Milestone 6.19.0 Released! (Experimental)

[Chris]

This update is also only accessible by switching to our Experimental branches (instructions on how to do so here) - although please be aware they have slower load times and worse performance than normal builds due to the extra logging they contain!

We're close to releasing Milestone 6 to the public now - we've fixed most of the remaining critical issues, and we're just trying to find a fix for the visual issues players will experience with UFO hull hiding on all UFOs from the Abductor onwards. Assuming no further serious bugs are reported by testers over the weekend, we should be on track for a release next week.

Changes:

• Updated the air combat UI to move the "UFO Charge Time" bar to the bottom of the screen and make it more obvious. It now has a label, a tooltip and a countdown too.
• Added a new "UFO Escaped" air combat result, which makes it more obvious when the combat has ended because the UFO has charged its hyperdrive and jumped away.
• Added new fire sounds for the ballistic SMG.
• Further improved the camera tracking for long-ranged shooting / shooting between levels.

Balancing:

• Geoscape:
  • The start of Phase 4 has been moved forwards three days.
  • Reduced the maximum range of the Phantom and Gemini interceptors by 15-20%.
  • Lasers now cost slightly more Alenium to build, and the Guardian Armour Protection upgrade now costs 50 Alenium and 25 Alloys (previously 30 Alloys). Tactical Module upgrade now costs 20 Alenium in addition to its 20 Alloy cost.
• Air Combat:
  • UFO Observer max speed has been slightly reduced so that an Angel on afterburner can (slowly) catch it.
  • Size of the deployment area has been reduced in scenarios where the UFOs are attacking you, preventing the player from deploying their fighters quite so close to the attacking UFOs.
  • Retreat mode now boosts your speed as if you had triggered the afterburners. Afterburners can no longer be triggered when in Retreat mode.
• Tactical Combat:
  • When units suffer a morale break, they now have a 50% chance of Panicking and 25% chance of Fleeing or Berserking (previously 33% each). This change has been made because it's not particularly fun to have aliens Berserking too often.
  • Mind Controlled Xenonauts that return to your control during your turn (i.e. because you killed or suppressed the psionic alien responsible) now regain all of their TU.
  • Gauss weapons now carry 20% less ammo in each magazine.
  • Most alien species now have scaling Bravery values - noncombatants have reduced bravery, basic soldiers remain the same, higher ranks now have somewhat higher bravery. Enemies should start becoming harder to suppress from roughly the point you encounter Observer UFOs.
  • Sebillians now have scaling Regeneration - soldiers remain at +50HP, but elites + officers now have +75HP and praetorians + leaders +100HP.
  • High Eternal now has 500 HP (up from 200HP) and +150 Regeneration (up from 100).
  • Removed one alien from the first Alien Base mission on non-Commander difficulty settings.
  • Various changes made to the UOO Sabotage mission:
    • Increased the reinforcement timer by 2 turns.
    • Fewer of the enemies have Fusion weapons.
  • Various changes made to the UOO Bridge Assault mission:
    • Starting alien crew increased in number, but a larger percentage of them are now alien noncombatants with plasma weapons (rather than praetorian-rank aliens with fusion weapons).
    • Reinforcement timer increased by 1.
    • Alien reinforcements are now roughly half praetorians with fusion weapons, rather than all being elites with plasma weapons.
    • At the end of the mission, items are only recovered from the tiles that contain Xenonaut units (alive or dead), rather than all tiles. This means you'll always recover your own soldiers and equipment but you won't recover any loot from the aliens (unless you pick it up).

Bugfixes:

• Fixed a crash that could occur during the character conversations if you press spacebar in the frame before it properly loads.
• Fixed a crash that would occur if you double clicked a "rescue" soldier in the Soldier Rescue mission pre-mission soldier equip screen.
• Fixed a problem where the building roofs on the UOO-1 Sabotage mission were not hiding when a unit went inside the building.
• Fixed a secondary problem with the roof hiding on the central building of the UOO-1 Sabotage mission.
• Fixed the ARES turning invisible when it takes damage.
• Fixed a problem with the Harvester UFO where the interior could be revealed through the hull.
• Fixed zombies hatching into Reaper after 2 turns, even if the zombie had been killed.
• Fixed an issue where many autoresolved air combats would incorrectly result in a draw because the UFO was escaping too quickly.
• Fixed engineering queue projects snapping way off to the right when you were dragging them to reposition them in the list.
• Fixed several UI issues on 5:4 screens (and other rare aspect ratios).
• Fixed armoured Psyons breaking their left arms when performing their fire animations.
• Fixed the Geoscape map scrolling having a visual "jump" when you scrolled far enough to wrap on the right edge of the screen.
• Fixed a visual issue with the shadow on the Observer.
• Fixed the UFOs inside the alien base maps not hiding their hulls correctly.
• Fixed a bug where using the shoot+move preview on a cloaked Wraith would show the incorrect hit chance value (it would apply the cloaking value from the current soldier location).
• Fixed jungle swamps hiding the fire path tiles if they passed over them.
• Fixed blood pools not being hidden when camera level changes.
• Fixed a particular type of hair incorrectly obstruction shading.
• Fixed the Soviet Town factory double door open position in gameplay terms not matching their visual position.
• Fixed a flicker on the Colossus fire animation.
• Lots of fixes to various tactical maps / tiles.

[Skitso]

9 hours ago, Chris said:

• Lasers now cost slightly more Alenium to build, and the Guardian Armour Protection upgrade now costs 50 Alenium and 25 Alloys (previously 30 Alloys). Tactical Module upgrade now costs 20 Alenium in addition to its 20 Alloy cost.
• Mind Controlled Xenonauts that return to your control during your turn (i.e. because you killed or suppressed the psionic alien responsible) now regain all of their TU.
• Removed one alien from the first Alien Base mission on non-Commander difficulty settings.

Great changes overall and good to see the launch of MS6 closing up finally.

About the quoted items above:

• Laser cost: FINALLY! Thanks. I've been asking for this like 2 years
• Return from mind control nerf: Not a fan. Mind control is quite rare and breaking out of it having no negatives seem odd. On the contrary, unit should be suppressed, stunned or even panic recovering from such an intrusive attack.
• Alien base crew: Same as my thoughts on Cleaner HQ, these permanent missions, where player can choose when to tackle them and usually use their optimal crew with best equipment while running the mission in a slow, careful and methodical way as there is also no turn restrictions, often feel too easy. Map design where threat is often approaching from one or two fronts make them even easier. As before, I need to play MS6 stable to get a better feel of this, but at least all previous versions had this problem.

Edited November 1, 2025 by Skitso

[gG-Unknown]

23 minutes ago, Skitso said:

• Return from mind control nerf: Not a fan. Mind control is quite rare and breaking out of it having no negatives seem odd. On the contrary, unit should be suppressed, stunned or even panic from such intrusive attack.

Yes, mind (control) game should offer more types, but less   severe negative effects. So it could happen more often !

Like :

• HandShaking - soldier unable shoot or throw, but  can run or melee.
• Stiffnes - movement TU price  doubled, all attacks has half chance to  land. 

Edited November 1, 2025 by gG-Unknown

[Skitso]

8 minutes ago, gG-Unknown said:

Yes, mind (control) game should offer more types, but less   severe negative effects. So it could happen more often !

Like :

• HandShaking - soldier unable shoot or throw, but  can run or melee.
• Stiffnes - movement price  doubled, all attacks has half chance to  land. 

Agree. AI should have more psionic tools and know how to better use them. I just saw eternal moving a mind controlled shotgunner unit next to him. I was like, thanks.

Edited November 1, 2025 by Skitso

[gG-Unknown]

8 hours ago, Chris said:

• • Most alien species now have scaling Bravery values - noncombatants have reduced bravery, basic soldiers remain the same, higher ranks now have somewhat higher bravery. Enemies should start becoming harder to suppress from roughly the point you encounter Observer UFOs.
  • Sebillians now have scaling Regeneration - soldiers remain at +50HP, but elites + officers now have +75HP and praetorians + leaders +100HP.
  • High Eternal now has 500 HP (up from 200HP) and +150 Regeneration (up from 100).

Yes.

Scaling a skill among the oponent type, and more difference between opnents type is welcome.

Would  you look at Androns and Towers ?

• Towers recently start to move, but keep them slow please, should be the slowest opponents TU: 30
• Then Androns TU 40 are basically Battle versions of towers. ( Intentional idea > slow  Androns with high armour are hard to shoot down, but perfect target for melee ambush with electric baton)

We need some  opponents on the list who use also low scale stats. Currently all opponents use above average TU (55+) which somewhat suppress meaning of word "average"

Edited November 1, 2025 by gG-Unknown

[Skitso]

1 hour ago, gG-Unknown said:

Yes.

Scaling a skill among the oponent type, and more difference between opnents type is welcome.

Would  you look at Androns and Towers ?

• Towers recently start to move, but keep them slow please, should be the slowest opponents TU: 30
• Then Androns TU 40 are basically Battle versions of towers. ( Intentional idea > slow  Androns with high armour are hard to shoot down, but perfect target for melee ambush with electric baton)

We need some  opponents on the list who use also low scale stats. Currently all opponents use above average TU (55+) which somewhat suppress meaning of word "average"

You are a on role today! All suggestions are something I can agree with!

[Chris]

On 11/1/2025 at 9:07 AM, Skitso said:

Great changes overall and good to see the launch of MS6 closing up finally.

About the quoted items above:

• Laser cost: FINALLY! Thanks. I've been asking for this like 2 years
• Return from mind control nerf: Not a fan. Mind control is quite rare and breaking out of it having no negatives seem odd. On the contrary, unit should be suppressed, stunned or even panic recovering from such an intrusive attack.
• Alien base crew: Same as my thoughts on Cleaner HQ, these permanent missions, where player can choose when to tackle them and usually use their optimal crew with best equipment while running the mission in a slow, careful and methodical way as there is also no turn restrictions, often feel too easy. Map design where threat is often approaching from one or two fronts make them even easier. As before, I need to play MS6 stable to get a better feel of this, but at least all previous versions had this problem.

There's not really much counterplay to mind control though. It's a nice reward to get full control of your soldier back if you can deal with the alien that is controlling them, in my experience.

On 11/1/2025 at 9:43 AM, gG-Unknown said:

Yes.

Scaling a skill among the oponent type, and more difference between opnents type is welcome.

Would  you look at Androns and Towers ?

• Towers recently start to move, but keep them slow please, should be the slowest opponents TU: 30
• Then Androns TU 40 are basically Battle versions of towers. ( Intentional idea > slow  Androns with high armour are hard to shoot down, but perfect target for melee ambush with electric baton)

We need some  opponents on the list who use also low scale stats. Currently all opponents use above average TU (55+) which somewhat suppress meaning of word "average"

Sentry Guns already only have 40 TU, which makes them the slowest enemy type. And both Sentry Guns and Androns already have very low Reflexes (about 30) which means they're already highly vulnerable to melee attack.

Not all other enemies have over 55 TU either. The Cyberdrone, Mentarch and Biter all also have 40 TU.

[Skitso]

51 minutes ago, Chris said:

There's not really much counterplay to mind control though.

Well, it depends if you are willing to give it another pass still... Couple of "easy" things to add more player agency in the counter mind control play.

1. Make focus mind an active way to block mind control. (Currently nobody uses it, it's good for absolutely nothing)
2. Change mindshied to a first aid kit -styled item that can be actively be used to break the mind control link.

[gG-Unknown]

1 hour ago, Chris said:

Sentry Guns already only have 40 TU / yes, for better scaling and opponent different feel make them even slower = TU 30, When you make count average TU over all opponent units, what number you  get ? , which makes them the slowest enemy type. And both Sentry Guns and Androns already have very low Reflexes (about 30) which means they're already highly vulnerable to melee attack.

Yes, mentioned units are easy to hit by melee.  However, soldier  have to come close in the first. Plan an Ambush on walking opponent who has TU pool 55 AND tend to walk thru walls is very difficult. Therefore, my recommendation made sense - Andron TU 40. If you think that slowing down make them too weak, add  armour or armour toughness.

Thanks