V20 Experimental Build 8 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 contains a large set of fixes and improvements across the board, there hasn't really been a particular focus to it. Probably the most important fixes are for a crash related to Reapers and another related to Bombers. The biggest changes are further work going into the balance for the Geoscape - Air combat has been softened again, and national funding has been increased to make up a bigger portion of your income. Terror missions have also been re-worked with different spawn locations and behaviours for aliens, which might prove quite a change so feedback on that appreciated.

I'm afraid there is a KNOWN ISSUE with this build which we have not had time to fix, but is quite easy to ignore if you know about it: The "autosave" created at the start of a ground combat mission is for some reason not saving the locations of alien units; this means if you load an autosave from ground combat it you will immediately be able to win the mission (ripe for abuse!). Normal saved games work fine. Please just work around this for the time being by making a save at the start of ground combat missions yourself - we will hotfix as soon as possible, but wantd to get this build out in the time for the weekend for everyone to play.

Fixes

- Fixed a load of incorrectly set tiles in the arctic and industrial sets

- Changed nation rating on mission end to say "placeholder" so it is less confusing until we get the new screen in

- Removed "Wraith Leader" enemy type, as there are no unique graphics for it

- Updates to Czech names to make them more correct

- Fixed: On 16:10 resolutions (and therefore also on 4:3 ones), the base screen buildings did not align correctly

- Fixed a variety of tile bugs in the Xenonaut base and Town tilesets

- Fixed instances where units killed in fire appeared to remain alllliveee

- Fixed a freeze caused by bombing run missions

- Fixed: double icon for aerial terror sites shown when reloading a game

- Pumped Reaper chance to hit to extreme levels (they were missing, which shouldn't happen)

- Sped up crouching / uncrouching /shooting animations for humans by 40%

- Removed final frame of all uncrouch animations to correct (one of several) animation glitch

- More window restyling in geoscape

- Increased Reaper movement speed and animations to match (graphical change only)

Additions

- GJ has been doing buckets of work generally improving AI behaviour; everything should benefit, but Reapers are particularly improved

- Captured alien Analysis images added to Xenopedia

- New animated tiles for Aliens props: Fusin Reactor, Comm Array and Hyperdrive (these are cool!)

- New UFO icons for geoscape reflecting their actual size

- Added explanatory tooltip to the Ground Combat (should only show the first time you play)

- Added some new custom soldier portraits

- Reaction fire popup has been disabled (will probably return for shots that do not come from the FOW)

- General Psionic power messages now last 2 sec instead of 3 sec

- Dread messages now only last 1 sec instead of 3 sec

- The Dropship Equip screen now shows you the role and weapon of a soldier if you mouseover their portrait, and will highlight the icon of the soldier in question on mouseover too.

Balance

- Geoscape funding increase, to re-emphasise national support

-- Increased the player starting funds from $750000 to $1000000

-- Increased the funding provided by each nation by roughly 70%(!)

-- Initially all countries will provide the same funding level (may be tweaked later)

-- Tweaked relations values to compensate for geographic area (UFOs spend more time over larger countries)

- Base building changes to make them much faster to come online, though a larger initial outlay

-- Increased the cost of building a base to $500000

-- Halved Command Center upkeep from $250000 to $125000

-- Reduced Command Center build time from 20 to 10

-- Reduced Radar build time from 20 to 10

-- Reduced Hangar build time from 10 to 5

-- Reduced the building and maintenances costs of various base structures, very significantly reduced in the case of the Hangar

- UFO balance changes to make both victories and failures more pronounced

-- Approximately doubled the relations penalty caused by UFO activity over a country (including terror attacks)

-- Increased UFO attack rate during their flight, to make sure attacks actually happen

-- Very large increase in the relations benefit provided by shooting down a UFO, e.g. from 6 to 40 in some cases

-- Reduced the health of UFOs to approximately 70% of their previous values

-- Reduced auto-resolve strengths of UFOs accordingly

- Returned alien weapons back to normal ammo values, as aliens now get unlimited ammo when using them (grenades remain limited)

- Tweaked explosive behaviour of all grenades so they cannot pass through walls

- Reduced the range of alien grenades by 4 tiles

- Changed the damage type of alien grenades back to kinetic (they were too good at blasting through tiles)

- Terror Missions now have a different layout of units spawns, and different alien behaviours to make them less "defend the chinook"

- Disabled the "system damage" for interceptors in air combat

- Reduced speed of "heavy" UFO projectiles to make dodging easier

- Halved turn speed of UFOs to encourage more manoeuvring around them

- Light Scouts have, after a bloody battle, been reduced down to slightly slower than Condors

- Scouts have had their speed increased significantly, but health reduced; they will require Foxtrots to catch reliably

- Balanced other UFO speeds so that there is a gradually increasing curve, rather than two tiers

- Also changed some UFO speeds to avoid matching human aircraft speeds; now you can either catch them, or they obviously outrun you

- Slightly increased damage of Avalanche Torpedoes, as they did not conform to the rule of slightly out-damaging light fighter weapons

- Dread now reduces APs by 30% instead of 50%

- Reduced alien strength to 60 (for throwing) removed alien grenade range penalty

EDIT: BONUS BALANCE FEATURE - I didn't realise this change made it in, but it did at the last minute: we have implemented a global accuracy buff to both Xenonauts and Aliens of 50% This is controlled by a new set of variables in weapons_gc at the top, and is intended to let us quickly test the feel of major accuracy changes. You will shortly also be able to tweak cover values globally, but that is not working right now.

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.

Edited December 14, 2013 by Aaron

[Lightzy]

Changes sound really good

BUT:

Make trees not block your shots if you stand right behind them for cover. Like in JA2.

Also make the maps have a lot more trees, like in JA2.

It's bizzaro cover mechanics that make you move a step, shoot, move a step, etc. It's not tactics, it's just bad design, which was fine for when the project was taking shape, but now for final polish, this crap has to go

Love!

[Chris]

We've tried to make things a bit snappier and more responsive in general. Speeding up the crouch and shoot animations so they're no longer in sloooow moooootion should help, and having the camera dwell on units after they perform an action for less long will hopefully make the alien turn shorter and also make the game feel a bit less ponderous.

If there are few bugs in this version, V20 Stable will hopefully be arriving next week before we officially shut up shop for Christmas. I'd like to get the new loading screen in the game for then, but the rest will be last-minute balance changes.

Air combat got some fairly significant changes last build but hopefully will be improved in this build. Let us know your thoughts in the appropriate balance threads:

Geoscape Balance: http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/8346-Geoscape-Balance-Discussion-V20-Experimental-8

Ground Combat Balance: http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/8345-Ground-Combat-Balance-Discussion-V20-Experimental-8

[llunak]

I don't want to make quick judgements, since this is based just on a couple of minutes of playing, but it's quite possible that the funding is still unbalanced enough to make the game eventually unplayable. I just did a quick test of quickly playing through September, just to see how funding now works. Veteran difficulty, I only placed the first base in Libya, built up to 3 Condors and 2 Foxtrots and hunted down almost all UFOs that came into my range (10 out of 12), but did no ground missions (not even airstrikes, now that I think of it), and there also were no terror sites or aerial bombings.

And the total funding after the month went down by 175k$ : NAm: -85k, EU: +10, NAf: +17, In: -33, SU: +33, SAm: -70, CAm: -83, ME: -12, SAf: +60, Au: -10. In other words, I lost about 75k in each of Americas (that were completely out of my reach), and with the exception of Middle East I was somewhat positive in all areas I at least partially covered. I didn't try a single ground mission, so I don't know how much it would improve, but I guess it wouldn't be much. The initial money also wasn't enough to start more than one new base, so I don't see a way to have a better coverage.

Is that to be expected? If I'm extrapolating this right, this should mean that at least 3 bases are needed to stabilize the funding, which means that at least 2 months some regions will have serious drop in funding, until it's possible to cover them. And that's being optimistic about the base buildup, I expect at least part of the money will have to be spent on development instead of expansion. As I said, I don't want to come to quick conclusions and will test this in practice, but if the idea is that funding is the main source of income, then IMO it should not drop so badly if the player does at least somewhat decently.

EDIT: Thinking more about this, I might have been too quick with jumping to conclusions after all. If I start with 2.5M$ funding and it drops this way for first 3 months, it'll drop just to 2M$, and after that it will (hopefully) increase, so this probably won't make the game unplayable.

Still, if proper playing of the game confirms this, I think this is not good for player motivation, seeing such a huge drop despite doing reasonably well (given the possibilities). In that case I suggest to reduce negative funding effects by a certain factor during the few first months (and this factor itself would be decreasing towards 1, making aliens effects eventually reach their full effect on the funding). This should make the players feel better, in practice it shouldn't matter more than adjusting initial funding, and the lore explanation can be that since Xenonauts are the only ones actually having some kind of success, even regions without cover can initially keep faith in them and only later get really upset that nothing is done to help them.

Edited December 13, 2013 by llunak

[Miyuki]

Completing certain research being completed, like the Fury, seems to freeze the Geoscape if it is run at 4 times speed prior when the notification is supposed to appear. It always freezes as soon as the notification of it being available for construction appears in Geoscape, which is a tad bit unfortunate. Some UFO missions spawning still cause freezes, but at least bombing missions seemingly start without a hitch now, or at least Strike Cruisers worked fine.

I'd say some of the long range shots from Battleships and such are a bit too slow now, what with corsairs, let alone marauders being able to fly around them in circles pretty much. However, being able to flank the craft at least now gives the player a chance. I'd go as far as increasing the range of the defensive weapons a bit further out, to make them more of a threat.

Alien behavior in combat is much improved, at least from the couple missions I've been in since patch.

Edit: Regarding what Ilunak said, the most prohibitive thing about many bases was the maintenance costs quickly sending budget to the red, no matter how many successful ground missions you did for $50k+ for even scouts and such, $150k for the bigger ones, unless you go crazy with explosives. I'll have to try and start from scratch once I've hit a wall with my current playthrough, but looking at the fundings at this point, it seems that not being able to cover a region is more punishing than doing well in others, especially as you start losing them to aliens. Even excellent relations with Russia don't really cover up for the bad relations elsewhere. The likelyhood of downing a UFO over some of the smaller nations that require a relations boost is just so small that I'd hope the relations boost to radiate to countries affected by the actions of that UFO, not just the one it was shot over.

Edited December 13, 2013 by Miyuki

[Jossis]

C4 seems pretty weak barely put a hole in a chain linked fence didn't touch any other walls so far.

The condors are a lot better now thanks!

But if you get the warning to have them head back and agree during an air combat mission they're considered grounded or shot down even though you sent them back when the warning popped.

Edited December 13, 2013 by Jossis

[Redwallzyl]

um the aliens all disappear if you reload a mission and you auto win.

[Sentelin]

um the aliens all disappear if you reload a mission and you auto win.

Isn't that mention in OP............

I'm afraid there is a KNOWN ISSUE with this build which we have not had time to fix, but is quite easy to ignore if you know about it: The "autosave" created at the start of a ground combat mission is for some reason not saving the locations of alien units; this means if you load an autosave from ground combat it you will immediately be able to win the mission (ripe for abuse!). Normal saved games work fine. Please just work around this for the time being by making a save at the start of ground combat missions yourself - we will hotfix as soon as possible, but wantd to get this build out in the time for the weekend for everyone to play.

[MaSer]

Sebillian guard aliens appear to be insanely tough. It took me like 10 rifle shots in close range(2-5 tiles) and 1 direct grenade explosive to kill one of them and 3 others took 3-4 grenades each.

[Chris]

Completing certain research being completed, like the Fury, seems to freeze the Geoscape if it is run at 4 times speed prior when the notification is supposed to appear. It always freezes as soon as the notification of it being available for construction appears in Geoscape, which is a tad bit unfortunate. Some UFO missions spawning still cause freezes, but at least bombing missions seemingly start without a hitch now, or at least Strike Cruisers worked fine.

Out of interest, is that a new save or an old one? Saves from prior to Experimental 8 are likely to have problems in them if loaded in this version.

[Miyuki]

Out of interest, is that a new save or an old one? Saves from prior to Experimental 8 are likely to have problems in them if loaded in this version.

That could help explain the issues from 20.8 persisting over to 20.9, yes it's an old save. Started a new game from scratch as the latest savegame with that problem encountered a freeze issue every single time at the same hour same day when that Fury research was supposed to have finished, regardless of whether I ended the research or not.

So far it's been working extremely well balance wise second month in on normal just so that I could actually get as far as, or further than that earlier attempt. Now there's enough cash to actually manage more than one base and enough craft within reason, instead of losing funds each month to the point of having a balance of less than 200k on third month with just one base. The aliens behave better, the air combat is more manageable and relies more on tactics and figuring out which craft is being chased to lure the UFO in a good position for the other craft. The difficulty curve overall has been much smoother too.

Oh, right... soldiers can now walk into objects when they don't know they're there and get stuck.

Edited December 14, 2013 by Miyuki

[ls35a]

My game is busted. When I try to start it I get a little steam window that says 'Updating Xenonauts ready in 0 seconds' and absolutely nothing happens. The 'play' button is grayed out.

It is not downloading updates. I tried deleting the local cache, but nothing changes anything.

Suggestions welcome.....

FYI, I deleted my appcache and that forced a reinstall.

Steam is handy until id doesn't work....

Edited December 14, 2013 by ls35a

[Sapare]

This isnt a v20.8 exclusive so don't mind me if this is known but aliens LOVE to hide 'inside' cover.(or well, sometimes there is an alien that seems to 'start' inside cover and won't move out of it, being 'behind' cover till you destroy it.) I dunno if that is supposed to or not..

The other thing is. Since v20.7(maybe before, but that was the only after v19 I played) windows are 'glitched' so hyper-velocity won't work.(The window got 100% block chance and as such the bullet will seemingly never get past it) At least that is the case in military base(not xenonaut base, just military base maps).

Edit: I just had a case of a shield/pistol guy being shot and when I went there to have my assault(shotgun) unit pick up the shield and pistol I found the pistol was gone. I don't recall ever having that in v19 so that might be a bug(but I also might have tripped up on my equipping, unlikely though, ammo was there just fine)

Edited December 14, 2013 by Sapare

[Miyuki]

Edit: I just had a case of a shield/pistol guy being shot and when I went there to have my assault(shotgun) unit pick up the shield and pistol I found the pistol was gone. I don't recall ever having that in v19 so that might be a bug(but I also might have tripped up on my equipping, unlikely though, ammo was there just fine)

I'm quite certain I've shot equipment off of the hands of aliens with plasma weapons, where an alien survives a burst of fire, but is then sitting there without a weapon. I started noticing this when they sometimes ran off unarmed and without their weapon being left on the floor, instead of shooting back. I wager it's a feature, like how sufficiently powerful grenades can cause equipment to blow up outright. Basically it seems that items and soldier armor can actually absorb damage and especially higher tier androns can take multiple shots before they start taking damage from the likes of projectile and laser weapons. I just wish there was some kind of an indication of this, other than leaving the player wonder why the soldier made a hit sound, but no damage was done.

Edit: I suppose our soldiers don't lose their weapons like this quite as easily, as any damage sufficient to destroy a weapon like that, would be enough to kill the soldier outright.

Edited December 14, 2013 by Miyuki

[Chris]

My game is busted. When I try to start it I get a little steam window that says 'Updating Xenonauts ready in 0 seconds' and absolutely nothing happens. The 'play' button is grayed out.

It is not downloading updates. I tried deleting the local cache, but nothing changes anything.

Suggestions welcome.....

FYI, I deleted my appcache and that forced a reinstall.

Steam is handy until id doesn't work....

We've had a number of people email us about this problem, but I don't know what to suggest. You've restarted Steam and tried right-click >> validate files too? If you find a solution please let me know.

[zolobolo]

Jumped right into the new build and:

- Hunted down first UFO but funding still decreased by 10000 (maybe haven't detected the other UFO(s))

- Ground mission went smoothly, aliens did not put up a good fight (hid behind rocks are only a few of them actually took shots on my soldiers positioned across a bunch of other rocks). Within the craft they released a reaction shot party on the soldiers but only one casualty. Flash bang took away 4-5 action points from them - also took some HP.

Changes to soldier positioning within craft and faster actions are a welcome change. The new arctic map at night time with pre-placed light-sources and pavement between the two buildings really showed off the props very nicely New Xenopedia images all look great except that of the Harridan - the guy looks way to stiff for an alien engineer who has been captured by apes

[Moonie]

And now for some trivia.

Why does the icon never appear on my desktop after install? I get a blank shortcut. Lets have a flashy icon for the game

You could run a competition for the best Xenonauts icon.

Edited December 14, 2013 by Moonie

[Ol' Stinky]

Soldiers cancel orders and grunt whenever they walk into a smoke grenade'd tile again. I'm close to using the dreaded red and angry emoticon!

[Mooton]

We've had a number of people email us about this problem, but I don't know what to suggest. You've restarted Steam and tried right-click >> validate files too? If you find a solution please let me know.

It's a problem with steam. It does that when it hasn't actually fully downloaded the update but won't download. You just have to try another time. Restarting steam might help. I got it for a few minutes on this specific update, but then it actually downloaded it. I've had it for other things in the past.

[Redwallzyl]

i keep crashing after i shoot down a corvette and an escort fighter. manual and auto both cause the crash.

Edited December 14, 2013 by Redwallzyl

[ls35a]

We've had a number of people email us about this problem, but I don't know what to suggest. You've restarted Steam and tried right-click >> validate files too? If you find a solution please let me know.

Deleting the appcache folder in my steam directory forced a reinstall and so that worked.

Game seems harder, but maybe that's coincidence. My first two missions I had multiple xeno's in very fortified positions.

[lemm]

- Light Scouts have, after a bloody battle, been reduced down to slightly slower than Condors

Maybe light scouts don't ALWAYS have to go slower than condors? At least on the world map, they could alternate between slow and fast.

[StellarRat]

We've tried to make things a bit snappier and more responsive in general. Speeding up the crouch and shoot animations so they're no longer in sloooow moooootion should help, and having the camera dwell on units after they perform an action for less long will hopefully make the alien turn shorter and also make the game feel a bit less ponderous.

The animations look much better. I think the speed is good.

[Solver]

The new animation speeds are subtle but better, the game feels more consistently responsive. Good job there.

[Skitso]

The animations look much better. I think the speed is good.

Yeah, definitely step in the right direction. Fence vaulting could use some speeding up still though and overall, I'd like the animations (especially shooting) even quicker than how they are now.