Milestone 1 Experimental Released (Closed Beta)

[Chris]

Milestone 1 Experimental has now been released on Steam and GOG. Note that this build is only available on our Experimental branch (unless you're part of our Steam Playtest, in which case you don't have to change branches at all!) so you'll need to switch over to get this update (instructions on how to do that here). If you want to continue your previous playthrough on V27, please switch to the Experimental Legacy branch.

As the name implies, this build will eventually become our Early Access launch build. I believe our publishers are announcing our Early Access launch date on Monday next week, so keep your eyes out for that if you don't already own the game!

Anyway, this build isn't yet finished and we'll continue to patch in content (notably updated writing, some new research art, and hopefully a few new maps for the Cleaner missions) as we approach Early Access. As usual, we'll also be working hard on fixing any bugs that people find.

If you do play the game, we'd also appreciate general gameplay feedback on the difficulty curve in the Milestone 1 Balance Thread. Right now it's hard to know if people aren't talking about the balance much because the difficulty curve is pretty good, or because they're just not posting feedback. There's still time to tweak the numbers to smooth out any issues in the difficulty curve prior to our Early Access launch.

Summary:

• Game Cut-Off: the game now cuts off after 180 days. We've done this to keep the amount of content we need to polish for the Early Access launch to a manageable amount, and the remaining content will be added back in Early Access once it's been polished to a similar standard (if you really want to play it before then, V27 is available on the legacy branches and doesn't have this cap).
• UFO speeds: UFOs will now change speed at semi-random intervals when flying around on the Geoscape. This means it's no longer binary whether an interceptor can catch a UFO or not; in general I've made the Angel less reliable at catching Observers and later UFOs but it still has a chance of doing so.
• Targeting Modes: we've added a new targetting mode for grenades and medikits which snaps to tiles, rather than whatever 3D object is under the mouse. This should make it much easier to target the intended object with these weapons.
• Memory Leak fixes: we've fixed a number of memory leaks in the game, which should improve performance in long play sessions.
• Xenopedia Updates: the entire tech tree for the playable 180 days will have research text when we launch into Early Access. I've made a decent start on this already but we'll continue to patch it in as we do hotfixes. 
• Translation: we're still waiting for some words to come back from our translators, but next week we should be able to patch in the updated translation files so people can experience the game in German, Spanish, French, Korean, Polish, Portuguese, Russian or Chinese.

Control Changes:

• Strategy - on the Aircraft screen, you can now rotate soldiers while you arrange them in the dropship. RMB click will rotate a soldier 90 degrees, and you can use Q/E to rotate soldiers 90 degrees in a particular direction.
• Strategy - quantity arrows in various places (stores screen, hiring scientists / engineers, etc) now support RMB / Ctrl+Click to add 10 and max quantity respectively. You can also click the number itself and enter a quantity.
• Strategy - on the Soldier Equip screen, RMB clicking a soldier in the soldier list will unassign them from the dropship.
• Ground Combat - RMB clicking now deselects grenade throw mode if you have it active.

Changelog - Strategy

• A few minor tweaks to the tech tree. Stealth Armour is now unlocked a tier earlier, coming off Alien Electronics in the Observer. It now has less Armour as a result.
• Also, there's now an engineering upgrade project for the Medical Center that is unlocked from the Tissue Regeneration project.
• By default the game is now muted when it's not selected (which only happens if you're playing in a window). You can disable this in the options if you want.
• Base structures can no longer be disabled, as this didn't have much functionality and means we can make the Power system less irritating and fussy.
• Interceptor squadrons now display a unique icon for each aircraft present in the squadron.
• If a UFO is detected by the Quantum Decoder, the crash site now also displays the species of the UFO.
• Attribute tooltips on the Soldier Equip screen now provide both a description of the stat, and show any modifiers affecting the current soldier.
• If you try to launch an empty dropship at a mission site, it now takes you to the Soldier Equip screen and lets you assign more soldiers rather than blocking the launch.
• The sort order on Soldier screen has been updated, so soldiers who cannot be used because they are wounded or in transit are sorted to the bottom of the list.
• Fixed some issues where units with lots of kills could get more than the +2 attribute cap after a battle.
• Fixed issues in Geoscape base placement when you scroll the map left / right and part of the radar preview circles disappear.
• Fixed a minor issue with AC aircraft labels flickering when in motion
• Fixed an issue where AC missiles were not making an impact sound.

Changelog - Tactical Combat

• Cleaner Soldiers (the guys with gas masks) no longer spawn in Cleaner Cells, which makes the missions a bit easier. They only appear as reinforcements.
• Weapons that can take multiple ammo types (e.g. HEVY) now show their loaded ammo type in the tactical UI.
• Stun damage is now shown as a small yellow line on the HP bar on the soldier minitabs at the top of the screen.
• Reloading a weapon no longer changes the order of the fire mode tiles in the tactical UI.
• If the currently selected soldier in tactical combat is killed during the enemy turn, the game now selects a new soldier at the start of the player turn. 
• The gibbed corpse items of gibbed units no longer still recover the corresponding undamaged corpse at the end of battle.
• Cleaner Data items now only cost 1TU to pick up from the ground, rather than 10TU.
• Fixed Servitors bringing dead aliens back to life with their healing ray.
• Fixed force fire mode being "sticky" rather than correctly responding to the key being held.
• Fixed grenades clipping the edges of buildings / cliffs even when they display a 100% hit chance.
• Fixed an issue where throwing a grenade at a mutli-tile object could sometimes allow the grenade to pass right through it.
• Fixed items dropped on the ground not displaying their item model after loading a save.
• Fixed explosives that inflict no damage (e.g. smoke grenades) destroying items that have been dropped on the ground.
• Fixed an issue where it was possible to drop below 0TU if you loaded your soldier with absurd amounts of gear on the strategy layer. This prevented the soldier from dropping any of the gear on the tactical layer, causing them to be stuck.
• Fixed an issue where the TU cost for moving an item in the inventory could get zeroed out if you moved it twice.