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! 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.

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.

I admit it does all start to blur together now, we’ve been through so many iterations. Phase 1 is longer in M6 than in M5 though isn’t it?

I wiped twice on it in my recent Veteran playthrough, although that's possibly because the AI was still using burst fire on their accelerated rifles and just deleting my soldiers from full health. Remember it happens earlier in M6 than it does in M5 so most players won't have Guardian armour by the time they fight the mission, nor the Dragonfly, and you're up against Accelerated weapons and some armoured aliens that also have Plasma weapons. And you have fewer soldiers. So I'd definitely try it again and see what you think - but even then, bear in mind you're a very experienced player and a lot of people would be going into Veteran blind both tactically and strategically. I don't think we're struggling to deliver content - if it's not content that excites you, that's fine, but that's not the same thing as content not being delivered. We've already made pretty extensive improvements to the ground combat balance in M6 and we're locking it down for final release once the bugfixes are done. Some of the stuff on your list is things we might consider in M7, but the only thing that we'll hopefully be addressing in M6 (or shortly afterwards) is the grenade / HEVY miss paths and how frequently they blow up the soldier trying to use it.

Thanks. Yeah, this is a tooltip error - the Container isn't the backpack, and it's not something that should be displayed to the player. I can see why that would confuse you. I'll get it fixed.

Thanks. Yeah, you're right, there's a noticeable framedrop as the tooltip is spawned now. We'll take a look at that next week.

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! Although we're approaching the public release of Milestone 6, we're not going to hit our target of releasing it this week. There's still a number of issues of varying severity we need to clear first, as we want to ensure the basic release is (reasonably) polished. Hopefully it won't be too long, but there's a couple of potentially quite thorny issues that may delay things if they take a while to fix. Balance Changes: Cleaner base mission made a little easier as it was quite tough for when it appeared. Fewer of the Cleaner Soldiers now have body armour, and the Cleaners with Accelerated Rifles are now less likely to use them in burst fire mode (previously even a single Cleaner could have massive damage output if RNG was in their favour; it's now a little more predictable). Enemy Sentry Guns are now able to move. Fire arc of missiles in the aerial combat has been reduced from 180 degrees to 150 degrees. Changes: Tactical: added a new 3D model for the variant of the Cleaner Soldier with body armour, so there's a visual distinction between the normal and armoured ones. Tactical: added a new melee animation for the Colossus. Tactical: fixed several issues with the Sebillian grenade throw animation, and slightly improved the Sebillian runcycle and Andron fire animations. Sped up the MARS move animation a bit. Tactical: some more tile fixes / improvements for the Soviet Town biome. Air Combat: clicking and dragging the background to move the camera no longer counts as a click (so it won't change the target / move destination of the selected plane). Air Combat: the current formation becomes deselected when you move a plane, allowing you to press the button again to reset your planes into their original positions. Bugfixes: (Hopefully) fixed a crash that could occur after killing a Cyberdrone. Fixed a hang that would occur if you pressed the Abort Launch button on the dropship screen while the "select soldiers" panel is active. Fixed there being black ground tiles around the dropship in certain types of missions (e.g. Ambush missions). Fixed local AI soldiers moving one tile at a time during the AI turn. Fixed the MARS / ARES not correctly despawning after being destroyed. Fixed the pathing system trying to path soldiers through the solid side walls of the blast doors on ATLAS / Cleaner Base missions. Further tutorial fixes to ensure none of the Cleaner soldiers get stuck trying to move to their intended positions in the tactical section of the tutorial. Fixed some unrevealed tiles and map edges on the ambush 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! We're not expecting to add any additional content to Milestone 6 at this point, and we're hoping to release this onto the public branch towards the end of this week (assuming we can fix the remaining bugs we're working through, and not too many more bugs are encountered). So please do let us know if you encounter any serious problems while playing! Bugfixes: Fixed a crash that would occur if you hovered over a weapon tile in the tactical combat (i.e. when the weapon tooltip would spawn). Fixed aliens with burst fire weapons (Servitors, Cyberdrones, Sebillians, etc) being unable to attack. Fixed the tutorial getting stuck in the air combat interception section due to the afterburners toggle not working correctly. Fixed a number of outdated text strings (such as the Agent Interrogation stating that it provides +150 OP, rather than +50).

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 mentioned in the previous patch notes, this update breaks save games. If you want to continue playing your 6.14.0 saves then that build is available on the Experimental Legacy branch. We're not expecting to add any additional content to Milestone 6 at this point, and we're hoping to release this onto the public branch towards the end of next week (assuming we can fix the remaining bugs we're working through, and not too many more bugs are encountered). So please do let us know if you encounter any serious problems while playing! Balance Changes: We've made a number of changes to the Doomsday values in Phase 1, which have been aimed at making the early game a little more forgiving and better emphasising success in tactical missions rather than relying on the player assassinating Infiltrators: Doomsday now starts at 30 (Recruit/Soldier), or 40 (Veteran/Commander). Infiltrators now generate +0.5 per day rather than +1, but there is now a baseline Doomsday gain of +1 or +2 (depending on difficultly setting). Overall, Doomsday generation per day has been decreased by -1 on all difficulty settings (counterbalanced by eliminating an infiltrator only reducing the Doomsday gain by -0.5 rather than -1). Winning a Cleaner mission now grants you -25 Doomsday. In some cases this is a significant increase. Cleaner Data items from Data Raid / Eliminate VIP missions are now worth +5 Operation Points each (not +10). Extract VIP missions now have the VIP carrying a briefcase item that contains investigative data on the Cleaners. Successfully extracting it grants +50 OP. Phase 1 Abduction missions now only generate +2 Doomsday for each civilian abducted by the aliens (reduced from +3). The following changes have been made to Supporters: All supporters now grant -1 Panic in their local region at the start of each month from Phase 2 onwards. Security supporters grant -1 Doomsday per day in Phase 1, and -1 Panic in each region at the start of each month in Phase 2. This is in addition to the bonus above, and the Elite Security supporter grants -2. Infiltrators generate +2 Panic per month in their local region from Phase 2 onwards. The VIP in Eliminate VIP missions is now less aggressive, so he will not push forward out of the building he spawned in. We've reduced the number of enemy spawn points near the target soldiers on Rescue Soldiers missions, as it was too common for them to start surrounded by enemies and fighting for their lives. Changes: Added the three large Soviet Town terror maps. Updated the destruction states on various Soviet Town tiles to improve their visuals. Units now play their damage animation when hit by a stun baton. Bugfixes: Fixed a random crash that could occur during tactical missions on Soviet Town biome. Fixed a crash that could occur on the soldier equip screen when moving items around. Fixed a crash that could occur when arranging soldiers in the mission launch screen (if you clicked the dropship name while on a mission using the teleporter device). Fixed the various tutorial progress issues, which would often also cause crashes when trying to complete the tutorial. Fixed the air combat deployment zone becoming almost invisible at the start of some interceptions. Another attempt at fixing shroud / fog of war not being visible inside UFOs. Fixed the Gemini's max speed incorrectly being reduced after you completed the Angel Engine Upgrade engineering project. Fixed enemy Sentry Guns showing as visually destroyed (but still actually being alive) after taking more than 50% damage. Fixed there being a noticeable delay when units reacted to being hit by a stun baton.

Yeah, 6.14 will go onto Legacy.

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! The minimum save version in this build has been increased, but it should not break save games created in the last couple of versions. This is intended to break campaigns started back in around 6.9 that did not survive the move to our more recent patches, as I'm not sure we can keep trying to patch those Please note that the next update we do (probably in a couple of days) will again break save game compatibility, so it's probably not a good idea to start a new campaign in this version! Balance Changes: Normal Security Supporters now only grant -1 Panic per month, as previously they gave -2 (which was the same as the Elite). However, there is a bug here that the supporters only grant local panic reduction, not in each region. This will be fixed in the next version (which will break save games). Changes: Some more visual fixes for the Soviet Town factory building walls. Bugfixes: Fixed shields not blocking shots at all. Fixed the crash when you unassign one of the target soldiers in the Soldier Rescue mission from the dropship (should really be fixed this time). Fixed a crash that could occur at end of turn on the Soviet Town maps. Fixed a crash that could occur when destroying particular walls on the Soviet Town maps. Fixed the weapon tooltip Armour Destruction value being broken. Fixed some of the issues with unrevealed objects inside UFOs partially drawing above the shroud.