V19 Experimental Build 3 available!

[Aaron]

Firstly, if you do not know how to access the experimental branch on Steam, please read the instructions (and warnings!) in this thread. All saved games from earlier versions (including experimental versions) are incompatible, attempting to load them will cause problems.

This new build focuses on fixes, content build out and usability improvements. The major new feature is the introduction of interceptor recovery - this is a new system intended to reduce the sting of aircraft loss during the air combat phase of the game, and is described more fully in the change log below and in this thread; we know this one is a bit of a controversial change, but please give it time. If you want to discuss it in any great depth please do so in the Geoscape balance thread in the Beta forum.

Here are is the changelog:

Fixes

- Removed duplicate reaction fire modifiers on some weapons

- Updated continent masks on Geoscape to match ground and remove graphical artifacts at high zoom

- Geoscape cities updated, existing cities repositioned where needed and new ones added

- Air combat missiles now have extra fuel so they can catch retreating/turning UFOs more reliably

- Animated sprites will now display properly after loading a saved game

- Alien Crew is picked on creation of UFO, rather than on GC mission start, to avoid save/load exploit

- Fixed UFO sometimes flying away from a ground combat mission in which the aliens were defeated

- Fixed F-17 missile and gun arrangement of the aircraft screen

Additions

- When Quantum Cryptology Center is built the player can now see more detailled information about UFOs

- Crashed Carrier and Battleship art added (all UFOs now have damaged art)

- Updated Harridan autopsy art

- Added GUI images for vehicles laser/plasma/mag weapons

- All research projects now have preview text (first draft)

- Human base attacks no longer require a scout mission locating a human base to target it; instead a random base is picked with a bias towards the older bases (older bases are more likely to be attacked)

- New game system: Interceptors which are shot down in air combat are no longer outright destroyed, they instead perform a crash landing and are recovered to their base 72 hours later (at which point they must be still repaired)

- Soldier inventory management screen has been redesigned to be a non-fullscreen window

- Expanded Ground Combat damage numbers, now colour coded and also display healing (green) and stun (blue) damage

- Soldiers wil now use burst fire in reaction shots. If they have both single and burst modes, they will use a burst if the target is within 10 tiles

- New Alien base tiles for both Sebillian and Andron themed rooms (work in progress, only partially implemented and still need new floors etc...)

- Many new Alien props (most not implemented yet)

- Few new props for Soviet archive buildings

- Various new and tweaked tiles for the final mission

Balance

- Aircraft now repair/refuel using a percentage instead of a static value; interceptors with more HP/fuel will no longer take longer to repair/refuel than ones with less

- Burst fire now only causes stat advancement at the same rate as single fire (previously it was double the rate)

- Grenades can now have negative or positive modifiers to throwing range; flares can be thrown 5 tiles further and C4 5 tiles shorter

- Grenade throw cost reduced to 20 TU, Flares down to 10 TU

- Alien Heavy Plasma changed to single shot only, damage increased to 100 and range reduced to 10

- Layout of final mission tweaked and improved

Please post your comments on the build here. If you encounter any bugs please post them in the experimental build sub-forum of the bugs forum. I will post new threads in the beta forum shortly for in-depth discussion of the current Geoscape and Ground Combat balance, but feel free to post brief opinions here too.

[janprusak]

I posted 22 bugs from version 19.2 but I only see one of them listed as solved. Does it mean the others have not been dealt with or just that they are so small you don't list all of them?

[ThunderGr]

Can you please, include a version number at the start screen? Steam keeps making delayed updates and I would like to know which version of the game I am playing.

[thothkins]

thanks Aaron

[ThunderGr]

First notice: Greece placed with the Middle-East? Seriously??

[Duke]

great.

[Duke]

- New game system: Interceptors which are shot down in air combat are no longer outright destroyed, they instead perform a crash landing and are recovered to their base 72 hours later (at which point they must be still repaired)

but i think it makes game litle casual

[ThunderGr]

Second thing noted: The hidden movement screen has not been fixed...I truly appreciate the new stuff and fixes but fixing the hidden movement should be trivial while it has a big impact on gameplay. I must admit I am already disappointed. There is already a bad judgement about putting Greece with the middle-east and an issue so much discussed in the forums(hidden movement screen) that was ignored...

[Ol' Stinky]

Can you please, include a version number at the start screen? Steam keeps making delayed updates and I would like to know which version of the game I am playing.

It says on the Xenonauts launcher in the top right.

I'm really looking forward to burst reaction fire, that's been a problem since forever.

Edited July 5, 2013 by Ol' Stinky

[Chris]

@Thunder - Chill out. Mexico is also geographically part of North America, Colombia is not part of Central America and nor is Iceland part of Europe, but we've tried to make all the regions similar sizes and that means we've taken some liberties with geography.

Anyway, you're proposing that Greece be part of Europe but not actually connected to the rest of Europe because the Soviet Union is in the way (making things messy in game terms)? Or that is should be part of the Soviet Union (which it wasn't either)?

The Hidden Movement screen bug is known and is being worked on. Please don't just assume a bug like that is trivial and criticise us for not fixing it. How do you know that part of the code is easy to work with? It's actually very much not.

Anyway, if Aaron's not updated the version number on the launcher then that's an oversight on his part, and I'll probably get him to fix it on Monday - if nothing else, it'll make bug tracking confusing.

@Jan - I think there's been quite a few fixes not listed there but I'm not quite sure. We are still reviewing the bug tracking forums so they all would have been logged in our bugtracker even if they are not fixed in the current build.

[Chris]

Ah, yeah, the version number is indeed correct. It's just on the launcher rather than the menu screen (as Stinky has pointed out above).

[ThunderGr]

@Thunder - Chill out. Mexico is also geographically part of North America, Colombia is not part of Central America and nor is Iceland part of Europe, but we've tried to make all the regions similar sizes and that means we've taken some liberties with geography.

Anyway, you're proposing that Greece be part of Europe but not actually connected to the rest of Europe because the Soviet Union is in the way (making things messy in game terms)? Or that is should be part of the Soviet Union (which it wasn't either)?

Since Greece was(and still is) part of Europe, always, despite being only connected by sea and air, and not by land, during the cold war, yes, I would suggest making it part of Europe, as it has always been. If fact, Greece was always giving a critical strategic advantage to NATO, because of its placement, during the cold war.

The Hidden Movement screen bug is known and is being worked on. Please don't just assume a bug like that is trivial and criticise us for not fixing it. How do you know that part of the code is easy to work with? It's actually very much not.

A temporary fix would go a long way towards making ground combat more pleasant. As it is, I will have to manually delete the image, just like others have done and I did not want to mess with game files at this point...

Anyway, if Aaron's not updated the version number on the launcher then that's an oversight on his part, and I'll probably get him to fix it on Monday - if nothing else, it'll make bug tracking confusing.

No, he has changed it. It was an oversight from my part, I am sorry about that.

Edited July 5, 2013 by ThunderGr

[Mytheos]

Thanks for the Update, and all your hard work!

[Mytheos]

@ThunderGr

I am looking forward to the Hidden Movement being fixed as well, but I'd prefere the Devs not slop something together when I can just delete it in 5 seconds...

And I'd rather not have THEM delete it for a build, beta or not...and then have to waste time explaining to people flipping out about it being removed, that is is temporarily disabled but will still be in the game...and then explaining how to go about re-enabling it for people complaining that it was temporarily disabled.

8-)

[Chris]

True, we could have deleted the HM image from the files I suppose. If you're lucky we might release a hotfix for it early next week.

EDIT - one that fixes the bug, rather than just deleting the image.

[farcelet]

Hooray! I hope this isn't some sort of a taboo question right here, but what is the usual interval between stable releases?

[svidangel]

Anyone know if the research durations were increased for this?

[Duke]

- Air combat missiles now have extra fuel so they can catch retreating/turning UFOs more reliably

looks like imba cous ufo cant evade from rocets. i think on insane must be off that extra fuel

[thothkins]

Hooray! I hope this isn't some sort of a taboo question right here, but what is the usual interval between stable releases?

No such thing as taboo questions here, except for all the usual ones that are illegal in most countries, and unless no one has told me about the taboo on taboo questions, because it's taboo to mention that as well.

The simple answer is that there isn't one. It's whenever the devs feel that the new features they have added are working well enough I guess, or whichever of those features they decide to keep work well enough.

I do have to agree that having Greece as part of the Middle East is a bit jarring, as are a number of the others. I see the logic behind it, but if I was a national of any of those, I'd not be thinking about funding bloc sizes past my disappointment. It initially comes across as the devs not doing their homework, instead of quite a bit of thought going into a balancing issue.

I usually put my first base on Greece! Now I'm over in Sicily. Bah! It's a matter of time before I'm paying a percentage of my funding to the mob

[RawCode]

interceptor's immortality shoud be bound to difficulty, same with xenonaut's immortality if it ever happen, since it affect gameplay difficulty greatly.

[Ol' Stinky]

interceptor's immortality shoud be bound to difficulty, same with xenonaut's immortality if it ever happen, since it affect gameplay difficulty greatly.

The trouble with losing aircraft completely is that it causes the difficulty to swing wildly. While a player should be able to lose the campaign by doing poorly in air combat/geoscape, they should also have a bit of slack. With this system, they can try and stop one failure from leading to a slippery slope. Even before the geoscape reset in v19 exp., geoscape difficualty has been binary, and that's bad. I'm looking forward to getting my teeth into a v19 HF3 playthrough.

There's no way soldiers will become invincible. Losing a soldier is nowhere near as costly as losing an aircraft. A player would have to lose a whole load of soldiers over a number of missions, at which point they're losing because they've been outplayed - either by the computer in ground combat or by being out-teched in the geoscape.

[Lightzy]

are there new maps included in hf3?

[RawCode]

new ground combat inventory screen shoud allow player to close it by same hotkey and by pressing same backpack button, currently player must press red cross and it's only way to close it.

[nathanjw]

The latest experimental release was forced on my by Steam despite setting it to Do Not Automatically update: is this a Steam thing or does the game force it to happen? I know I might sound like a stuck record but I want to be the one deciding when to upgrade. Thx

[Went]

Probably, instant losing of aircrafts was a hardcore feature, but it gave the game a certain charm. It was challenging, addictive, it made player to think and emerge in game. Now it's very, very casual. I would suggest a more moderate solution for nervous players:

1. Battle simulation mode. Player will able run fake battles to discover optimal tactics for 5000$ each, for example.

2. Easier retreat for player fighters. Don't forget about 3-rd dimension - height! Instead of turning to 180 deg back, fighter can just fall down, where UFO's can't reach it for some reason.

3. Fighters can be just cheaper in production. Pilots would able to catapult out of destroyed plane, and it will start rescue mission, where surrounded crew must defend against alien troops

I want to repeat: do not break the balance of the 18th version. Casual players will not accept old-school Xenonauts in any case. So make the game at least for true fans.