Xenonauts 2 June 2023 Update!

[Chris]

This month has been extremely busy for us, as we announced our Early Access launch date as July 18th - which is only two weeks away now, so I'll keep this update brief as I've got a lot to be working on!

Playtesting:
If you already have access to Xenonauts 2, either as a Kickstarter backer or as part of our Steam Playtest group - now would be a great time to play the game and let us know your thoughts. The content will be the same as for the Early Access launch, but there's still time for us to fix bugs and make minor balance tweaks to make launch day a bit smoother!

New Content:
We've obviously been fixing a lot of bugs and adding small polish features to the game - the Early Access build has already been hotfixed 11 times, and we'll continue this right up to release (this includes finally fixing the long-standing memory leaks in the game). However, we've been adding more content too.

I've spent significant amounts of time on the research reports over the last couple of months, which means almost every research project in the game now has text and art (which is a LOT of projects). We've also added art for several engineering projects that previously did not have them.

In terms of gameplay, we've set UFOs up to have variable Geoscape speeds so it's not always as simple as "this type of interceptor always can / cannot catch this type of UFO", improved the air combat autoresolve, and also set the UFOs up to have different interior variants so crash sites don't play out the same every time. We've also rewritten the code for targetting with grenades and medikits as it was previously very fiddly, and they now snap to tiles instead which is much cleaner.

Finally, we've continued to work on the translations for the game. There's a lot of UI in the game so this continues to be a bit of a pain, but it's obviously an important thing to get right.

Summary:
That's pretty much everything. Our plans for this month aren't hugely surprising - we're going to be frantically fixing bugs and adding polish prior to release, and the two weeks after release are likely to involve frantically fixing bugs that we didn't even know existed prior to launch!

Still, it's an exciting (and exhausting) time for everyone on the dev team, so hopefully we'll see some of you around for our launch on the 18th!

[Unkim]

Great job! I hope and wish an awesome early access launch for the whole team. You guys definitely deserve it!

[Alienkiller]

There I agree with You Unkim. Esp. with the big Refits / Reworks and Upgrades which the Game get during it´s Development-Stages the last Years, where the Beta-Testers from the first Day get desperate here & there sometimes.

Edited July 3, 2023 by Alienkiller

[CaptainSPrice]

Sorry @Chris- I don't had much time lately to do testing, but i am planning on doing Commander+Ironman Difficulty + No Damage Run - ofcourse it is gonna be possible to record and post videos on youtube?

[Chris]

3 hours ago, CaptainSPrice said:

Sorry @Chris- I don't had much time lately to do testing, but i am planning on doing Commander+Ironman Difficulty + No Damage Run - ofcourse it is gonna be possible to record and post videos on youtube?

No, please don't stream the game or post videos about it yet - it's under embargo until launch on the 18th July.  You can stream it as much as you like after that!

[CaptainSPrice]

15 hours ago, Chris said:

No, please don't stream the game or post videos about it yet - it's under embargo until launch on the 18th July.  You can stream it as much as you like after that!

I guess you gonna be the first one watching my gameplay and literally nerfing everything that I abuse/exploit xD.

[Alienkiller]

CaptainSPrice, the Reason why you don´t have to make an Let´s Play or similar is very easy: The Publisher have forbidden that, until they give an OK to make Let´s Plays etc.

And everyone which ignore that flys out.

[CaptainSPrice]

@Chris @Alienkiller both of you are aliens. We are in the forum called Early Access.......... It's obvious i am talking about after release, not before. Did i say anything about streaming/recording right now?

[CompoTheSmoggie]

@Chris

Loving the update has I have had a kind of hiatus from the game with other things going on.

Took the game up to 180 days and I was kinda disappointed it stopped and I couldn't advance any further with any research and the bombers and destroyers where the only last kind of UFO's I came up against as well as not getting the Pegasus transport and Gemini interceptors and the advanced weapons that go with it.

Don't take the word 'disappointment' as a negative, the fact I wanted to play on. I assure you that's a huge positive sign.

I've then read up on the development updates and all I can say... ROLL ON THE 18TH!

Can you make the official release of the game 'open ended' though? You know, if you don't want to commit to the final mission and want to crack on with research, production and levelling up your soldiers? I think in one playthrough on version 22 or in the dim in distant past last year, I think I'd made it to day 480 something or another and had Colossus suits in production and the game ended whilst I was owning battleships with my Gemini interceptors.

I saw you'd added orbital bombardment which irks the continents off and after losing 2 of them, the game ends. it's all well and good if you can get the missions or down UFO's to counter this, but when the supply of UFO's end, the end is inevitable and you're forced to end the game with the final mission.

Also, will the game be rolled out so modders can change it? I know there was a huge Xenonauts community producing such as the likes of the X Division mod and various different gun models.

I'd love to see some Warsaw Pact, US and UK weapon mods amongst the weaponry as well as a few wild cards like the French Famas, US M107/M82A1 anti-material rifle, German HK MP5, Croatian VHSD2 etc. It was suit me down to ground if I could arm my soldiers in Russia with the likes of MP443's, AK-24's, AK-47's, RPK's and Dragunovs as well as in the UK, Glock17's /Brownings, M4 Super 90 Shotgun, L86A3 Rifle, L22A2 Carbine, L86A2 LSW, L129A1 Sharpshooter, FN Minimi LMG and the M72 LAW (instead of a grenade launcher). I see you already have a M249 SAW and L115A3 Sniper Rifle.

Mind, the L129A1 would be a sniper rifle with a shorter shooting distance for instance. The L86A2 being a kind of assault rifle with a longer shooting distance. Likewise, the L22A2 being a kind of SMG kind of weapon with a shorter distance than the L85A2.

A single shot sniper rifle like a M82A1 anti-material rifle which as the power of a grenade launcher and same range of a sniper rifle would be good for taking out armooured targets.

Other than that, maybe I've spawned an idea for a future modder to come up with an idea around that instead of further difficulty and getting the game out and Accelerated, Gauss and Plasma weapons kind of render basic start-of-the-game weapons redundant after a while, but those of us who are common-day weapon fanatics, madebe there's some code we could alter so we can get the perfomance of Plasma weapons with basic weapons? Just an idea.

Anyway, crack on getting the completed game out to use and I look forway to playing the finished product that all of us Kickstarters have waiting eagerly for.

Edited July 6, 2023 by CompoTheSmoggie

[Chris]

24 minutes ago, CompoTheSmoggie said:

@Chris

Loving the update has I have had a kind of hiatus from the game with other things going on.

Took the game up to 180 days and I was kinda disappointed it stopped and I couldn't advance any further with any research and the bombers and destroyers where the only last kind of UFO's I came up against as well as not getting the Pegasus transport and Gemini interceptors and the advanced weapons that go with it.

Don't take the word 'disappointment' as a negative, the fact I wanted to play on. I assure you that's a huge positive sign.

I've then read up on the development updates and all I can say... ROLL ON THE 18TH!

Can you make the official release of the game 'open ended' though? You know, if you don't want to commit to the final mission and want to crack on with research, production and levelling up your soldiers? I think in one playthrough on version 22 or in the dim in distant past last year, I think I'd made it to day 480 something or another and had Colossus suits in production and the game ended whilst I was owning battleships with my Gemini interceptors.

I saw you'd added orbital bombardment which irks the continents off and after losing 2 of them, the game ends. it's all well and good if you can get the missions or down UFO's to counter this, but when the supply of UFO's end, the end is inevitable and you're forced to end the game with the final mission.

Also, will the game be rolled out so modders can change it? I know there was a huge Xenonauts community producing such as the likes of the X Division mod and various different gun models.

I'd love to see some Warsaw Pact, US and UK weapon mods amongst the weaponry as well as a few wild cards like the French Famas, US M107/M82A1 anti-material rifle, German HK MP5, Croatian VHSD2 etc. It was suit me down to ground if I could arm my soldiers in Russia with the likes of MP443's, AK-24's, AK-47's, RPK's and Dragunovs as well as in the UK, Glock17's /Brownings, M4 Super 90 Shotgun, L86A3 Rifle, L22A2 Carbine, L86A2 LSW, L129A1 Sharpshooter, FN Minimi LMG and the M72 LAW (instead of a grenade launcher). I see you already have a M249 SAW and L115A3 Sniper Rifle.

Mind, the L129A1 would be a sniper rifle with a shorter shooting distance for instance. The L86A2 being a kind of assault rifle with a longer shooting distance. Likewise, the L22A2 being a kind of SMG kind of weapon with a shorter distance than the L85A2.

A single shot sniper rifle like a M82A1 anti-material rifle which as the power of a grenade launcher and same range of a sniper rifle would be good for taking out armooured targets.

Other than that, maybe I've spawned an idea for a future modder to come up with an idea around that instead of further difficulty and getting the game out and Accelerated, Gauss and Plasma weapons kind of render basic start-of-the-game weapons redundant after a while, but those of us who are common-day weapon fanatics, madebe there's some code we could alter so we can get the perfomance of Plasma weapons with basic weapons? Just an idea.

Anyway, crack on getting the completed game out to use and I look forway to playing the finished product that all of us Kickstarters have waiting eagerly for.

Hi - thanks for your thoughts, I’m glad to hear the game left you wanting more!

Did you encounter Observer UFOs and Abductor UFOs in the game? They should have been flying around for a 2-3 months before the end of the game.

Yeah, there will be options to turn off (or turn down) the orbital bombardment if you don’t want that time pressure at the end game.

Hopefully we’ll have nodding tools relatively soon into Early Access too, but I can’t make any promises on that front quite yet.