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! We were hoping 6.21.0 would be ready for public release, but player testing suggested it needed another round of fixes first. We'll leave this build on the Experimental branch over the weekend and then release onto the public branches on Monday if no further serious bugs are found. Balance Changes: Fusion weapons now cause 5 Armour Destruction per shot (up from 3). Vehicle cannons now have double the damage / armour pen / armour destruction of the equivalent rifles, which works out a nerf for early-game cannons and a buff for late-game cannons: All cannons now have 24 range. Previously they had 20 range, but were bugged and would actually increase their hit chance beyond this point. Ballistic Cannon - damage now 68 (down from 70), armour destruction now 4 (down from 10) Laser Cannon - damage now 80 (down from 95), armour destruction now 16 (up from 10) Gauss Cannon - armour penetration now 20 (up from 0), armour destruction now 8 (down from 10) Fusion cannon - damage now 144 (down from 150), armour penetration now 30 (up from 0) Added 1-4 extra enemies to the Cleaner Base mission, depending on difficulty setting. Updated the UOO Bridge Assault mission so that it has slightly fewer aliens in the main room, and a few more weaker enemies spread out through the edges of the map. Gameplay Changes: We've improved the way grenades work in several ways: We've fixed the bug where any missed grenade throw inside a building or in an alien / Xenonaut base map would always hit the ceiling directly above the thrower and explode. Grenade arcs can now be a bit flatter, which means grenades are less likely to strike the ceiling in general. If a grenade throw path has a 0% hit chance because of a blocking object, the throw path now renders red beyond that object / ceiling tile. This should make it easier to see what is actually blocking the throw, We've also fixed an issue where the game would display a positive hit chance for a particular tile, but then incorrectly refuse to let you throw at that tile (as if you had a 0% chance). Bugfixes: Fixed an issue where base defence missions would allow you to use soldiers to defend the base who were already in an airborne dropship, which would then cause the game to be in a broken state on the Geoscape. Fixed a bug where you could sometimes take sentry guns on normal missions when using advanced dropships. Fixed the UFO outer doors sometimes not rendering correctly if the UFO is sighted in the shroud before the soldier has direct line of sight on the door itself. Fixed Cyberdrones that are killed on impact in crash sites not appearing visually dead. Fixed the Doomsday Counter tooltip on the strategy layer not including the +Doomsday values generated by the difficulty setting (which is usually +1 or +2 per day). Fixed a bug on the UOO Sabotage mission where the aliens could use some of the "teleporter" tiles in the Xenonaut spawn zone as actual teleporters, and attack your soldiers from behind. Fixed the MARS having the incorrect movement sound when using its light armour variant. Fixed some wooden plank tall props not having a 100% blocking chance. Fixed a building on a Boreal map that didn't have an internal floor.

If this is an issue in milestone 5 then I don't think we can fix it; we're focusing on Milestone 6 now (which should release in a few days) and switching back to 5 to debug a save from that version takes too long. However from memory I think there may be a bug in Milestone 5 about Endgame launching and having soldiers / dropships at a secondary base confusing the game. Can you try loading an earlier save from before the Endgame launch, but then move all your soldiers and dropships to your original base (and sell the ones you don't need) before you try to launch Endgame?

That's a separate issue though - vision cones are slightly more than 90 degrees, which you can see in other parts of the game too.

There's nothing we can do about this unfortunately. Windows are always the full width of the tile in game terms; it'd look natural enough if the windows were as wide as the other type of sawmill window you see on the sides of the building but that'd make the game look visually boring. EDIT - well, maybe there is something we can do. But at present this isn't really a bug, and fixing it would involve making further changes to the LOS system. I'll check with the coders if my suggested solution is potentially possible.

Thanks. We'll look into this - we appreciate the detailed bug report!

Thanks, but unfortunately it looks like this save is from the start of the UOO Bridge Assault mission, so it's a bit too early in the campaign to use.

As long as you're not actively feeding assets from the game into an AI (which is potentially giving the AI ownership over them), then you're free to create or share your creations however you like.

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! As this build fixes the last remaining critical issues in Milestone 6, we'll release this build onto the public branches as the first Milestone 6 Stable build next week if our players do not encounter any serious issues over the weekend. Bugfixes: Fixed the Abductor hull not hiding correctly when the main door is opened. Fixed an issue where certain tiles around the outer edge of the UFO interior would be visible in the shroud. Various visual fixes to a selection of tactical maps.

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! This update fixes most of the remaining issues blocking the Milestone 6 public release, but there are still some problems with the Abductor UFO hull revealing that need to be corrected (hopefully we can debug that tomorrow). Balancing: ENDGAME part 1 reinforcement timer increased by 1 turn, and four extra alien Praetorian-ranked aliens added to the mission. There's also now dedicated spawn points for the enemy noncombatants, so they always spawn inside buildings. Bugfixes: Fixed Sentry Guns being automatically assigned to ENDGAME / UOO mission strike teams, and crashing the game if you actually tried to bring them on the mission. Fixed various display issues for the multi-level UFOs in the tactical combat (except the Abductor, which we're still looking into). Fixed the game completion achievement not always correctly unlocking after you win the campaign. Fixed the engineering screen UI resizing itself when you add the MARS / ARES rebuild projects to the queue. Fixed the default soldier arrangement for the Pegasus dropship spawning a couple of soldiers inside diagonal wall tiles. Fixed the roof tiles on the ENDGAME part 1 mission not being properly destructible. Fixed some of the walls in the UOO Sabotage mission not visually updating their appearance when destroyed, and still looking undamaged. Fixed the vehicle Heavy Reinforced Armour incorrectly being called the Heavy Ceramite Armour. Fixed the ENDGAME part 1 intro incorrectly referring to the Pegasus.

Hello everyone - October is now finished, so it's time for our monthly progress update. I'll be keeping things brief this month! Milestone 6 & 7: We had hoped to release Milestone 6 onto the public branch last month, but unfortunately we've been dealing with a couple of rather thorny UFO-related bugs in the shroud / line of sight system. These are now fixed and what we hope will be the public release of Milestone 6 has been compiled and released onto the Experimental branch. Assuming no serious bugs are found over the weekend, we'll then release it onto the standard branches next week. We'll probably continue to patch Milestone 6 for another week or two, as there's a couple of annoying visual bugs in the game that we still want to fix (such as certain tiles incorrectly drawing under the shroud, etc). We'll also make it a priority to fix any bugs that are reported by the community after the public release. Aside from the programmer working on fixing those key bugs, most of our team moved on to Milestone 7 towards the end of last month. That update will be the final launch update for Xenonauts 2, and we'll be focusing primarily on polish and performance - however, we are still planning to add some extra content to the game in the update, and we've started by working on that. Strategy UI Background Updates: The most noticeable piece of new content will be the strategy UI background illustrations changing and updating as the game progresses and the player unlocks new technology. This feature existed in the original Xenonauts and was very well received; players felt it made the game feel much more reactive and immersive to get to see how the new technology impacted the day-to-day life of the Xenonauts. We've actually been working on these in the background for several months now. The artwork is already complete for the Research and Engineering screen backgrounds / characters, but the work of integrating them into the game only began at the start of this month. We still have to finish the new background illustrations for the Base Stores and the Soldier screens (which are the other two that upgrade), but we're expecting to have everything wrapped up in the next couple of months. I've attached an example of the updated artwork above. Aircraft Equipment Visualisation: In a similar vein to the background illustrations, we've been working on a proper "paperdoll" system for the Aircraft screen. The idea here is simple - the artwork for your interceptors should accurately reflect the equipment and upgrades that you've chosen for them. If you're equipping them with missiles, you see missiles appearing under the wings. If you've run the engineering upgrade project to give it improved engines, the artwork for the interceptor updates to show a more advanced engine, etc. We started working on the art assets for this task last month, and we'll be starting on the code implementation for it this month. Balancing Playthrough: Last month I did another campaign balancing / testing session. As always, this was rather time-consuming - the campaign I completed took about 35 hours, and there were also a couple of other shorter campaigns before that that were ended by serious bugs. Nonetheless, it was time well spent. We identified a lot of minor polish and balancing issues that we were able to fix relatively quickly and roll into the Milestone 6 builds. However, we also pushed a number of tasks back into Milestone 7, and we've been busy working on those over the past couple of weeks. Some of these were bugfixes that we didn't want to include in Milestone 6 because they risked introducing new bugs or breaking save game compatibility, whereas others were larger balancing changes that we'll implement as a group before we start our Milestone 7 playthroughs. Finally, playing the game for an extended period of time has been valuable for our planning process. There's only so much development time remaining before we leave Early Access, and we're not going to have time to polish or improve everything we'd like - so having a better understanding of how much each individual issue affects gameplay makes it much easier to make sensible decisions about what we should prioritise. Additional Maps: Another thing that has become obvious after repeated playtesting campaigns is that the game needs some additional maps for the early-game UFOs. There's currently three maps per biome for the small UFOs (Scout, Destroyer, Observer), which is enough that you shouldn't see repeats within a single campaign - but many users will restart the campaign at least once, and will therefore end up playing the early-game content multiple times. We've already started work on two extra maps per biome for the small UFOs, which should hopefully address the problem. We're hoping these new maps will all be complete by the time we release the first test versions of Milestone 7, which will probably be early in the new year. I think that covers everything we did last month. As always, thanks for reading, and I'll write another update in a few weeks!

There's not really much counterplay to mind control though. It's a nice reward to get full control of your soldier back if you can deal with the alien that is controlling them, in my experience. Sentry Guns already only have 40 TU, which makes them the slowest enemy type. And both Sentry Guns and Androns already have very low Reflexes (about 30) which means they're already highly vulnerable to melee attack. Not all other enemies have over 55 TU either. The Cyberdrone, Mentarch and Biter all also have 40 TU.

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! We're close to releasing Milestone 6 to the public now - we've fixed most of the remaining critical issues, and we're just trying to find a fix for the visual issues players will experience with UFO hull hiding on all UFOs from the Abductor onwards. Assuming no further serious bugs are reported by testers over the weekend, we should be on track for a release next week. Changes: Updated the air combat UI to move the "UFO Charge Time" bar to the bottom of the screen and make it more obvious. It now has a label, a tooltip and a countdown too. Added a new "UFO Escaped" air combat result, which makes it more obvious when the combat has ended because the UFO has charged its hyperdrive and jumped away. Added new fire sounds for the ballistic SMG. Further improved the camera tracking for long-ranged shooting / shooting between levels. Balancing: Geoscape: The start of Phase 4 has been moved forwards three days. Reduced the maximum range of the Phantom and Gemini interceptors by 15-20%. Lasers now cost slightly more Alenium to build, and the Guardian Armour Protection upgrade now costs 50 Alenium and 25 Alloys (previously 30 Alloys). Tactical Module upgrade now costs 20 Alenium in addition to its 20 Alloy cost. Air Combat: UFO Observer max speed has been slightly reduced so that an Angel on afterburner can (slowly) catch it. Size of the deployment area has been reduced in scenarios where the UFOs are attacking you, preventing the player from deploying their fighters quite so close to the attacking UFOs. Retreat mode now boosts your speed as if you had triggered the afterburners. Afterburners can no longer be triggered when in Retreat mode. Tactical Combat: When units suffer a morale break, they now have a 50% chance of Panicking and 25% chance of Fleeing or Berserking (previously 33% each). This change has been made because it's not particularly fun to have aliens Berserking too often. Mind Controlled Xenonauts that return to your control during your turn (i.e. because you killed or suppressed the psionic alien responsible) now regain all of their TU. Gauss weapons now carry 20% less ammo in each magazine. Most alien species now have scaling Bravery values - noncombatants have reduced bravery, basic soldiers remain the same, higher ranks now have somewhat higher bravery. Enemies should start becoming harder to suppress from roughly the point you encounter Observer UFOs. Sebillians now have scaling Regeneration - soldiers remain at +50HP, but elites + officers now have +75HP and praetorians + leaders +100HP. High Eternal now has 500 HP (up from 200HP) and +150 Regeneration (up from 100). Removed one alien from the first Alien Base mission on non-Commander difficulty settings. Various changes made to the UOO Sabotage mission: Increased the reinforcement timer by 2 turns. Fewer of the enemies have Fusion weapons. Various changes made to the UOO Bridge Assault mission: Starting alien crew increased in number, but a larger percentage of them are now alien noncombatants with plasma weapons (rather than praetorian-rank aliens with fusion weapons). Reinforcement timer increased by 1. Alien reinforcements are now roughly half praetorians with fusion weapons, rather than all being elites with plasma weapons. At the end of the mission, items are only recovered from the tiles that contain Xenonaut units (alive or dead), rather than all tiles. This means you'll always recover your own soldiers and equipment but you won't recover any loot from the aliens (unless you pick it up). Bugfixes: Fixed a crash that could occur during the character conversations if you press spacebar in the frame before it properly loads. Fixed a crash that would occur if you double clicked a "rescue" soldier in the Soldier Rescue mission pre-mission soldier equip screen. Fixed a problem where the building roofs on the UOO-1 Sabotage mission were not hiding when a unit went inside the building. Fixed a secondary problem with the roof hiding on the central building of the UOO-1 Sabotage mission. Fixed the ARES turning invisible when it takes damage. Fixed a problem with the Harvester UFO where the interior could be revealed through the hull. Fixed zombies hatching into Reaper after 2 turns, even if the zombie had been killed. Fixed an issue where many autoresolved air combats would incorrectly result in a draw because the UFO was escaping too quickly. Fixed engineering queue projects snapping way off to the right when you were dragging them to reposition them in the list. Fixed several UI issues on 5:4 screens (and other rare aspect ratios). Fixed armoured Psyons breaking their left arms when performing their fire animations. Fixed the Geoscape map scrolling having a visual "jump" when you scrolled far enough to wrap on the right edge of the screen. Fixed a visual issue with the shadow on the Observer. Fixed the UFOs inside the alien base maps not hiding their hulls correctly. Fixed a bug where using the shoot+move preview on a cloaked Wraith would show the incorrect hit chance value (it would apply the cloaking value from the current soldier location). Fixed jungle swamps hiding the fire path tiles if they passed over them. Fixed blood pools not being hidden when camera level changes. Fixed a particular type of hair incorrectly obstruction shading. Fixed the Soviet Town factory double door open position in gameplay terms not matching their visual position. Fixed a flicker on the Colossus fire animation. Lots of fixes to various tactical maps / tiles.

Thanks. Can you provide a save game next time you see it happen? The UFO is able to escape from combat if the combat is not ended quickly enough, which is why it jumps away on the Geoscape (we need to better explain this mechanic), but it does sound like something is going a bit wrong with the autoresolve. The Observer is fast enough to outrun an Angel in 6.18 but that shouldn't be relevant in the autoresolve, and the scout and destroyer aren't that fast anyway.

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! There's only a handful of key bugs we still need to clear before we can release Milestone 6 to the public (plus any other serious bugs reported by the community). These known bugs are: Non-experimental Milestone 6 builds have a number of tactical combat tiles rendering black for some reason "Miss" grenade throws almost always explode on top of the thrower if there is a roof above them The roof hiding on the UOO-1 Sabotage map doesn't work properly in some parts of the central building Fire and transparent objects are still incorrectly drawing below the shroud Changes: Improved lots of Soviet Town assets that were having issues with their destruction states. Units now correctly reset their idle animation after finishing a move, which should prevent units jerking noticeably. Another set of translation fixes and updates. A few map fixes. Moved the air combat evasive roll button tooltips so they don't obscure the other nearby buttons. Balancing: First terror site was made slightly easier by reducing the number of aliens by one. Fixed one terror site map that seemed significantly harder than the others (the Western Town one where you start in the middle of the map), by adding a bit more cover near the dropship and moving some of the alien spawns further away from the dropship. Bugfixes: Fixed a crash that could occur at end of turn on tactical missions. Fixed a crash that could occur when a Gemini interceptor was shot down in the air combat. Fixed a specific Soviet Town map that contained a corrupted asset that would break any save games made in that map. Fixed the cursor snapping to doors when you were trying to move units behind them. Fixed an instance where units like the Mentarch could bleed to death without triggering their death animation (leaving them hovering in the air). Fixed a couple of issues that could be caused by aborting stage 1 and stage 2 of ENDGAME. Fixed dragging-and-dropping certain UI elements having incorrect alignment on non-1080p screens. Fixed a Rescue Mission map where the soldiers were incorrectly split across two buildings. Fixed shields displaying that they could be equipped in the "Container" slot, which confused players into thinking it could be placed in the Backpack. Fixed some of the strange move paths that could be generated when trying to path into a shrouded part of a UFO. Fixed the X role icon not showing an icon in the tactical combat UI. Fixed the Sentinel System module incorrectly reporting a vision arc twice what it should be on the tooltip. Fixed all the remaining known broken translation strings.

You misunderstand my point. I'm not saying that we don't struggle to hit deadlines, but the problem isn't content - as of Milestone 6, the game is effectively content complete. I think people will enjoy the couple of extra bits of content we're adding in Milestone 7 but we're not going to be adding any more new aliens, or missions, or biomes, etc. What we're actually struggling with is a long list of bugs to fix, and gameplay systems that could do with a bit of a rework. There's a lot of tidying up that needs to be done, and that's what we've spent our time doing rather than adding new content. The problem is that lots of the things you're suggesting are gameplay features - they're existing systems that could do with a rework so they work differently. Fix the grenade launcher so it has a different ballistics model. Allow the Colossus to carry items that it cannot use. Make it so that shields and the Colossus block 100% of the shots passing through their tiles. They're all reasonable requests but they're not just changing balancing numbers, they require a coder to sit down and spend several hours working on them. So you're not asking us to focus on the game balance (which we're already doing), you're actually asking us to prioritise spending dev time on the polishing work you personally think is most important. Problem is, I could ask ten people on the forums what they think are the most important issues affecting tactical combat and I'd probably get ten different answers. I really don't think that, say, "light armour not allowing soldiers to throw grenades further" would be mentioned by many other people. They'd have their own ideas. Plus, you also shouldn't confuse things I don't want to fix because I don't agree they are issues (shotgun range, using alien grenades, smoke radiuses, the Colossus power fist weapon) with stuff I do agree is an issue but we just don't have the bandwidth to fix right now. Some of the stuff we hope to fix in Milestone 7. Other stuff, I don't think needs fixing - but once the mod tools are done, you'll be able to mod it yourself if it bothers you.