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V21 Stable Released!


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Build V21 Stable has been released on Steam! This contains all of the updates made in the Experimental branch over the past few months and marks the point where the game is feature complete...but not finished. We're planning to spend the next couple of months working on polishing the game, fixing bugs and correcting usability issues (more details on this below).

This update will break saves - to get the old version back to continue your save games, please read this thread.

We will begin the porting process to Mac / Linux for this new version shortly, and upload new versions of the game to the Humble Store and Desura soon too.

The most important changes are listed below:

  • Lots of bugfixes
  • New loading screen added to the game
  • Updated mission debrief screen added
  • Lots of new maps added for aliens bases / terror sites
  • Spangly new UFO interior graphics
  • Load / hidden movement waiting times improved
  • TU costs for moving and shooting lowered
  • Firing weapons now uses % of max TU, rather than static costs as before
  • Weapon types have been rebalanced to act more differently from one another
  • AI now improved, particularly regarding psionics
  • Aliens now have access to a plasma shotgun
  • Updated final mission
  • New Singularity Cannon end-game weapon added

The (very long) full changelog can be found at the bottom of the post, but I'll take this opportunity to explain the rest of the development process.

This version of the game is "complete" - we think could kick it out the door now if we wanted to. However, we are planning to continue development work on the game until 30th May 2014, working to fix bugs and polish out usability issues...or basically doing anything that needs to be done on the game.

At the end of May we'll lock down the game to any further changes and start launch preparations. The game may launch on 30th May, but chances are we'll want a couple of weeks where we concentrate on getting reviews and other press coverage in place for the big day. So the actual release date is still unknown at present.

To make it easier for the community to track what we're working on and feedback on existing issues without too much duplication, we will be launching a public issue tracker. This will record and prioritise everything we consider to be an issue in the game, with special forum threads where people can report things they believe should be on the tracker.

We will not be able to fix everything on this tracker before release, but we'll fix as much as we can (working from the most important issues down). Full details of this process can be found here: http://www.goldhawkinteractive.com/forums/showthread.php/9310-Release-Date-Work-Tracker

The full changelog can be found here:

V21 Experimental 1 Changes:

Fixes:

- Crash for Aircombat Autoresolve feature fixed (game crashed when player lost and destroyed no UFO)

- Autoresolving an aircombat now uses weapons from all aircrafts, instead of just the first one

- Fixed a bug allowing you to walk through certain rock formations in the Middle East tileset

- Fixed Shrike walls being passable when it was facing NE

- Fixed bug that would switch soldiers while scrolling the soldier list in the soldier equip screen

- Fixed inability to spawn when using the Valkyrie

- Target name in launch interceptors dialog fixed (says Alien base instead of showing coordinates; translates "waypoint" and city names)

- Alien missions now don't spawn any event over lost continents.

- Alien bases are built only on non-lost continents, and (if possible) on continents that don't have one yet

- Fixed minor issue with airliner destroy events (sea and land strings were swapped)

Additions:

- Geoscape UFO icons now display whether the UFO in question has escorts

- Added sprites for Xenonaut soldiers using the assault shield with all armour combinations

- Added sprites for Xenonaut soldiers using the Alien plasma cannon with all armour combinations

- Air combat auto-resolve defeat image added (still has a scaling bug atm)

- Added a slight time variation to when UFOs that are part of a single wave spawn

- Number of player bases capped at 9

- If an aircraft does not have enough fuel to reach a target, it will now say "No Range" in the ETA column of the launch list

- Created extra small variants of "small" ground combat maps for light scouts

Balance:

- "Veteran" difficulty level is now the "standard" difficulty in game data; it uses the unmodified values specified in the configuration files (previously "Normal" did this)

- Alien weapons no longer cause overdamage

- Updates to UFO turn rates and weapons arcs/speeds so that later UFOs remain dangerous

- Capturing a landed UFO should now grant 3x the Alenium/Alloy resources than the crashed version of the same craft

- Added Alenium and Alien Alloy rewards for shootong down fighter and bomber UFOs (bombers are particularly lucrative!)

- Changed the soldier carry capacity formula to 10kg + 0.25*str, from 20kg * 0.2*str

- Moving a tile now costs 3 TU instead of 4, other action costs (shooting aside) reduced in line with this

- New soldiers start with 35-70 in most stats, instead of 45-55

- Cover effectiveness reduced by 25%

- Weapons have a much tighter accuracy spreads between zoom levels, all of which are clustered around 100 accuracy

- TUs now capped at 80 instead of 99

- Alien weapons made more accurate

- Reduced alien sight ranges to 18

- Reduced chance of Xenonauts panicking

- Combat Shields now have 60HP but provide 80% protection from 90 degrees in front, and 60 protection for 180 degrees. Assault Shields have 120HP.

- Upgraded armour on vehicles to increase survivability somewhat

- Rebalanced the number of aliens on missions somewhat

- Soldier carrying capacity has been rebalanced to reduce it

V21 Experimental 2 Changes:

Fixes:

- Fixed Reapers not being properly centred on the camera when moving/attacking

- Right clicking on the Ground Combat UI no longer also causes units to turn

- Fixed cash getting drained when trying to build an item with only 1-2 available engineers

- Equipping Predator armour will no longer destroy already equipped incompatible weapons

- Fixed various instances of incorrect UFO placement on new Light Scout maps

- Alien missions can no longer occasionally be detected before they spawn

- Fixed Barracks and Stores screen backgrounds not upgrading

- Fixed potential saved game corruption when a soldier had a corpse in their inventory

- It is now possible to apply a medical kit to a stunned soldier

- The force fire (Ctrl) mode should now highlight units in preference to terrain

- Finally, a proper fix for the soldiers coming back from battles with 98% health!

- Androns now leave scrap metal when over-killed, instead of a human corpse

- Added spectres for crouched Reaper animations

- Changed weapon order in armoury panel so it is consistent between weapon tiers

- Using a Fury to intercept an aircraft no longer displays the Auto-resolve option

- Using Singularity Torpedoes now depletes the players stock of them

- UFOs that grant items immediately on destruction (fighters, bombers) no longer do so if over-killed

- Compressed more game tiles, saving a few hundred more megabytes of disk space

Additions:

- Re-introduced new loading screen

- Reduced the length of time the alien turns take by removing various hidden delays, as much as a 60% reduction

- Added all new Terror Site maps for the standard Town set.

-- There are now 3 maps for each of small, medium and large Terror sites

-- Aliens are distributed in these maps further from the player spawn, which means they are less "rushy"

- The latest aircraft missile/cannon type should now always be added to all interceptors on unlock

- Implemented multipliers for Xenonauts aircraft speed/range per difficulty level (small differences for now)

- Enabled new reaction fire system

-- Units can now keep taking reaction shots (losing initiative with each) until out of TU or until their initiative drops below that of their target

- Added inventory corpse tiles for Harridan and Wraith rank variants

- Updated Autoresolve images for the air combat

- Added interrogation images for the aliens

- Adjusted "Bezerk" unit target selection

- Fixed Ground Combat UI sometimes crashing after loading

AI:

- AI will now end turns looking in the direction they predict to be attacked from

- Civilians and friendly soldiers should no longer enter UFOs

- AI is no longer afraid of smoke

- Units will get into cover if they run out of AP to shoot

- Turn costs now taken into account in pathfinding

- Re-introduced ProbabilisticSearch, which allows the AI to guess where enemies might be (less psychic now)

Balance:

- Re-added elevated soldier starting stats (they were accidentally removed)

- Soviet Town tileset expanded to cover more of the planet (will now be a more generic "cold city" tileset)

V21 Experimental 3 changes:

Fixes:

- Fix for loading screen crash (hopefully!)

- Fixed a crash when a terrain explosive tile exploded (possibly related to C4 and Rocket crashes)

- Reduced loading screen refresh rate to shorten load times

- Wraith soldier stunned/dead images no longer mixed up

- Improved the ground blending of the sprites for several Middle East buildings so they look less floaty

- Fixed bug where items could have their corners overlapping in the inventory

- The base upgrade research now correctly boosts the speed of manufacturing and research

- 4:3 resolutions now display correctly using a letter-boxed mode

- Fixed bullets not being able to fly through windows

- Fixed the AI not understanding it can shoot through windows

- Fixed bug where crouched soldiers would stand if clicked

Additions:

- Added all new maps for the Soviet town terror mission tileset, though a bug means these aren't accesible yet

- Predator armour wearing soldiers now move slower (animation only, no gameplay effect); this is controlled from new variables in armours_gc

- Resilience stat renamed to Health for clarity

- More loading screen tips

- Moving items around in a soldiers inventory in combat now only charges the the TU cost for doing so on closing

-- This means you can freely move objects around and only commit to the new arrangement when closing the soldier inventory

-- It also no longer cost anything to move items around if they stay in the same "container" (belt, backpack etc...)

Balance:

- Reapers can now be suppressed

- Crouching now costs 3 TU

- Close range bonus now +12% per tile

- Stopping chance for incidental targets reduced to 50% from 75% (this is the modified to hit chance for targets you aren't aiming at)

V21 Experimental 4 changes:

Fixes:

- Units will now not continue reaction fire against already dead targets

- Fixed an instance where two units pathing into the same tile would become stuck

- You will no longer recover equipment from soldiers who are left behind in an aborted mission

- If you put an alien corpse in a units backpack, it will now still correctly be recovered at mission end

- Fixed Ironman mode causing a delay when starting a mission and between turns, showing un-initialised UI elements

- Added a missing animation for Harridan sniper Soldiers

- Also fixed an AI spawn trap in the desert toilet block

- Predator armoured soldiers can no longer throw grenades

- Soldiers will no longer be resurrected if they earned a resilence point at mission end

- Fixed SoldierEquipView showing "no soldiers present" when removing assignment of last soldier of dropship

- Fixed SoldierEquipView sometimes hanging for a few seconds while scrolling soldiers

Additions:

- New Alien base maps

-- These are much more polished than the previous ones they replace

-- Much better use of alien specific rooms, vents, teleporters etc...

-- There are currently 2 variants for each base size, but there will be 3 shortly

- The "Soviet" tile set for terror missions is now a generic "cold town" set, and occurs over a wider area of the globe

- Added additional "cold town" terror mission maps

- Layout of the final mission has been reworked, though is still heavily a work in progress

- Added animations for Praetor commander

- Sebillians now display health regeneration numbers

Balance:

- Only 25% of aliens are now killed in a UFO crash, or 40% if the power cores explode

- Buffed plasma cannons significantly, but they no longer appear until Warrior rank ("support" troops get Heavy Rifles at Soldier level)

- Increased accuracy on Alien Battle Rifle so it is the same as the normal rifle

- All alien weapons now also do stun damage equal to their normal damage

- Added Alien Assault Plasma weapon (shotgun) to the game, creating a new class of "assault" Androns and Sebillians to use it

- Extended range of the Heavy Plasma Rifle, changed stats so it is a powerful single-shot weapon with no blast radius

- Removed grenades from Sebillian support troops

- Electroshock grenades now explode on contact rather than at end of turn

- Backpack and Belt item movement cost now 4 APs

- Easy mode aliens now 10% weaker

- AI troops now have more APs, so should be more aggressive

- Cover modifier increased from 0.75 to 0.9

- Andron armour increased slightly

- Light drone now much better at suppression and has more mitigation, but less base damage

- Aerial terror sites somewhat less common

- Significantly reduced resource gain from shooting down UFOs that do not generate crash sites

- Alien weapons rebalanced to be more of a threat to end-game armour

- Single shot weapons have smaller suppression radius than before - 2 for rifles and carbines, 1 for pistols and sniper rifles. Burst fire remains at 3.

- Switching items between hands is now free in terms of AP

V21 Experimental 5 Changes:

Fixes:

- Units larger than 1x1 (e.g. drones) no longer have accuracy problems with "phantom" blocking tiles

- Bullets should now appear near the barrel of the firing weapon, rather than at the units chest

- Updated animated alien base wall screens so damaged variants are aligned correctly.

- Fixed inventory bug allowing you to swap used items (mags etc...) for full ones for no AP

- Fixed a crash when carrying an alien corpse in a units inventory between missions

- Fixed inventory items disappearing when dragging items around with insufficient AP to move them

- Fixed crash when dragging an item in the soldier equip screen and changing base

- Fixed aircraft flight lines not displaying if any option had been changed

- Added missing entry in items.xml for plasmabeam ammo

- Fixed: dropping an item to the ground without the required APs duplicated the item

- Fixed hiring soldiers being free

- Fix: items list empty on 1920x1080 screens

- Disabled the playing of footstep sounds for units that are moving under the fog of war.

- Androns will now longer smash through walls in their own bases

- "Dead" soldiers no longer have a chance to survive after an aborted/lost battle

- Bugfix: SupplyRun missions sometimes causing a crash when alien base was destroyed

- Fixed issue that could cause UFO ground tiles to appear as ugly black triangles

Additions:

- UFO interiors have all been reworked, with some new props added

- Items within UFOs now grant the Alien Alloys/Alenium for that UFO, so don't destroy them

(There seems to be some bugs with the displaying of larger UFO hulls, we are investigating)

- New style mission debrief screen

- Manufacturing now drains money gradually as the project progresses

- Rocket launcher now shows currently equipped rocket in inventory / soldier equip screen

- Showing reserved APs in orange in combat UI

- Alien drones now have their own spawn points in maps, to prevent them spawning in buildings

- Added Singularity Cannon weapon (not balanced yet, but should work)

- Save files now use game name instead of save time

- Added the ability for soldiers to heal themselves with a medical pack

- Many alien props have now been painted over

- If a bullet misses a unit but lands in the same tile as the unit the text "MISS" is printed

- If a bullet hits a unit but does zero damage due to armour then the text "RESISTED" is printed

- Fixed the damaged versions of animated sprites being incorrectly positioned

Balance:

- Weapons now cost a percentage value of units max AP to fire (rather than a flat value)

- Due to the above the cost to fire weapons has been updated to keep them the same as before (for starting AP values)

- Machine guns now do reduce damage per shot, but fire 10 rounds

- MG upgrades now all have 20 clip size; enough for two bursts

- Alien weapon suppression dialled back a bit

- Removed stun damage from alien weapons

- Alien accuracy reduced by approximately 15 points across the board

- Rebalanced difficulty settings a bit to make Easy easier

- Valkyrie and Shrike both moved forwards one stage in tech tree, arriving at the same time as the comparable interceptors

- Max / min number of UFO squadrons reduced to 3 / 7 from 4 / 8

- Veteran difficulty alien invasion speed reduced from 1.0 to 0.9

- Aircraft cannons reduced to 3000 range, now the same as a Sidewinder

- Removed Elites from Carriers; they now only spawn on Battleships and Large Bases (so with Praetors)

- UFO minimum landing time is now 8 hours

- Explosive damage no longer falls off with range

- Blast radius for weapons turned down as the damage drop-off has been disabled

- Toned down the AP scaling at higher alien ranks, reduced Sebillian AP in particular at high levels

- Light drones now have a minimum shot threshold of 5%, rather than 35%

- Reduced damage on upgraded human grenades by 10-20%

- Increased Andron health to be in line with Caesans

- Removed shooting ability from final Praetor

V21 Experimental 6 changes:

Fixes:

- Cleaned up a large number of unecesary transparent floor tiles from UFO submaps

- Ground floor tiles in UFOs can now receive damaged decals

- Changed the timings on the Xenonaut crouch / uncrouch animations to slow them down a bit

- Fixed Reapers in final mission spawning immediately if the game is loaded from a save

- Fixed missing reference to directional thruster array for Corvette

- Props that remain impassable in their destroyed state are no longer drawn beneath other tiles

- Fixed a bug that allowed the player to see inside UFOs through walls in some cases

- Explosive props now work correctly when multi-tile (display their explosion, and position it in the correct place)

- Tweaked Corvette submap to reduce instances of shots being blocked near the UFO unexpectedly

- Pathfinding improved to limit itself to range of available TUs when calculating a path (internal fix)

- Fixed the AI being unwilling to use weapons with only a burst fire mode (e.g. light drones)

- Fixed some UFO data cores bieng missing alenium/alloy values

- UFO power core generated smoke will now dissipate gradually over 10 turns

Additions:

- Further refinements to the final mission (still work in progress)

- Implemented basic Psionic behavior for the AI

- The ground combat camera now displays both target and shooter at once for shots under 20 tiles in range

- Added animated blood sprites when a unit takes damage from weapons fire

- More painted over tiles/damage states for various alien base props

- Added a loading screen tip about reaction fire / remaining TU %

- All cars and vehicles now have appropriate damaged/destroyed states

- Added missile impact explosion in air combat

- Updated image for the Alien Assault Plasma

- Right-clicking on a weapon in GC inventory unloads the current loaded clip

Balance:

- Weapon TU costs rebalanced extensively to reflect experimental balance patch (in line with the weapon roles defined in this thread)

- TUs now capped at 99 instead of 79, and you can gain 2 TU per battle instead of 1 TU

- Starting attributes returned to a 30-70 spread for everything, including TU.

- Reduced pistol range to 10 tiles, from 16 tiles.

- Heavy weapon move penalty removed

- Reduced reload costs to reflect the fact that they use flat TUs rather than a TU %

- C4 / Plasma Charge damage halved, as the blast radius changes had made it extremely powerful

- Increased the number of defensive aliens in the larger UFOs

V21 Stable Candidate Changes:

Fixes:

- Fixed: psionic attack message could stay on screen after an attack was finished (fixes the "beserk crash")

- Fixed aliens not using TU if no Xenonaut sighted during their turn

- Fixed extremely slow loading in full screen mode

- Fixed medical kits behaving strangely in diagonal healing

- Fixed misaligned vehicle 50cal image

- Darkened background image for soldier equip screen

- Fixed some ##### strings on Vehicle Equip screen

- Fixed bug with Sebillian Soldier appearing unarmed when equipped with an Assault Plasma

- Fixed issues with vehicles (props only!) becoming invisible when in the destroyed state

- Fixed a variety of problems in submaps where vehicles were positioned incorrectly

- Fixed some mis-set grenade / C4 throw animations for advanced armours

- Fixed stun gas being deadly for unarmoured Xenonauts

- Fixed pressing space on the victory screen displaying the loss screen (!)

- Grenade selector menu now shows correct grenade throw cost

- Pressing Next/Prev buttons on Airplane equip screen did not show an empty window if hangar was not full

- 0/0 civilians/local forces saved score is now rated Excellent, rather than Terrible

- Not showing ammo load percent if magazine fully loaded

- A few Xenopedia typos / inconsistencies fixed.

- Fixed: shotguns caused no suppression if they didn't have a burst fire mode defined

- Now in missions with the Valkyrie dropship the player gets the first turn the deployment phase

- Key final mission doors are now only openable by players

- Corrected ammo clip sizes for some alien weapons

- Fixed: vehicles didn't spend and sometimes gained TUs when firing their weapons

- Fixed: flashbangs and other throwables caused no suppression damage against enemies that passed a reaction check against the thrower

Additions:

- Added "ground" images for all weapons and equipment in the game

- Even more revisions to the final mission, and new art (still not final, need prop paint-overs + new floors!)

- New Game Over screens (victory/eradicated/bankrupt)

- Aliens now have +25% accuracy on Insane, - 10% ACC on Normal and -25% ACC on Easy difficulty levels

- Added hovering animations for the Harridans

- Added an Alien Assault Plasma research project to the game

- Added final praetor injury animation

- Added Xenopedia descriptions to Alien Assault Plasma and the Singularity Cannon

- Gave singularity cannon a better looking animation, projectile and blast

- Updated general unit shadows to be a little softer

Balance:

- Predators now have 0.65x TU fire costs (MG burst costs 52% TU)

- Vehicle weapon fire costs doubled to account for % TU costs rather than static ones

- Snap shot costs for most weapons increased from 25% TU to 28% TU

- Made morale events less likely to occur and reduced the morale damage from some events (civilian death, wounded penalty)

- Reaction fire bonus of pistols and shotguns (humans and alien) reduced from 2x to 1.5x

- Nerfed the Reflexes scaling of Androns a bit.

- MG and MG derivatives now have 30 round capacity, but 75 recoil

- Reduced the Alenium cost of new aircraft / vehicles by 50-70%

- Added Alien Alloy cost to manufacturing aircraft and vehicles

- Reduced the relative $ and Alloy cost of MG and sniper rifle derivatives

- MGs and MG derivatives now have 0.5x Reaction Fire modifier

- Soldier starting values are now 35-65 in each stat (starting squad still have +5)

- Updated Singularity Cannon stats to be ludicrously powerful

- Disabled reaction fire on rocket launcher/singularity cannon

V21 Stable Candidate 2 Changes:

Fixes:

- Reapers no longer cause AI hangs

- Topbar buttons now no longer stop working after some ground combat missions

- Units can no longer path inside solid objects when opening a door

- Fixed "UFO escaped to space" message after completing a landed UFO mission

- Weapons can no longer be duplicated with right-click after battle

- Dropships can now be assigned troops after being transferred to a secondary base

- 1x1 buildings can no longer be rotated when placed, causing them to appear invisible

- Medals that replace other medals (eg: LongServiceMedal) are now shown on mission Debrief screen when awarded

- Fixed a number of missing Research description text strings: Stun Weapons, Alien Communications Array

- Fixed Xenopediea research pop-ups not appearing for some projects: Alenium Warheads, Alien Officer Interrogation, Alien Leader Interrogation, Praetor Interrogation

- Slight alignment tweak to structure construction list to make more room for Quantum Cryptology building when it appears

- Basic armour machinegun crouch and uncrouch animation "jumping" fixed

- Fixed some mis-set cover walls in alien bases that were preventing units from entering the entire tile

- Swedish surname "Bergamn" corrected to "Bergman"

Additions:

- Updated final victory and loss artwork

- Added Xenopedia image for Quantum Cryptology Center

- GJ has done some AI changes that should make the aliens more aggressive, and work better as a team when four or more wandering aliens are in the same map.

- Hidden movement screen times optimised a bit.

- All weapons are now reloaded after a GC

- Wraiths can no longer perform any actions after a teleport

Balance:

- Sebillians no longer receive an accuracy penalty from smoke

- Machinegun and derivatives reduced from 40 to 30 accuracy, but recoil also reduced from 75 to 70.

- Alien psionic strength reduced from 600 across the board (used for testing) to 100-200 depending on strength.

- Alien weapon accuracy modifier increased to 1.25x to match 1.25x human weapon modifier.

- Aliens now have 50% accuracy on Easy, 75% on Normal, 100% on Veteran and 125% on Insane.

- AI can now employ grenades against soldiers using shields, even if they are not "grouped".

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Next couple of months? NEXT COUPLE OF MONTHS? Maybe I'm wrong, but wasn't there a post first week in December saying (roughly) 'you know, we could push and get this done by Christmas, but we're going to take our time'?????

Now it's end of May/early June release?

The game is looking so much better, but still. It's frustrating.

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Next couple of months? NEXT COUPLE OF MONTHS? Maybe I'm wrong, but wasn't there a post first week in December saying (roughly) 'you know, we could push and get this done by Christmas, but we're going to take our time'?????

Now it's end of May/early June release?

The game is looking so much better, but still. It's frustrating.

Would you rather have a balanced, non-buggy game OR a game that needs 10 patches after release?
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Hi All

So I only play stable versions because I dont have a lot of time to play. I am super excited for this and just started a game. I went to my research tab after building my first base and I already have options to research alienium, alien alloys, plasma pistol, and plasma rifle. I havent even encountered a ufo yet. I dont think this is a bug. But why the early research options? I liked having to kill the aliens to take their tech and then use their own tech against them.

In any event I am super pumped to play V21 Stable! Thank you Chris and everyone at GH!!!

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@l35a - well, if we were going to release it today the game still would be exactly like it is today - the game you can play right now :)

We wouldn't have got any extra work done in the intervening time...well, maybe a little more due to the looming deadline, but not much more. It's just we've decided to continue development work for another couple of months before releasing the game, which can only be a good thing.

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Actually had the day off work, so fired up Xenonauts. Though I had a good number of hours invested in a v20 game, when I saw "lots of new maps for alien bases/terror sites" I said woohoo, v21 here we go!

My one observation so far is the seemingly greater range of starting statistics for your troops (or is it my imagination?). I had several soldiers with acc of ~40, which makes them basically worthless, or movement of ~40, which makes them basically immobile. I restarted a few times and noticed the same thing. Was it like this before, or was the RNG for the starting stats changed?

EDIT: Sorry about that, just saw the thread where you detail all the changes. Well, that's interesting. Increases your chances of getting a few badass soldiers right off the bat, but also your odds for a few shoemakers. Have to see how that plays out

Edited by dpelectric
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I'd also just like to say how extremely impressed, almost blown away, I am by Goldhawk's community support and the level of developer response to fan input. I have NEVER witnessed such interaction. The single thread that was just posted summarizing the v21 changes in itself exceeds the sum total of all information ever released across a game's entire lifespan by most developers. You guys may not be making a product that appeals to the great masses, by I'll bet the fanbase you attract will be an extremely loyal and diehard one. Me included :D

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I haven't played Xenonauts for a long time since I wanted to wait until it was more complete. It is amazing how far it has come! It looks very polished now!

I started a new game and encountered 2 small scout UFOs. Both times my condors has to break off from the attack while in the combat screen just before they could fire on the UFO. I got the message that I had to break off the attack or else I wouldn't have enough fuel to fly back to base. I said yes to break off the attack. The condors then turn around and fly off the screen in slow motion. It takes a minute or two for them to leave the screen and for the screen to go back to the Geoscape. Is this normal behavior? Is there a way to speed it up?

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@l35a - well, if we were going to release it today the game still would be exactly like it is today - the game you can play right now :)

We wouldn't have got any extra work done in the intervening time...well, maybe a little more due to the looming deadline, but not much more. It's just we've decided to continue development work for another couple of months before releasing the game, which can only be a good thing.

Will future patches destroy my save games if I start playing now?

thats the million dollar question

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mrxny - if you start playing on the Stable build, there won't be another update for two or three months and even then you'll be able to access the old version on the legacy branch. So your save games should be safe provided you don't play on the Experimental branch.

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Whoa, being inside the development process and reading the SVN commit list everyday made it difficult to notice how much changes we did over v20. Seeing them all in a single changelist makes a completely different impression!

V21 is a big step ahead V20, and I truly believe the final product will be very near to an AAA release! :cool:

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What I like and do not like:

Good:

- I like the new end game weapon ( but this is ridiculous she needs a Singularity Core )

- The hit accuracy of the AI is back to normal

- The Brave New Graphics

- The many small and large balancing

Bad:

- The terrorist missions

PSI :

Only the AI ​​controlled PSI

Xeno PSI values ​​are invisible

the Xenos no equipment for PSI protection have as the UFO Original

This means that my soldiers at random a massacre inflict upon each other . This is not a challange or tactically good, but just bad because I Can do about NOTHING . A random factor despite tactically good planning just cost me soldiers. BAD with a big " B". At least for the moment . Maybe you let yourself be still something meaningful come . ^ ^ Until then I use generously saving and loading to the PSI attack fails. This solution is a shame, but at the moment the only solution.

- Where are the old Mag weapons? I found that really cool.

-In bases and terrorist missions later to 90% Andron (Robots) or from time to time Sebillians . Andron and Haradrians have 90% AOE weapons. It's annoying.

Suggestions:

-More Alien Races and Techs for a longer Gameplay

Xenonauts 2 Revolution (add on?):

other names: Projekt Liberty or something like this.

The Xenonauts Organisation helps the Slaved Alien Races and free there Homeworlds from the Preators.

Idea:

A Great Mothership Started from earth and you must choose where you travel and free first. After free a Race you can hire them as Team members, get new Techs; Buildings etc...and can Build Bases on there Home Planets (Sebillian jungle, Caesian Metropoles etc...)

On Planets you can get Ressources for your Projekt. (free the Races)^^

Edited by VaeliusNoctu
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Ah, just another request for Goldhawk:

In future experimental and stable release updates, could you please put down a list of which files were changed from the last build? For mods and modders, the fast pace of the game updates requires constant reintegration and tweaks as new content gets added. The gameplay changes listed in the changelogs will hint as to which files were altered, but a changed-file-list would speed things up immensely.

We can figure out the raw alterations ourselves; personally I keep a backup of every build's XML files so I can compare them with the latest ones. That way I can merge new official content into my modifications instead of re-doing everything from scratch the other way around. A file list for the changelog would be really appreciated.

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