Xenonauts 2 News

Xenonauts 2 Monthly Development Update!

Hello everyone - hope you all had a nice June. As we're now into July (and almost a year since the game launched into early access), it's definitely time for another monthly development update.

[h2]Milestone 4 Released[/h2]
We recently released Milestone 4 onto the default Steam / GOG / Epic branches last week, which was a rather substantial update to the game. Most of our efforts this month simply went into patching and tweaking Milestone 4, so this is going to be a much shorter update than normal.

We want to give a big shout out to everyone who helped us out by testing the experimental versions and reporting bugs or giving feedback, as your assistance really helps improve the quality of our updates!

We've continued patch Milestone 4 post-release to fix the handful of bugs that made it past our testing, and also to add a few bits of missing content (such as the text for handful of research projects that didn't quite meet the original deadline). We'll continue this as long as necessary to fix any remaining stability issues, but in general the game seems to be stable for most players. This means we're now ready to turn our attention to our next big update.

[h2]Milestone 5 and beyond[/h2]
Milestone 5 is going to be our most important update so far - the goal is to allow the player to unlock and complete the final mission, meaning you will be finally able to play the entire game from start to finish.
This also means that this update is likely to have quite a long development cycle - it'll probably be a larger update than Milestone 4, and will also include most of the remaining gameplay-related items on our roadmap and revamping the second half of the story. That means there's going to be quite a lot of content for a small team to generate!

This won't be the last update for the game before we launch out of Early Access, as we'll still release updates to further polish and improve the game. More details closer to the time. Rather than try to talk in detail about plans that haven't yet been finalised, I think the most sensible thing is just to finish this blog here.

Next month's entry should be a lot more exciting, as we should have some solid progress towards Milestone 5 that we can show off!
[hr][/hr][h2]Help Us Improve The Game![/h2]
Thank you so much for your continued support of Xenonauts 2! We genuinely appreciate all the feedback you’ve provided. Your thoughts are incredibly valuable to us, so we invite you to share a Steam review to help us keep improving the game.

Milestone 4.15.0 Released! (Experimental)

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!

[h3]Changes:[/h3]

The player's base funding now passively increases by roughly ~$120,000 per month, split across the six funding regions. This should help ease the mid-to-late game funding issues (unfortunately this change may only take effect in new campaigns).
Guardian armour now offers 15 Armour, and +15 more with heavy armour (previously it was 12, with +12).
Exosuit armour now offers 25 Armour and +25 with heavy armour (previously 25, and +18).
Colossus armour now offers 40 Armour (previously 30), and when upgraded it has 70 Armour (previously 60).
Stun Gun now gets +6 hit chance for each tile closer than max range (previously +4.5%)
Electroshock Pistol now does 40 EMP damge (up from 35), and Electroshock Rifle does 50 EMP damge (up from 40).
Electoshock Grenade EMP damage reduced to 45 (from 50)
Updated Electroshock Pistol / Rifle so they have broadly the same accuracy and fire modes as a standard Pistol or Rifle (this is a slight buff), but their range remains as before (i.e. shorter than a standard pistol / rifle).
Cleaner SMG range reduced to 16 tiles (previously 20).
Increased Armour Destruction on Reaper melee attacks to 15 (from 5).
The crosshair / crosshair text now always draws on top of any text displaying the stopping chance of intervening objects along a shot path.
Reinforced Shield now unlocks properly from Ultradense Alloys.

[h3]Bugfixes:[/h3]

Fixed a crash that could occur on completion of a tactical mission.
Fixed a crash that could occur when trying to load an older campaign into version 4.14.0.
Fixed being unable to reload weapons in the tactical inventory if you were playing a campaign that was started prior to version 4.14.0.
Fixed an issue where units could move diagonally through multi-tile doors without opening them.
Fixed a number of gameplay issues in the Tropical maps - e.g. there were a number of vegetation items in our newer maps that wouldn't remove properly if destroyed, and it was also possible for units to walk on the swamp water tiles if they were damage.
Fixed aircraft not regenerating inbuilt armour.

[hr][/hr][h2]Help Us Improve The Game![/h2]
Thank you so much for your continued support of Xenonauts 2! We genuinely appreciate all the feedback you’ve provided. Your thoughts are incredibly valuable to us, so we invite you to share a Steam review to help us keep improving the game.

Milestone 4.14.0 Released!

We've removed grenades from all types of Wraith except Wraith Leaders and Wraith Officers, as the AI is now clever enough to know how effective grenades are and will use them (very) frequently. In a future update we'll add a small chance that other types of Wraith can also spawn with a grenade, but it'll remain a small chance.
Fixed another lockup that could occur during the AI turn.
Fixed weapons in the tactical inventory backpack not being able to be moved to the equip slot or be dropped on the ground.
Fixed grenade throw mode sometimes getting stuck displaying a 0% hit chance.
Fixed an AI bug that could sometimes cause AI units to move to a good attacking position and then just not fire their weapon.
Fixed an issue with the Harvester UFO on Dockyard maps where certain interior tiles could end up not being walkable (these were shipping containers by incompelely deleted by the UFO when it spawned).
Fixed the Fusion Lance engineering project not being cancellable.
Fixed a white square briefly appearing when assigning soldiers on the Soldier Equip screen.

Milestone 4.13.0 Released! (Experimental)

Added research text for the Ultradense Alloys and Biosurvey Array research projects.
Sentinel Module now has a 360-degree vision arc (and the item tooltip reflects this).
Added a death sound for the Servitors so they no longer scream like humans.
Bug reporter tool will now delete excess Xenonauts 2 crash zips if you have more than 25 on your machine.

[h3]Bugfixes:[/h3]

Fixed a hang on the AI turn that could hardlock the entire game.
Fixed Secton eyes always glowing purple when the unit is moving, even if Psionic Triangulation is not active.
Fixed an issue where moving items in the soldier inventory could lead to "ghost" temporary duplicate items being created, which could cause crashes if interacted with.
Fixed replacing a weapon on the soldier equip screen not also updating the ammo clips if the weapon in question was an upgraded Laser.
Fixed the game incorrectly showing the "quicksave completed" popup if you quicksaved with another pop-up open (as that will prevent the quicksave being made).
Fixed multi-shot UFO weapons in the air combat (e.g. on Cruisers) continuing to fire the remainder of the burst even if you pause the game, or destroy the UFO.
Fixed a bug where the player was not being given notifications when alien units suffered a morale break and panicked, fled or berserked if they were not directly in the vision cone of a Xenonaut soldier. This "fixes" a bug where suppressed Sectons were still performing overwatch fire - what is actually happening here is that they're suffering a morale break after the death of a nearby Psyon and are berserking, but the game wasn't giving a notification.

XCOM spiritual successor Xenonauts 2 introduces more enemies and armor

The XCOM series comprises some of the best strategy games on PC, yet its modern iterations of 2012's Enemy Unknown and 2016's XCOM 2 are a little different from the likewise excellent origins of X-COM in the '90s. Sticking more closely to those old games is Goldhawk Interactive's excellent Xenonauts 2, published by indie strategy house Hooded Horse. Its latest update, just released on Steam, brings some new threats to the battlefield, alongside a new way to help deal with them.

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