V25.3 Experimental Released (Closed Beta)

[Chris]

This hotfix is primarily a balance patch for 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 V25.2 playthrough then please switch over to the Experimental Legacy branch (just called "Legacy" branch on Playtest).

Much of Goldhawk is currently on holiday, so we've not been able to fix any of the bugs reported in V25.2 that require attention from the programmers. Therefore don't worry about re-reporting bugs that you reported in V25.2 and aren't fixed - we'll hopefully be able to fix them in January!

Balance / Gameplay Changes:

• Strategy:
  • You start with 25 Panic in each region rather than 50 Panic (this indirectly increases your income too).
  • UFOs now generate about 20% less Panic as they fly around the Geoscape.
  • Almost doubled the repair speed of interceptors
  • Before day 90, Destroyers on Retaliation missions (i.e. attacking your base) now do not spawn with Fighter escorts.
  • Added Defender Armour project to the starting Xenopedia.
  • Fixed a bug where you could end up with extra Steel Plates even after upgrading to Alloy Plates.
• Tactical Combat:
  • Xenonaut soldiers can now only deploy within the Access Lift during a Xenonaut Base defence mission.
  • Updated the enemies present in the Cleaner Base mission so they are a bit more of a threat to well-armoured soldiers.
  • The objective desks in the Cleaner Intel mission are no longer crushable.
  • The Stealthsuit now has the Cloaking Field ability (works like the Wraith version; +2 Defence per tile of range from shooter) rather than a flat +20 Defence
  • MARS rocket launcher blast radius reduced from 4 tiles to 3 tiles, and damage reduced from 40 to 36.
  • Combat Shield has bonus armour reduced from 20 to 16, and Assault Shield reduced from 35 to 28.
  • Combat Knife has damage reduced from 40 to 26, and weight reduced from 15 to 10. Armour Destruction increased from 0 to 2.
  • Fixed an issue where advanced Shotguns would gain rather than lose accuracy for one tile beyond their maximum range.

Visual / Interface Changes:

• Fixed a lot of issues with text and tooltips in various places in the game.
• Geoscape popups now have open / close sounds again.
• Adjacency effects are now displayed in more intuitive way (showing the total value of one adjacency link).
• Items in the tactical vests of the default loadouts are now arranged in a more aesthetically pleasing manner.
• Fixed another missing move path tile.
• Fixed a bright pink error texture in the Cleaner Intel mission, and various other visual fixes to the walls etc.
• The interactive desks in the Cleaner Intel mission now correctly remove the glow effect from all objects when interacted with.
• Set the hotkey for Air Combat afterburners to be F, as previous key was clashing with a camera scroll key.
• Added a proper image for the Steel Plates soldier armour module.

[Emily_F]

Awesome thanks Chris. Out of interest, does researching live aliens and cleaners do anything yet?

[asdfcyber]

@Chris are you sure v25.2 saves are incompatible? I edited the version info of one and it all seems to load and run fine

[Alienkiller]

Best Christmas Present to the Holidays. Thanks!

[Chris]

1 hour ago, asdfcyber said:

@Chris are you sure v25.2 saves are incompatible? I edited the version info of one and it all seems to load and run fine

The game will always load saves if you edit the config files so it thinks the saves are compatible, but the game saves a bunch of data into the campaign at the start of the game. At best it means a lot of the changes won't register in a new campaign, and at worst it means the campaign will be looking for data that doesn't exist.

We specifically disable compatibility to stop people reporting bugs that aren't actually bugs, and are just broken campaigns. We had quite a bit of wasted developer time investigating that sort of thing earlier in development.

[asdfcyber]

31 minutes ago, Chris said:

We specifically disable compatibility to stop people reporting bugs that aren't actually bugs, and are just broken campaigns. We had quite a bit of wasted developer time investigating that sort of thing earlier in development.

I understand that, but as far as I can tell the only problem is that I still have some steel plates. All other changes work, and the logs show no errors from loading an older save. Do you mind if I continue my v25.2 campaign in v25.3? Because I can restart, but it'll take another 10h or so to get to my current point.

[Chris]

If you must - but please flag up that you're doing this in any bug report. It just means if anything seems at all weird about the bugs you're encountering (at least the data-driven ones), we won't bother looking into it.