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Xenonauts-2 February 2022 Update!


Chris

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Hello everyone - it's time for the February update! With this update being a bit early and the last one being a little late, we've only had three weeks since the last update - but a lot has been done in that time. 

Releasing a new public build is our main priority right now and so we're actively working on Build V23 at the moment. We've mostly been working on polishing the experience and improving the game balance, and I've spent a lot of time playing the game this month to help facilitate that. We've done a lot of work on the Air Combat this month as we've been adding various new features to it recently (such as the pre-battle deployment phase and the different formations that UFOs can spawn in) and we've also had to make some quite fundamental changes to the code in order to fix a persistent bug where missile hits would not always be detected correctly. Although it's frustrating this sapped away quite a bit of time, having missiles occasionally pass straight through their target without exploding is clearly not acceptable in a game where it can mean the difference between victory and defeat!

There's already been a LOT of tweaks to the game balance and I'll continue with these as we work on V23. The early-game Cleaner missions are now a research chain that give you a series of standalone missions that occur alongside the alien invasion (rather than before it), and I've done a pass on all the UFO / tactical mission crews to ensure the right aliens are spawning in roughly the right numbers at the right time. There's been a load of updates to the tech tree, sometimes to fix things not unlocking correctly but mostly to ensure a relatively steady flow of research and upgrade projects throughout the game. The tech tree is more extensive than in X1 and this can be a problem in some cases - if the player is doing too many research projects between ground missions then it can get a bit overwhelming. 

We've also fixed a lot of bugs / issues we've enountered while playing the game, and updated various game systems that weren't working quite right (e.g. the Sentry Guns). I've updated some more of the strategic UI to use the new visual style, and we've added various new terrain tiles to the game and produced the final destruction states on more terrain objects. Windows have continued to be a pain to get working correctly, but when you play a tactical mission on a finished biome like the Polar biome I personally think the game looks and feels pretty good nowadays. It'll be nice when we have all the biomes up to that standard, but it's taking a while to churn through all the assets. We're recruiting a rigger to get our new civilian 3d models into the game, and if all goes well we'll have those in V23 too.

There's not really that much more to say, as it's been one of those months where we've fixed far too many things to mention individually but relatively few of them are big headline features you can write about in updates like this.

Once V23 is out we're planning to focus on a few more mechanics that set the game apart from the first Xenonauts, as we're in quite a nice place with development now where the campaign is largely functional and all the remaining work is adding in new assets, polishing what we have, and adding things to make the game more distinct from its predecessor.

The biggest thing I want to test is various more significant alien abilities that will hopefully make each alien race feel more distinctive. For instance, we're going to test whether it makes combat more interesting if the regenerating Sebillian aliens enter a "downed" state when killed, and have to be finished off within a couple of turns else they'll get back up again. Or whether Wraiths are more interesting if they can enter a "ghost" state after taking damage and take reduced damage until end of turn (although perhaps only from kinetic damage). Basically what we're looking for is abilities that cause the player to think about how they sequence their actions or encourage them to use a wider selection of equipment than otherwise.

That's it for me - we're hoping to put out the first incarnation of V23 at some point during the week after next (w/c 7th March)!

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On the topic of alien abilities...

The cleaners should be completely immune to all forms of gas attacks because if their gas masks. However when they take enough damage, their gas mask should crack or break, allowing for them to be affected by gas. 

It would be interesting if alpha reapers had access to minor forms of psionics that can panic your soldiers. It would synergize well with the normal reapers and make alpha reapers a high priority target. 

Perhaps wraiths should go into a ghosting state when they teleport. I remeber taking out wraiths pretty easily in xen 1 because they lacked the tu to defend themsleves after teleporting. Ghosting after teleporting will make it more difficult to kill them after they teleport. 

What is the purpose of the mantids? They seem like pretty weak and frail creatues with no niche at the moment, so what is the niche that they are going to fill?

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 2/25/2022 at 6:20 PM, Emily_F said:

On the topic of alien abilities, the sebillians are meant to have poor vision and reactions so should not be able to shoot very far and not have reaction fire. 

I agree, every race should have both strengths and weaknesses. The advantage of sebilians is survivability, so they should reduce the accuracy and range of vision. They are strong creatures, so they must prefer heavy armor and heavy weapons, probably short distances.

I do not know if this is possible, but it would be advisable to make it impossible to aim at a distance greater than the range of the unit of vision.

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I will let me surprise what the Devs and helping Freelancerhands have done in the last 2,5 Monthes.

All Aliens and Humans have Advantages and Disadvantages. That is true and there I agree fully with you. All that is explained in the Autopsy-Reports (Organic), Dismentle-Reports (Robots and similar Electronic-Things) and Interrogations of Organic living Enemys.

The Problem is to bring in that Advantages / Disadvantages and the Idea without to overflow the Ying and Yang-Principle in the Ground-Fight-Maps as well as Alien-Inetneur. Means it have to be stable for both sides [Aliens and Humans]. That´s not easy to solve.

I personaly hope that the Devs and helping Freelancers have found an solution for it with all the new Oportunitiys which come up the last 8 Years.

Edited by Alienkiller
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When it´s done and ready for Beta-Testing.

The Devs wrote it should be after the Week from 7th to 13th March if all goes well. More accurate Information they couldn’t give.

We Testers can only wait and drinking Tea / Coffee until it comes out. 
 

 

Edited by Alienkiller
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When it´s ready for Beta-Testing. There are so many Fixes, Reworks, Refits and Ballances as well as new Implementations to work on for V.23. We don´t wanna have an Desaster like in the last Beta-Test-Version, esp. with V.22.6.

Don´t rush them, that won´t work. They do what is possible, esp. in that Crisis-Situation we have worldwide.

Edited by Alienkiller
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