Hello everyone - I'm pleased to announce that Xenonauts 2 has now officially reached 1.0, and is out of Early Access with a 35% off discount!
This is the end of a long journey, and we're all incredibly excited. To celebrate, we're releasing another major content patch to accompany the launch! Be sure to check out the 1.0 release trailer down below, too.
THANK YOU TO OUR COMMUNITY
Huge thanks go out to the many, many people who have supported the project during development. All the comments, suggestions, and bug reports have really helped shape the game into what it is today, whilst the extra funds raised from Early Access sales have allowed us to add significantly more content than we had originally planned. Xenonauts 2 is a better game because of your support.
STEAM REVIEWS: YOUR FEEDBACK MATTERS
If you haven't already, please do consider leaving a review for us on Steam. People pay a lot of attention to reviews when deciding whether a game is worth buying, so if you're enjoying Xenonauts 2 (or just want to say thanks to the dev team), leaving a review would really help our game find its audience!
MILESTONE 7 PATCH
Today's major content patch marks the arrival of Milestone 7 on the public branches. This contains several significant gameplay updates and comes with an 8,000-word changelog that can be read below (there's a Key Content section at the top for people who just want the headlines).
Milestone 7 Breaks Milestone 6 Saves, Use the Legacy Branch to Continue Existing Campaigns
As this is a Milestone update, it will break saves made in Milestone 6 or earlier; however, anyone with an ongoing Milestone 6 campaign can switch to our Legacy branch to continue playing on the older version of the game. Please check the guide we've linked to see how to access an older branch.
POST-RELEASE PLANS
Our 1.0 release will not be the end of development work on Xenonauts 2. For the next couple of weeks, we'll be focused on ensuring the game is completely stable and trying to finish up the various smaller improvements we couldn't quite get over the line before release. If you do encounter a bug that affects gameplay, please do report it - we'll do our best to fix it as quickly as possible!
Once the dust has settled on the launch, we'll start planning out our post-launch content roadmap and begin work on the modding tools for the community. The game does already support Harmony code modding, but we think it's important for the longevity of the game to make modding as easy as possible (as the numerous excellent mods for Xenonauts 1 showed).
We're still not quite sure what form the post-launch content will take, but we like the idea of releasing a mixture of free updates and paid DLC content expansions. Anyway, we'll announce our plans for this when we know more.
COMMUNITY LINKS
Finally, if you're interested in chatting with the devs or other players, we urge people to join our Discord server or visit our forums. There's also an official community wiki for Xenonauts 2, where you can find information to help you progress through the game.
I think that's everything - thanks for reading, thanks again for your support, and good luck defeating the alien invaders!
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MILESTONE 7 (1.0 RELEASE) PATCH NOTES
KEY CONTENT:
New UI Background Art: we have added new background art for the Research, Engineering, Soldiers and Base Stores screens, all of which visually changes and upgrades with new technology as you progress through the game - a popular feature from the first Xenonauts that we've finally managed to implement in the sequel!
Interceptor "Paperdoll": the top-down interceptor art on the Aircraft screen has been updated, and the image now reflects changes in weapons and equipment loadout as you make them. There's also additional artwork for things like the engine upgrade engineering projects for the early-game interceptors, which again helps the progression of the game feel more immersive and rewarding,
Alien Praetorians: a new rank of Psyon / Sebillian / Wraith has been added in the final stages of the game. These Praetorians have new 3d models and only appear on missions where Eternals are present, and they are significantly tougher and more dangerous than normal aliens (the alien Praetorians that existed in Milestone 6 have been demoted to alien Elites, and the previous alien Elites have been demoted to a newly-created Warrior rank).
Farm Map Revamp & Scout UFO Maps: this update contains a complete rework of most of the existing Farm tactical maps, making their layouts more interesting and adding a number of new or updated terrain tiles. We've also added two new Scout UFO maps to each biome, as previously there were only three maps per biome for Small UFOs (Scout / Destroyer / Observer), and they would quickly start to repeat if a player started a second or third campaign.
Extended Mode: there's a new toggle on the campaign settings screen called "Extended Mode" that controls the UFO Delegation system, and therefore the number of tactical missions a player will need to run during a campaign. Tucking the UFO Delegation toggle away as a difficulty setting (as we did in Milestone 6) was a mistake, because really the system is more like Iron Man mode - an important decision that players need to be clearly prompted to consider at the start of a campaign, for which there's no "correct" choice.
Improved Performance: game performance has been significantly improved in a lot of different areas, including the following:
Faster loading times (for both strategy layer and tactical combat)
Reduced slowdown when UFOs spawn on Geoscape at high time acceleration speeds
Reduced strategy UI sluggishness, especially when spawning tooltips
Explosions in tactical combat should now calculate much faster
Better performance when using the Sentinel System that grants 360-degree vision
AI turns in tactical combat have been sped up - both in terms of improved AI calculation time, and reducing the number of unnecessary moves made by civilians
Much faster save speeds across all parts of the game, the biggest effect of which should be that autosaves should no longer lock up the game for 1-2 seconds. This will be especially obvious on Ironman mode, as the game frequently autosaves during tactical combat when Iron Man is active.
Steam Workshop integration: this update contains the last of the technical work required for making mods work, including the ability to edit texture files using code mods and in-game UI for managing mods and uploading / deleting mods to Steam Workshop. Although the general-purpose mod editor tools are not yet complete, experienced modders who are familiar with Harmony code modding should now theoretically have everything they need to be able to create and distribute mods.
KEY BALANCE CHANGES:
The feedback from Milestone 6 was that Doomsday was too easy to avert in Phase 1, and that the plentiful Operation Points made it possible to unlock all the Supporters (and their associated bonuses) too early in the campaign. We've tweaked the Phase 1 tactical missions to make them a little less generous with Doomsday reduction, and made a couple of changes to Operation Points.
First, the cost of eliminating Infiltrators now slowly increases over time - they rarely pose much immediate threat, but they will become a Operations Point sink if you leave them too long. Secondly, building new bases is now a Strategic Operation that costs 100 Operation Points. This change was as much about improving the UX as balancing gameplay, but it does also serve to remove an extra 200 - 300 Operation Points across the campaign. We think this is enough to stop Operation Points getting out of hand without going too far and completely choking the supply.
On the tactical layer, we have reworked the Colossus Battlesuit and Stalker Stealth Armour as players felt both were underwhelming. The Colossus now enjoys a 20% fire cost reduction for its weapons (allowing it to use machineguns more like assault rifles), can now carry items it cannot itself use (so it can use its 100 Strength to act as an item mule for the rest of the team). There is also a researchable Automed Unit module for the Colossus that is heavy, but improves the survivability of the soldier inside. It is now much more effective on the battlefield, and much more fun to use.
The Stalker Stealth Armour has been redesigned so it no longer has a "heavy" variant but has very strong stats on the "light" variant. It therefore offers 25 Armour with minimal weight and no Accuracy penalty, while retaining its cloaking field effect. This makes it much more viable, particularly for soldiers who want to maximise Accuracy - something that is more relevant as the cheapest fire mode on Sniper Rifles have been reduced in cost to allow firing twice per turn. Snipers with very high Accuracy can therefore output lots of damage if positioned correctly.
The aliens have also received buffs - in Milestone 6 the elite Cleaners were actually tougher and more dangerous than the early aliens, which didn't feel right. Most aliens have now been given a 20% HP boost, with the Androns and the Sebillians instead being given 35% resistance against Kinetic and Energy weapons respectively. Mantids now make more use of their Symbiote-spawning Bio-Rifles, and receive an upgraded version that spawns two Symbiotes per shot towards the end of the game. The Psyon Mesmerise ability is now stronger as it checks against Bravery rather than Morale and, as mentioned above, there's a new rank of especially tough and dangerous Psyons / Sebillians / Wraiths that appear at the end of the game as bodyguards to the Eternals.
Finally, the AI has been upgraded further. This is both a buff and a nerf - the AI is now more deadly because it is more capable of making the correct decisions in combat, but we have also implemented systems to prevent the AI "cheating". It is now much better at keeping track of what information the aliens should know, and what they should not - so there should be far fewer instances of aliens unfairly homing in on Xenonauts that they cannot see and should not know were there. This was (rightly) a big complaint for players in previous Milestones and these changes should allow more tactical play.
There's many more changes than what I've written above, but anyone interested can dive into the full patch notes below!
General:
Commander difficulty no longer prevents the player from using Air Combat autoresolve, as the autoresolve rarely outperforms human players and the general feeling was that disabling it was simply making the Commander experience more repetitive, not more difficult.
Strategy Layer:
Two existing features have been moved inside the Strategic Operations system via a couple of new Strategic Operations that unlock after the ATLAS Base mission:
Refresh Soldier Pool: the soldier pool would previously automatically refresh at the end of each month, but will now only refresh when the Identify Recruits strategic operation is used. This operation costs 35 Operation Points, decreasing by -1 OP per day, so players effectively still get that free monthly refresh but can also pay a little extra to refresh the pool faster if they want. This can be very useful if you need to replace heavy losses, or were just given a really bad batch of recruits to pick from!
Build Base: constructing a new base is now done via a Strategic Operation that costs 100 Operation Points in addition to the existing $ cost of constructing the base. This serves as a minor Operation Points sink (they were too plentiful in Milestone 6), but the change was primarily made for UI / UX reasons. Inexperienced players sometimes didn't realise you could build new bases at all, so moving it to sit within the Strategic Operations (which represent actions you can do on the Geoscape) felt a more natural and more discoverable home. Helpfully, it also fixes the UI issue where the New Base button couldn't fit into the topbar on 16:10 screen resolutions!
Supporters & Operations Points:
The cost to remove Infiltrators now increases by +0.5 OP per day, capped at +100 Operations Points.
Intelligence supporters reduced back to generating +1 OP per day, or +2 OP for Elites.
Security Supporters now each grant -2 Panic in each region (Elite grants -4 Panic), but their Phase 1 Doomsday reduction values remain unchanged.
Cleaner Agents / Soldiers now grant +25 Operation Points on completion of their Interrogation project (down from +50). Cleaner Leaders now have their own Interrogation project, which grants +50 Operations Points (previously you gained +30 per captured Leader item).
Recruit difficulty now generates 10 OP per day, not 12.
Mission Changes:
Reduced the Doomsday reduction win rewards of all Cleaner missions by -5 each (except Abduction missions where the reward remains variable)
You are now awarded the item contents of the attacking UFO if you win a Xenonaut Base Defence tactical mission, or if your base defence turrets shoot down the UFO as it tries to attack your base.
Soldiers can no longer overload themselves by more than 16 weight on the pre-mission Soldier Equip screen. This is to prevent players from loading up excessive amounts of extra equipment and then dropping it all on turn 1.
Fusion weapons now require Alien Fusion Weapons research in addition to the Ultradense Alloys research to unlock. Updated the Alien Fusion Weapons research text so it no longer implies human Fusion Weapons could be unlocked immediately.
Aircraft engine upgrade projects reduced in cost to $350k (from $500k) for the Angel, and to $1m (from $1.5m) for the Phantom
Unlocking the North America region bonus (+5 Soldier Starting Experience) now gives you an immediate free refresh of the soldier pool.
Air Combat Layer:
Reduced the damage on the Alenium and Fusion missiles / torpedoes, as they were too effective against late-game UFOs.
The Evasive Roll cooldown of the Gemini has been increased by 0.6 seconds to 2.2 sec, which means the Gemini can now roll as often as a Phantom can.
Battleship UFO side cannons can now fire immediately at the start of the battle - previously there was a 4 sec delay after the start of the battle where they were still reloading, which made the battle easier than it should be.
Rush replacement cost for aircraft has been increased: the Angel went $100k to $120k, the Phantom $200k to $250k, the Gemini $250k to $500k.
Gemini interceptor starting loadout now has two Armour items instead of the two Fuel Pods.
Tactical Combat:
Reflexes Modifier has been re-added to weapons, which modify the soldier's reflexes by values ranging from 1.25x (shotguns) to 0.5x (shields). Be aware that the system always uses the lowest value from the main and offhand weapon, so it doesn't matter which weapon is set as the active weapon when moving.
Time Unit modifiers (with the exception of weight penalties) now affect weapon TU fire costs. This means that the Vanguard Armour now simply extends the move range of soldiers, rather than permitting them to fire additional shots. Conversely, the MARS Heavy Armour now only reduces the move range of the vehicle and does not reduce the number of shots it can fire.
Being on a higher level than your target now grants a +0.10x Hit Chance (per level) modifier to your shots, and being on a lower level inflicts a -0.10x penalty per level. This replaces the overly complex system in older versions that would reduce the stopping chance of any intervening cover, but did not change the overall accuracy of the shot.
The damage types of weapons and their effectiveness against terrain have been reworked:
Kinetic weapons now do 25% of their base damage to terrain (this means their damage vs terrain has been reduced by 40%)
Thermal damage has now been split into Energy damage (lasers, plasmas, fusion) and Explosive damage (rockets, demolition charge, etc).
Energy weapons do 100% of their base damage to terrain. This is a reduction of about half since the previous build (Lasers in particular could clear terrain a bit too effectively), but Energy weapons still remain 4x more effective against terrain than Kinetic weapons are!
Explosive weapons now do 200% of their base damage to terrain (reduced from 250% in the previous build).
UFO interior walls now have 50% more HP.
You can now force-fire at enemies using Ctrl even if there is a 0% chance of hitting them. You can already use force-fire to take 0% shots against terrain, so this makes the behaviour consistent.
Berserking units now give reduced weight to inflicting suppression damage, which makes them less likely to waste their TU throwing flashbangs at enemies rather than performing normal attacks.
Tweaked the vision-blocking and stopping chance values of certain terrain objects to improve consistency.
Updated a number of trees to have cover on the upper levels as well as the lower levels.
Alien Changes:
Aliens are now noticeably tougher, as in previous versions they weren't much of a step up from elite Cleaners:
Sebillians now have 35% Energy resistance, but 0 Armour.
Androns now have 35% Kinetic resistance
Most other (non-robotic) enemies have been given +20% HP
Cleaner Accelerated Rifle is now called the Magnetic Rifle, and Cleaner Soldiers are always equipped with it. It is now halfway between the human Ballistic Rifle and Accelerated Rifle in terms of damage and armour penetration - the intention being that skilled players can capture them and use them as a stopgap if they are skipping Accelerated Rifles to get Lasers faster.
A new rank of Psyon / Sebillians / Wraiths has been added to the game. These "Praetorians" appear on missions where Eternals are present and are tougher and more accurate than existing aliens. Because "Praetorian" was already an alien rank, the previous Praetorians have been demoted to Elites, and the previous Elites have been demoted to a newly-created "Warrior" rank.
All non-melee aliens have had their Accuracy stat reduced by 10%, but on Commander the Accuracy multiplier has been returned to 1.3x (up from 1.1x). This means aliens are about 10% less accurate on all difficulties except Commander, where they are roughly 6% more accurate than in Milestone 6 (which equates to about +2% chance to hit against a soldier in cover at medium range).
The Psyon "Mesmerise" ability no longer checks against Morale, as it would very rarely succeed in M6. It now checks against Bravery, using a random 100 roll against this formula:
(Bravery - 25) x 2
Effectively this means soldiers have 2% resist chance against Mesmerise for each point of Bravery above 25, and they become entirely immune to Mesmerise at 75 Bravery.
Psyons previously had a variant of each rank with and without armour, but these have been consolidated into a single variant with a fixed amount of armour - Soldier (10), Warrior (20), Elite (30), Praetorian (40). This change was made because all the unarmoured Psyon variants previously looked identical, which made it hard to assess the threat each unit posed.
Sebillians now use a mix of LMGs and Rifles, rather than always being equipped with LMGs.
Sebillians equipped with Fusion weapons now have standard grenades rather than poison grenades (as the latter are obsolete by that point in the game).
Mantids now have access to an upgraded Alien Bio-Rifle in the later parts of the game. This new weapon is called the Alien Bio-Cannon, which inflicts greater damage and spawns two Symbiotes per shot. We added this because it was kinda sad that the unique Mantid weapon went away halfway through the game, particularly given the Colossus can crush Symbiotes just by walking over them!
The fire costs of both of these weapons have been increased so they cannot fire more than once per turn, but their accuracy has been increased a little to compensate.
A bug in the Symbiote spawning logic has been fixed, meaning "miss" shots should now reliably spawn Symbiotes.
Cyberdrone / Heavy Cyberdrone now has two attack modes - the existing triple shot (80% TU) and a single shot (36% TU). This means Cyberdrones are extremely dangerous if given the opportunity to use their triple shot, but they are much less threatening if you can force them to move.
Cyberdrone / Heavy Cyberdrone shields have been reworked to function like human shields - rather than granting extra Armour, they offer 100HP / 150HP extra health with a 75% blocking chance from the front (this reduces at the sides and falls to 0% from the back). We changed this because the +Armour rules for the previous shield were too complicated and didn't interact properly with explosions.
Basic Cyberdrones now make blue explosions that do 50 damage, Heavy Cyberdrones have green explosions that do 75 damage (previously both had 60 damage green explosions).
Zombies are now gas immune.
Symbiotes can no longer be Suppressed, but can also no longer vault or climb.
The base hit chance of all alien melee weapons has been increased to 70%-80%, which was generally an increase of about 10%. Reapers were already at that level, so did not receive any increase. Due to their very low Reflexes making it hard for them to hit anything, Zombies gained an additional +20% to their base hit chance.
Reaper melee damage increased by 10%.
Symbiote melee attack now has only a 30% chance to inflict a Bleeding Wound per 10 damage inflicted (down from 50%).
Xenonaut Equipment Changes:
Grenades can now only scatter half of their intended throw distance, which should make it impossible for soldiers to drop grenades at their feet when throwing more than a few tiles.
Upgrading weapons now always add ~15% to their damage. Upgraded Gauss weapons now do slightly more damage, and a few of the upgraded Fusion weapons have had their damage numbers slightly tweaked upwards or downwards to better fit the rule.
Suppression values for all weapons have been unified into a consistent pattern. Previously most Fusion weapons and some Laser weapons were doing less suppression than expected, but the Gauss / Fusion Shotguns were doing MUCH more Suppression than intended (almost 10x more).
Shotgun short range hit bonus increased from +7.5% per tile to 8% per tile.
Sniper Rifle cheapest fire mode reduced in cost from 52% TU to 48%, but Accuracy of that fire mode has been reduced from 100 to 80. This is is an overall buff to the Sniper Rifle, as it permits the weapon to be fired twice in a turn if a soldier has enough Accuracy to make effective use of the cheaper fire mode.
Heavy Armour now causes a -10% Accuracy penalty (previously a flat -5 Accuracy). Except for the basic Tactical Armour, the light armour variant now grants roughly 65% of the armour of the heavy variant (previously 50%).
The Guardian Armour protection upgrade engineering project now unlocks earlier - off Alien Electronics (Observer UFOs) rather than Advanced Alloys (Abductor UFOs). The upgraded armour now provides 25/38 Armour and 12 Hardness (up from 24/36 and 10).
Stalker Armour now offers 25 Armour in its light variant, but has no heavy variant. This means it offers good protection for 8 Weight (and no Accuracy penalty), although it is not as protective as the heavy variant of the upgraded Guardian Armour.
Enemy AI no longer considers the cloak effect of Stalker Armour soldiers when choosing their shots (they use the non-cloaked hit chance instead). This means the AI will now take more low-accuracy shots at cloaked soldiers and will therefore miss more often.
Colossus Armour changes:
Reflexes penalty is now a 0.5x multiplier (previously a flat -20 Reflex penalty)
The TU fire cost of the LMG is reduced by 20% when carried by the Colossus.
Added an engineering upgrade project that permits Colossus Armour to equip an Automed System. This functions like the Automed Module but is substantially heavier.
Colossus-equipped soldiers now display all (non-module) items in the Armory, and can place them in their backpacks. However, they can still only equip LMGs and the Power Fist in their Primary and Secondary slots, and they are still unable to use grenades. Basically, they can now use their 100 Strength to carry extra equipment for the rest of the team!
Power Fist item now automatically equips in the Secondary slot when the Colossus is equipped, and the secondary slot then becomes locked (displaying greyed out_ so it cannot be unequipped or replaced.
Power Fist melee attack granted 40 Stun Damage, and normal Damage increased to 60 (from 50). Armour Penetration increased to 40 (from 20).
C4 Charge item has been removed. This item was always meant to be superseded by the Demolition Grenade, which is why it doesn't receive any in-game upgrades and the UX for using it is so janky. We're planning to add support for timed fuses on grenades in a future update, which will allow the Demolition Grenade to fully replace the C4.
Smoke Grenades now inflict 1 Gas damage rather than 1 Thermal damage, which means they no longer inflict any damage at all on gas-immune enemies. This could be particularly confusing on Veteran / Commander difficulty, as without visible damage numbers players did not know the alien had only taken a tiny amount of damage.
Mission Changes:
Crash Sites - increased the number of aliens inside large multi-level UFOs, and added dedicated spawn / patrol points for the middle level of Abductors / Harvesters / Battleships to minimise the chances of there being only a handful of aliens remaining once you clear the UFO ground floor.
Extract VIP (escort) - the VIP will now create a body item if stunned or killed. This means you can physically pick him up and carry him to the extract area to win the mission if he becomes stunned.
Extract VIP (escort) - reduced the number of enemies by 1 on all difficulties.
Abduction - local forces / armed civilians no longer spawn on Abduction missions, as the fact that they look identical to the civilians the player is meant to be protecting was proving confusing for some players.
Terror Sites - these now contain an average of 50% more Alenium, as we've fixed an issue that was causing each Alien Bomb in the map to only have a 50% chance of spawning.
Terror Sites - aliens now start using Fusion weapons at roughly the same time that they appear within UFOs (previously they were getting them later, and some species not at all).
Terror Sites - terror sites spawned from Terror UFOs that are not shot down (as opposed to "normal" sites that do not spawn from UFOs) now have an alien crew of appropriate difficulty. Previously these Terror Sites were significantly harder than they should be.
Terror Sites - tier 1 Psyon terror sites (about day 180) now have one fewer Cyberdrone in them on Veteran difficulty and above.
Xenonaut Base Defence - you are now awarded the item contents of the attacking UFO if you win a Xenonaut Base Defence tactical mission, or if your base defence turrets shoot down the UFO as it tries to attack your base.
UOO Bridge Assault - there are now 4 alien spawners to destroy, rather than 2. The first wave of reinforcements spawned from the lifts on either side of the map has been delayed by 1 turn.
Mantids with the upgraded Symbiote launcher weapon should now be more common in late-game missions, as there was a few mission types where they were almost all using standard Plasma / Fusion weapons instead.
The contents of reinforcement waves now vary based on the difficulty setting. Generally we've reduced the number of reinforcements in the initial wave of reinforcements on Recruit and Soldier difficulty, and left it the same on Veteran and Commander (subsequent rounds of reinforcements remain at full strength).
Cleaner Data Raid / VIP Extraction - on Soldier difficulty, the first reinforcement wave from the rear reduced to 2 enemies (from 3). On Recruit, the first reinforcement wave from the sides is also reduced to 1 enemy (from 2).
UOO Bridge Assault - on Recruit and Soldier difficulties, the Andron Praetorian and Wraith Praetorian do not spawn in the first wave of reinforcements from the lifts on either side.
UOO Data Raid - on Recruit difficulty, the second wave of reinforcements contains 1 fewer enemy from each of the three enemy spawn points (4 enemies at the rear, 3 at the sides). On Commander difficulty, the first wave of reinforcements contains 1 extra alien (from 2 to 3) from each enemy spawn point, as does the second wave (6 enemies at the rear, 4 at the side).
When reinforcements spawn on night missions, the tiles on which they spawn are now temporarily illuminated so you can actually see them appear. Previously the camera would focus on the area, but no enemy activity could be seen in the darkness.
Reworked the equipment of the local forces / armed civilians so they have a wider variety of weapon types across the different biomes. Previously almost every armed civilian on every map had a shotgun.
USABILITY & CONTENT UDPATES:
General:
Significant performance updates have been made in various areas of the game (as already covered in the "Key Changes" section at the top of this post).
Anonymised automated error reporting has been added to the game. The welcome message that appears when you first up the game allows you to choose whether this is enabled or disabled (this can also be changed in the game settings), and it would certainly be helpful if players chose to permit this!
The voiceover on the intro / outro cinematic has been re-recorded with a new voice actor due to a contract issue. We think the new voice actor has done an excellent job!
Added a settings option for locking the mouse cursor to the gameplay window (unless alt+tabbed). This setting is on by default.
The campaign difficulty settings now have a wider array of possible values in many of the dropdowns. Although none of these are used by the default difficulty settings, they permit players more options when customising their campaign difficulty.
Updated the appearance of the "tutorial notification" UI popups (e.g. how to use doors, etc) so they have proper close button and checkbox art.
Fixed a large number of text strings that were not being translated when playing in non-English languages, or places where the translated text string was too long and was not displaying correctly. This should dramatically improve the experience for anyone playing a localised version of the game!
Fixed the Xenopedia font displaying some accented character glyphs slightly differently from standard characters, making the text difficult to read in several non-English languages (particularly Polish).
Fixed an issue where Japanese and Korean translations were displaying the Chinese variants of some glyphs due to Unicode overlaps.
The Campaign Name field when starting a new game will now accept non-Latin characters.
Added an icon to certain Main Menu side buttons to indicate that they open their links in new browser windows.
Strategy Layer:
Various UI buttons, dropdowns, sliders and arrow buttons have been updated on the Main Menu and Strategy layers to improve clarity. This updated style no longer uses the diagonal stripe visual language of the previous UI, which sometimes caused players to think buttons were disabled when they were not. Lots of screens have changed subtly, but the effect is most noticable on the settings menu and the Soldiers screen!
Updated the Geoscape background art to better incorporate the Doomsday bar and the region info elements (i.e. the area around the text log at the bottom center of the screen) into the background scene. Made the colours for various parts of this a little more muted, as the new UI added in that area over the past few Milestone updates had made it too visually busy.
The Doomsday bar now has a more stylized appearance.
Hotkeys 1-9 have been set up for strategy navigation. Key "1" is the Geoscape, "2" is the Main Base screen, etc.
A dedicated Interrogation research project has now been added for captured Cleaner Leaders.
Engineering project item costs now show the quantity available in stores for all item types (previously this was only showing for Alloys / Alenium).
Engineering projects now include items equipped on soldiers when displaying how many items of that type you already own.
Engineering upgrade projects now have more informative descriptions that provide specific numbers for what is being upgraded.
Engineering weapon upgrade projects will now show the stats tooltip for both the upgraded and unupgraded weapon.
Enemy stats shown on Autopsy / Interrogation research projects now include any difficulty level modifiers (e.g. increased Accuracy).
Base Stores Sell / Transfer screens now both have progress bars that visualise the available storage capacity at the selected base(s).
When switching armour on a soldier, the "Jetpack" toggle state is now remembered (previously it would reset to "off" whenever the armour changed).
Launch Aircraft mode now has a unique cursor to make it more obvious when that mode is active.
If Operation Points fall below 0, the number is now shown in red.
The soldier image on the Armory screen no longer flickers when you change soldiers.
The values for aircraft range / aircraft speed / radar detection range were very inconsistent in previous versions of the game. These have now been unified and brought in line with real distances and travel times. This has resulted in the following:
The fastest Geoscape time speed has been reduced by 20% to permit the other changes below,
Geoscape speeds of all UFOs and aircraft have been doubled. For clarity, this doesn't affect game balance - it just means units move twice as fast across the map on any given Geoscape time setting.
Aircraft now display accurate values for speed and range in the Xenopedia, on the Aircraft screen, and when in flight on the Geoscape.
Base "Detection Range" on the Base screen is now called "Detection Radius", and the stated range is now much closer to real-world distances.
Radar buildings on the Base screen now state their function as "Extends radar range" rather than giving a nonsensical figure for their radar range.
Fixed an issue where the "Range" value on the Aircraft screen was incorrectly changing based on the current fuel level of that aircraft.
Added two new "tutorial" pop-notifications that explain quality of life functionality that many newer players were unaware of:
Soldier screen - added a popup explaining how to sort the various tables by header, which makes managing / recruiting soldiers much easier.
Armory screen - added a popup explaining the various QOL shortcuts in the bottom left assignment panel (e.g. RMB unassign, click-and-drag to reorder team, double-click to replace soldier)
Added a Close button to the Soldier Loadout selection pop-up on the Armory screen.
Panic levels are no longer shown in the topbar when hovering over a region in Phase 1.
Added various tooltips to the Supporter panel to better explain the system.
Air Combat:
Updated the position of the UFO name / hp / armour text rows in the air combat, as in many cases they were drawing on top of the UFO sprite and were difficult to read.
Retreating aircraft will no longer switch targets automatically if their target is destroyed. This means they won't turn around and start flying back towards the combat area - previously this could be a problem for interceptors tasked with firing a barrage of missiles at long range and then retreating!
Updated the air combat ambient sound to (hopefully) not contain an ear-splitting high-pitched whine that old people like myself apparently lack the auditory range to hear. If this doesn't actually fix the issue, please let us know!
Missile / torpedo tooltips have been updated to explain that they will only fire at the targeted UFO, rather than shooting at anything within their fire arc like cannons and lances.
Tactical Combat - Gameplay:
Lots of long-standing issues with the line of sight / shroud system have been fixed, including:
Worldspace UI elements such as the move path are no longer hidden by the shroud.
Transparent objects (abduction tubes, cloaked Wraiths, etc) no longer draw underneath the shroud.
Particle effects (smoke, fire, etc) no longer draw underneath the shroud.
Certain types of corner tile (e.g. ATLAS Base rooms, certain cliffs) are now revealed correctly when units look at them.
Terrain objects in the first tile of unrevealed shroud should no longer incorrectly show their 3D models before they are revealed.
Fixed the ENDGAME stage 1 outer walls being black in some instances.
You can now manually trigger a teleporter with right-click if a soldier is standing on it. This costs 4 TU.
Xenonaut units will now automatically choose move paths that do not contain dangerous hazard tiles (e.g. smoke, fire, poison), provided the alternative path does not cost additional Time Units. If the safer path does cost additional Time Units, players will need to manually path around the hazards.
Smoke and poison gas (but not fire) can now spawn over water tiles.
Hovering over the toggle overwatch UI icon for a weapon (the little eye icon) will now show the tiles visible to that soldier. This is relevant because units can only overwatch fire on visible tiles within their own vision cone, so should make planning overwatch a little easier.
Right-clicking a door to open it will now only take precedence over right-clicking to rotate a soldier if the soldier is in an adjacent tile to the door. At longer ranges, the soldier will now rotate as normal.
The "range" line in the weapon tooltips now has an extra "adjacent" section that shows the total hit bonus you get with that weapon if standing next to the target. Hopefully this makes weapons easier to compare and makes the range hit bonus system easier to understand.
Xenonaut Base Defence maps now have an extra tile of width between rooms, which prevents line-of-sight "leaking" from one room to another.
Aliens should no longer attack mind-controlled Xenonaut soldiers.
Civilian AI has been tweaked so they should be more reluctant to move near alien units when running to their next move point (note this does not affect civilians you have ordered to evacuate, who will always sprint towards the exit using the shortest possible route).
Added a "Armour Hardness" value to the tactical inventory screen, as it wasn't previously listed anywhere in tactical combat.
Improved the camera tracking for enemy shots at your soldier during the AI turn. This should reduce the number of times the camera doesn't appropriately focus on the targeted soldier.
Thrown grenades and alien Symbiote projectiles now have a slight visual "trail" that makes them easier to see as they fly through the air.
Reduced the opacity of smoke tiles on the battlefield.
You now get a pop-up warning you if try to start a tactical mission with a deployment area without having moved your soldiers.
Throwable items like grenades now correctly dim their sprite image when you don't have enough TU to use them (this mirrors the behaviour of items in the primary / secondary slots).
The quick reload button (hotkey "R") previously only appeared if you had a full clip for that weapon in your inventory, but it now also appears if you have a partially-full clip in your inventory that contains more shots than the weapon currently does.
If a weapon has no clip loaded, it instead displays "No Clip" on the fire cursor rather than a 0% hit chance percentage.
Corpses now display sideways when added to the primary / secondary slot in the tactical inventory.
Added an additional system to ensure you do not get the same tactical map twice in a row, closing off a (somewhat uncommon) sequence of events that could cause a repeat.
The game will now notify the player if a unit is unable to reach the target tile because it is unable to climb (i.e. it's a vehicle, or is using a Shield or wearing Colossus armour).
Made another row of tiles at the front of the Battleship UFO exterior walkable, making the front door more accessible.
A large number of AI improvements:
We've finally implemented tracking of "known" Xenonauts vs unseen Xenonauts, which means alien units will no longer have automatic knowledge about Xenonaut units that they have not yet encountered. Basically, this should reduce the amount of obvious AI "cheating", and make flanking aliens more effective.
Reduced the AI "kill" bonus for certain alien species - this represents how much weighting an enemy gives to attacking a target it believes it can kill, rather than simply scoring as many hits with its weapon as possible. Practically, this means that "smart" aliens (Wraiths, Psyons, Sectons, etc) are more likely to prioritise attacks that will actually secure kills, whereas melee-only or "dumb" aliens (Androns, Sebillians) will favour the enemies that are easiest to hit (usually the closest enemies).
The AI should now better plan its move back into cover after taking a shot, leading to fewer cases where it is stranded in the open. Previously it was assigning a certain portion of its TU to attacking and a certain portion to moving to cover, rather than considering both actions together.
The AI should now turn to face expected danger after making a move, which should prevent examples of the AI staring into corners etc after movement. However the code has been updated so the AI will only consider "known" Xenonauts when doing this.
The AI will now always replan its actions whenever it sights a new hostile unit, which should hopefully reduce the number of aliens positioning themselves in extremely vulnerable positions after unexpectedly encoutering a Xenonaut.
The AI now makes better decisions when the optimal course of action is to shoot from its starting position and then make a move. Previously it would always move first and then shoot.
Enemy AI no longer has access to the Bravery and Morale of your soldiers when choosing targets for Mind Control, as previously they would always focus in on the most vulnerable units and ignore those most likely to resist.
Tactical Combat - Content:
New 3d models have been added for the Alien Bio Rifle and the new Alien Bio Cannon weapon.
All Farm biome tactical maps have been revamped (there are about 15 of them), making them more visually appealing and more interesting from a gameplay perspective. Many will be completely unrecognisable from earlier versions.
All seven main biomes now have two additional Scout UFO maps, increasing the number of maps for small UFOs from 3 to 5. This should help avoid potential map repetition when players have to restart their campaign.
Added a few more crash site maps to the game that weren't previously spawning due to a setup issue.
Updated one of the newer Cleaner Data Raid missions to expand the size of the map, as the target building was smaller than in the other maps and it made the mission easier to win.
Roof destruction "frills" have been implemented for most types of roof - these are the irregular "edge" tiles that get placed around the sides of destroyed tiles to make the destruction look more natural (as blowing a perfectly square hole in a roof tends to look a bit odd).
Gauss Shotgun artwork has been updated to give it a front grip, as it was previously quite hard to tell apart from the Gauss Rifle at a glance.
Symbiotes now perform a proper "hatch" animation when they spawn.
Sebillian death animation now largely fits inside a single tile, which should stop the legs of dead Sebillians sticking through UFO walls.
Added a couple more car variants to the urban maps.
Added a 3D model for the briefcase objective item in the Extract VIP mission.
BUGFIXES:
General:
If the default save location on a PC contains either "OneDrive" or "Dropbox", we're now redirecting the save path to be "C:\\Users\\\\AppData\\LocalLow\\Goldhawk\\" instead, as we were getting a lot of crashes caused by cloud services locking files that the game was trying to use.
Various safeguards have been added to prevent the game crashing if it cannot save. It should now always display a popup reading "Game was unable to save" but permit the user to keep playing.
Fixed the game failing to load into the Main Menu on some Mac and Linux systems. Please note we still don't officially support Mac or Linux, we just did this because it was a straightforward fix that would help quite a few players!
Fixed a crash that could occur if you clicked the Open Mod Folder button on the Mod Management popup when no mod existed.
Fixed the Save Game UI panel scrollbar not permitting the user to scroll all the way to the bottom of the list.
Fixed the typewriter sound used in the cutscenes being in the incorrect sound effect category.
Fixed the Main Menu mods button having the incorrect toolltip.
Strategy Layer:
Fixed a very serious bug that could cause UFOs, missions or other game triggers to not spawn correctly if you were using Geoscape speed level 3 (i.e. the second fastest speed). We believe this was the cause of various issues in earlier Milestones where players did not have certain Cleaner missions spawn, or got into a situation where Battleships never started spawning, or just had the alien invasion stop entirely after a certain date.
Fixed a Geoscape crash that could occur if a UFO filled its charge bar and escaped from combat, but then took lethal damage in the 2 seconds before the combat actually ended.
Fixed a crash that could occur if you were able to intercept and shoot down an undetected UFO before the radar detection tick revealed it.
Fixed another way of getting the Rescue Soldiers preview soldiers stuck in your dropship if you cancelled the mission preparations, which would cause a crash when you tried to use the dropship.
Fixed an issue where interceptor squadrons tailing a Retaliation (Base Attack) UFO over water would sometimes not get the opportunity to attack the UFO before it attacked the base if that base had been placed close to the coast.
Fixed adjacency values for new Generator buildings not showing immediately, even though the basic Power generation of the structure was added immediately.
Fixed the "Panic Reduction: -10 Panic" text not updating to show the correct Panic reduction value when choosing the target for the Reduce Panic strategic operation.
Fixed an issue where Abduction missions could incorrectly increase Panic if you were at low Panic levels, even if the overall mission result should have lowered Panic (the Panic reduction was being applied before the Panic increase, which caused issues as the Panic could not go below zero, and then the increase was applied to the zero).
Fixed the Probe UFO not having the correct visual appearance in the air combat.
Fixed the air combat camera zoom being "jumpy" rather than smooth.
Fixed a couple of ways that the air combat section of the tutorial could get softlocked.
Fixed the "open" sound effect playing twice when you clicked the menu button on the Geoscape topbar.
Fixed the aircraft name in hangar not updating immediately after renaming an aircraft.
Fixed Escape key not returning to the Geoscape on the Transfer Scientists / Transfer Engineers screens
Fixed an issue where the "Critical Panic" pop-up would be shown before the Orbital Bombardment pop-up if the bombardment raised Panic in a region above 100.
Fixed the Equipment hardpoints on the interceptors incorrectly displaying the "Weapon Hardpoints" label.
On the Soldier Equip screen, fixed the soldier list order randomising every time you opened the popup to choose a soldier for the dropship.
Fixed the Guardian armour helmet not correctly hiding hair on the paperdoll.
Fixed the helmet for the upgraded Guardian armour always appearing, even when using the light variant.
Fixed the Advanced Gauss Weapon engineering projects not updating their name to contain "Advanced" after the upgrade project.
Fixed the "Hardness" value for the Colossus research project having an extra "f" character in the text line.
Fixed the Xenopedia aircraft "range" text line to display a value consistent with the Geoscape distances.
Fixed a number of soldier portraits that had hair / facial hair sticking out through the sides or top of their helmet.
Fixed the "complete Quantum Teleportation research" objective showing before you have the option to actually research it.
Fixed a missing word in the Waveform Analysis research text.
Fixed inconsistent naming on the alien Data Cube objects in the UOO Sabotage mission briefing.
Fixed the Geoscape zoom speed being dependent on framerate. It's now a consistent value for everyone.
Fixed a minor judder on the Research screen when the scientist character is animating in from the right of the screen.
Fixed the dropship / unassigned tabs on the side of the Armory "assigments" menu (in the bottom left) having visually similar active / inactive states, and the fixed the icons turning white when a different tab was activated.
Fixed a bug where items / buildings that had been upgraded by an engineering project would always display their name in English, even if playing in another language.
Tactical Combat:
Fixed a crash that would occur if the game could not locate the directory where saves / settings etc are created.
Fixed various small memory leaks that could potentially cause crashes during extended play sessions.
Fixed a crash that could occur when picking up certain ammo types using the Colossus.
Fixed various bugs with the grenade throw code that were potentially causing 100% hit chance shots to miss, or for soldiers to blow themselves up for seemingly no reason (generally this was because the throw was incorrectly hitting a ceiling).
Fixed a bug where an AI unit would take no further actions that turn if a reaction fire shot was fired at them during their movement.
Fixed a bug where the move-attack preview would not show the correct accuracy value when the soldier was crouched.
Fixed UFO Power Cores that explode as part of the UFO crash sequence not correctly inflicting damage on the area around them.
Fixed a bug where shooting into smoke would count one too few smoke tiles when calculating shot accuracy (shooting out from within the smoke cloud was calculating correctly).
Fixed a bug where explosion damage did not always propagate as far as it should, as the Incendiary damage bonus was not being correctly applied when calculating overdamage. This would cause walls and other terrain objects to absorb too much explosion damage, reducing the amount of damage that would penetrate through them and damage units and terrain behind them.
This also fixes the bug where explosion damage could sometimes "leak" through closed doors or walls, injuring units on the other side that should have been fully protected.
Fixed the rare bug where combat shields would sometimes not visually disappear when destroyed - this was occuring if the shield was destroyed by overwatch fire in response to the soldier having thrown a grenade.
Fixed a bug where attempting to change weapons when a soldier was moving would visually update their 3D model, but wouldn't change the equipped weapon in game terms - this could lead to players accidentally using the wrong weapon.
Fixed the Colossus, Servitor and Heavy Servitor models not showing the crosshatch obstruction shader if obscured by a terrain object.
Fixed the grenade blast radius indicator (the green tiles) not displaying properly if a soldier was throwing at a tile on the edge of cliffs.
Fixed a bug where the Mantid Bio-Rifle would not spawn a Symbiote if the shot hit a tile corner rather than the center of a tile (meaning "miss" shots should now reliably spawn Symbiotes).
Fixed units being able to throw grenades onto destroyed floors / roofs, despite throwing grenades at empty tiles usually being disallowed.
Fixed the visual inconsistency between Smoke Grenade smoke and the smoke from the MARS Smoke Launcher.
Fixed a bug in the tutorial where the final conversation was incorrectly triggering before the Xenonauts had finished fleeing from the Cleaners.
Fixed the Colossus Power Fist disappearing when transitioning between Endgame part 1 and part 2.
Fixed a lot of minor visual issues in a variety of different tactical maps and with a variety of different terrain tiles.
Fixed a bug where destroyed shipping containers could still block throwable items like flares and grenades.
Fixed a number of doors where the gameplay footprint of the opened door was inverted compared to its visual appearance.
Fixed the alien base command room upper levels incorrectly having destructible outer walls.
Fixed a number of terrain objects in the Alien Base biome visually disappearing when entering their "damaged" state, despite still existing in gameplay terms and therefore invisibly blocking movement / shots.
Fixed a number of roofs that were not being properly destroyed and were incorrectly leaving behind walkable tiles.
Fixed the spinning rings of the Singularity Core terrain object visually resetting position when changing from Undamaged to Damaged state.
Fixed a pathfinding bug that could occur when attempting to move up to and then melee an enemy unit.
Fixed a minor bug where alien units would sometimes end up with their weapons rotated towards the ground after firing a shot.
Fixed a bug where the Pegasus dropship walls could be moved / shot through after loading a save.
Fixed zombified civilians being able to "escape" the battlefield if they accidentally wandered onto the mission evac area.
Fixed the Colossus doing an animation "jump" as it raised its weapon to fire it.
Fixed a visual issue with the left arm of Sebillians when they fired their weapons.
Fixed visual errors (dark patches) on water tiles and other lowered ground tiles on night missions.
Fixed suppressed mind-controlled units regaining full TU when mind control ends.
Fixed the UOO Bridge mission briefing incorrectly listing "Elliminate all hostile units" as an objective.
The UOO Bridge Assault green tiles around the mainframe (which show the tiles you are trying to defend) are now always visible, not only when in line of sight.
Fixed an issue where spawned Symbiotes could incorrectly be visible in the fog of war.
Cyberdrones now perform an additional visual-only explosion when destroyed. Normally this cannot be seen due to the actual death explosion, but it prevents things looking silly if the Cyberdrone is killed by burst fire (as the actual death explosion can only occur after the burst has finished).
Fixed the soldier role name tooltip drawing over the soldier role icon when hovering the mouse over the soldier minitabs at the top of the tactical UI.
Fixed a couple of tiles that have black z-fighting issues on Linux machines.