Xenonauts 2 News

[p]Now, you can experience the intense strategic gameplay of Xenonauts 2 for 35% off.

In Xenonauts 2, you command a global defense organization tasked with intercepting alien threats and leading tactical ground missions. Build your base, manage resources, and engage in turn-based combat to protect humanity.
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[p]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![/p][p]Balance / Gameplay Changes:[/p]

• [p]The light variant of Xenonaut armour now grants roughly 65% of the armour of the Heavy Armour variant (except for the basic Tactical Armour), rather than 50% as in previous versions.[/p]
• [p]Reverted Combat Shields to 100% effectiveness on Veteran and Commander difficulties.[/p]
  • [p]This change was originally made to address how powerful the shield & pistol combo was when given to the entire team. After some more testing, we decided that it wasn't quite overpowered enough to warrant a second shield nerf (after Milestone 6 reduced their side protection), so we've returned to the previous values.[/p]
• [p]Cost of the Identify Recruits strategic operation reduced to 35 OP, and cooldown reduced to 1 day. In a future patch we'll set this operation up to decrease in cost by 1 OP per day, so you effectively retain your free monthly soldier pool refresh but also have the opportunity to refresh more often if you spend OP to do so.[/p]
• [p]Colossus should now be able to place items it cannot use in its Primary / Secondary slot into its backpack.[/p]
• [p]Set up the Secondary soldier inventory slot to display grey when the Colossus Power Fist is equipped in it, indicating that it cannot be unequipped.[/p]
• [p]Added a slight visual trail to alien Symbiotes when they are being shot at you.[/p]

[p]Bugfixes:[/p]

• [p]Fixed the game crashing when trying to load a tactical autosave.[/p]
• [p]Fixed two different crashes that could occur at the end of a tactical battle.[/p]
• [p]Fixed another way of getting the Rescue Soldiers preview soldiers stuck in your dropship if you cancelled the mission preparations, which would cause a crash when you tried to use the dropship.[/p]
• [p]Fixed LMGs not having both burst fire modes.[/p]
• [p]Fixed certain Research projects (like Laser Weapons) incorrectly showing a quantity number after their title.[/p]
• [p]Fixed there being a minor dark flicker on the Geoscape after a dropship reaches a mission site.[/p]

[p]We've released the first version of Milestone 7 on our Experimental branch (instructions on how to access it here).[/p][p]Standard disclaimers - this is an early experimental build, so it's likely to be unstable and will probably have balance issues. Because of the extra logging in experimental builds, it'll also have worse performance than standard builds. Additionally, not all of the planned Milestone 7 content is in place yet. Basically, please only play this if you're prepared to encounter problems - if you're looking for a smooth and stable experience, please wait for the full Milestone 7 release![/p][p]Please also be aware that save games often end up getting broken due to bugfixes in the early days of an Experimental build (although we do try to avoid it where possible). If you're likely to find that frustrating, it'd be best to wait a couple of weeks for things to settle down before you dive in.[/p][p][/p][h3]KEY CONTENT (SO FAR):[/h3]

• [p]New UI Background Art: there is now new background art for the Research, Engineering, Soldiers and Base Stores screens, which visually changes and upgrades with new technology as you progress through the game - a popular feature from the first Xenonauts that we've finally managed to implement in the sequel![/p]
• [p]Interceptor "Paperdoll": the top-down interceptor art on the Aircraft screen has been updated, and the image now reflects changes in weapons and equipment loadout as you make them.[/p]
• [p]Alien Praetorians: a new rank of Psyon / Sebillian / Wraith has been added in the final stages of the game. These Praetorians have new 3d models and only appear on missions where Eternals are present, and they are significantly tougher and more dangerous than normal aliens (the alien Praetorians that existed in Milestone 6 have been demoted to alien Elites, and the previous alien Elites have been demoted to Warriors).[/p]
• [p]Farm Map Revamp & Scout UFO Maps: this update contains a complete rework of most of the existing Farm tactical maps, making their layouts more interesting and adding a number of new / updated terrain tiles. We're also in the process of adding two new Scout UFO maps to each biome, as previously there were only three maps per biome for Small UFOs (Scout / Destroyer / Observer), and they would quickly start to repeat once players began their second or third campaign.[/p]
• [p]Improved Performance: game performance has been significantly improved for Milestone 7 - although remember these will be less obvious on the Experimental branch due to the extra logging! The improvements cover a lot of different areas of the game, including the following:[/p]
  • [p]Faster loading times (for both strategy layer and tactical combat)[/p]
  • [p]Reduced slowdown when UFOs spawn on Geoscape at high time acceleration speeds[/p]
  • [p]Reduced strategy UI sluggishness, especially when spawning tooltips[/p]
  • [p]Explosions in tactical combat should now calculate much faster[/p]
  • [p]AI turns in tactical combat have been sped up - both in terms of improved AI calculation time, and reducing the number of unnecessary moves made by civilians[/p]
  • [p]Much faster save speeds across all parts of the game, the biggest effect of which should be that autosaves should no longer lock up the game for 1-2 seconds. This will be especially obvious on Ironman mode, as the game frequently autosaves during tactical combat when Iron Man is active.[/p]
• [p]Steam Workshop integration: this update contains the last of the technical work required for making mods work, including the ability to edit texture files using code mods and in-game UI for managing mods and uploading / deleting mods to Steam Workshop. Although the general-purpose mod editor tools are not yet complete, experienced modders who are familiar with Harmony code modding should now theoretically have everything they need to be able to create and distribute mods.[/p]

[p][/p][h3]BALANCE CHANGES:[/h3][p]Strategy Layer:[/p]

• [p]Two existing features have been moved inside the Strategic Operations system via a couple of new Strategic Operations that unlock after ATLAS Base:[/p]
  • [p]Refresh Soldier Pool: the soldier pool would previously refresh for free at the end of each month, but will now only refresh when the Identify Recruits strategic operation is used (50 Operations Points cost, 3 day cooldown). I think this is easier to understand, and makes it easier to recover if you sustain heavy losses on multiple missions in the same month.[/p]
  • [p]Build Base: constructing a new base is now done via a Strategic Operation (100 Operations Points cost, no cooldown), which is in addition to the existing $ cost of constructing the base. This change was primarily done for UI / UX reasons, as the Strategic Operations represent actions you can do on the Geoscape and building new bases naturally sits within that. It also serves to clearly flag the ability to construct new bases to inexperienced players, and fixes a UI issue on 16:9 screens where there was not enough space for the Create New Base system in the topbar.[/p]
• [p]Supporters & Operations Points:[/p]
  • [p]The cost to remove Infiltrators now increases by +0.5 OP per day, capped at +100 Operations Points.[/p]
  • [p]Intelligence supporters reduced back to generating +1 /+2 OP per day.[/p]
  • [p]Security Supporters now each grant -2 Panic in each region (Elite grants -4 Panic), but their Phase 1 Doomsday reduction values remain unchanged.[/p]
  • [p]Cleaner Agents / Soldiers now grant +25 Operation Points on completion of their Interrogation project (down from +50). Cleaner Leaders now have their own Interrogation project, which grants +50 Operations Points (previously you gained +30 per captured Leader item).[/p]
  • [p]Recruit difficulty now generates 10 OP per day, not 12.[/p]
• [p]Mission Changes:[/p]
  • [p]Reduced the Doomsday reduction win rewards of all Cleaner missions by -5 each (except Abduction missions where the reward remains variable)[/p]
  • [p]You are now awarded the item contents of the attacking UFO if you win a Xenonaut Base Defence mission, or if your base defences shoot down the UFO as it tries to attack your base.[/p]
  • [p]Reduced the number of enemies in the Extract VIP cleaner escort mission by 1 on all difficulties.[/p]
• [p]Heavy Armour now causes a -10% Accuracy penalty (previously a flat -5 Accuracy).[/p]
• [p]Soldiers can no longer overload themselves by more than 16 weight on the pre-mission Soldier Equip screen. This is to prevent players from loading up excessive amounts of extra equipment and then dropping it all on turn 1.[/p]
• [p]Aircraft engine upgrade projects reduced in cost to $350k (from 500) for the Angel, and $1m (from $1.5m) for the Phantom[/p]
• [p]Unlocking the North America region bonus (+5 Soldier Starting Experience) now gives you an immediate free refresh of the soldier pool.[/p]

[p]Air Combat Layer:[/p]

• [p]Reduced the damage on the Alenium and Fusion missiles / torpedoes, as they were too effective against late-game UFOs.[/p]
• [p]Rush replacement cost for aircraft has been increased: the Angel went $100k to $120k, the Phantom $200k to $250k, the Gemini $250k to $500k.[/p]

[p]Tactical Combat:[/p]

• [p]The effectiveness of Combat Shields is now affected by the difficulty level. On Veteran and Commander, they no longer block every shot from the front (90% block chance on Veteran, and 80% block chance on Commander). This change has been made because having a guaranteed source of protection from alien attacks can be a little too strong in the hands of experienced players.[/p]
• [p]Reflexes Modifier has been re-added to weapons, which modify the soldier's reflexes by values ranging from 1.25x (shotguns) to 0.5x (shields). Be aware that the system uses the lowest value from the main and offhand weapon, not the value of the currently active weapon.[/p]
• [p]Being on a higher level than your target now grants a +0.10x Hit Chance (per level) modifier to your shots, and being on a lower level inflicts a -0.10x penalty per level. This replaces the overly complex system in older versions that would reduce the stopping chance of any intervening cover, but not change the overall accuracy of the shot.[/p]
• [p]The damage types of weapons and their effectiveness against terrain have been reworked:[/p]
  • [p]Kinetic weapons now do 25% of their base damage to terrain (this means their damage vs terrain has been reduced by 40%)[/p]
  • [p]Thermal damage has now been split into Energy damage (lasers, plasmas, fusion) and Explosive damage (rockets, demolition charge, etc).[/p]
  • [p]Energy weapons do 100% of their base damage to terrain. This is a reduction of about half since the previous build (Lasers in particular made clearing terrain a bit too easy), but Energy weapons remain 4x more effective against terrain than Kinetic weapons are![/p]
  • [p]Explosive weapons now do 200% of their base damage to terrain (reduced from 250% in the previous build). [/p]
  • [p]UFO interior walls now have 50% more HP.[/p]
• [p]You can now force-fire at enemies using Ctrl even if there is a 0% chance of hitting them. You can already use force-fire to take 0% shots against terrain, so this makes the behaviour consistent.[/p]
• [p]Berserking units now give reduced weight to inflicting suppression damage, which makes them less likely to waste their TU throwing flashbangs at enemies rather than performing normal attacks.[/p]
• [p]Tweaked the vision-blocking and stopping chance values of certain terrain objects to improve consistency. [/p]
• [p]Updated a number of trees to have cover on the upper levels as well as the lower levels.[/p]
• [p]Alien Changes:[/p]
  • [p]Aliens are now noticeably tougher, as in previous versions they weren't much of a step up from Cleaners:[/p]
    • [p]Sebillians now have 50% Energy resistance, but 0 Armour.[/p]
    • [p]Androns now have 50% Kinetic resistance[/p]
    • [p]Most other (non-robotic) enemies have been given +20% HP[/p]
  • [p]Cleaner Accelerated Rifle is now called the Magnetic Rifle, and Cleaner Soldiers are always equipped with it. It is now halfway between the human Ballistic Rifle and Accelerated Rifle in terms of damage and armour penetration - the intention being that skilled players can capture them and use them as a stopgap if they are skipping Accelerated Rifles to get Lasers faster.[/p]
  • [p]A new rank of Psyon / Sebillians / Wraiths has been added to the game. These "Praetorians" appear on missions where Eternals are present and are tougher and more accurate than existing aliens. Because "Praetorian" was already an alien rank, the previous Praetorians have been demoted to Elites, and the previous Elites have been demoted to a newly-created "Warrior" rank.[/p]
  • [p]Psyons previously had a variant of each rank with and without armour, but these have been consolidated into a single variant with a fixed amount of armour - Soldier (10), Warrior (20), Elite (30), Praetorian (40). This change was made because all the unarmoured Psyon variants previously looked identical, which made it hard to assess the threat each unit posed and led to player confusion.[/p]
  • [p]Sebillians now use a mix of LMGs and Rifles, rather than always being equipped with LMGs.[/p]
  • [p]Sebillians equipped with Fusion weapons now have standard grenades rather than poison grenades (as the latter are obsolete by that point in the game).[/p]
  • [p]Mantids now have access to an upgraded Alien Bio-Rifle in the later parts of the game. This new weapon is called the Alien Bio-Cannon, which inflicts greater damage and spawns two Symbiotes per shot. We added this because it was kinda sad that the unique Mantid weapon went away halfway through the game, particularly given the Colossus can crush Symbiotes like a vehicle![/p]
  • [p]Cyberdrone / Heavy Cyberdrone now has two attack modes - the existing triple shot (80% TU) and a single shot (36% TU). This means Cyberdrones are extremely dangerous if given the opportunity to use their triple shot, but they are much less threatening if you can force them to move.[/p]
  • [p]Cyberdrone / Heavy Cyberdrone shields have been reworked to function like human shields - rather than granting extra Armour, they offer 100HP / 150HP extra health with a 75% blocking chance from the front (this reduces at the sides and falls to 0% from the back). We changed this because the +Armour rules for the previous shield were too complicated and didn't interact properly with explosions.[/p]
  • [p]Zombies are now gas immune.[/p]
  • [p]The base hit chance of all alien melee weapons has been increased to 70%-80%, which was generally an increase of about 10%. Reapers were already at that level, so did not receive any increase.[/p]
  • [p]Enemy AI no longer has access to the Bravery and Morale of your soldiers when choosing targets for Mind Control, as previously they would always focus in on the most vulnerable units and ignore those most likely to resist.[/p]
• [p]Xenonaut Equipment Changes:[/p]
  • [p]Grenades can now only scatter half of their intended throw distance, which should make it impossible for soldiers to drop grenades at their feet when throwing more than a few tiles.[/p]
  • [p]Shotgun hit bonus increased from +7.5% per tile to 8% to turn.[/p]
  • [p]Colossus Armour changes:[/p]
    • [p]Reflexes penalty is now a 0.5x multiplier (previously a flat -20 Reflex penalty)[/p]
    • [p]The TU fire cost of the LMG is reduced by 20% when carried by the Colossus.[/p]
    • [p]Added an engineering upgrade project that permits Colossus Armour to equip an Automed System. This functions like the Automed Module but is substantially heavier.[/p]
    • [p]Not yet implemented: Colossus-equipped soldiers now display all (non-module) items in the Armory, and can place them in their backpacks. However, they can still only equip LMGs and the Power Fist in their Primary and Secondary slots, and they are still unable to use grenades. Basically, they can now be used to carry extra equipment for the rest of the team![/p]
    • [p]Power Fist item now automatically equips in the Secondary slot when the Colossus is equipped, and the secondary slot then becomes locked so it cannot be unequipped or replaced.[/p]
  • [p]Enemy AI no longer considers the cloak effect of Stalker Armour soldiers when choosing their shots (they use the non-cloaked hit chance instead). This means the AI will now take more low-accuracy shots at cloaked soldiers and will therefore miss more often.[/p]
  • [p]C4 Charge item has been removed. This item was always meant to be superseded by the Demolition Grenade, which is why it doesn't receive any upgrades and the UX for using it is so janky. We're planning to add support for timed fuses on grenades in a future update, which will allow the Demolition Grenade to fully replace the C4.[/p]
  • [p]Smoke Grenades now inflict 1 Gas damage rather than 1 Thermal damage, which means they no longer inflict any damage at all on gas-immune enemies. This could be particularly confusing on Veteran / Commander difficulty, as without visible damage numbers players did not know the alien had only taken a tiny amount of damage.[/p]
• [p]Mission Changes:[/p]
  • [p]Crash Sites - increased the number of aliens inside large multi-level UFOs, and added dedicated spawn / patrol points for the middle level of Abductors / Harvesters / Battleships to minimise the chances of there being only a handful of aliens there.[/p]
  • [p]Abduction - local forces / armed civilians no longer spawn on Abduction missions, as the fact that they look identical to the civilians the player is meant to be protecting can be confusing.[/p]
  • [p]UOO Bridge Assault - there are now 4 alien spawners to destroy, rather than 2. The first wave of reinforcements spawned from the lifts on either side of the map has been delayed by 1 turn.[/p]
  • [p]The contents of reinforcement waves now vary based on the difficulty setting. Generally we've reduced the number of reinforcements in the initial wave of reinforcements on Recruit and Soldier difficulty, and left it the same on Veteran and Commander (subsequent rounds of reinforcements remain at full strength). [/p]
    • [p]Cleaner Data Raid / VIP Extraction - on Soldier difficulty, the first reinforcement wave from the rear reduced to 2 enemies (from 3). On Recruit, the first reinforcement wave from the sides is also reduced to 1 enemy (from 2).[/p]
    • [p]UOO Bridge Assault - on Recruit and Soldier difficulties, the Andron Praetorian and Wraith Praetorian do not spawn in the first wave of reinforcements from the lifts on either side.[/p]
    • [p]UOO Data Raid - on Recruit difficulty, the second wave of reinforcements contains 1 fewer enemy from each of the three enemy spawn points (4 enemies at the rear, 3 at the sides). On Commander difficulty, the first wave of reinforcements contains 1 extra alien (from 2 to 3) from each enemy spawn point, as does the second wave (6 enemies at the rear, 4 at the side). [/p]
  • [p]When reinforcements spawn on night missions, the tiles on which they spawn are now temporarily illuminated so you can actually see them appear. Previously the camera would focus on the area, but no enemy activity could be seen in the darkness.[/p]
  • [p]Reworked the equipment of the local forces / armed civilians so they have a wider variety of weapon types across the different biomes. Previously almost every armed civilian on every map had a shotgun.[/p]

[p][/p][h3]USABILITY & CONTENT UPDATES:[/h3][p]General:[/p]

• [p]Significant performance updates have been made in various areas of the game (as already covered in the "Key Changes" section at the top of this post).[/p]
• [p]Anonymised automated error reporting has been added to the game. The welcome message that appears when you first boot up Milestone 7 allows you to choose whether this is enabled or disabled (this can also be changed in the game settings), and it would certainly be helpful if players chose to permit this![/p]
• [p]The campaign difficulty settings now have a wider array of possible values in many of the dropdowns. Although none of these are used by the default difficulty settings, they permit players more options when customising their campaign difficulty.[/p]

[p]Strategy Layer:[/p]

• [p]Hotkeys 1-9 have been set up for strategy navigation. Key "1" is the Geoscape, "2" is the Main Base screen, etc.[/p]
  • [p][/p]
• [p]A dedicated Interrogation research project has now been added for captured Cleaner Leaders.[/p]
• [p]Engineering project item costs now show the quantity available in stores for all item types (previously this was only showing for Alloys / Alenium).[/p]
• [p]Engineering projects now include items equipped on soldiers when displaying how many items of that type you already own.[/p]
• [p]Enemy stats shown on Autopsy / Interrogation research projects now include any difficulty level modifiers.[/p]
• [p]When switching armour on a soldier, the "Jetpack" toggle state is now remembered (previously it would reset to "off" whenever the armour changed).[/p]
• [p]The Colossus Power Fist weapon now appears under the Weapon tab in the Armory, not the Equipment tab.[/p]
• [p]Launch Aircraft mode now has a unique cursor to make it more obvious when that mode is active.[/p]
• [p]If Operation Points fall below 0, the number is now shown in red.[/p]
• [p]The soldier image on the Armory screen no longer flickers when you change soldiers.[/p]
• [p]The values for aircraft range / aircraft speed / radar detection range were very inconsistent in previous versions of the game. These have now been unified and brought in line with real distances and travel times. This has resulted in the following:[/p]
  • [p]Geoscape speeds of all UFOs and aircraft have been doubled. For clarity, this doesn't affect game balance - it just means units move twice as fast across the map on any given Geoscape time setting.[/p]
  • [p]Aircraft now display accurate values for speed and range in the Xenopedia, on the Aircraft screen, and when in flight on the Geoscape.[/p]
  • [p]Base "Detection Range" on the Base screen is now called "Detection Radius", and the stated range is now much closer to real-world distances.[/p]
  • [p]Radar buildings on the Base screen now state their function as "Extends radar range" rather than giving a nonsensical figure for their radar range.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed an issue where the "Range" value on the Aircraft screen was incorrectly changing based on the current fuel level of that aircraft.[/p]

[p]Air Combat:[/p]

• [p]Retreating aircraft will no longer switch targets automatically if their target is destroyed. This means they won't turn around and start flying back towards the combat area - previously this could be a problem for interceptors tasked with firing a barrage of missiles at long range and then retreating![/p]
• [p]Updated the air combat ambient sound to (hopefully) not contain an ear-splitting high-pitched whine that old people like myself lack the auditory range to hear. If this doesn't actually fix the issue, please let us know![/p]
• [p]Missile / torpedo tooltips have been updated to explain that they will only fire at the targeted UFO, rather than shooting at anything within their fire arc like cannons and lances.[/p]

[p]Tactical Combat - Gameplay:[/p]

• [p]Lots of long-standing issues with the line of sight / shroud system have been fixed, including:[/p]
  • [p]Worldspace UI elements such as the move path are no longer hidden by the shroud.[/p]
  • [p]Transparent objects (abduction tubes, cloaked Wraiths, etc) no longer draw underneath the shroud.[/p]
  • [p]Particle effects (smoke, fire, etc) no longer draw underneath the shroud.[/p]
  • [p]Certain types of corner tile (e.g. ATLAS Base rooms, certain cliffs) are now revealed correctly when units look at them.[/p]
  • [p]Terrain objects in the first tile of unrevealed shroud should no longer incorrectly show their 3D models before they are revealed.[/p]
  • [p]Fixed the ENDGAME stage 1 outer walls being black in some instances. [/p]
• [p]You can now manually trigger a teleporter with right-click if a soldier is standing on it. This costs 4 TU.[/p]
• [p]Xenonaut units will now automatically choose move paths that do not contain dangerous hazard tiles (e.g. smoke, fire, poison), provided the alternative path does not cost additional Time Units. If the safer path does cost additional Time Units, players will need to manually path around the hazards.[/p]
• [p]Smoke and poison gas (but not fire) can now spawn over water tiles.[/p]
• [p]Hovering over the toggle overwatch UI icon for a weapon (the little eye icon) will now show the tiles visible to that soldier. This is relevant because units can only overwatch fire on visible tiles within their own vision cone, so should make planning overwatch a little easier.[/p]
• [p]Right-clicking a door to open it will now only take precedence over right-clicking to rotate a soldier if the soldier is in an adjacent tile to the door. At longer ranges, the soldier will now rotate as normal.[/p]
• [p]The "range" line in the weapon tooltips now has an extra "point blank" section that shows the total hit bonus you get with that weapon if standing next to the target. Hopefully this makes weapons easier to compare and makes the range system easier to understand.[/p]
• [p]Xenonaut Base Defence maps now have an extra tile of width between rooms, which prevents line-of-sight "leaking" from one room to another.[/p]
• [p]Aliens should no longer attack mind-controlled Xenonaut soldiers.[/p]
• [p]Civilian AI has been tweaked so they should be more reluctant to move near alien units when running to their next move point (note this does not affect civilians you have ordered to evacuate, who will always sprint towards the exit using the shortest possible route).[/p]
• [p]Added a "Armour Hardness" value to the tactical inventory screen, as it wasn't previously listed anywhere in tactical combat.[/p]
• [p]Improved the camera tracking for enemy shots at your soldier during the AI turn. This should reduce the number of times the camera doesn't appropriately focus on the targeted soldier.[/p]
• [p]Thrown grenades now have a slight visual "trail" that makes them easier to see as they fly through the air.[/p]
• [p]Reduced the opacity of smoke tiles on the battlefield.[/p]
• [p]You now get a pop-up warning you if try to start a tactical mission with a deployment area without having moved your soldiers.[/p]
• [p]Throwable items like grenades now correctly dim their sprite image when you don't have enough TU to use them (this mirrors the behaviour of items in the primary / secondary slots).[/p]
• [p]The quick reload button (hotkey "R") previously only appeared if you had a full clip for that weapon in your inventory, but it now also appears if you have a partially-full clip in your inventory that contains more shots than the weapon currently does.[/p]
• [p]If a weapon has no clip loaded, it instead displays "No Clip" on the fire cursor rather than a 0% hit chance percentage.[/p]
• [p]Corpses now display sideways when added to the primary / secondary slot in the tactical inventory.[/p]
• [p]Added an additional system to ensure you do not get the same tactical map twice in a row, closing off a (somewhat uncommon) sequence of events that could cause a repeat.[/p]

[p]Tactical Combat - Content:[/p]

• [p]New 3d models have been added for the Alien Bio Rifle and the new Alien Bio Cannon weapon.[/p]
• [p]All Farm biome tactical maps have been revamped (there are about 15 of them), making them more visually appealing and more interesting from a gameplay perspective. Many will be completely unrecognisable from earlier versions.[/p]
• [p]All seven main biomes now have two additional Scout UFO maps, increasing the number of maps for small UFOs from 3 to 5. This should help avoid potential map repetition when players have to restart their campaign.[/p]
• [p]Updated one of the newer Cleaner Data Raid missions to expand the size of the map, as the target building was smaller than in the other maps and it made the mission easier to win.[/p]
• [p]Roof destruction "frills" have been implemented for most types of roof - these are the irregular "edge" tiles that get placed around the sides of destroyed tiles to make the destruction look more natural (as blowing a perfectly square hole in a roof tends to look a bit odd).[/p]
• [p]Gauss Shotgun artwork has been updated to give it a front grip, as it was previously quite hard to tell apart from the Gauss Rifle at a glance.[/p]
• [p]Symbiotes now perform a proper "hatch" animation when they spawn.[/p]
• [p]Sebillian death animation now largely fits inside a single tile, which should stop the legs of dead Sebillians sticking through UFO walls.[/p]
• [p]Added a couple more car variants to the urban maps.[/p]
• [p]Added a 3D model for the briefcase objective item in the Extract VIP mission.[/p]

[h3]BUGFIXES:[/h3][p]General:[/p]

• [p]Fixed the Save Game UI panel scrollbar not permitting the user to scroll all the way to the bottom of the list.[/p]
• [p]Fixed the typewriter sound used in the cutscenes being in the incorrect sound effect category.[/p]

[p]Strategy Layer:[/p]

• [p]Fixed a crash that could occur if you were able to intercept and shoot down an undetected UFO before the radar detection tick revealed it.[/p]
• [p]Fixed an issue where interceptor squadrons tailing a Retaliation (Base Attack) UFO over water would sometimes not get the opportunity to attack the UFO before it attacked the base if the base had been placed close to the coast.[/p]
• [p]Fixed the "Panic Reduction: -10 Panic" text not updating to show the correct Panic reduction value when choosing the target for the Reduce Panic strategic operation.[/p]
• [p]Fixed an issue where Abduction missions could incorrectly increase Panic if you were at low Panic levels, even if the overall mission result should have lowered Panic (the Panic reduction was being applied before the Panic increase, which caused issues as the Panic could not go below zero, and then the increase was applied to the zero). [/p]
• [p]Fixed the "open" sound effect playing twice when you clicked the menu button on the Geoscape topbar.[/p]
• [p]Fixed the aircraft name in hangar not updating immediately after renaming an aircraft.[/p]
• [p]Fixed Escape key not returning to the Geoscape on the Transfer Scientists / Transfer Engineers screens[/p]
• [p]Fixed an issue where the "Critical Panic" pop-up would be shown before the Orbital Bombardment pop-up if the bombardment raised Panic in a region above 100.[/p]
• [p]Fixed the Equipment hardpoints on the interceptors incorrectly displaying the "Weapon Hardpoints" label.[/p]
• [p]On the Soldier Equip screen, fixed the soldier list order randomising every time you opened the popup to choose a soldier for the dropship.[/p]
• [p]Fixed the Advanced Gauss Weapon engineering projects not updating their name to contain "Advanced" after the upgrade project.[/p]
• [p]Fixed the "Hardness" value for the Colossus research project having an extra "f" character in the text line.[/p]
• [p]Fixed the Xenopedia aircraft "range" text line to display a value consistent with the Geoscape distances.[/p]
• [p]Fixed a number of soldier portraits that had hair / facial hair sticking out through the sides or top of their helmet. [/p]

[p]Tactical Combat:[/p]

• [p]Fixed a crash that could occur when picking up certain ammo types using the Colossus.[/p]
• [p]Fixed a bug where the move-attack preview would not show the correct accuracy value when the soldier was crouched.[/p]
• [p]Fixed UFO Power Cores that explode as part of the UFO crash sequence not correctly inflicting damage on the area around them.[/p]
• [p]Fixed a bug where shooting into smoke would count one too few smoke tiles when calculating shot accuracy (shooting out from within the smoke cloud was calculating correctly).[/p]
• [p]Fixed a bug where explosion damage did not always propagate as far as it should, as the Incendiary damage bonus was not being correctly applied when calculating overdamage. This would cause walls and other terrain objects to absorb too much explosion damage, reducing the amount of damage that would penetrate through them and damage units and terrain behind them.[/p]
  • [p]This also fixes the bug where explosion damage could sometimes "leak" through closed doors or walls, injuring units on the other side that should have been fully protected.[/p]
• [p]Fixed the grenade blast radius indicator (the green tiles) not displaying properly if a soldier was throwing at a tile on the edge of cliffs.[/p]
• [p]Fixed units being able to throw grenades onto destroyed floors / roofs, despite throwing grenades at empty tiles usually being disallowed.[/p]
  • [p][/p]
• [p]Fixed the visual inconsistency between Smoke Grenade smoke and the smoke from the MARS Smoke Launcher.[/p]
• [p]Fixed a bug in the tutorial where the final conversation was incorrectly triggering before the Xenonauts had finished fleeing from the Cleaners.[/p]
• [p]Fixed the Colossus Power Fist disappearing when transitioning between Endgame part 1 and part 2.[/p]
• [p]Fixed a lot of minor visual issues in a variety of different tactical maps.[/p]
• [p]Fixed a bug where destroyed shipping containers could still block throwable items like flares and grenades.[/p]
• [p]Fixed a number of doors where the gameplay footprint of the opened door was inverted compared to its visual appearance.[/p]
• [p]Fixed the alien base command room upper levels incorrectly having destructible outer walls.[/p]
• [p]Fixed a number of terrain objects in the Alien Base biome visually disappearing when entering their "damaged" state, despite still existing in gameplay terms and therefore invisibly blocking movement / shots.[/p]
• [p]Fixed a number of roofs that were not being properly destroyed and were incorrectly leaving behind walkable tiles.[/p]
• [p]Fixed the spinning rings of the Singularity Core terrain object visually resetting position when changing from Undamaged to Damaged state.[/p]
• [p]Fixed a pathfinding bug that could occur when attempting to move up to and then melee an enemy unit.[/p]
• [p]Fixed a minor bug where alien units would sometimes end up with their weapons rotated towards the ground after firing a shot.[/p]
• [p]Fixed a bug where the Pegasus dropship walls could be moved / shot through after loading a save.[/p]

[p]Hello everyone - hope you all had a good Christmas and start tot he year! It's time for another development update. It's unusually long because it covers both December and January![/p]

[h3]Milestone 7 & Full (1.0) Release[/h3][p]We're almost entirely focused on our upcoming Milestone 7 update these days. As many readers already know, this is the update that will become our full 1.0 release when Xenonauts 2 leaves Early Access. We're not yet ready to confirm our planned release date, but we've locked in an internal target and our publisher (Hooded Horse) will be making the full announcement once the trailer and marketing are ready to go!

We'll hopefully be releasing the first version of Milestone 7 onto the Experimental branches for testing next week. I've just finished writing up the 5,000-word changelog for the initial Experimental release, and there's already a lot of good stuff in there - despite having a shorter development cycle than Milestone 5 or 6, it should still be a fairly chunky update. We're looking forward to sharing it with everyone.

However, the Experimental release is subject to stability - we're currently working on fixing some critical bugs that make the game unplayable, so unfortunately we don't yet know if there are other game-breaking bugs lurking deeper into the campaign. If there are, we may need to push the release back while we address them. Fingers crossed for next week, though.

[h3]Strategy UI Backgrounds & Interceptor Paperdoll[/h3][p]I'm pleased to say the updated interceptor art on the Aircraft screen is now fully implemented, which means you see the aircraft art update and change as you customise the loadouts of the planes. The updated strategy UI background art that upgrades and changes as you progress through the research tree should also be complete for the Experimental release next week, as we're now working on the last variant of the final UI screen.

I think these updates will be the most noticeable part of the update for most people - they sound like small things when written out, but I think they do a lot to make the game feel more reactive and immersive.

[h3]Performance Optimisation[/h3][p]A large chunk of programming time over the past couple of months has been spent on improving the performance of the game, and we've made substantial improvements in a lot of different areas - faster loading times on strategy and tactical combat, reduced slowdown on the strategy layer when UFOs spawn on the Geoscape, improved AI turn times during the tactical combat, and speed improvements that should stop explosions and autosaves locking up the tactical combat for 1-2 seconds (the autosave improvements will probably make Iron Man mode feel a lot better).

There are a few other areas we wanted to optimise, but we're on a tight schedule so we'll be moving onto other tasks instead (unless community feedback suggests there are still serious performance problems in particular areas). Unfortunately, the downside of all these improvements is that optimisation work frequently introduces bugs to the game - indeed, it's part of the reason for the critical bugs we're currently working on fixing. Ironing out any of these newly introduced issues is going to be an important part of the Milestone 7 testing cycle.

[h3]Praetorians & Alien Bio-Cannon[/h3]We've now finished adding a new rank of elite Psyons / Sebillians / Wraiths that appear on the hardest missions, acting as bodyguards for Eternals. The 3D models for these "Praetorians" have now been completed and set up in the game, and we've finished the big reshuffle of alien ranks required to make this happen (as "Praetorians" already existed in the game, we've had to demote the existing Praetorians to be Elites, and the existing Elites to be a newly-created "Warrior" rank).

We've also finished setting up an improved version of the Mantid Alien Bio-Rifle, which is the weapon that spawns Symbiotes that previously disappeared halfway through the campaign because it posed little threat to heavy armour. The new Alien Bio-Cannon does increased damage and spawns two Symbiotes per shot, meaning Symbiotes will continue to appear throughout the campaign. This is especially fun because the Colossus can crush Symbiotes by walking over them in the same way that vehicles can!

[h3]Farm Maps & Additional Scout UFO maps[/h3]We felt that the Farm biome maps were noticeably weaker than the others, in terms of both visuals and map layout. We've therefore reworked this biome as part of Milestone 7, revisiting and redesigning all of the Farm maps and incorporating a number of new terrain tiles that we were working on towards the end of last year. We're most of the way through this process, with just the Ambush and Extract VIP maps left to complete.

We've also created an additional two maps for each biome for Scout UFOs, as previously each biome only had three maps shared between the three smallest UFOs (Scout, Destroyer, Observer). Although this was 21 possible maps across the seven biomes, players who restarted their campaign would inevitably start to see map repeats (especially if they did it more than once). The 14 new maps are currently at the draft stage, but we're expecting to get them fully completed in the next four to six weeks.

[h3]Smaller Tasks[/h3]We've also worked on a lot of smaller tasks over the past two months. I won't go into detail on them, but I know there will be community members happy to read about things like the return of weapons having Reflex Modifiers, the addition of a new Interrogation project for Cleaner Leaders, the ability to manually activate teleporters when your soldiers are stood on them, and making being on a higher / lower level than your target give a more straightforward hit chance increase / decrease in the tactical combat. 

[h3]Mods & Steam Workshop Integration[/h3]Finally, we've spent a bit of time this month doing the last remaining technical tasks on modding support. Previously our solution did not support the loading of replaced assets (e.g. edited textures, etc), but Milestone 7 will have functioning support for this. Additionally, we've implemented Steam Workshop integration and created the UI required to generate new mod manifests and upload the files to Steam.

This means that any modder familiar with Harmony code modding should theoretically have everything they need to create and distribute mods with the release of Milestone 7. Unfortunately, the average modder will probably need to wait for our Mod Editor tool to be completed - and that's likely to be pushed back to a post-release update, as right now it makes sense for us to focus all our attention on polishing the game content prior to launch. Now the technical foundations of mod support are complete, building the tools themselves will hopefully be fairly straightforward.

And that's everything - as always, thanks for reading. We'll write another update next month, and hopefully we'll see some of you testing the Milestone 7 before then!

[p]This update contains the next round of stability fixes for Milestone 6. We're now primarily focused on our upcoming Milestone 7 update, but we'll continue to investigate and patch any serious issues reported by the community![/p][p]As always, these hotfixes can sometimes break tactical mission saves. If you experience unexpected crashes playing an existing tactical save immediately after the update please try restarting the mission by loading the pre-mission strategy save.[/p][p]Bugfixes:[/p]

• [p]Fixed an issue where the game would sometimes not show the Game Over screen if too many regions were above 100 Panic at the point where the player lost the campaign.[/p]
• [p]Fixed a crash that could randomly occur during the AI turn during tactical combat due to an error in the AI's tile search algorithm.[/p]
• [p]Fixed a crash that could occur if you shot down a UFO over international waters (i.e. in the distant parts of the oceans).[/p]
• [p]Fixed a crash that could occur on the dropship soldier arrangement screen if the player hovered over a soldier icon in the dropship while dragging a soldier line in the soldier list on the left.[/p]
• [p]Fixed a crash that would be caused by players going to the dropship soldier arrangement screen from the unassigned soldier tab of the pre-mission soldier equip screen (although it only usually crashed after a bit of a delay).[/p]
• [p]Fixed a variety of crashes on the Soldier Equip screen related to assigning / unassigning the placeholder dropship soldiers on the Rescue Soldiers mission, and ensured they don't get stuck in the "Airborne" state if you cancel the dropship flight while it is en-route to the mission site.[/p]
• [p]Fixed an issue with the target soldier generation on the Rescue Soldiers mission.[/p]