Xenonauts-2 November 2022 Update!

[Chris]

November is nearly over so it's once again time for our monthly dev update. We've had a productive month here overall, making numerous improvements to the game and adding in several new features too.

Public Releases:
We continued patching V24 this month, eventually releasing V24.7b onto the standard Steam / GOG branches. We got a lot of useful feedback on balancing from the community and I'm actively playtesting V25 at the moment with the intention of releasing it either later this week or some time next week.

V25 is going to be our first open beta build, although it'll spend a few days with our existing community beforehand so we can find any critical bugs in it before we begin the open beta. The first (small) wave of invites will probably therefore be going out in mid-December.

Alien Abilities:
The biggest new feature we implemented this month were the remaining alien racial abilities. These are a bit more "active" compared to the alien powers in the first Xenonauts, with the idea being to pose interesting tactical challenges for the player. I'll give a couple of examples to show you what I mean.

The first is the Wraith, which in Xenonauts 1 could teleport around the map (not particularly funny when you were trying to find the last alien in an alien base, etc). Now they instead have an ability called Cloaking Field, which reduces Accuracy by -2 for each tile of distance when shooting at a Wraith. However, Cloaking Field is disabled for the remainder of the turn when the Wraith takes damage from any source.

The second is the Cyberdrone, which is a late-game alien unit which has heavy frontal armour and rotates in the direction of any sound - gunshots, footsteps, explosions, etc. Using multiple soldiers (or just throwing grenades behind it) allow you to expose the weaker rear armour and can make it easier to kill.

Hopefully this illustrates what we're trying to achieve - basically to make the player think more closely about where to position their soldiers and what attacks or equipment to use. While these abilities still require quite a lot more testing and polishing, once we have them working properly the gameplay will hopefully be richer and the aliens more memorable. 

Soldier Equipment:
In V24 soldiers have an equipment slot called the "special" slot (also known as the "undersuit" slot). This is basically an additional item slot where you can carry one item that gives the soldier a particular bonus - e.g. extra armour plates to boost survivability, a tactical visor to boost Accuracy, a mind shield to boost defence against psionics, etc.

As this system hasn't added as many interesting choices to the game as I'd have liked, I've spent this month updating the soldier inventory. Soldiers now have a Primary weapon, a Secondary weapon, and a single 5x5 "vest" grid which contains all the additional items they want to carry into battle (ammo, grenades, extra weapons, etc). Importantly, all the items that previously went in the special slot are now 2x2 items that fit into the vest grid like any other item.

I've been playtesting this over the past few days and I think it's a really fun change. The backpack wasn't really being used that much before, but now vest space (and the carrying capacity of the soldier) are much more important, even at the start of the game. Is it worth giving up that spare ammo magazine and two grenades for +5 Accuracy? It all depends on how you want to set up your soldiers, and it's a system I'm looking forward to discussing and balancing further during the open beta.

General Development Progress:
Other than my work on the two systems mentioned above, most of my time this month has been spent discussing the gameplay experience with our community and ironing out various smaller gameplay / usability pain points in the campaign. General feedback on V24 was pretty good but there's clearly quite a few aspects of the game that are interfering with people's enjoyment of it; many of these should be improved in V25.

There's been several content updates to the game, too - the Engineering screen has now been re-skinned into our new UI style, the updated Arid biome is now present (with eight entirely new maps), and the dropships have been retextured in the tatical combat. We've also been busy planning out the tutorial and creating the map required for it, and we'll start work implementing that in December. 

Finally, we've been working on the load times for the game, and have hopefully now fixed the issue where Windows would think the game had frozen and invite you to terminate the process if you had alt+tabbed out while the game was loading. 

So overall a rather productive month. I'll wrap up this update there, and hopefully we'll be seeing some of you in the open beta during December!

If you want to sign up for the open beta, please post in the previous update thread. I'll be DMing people Steam keys via these forums when the open beta starts.

 

[Alienkiller]

Nice that the Aliens get the missing Abilitys. That was in V.24 an big Surprisse.

It´s good to see that more missing Maps, Research & Development-Things and other small to medium Features / Upgrades will come up in the V.25-Version.

That all makes the Game much more interresting to play again. I did in the last Version 2 Gameplays up to the Limiter (Day 320) differnt Gameplaytests.

1. one was an Storyline-Test [Enemy Agents and as most as possible for the Aliens] incl. the Main-Upgrades for Xenonauts-Soldiers / Fighters / Vehicles / Buildings. 

2. one was an normal Gameplaytest with more watchout to the other Gameplayparts [Interrogations and Main-Upgrades / first Mid-Game-Upgrades].

Sadly in both Testings the cool Stuff which comes then (Alien Fusion Upgrades, Advanced Buildings, etc.) couldn´t testet. Some medium Upgrades like Alien-Plasma-Explosive-Upgrade, new Suits etc. could be testet a little bit.

 

What the new Soldier-Equipment belongs:

The Backback from the Soldiers get used very often, the same for the Belt. Both get needed (Belt for Ammo, Grenades) and the Backback for bigger Specials (Medikit, Knifes, C4 etc.). That are main important Features and if one of them get canceld, the Game get scrappy. That´s why in all other Games which are self-respecting themselfs of that Gerne keep the Backback (old X-COM, Phoenix Point, UFO ET-Series, UFO: AI) as well as the outsider UFO-Afterrow.

The upgraded special Slot sound an cool thing to give Xenonauts 2 an massive Gameplayupgrade. I like the normal Version of it with the different Versions, but if we can make an Mulit-Vest-Version (like Armor-Plates and tactical Visor or like the upgraded Versions in V.24 with additional HPs and auto-regenerationg HPs) and more it could be the first Game of that Gerne which bring that Gerne to an new Level. We have to see what the refited Special Slot can do. The only 2 important Parts which are not to be touched are the Belt and Backback.

An similar Upgrade of the Armours get done in 2007 UFO 1 ET-Standard / 2010 UFO 1 ET-Gold Version from the UNI-Mod until that Mod reached the Maximum doable of the Game. I have found an Picture on civforum.de to explain what I mean.

The Main-Parts don´t get touched: Backback, Belt, left and right Hand, right and left Shoulder and Revolver-Slot. Thats all the Basics in UFO 1 ET for the Armours. There 3 Parts for all Armours get added: An Helmet-Slot, an Energy-Shild-Slot and left / right Ammo-Pocket. That System the Devs from the UFO ET-Row (see Picture) wanna bring in again in the moderniserd Versions of their Games (UFO 1 ET Platinum, UFO 2 ET Gold-Upgrade+).

For Xenonauts 2 the right and left Shoulder as well as right and left Ammo-Slots come in as an extra Multi-Role-Vest. That´s good and hopfeully the Vest and Armours are upgradeable now (like the Cevlar-Armour to the Warden Combat Armour, which you have already for your Soldiers). I´m surprissed if we get an similar cool Soldier-Equipment Screen as the older UFO 1 ET-Versions (see Picture).

I personaly hope that we Beta-Testers can test the new Version as soon as possible (evtl. on that Weekend?).

Edited December 1, 2022 by Alienkiller

[Kamehamehayes]

On 11/30/2022 at 10:47 AM, Chris said:

If you want to sign up for the open beta, please post in the previous update thread. I'll be DMing people Steam keys via these forums when the open beta starts.

@Chris I assume this means the October update right? Currently, this link leads to the September update instead of the October update. We already got one casualty of this as one person already posted to the September update thread instead. 

@st3fan21 If you are still hanging out in the forums somewhere, you should move your post from the September update thread to the October update thread if you are interested in the open beta.

Otherwise, nice update. I hope that you and the team get a nice Christmas vacation and that v25 and open beta will have a lot of useful feedback to give once you return.  

[Chris]

2 hours ago, Kamehamehayes said:

@Chris I assume this means the October update right? Currently, this link leads to the September update instead of the October update. We already got one casualty of this as one person already posted to the September update thread instead. 

@st3fan21 If you are still hanging out in the forums somewhere, you should move your post from the September update thread to the October update thread if you are interested in the open beta.

Otherwise, nice update. I hope that you and the team get a nice Christmas vacation and that v25 and open beta will have a lot of useful feedback to give once you return.  

Oops. Yeah, I linked the wrong thread. Thanks for the heads up - I'll update that and move the posts.

[Solver]

The Vest slot sounds fun with the tradeoffs it brings into the game, as currently soldiers of sufficient strength can fill their backpack and carry way too much. Though I do enjoy the belt/backpack distinction where belt items are quicker to access.

What about carrying out wounded soldiers (or captured aliens / items) though? A somewhat uncommon but very cool situation is if you carry a fallen comrade back to the dropship, I've used that in the Cleaner Intelligence Hub to successfully rescue a downed soldier. I hope that system doesn't go away.

[Oldsmobile]

6 hours ago, Solver said:

What about carrying out wounded soldiers (or captured aliens / items) though? A somewhat uncommon but very cool situation is if you carry a fallen comrade back to the dropship, I've used that in the Cleaner Intelligence Hub to successfully rescue a downed soldier. I hope that system doesn't go away.

Ha!  I used to do that in the Classic X-Com games (UFO Def and TFTD).  I'd put a bleeding or stunned comrade in the backpack and ferry him to a safe place.  Or haul an alien.  Kinda hilarious if you think about it.  "Look guys - I have a stunned Tentaculate in my backpack!"  Sometimes, they'd wake up and appear next to the soldier - Awkward...

[Alienkiller]

Couldn´t be long anymore that we can playtest the next Version first in closed Beta and if there is nothing big in Open Beta later on.

If we look at the Informations from SteamDB, there is over 20 Days Silence in the History-Part. Means that the Devs are testing the new Version internaly since about 3 Weeks.

https://steamdb.info/app/538030/history/

That´s good, so they can Manage more Issues before we Closed / Open Betatesters get the second fully playable Version in Hands.

Edited December 6, 2022 by Alienkiller

[CasteloBranco]

Thank you all for the hard work.

And about carrying out wounded soldiers to a safe place inside the dropship, that would be cool. It could be some tech in the dropship that would keep the soldier alive and helps to keep his morale up for the next mission.

Anxious for the great beta. o7

 

[st3fan21]

The backpack was always used in some way, in xenonauts 1 and until v23.
I really think you should consider a hybrid:

in UFO extraterestrials 1 and 2 they had SHIELDS, TELEPORTERS, JUMPJETS, ACCURACY MAGNIFIERS, etc.

You could put those in the backpack.

I really want to test v25 to see your ideeas

[DoxaLogos]

Ugh.. I keep checking back on this on steam periodically to see if beta test is open and I keep missing it   I really enjoyed the original and would love to help playtest.

[st3fan21]

Hey everyone,

I m testing out the new v25.

And i just played Xenonauts 1 a little, and i realised weapons had reaction modifiers (pistols and shotguns could reaction fire faster/easier compared to other weapons)

In Xenonauts 2 this does not exist. I did not realise this before, i just assumed it was there.

Any reason for this?