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 contains our first round of balancing fixes for Milestone 6. I'm going to release them on this branch now so they get a few days of testing over the weekend while we wait to see if the wider playerbase encounter any stability bugs in Milestone 6.
Gameplay Changes:
Some weapon tweaks:
Alien weapons (including the Cleaner Accelerated Rifle) now gain +2% hit chance per tile of proximity to the target, which matches the equivalent human weapons. Previously they only gained +1.5%.
Fixed alien weapons having zero recoil, which meant burst fire from alien weapons was more effective than it should have been.
The cheaper fire mode on Sniper Rifles now correctly has +20 No Move bonus, rather than +40 (which was higher than the more expensive fire mode).
Laser Sniper Rifle now has the same fire mode accuracy / TU cost / No Move bonus values as other human sniper rifles (it got out of sync a few patches ago).
The average missed shot in tactical combat now deviates from the target more than twice as much as before, but the maximum permissible shot deviation has been significantly reduced.
This means missed shots will generally have a wider spread, but you should no longer see the occasional shot that flies off wildly at a crazy angle. The reason for this change is that previously miss shots would often deviate by such a small amount that many of them would still pass through the tile of the target unit - and while they were disallowed from actually hitting the target, they could still inflict suppression or take out the intervening cover, etc.
Fighter UFO missiles have been reduced in speed by 25%, and the Interceptor UFO missiles have been reduced in speed by 15%, as both were harder to evade than intended.
Bugfixes:
Fixed a bug where AI units would sometimes ignore and not attack Xenonaut units that were clearly visible but did not start the turn directly within in their vision cone.
Fixed some minor visual issues with the cliffs on a Polar Cruiser UFO crash site map.