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Build V18.51 Hotfix 2 Released!


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This fix is an update for V18.51 and includes Hotfix 1 too. To use it, simply download the file and unzip the archive into your /xenonauts/ folder.

Link: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/26290309/V18.51_hotfix2.rar

CHANGELOG:

  • Xenopedia now has an entry for every research project, some 31,000 words of it. It needs more editing though.
  • Mission debrief "UFO Secured" scores reduced substantially to prevent the player getting so much of a funding increase after every mission.
  • Aaron's first balance patch has been introduced, mostly affecting the ground combat:
    • Alien races have been homogenised, so there currently is no stats differentiation between different races.
    • The UFO crew size now increases linearly with size, starting with 4 crew in a Light Scout and going up to 16 in a Battleship.
    • Weapon tiers are now identical to the tier before, but do additional damage.
    • Zoom levels have fixed accuracy levels between weapons - level one zoom will always be (say) 50 accuracy, level 2 will be 75 accuracy etc. Weapons simply have different zoom levels and different TU costs for each level.
    • We will add more variation back into the game once we have a solid game progression in place that we can use as a framework. There were too many variables at play previously.

    [*]Added difficulty settings back in. Aliens have 20% more health than normal on Veteran and 50% more on Insane. Easy mode they have 80% health and do 75% normal damage.

BUGFIXES:

  • Game no longer crashes on losing a combat mission.
  • Civilians that bleed to death no longer automatically counted as killed by Xenonauts.
  • Hidden Movement screen sound reduction now only applies on hidden movement (so when the image is being shown)
  • Rocket launcher default ammo now updates as new rockets are unlocked.
  • Game Over screen no longer appears behind terrain.
  • Various level editor viewing fixes.
  • Flashbangs no longer suppress through walls.
  • A combat crash with invalid weapons has been fixed. Not sure what this one is tbh.
  • You now get victory points for capturing a UFO even if you save / load.
  • C4 now works properly with save / load.

Let me know if it makes the game better to play, or if it has crashes in it. If it is clean, I will add it to the V18.51 release in time for the Steam release and call it V18.52, and that'll be the stable build we'll port to other platforms and keep for some time.

I'd be particularly interested to see if the aliens still have vastly longer sight ranges than your men in this build. We couldn't actually replicate the issue in the dev build. Let me know if it's still affecting things!

EDIT - it seems there's still some AI-related shenanigans, with it not playing by the same rules as you have to regarding TUs and LOS. It's still worth applying this hotfix because of the stability benefits, but the community have done some detective work on the causes of this and hopefully we'll have a hotfix 3 out soon.

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I'm gonna start a new game... with FRAPS recording. When (and I expect this to be "when" not "if" I get a good recording of aliens with ludicrous sight ranges I'll post a link on the forums. I'll try to get a save, too, but that's harder.

EDIT:

Yep. First mission, alien took a shot at me from 20+ tiles. Using... burst fire from a pistol?

Anyway, here's the video I promised.

You can see me at the end count tiles from the Caesan to my troops. He missed badly and I dunno if I counted tiles to the right troop but the nearest troops were about equidistant from him... and I counted OVER 23 tiles. If you watch the end you can count with my cursor. That video should also pretty clearly prove that it can't be based on squadsight, since I've got the whole area clear.

Save is no good, since it's from the beginning of the level not that turn.

EDIT 2: I should point out that the game's balance is currently way far out of whack. I've been fighting that ONE CAESAN for a couple turns now, and my troops cant hit worth a damn. Neither can he, though. Also, he got suppressed by my first rifle bullet that went past him. Also also, he's clearly not using the proper AP system. He's a Caesan non-combatant, aiprops.xml says he ought to have 50 APs. Well, I have ended every turn with him suppressed, and can usually return fire with a burst next turn. The plasma pistol's new burst fire costs 40 AP, so he's clearly starting each turn with at least 80 AP. (Unless the suppression system got changed and now you don't automatically lose 1/2 of your AP. I've not been suppressed yet to test that.)

EDIT 3: Suppressed my own troops with flashbangs. They lost 1/2 their AP next turn from suppression all right. Suppression damage also seems borked: Like I mentioned above, I suppressed a Caesan with a single rifle round but a few turns later a flashbang at his feet did not suppress (even though the weapons_gc file indicates that a rifle bullet has a suppression value of 40 while a flashbang has a suppression value of 100). After I eventually killed him, I flashbanged my own troops to test. It took two flashbangs to suppress two of the five troops I had standing right next to each other.

EDIT 4: Finished the first mission. Discovered a few new things. 1.) The aliens like to hide more, now. I was playing "find the last guy" at the end of that mission, and eventually found him in a building. Right after I found him I also learned that 2.) The "Secure UFO for 5 turns" objective is active now! So we can win without playing "find the last guy" if we don't want to. (Downside: You do lose 2 points per alien not killed, for a net loss of 4 points (if you had killed them) or 5 (if you had captured them). Dropping UFO secured value to 5 makes getting points from other things much more important!

Edited by Waladil
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I'm gonna start a new game... with FRAPS recording. When (and I expect this to be "when" not "if" I get a good recording of aliens with ludicrous sight ranges I'll post a link on the forums. I'll try to get a save, too, but that's harder.
Good idea. Make sure it's not squad sight.
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I'm gonna start a new game... with FRAPS recording. When (and I expect this to be "when" not "if" I get a good recording of aliens with ludicrous sight ranges I'll post a link on the forums. I'll try to get a save, too, but that's harder.

EDIT:

Yep. First mission, alien took a shot at me from 20+ tiles. Using... burst fire from a pistol?

Anyway, here's the video I promised.

You can see me at the end count tiles from the Caesan to my troops. He missed badly and I dunno if I counted tiles to the right troop but the nearest troops were about equidistant from him... and I counted OVER 23 tiles. If you watch the end you can count with my cursor. That video should also pretty clearly prove that it can't be based on squadsight, since I've got the whole area clear.

Save is no good, since it's from the beginning of the level not that turn.

I JUST HAD AN EPIPHENY! I bet the aliens are moving back to better cover AFTER they fire at you! Remember, they have quite a few TUs, so they can fire and move just like the Xenonauts. So, the sight range is right, they're just taking advantage of the slight amount of difference between distances we can see them at! The solution is to show them when the fire and which way they move for just a second afterwards! Or alternatively give them less sight range or TUs. Any counting of range HAS TO be done on a alien that can't move to be valid. Why didn't I think of this! I frequently hear alien steps after they fire, maybe it's them moving back. That's real common tactic I use and it's used IRL too. Run out of cover, fire, and get back under cover. If aliens even have ONE tile advantage in spotting range this becomes a VERY good tactic for them to use. They can move up, see you, and fire without receiving reaction fire from your point man then retreat back to safety. Try tossing some smokers into the LOF then move up. Edited by StellarRat
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I confirm aliens using far more sight range or unholy detection mechanics. I have a save here to use to give more evidence.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/u24p1vo6wxwwql0/2013-05-30_00.30.42.sav

Situation has full team stopped at def positions, several turns already happened in that situation, and sebilians repeatedly shooting me from beyond my FOW. Sebilian sight 14 vs naked human 18.

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I confirm aliens using far more sight range or unholy detection mechanics. I have a save here to use to give more evidence.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/u24p1vo6wxwwql0/2013-05-30_00.30.42.sav

Situation has full team stopped at def positions, several turns already happened in that situation, and sebilians repeatedly shooting me from beyond my FOW. Sebilian sight 14 vs naked human 18.

Are you sure someone hasn't moved up and given them squad sight possibly from a direction you aren't covering then moved back far enough that you can't seen them?

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They fire mostly at the guy at bottom of map, wich he has a sebilian in front, full team at north, lake at back and end of map just at south. No way he is being spotted with squad sight

Note: And if sebilian is moving forward , back and firing then hidden screen is broken cause he is not detected entering own troop sight range, and with 4 tiles less of sight its 32 TU to move forward, spot soldier and move back out of sight again and then it uses burst shot.

Edited by lightgemini
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They fire mostly at the guy at bottom of map, wich he has a sebilian in front, full team at north, lake at back and end of map just at south. No way he is being spotted with squad sight

Note: And if sebilian is moving forward , back and firing then hidden screen is broken cause he is not detected entering own troop sight range, and with 4 tiles less of sight its 32 TU to move forward, spot soldier and move back out of sight again and then it uses burst shot.

Well, that's a good point. I suppose it could be a hidden movement issue even. One way to test would be to go into the alien xml and make shooting take a lot more TU or reduce alien TU and see what happens.
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A couple of fights ago I had several guys in good cover 10 or so tiles from a sibelian, and my sniper was some 23 tiles away, out of cover, and the sibelian repeatedly targetted my sniper in a very deliberate way, so in this case I ruled out hidden movement

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Stellar, did you not see (and since I edited it like 4 times I completely understand you not seeing) my point about "aliens have more TUs than the files tell them to have?"

I'm getting more and more convinced that the AI code is completely skipping normal game mechanics. The aliens aren't bothering with things like "TUs" or "sight range." The code tells them to take action against any enemies within 25 tiles, so they do that. The code says they ought to fire a burst when possible, so they do that even if it takes 15 more TUs than they have.

I mean, let's say you're right and the LOS code is good (which is pretty obviously is not). That 50-TU Caesan must have fired a burst, then turned around and walked six tiles, then turned back around. That's 40 TUs in burst fire, 8 TUs in turning, and 24 TUs of walking. Grand total: 72 TUs minimum. So we can prove, conclusively, that the AI must have more TUs than the XML files tell them to have. I have done that both here, assuming no LOS bugs and above (when that same Caesan fired a 40-TU burst after being suppressed down to 25 TUs). Why would you not believe that they also have a longer LOS than the xml files say?

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More testing in save game provided shows moving back 24 tiles away from sebilian fire position it still shoots at the soldier, using single+burst fire using up all its TUs. Can it be that FOW doesnt reset on them?

Waladil:

Then we can make a mini mod decreasing TUs of aliens down to say 20TU and see what they do? it should clearly unmask any cheating.

Edited by lightgemini
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I'll start work on testing aliens with a mod now.

Work would go faster if a Certain Someone (Chris, preferably), can answer this question: How often does Xenonauts read data from the XML files? When you load a save? When the game starts up? When you start a new mission? When you start a new game? Until that question is answered, I have to assume that Xenonauts must be quit out of, and a completely new game started with every iteration of test.

So I'll go extreme. All Caesan and Sebilians non-combatants (this test wont run long enough to fight anything else) will be reduced to ONE TU, ONE sight range, and ONE HP. (Might as well test if their health is being cheated too and it's just harder to tell.)

Pretty much if they ever shoot me then something's going wrong. Ditto if they ever survive a single bullet.

EDIT:

Well, you guys can watch what happened with super-nerfed aliens.

Okay. So clearly changing the XML files had SOME impact. But he ought to have had ONE TU. The first turn he turned around (4 TUs), and then crouched (4 TUs). Second turn he uncrouched then crouched again (8 TUs). So he got at least seven more TUs than he was supposed to.

I should point out that this test game was in NORMAL mode, and I should further point out that I noticed in gameconfig.xml that the difficulty modifiers say alienAttribute<difficulty> not alienHealth<difficulty>. However, that doesn't effect this test because it was in normal (1.0 modifier should do nothing).

A further test that I did with this mod: I decided to test alien sight range. I discovered that an alien would always face my nearest troop (If two troops were equidistant then the alien would alternate which he faced every turn). So I eliminated all but one alien, put one troop on each side of the last one, and started leapfrogging them out. This test gave me two results: One, the alien always stood up, TURNED 180, and then crouched, so we can up their minimum TUs to 12. Second, they have a sight range of (drumroll please)

...Results inconclusive. The alien remained responsive to my actions until I ran out of map to test on. The final range was 26 tiles, and the alien continued to alternate his facing every turn.

He remained responsive to 26 tiles. He always maintained vigilance on the nearest enemy up to 26 tiles. That means we can clearly and definitively declare that the AI is using far more information than it ought to have, whether because they have a silly-long LOS or, my theory, the AI is SIMPLY IGNORING THE LOS SYSTEM ENTIRELY.

P.S. The alien also remained responsive to my troops that had things blocking LOS, namely those huge desert pillars. They can still see through walls.

Edited by Waladil
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Xenonauts versión at launcher says hotfix 1, I double applied hotfix 2 to be sure.

The game loads XML when going to battle, I confirm that as I used saves with a Charlie seconds from getting to target to test mods.

Cant say if it loads XML at load save, never tried.

Made some quick tests with new game using 6 sight for caesans/sebies and 20TU. Result so far is they ignore XML setting entirely.

If Waladil tries with 1TU and 1 sight (lol poor aliens) and have same results then thing is clear.

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To help, you should load the Xenonauts_gc_editor version of the game. If you press U in the ground combat while playing in a window, the debug panel turns up and that will show movement as it happens and let you check (and change) the TUs and HP that a unit has.

I think L also shows the map from an alien perspective, and Q / Ctrl+Q let you hide / reveal the map. It's possible our over-reliance on developer shortcuts means we miss a bit of how the game actually plays when you play it...

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Why would you not believe that they also have a longer LOS than the xml files say?
Because Chris said they couldn't replicate the problem, so I thought maybe they were seeing correct behavior and we were mis-interpeting what we were seeing. I assumed Chris and company had a way to test all this without have to deal with FOW as far knowing exactly where the aliens were at all times. Otherwise it would be very hard to test things.
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Reposting what I edited into an above post (it took me a lot longer than I thought to do this testing and a bunch of replies popped up while I worked)

You guys can watch what happened with super-nerfed aliens.

Okay. So clearly changing the XML files had SOME impact. But he ought to have had ONE TU. The first turn he turned around (4 TUs), and then crouched (4 TUs). Second turn he uncrouched then crouched again (8 TUs). So he got at least seven more TUs than he was supposed to.

I should point out that this test game was in NORMAL mode, and I should further point out that I noticed in gameconfig.xml that the difficulty modifiers say alienAttribute<difficulty> not alienHealth<difficulty>. However, that doesn't effect this test because it was in normal (1.0 modifier should do nothing).

A further test that I did with this mod: I decided to test alien sight range. I discovered that an alien would always face my nearest troop (If two troops were equidistant then the alien would alternate which he faced every turn). So I eliminated all but one alien, put one troop on each side of the last one, and started leapfrogging them out. This test gave me two results: One, the alien always stood up, TURNED 180, and then crouched, so we can up their minimum TUs to 12. Second, they have a sight range of (drumroll please)

...Results inconclusive. The alien remained responsive to my actions until I ran out of map to test on. The final range was 26 tiles, and the alien continued to alternate his facing every turn.

He remained responsive to 26 tiles. He always maintained vigilance on the nearest enemy up to 26 tiles. That means we can clearly and definitively declare that the AI is using far more information than it ought to have, whether because they have a silly-long LOS or, my theory, the AI is SIMPLY IGNORING THE LOS SYSTEM ENTIRELY.

P.S. The alien also remained responsive to my troops that had things blocking LOS, namely those huge desert pillars. They can still see through walls.

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Xenonauts versión at launcher says hotfix 1, I double applied hotfix 2 to be sure.

The game loads XML when going to battle, I confirm that as I used saves with a Charlie seconds from getting to target to test mods.

Cant say if it loads XML at load save, never tried.

Made some quick tests with new game using 6 sight for caesans/sebies and 20TU. Result so far is they ignore XML setting entirely.

If Waladil tries with 1TU and 1 sight (lol poor aliens) and have same results then thing is clear.

Looks like maybe you've found the problem then or part of it. I wonder if the AI code is using hard coded values for various parameters instead of reading files OR there is another file that it's using that it shouldn't be.
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Reposting what I edited into an above post (it took me a lot longer than I thought to do this testing and a bunch of replies popped up while I worked)

You guys can watch what happened with super-nerfed aliens.

Okay. So clearly changing the XML files had SOME impact. But he ought to have had ONE TU. The first turn he turned around (4 TUs), and then crouched (4 TUs). Second turn he uncrouched then crouched again (8 TUs). So he got at least seven more TUs than he was supposed to.

I should point out that this test game was in NORMAL mode, and I should further point out that I noticed in gameconfig.xml that the difficulty modifiers say alienAttribute<difficulty> not alienHealth<difficulty>. However, that doesn't effect this test because it was in normal (1.0 modifier should do nothing).

A further test that I did with this mod: I decided to test alien sight range. I discovered that an alien would always face my nearest troop (If two troops were equidistant then the alien would alternate which he faced every turn). So I eliminated all but one alien, put one troop on each side of the last one, and started leapfrogging them out. This test gave me two results: One, the alien always stood up, TURNED 180, and then crouched, so we can up their minimum TUs to 12. Second, they have a sight range of (drumroll please)

...Results inconclusive. The alien remained responsive to my actions until I ran out of map to test on. The final range was 26 tiles, and the alien continued to alternate his facing every turn.

He remained responsive to 26 tiles. He always maintained vigilance on the nearest enemy up to 26 tiles. That means we can clearly and definitively declare that the AI is using far more information than it ought to have, whether because they have a silly-long LOS or, my theory, the AI is SIMPLY IGNORING THE LOS SYSTEM ENTIRELY.

P.S. The alien also remained responsive to my troops that had things blocking LOS, namely those huge desert pillars. They can still see through walls.

Good work!

I can attest to the fact that the AI shoots at you even when your troops are behind walls and can't be seen. (At least they don't shoot through walls anymore.)

When Chris gets to work in the morning maybe we'll have some answers about why. This conclusively proves something is FUBAR with the AI.

Edited by StellarRat
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I made more tests using the debug tools posted by Chris, and I can completely support and confirm what Waladil posted. ALiens DO know of your position regardless of LOS and engage up to 24-25 tiles even having 6 sight range and debug tool confirming troops were completely out of sight range, well inside alien FOW 24 tiles away.

Having debug tool Reading correctly the XML files, then Im sure its very possible its some AI code overriding the XML.

On bright side aliens at least walked as if they had the 20TU I gave them, but it didnt matter much to them as they used burst fire on their turn and in reaction fire after having moved those 20TU

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