We've released the first "prototype" build for Milestone 5 on our Experimental branch (instructions on how to access it here).
Milestone 5 introduces several major new mechanics to the Geoscape and adds significant amounts of new content to the tactical combat. All limits on playable time have been removed from the campaign, and it is now possible to unlock and complete the final mission in order to win the campaign.
This is currently a rough prototype build of Milestone 5 which is fully playable, but likely to contain bugs and missing content (e.g. some missing research art / research text, some placeholder UI, no victory cinematic, etc). We will be releasing regular updates for Milestone 5 while it remains on the Experimental branch, and it will only be released on the standard branches once we have added the remaining content into the game and we are happy with stability and game balance.
TL;DR - this build contains a lot of upgrades but is unfinished. If you're not interested in being a tester, you'll enjoy this update a lot more if you wait until it appears on the main Steam branch!
KEY CONTENT:
- Battleship UFO: the Battleship is the final alien UFO. It is extremely powerful in the air combat and is a large multi-level UFO with a large crew of the most elite aliens defenders in the tactical combat - successfully capturing one therefore provides the player vast quantities of Alloys and Alenium!
- Operation Endgame: it is now possible to unlock Operation Endgame and complete the campaign with a high-stakes assault on the alien high command. We made this a two-part mission in homage to the Cydonia mission from classic X-Com (creating an entirely new set of terrain tiles for the first part)!
- Supporter System: each of the six funding regions on the Geoscape now contains four Supporters, representing important VIPs in the local area. Each Supporter provides your organisation with a permanent bonus when recruited (there are five types of Supporter), and a unique Region Bonus is also unlocked if all the Supporters in a region are recruited. However, UFO missions can also cause Supporters to fall under alien control - becoming Infiltrators, who slowly raise Panic in the local area until you assign the resources required to eliminate them. This system makes the Geoscape much more engaging, giving the player far more choice about their playstyle.
- Strategic Operations: the same currency used to recruit Supporters can alternatively be used on Strategic Operations, which provide an instant benefit such as an injection of cash or a shipment of alien materials. Importantly, this also gives players a method of quickly reducing Panic in a specific region - something many players have been requesting for a long time.
- Invasion Phases: the campaign has been divided into five different phases that better explain the progression of the invasion, with some phases introducing or removing new mechanics to reflect the changing alien invasion strategy.
- New Missions: two new tactical missions set on an alien orbital station take place towards the end of the game, adding more mission variety to second half of the campaign.
- New Aliens: there's a couple of new alien units - the Eternal (the alien leader unit), and a small melee creature with a limited lifespan known as the Symbiote which certain enemies can fire at Xenonaut units as a form of living weapon.
- Civilian Evacuation: civilians on tactical missions can now be interacted with to order them to evacuate. Doing this will cause them to run towards the evacuation zone (next to the Xenonaut dropship) and leave the map - assuming no aliens kill them on the way!
KEY BALANCE CHANGES:
- Base Regional Pricing: Xenonaut bases now vary in price between $500k and $1.5m depending where in the world you place them, with the optimal locations in terms of radar coverage (e.g. North Africa / Middle East, Latin America, etc) being more expensive. This means there are more viable strategies in terms of base placement, and also means new players end up with more starting funds if they unwittingly place their first base in a "bad" location.
- UFO "Delegation" System: once the player has completed two crash sites for a specific UFO type, enough data has been gathered about that particular UFO to allow local military forces to take over future crash sites of that type. The Xenonauts are given a permanent increase in monthly funding, but the player is expected to claim the cash bounty on any future Crash Sites of that type rather than manually completing the mission - ignoring this will increase Panic by damaging relations with the local region (who want the alien materials from the Crash Site for their own purposes).
- This system has been added because it was very difficult to balance the game when some players complete only a single Crash Site for each specific UFO type, whereas others would fight every single UFO crash site they create (even if they find it grindy and repetitive) simply because the extra money / resources generated by doing so made it the optimal way to play the game. The new Panic penalty means there's now costs as well as benefits associated with fighting more than two Crash Sites of a particular type - but the penalty isn't *that* big and is limited only to a single region, so in some cases it can still be worthwhile.
- 50%-150% Damage Randomisation: in Milestone 4 weapons (both human and alien) inflicted between 50%-200% of their Damage value when they hit the target, but this has now been reduced back down to 50%-150%. This makes armour more effective at stopping units being instantly killed by a single shot.
Strategy - Full Gameplay Changes:
- As covered in the Key Changes section above, we've added several new strategic mechanics such as Strategic Operations, Supporters, and the Invasion Phase system. Additionally, the Base Regional Pricing and UFO Delegation system significantly change the game balance.
- It's worth highlighting that the "Reduce Panic" strategic operation can be used on lost regions, and if you reduce Panic below 100 and keep it there then that region will rejoin the Funding Council.
- A new "Geoscape Timer" UI element has been added, which tells you how many days until your next Funding Report and any upcoming narrative event (usually relating to the end of the current Phase).
- The Campaign Victory / Campaign Loss screen has been updated with proper artwork, flavour text and music. The full campaign stats (e.g. total aliens killed, etc) are now shown for both victory and loss.
- Item sale prices that have fallen (as a result of selling those items) now regain some of the lost value at the end of each month.
- The introduction of Phases (see Key Changes section) has led to a rebalance of some parts of the invasion:
- Individual regions do not suffer Panic in the first couple of months of the campaign. Instead, there is a single global "Doomsday" counter which must be kept below 100. This is mostly for narrative reasons, but in game design terms it gives the player more time set themselves up before Panic becomes a problem.
- The initial "Cleaner" stage of the game is now a bit shorter and contains fewer missions overall, so each campaign now only contains one of the following mission pairs - Rescue Soldiers / Convoy Ambush, and VIP Extraction / VIP Elimination.
- Monthly funding is much lower at the start of the game, but increases significantly once Phase 2 begins.
- Infiltration UFO missions no longer cause Panic, but instead convert neutral Supporters into Infiltrators that generate Panic each month. Infiltrators can be eliminated by spending Operation Points.
- Alien materials are now more plentiful in the second half of the game.
- A few changes have been made to the tech tree:
- Research speed is 10% faster on Soldier and 20% faster on Recruit
- Research project durations have been decreased by 10%-20% for projects in the second half of the game on all difficulties.
- Removed the Alien Officer Interrogation and Alien Leader Interrogation placeholder plot research, and replaced them with plot-related research related to UOO-1.
- The second-stage Corpse Analysis engineering projects have been removed, meaning there is now a single Corpse Analysis that grants +20% damage for each alien species.
- An (expensive) engineering project has been added to upgrade the speed of Angel interceptors to match that of Phantom interceptors.
- An engineering project has been added to improve the protection of Guardian Armour (unlocked by researching Alien Plasma Weapons). As both Stalker Armour and Colossus Armour are somewhat specialised, Guardian Armour remains the mainline armour for quite a while!
- Added an upgraded variant of the Stun Baton called the Electroshock Baton (unlocked from Advanced Stun Weapons research).
- The Quantum Laboratory and Nanotech Workshop upgrades now require Alien Electronics in addition to completion of the Cleaner Base mission (meaning they arrive a couple of months later).
- The research projects for Cleaner Autopsy and Cleaner Interrogation now autocomplete, as they are rendered redundant before most people complete them. The Cleaner Corpse Analysis engineering projects have been removed entirely for the same reason.
- The power consumption of various base structures has been rebalanced. The quick summary is:
- Power consumption of many buildings has been slightly increased, including the Hangar and Living Quarters (which previously did not require power).
- Power production of the Access Lift and the basic Generators has been reduced (Alenium Generators remain unchanged). Your starting base now contains an additional Generator to compensate.
- The overall effect of this is that new bases can only construct a single Hangar and Radar with the power from the Access Lift, and expanding the base further requires construction of additional Generators.
- There's been some minor updates to the air combat:
- Torpedoes are now faster and Missiles are now slower, so the Torpedoes will hit the target first if both are fired at the same time (usually desirable because they are very effective at destroying Armour, allowing subsequent Missile hits to inflict higher damage).
- The weapons on the Cruiser / Abductor UFOs now do reduced damage and have smaller fire arcs.
- Evasive Roll now travels a consistent distance whatever speed the air combat is set to.
Tactical Combat - Full Gameplay Changes:
- The Civilian Evacuation system allows you to click on a civilian from an adjacent tile, which causes them to path towards the evacuation zone near the dropship as quickly as possible. This does not cost TU to use. Note that evacuating civilians will try to sprint past any threats they encounter, so make sure their escape route is safe!
- Building roofs are now destructible. Units / objects will fall down to the level below if the floor beneath them is destroyed, and if they land on another actor / object then they both will be stunned or destroyed.
- Sloped building roofs now correctly block line of sight and shots / throwable objects from all angles,
- Units now only rotate to face their attacker after taking damage on the enemy turn. Having it occur in the player turn could cause frustration, as soldiers hit by enemy reaction fire would rotate towards their attacker and sometimes be left without enough TU to complete their planned actions.
- Suppressing a unit now reduces their Reflexes by 50%, which makes them easier to hit with melee weapons.
- Performing melee attacks on hostile units now grants attribute progress towards improving Reflexes.
- Mind Control is now properly broken if the alien is killed or stunned.
- Hay now costs additional TU to move through, and is crushed the first time any unit moves through them. This penalty does not apply if the unit doing so is Crushing (e.g. vehicles, Colossus Armour).
- You can now set a move path to an obstructed tile that contains a unit or a terrain object under the shroud, although unit movement will end once the obstruction is revealed (this prevents players "scanning" the shroud to identify what is there).
- Alien Changes:
- Eternals have been added to the game on Battleships and inside the largest Alien Bases.
- Psyon "Mesmerise" ability can now only be used once per turn by each Psyon.
- Some Mantids now carry Symbiote Launchers, which fire eggs towards their enemies that hatch into Symbiotes - small, aggressive melee aliens that only live three turns,
- Sebillians now carry LMGs instead of Rifles, and some been issued with a special type of grenade that spawns large clouds of poison gas.
- Wraith soldiers now have a 30% chance of spawning with a grenade.
- Wraith Cloaking Field is now disabled by stun damage (as well as normal damage).
- Cyberdrone weapon is now an AOE weapon that fires 3 explosive shots (damage per shot has been reduced).
- Androns and Cyberdrones should no longer seek cover, nor back off if facing large numbers of hostile units.
- Androns should no longer crush alien doors when moving around UFOs / alien bases.
- Cleaners are no longer hostile to civilians / local forces on certain map types.
- AI units of all kinds should no longer clump together quite as much as before.
- Weapon Changes:
- The maximum deviation on a missed shot is now 10 degrees. As well as looking more realistic, this makes the HEVY more effective.
- A couple of bugfixes related to the way corners (e.g. walls, doorframes) and fire arcs are treated for missed shots have made the HEVY less likely to blow up the user unexpectedly.
- Cleaner Accelerated Rifle now has identical stats to the Accelerated Rifle.
- Demolition grenades now spawn smoke and fire on detonation.
- Usability Changes:
- Pressing R will now reload your weapon.
- The tactical combat camera now returns to its previous position after the enemy turn has been processed.
- The currently selected soldier now displays with orange shading if obstructed by cover, rather than green. This makes it much easier to see which soldier in the dropship is currently selected.
- Ambush maps now reveal the position of all enemies during deployment, so you can better choose where to deploy your soldiers.
- Added camera scroll from the target soldiers to the rest of your team at the start of the Rescue Soldiers mission.
- Scrolling between soldiers in the tactical inventory can be done using up / down, as well as left / right (this mirrors the Soldier Equip screen).
- UI Improvements:
- We've added an "abort mission" button to the tactical combat UI, as not everyone was aware you could access it through the Esc menu.
- The soldier minitabs along the top of the tactical UI now also display the secondary weapon if the primary weapon is a combat shield.
- Mind controlled units remain in the topbar minitabs (but cannot be interacted with, as if the soldier was dead).
- On missions with a pre-battle deployment phase, the "Commence Mission" button no longer softlocks the game for a couple of seconds after pressing it.
- On Data Raid missions, if you return all the soldiers to the dropship without having sabotaged enough computers for the mission to count as a victory, the game will now spawn a pop-up telling you this and asking if you want to end the mission anyway.
- Updated the Data Raid objective text to be slightly clearer about how many computer desks need to be interacted with for victory.
- Added tooltips to the post-mission debrief screen for the soldier promotion icon, and the soldier kills icons.
Visual / Audio Updates:
- Fix various kinds of minor visual issues in lots of different tactical maps.
- Added various new terrain tiles for the tactical combat. These are mostly alien tiles related to the new missions (e.g. Operation Endgame, Battleship UFO, the alien orbital missions, etc) but there's some visual updates to the Farm biome and a new oil pumpjack prop for the Desert biome.
- Added new 3d models for the Wraiths, including entirely new designs for the heavily-armoured elite Wraiths.
- Added Soldier Equip screen paperdoll artwork for the various advanced MARS / ARES weapons.
- Added new or updated sound effects for:
- Ambient sounds for various tactical biomes and strategic UI screens
- Winning or losing a tactical mission
- Accelerated and Gauss weapons
- Alien Fusion weapons
- MARS / ARES / Sentry Gun movement and death sounds
- MARS / ARES rocket turret weapon
- Dropships now have a new take-off sound when launching on the Geoscape (instead of sounding like jet fighters).
Bugfixes:
- Fixed another rare multi-threading crash related to saving the game.
- Fixed several issues where the game could crash when moving inventory items (both on the Soldier Equip screen and the tactical inventory).
- Fixed a crash that could occur if you accidentally killed The General in ATLAS Base with an explosive weapon before he had been revealed from the shroud.
- Fixed a crash that could (rarely) occur on enemy overwatch fire.
- Fixed zombies incorrectly spawning two Reapers when stunned, which could then cause a crash in some circumstances.
- Fixed an issue where a teleporter would still trigger if a unit ended a move on it due to their move being interrupted (e.g. by spotting an alien, or because of enemy reaction fire).
- Fixed a bug where most of the crew of Harvester UFOs were not spawning (the ones that were meant to be inside the UFO).
- Fixed some abduction missions loading incorrect map variants with too few abduction tubes.
- Fixed a bug where soldiers would sometimes not carry out move actions even though the UI tells you there are enough TU to do so.
- Fixed a pathing calculation issue where the game would sometimes tell you a soldier lacked enough TU to reach a tile, but would then recalculate and allow a longer movement if you chose a different tile.
- Fixed some pathfinding issues for jetpack-equipped soldiers, where the game was incorrectly claiming a "path cannot be found" if the soldier did not have enough TU to reach the spot (rather than showing how far the unit could move).
- Fixed pathfinding incorrectly calculating costs for units with Crushing making moves that involved crushing multiple objects.
- Fixed interrupted soldier moves not always reimbursing the player with the correct number of TUs.
- Fixed an issue where units would sometimes not turn if attacking as part of a move >> shoot preview action, leading to their arms facing a completely different direction to their torso.
- Fixed some (but not all) instances of shroud drawing over materials with transparency, such as the glass parts of alien abduction tubes etc.
- Fixed an issue where fleeing aliens would often flee directly towards your units.
- Fixed an issue where the shroud would sometimes not be revealed on certain tiles, even if a unit walked into them.
- Fixed some displayed "hit chance" labels being offset when passing through certain types of smoke.
- Fixed some displayed "hit chance" labels being offset in certain camera circumstances.
- Fixed the issue where destroying a shipping container would often not destroy the ladder attached to it.
- Fixed an issue where certain dropped items could not be picked up.
- Fixed destroyed splinters of wood hovering in the air after destroying certain sawmill walls.
- Fixed a UI bug where selecting soldiers on the Manage Soldier screen would cause the Training Capacity bar to decrease.
- Fixed the Ultimate Power achievement (all Colonels in a squad) being unlocked if you play a base defence mission containing only Sentry Guns.
- Fixed the Psyon Mesmerise triggering incorrectly when a "missed" shot from an explosive weapon kills the Psyon.
- Fixed an issue where in some circumstances the UI would show the fire mode icons for the medikit on top of the normal fire mode icons for a pistol in the other hand.
- Removed a duplicate soldier role icon.
- Fixed an issue where thrown grenades would sometimes get stuck in mid-air and explode on the wrong tile (or leave flares floating in mid-air.)
- Fixed EMP Damage and Stun Damage numbers incorrectly being shown on Commander difficulty, when normal damage numbers are not.
- Fixed the tooltip for the Stalker Armour showing the linked tooltip for the Wraith Cloaking Field, not the human equivalent.
- Fixed the Colossus tooltip not having enough space to display the various effects.
- Fixed Soldier Equip screen item comparison issues that caused the currently equipped weapon to display error text instead of its ammo capacity.