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V19 Stable Candidate 1 available!


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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 build is our candidate for promotion to the main Steam branch next week, unless any show-stopping bugs are found. It is mainly bug fixes, the most notable being that we think we have fixed the "cheating AI" bug where aliens could use more TUs while suppressed than they should have access to. Balance wise not a lot has changed, aside from the tweak to the economy to de-emphasise crash site loot versus national funding; there's also a few air combat changes aimed at making Foxtrots less able to deal with fighters.

If all goes well and no major bugs have appeared by tomorrow afternoon, then I will post a "warning" thread in this forum to let Steam users who are still on the main branch know (via the RSS feed in the launcher) that their saved games will be invalidated come this time next week when we promote the new build to the main branch. The V18 Stable build will be made available as a "legacy" branch for people who want to finish their saved games on it.

Here is the changelog:

Fixes

- Fixed AI "cheating" to get more TUs when suppressed. The specific problem was if they had the AP for any type of shot they could upgrade it to burst fire for "free"

- Fixed relocating wounded soldiers causing saved game corruption

- Trying to change the equipment of soldiers at a secondary base should no longer cause a crash

- Equipping Predator armour no longer destroys equipped incompatible weapons (they are just un-equipped)

- Rocket launchers should now be loaded when equipped from loadout

- The correct sets of aliens should now be loaded for all UFOs (no more empty Battleships/Carriers!)

- Another fix for air combat against escorted UFOs that fixes "zombie" fighters and a crash

- Much better distribution of aliens in alien base missions, far fewer of them will spawn in command rooms

- Line of site blocking smoke grenades now also block accuracy 100% (this fixes aliens reaction firing through smoke)

- Praetor leaders should now correctly spawn in Battleships

- I spent an agonising day manually fixing, re-timing and re-aligning each and every Andron animation (only 6 more races to go...)

- Jetpack troopers should no longer be able to fly down through sloped roof buildings on farm maps

- If base defenses shoot down a UFO, the popup should no longer be non-dismissable

- Fixed a manufacturing issue that allowed you to get multiple items for the cost of one item

- You can now transfer items of 0 value (Aircraft guns etc...)

- Fixed crash on later Terror Sites (caused by missing Valkyrie dropship landing area)

- Changed several of the larger farm props to be crushable by vehicles

- Alien/Civilians now face different directions on mission start, rather than all NW

- Alien bases now correctly contain a base core that can be recovered and researched (also grants some Alenium/Alloys)

- Internal fix to spectres so that when the damaged state has 0 HP it is considered an "invulnerable" state, rather than being skipped

- Airborne soldiers should not be able to stop/shoot in midair (reaction fire still stops them, jet packs due for an overhaul later anyway)

- Alien inventories were not preserved when loading a saved game (no immediate effect, but important for alien grenades to be implemented)

Additions

- Large number of final painted over tiles for alien bases, including damaged/destroyed versions

- Final alien drone autopsy images

- The Geoscape UI now has an "objective" to guide players one what they should try to do next

- New style of Geoscape icons (only partially finished thus far)

Balance

Ground Combat:

- Reduced AP cost of Hunter MG to 30, slightly increased damage and increased suppression significantly

- Increased Hunter rocket count from 4 to 8 (the rockets are stacked like matroshka dolls, before anyone says anything)

- Reduced spread radius of smoke grenades from 4 to 3, and reduced the longevity of smoke clouds

- The alien heavy plasma rifle has been given 50 armour mitigation to boosts its performance versus later Xenonaut armours

- Hypervelocity weapons have all been disabled; long term they may be re-enabled, but they were taking too much dev time right now

- Sniper rifles have received a 25% damage increase (to counter the loss of HV properties)

Geoscape:

- Increased the initial funding provided by backer nations by about 50%

- The value of recoverable alien technology reduced by 50%

- Reduced speed and turn rate of Xenonaut aircraft torpedoes

- Reduced aircraft evasive roll cool down to 1 second (from 4)

- Increased range and damage of alien fighter missiles, but reduced turn-rate

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.

UPDATE: Just did a small patch to fix starting out with a pre-built Hunter.

Edited by Aaron
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All saved games from earlier versions (including experimental versions) are incompatible, attempting to load them will cause problems.

lost all my bases, soldiers, workers, airplanes and so on :( can i play this version and be sure that with new patch i will not lose save games? :)

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there's also a few air combat changes aimed at making Foxtrots less able to deal with fighters.

It's like you knew that all last game I purchased only Foxtrots until Marauders became available. Now I'm going to have to become flexible and actually control my tactical air combat instead of time missile strikes and run away... :P

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We can read about balance updates :

- Sniper rifles have received a 25% damage increase (to counter the loss of HV properties)

The in game description of the sniper weapon did not change nor the weapons.xml file.

For the most part, you want to look at weapons_gc.xml for the ground combat stats. The odd case where weapons.xml does need to be in sync with weapons_gc.xml is ammo count, I think.

If you clear out a UFO ingame, you can tell that the sniper rifle has changed. It now does 50 damage (up from 40) and has 20 mitigation (up from 10, I think). It also has the damage variance as intended - I've seen a sniper hit for 72 damage.

Did Laser/Plasma/MAG shotguns go back to carabines?

I don't think so. I haven't looked in game, but in weapons_gc.xml they look like shotguns.

Edited by Ol' Stinky
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Nice patch, will play it now.

However there is one thing I noticed in build 7, and that is while recovering a Medium (I think) UFO the Aliens on the Upper or Lower floors were able to SEMI shoot down/up to my soldiers, through the flooring that is. 90% their shots just hit the floor but sometimes they would pass through.

Not sure if this is intentional but you might want to check it out.

PS. Dont forget to add base images for Laser/Missile Batteries et al..

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I have 2 soldiers sitting one by another at two adjecent tiles. One shot on an alien with a burst and all 3 bullets hit the adjecent soldiers, who died at once. there was no hint, no obstacle, no targeting that the line of sight and line of shot was blocked by the neighbor.

That is a kind of friendly fire which is most annoying and there was no chance, that the soldier could have hit him. Is that a bug or just an issue with the targeting?

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