Milestone 7.1.0 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!

Balance / Gameplay Changes:

• The light variant of Xenonaut armour now grants roughly 65% of the armour of the Heavy Armour variant (except for the basic Tactical Armour), rather than 50% as in previous versions.
• Reverted Combat Shields to 100% effectiveness on Veteran and Commander difficulties.
  • This change was originally made to address how powerful the shield & pistol combo was when given to the entire team. After some more testing, we decided that it wasn't quite overpowered enough to warrant a second shield nerf (after Milestone 6 reduced their side protection), so we've returned to the previous values.
• Cost of the Identify Recruits strategic operation reduced to 35 OP, and cooldown reduced to 1 day. In a future patch we'll set this operation up to decrease in cost by 1 OP per day, so you effectively retain your free monthly soldier pool refresh but also have the opportunity to refresh more often if you spend OP to do so.
• Colossus should now be able to place items it cannot use in its Primary / Secondary slot into its backpack.
• Set up the Secondary soldier inventory slot to display grey when the Colossus Power Fist is equipped in it, indicating that it cannot be unequipped.
• Added a slight visual trail to alien Symbiotes when they are being shot at you.

Bugfixes:

• Fixed the game crashing when trying to load a tactical autosave.
• Fixed two different crashes that could occur at the end of a tactical battle.
• Fixed another way of getting the Rescue Soldiers preview soldiers stuck in your dropship if you cancelled the mission preparations, which would cause a crash when you tried to use the dropship.
• Fixed LMGs not having both burst fire modes.
• Fixed certain Research projects (like Laser Weapons) incorrectly showing a quantity number after their title.
• Fixed there being a minor dark flicker on the Geoscape after a dropship reaches a mission site.

[fusion-waffle]

Thank you for the fast follow with fixes for all those crash-during-load and crash-at-tactical-battle-end issues!  Both fixes worked in the case of my 7.0.0 campaign.

 

But, it looks like this 7.1 update did introduce a new regression that breaks dragging certain weapons to Primary / Secondary slots -- maybe an unintended consequence of the colossus inventory changes?

 

Edited February 18 by fusion-waffle

[fusion-waffle]

On 2/18/2026 at 12:37 AM, Chris said:

Cost of the Identify Recruits strategic operation reduced to 35 OP, and cooldown reduced to 1 day. In a future patch we'll set this operation up to decrease in cost by 1 OP per day, so you effectively retain your free monthly soldier pool refresh but also have the opportunity to refresh more often if you spend OP to do so.

 

Overall impression of 7.0.0/7.1.0 Operations Points & doomsday track balance during Phase 1 & early Phase 2, Commander difficulty:

Doomsday increases so rapidly that it feels risky to spend OPs on anything that doesn't damp the rate of doomsday increase (security supporters or knifing infiltrators) or immediately reduce it ("reduce tensions" strategic OP).

It feels like even if pouring *all* OPs into doomsday slow/reduction using strategic operations alone, you are still slowly drowning, and eventually you are going to to succumb to 100+ doomsday without having the 100 OPs for a "reduce tensions".  Some of this feeling may be because I got greedy and unlocked a funding supporter before a month end funding round, whereas instead the better play might have been to get another security supporter or knife an infiltrator.
 
It feels like that in order to get ahead of the doomsday clock, fighting doomsday with strategic operations isn't enough. You need to do well enough in tactical missions to reduce doomsday or win small OP bounties that can be ploughed back into doomsday reduction. This creates interesting decisions in the tactical missions: I can blindly run this soldier out into the open to save another civilian from abduction, but if there's an alien overwatching, there's a good chance my soldier will die. Is throwing away this soldier worth a -6 doomsday swing? Maybe!

Overall, I enjoy this balance. On Commander difficulty, the game is meant to be challenging & produce a lot of hard decisions. It is & it does! At least in Phase 1.

 

I suspect in 7.1.0, the best use of OPs during phase 1 is "reduce tensions" where necessary to avoid immediately losing the campaign, and always unlocking security supporters otherwise. Spending OPs for the +1OP / day supporters gives you effectively -0.3 doomsday reduction per day (using the 100 OP to -30 doomsday base exchange rate). In contrast, unlocking a security supporter gives you -1 doomsday reduction per day for the same OP investment, so they're about 3x as effective during Phase 1.  Also helps to be mindful that a UFO could start marauding around a continent outside your radar range at any time, causing a sudden slight spike in the doomsday level, so you need to leave a bit of doomsday buffer at all times, or always hold a balance of 100+ OPs, to avoid this risk of abruptly losing a campaign from an unanticipated 100+ doomsday.

Re: the OP costs for base construction & refreshing the recruit pool, introduced in 7.0.0 & tweaked in 7.1.0:

In my campaign, I didn't have anywhere near enough cash to begin constructing a second base until the first "proper" funding round immediately after Phase 2 began.

When Phase 2 begins, doomsday has been averted and the huge pressure & continual early game OP drain of Phase 1 doomsday has suddenly vanished. The panic levels of all regions start around 50/100. This means that suddenly your OPs are freed up for other uses, beyond firefighting the doomsday clock or firefighting panic -- such as building a base!

If you barely survived Phase 1 with 99 doomsday and zero remaining OP balance, after 10-12 days your OP balance will have recharged back to 100, panic levels wont yet be an immediate concern, and you can use those 100 OPs & the funding round cash to build a second base.  The 100 OP cost for building a base seems fine, it merely delays other potential OP uses by ~10 days.

Re: refreshing the recruit pool now being a strategic operation costing OPs, instead of a free monthly refresh, with the 35 OP cost of 7.1.0.

I like it! It has the benefit of facing the player with a new difficult & interesting decision during Phase 1 & early Phase 2:  after you've hired all the rookies that highrolled the important attributes, and are left with the runts of the litter, you've got a really hard choice -- can you spare 35 OPs from doomsday firefighting to refresh the pool, or could you survive another few weeks drafting rookies you'd otherwise never consider to free up the OPs?  I was under so much doomsday pressure I ended up drafting some awful rookies (45 TUs & 30 Acc? .... welcome to the squad, grab a shield, your job is being ablative cover!)

I speculate that this "is it worth rerolling the recruit pool?" decision may become less interesting ("bad recruits? always reroll") toward mid-game and late-game as if the player is doing well, winning the air war, then panic will be under control, so unlike doomsday in phase 1 there will be no urgent threat continually requiring OPs to firefight. OPs will not be such a bottleneck resource in mid-late game & it'll just be a question of deciding what you want to prioritise spending your OPs on next.

 

 

Edited February 19 by fusion-waffle