This update is also only accessible by switching to our Experimental branches (instructions on how to do so here) - although note they have slower load times and worse performance than normal builds due to the extra logging they contain!
This is our first test build for Milestone 3, and we're releasing it to test for stability issues that may have occurred as a result of us upgrading the game to use a newer version of Unity. The new content is included but still unpolished at this stage; we'll be finishing that off and starting to test it properly next week along with a further balance pass (assuming there's no widespread technical issues as a result of the Unity upgrade).
KEY CHANGES:
New Content: The playable time for the campaign has been extended to 260 days (from 180 days), during which time the Cruiser UFO will begin to spawn. This contains or unlocks several new pieces of content:
- Cruiser UFO (with two interior layout variants)
- Alien Fusion Weapons
- Xenonaut Fusion Weapons
- The Gemini interceptor
- The Pegasus dropship
- The ARES (an improved version of the MARS)
- At present we only have research text / art for some of these projects; the remainder will be finished by the end of next week.
Unity 2022: We've upgraded Xenonauts 2 to run on Unity 2022, which is a much more modern version of Unity than we were previously using. We've tested the game pretty heavily at this end and fixed most of the bugs we encountered, but now we need to see how the game works on a wider selection of hardware. Please give the game a test and let us know if you encounter any issues!
Borderless Fullscreen: Borderless Fullscreen mode should now be properly supported in Xenonauts 2. The monitor resolution settings are now handled natively by Unity 2022 rather than through our own code so we'd appreciate it if people can give this feature a test and see if it is working as intended, particularly if you have multiple monitors or some kind of unusual hardware setup.
Faster Loading: Load times should now be reduced by about 30% across all sections of the game, and we're hoping to reduce this by another 10%-20% in Milestone 4. However, please remember that this is an Experimental build and it has lots of extra logging that slow load times - for now, this is likely to cancel out any improvements compared to the "normal" build on the default branches!
We've also taken the opportunity to move the tactical mission briefing onto the loading screen, rather than showing it at the start of the mission. This gives you something to read while the mission loads, and allows you to get into the action faster once the load is complete!
AI Improvements: We've spent a lot of time working on the AI for this update, improving both the general decision-making of the AI and addressing various specific issues that have been affecting gameplay like:
- Civilians are now much less suicidal.
- Melee units (especially Reapers) should make better decisions.
- AI units will no longer just stand in fire / smoke until they die or pass out.
- The AI will now open doors even if the tile on the other side is blocked by another unit, allowing them to shoot at Xenonauts camping doors.
- Pre-Mission Soldier Equip / Arrangement: One frequently requested feature was to add a button on the pre-mission Soldier Equip screen that allows the player to easily access the screen where they can set the positions of their soldiers within the dropship. We've now implemented this, allowing you to easily switch back and forth between these screens prior to launching a dropship.
"Sell Junk Items" button: We've also added a button on the base stores screen that will set all "junk" items (e.g. items that are not used in research / engineering projects) to sell at maximum quantity. In future we may expand this system to allow autoselling items immediately after the mission, or we may add in a system where the reduced sale prices of items will increase over time (giving players an incentive not to always sell their junk immediately).
Bleeding Wound Healing & Bleeding Aliens: Aliens can now suffer Bleeding Wounds when they take damage in the same way that Xenonauts do. However, each Bleeding Wound now have a 25% chance of healing and disappearing after it inflicts damage at the end of the turn.
Unconscious units will now also continue to suffer damage from any bleeding wounds they suffered while conscious, and may die as a result.
Mission Updates & Balancing: We did a balance pass on the early game as part of our AI testing. A number of tweaks have been made to reflect the fact Convoy Ambush missions felt a little too easy, whereas the second Abduction Site mission, the Cleaner Leader Elimination missions and any early Base Defence missions felt harder than other missions. We've also made a number of changes to specific mission types:
Abduction missions:
- Abduction missions no longer end immediately when the abduction tubes disappear; the mission will now continue until all alien forces are eliminated (effectively these are now deathmatch missions with a time-limited optional objective). This change was made because many players reported that the abrupt ending of the mission in previous versions could feel quite jarring.
- You still gain Alien Alloys for each abduction tube you disable, but now you also gain -1 Panic in the local region for each surviving civilian that you released.
- The timer on abduction tubes has been reduced by 2 turns (from 8 turns to 6 turns).
- There's now a teleport animation when the tubes disappear.
Data Raid missions:
- These are the missions where you have to capture a certain number of Data Sticks from Cleaner computers. These have now been updated so victory is triggered off the number of computers you have interacted with (i.e. sabotaged), rather than how many Data Sticks you have brought back to the dropship.
- This change is unlikely to affect too many players, and was made because having a retreating soldier killed while carrying Data Sticks could completely ruin a mission. In most cases the mission will play out exactly the same as it did before.
- We've added a new UI element for this mission that shows how many Data Stick items are being carried by each soldier.
- The objectives now show how many turns remaining until the enemy reinforcements start appearing.
- Enemy reinforcements timer reduced by 1 turn, unless the mission is encountered in month 1.
Extract VIP missions:
- At the start of the mission, the camera shows the empty dropship you are trying to reach before panning to the starting positions of your soldiers. This gives the player clarity over which direction they need to travel at the start of the mission.
- The VIP is now automatically added to your team at the start of the mission (rather than the player having to click on them).
- The VIP now has 50 TU rather than 40 TU.
- Enemy reinforcements timer reduced by 1 turn (from 9 to 8)
- The objectives now show how many turns remaining until enemy reinforcements start appearing.
Soldier Rescue missions:
- Many players did not appear to understand that you were expected to leave 3 free slots in your dropship on this mission, which gave you space to pick up the 3 soldiers that needed to be rescued. We have therefore added them to the dropship as "ghost soldiers" that fill those dropship slots (this means you can also view their stats prior to the mission).
- We've also updated the logic about which soldiers are recovered if the player does not leave those 3 free slots in their dropship. The game will now always pick living soldiers over dead soldiers (irrespective of their origin), and will prefer your existing soldiers to those you are supposedly trying to rescue.
Eliminate VIP mission:
- On Eliminate VIP missions, the camera will now pan to the VIP and show a message reading "VIP Sighted" when you see the target. It will also show a "VIP Eliminated" or "VIP Stunned" message at the appropriate points.
- The objectives now show how many turns remaining until enemy reinforcements start appearing.
MINOR BALANCE CHANGES:
We found that soldiers were becoming too strong too quickly in previous builds and this problem was just getting worse as we extended the length of the campaign. We've therefore taken several steps to slow down soldier progression a little:
- Starting values for soldier attributes are now capped at 65 (previously 70)
- Starting soldiers are now Privates rather than Corporals.
- Reduced the speed at which soldiers gain combat experience to about 60% of the previous level.
- The training speed of the Training Room has been halved (both the starting value and the gain from completing Interrogation projects).
Other changes:
- It is no longer possible to see doors opening or closing under the fog of war, as this made the position of alien units very obvious. These doors will now only visually update when one of your units sees them.
- Sectons now trigger their Psionic Triangulation accuracy bonus from being near Psyons, not by being near other Sectons. However, if the Psyon is killed (and no other Psyon is nearby) the Secton will now immediately panic and lose all remaining TU.
- Duration of crash sites reduced from 72 hours to 32 hours.
- Medikit weight increased to 25 (from 15).
- Construction time of Radar Array reduced from 20 days to 15 days.
- Using a healing item will no longer trigger enemy reaction fire.
- Enabled reaction fire on the various alien melee weapons (mantids, sebillians, reapers, mentarch, zombies).
Air Combat balancing:
- Reduced construction cost of missiles / torpedoes by 20%
- Reduced upkeep for Angel from $100k to $75k per month
- Reduced upkeep for Phantom from $150k to $120k per month
- Destroyer UFO increased to 200HP (from 175).
- Fighter UFO turn rate increased by 50%.
- Fighter Cannon armour destruction increased to 2-5 (from 0-3).
- Abductor UFO increased to 275HP (from 250).
- Abductor Cannon range increased by 10%, armour destruction increased from 1-3 to 3-5, and reload time reduced from 0.75 sec to 0.5 sec. Projectile speed slowed down by 33%.
- Alien Interceptor Missiles armour destruction increased to 3-7 (from 0-4).
MINOR GAMEPLAY / CONTENT CHANGES:
- Added a number of new maps for Terror Sites / ATLAS Base / Cleaner Data Raid / Convoy Ambush / Rescue VIP missions.
- Added new 3D models for the Cleaner Accelerated Rifle, Accelerated Shotgun, Accelerated LMG, Alloy Shield, Stun Gun and Stun Baton.
- Added new 2D inventory tile art for the melee knife and the HEVY Smoke Rounds.
- Added Fusion weapons to the game. For any Kickstarter backers who saw the old incarnation of these weapons, we've updated the designs of the Shotgun and LMG and also given each weapon a unique ammo battery design.
- Added proper melee animations for the Mantid and Sebillian units.
- Units now play an injury sound and injury animation when struck with a stun weapon that does not inflict damage.
- Soldiers should now hide their carried weapon when performing their ladder climb animation.
- It is now possible to use any combination of uppercase and lowercase letters in soldier / aircraft / base names.
- Moved a check that was preventing a player launching an empty dropship from the Launch Aircraft screen to the pre-mission Soldier Equip screen instead (i.e. after you've had a chance to fill the dropship with soldiers).
- Stopping chance 0% objects are no longer highlighted on the fire path.
- Added a basic sort order system to the soldier loadout profiles.
- Units that can crush terrain now do not crush an open double door when they pass through it (most noticable inside UFOs and in Alien Base missions).
- The MARS now shows a custom "cannot interact" cursor when hovering over a mission objective item (like a computer desk) that soldiers can interact with but vehicles cannot.
BUGFIXES:
- Fixed a crash that could occur if you tried to run a building upgrade project when having a large number of buildings (most commonly occurred with the Gauss Battery Upgrade project).
- Reloading a weapon in the tactical inventory now correctly plays the reload sound.
- Fixed a bug where the text on UFO information pop-ups was not being displayed for users playing in Chinese / Japanese / Korean.
- Fixed a bug where Unassigned soldiers are not showing certain items on their paperdoll image on the Soldier Equip screen (jetpacks, MARS weapons, etc).
- Fixed soldiers sometimes not being removed from the dropship even when reduced to below 50% HP.
- Fixed a bug where the Autofill Dropship button on the Soldier Equip screen could bypass the dropship vehicle limit.
- Fixed a bug where Senty Guns were incorrectly showing on the Soldier Equip screen in secondary bases (they should only appear before Base Defence missions, as that's the only time they can be used).
- Fixed a bug where the soldier paperdoll could get blurred if a certain combination of items were equipped
- Fixed a bug where the soldier portrait could disappear on the dropship soldier arrangement screen
- Fixed the bug where grenades could get stuck displaying a 0% hit chance.
- Fixed a bug where units could stand in mid-air at the top of a ladder.
- Fixed a bug where you could place two soldiers into the same destination tile if one of them was using a jetpack.
- Fixed a bug where unconscious units could not be revived with a medikit,
- Fixed a bug where the shoot/move preview hit calculations was not accurately updating the value for Wraith Cloaking Field based on the new soldier location being previewed.
- Fixed a bug where TU values could end up with a decimal point after a Berserk action.
- Fixed a bug where suppressing an enemy unit with reaction fire would not stop them finishing their planned movement.
- Fixed a bug where crouching during the pre-battle deployment phase on cerrtain missions cost TU, and did not refund it if you stood up.
- Fixed a bug where the crouch keyboard shortcut ("C") did not work during the pre-battle deployment phase.
- Fixed a bug where the combat shield was not disappearing after being destroyed.
- Fixed a bug where certain weapons could not be picked up from the ground after being dropped.
- Fixed certain objective items (mostly the computer desks) being incorrectly rotated in some situations.
- Fixed the Bleeding Wounds counter being displayed vertically if the unit has more than 10 Bleeding Wounds.
- Fixed the open door mouse cursor remaining active on the menu if you press Esc while hovering over a door.
- Fixed a visual issue where the green deployment area tiles could sometimes remain after the end of the deployment phase.
- Fixed throwing a grenade / flare onto the roof of a building causing windows on the floor below to shatter.
- Fixed some visual issues with the restaurant sign in the Western Town terror maps.
- Fixed a number of bugs with the Ultimate Power achievement (bring all Colonels to a mission).