Xenonauts-2 Closed Beta Build V20 Released! (Experimental Branch)

[Chris]

Closed Beta Build V20 has now been released on Steam and GOG. Note that this build is only available on our Experimental branch so you'll need to switch over to get this update (instructions on how to do that here).

This is another fairly large update to follow on from V19 a month ago. There's not many massive new features, but there's a lot of smaller fixes and updates. I think the game balance is now passable for the first half of the game at least, so in the next build I'll probably turn my attention to creating some additional maps and working on the research images / text. 

Key Highlights:

• Polish & Balancing: this update includes a lot of small updates to the game balance and the game usability. See the full changelog below for details!
• Dropship & UFO tiles: The tactical combat tiles (although not strategy art) for the advanced dropships and the largest UFOs are now setup in the game.
• AI Improvements: The AI still does some fairly dumb stuff, but we spent some time this month fixing some of the biggest problems.
• "High-Tech" Lab / Workshops: these are a couple of new building types available to build at the start of the game. They're more expensive and power-hungry than the basic Lab / Workshops, but allow your staff to work at higher efficiencies. You probably want to switch over to these from the basic lab / workshops at some point in the game, but when you do that is a decision for the player!
• Mind Control: the Mind Control power has been reworked and added back into the game, and it should hopefully be better balanced than before.
• Proper Drag-and-Drop: We now have proper drag and drop support for the Engineering Queue and the Soldier Equip screen soldier lists, which makes life way easier!

Strategy:

• A "High-Tech" Lab and Workshop are now available to build at the start of the game. These are more expensive than a standard lab / workshop, use more power and have less scientist / engineer capacity. However they provide a +50% speed boost to each member of staff assigned to that building.
• Added a Credits screen to the Main Menu (this also includes the names of our Kickstarter backers as promised during our Kickstarter campaign)
• Items being transferred between bases and that have been "claimed" by engineering projects you've added to the research queue now correctly take up space in the base stores (they are all consolidated together under a single item of appropriate size).
• The Engineering queue and the Soldier Equip soldier lists now support proper dragging and dropping.
• When viewing an Engineering project, the game now tells you how many you have of each item required to build the project.
• Tooltips are shown side by side when viewing an upgrade project (existing weapon vs. upgraded weapon) or hovering over a weapon in the Armory (equipped weapon vs. hover weapon). Let us know if this is annoying; I'm not sure it's an improvement. We might bind the functionality to Ctrl or something.
• Crash Site titles now specify the type of UFO that has crashed.
• The UI element that allows you to select a base to transfer items / soldiers / aircraft etc to now correctly shows the selected base.
• Fixed several tooltips that were appearing in needlessly annoying places.
• Re-ordered a lot of projects in the Armory / Engineering screen so they are displayed in a more sensible order.
• Equipping a jetpack no longer messed up the soldier paperdoll.
• Guardian Armour now shows its helmet correctly.
• The game now tells the player they need to place the Access Lift after building a new base.
• You can no longer use the Soldier Assignment menu that pops up in an empty dropship slot to add soldiers to the dropship that are injured or stationed at other bases.
• Fixed an issue where custom soldiers with the United States nationality were displaying as Random.
• Fixed an issue where zombified soldiers would be memorialised in the Memorial screen as "Reaper Zombie".
• Fixed an issue where weapons would not disappear from the Armory if sold on the stores screen.
• Fixed an issue with the Settings menu custom soldier box, and visually restlyled it too.

Tech Tree:

• Added "Advanced" Laser weapon upgrade projects, which work in the same way as the Accelerated weapons that you can upgrade your Ballistic weapons into.
• Added a "Stealthsuit" soldier armour that doesn't currently do very much, but will soon!
• Fixed an issue where the Exosuit was not correctly unlocking, and updated the cost and manufacturing time of both the Exosuit and the Colossus armours.
• Alenium / Plasma Explosives (grenades and missiles) now unlock directly from Alenium and Enriched Alenium, rather than from alien grenades.
• Jetpack module now unlocks off the Gun Drone autopsy, or the Secton Elite autopsy.
• Advanced base defence turret upgrade projects now require their predecessors to be completed first, but each upgrade stage is cheaper than before.

Tactical Combat:

• Set up the two largest non-unique UFOs in the tactical combat, the Battleship and Harvester UFOs.
• Added new tactical combat tiles for the two advanced dropships in the game, although the interior tiles for the final dropship are still in production. The strategy-layer art for these dropships is not yet finished though.
• All maps now have AI movement nodes painted into them. This should make the AI act a bit smarter than it did previously and lays the foundations for further AI improvements in the current months.
• The AI still isn't exactly great, but it should now be better at:
  • Spotting the Xenonaut units visible to alien units at the start of their turn.
  • Noticing Xenonaut units when they are already moving, and stopping their move so they can attack them.
  • Taking cover behind nearby objects.
  • Using the appropriate fire mode on their weapon, or switching to a secondary weapon if they have more than one and the secondary is more appropriate for the situation.
• There's now an appropriate wheeled model for the mobile Sentry Gun enemy unit in the Cleaner Base (the same model is used for your own Sentry Guns).
• Various button tooltips now show the hotkey button for that button. This is dynamic so will update correctly if you rebind your keys.
• We've spent some more time cleaning up the Reaper Zombie reanimation sequence, and the visuals for when a Zombie is killed or hatches into a Reaper. These should now work more smoothly than before.
• Mentarchs and Guardian Armour soldiers now have dropshadows.
• Fixed an issue where UFO / alien base walls were not quite tall enough, which could cause visual issues when you were viewing the upper levels of an alien base.
• Improved how the soldier selection / movement logic in the pre-mission deployment phase on Xenonaut Base defence missions works, as it was very clunky before.
• Fixed an issue where Reaper zombie corpses could block movement in some situations.
• Fixed various problems with the camera during the alien turn.
• Fixed some instances where the AI would take control to overwatch fire, but then not actually overwatch fire.
• Fixed an issue where vaultable waist-high cover could allow units to vault through the invisible walls that prevent you getting into the solid parts of the UFO hulls.
• Fixed an issue where units would not immediately be spotted on night missions after being lit by a flare.
• Fixed an issue where the Gun Drone shadow would disappear through the floor as it bobbed along.
• Fixed an issue where unit move paths / selection circles would randomly disappear.
• Fixed an issue where Wraiths would flicker as they moved during the alien turn.
• Fixed some doors not making sounds when opened, or not being interactable with right-click.
• If a unit falls unconscious by taking damage from burst fire, but then is immediately killed by subsequent shots in the burst, the game will not notify you that the unit has been stunned.

Balance Changes:

• Androns no longer have explosive weapons, and instead are equipped with Plasma / Fusion rifles.
• Reapers now have less TU, and their attacks cost more TU. They were previously incredibly deadly inside alien bases.
• Alien noncombatants now upgrade from Magnetic Pistols to Plasma and then Fusion pistols as the game progresses, rather than sticking with Magnetic Pistols for the whole game.
• Mind Control has been reworked and reintroduced:
  • The base chance of success is now lower than before, and the effectiveness of the psionic power decreases over range.
  • The defence against psionic attacks is purely Bravery (and some random chance). Units no longer get a defence bonus from having TU remaining at end of turn.
  • Units will be Mind Controlled if the alien succeeds by more than 30, and will just panic if the attack succeeds by less than 30.
  • Units that panic now only drop their Primary weapon before running away (instead of literally all of their equipment).
• The aliens should try and attack your base more frequently than before.
• When units suffer damage in combat, 50% of the damage sustained is removed from their maximum HP and therefore cannot be healed (up from 30%).
• The 5-round burst has been removed from the Rifles because it was overpowered - it was extremely effective at short range, making shotguns kinda pointless.
• Cleaner Base map is now larger, and contains more Cleaners.
• UFO Bombers have had their damage toned down because it was previously pretty extreme.
• Alien base missions now spawn a few weeks later than before.
• Fixed an issue where some Gauss weapons could not be built, and updated the damage on the Gauss Sniper which was previously too low.
• UFO front doors now all have 200HP, as they were being destroyed way too easily previously.

As always, please let us know if you encounter any bugs by posting them up on the Bug Reporting subforums, as we'll release a hotfix if necessary.

[Chris]

Note that I'm out of the office next week, so any hotfixes are unlikely to appear until the following week (5th July). But please do report any bugs you encounter so they're ready for me when I'm back!

[odizzido]

Cool Thanks for the patch notes, some neat stuff in there.

[Acosta]

Awesome work as always!

[Kamehamehayes]

Wow, you and the team made a lot of balance changes, quality of life enhancements, and many bugfixes. Must've been a busy month huh. 

I have a couple of questions about the changes:

When the stealthsuit is fully implemented, what will its affect be on the battlefield (other than making a soldier "stealthy" because that is not specific)?

You said you set up the largest "non-unique" ufos in the tactical layer. Does that mean that there will be a unique ufo that you get to intercept and meet on the battlefield only once as a story mission? 

Speaking of psionics, do you think that player psionics will ever be implemented into the game?

Overall good work this month. I look forward to every update. 

 

[Alienkiller]

Thanks too for the new Version.

Haven´t testet it yet, because UFO 2 Extraterestials came out this Month too (15.th June). But I will take a big look in the new Version.

[baryla]

Hello Chris - how to get access  X2 Beta ? 

It is possible  ?

[Alienkiller]

There is an announcementoffer in Steam to join the Testers. Maybe it´s still active. You can´t miss it.

[baryla]

There is no option on Steam. Besides, I already sent a request to join the tests some time ago. :|
Only demo is available.