Xenonauts 2 News

With the start of the Autumn Sale, nominations for this year's Steam Awards are underway. We'd like to ask for your support by nominating Xenonauts 2 for the Best Game You Suck At Award.



There's no joy like overcoming a challenge, even if it means wearing out your quickload key. There's no feeling like watching your highest-ranking officers blown to pieces during an Ironman run. Xenonauts 2 isn't for the faint of heart, and that's part of the fun. We're about to release the Milestone 2 update that includes several brand new types of tactical missions, a new UFO type, and many more changes and updates to improve the game.

We wouldn't be here if it weren't for you, the community, supporting our game throughout the development of Xenonauts 2. We are incredibly grateful for your support, and we know there will be a lot of competition for this award, so your nomination would mean the world to us. Please check the nominate button that's part of this post if you would like to consider us for the Best Game You Suck At award for the 2023 Steam Awards.

Thank you,

The Goldhawk Interactive team

This update is also only accessible by switching to our Experimental branches (instructions on how to do so here).

One last little patch for Milestone 2 before it launches early next week.  Unlike normal, this is NOT AN EXPERIMENTAL BUILD - this is a "release" build without extra logging and normal performance, as I thought we should probably give that a quick test prior to release!

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

• If player has negative funds after their monthly report, added a warning that you will lose the game if it happens for a second consecutive month.
  
• Accuracy of Rifle burst fire modes has been increased from 40 to 45.
  
• Servitor weapon has been reduced from 70 Suppression to 30 Suppression.
  
• Reduced the cost of the Radar Upgrade (to Quantum Arrays) from $1m to $500k.
  
• Increased sell price of captured Cleaner Leaders from $20,000 to $50,000.
  
• Increased the damage multiplier required to gib units with a normal attack from 2x their maximum health to 2.5x their max health.
  

[h3]Bugfixes:[/h3]

• Fixed an issue where some of the Cleaner missions would spawn at the wrong time (although this would only happen if you'd still not beaten the Cleaner base after 4+ months).
  
• Fixed an issue where grenades could show 100% hit chance but always miss if you happened to be doing an angled throw through a window.
  
• Fixed the "Insuffient Payload Capacity" error popup displaying behind the aircraft equipment images, rather than on top of them.
  
• Fixed some shelves on certain dockyard maps preventing you walking into tiles, making doors inaccessible.
  
• Attempted fix for another instance of the "grenades always showing 0% chance to hit" bug.
  

With the start of the Autumn Sale, nominations for this year's Steam Awards are underway. We'd like to ask for your support by nominating Xenonauts 2 for the Best Game You Suck At Award.



There's no joy like overcoming a challenge, even if it means wearing out your quickload key. There's no feeling like watching your highest-ranking officers blown to pieces during an Ironman run. Xenonauts 2 isn't for the faint of heart, and that's part of the fun. We're about to release the Milestone 2 update that includes several brand new types of tactical missions, a new UFO type, and many more changes and updates to improve the game.

We wouldn't be here if it weren't for you, the community, supporting our game throughout the development of Xenonauts 2. We are incredibly grateful for your support, and we know there will be a lot of competition for this award, so your nomination would mean the world to us. Please check the nominate button that's part of this post if you would like to consider us for the Best Game You Suck At award for the 2023 Steam Awards.

Thank you,

The Goldhawk Interactive team

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!

We're hoping this is the final experimental build of Milestone 2, and unless people find significant numbers of bugs then we'll release it onto the public branches in the next few days. So please make sure you report any issues you encounter!

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

• Added research art for the captured General interrogation project.
  
• Fixed torpedoes incorrectly being able to turn fast enough to hit evasive roll UFOs.
  
• The random Cleaner missions on the Geoscape are now split up into two groups, so instead of randomly picking one of four mission types each time it now picks from two groups of two possible missions. This ensures you'll never get the same Cleaner mission twice in a row.
  
• Updated the Xenopedia projects for aircraft to show their Payload (the new name for Weight Capacity), and for Armour to show their light and heavy armour variant values.
  
• HEVY loaded ammo image slot in the tactical UI is now displayed larger and more clearly.
  
• Removed the outdated Defender Armour starting Xenopedia project, and updated the text on the Tactical Armour starting Xenopedia project.
  
• The Psionic Triangulation ability for Sectons is now shown on the Psyon Xenopedia project (as it now only triggers when near Psyons).
  

[h3]Bugfixes:[/h3]

• Injured / wounded soldiers no longer always show "5 days" until recovery after battle.
  
• Fixed players being unable to move multiple soldiers simulataneously, which has involved reverting the improved camera tracking when units change height level as part of a move (this will return in Milestone 3 once we've fixed the issues).
  
• Fixed base structures displaying their construction time with lots of extra zeros.
  
• Fixed recovering soldiers displaying their healing time with lots of extra zeros.
  
• Fixed the objective lines in the bottom left sometimes displaying two copies of the same line.
  
• Fixed the new Probe UFO being called the Mimic in some places.
  
• Fixed an issue in the tutorial where you were expected to hold Ctrl to force fire at some crates, but the game was requiring a Ctrl press followed by a click instead.
  
• Fixed various visual issues on the new ATLAS Base map.
  
• Fixed some floating crates in the Boreal VIP Extraction map.
  
• Fixed there being a floating walkable tile in the air next to the caravans on the Desert maps.
  
• The radar and other large props in the Xenonaut base (like base defence turrets) can no longer be walked inside once they'd taken enough damage.
  

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!

We're planning to release Milestone 2 onto the standard Steam branches for everyone next week. If all goes well this may be the final Experimental build for Milestone 2, so please give it a test and let us know if you encounter any issues! This update breaks save games so if you want to keep playing 2.10, please do so on the Experimental Legacy branch.

[h3]Gameplay Changes:[/h3]

• Convoy Ambush and Extract VIP tactical missions now support all potential biomes, rather than always using a fixed map. We've therefore added 12 new maps to the game to allow this.
  
• Added research text to the Mantid Interrogation and the Wraith Interrogation. This means all research projects now have research text (although I need to do a quick second pass on a handful more before I call this work totally done).
  
• The game now displays "Game Loss" as a failure effect on the initial ATLAS Base Reclaim mission.
  
• You can no longer access the VIP's inventory on the VIP rescue missions.
  
• Revised some of the objective text lines (that appear in the bottom left of the Geoscape) to reflect changes to the research tree.
  
• Aircraft screen now has tooltips for the Weight Capacity and Hardpoint Capacity.
  
• Beards should no longer disappear when you equip the heavy armour on soldiers.
  

[h3]Balance Changes:[/h3]

• Reapers now have 70TU (from 60) and 75 Reflexes (from 50).
  
• Sebillian Bravery increased to 70 (from 50).
  
• Wraith Strength reduced to 55 (from 60) and Bravery increased to 60 (from 50).
  

[h3]Bugfixes:[/h3]

• Fixed an issue where soldiers that have been removed from dropship (due to injury or being MIA on a mission) are added back in with a broken loadout (this could cause crashes in some circumstances).
  
• Fixed an issue where the game would fail to boot for people using the save game folder directory override.
  
• Fixed some Landed UFOs never taking off again.
  
• Fixed the Ammo Recharge upgrade for the Lasers leaving them with no ammo.
  
• Fixed an issue where a soldier caught in multiple simultaneous explosions (e.g. several vehicles chain-exploding) would sometimes only suffer damage from one of them.
  
• Fixed surviving soldiers being labelled as "Wounded" rather than "Survived", and not showing a recovery time.
  
• Fixed smoke tiles being visually duplicated (so looking much thicker) after loading a saved game.
  
• Fixed the sorted column header still being selected on the Soldier screen when you leave the screen and re-enter.
  
• Fixed the mods panel buttons all generating unnecessary popups.
  
• Updated the weight icon on the Aircraft loadout screen to be correct.
  
• Fixed some issues with the dockyard warehouse rollerdoor being able to get into a broken state once opened.
  
• Fixed the petrol station columns still being 100% blocking in their destroyed states.
  
• Fixed a typo on the Xenonaut base defence mission briefing.
  
• Time estimates for research / engineering projects that are not in progress should now always be consistent, as previously they could change by up to an hour (depending if you were closer to the start or end of the current hour).