V25.2 Experimental Released (Closed Beta)

[Chris]

This hotfix addresses several more issues discovered within V25. You'll need to be part of our Steam Playtest or on the Experimental Branch to access the build. This update does break saves so if you want to continue your V25.1b playthrough then please switch over to the Experimental Legacy branch (just called "Legacy" branch on Playtest).

Just a quick note to say thanks to all the new testers who have given us their thoughts on the game and reported bugs, we've been able to make a lot of changes in the past couple of days with your help. Many of them are quite minor changes but the layers of polish really start to add up over time.

This may be be our last major hotfix this year, as both of our programmers are now on their Christmas holidays and won't be returning until the start of January, although I'll still be working for a few days yet so I can continue to improve balance and fix any asset-related bugs (and to be honest that's most of them these days). But please continue to post up bugs and provide feeback so we know what we need to work on when we're back!

Bugfixes:

• Fixed a crash if you tried to produce the Vehicle Gauss Weapons engineering project.
• Fixed newly constructed interceptors not being equipped with armour.
• Fixed an issue where alien abilities did not function after loading a tactical save (including causing the Wraith accuracy penalty to be permanently active).
• Fixed the player incorrectly getting a massive +hit bonus against the Sebillians as a result of their poor eyesight.
• Fixed Sectons being able to fire their weapons significantly beyond their usual range, which was causing 0 damage on hits due to damage dropoff.

Balance / Gameplay Changes:

• Servitors no longer self-heal.
• Sentry Guns can no longer use the MARS Cannon or MARS Rocket weapons, and are now correctly limited to infantry LMGs.
• The first Observer UFO has been pushed back one UFO wave. The crew of Observers is now a mix of Soldiers with magnetic weapons, and Elites with plasma weapons (previously it was all Elites with plasmas, which was too much of a difficulty spike).
• The minimum sell price of items has been increased from 25% to 40% of their original price.
• Each recovered abduction tube now correctly grants 5 Alloys and 3 Alenium. Previously it gave one or the other.
• Wraiths no longer have grenades, as these appeared to be causing crashes. We'll fix this issue in the next major build and return the grenades afterwards.
• The range bonus on the MARS Cannon was far too high before, and it has now been reduced to be in line with other weapons.
• There's now a deployment region in the starting room of the Cleaner Base.
• Sentry Guns can no longer gain medals.
• The missiles in the hangars in the Xenonaut Base defence missions now explode on destruction.

Interface / Visual Updates:

• There's some new art for the Cleaner Headquarters research project.
• Attempted to fix the Farm hedgerows being visually messed up.
• The Geoscape pop-up that provides information on ground combat missions now contains a line for "Mission Type"
• The Toogle Roof button in the tactical UI should no longer disappear when toggled on in some instances
• The Quickload key (F9) will now hire only the most recent Quicksave (F5) from the current campaign, rather than the most recent save from the current campaign.
• The scientists / engineer hire screens no longer automatically hire selected staff if you navigate away from the screen without pressing the Hire button.
• Fixed a number of incorrect tooltips, and added several new tooltips to the Engineering screen.
• Updated the tooltips / engineering project descriptions for various advanced soldier modules so it's a bit more obvious what they do
• Updated the research project descriptions for alien interrogations
• Updated cliffs so that their sides should not z-fight.

[Alienkiller]

Thanks Chris for the last major Update this year. 

Sounds good, that some more R & D Descriptions come in and that the Newbies have found Bugs what we older Main-Testers have overseen or not noticed.

Thanks to them too that the Game get better with their showup from Bugfix- and Feature-Issues. Keep up the good work Devs and it´s good to have fresh Blood which help to find Issues in the existing and important come-in Features as well as Bugs.