Xenonauts 2 News

This update is also only accessible by switching to our Experimental branches (instructions on how to do so here) - although note they have slower load times and worse performance than normal builds due to the extra logging they contain!

This is hopefully the final build we'll be putting out before the full release for Milestone 3 next week, so please give it a test and let us know if you experience any major bugs!

[h3]Gameplay & Balance Changes:[/h3]

• Reduced the number of Cleaners in the Cleaner Base to make it a bit more manageable if you manage to unlock it early.
  
• Delayed the first possible alien retaliation mission, as it would frequently spawn in the same wave as the first Destroyer (meaning the player had often just fought a battle when they were attacked).
  
• Mentarch can no longer crouch or be suppressed.
  
• Reaper Zombies now have 70HP (up from 40HP).
  
• Warden Armour now requires 6 Alloys to build (up from 4).
  
• Accelerated Weapons now require more Alloys to build, with the most expensive weapons requiring 6 (up from 4).
  
• Laser weapons now require more Alloys and Alenium to build, with the most expensive requiring 6 of each (up from 4).
  
• Swapped the Alloys and Alenium cost of advanced building upgrades; these generally now require twice as much Alenium as they do Alloys rather than the other way around.
  
• Increased Alloys gained from Observers, Abductors and Cruiser UFOs by 50%.
  
• Training Center building increased in cost from $250k to $350k.
  
• Doubled the duration of Corpse Analysis II engineering projects.
  
• Added updated translation files for all supported languages except Japanese and Korean (which will be patched in shortly).
  
• Improved the performance for the Farm cabbage fields, as some players were experiencing FPS drops there.
  
• Updated the sort order on several items in the soldier armory and in the base stores so things are grouped more sensibly.
  
• Abduction tubes and the various Stealth unit shaders (Wraiths / Stealthsuit) no longer draw under the shroud.
  
• Security guards in the dockyards now have little hats so they don't look quite so much like Cleaners.

[h3]Bugfixes:[/h3]

• Fixed a crash that could occur when Ctrl+Shift shot previewing towards a higher level.
  
• Fixed another way that doors could get stuck in a state where they visually looked open or closed, while actually being in the opposite state in game terms.
  
• Fixed the AI being unable to attack in certain situations due to a bug that could occur when sighting a Xenonaut at certain angles.
  
• Fixed the visual flicker that occurred when adding / removing projects from the Engineering queue.
  
• Fixed the end of the move path being sunk into certain types of slightly raised floor level.
  
• Fixed the active base changing after recruiting new soldiers on the Soldier screen.
  
• Fixed the items on the Stores screen not sorting in the correct order the first time you access the screen after loading a save.
  
• Fixed the "enemy has died from their wounds" toast displaying "Name:" before the enemy name.
  
• Fixed a visual issue on the UFO HP display text line in the air combat.
  
• Fixed Mantids with rifles holding their guns like they were pistols.
  
• Fixed the plasma / fusion projectiles having a misaligned particle effect.
  

This update is also only accessible by switching to our Experimental branches (instructions on how to do so here) - although note they have slower load times and worse performance than normal builds due to the extra logging they contain!

Unfortunately this update breaks saves from earlier than the previous build (3.0.5). We do try to avoid this happening where possible but sadly it is sometimes necessary with Experimental builds!

[h3]Gameplay Changes:[/h3]

• Updated some of the Abduction missions so now they all correctly give +20 Panic if you fail / ignore them, and the Panic reduction is always based purely on how many civilians you rescue.
  
• Slightly reduced the Accuracy on the MARS Cannon weapons, with the cheapest fire mode having a greater Accuracy reduction but also a slight reduction in TU fire cost.
  
• You now get a small notification when an AI unit dies from bleeding damage (as it wasn't always obvious what happened).
  
• Alien melee weapons can no longer gib units through overdamage.
  
• There's now a small animation when soldier pawns switch places in the dropship (on the Aircraft screen), which makes it easier to understand what's happening.

[h3]Bugfixes:[/h3]

• Fixed some players suffering extremely long load times.
  
• Fixed a crash that could occur performing certain movements with a jetpack.
  
• Fixed the tutorial not booting up properly.
  
• Fixed cancelling a research project causing it to be temporarily duplicated in the project list.
  
• Fixed an issue where wounded soldiers (below 50% HP) would be incorrectly classed as injured (above 50% HP), and allowed to remain in the dropship.
  
• Fixed several places where shelf tiles were incorrectly blocking movement in the Data Raid office maps, and one place where a parking bay was blocked by an invisible lorry.
  
• Fixed the ATLAS Base mission conversation when you spot The General not being triggered correctly.
  
• Fixed the tracks on the MARS continuing to spin after it stopped moving.
  
• Fixed the MARS sometimes remaining visible after being destroyed.
  
• Fixed the deployment zone green tiles sometimes remaining in place for the whole mission instead of disappearing.
  
• Fixed Wraiths flickering when running.
  
• Fixed occasional white flashes as the soldier portrait images loaded in on the tactical UI.
  
• Fixed the Autofill Drosphip button not appearing immediately if you used RMB to unassign a soldier from a full dropship.
  
• Fixed the Custom difficulty button on the New Campaign screen not being highlighted when you used custom campaign parameters.
  
• Fixed the base navigation menu not updating correctly when you change base.
  
• Fixed a typo in the Electroshock Pistol name.
  
• Fixed the objective item indicator on the tactical UI soldier minitabs having the incorrect tooltip, and being unable to display double-digit numbers.
  
• Fixed the date of death on the Soldier Memorial Screen using the language detected from your operating system location, not the language set in-game.
  

This update is also only accessible by switching to our Experimental branches (instructions on how to do so here) - although note they have slower load times and worse performance than normal builds due to the extra logging they contain!

[h3]Gameplay Changes:[/h3]

• Added research text for the Gemini Interceptor and Heavy Fusion Weapons research projects, meaning all research projects should now have research text.
  
• Slightly updated the Abduction missions so they work as follows:
  • If you don't attempt the mission at all, you get +20 local panic
    
  • For each of the 10 civilians trapped in the abduction tubes, you get:
    
  • +2 panic for each civilian remaining in an abduction tube when the timer runs out and the tubes teleport away
    
  • -2 panic for each civilian freed from an abduction tube that survives the mission
    
  • +0 panic for a civilian freed from the tube who is killed before the end of the mission 
• Soldier Equip screen - double clicking an empty slot will bring up the soldier assignment menu directly, so you don't need to select the slot and click the button any more.
  
• Soldier Equip screen - clicking a weapon in the soldier inventory will select it in the Armory, allowing you to add more ammo quickly (let us know if this ends up being annoying).
  
• Reduced the completion time of the initial research project, so you can now begin work on the new research immediately after winning the ATLAS Base mission.
  
• Fusion lance cost reduced to $300k and 25 alloys / alenium (down from $1m and 40 alloys / alenium).
  
• Wraith Destroyers now contain 1 less Wraith and 1 less Servitor, as they previously were a bit too difficult.
  
• Set the large rock mesas in the Polar and Desert maps to be significantly tougher, and added proper destruction states to the Polar one.
  

[h3]Bugfixes:[/h3]

• Fixed the bug where the screen resolution doesn't change when in borderless fullscreen / exclusive fullscreen mode.
  
• Fixed the bug where certain soldier hairs were not displaying correctly on their 3D models, leading to you having a team of bald people.
  
• Fixed the occasional post-move delay that would sometimes affect soldiers, briefly blocking further movement / rotation / crouching input.
  
• Fixed the soldiers initially not being visible in the dropship if you went to the Arrange Soldiers screen on the pre-launch soldier equipment screen.
  
• Fixed not being able to heal unconscious units on the ground.
  
• Fixed the Geoscape base icon being smaller in construction mode than it is when actually placed on the Geoscape.
  
• Updated the Soldier Equip screen so items in the inventory and in the base armory panel now both have a slight highlight on mouse hover.
  
• Pressing Esc when a soldier is moving now correctly interrupts moving, rather than opening the menu.
  
• Soldiers no longer show their selection circle when moving.
  

This update is also only accessible by switching to our Experimental branches (instructions on how to do so here) - although note they have slower load times and worse performance than normal builds due to the extra logging they contain!

[h3]Changes:[/h3]

• Added research text for the Fusion Weapons research project.
  
• Cleaner reinforcements will now act more aggressively on most maps, and move quickly towards your dropship / extraction area.
  
• The soldiers you can rescue on the Soldier Rescue missions now have +3 to all their base stats, in addition to the +3 to all stats they get for being a Sergeant rather than a Private.
  
• Enabled a number of new maps (these were meant to be enabled in Milestone 3, but there was a minor error in the settings we've now corrected).
  
• Fixed the character conversations that show at the start of the mission sometimes starting under the loading screen, so several lines have already been written out by the time you get to see them.
  
• Fixed aircraft items incorrectly being marked as "junk" on the Stores screen.
  
• Fixed a minor issue with fire paths where shooting round corners was more permissive if you were shooting through an adjacent unit.
  
• Hopefully fixed an issue where the friendly VIP on the VIP Extraction mission had a rank in Russian (which was an issue with the localisation system).
  
• Camera should no longer get stuck at a weird angle if you were halfway through rotating it and something else tried to take control of the camera (sighting an enemy, etc).
  

Hello everyone - this month's update covers both December and January, as I was out of the office over new year. We've all returned refreshed from our Christmas break and we hope you all had a good festive season too!

[h3]Milestone 3[/h3]
The biggest piece of news is that Milestone 3 is out on our Experimental branches for testing, with the goal of releasing the final version of Milestone 3 onto the default Steam / GOG / Epic branches on February 19th.

There's an extensive changelog for Milestone 3 which we'll post here when the update is out, although you can go to our official forums to check out the testing patch notes.

This new build ticks off a number of content items on our roadmap: the Cruiser UFO, both alien and human Fusion Weapons, the third interceptor and dropship aircraft, plus the ARES (an upgraded hovering version of the MARS).

We're currently hotfixing the game on a daily basis to remove crashes and AI hangs encountered by our community, and we'll be focusing on smoothing out the game balance once the worst of the bugs are dealt with.

[h3]Unity 2022 - Load Times & Borderless Fullscreen[/h3]
The biggest single task we've completed over the past couple of months has been upgrading to Unity 2022, which Milestone 3 now runs on. This has been quite disruptive, but worthwhile -- the update has enabled us to reduce load times by ~30% across all parts of the game, and we're hoping to further improve that to a ~50% reduction in the coming months.

The game now also properly supports Borderless Fullscreen mode, allowing you to freely Alt-Tab without issues (something a LOT of people in the community had been requesting). Players should encounter fewer issues with multi-monitor setups than before too.

The upgrade should also help speed up development somewhat. I won't bore you with the technical details, but code compiles much faster in 2022 relative to our older version and there's much more powerful debug tools available, so we'll collectively be spending a lot less time twiddling our thumbs while we wait to test our work.

[h3]AI Upgrades[/h3]
The other major task we've been working on is AI improvements. The AI now has access to more information about the battlefield around it, and it's making much more sensible decisions in combat about where to position its units and how to attack.

However, we're still keeping a close eye on the AI because further tweaks or bugfixes may be required - even minor issues in the AI settings can cause AI units to do bizarre things in certain situations. But the good news is that these issues should now be easy to fix, and it's just a case of testing the game enough to find them all.

Specific AI improvements have been also made to the civilians (who were famously suicidal in older builds) and for melee aliens like Reapers, which had been struggling to attack effectively.

[h3]New Assets[/h3]
The new content I already mentioned has been added for Milestone 3, and we've been adding lots of new maps to the game as well as a significant number of new 3D models for various soldier weapons that had previously been using placeholders. The research art for the new research projects is also largely complete and should be finished by the 19th.

[h3]Conclusion[/h3]
Overall, it's been a productive couple of months for the team despite the disruption of the Christmas holidays. The Unity 2022 upgrade and the AI upgrades were both large tasks so it's nice to have them done, and I think Milestone 3 is going to be another significant upgrade for the game - once testing has ironed out all the kinks.

Thanks for reading, and please let us know if you encounter any bugs or issues when playing on the Experimental branch!