fire the shot.

[Irishguy117]

Alien bases can usually be discovered by a ton of landingships operating in a single area or an excess of Grounded UFOs, but that only works if you have Radar coverage over the Alien Base, and it absolutely makes sense that local militaries who cannot directly engage the Aliens can at least provide recon information to the Xenonauts. Its not like those supply ships are particularly subtle.

So for people not using steam will this go up on Desura or is only V1.05 planned to go up? I know its a pain in the ass I'd just like to know either way.

Edited June 11, 2014 by Irishguy117