Xenonauts-2 Closed Beta V22 Released! (Experimental Branch)

[Chris]

Closed Beta Build V22 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).

It has been five weeks since V21 came out and we've been trying to focus on polish with this build - or, at least, making the game a bit more playable in the early stages. There's several new features that have already been wholly or fully implemented (the soldier morale system, the new tactical mission types at the start of the game, etc) but I didn't want to try and introduce them into this build because there were more pressing gameplay issues to fix. If all goes well I'll be introducing them with V23.

Key Highlights:

• New UI (Loading Screen & Geoscape Topbar): we've rolled out the final UI for the loading screen and the Geoscape topbar, which look quite a lot slicker than what we had before - however I've just realised that these don't display very well if you're not using a 1080p resolution (I'll have to look at that for the next update)!
• 3-Aircraft Squadrons: the air combat is always more fun when you have more than one plane, so we've set up hangars to hold up to three interceptors and made interceptor construction also to happen in squadrons of three. The game will therefore now be balanced assuming you are sending three interceptors into every air combat!
• Early Game: we've spent some time balancing the early game, and adding more tactical maps so there's more variety. This part of the game covers the period where the Xenonauts are transitioning from a covert organisation to one capable of fighting a war against the aliens, so for example you don't start with interceptors and have to research them while battling the Cleaners so you can be ready for the aliens when they start to appear.
• New Visuals / Content: the final Xenonaut 3d tactical models are now in the game, and they support different hairstyles and hair colours too. We've also continued to update some of the environment art (mostly in the Polar and Boreal biomes this time). Ten early game research projects have been written or rewritten, and eight new Raid maps have been added. 
• Unassigned Scientists / Engineers: to stop unused scientists / engineers being such a dead weight on your finances, these staff now generate $50 each per hour when they do not have an assigned project. Effectively, they're just helping out around the base and reducing your maintenance costs.

Major Changes:

• General - added new UI for the Loading screen and the Geoscape topbar.
• Strategy - scientists and engineers that have lab / workshop space available but have nothing to work on will now generate income for your organisation, rather than just doing nothing. You currently earn $50 per hour per staff member, which is enough to cover their monthly wages and still make a small profit.
• Strategy - hangars are now 2x2 buildings which contain either one dropship or three interceptors. Constructing an interceptor now gives you three interceptors of the same type.
• Strategy - if an aircraft is shot down in air combat, you can either wait for it to be replaced for free or pay a resource cost to have it replaced in a couple of days.
• Strategy - aircraft now use a "carry weight" system to control the equipment they can carry. This is visualised on the Aircraft screen.
• Strategy - 10 early game research projects have been written or revised to ensure they are consistent with the current game lore.
• Strategy - there's been quite a bit of strategy balancing done on the early stages of the game.
• Tactical - the final 3d models for all Xenonaut armours have been added to the tactical combat.
• Tactical - Xenonaut soldiers in the tactical combat now have a variety of available hairstyles / hair colours, so the 3d model should (mostly) match the portrait of the soldier.
• Tactical - new environment art has been added to the American Town biome, and to the Polar and Boreal biomes. The latter two will get more updates in the coming weeks but should already look a lot better than before.
• Tactical - some new art for the alien plasma weapons
• Tactical - added eight more Raid maps to the game, which means the Polar, Farm, Desert and Boreal biomes now have three Raid maps each instead of just one.
• Air Combat - added the afterburner to human aircraft. Your aircraft cannot fire weapons while using the afterburner.
• Air Combat - weapons can now be set to face in a direction other than forwards, and rotating weapons can be set to only rotate within certain bounds (this is mostly for use on UFOs).
• Air Combat - units now preserve their turn speed even when they change direction, like they did in X1. This means they feel a lot more responsive to new orders.

Minor Changes:

• Strategy - added an indication when engineering progress has been stopped due to lack of storage space
• Strategy - UFOs that don't generate crash sites now produce wreckage on the Geoscape which awards items to the player 24 hours later.
• Strategy - "Building constructed" popup now lists the base at which the building was constructed
• Strategy - the biome name on the mission information panels now shows the name formatted correctly
• Strategy - recovered items (including when your dropship is shot down) now tell the player what items are recovered
• Tactical - some visual updates to the Valkyrie dropship ground combat tiles just to tidy it up a bit.

Bugfixes:

• Fixed an issue where no aliens spawn after day 149.
• Fixed projects that have another project (research or engineering) as a requirement showing an unintelligible file path rather than the project name.
• Fixed all UFOs having a $150k crash site airstrike reward, rather than it increasing with UFO size.

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.

[Alienkiller]

Thanks for the new Version Chris.

I have tested her a little yesterday. The Game have done a great Step in that Version (the Intro for the Tutorial is there, you can switch the Difficulty-Settings and discussed Things got in).

Will test it more in the next time, but I like the new Enemys and Aliens in the Ground-Fight. The Weapons destroy unarmored People like Dynamite a Wall. That´s cool Stuff too and very realistic.

Oh and yes, I have found my Backer-Soldier with your Help. Have only forgotten his Name.

[Steelpoint]

I've already noticed a major improvement in performance, I've only suffered a single crash after completing two missions, whereas in the last patch I never got through a mission without a crash. The new lore text is excellent as well. 

[Alienkiller]

Yes Steelpoint, the Performance-Improvement is such a Point we have discussed too very long.

After the Game is more Stable now in the Beginning and Mid-Game-Parts (esp. the Ground-Missions and Geoscape) it was time to put her in.

I personally think that the last 3 Test-Versions   (V 20 to V 22) are there for Stability-Testing and already implemented Improvements with upgrading the Beginning- and Midphase of the Game.

In V.23 and V.24 we will get other overworked Parts back with more Implementation-Things (R & D, Pictures etc.).

That Reworks, Refits and Upgrades the Devs wouldn’t give us for Testing if they have the Endgame-Parts as well as missing Starting-Parts in final Stage.

Edited October 21, 2021 by Alienkiller

[Chris]

4 hours ago, Steelpoint said:

I've already noticed a major improvement in performance, I've only suffered a single crash after completing two missions, whereas in the last patch I never got through a mission without a crash. The new lore text is excellent as well. 

Thanks. Can you report the crash? We're trying to get the crashes down to zero for the hotfix.

6 hours ago, Alienkiller said:

Thanks for the new Version Chris.

I have tested her a little yesterday. The Game have done a great Step in that Version (the Intro for the Tutorial is there, you can switch the Difficulty-Settings and discussed Things got in).

Will test it more in the next time, but I like the new Enemys and Aliens in the Ground-Fight. The Weapons destroy unarmored People like Dynamite a Wall. That´s cool Stuff too and very realistic.

Oh and yes, I have found my Backer-Soldier with your Help. Have only forgotten his Name.

Glad you're enjoying it!

[Kamehamehayes]

Gaining money from the scientists and engineers that are currently not doing anything is a great idea. I found it pretty crippling when I spent a lot of money on scientists and then they ran out of research projects to research (or be like me and forget to assign anyone to research stuff for a better part of a month in an Ironman run, oops). 

Out of curiosity, how much are scientists and engineer wages? 50 dollars an hour per person is a lot of money, and if you leave 10 engineers to nothing for a whole month, then they can make around 360000 dollars, which is a whole lot of cash for 10 workers that didn't research or make anything. So, I think the wages should be enough to reduce this to a more reasonable number. 

Also, I think it would be cool for scientists or engineers that are in high tech labs and workshops to also get a boost to the money that they make as well as a boost to their research/production efficiency. This would also somewhat help with the higher matinenece costs of high tech labs and workshops. 

 

[Chris]

2 hours ago, Kamehamehayes said:

Gaining money from the scientists and engineers that are currently not doing anything is a great idea. I found it pretty crippling when I spent a lot of money on scientists and then they ran out of research projects to research (or be like me and forget to assign anyone to research stuff for a better part of a month in an Ironman run, oops). 

Out of curiosity, how much are scientists and engineer wages? 50 dollars an hour per person is a lot of money, and if you leave 10 engineers to nothing for a whole month, then they can make around 360000 dollars, which is a whole lot of cash for 10 workers that didn't research or make anything. So, I think the wages should be enough to reduce this to a more reasonable number. 

Also, I think it would be cool for scientists or engineers that are in high tech labs and workshops to also get a boost to the money that they make as well as a boost to their research/production efficiency. This would also somewhat help with the higher matinenece costs of high tech labs and workshops. 

So unless I forgot to update it, I don't think advanced labs / workshops still have higher maintenance costs - I've actually stripped out the high-tech labs / workshops for simplicity's sake, and now base structures upgrades are a global engineering project.

$50 per hour covers the wages and the upkeep for the building, and the upkeep for the power generation, and then some. Their monthly wages are $25k so their wages are $34.7 per hour. I think the generation could be dropped to $40 per hour before you started making a loss but I just thought $50 per hour was a nice round number.

You've also got to remember that a scientist costs $50k to hire, so at $10 per hour profit it takes about 200 days to pay off their hire cost!

[Kamehamehayes]

43 minutes ago, Chris said:

So unless I forgot to update it, I don't think advanced labs / workshops still have higher maintenance costs - I've actually stripped out the high-tech labs / workshops for simplicity's sake, and now base structures upgrades are a global engineering project.

$50 per hour covers the wages and the upkeep for the building, and the upkeep for the power generation, and then some. Their monthly wages are $25k so their wages are $34.7 per hour. I think the generation could be dropped to $40 per hour before you started making a loss but I just thought $50 per hour was a nice round number.

You've also got to remember that a scientist costs $50k to hire, so at $10 per hour profit it takes about 200 days to pay off their hire cost!

I'm not a beta tester, so I don't know all of the end and outs, but yeah thanks for explaining this. 

So if I understand this right, scientists and engineers effectively make 15 dollars per hour? I think that 50 per hour is fine now that I understand the wage costs. 

So upgrading the labs and workshops are now tied to workshop projects? Yeah, I think that is probably for the the best as it is a lot simpler to understand and balance. 

Yeah, thanks for answer all of my questions.