Xenonauts 2 News

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!

I would not recommend starting a new campaign playthrough on this update, as I'll be releasing a more significant balance update later this week that will require starting a new campaign to see the changes. If you're thinking about starting a new playthrough, probably best just to wait for that one!

[h2]Bugfixes:[/h2]

• Fixed another example of the 90% loading hang / crash bug, again linked to specific jungle maps.
  
• Fixed another example of the AI turn hang, this time related to Symbiotes spawning on tiles with other units.
  
• If you hover over a soldier minitab at the top of the tactical UI, pressing C to crouch will now correctly cause the selected soldier to crouch (not the one you're hovering over).
  

[h2]Gameplay Changes - Strategy:[/h2]

• Soviet Union region bonus is now a -25% Upkeep reduction (down from -30%)
  
• North America region bonus is now +10 Soldier Starting Experience (up from +5)
  
• Failing a terror site now causes -35 Panic, not -20 Panic
  

[h2]Gameplay Changes - Tactical:[/h2]

• Wraith cloaking is now inactive by default, and activates if the Wraith takes damage. The defence bonus per tile has increased to 3 per tile (from 1.5 per tile). This should make Wraiths a bit easier to deal with - but more importantly, it should now be possible to distinguish between different ranks of Wraith on the battlefield.
  
• The Cyberdrone weapon is once again a direct-fire weapon rather than an arc weapon, which means it will lose accuracy if fired through smoke. The weapon is also now not capable of performing reaction fire.
  
• All thrown grenades now have -2 tiles of range.
  
• Smoke grenades of all types now generate a substantially larger cloud of smoke.
  
• Fixed Cleaners attacking civilians on the Rescue Soldiers mission.
  
• Added updated movement sounds and attack sounds for the Symbiote.
  

This is a small hotfix for the 5.6.0 update released yesterday, fixing an important gameplay issue and a couple of other minor issues.

[h2]Changes:[/h2]

• Fixed being unable to transfer aircraft between bases.
  
• Exploding vehicle damage is no longer subject to damage randomisation, so exploding vehicles should now inflict a maximum of 50 damage on anyone in the blast radius.
  
• On Abduction missions, the "Eliminate all hostile combatants" objective line is now marked as complete (with a green tick) if you eliminate all enemy units before the mission ends.
  

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 is another stability fix for Milestone 5 that hopefully fixes most of the remaining stability problems. Although we will continue to fix any bugs reported by the community, our plan is to start reviewing all the player feedback and begin making balance changes in the next hotfix.

Please note that this update contains a number of fixes for tactical maps. Geoscape saves from 5.5.0 and earlier should work fine, but some tactical saves from 5.5.0 will not load correctly. If you're having this problem, please load an earlier Geoscape save!

[h2]Gameplay Changes:[/h2]

• The Command Points UI in the bottom right of the Geoscape is now hidden until the Strategic Operations are unlocked after the ATLAS Base mission is completed.
  
• The Operations Points cost for doing additional crash sites once that UFO type has been delegated now functions correctly (previously it wasn't actually deducting the cost).
  
• The Doomsday Counter should now warn you when you go over 100 and give you until the end of the day to fix it, rather than instantly ending the game (the warning previously wasn't triggering if the passive increase at the end of the day took you above 100).
  
• Living Quarters now consume power as intended.
  
• Evacuating civilians will no longer path through fire and poison gas.
  
• Added corpse artwork for the Symbiote, so they no longer use the dead Cleaner artwork.
  
• The UOO Bridge Assault mission objective timer (defend the mainframe for X turns) is no longer modified by campaign settings, as people who wanted to effectively remove mission timers by using the +99 turns setting were being forced to defend the objective for over 100 turns.
  
• Slightly increased the range of dropships to ensure they can reach anywhere in the world, as there were a few places you could put your base where it was not possible to reach certain missions.
  
• The roofs on the Desert construction site buildings should now be properly destructible.
  
• The strategic operations button cooldown overlay has now been inverted; it's shown fully greyed out when first activated and the grey overlay shrinks towards the bottom as the cooldown decreases.
  

[h2]Bugfixes:[/h2]

• Fixed an AI hang that could occur when heavy alien units tried to crush a wall and discovered an enemy unit stood directly behind it, preventing them from being able to complete their move.
  
• Fixed another example of the 90% loading freeze on tactical missions, this one related to certain Tropical maps.
  
• Fixed a crash that would occur if you cancelled the Reduce Panic strategic operation while choosing which region to target.
  
• Fixed a crash that could occur during the AI turn if an explosion went partially beyond the playable area.
  
• Fixed a crash that could occur when dragging items on top of other items in a soldier's backpack.
  
• Fixed a crash that could occur if a UFO destroyed an undefended Xenonaut base that had soldiers / personnel / items midway through being transferred to it.
  
• Fixed an issue where the Phase 5 timeline (which contains Battleship UFOs) would not trigger correctly if you completed the UOO Bridge Assault mission at a certain time. This fix will unfortunately not help anyone who is already in this situation.
  
• Fixed the walkable tiles on top of shipping containers and certain vehicles being destroyed by grenades, which could cause units to fall inside the shipping containers and get stuck.
  
• Hopefully fixed the issue where enemy reinforcements would sometimes be invisible.
  
• Fixed the spawn locations on ENDGAME part 2 so units can no longer spawn inside objects.
  
• Fixed the UOO Sabotage and UOO Bridge Assault missions not showing the post-mission debrief screen.
  
• Fixed the move+shoot preview calculating TU costs slightly wrong on Soldier or Recruit difficulty if soldier rotation was part of the shot.
  
• Fixed the Harvester UFO triggering the "capture" victory condition before the upper bridge level had been cleared.
  
• Fixed units with jetpacks being able to fly out the top of the upper level rooms on the larger alien base maps.
  
• Fixed the Advanced Fusion Rifle project incorrectly producing basic Fusion Rifles.
  
• Fixed achievements for completing the campaign not triggering.
  
• Fixed "Ultimate Power" achievement unlocking if a single Colonel was present on the team, rather than requiring all soldiers present to be Colonels.
  
• Fixed dead civilians incorrectly still showing the "evacuate" hover cursor.
  
• Fixed the VIP minitab in the tactical UI not showing the HP and TU bars.
  
• Fixed the Alien Symbiote Launcher weapon incorrectly being called the "Alien Symbiote Clip" in the base stores, and not being marked as junk.
  
• Fixed the dockyard water edge tiles being destructible, and turning into walkable tiles when destroyed.
  
• Fixed one of the alien consoles not visually disappearing when destroyed.
  
• Fixed the roofs of the Boreal buildings.
  
• Fixed the crashed Observer UFO hull not having a drop shadow.
  
• Fixed the corner tiles in the alien base hangar rooms not revealing from the shroud.
  
• Fixed an incorrectly rotated floor tile in the Destroyer UFO.
  
• Hopefully fixed the issue that was causing certain user bug reports to contain only a single file.
  
• We've removed the parked Scout UFO from the UOO Sabotage mission, as it was just causing confusion and also caused some gameplay problems.
  
• Fixed the Geoscape timers on the left of the UI going offscreen on non-1080p screens.
  
• Fixed the North American region displaying Infiltration rather than Panic on hover.
  
• Fixed the Rush Replace button always displaying the cost as $30,000.
  
• Fixed typos in the Fusion Weapon Upgrade project.
  
• The MARS / ARES "Plasma Cannon" is now correctly called the "Fusion Cannon", and should have green rather than blue artwork and should fire green projectiles.
  

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, now 35% off.

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https://store.steampowered.com/app/538030/Xenonauts_2/

It's the end of the year and time for our monthly Xenonauts 2 development update. A fairly quick one this time, though, as I'm currently on holiday!
[h2]Milestone 5 Release:[/h2]
The biggest news this month is that we released the initial Milestone 5 prototype on the Experimental branch on the 13th December. Although we did a lot of internal testing prior to releasing the prototype, it still ended up being very unstable (probably because we were still adding new features right up until release).

As the studio closed for Christmas on the 20th Dec, we then worked long hours to try and get the prototype into a more stable state before the holidays. After five hotfixes (including a festive Christmas Eve update) we managed to deal with most of the critical issues, leaving the prototype in much better shape. However, we're already aware of a number of bugs that we need to look at in January.

We'll also be adding a lot more content to Milestone 5 next month - as mentioned in previous updates, the initial prototype contains quite a lot of placeholder assets that we need to finish or replace before Milestone 5 is released on the standard branches.

Thanks once again to everyone who has taken the time to report bugs or give us feedback. If anyone wants to offer further thoughts, please do!
[h2]UFO Delegation:[/h2]
One change in Milestone 5 proved controversial, which was the "UFO Delegation" feature. Basically, this is triggered after completing two Crash Sites of a particular UFO type, and it gives you a permanent monthly funding increase - but also imposes an Operations Point cost if you complete further Crash Site missions of that particular UFO type (there is a lore justification for this, but for the sake of brevity I won't explain it here).

We introduced this change because the player shoots down a lot of UFOs during the course of the game, and unfortunately there's two opposing (but equally valid) playstyles regarding the Crash Sites produced. The first group of players will happily fight every single tactical mission that spawns on the Geoscape, which can easily be 30+ Crash Sites over the course of a single campaign. The second group of players is happy to fight one or two Crash Sites of a particular UFO type to see the new content and unlock the associated research, but find it repetitive to do more than that.

It's extremely difficult to balance the game to account for both these playstyles, as it either ends up too easy for the people who like to complete every Crash Site (as they have way too much money / resources) or too tedious and grindy for the people who prefer to complete only one or two per UFO (as they're forced to complete every crash site to avoid money / resource shortages).

The delegation system was our attempt to support both sides by reducing the potential rewards for fighting lots of identical Crash Sites - players can still do it if they choose, but they gain less of an advantage than they did previously.

We've already listened to community feedback on this point (the Operations Point cost was previously a Panic penalty) and we'll continue to do so. Much like we added options for people who wanted to disable turn timers on tactical missions, if necessary we're prepared to add an optional "extended" mode that fully removes delegation and is balanced around the player completing every Crash Site.

However, this won't be possible until the game balance for the "normal" campaign is locked for final release in Milestone 6, as keeping an additional game mode updated while balance is still in flux would take up lots of development time.

So if you see people getting upset about this topic, please point them at this post. I think most people will find the new system an improvement overall, but we'll continue to support those who would prefer to play without it.
[h2]Conclusion:[/h2]
That's everything from me. The first of us will be back at work on Thursday and we'll be back to full strength on Monday 6th, so expect the patches and updates for Milestone 5 to resume next week.

I'd like to close by thanking everyone for your support during 2024 - this game genuinely wouldn't be possible without our community. I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and have a happy New Year!