Milestone 2 Consolidated Patch Notes

[Chris]

These are the consolidated patch notes for all the improvements we've made in the various versions of Milestone 2, which is currently available on the Experimental branch and will be released onto the standard branches next week.

We've made a LOT of changes to the game, but I'll highlight the most important improvements here with a little developer commentary!

Cleaner / Early Mission Rework:
A lot of players mentioned that the pacing in Milestone 1 felt off. Many people liked the addition of the Cleaners, but felt they were barely involved in the game. They didn't feel threatening, and their whole storyline could be completed in as little as two or three missions. This contributed to an overall feeling of being rushed through the game content.

• We've extended the playable time to 200 days by adding additional content to the beginning of the game. Most of this is related to the Cleaners, with a number of extra tactical missions and mission types being added to make the most of the unique opportunities provided by having an alien-aligned human faction in the game.
• The storyline of the game has been rewritten to reflect this. We've returned the player to being a silent protaganist, and introduced The General (the predecessor of the Commander) as antagonistic character that appears in the tutorial and the first mission. The early game now has a bit more of a narrative punch than it did previously, and it's worth replaying the tutorial if you're interested in the lore.
• The entirely new mission types include Rescue Soldiers, Convoy Ambush and Rescue VIP, but in general we've created a larger pool of Cleaner missions (with more map variants) that can be randomly chosen. You'll now spend more time fighting the Cleaners, but there should be enough variety that it does not become boring or repetitive!

Panic & Funding Rebalance:
On harder difficulty settings, Milestone 1 had an issue where the player was forced to spend a large amount of their income building new bases and aircraft right from the very beginning of the game - otherwise Panic would rapidly get out of control, either causing you to lose the game directly or causing your funding to drop significantly. There was therefore only one "correct" way to play the strategy layer, which made the game less fun.

• We've made several changes that give players more initial flexibility. Panic now drops by 10% per region at the end of each month, and funding is now no longer affected by Panic level (provided you haven't lost the region). Of course, expanding early is still a very strong strategy - but you can now experiment with other options too. 

Probe UFO:
As the "Cleaner phase" at the start of the game is now quite a lot longer, we had to push back the point where the Scout UFO began to spawn. This meant we needed to add a new UFO to the early game that didn't produce crash sites or unlock too much advanced technology. 

• The new unmanned Probe UFO appears in the very early stages of the game. This small UFO does not create crash sites, but instead creates wreckage that awards a small amount of Alloys when shot down. Because it is relatively weak, we also use it as an early-game escort craft once larger UFOs start to appear.

Aircraft Payload System & Air Combat:
In Xenonauts 2 we want the aircraft equipment loadouts to be more varied and flexible than they were in Xenonauts 1, giving the player more space to customise their aircraft to fight in different ways.

• Interceptors no longer have fixed weapon slots that can only take particular types of weapons. Instead, they can now carry a much wider variety of weapons and equipment - but they have to respect a total Payload limit (i.e. equipment weight).
• There's also been a significant amount of balancing work done on the air combat itself, making the difficulty curve of the invasion fairer and making the air combat battles themselves more engaging.

"Heavy" Soldier Armour Variants:
One of the less cool things in Milestone 1 was that you could research advanced new armour types and then discover that many of your soldiers just weren't strong enough to use it (the Guardian was the worst offender here). Conversely, stronger soldiers had little opportunity to carry heavier armour beyond equipping the armour plate module (which filled backpack space).

• Each type of soldier armour in the game now has a "heavy" variant that is enabled by a checkbox. This provides extra armour, but also adds extra weight (and usually reduces Accuracy slightly). This gives the player more choice when equipping their soldiers, and allowed us to consolidate the starting Tactical Suit / Defender Armour into a single item.

Civilian AI Improvements:
Players frequently complained about how incredibly dumb / suicidal the civilians were in Milestone 1, so we decided to fix this.

• We fixed several bugs that were interfering with the AI (which should make all AI units a bit more effective) and then we worked on the civilian AI specifically, to make them behave in a more realistic manner. This work also lays the foundations for further AI upgrades in Milestone 3.

CHANGELOG - Gameplay Changes:

• Economy: 
  • Cash can now go negative on the strategy layer due to upkeep / wage costs. If you have negative funds after receiving your monthly income for two consecutive months, you lose the game.
  • Funding is no longer dependent on Panic level (unless the region is actually lost).
  • The starting base has one less Hangar and one less Angel interceptor.
  • Aircraft are slightly more expensive to build, and you now have to pay for their equipment items indvidually.
  • Cost for constructing new bases has been reduced from $750k to $500k.
  • Soldier cost increased from $10k to $20k.
  • Upkeep on base structures and aircraft increased by 50%.
  • Upkeep costs for upgraded buildings (e.g. Alenium Generators) reduced to match those of their basic equivalent.
  • Slightly updated the construction cost and sell prices of all manufactured soldier weapons. Shotguns and Rifles are now slightly cheaper, Gauss weapons are more expensive, and Lasers & Gauss weapons have higher starting sale prices.
• Alien Invasion: 
  • Panic now falls by 10% of the current total in each region at the end of the month.
  • Shooting down a UFO now reduces Panic by -1, rather than -2.
  • The Cleaner Base no longer continually spawns Panic-raising anomalies on the Geoscape until destroyed. Instead, the Cleaners generate regular tactical missions on the Geoscape that will raise Panic if you do not complete them (these stop when the Cleaner Base is destroyed).
  • Most alien activity now occurs a couple of weeks later than it did in Milestone 1, as this makes space for the extra Cleaner missions. There's a couple of extra early-game research projects to fill this space.
  • The new Probe UFO is the first type of UFO to spawn. It is unmanned and so does not generate crash sites, and is weak enough that even a basic Angel can take it down relatively easily. Because the player only starts with one Angel and missiles / torpedoes now need to be researched, Scout UFOs are quite a lot more dangerous than they were in Milestone 1.
• Air Combat:
  • All aircraft equipment now has to be built individually for your aircraft, rather than being unlocked as a global upgrade.
  • Most weapon damage values have been changed to take into account the new slot system on the interceptors.
  • Updated the stats on most UFOs and updated their weapon loadouts, including adding a new "hunter-killer missile" weapon to some types of UFO. 
  • Missiles and Torpedoes are no longer starting items and need to be researched.
  • Added two new equippable items for aircraft - Armour and Fuel Pods.
  • The UFO health balancing system that would occur based on the number of aircraft in your squadron has now been disabled, as it seemed too easy to exploit.
  • Damage dealt by UFOs is now modified by the difficulty setting, ranging from 80% of normal on Recruit to 120% of normal on Commander.
  • The autoresolve damage of certain weapons is now reduced against targets that can evasive roll, as the autoresolve formula could generate some strange results where powerful but easily dodged weapons were involved.
  • All UFOs now use a dynamic battlefield in the air combat, where it moves based on the position of the main UFO. This prevents them flying off the map entirely.
  • When an interceptor runs out of fuel and chooses to retreat from combat, it now does the updated Retreat action where it escapes after 3 seconds (rather than the old retreat action where they need to fly to the edge of the map).
• Heavy Armour: 
  • All soldier armours now have a "Heavy Armour" checkbox that increases the protection offered at the cost of additional weight and a small Accuracy reduction.
  • Defender Armour has been removed, as it is now the heavy variant of the starting Tactical Armour.
  • Armour Plate modules have been removed, as this new system makes them redundant.
• Tech Tree:
  • Added a number of new projects related to the new content in this patch.
  • All research projects should now have research text, and various existing projects have been edited to reflect the updated story.
  • Autopsies are no longer autocomplete missions, and can be researched after completing Xenobiology.
  • Completing an autopsy research unlocks "Corpse Analysis" engineering projects for that alien species. This consumes corpses to provide a 10% and eventually a 20% damage bonus against that type of alien.
  • Assault Shield upgrade project has been moved earlier in the tech tree, and now unlocks at a similar time to Guardian armour.
• Weapons & Equipment:
  • Modules can now be moved around inside the backpack, and dropped / picked up from the ground in battle.
  • Ammo loaded into weapons now has weight. We have therefore also reduced the weight of all weapons by roughly the weight of their default ammo clip.
  • Rebreather module added as a starting item. This makes units smoke immune.
  • Stun Baton is now a starting item.
  • Stun Baton and Combat Knife are now 3x1 items rather than 3x2.
  • Machinegun ammo is now 2x1 rather than 1x1.
  • Machineguns now require 51% TU to fire the 3-round burst, not 50%.
  • HEVY now uses %-based fire modes, like all other weapon types.
  • HEVY has been reduced in weight.
  • HEVY grenades no longer inflict reduced damage if they miss the target and detonate beyond the maximum range of the gun.
  • HEVY Smoke Rounds no longer destroy enemy armour.
  • Added unique artwork for the HEVY Alenium / Fusion grenades.
  • Added unique artwork for all the different Gauss weapon ammo magazines
• Tactical Combat:
  • Civilian AI has been updated to make them less suicidal.
  • Crouching now provides a 10% Accuracy bonus, but only 10% defensive bonus (down from 20%).
  • Units have their Accuracy reduced by 0.25% for each 1% of missing Health. This also includes soldiers who are sent into battle not fully healed!
  • Stun Damage now heals more quickly (the greater of 25% of current Stun HP, or 5 HP).
  • On Xenonaut Base Defence missions, the player is now given vision on all alien units after 10 turns.
  • Time Units costs for fire modes now have a minimum of 1 Time Unit, as hugely overloaded soldiers were able to fire their weapons an unlimited number of times.
  • Time Units are no longer refunded if an overweight soldier drops an item to reduce their TU penalty, as this permitted an exploit where units could use multiple 51%+ TU actions per turn. However, overweight TU penalties are only applied when you close the inventory screen so you're free to shuffle items about as long as the weight is at acceptable limits when you close the screen.
  • Fleeing units now drop their Secondary weapon in addition to their Primary.
  • Berserking will now always choose a random inanimate object as a target if no alien is nearby, and the soldier may recieve some bonus TU that allows them to fire more than normal if they berserk.
  • Laser weapons now have significantly reduced recoil compared to kinetic weapons for flavour reasons.
  • Grenades now always damage shields if the unit carring the shield is in the blast radius.
  • Shields will offer protection from grenade damage, but only if they're facing towards the tile where the grenade exploded.
  • Jetpack move costs have been increased slightly, which means soldiers will now only use the jetpack if they cannot walk the path instead.
  • Increased the damage multiplier required to gib units with a normal attack from 2x their maximum health to 2.5x their max health.
  • Accuracy of Rifle burst fire modes has been increased from 40 to 45.
• Tactical Aliens:
  • Secton Psionic Triangulation now triggers when Sectons are near Psyons, rather than near other Sectons. This means they're less deadly if you encounter them in a group in early missions but equally threatening once Psyons start appearing.
  • Reapers now have 70TU (from 60) and 75 Reflexes (from 50).
  • Sebillian Bravery increased to 70 (from 50).
  • Wraith Strength reduced to 55 (from 60) and Bravery increased to 60 (from 50).
  • Servitor weapon has been reduced from 70 Suppression to 30 Suppression.
  • Increased alien HP to counterbalance the corpse analysis damage increase. Early-game aliens have no increase, mid-game aliens get +10% HP, and late-game aliens get +20% HP.

Usability / Visual Changes:

• Strategy:
  • The icon for the Skyhawk dropship has been updated so it doesn't look like it is flying backwards.
  • Mission briefings now accurately display the turn limits / reinforcement timers for timed missions, even when this value is modified by the difficulty setting.
  • If you have multiple soldiers selected on the Soldier screen, clicking either the Loadout dropdown or Role dropdown will attempt to assign the new value to all selected soldiers.
  • The soldier portrait is now shown on hover on the Soldier screen soldier list.
  • On the Soldier Equip screen, if you drag an item out of a slot and drop it into empty space, it now disappears and returns to the base stores rather than snapping back to its previous location.
  • The "Items Arrived" popup will now split the list by base if items simultaneously arrive at multiple bases.
  • The Damage value for weapons on their tooltip is now modified by the ammo loaded (e.g. the HEVY shows 0 damage if loaded with smoke rounds).
  • The equipment selection menus on the Aircraft screen have been updated so they size themselves dynamically, which means they can display more weapons without having issues.
  • The "Commence Research" button on the Research screen is now visually disabled if you have no research available.
  • There's now a +5 Turn mission timer option for people who wanted more than +3 but less than +99.
• Tactical Soldier Inventory:
  • You can now scroll through soldiers using the left / right arrows, or by pressing the number hotkeys.
  • Scrolling past a vehicle without an inventory (e.g. MARS) now simply skips past it, rather than closing the inventory screen.
  • Added a "Reset Item Moves" button that resets all item moves and refunds all TU spent.
  • Added a new line that shows the current TU of the soldier.
  • Improved the way items stack when dropped on the ground (usually by a dead combatant).
• Tactical:
  • Added a 3D model for a military officer. One variant of this is used for The General in the ATLAS Base mission, while another is used for the Cleaner Leaders on VIP Elimination missions.
  • Units will now automatically path to the intended location if using a melee weapon or placing C4 from more than one tile away.
  • Updated the Combat Shield animations so it is held straight (especially when crouching).
  • Updated the human Pistol animations, making it more obvious that the unit is armed with a pistol rather than being unarmed.
  • Move paths for jetpack-equipped soldiers now display properly.
  • Fixed various issues with the TU reserve system (which can be accessed by right-clicking the various weapon fire modes).
  • The orange TU reserve overlay is now shown on the soldier minitabs at the top of the screen when TU are being reserved by a soldier.
  • Combat Shields now play an appropriate impact sound if hit by enemy fire, and a destruction sound if destroyed. They also play a spark visuel effect if they absorb all the damage, rather than a blood splatter.
  • C4 now shows its blast radius once laid if you hover over the detonator, and will display a "Are you sure?" popup if you try to detonate it with a unit in the blast radius.
  • Using Tab or Next Soldier to cycle through your soldiers now works correctly with soldier number 10 (who was previously being placed last).
  • The combat camera zoom now switches between five preset distances, and the alt+scrollwheel zoom shortcut should now work correctly.
  • The 3D models of dropped items are now placed within the tile to look like they are laying on the ground. Weapons in the hands of dead bodies are now also hidden (as those weapons are being shown as an item on the ground).
  • Throwing a grenade through a window now shatters it.
  • Healing stun damage with a medikit now displays "Stun: -X" rather than "Stun: X", as some people thought the medikit was causing stun damage.
  • Fixed several visual issues with the Alenium Generator objects in the Xenonaut Base defence missions.

Bugfixes:

• Strategy / General:
  • Fixed a cursor offset bug that could occur if you tried to switch Xenonauts 2 between multiple monitors with different screen resolutions.
  • Fixed various issues with the following achievements: First Contact, Counterfire, Unfriendly Fire, Welcome To Earth, Future Warfare.
  • Fixed surviving soldiers being labelled as "Wounded" rather than "Survived", and not showing a recovery time.
  • Fixed a bug where you could go overcapacity when hiring scientists / engineers if you had space free at a different base.
  • Fixed various visual issues with the hair / jaw of certain soldiers and the collars of certain types of armour.
  • Removed the "do you want to save?" popup on quit if the player is playing Iron Man mode.
  • Fixed an incorrect error message when trying to build the Gauss Blaster without completing Accelerated Cannon first.
  • Fixed the visual highlight when hovering over the names of unassigned wounded soldiers.
  • If you get the "You have some empty slots in the dropship!" message when trying to launch a dropship, clicking the Assign Soldiers button now leaves you on the assignment screen so you can do the assignment (previously it incorrectly used Auto-Fill and launched the dropship).
  • Time estimates for research / engineering projects that are not in progress should now always be consistent, as previously they could change by up to an hour (depending if you were closer to the start or end of the current hour).
  • Fixed a typo on the Xenonaut base defence mission briefing.
• Tactical Combat:
  • Fixed smoke and suppression damage incorrectly passing through undamaged solid walls or closed doors.
  • Fixed Combat Shields not functioning correctly or displaying correctly if picked up off the ground.
  • Fixed the Secton glowing eyes that indicate Psionic Triangulation being active not triggering correctly.
  • Fixed aliens and humans being revealed if they are stunned when the player does not have line of sight on them.
  • Fixed dead soldiers sometimes surviving even when the player has a 0% survival chance.
  • Fixed moving items around the inventory incorrectly not deducting TU in some cases.
  • Fixed units being able to shoot themselves when using Ctrl+Shift to preview move & shoot actions.
  • Fixed various issues that would occur when you pick up and drop corpse items, as sometimes the game was not properly reflecting the new location of the body (both visually and mechanically).
  • Fixed units not playing their death animation correctly if they are stunned, then revived, then stunned / killed again.
  • Fixed fleeing units dropping their weapons but their 3D model not updating to show they are now unarmed.
  • Fixed revived units still visually holding the weapon they were carrying when they were stunned, despite them being unarmed and the gun being on the floor.
  • Fixed HEVY soldiers incorrectly using 1-handed weapon animations if they switch to a pistol and then back to the HEVY.
  • Fixed the 3D models of items on the ground not being removed if an explosion destroys those items.
  • Fixed a misleading error message about uncrouching.
  • Fixed blood puddles not correctly hiding when you changed camera level.
  • Fixed camera incorrectly snapping to an alien the player cannot see going through a teleporter.
  • Fixed an issue where an unloaded weapon would display 0/0 ammo, rather than 0/X.
  • Fixed melee weapons causing the target to play their injury sound twice.
  • Fixed the player gaining 50 Alenium simply by visiting an Alien Base and aborting the mission.
  • Fixed hitbox issues with the main door on some of the larger UFOs (from Observer up).
  • Fixed an issue with the Observer UFO sometimes having invisible terrain objects near its front door.
  • Fixed destroyed doors in the Alien Base maps still showing the open / close door icon.
  • Fixed the Electroshock Rifle having the incorrect silhouette in the minitabs at the top of the screen.
  • Fixed melee attacks not causing units to rotate to face the attacker.
  • Fixed AI units that are able to crush objects by walking through them absolutely trashing the interior of their UFO / base as they patrol around.
  • Fixed teleporters triggering if you do not deliberately end your move on them.
  • Fixed the Flares not appearing for a soldier if you Tab to them after having a vehicle selected.
  • Camera Rotate buttons are no longer reversed, and now show the correct keyboard shortcut keybinds on the tooltip.
  • Fixed the click hitbox on the "Visible Enemy" head icons being too large.
  • Fixed there being a floating walkable tile in the air next to the caravans on the Desert maps.
  • The radar and other large props in the Xenonaut base (like base defence turrets) can no longer be walked inside once they'd taken enough damage.
  • Pressing C when a unit is in motion will correctly queue up a crouch icon (as if you clicked the Crouch button).
  • Fixed the generators in the Xenonaut base defence Generator Room not allowing units to path through them once destroyed.
  • Fixed the human Combat Shield jetpack animations so the shield doesn't clip through the body at a 90-degree angle when in flight.
  • Fixed an issue where the Cyberdrone frontal shield was not correctly being destroyed by explosives.
  • Fixed some issues with the dockyard warehouse rollerdoor being able to get into a broken state once opened.
  • Fixed the petrol station columns still being 100% blocking in their destroyed states.
  • Park trellises no longer block vision, as they're clearly transparent.
  • Fixed smoke tiles being visually duplicated (so looking much thicker) after loading a saved game.

[Conductiv]

love most of the stuff, am wondering why there was a need to add an offensive buff to crouching and lowering its defensive utility.

[Alienkiller]

You hadn´t good Buffs in the first Years of Testing. You only had a little Buff in Safety, but not in the Accuracy. That´s an Point, where the Dev-Team begunn to Work on in the last time (incl. the Milestone-Versions). Means it´s not final and here & there will come more Changes, Reworks, Refits and Upgrades with more new Content / Features.

[gG-Unknown]

On 11/26/2023 at 12:24 PM, Conductiv said:

love most of the stuff, am wondering why there was a need to add an offensive buff to crouching and lowering its defensive utility.

Defensive AND Offensive buff for all weapons is questionable design. It means, player is forced to knee at the end of every round with  every soldier.

If you remove knee option and  remove 4  TU points and add 10% acc and defence to every soldier. Result of battle will be the same. That is  sad.

 

It would be  better add acc buff by knee only for a Bipod  type of weapon - mg, sniper.

Also, knee in melee should get de-buff !  For obvious reason, knee is less mobile and submissive  position. So when you meet Reaper kneeling well, ...

Expanding this mechanic:  certain melee attacks  can throw opponent   to kneeling state so attacker gets a bonus in subsequent beating.

Result is, knee is option how to get a bonus, sometimes. But is no longer mandatory.

Edited November 27, 2023 by gG-Unknown

[Alienkiller]

gG-Unknown. Where you ever an Soldier? From your Suggestion I think not. If you had done your military Duty, you would know that all Shooting Weapons get in Kneeing and Lay-Down an Acc. Bonus. The remaining belongs on the Soldier itself.  In that Case the Bonus have to be for all Shooting Weapons when kneeing in the Game.

Yeah, Kneeing or Laying have Disadvantages too, esp. when you go in the Infight (Close & Personal). If you are well trained (here the Fighting Sports like MMA or BJJ / Self Defense like Grav Maga) give you an higher Chance of Survival. In Game that would mean, that you can use an Knife / Stun Batton from Kneeing Positon to fight Close an Personal and hurt or kill / stun the Enemy.

Such an Close & Personal fight I had roundbased in the first real Testplay in JA 3 from the same Position (Kneeing). But I haven´t tested it out again after several Patch-Modernisations again.

Summarized: Keep the Kneeing with the Acc. for Shooting Weapons & Saftey-Bonuses for the Soldier. More Content & Features for it would be nice to make that System more interessting and make it more realistic (Knife and Stun-Batton Fights, etc.).

Edited November 28, 2023 by Alienkiller

[gG-Unknown]

On 11/28/2023 at 10:51 AM, Alienkiller said:

 If you had done your military Duty, you would know that all Shooting Weapons get in Kneeing and Lay-Down an Acc. Bonus.

 

Reality vs  game need certain level of abstraction. On top, you  need  to make it so that rules are fun to use.

Mandatory knee on end of round is not fun. It is bad design.

 

As long as game do not have prone position (for simplicity reason) then kneel is only available "the_stable_position".

Because we don not want  bad design of mandatory kneel for everyone, we need to find a group of  weapons which has different usage, then grant this weapon group advantage over rest. e.g. special group of weapons has bipod.

As  long as kneel is "the_stable_position" then we grant acc bonus for stable position to this group.

For creating a dilemma situation (Reaper is incoming, do I rather knee to get acc  bonus or stand to get better melee defence ? )

it is smart  to add also disadvantage for kneel in some situation. As long as kneeling is generally submissive position, and not very good suited for melee  fight against standing  opponent, it is very reasonable to set disadvantage to kneel in melee. There is no need for question "is it possible to fight on kneel?" .  Of course it is(, with some disadvantge). The  issue here is, make a rule which makes sense, is readable and is acceptable abstraction of an engagement.