Posted February 04, 2015
Hi all,
We've uploaded a new version of Xenonauts to your game shelves. Please make sure you download the new installer + BIN file in order to get Xenonauts 1.51 (filenames: setup_xenonauts_2.1.0.10.exe and setup_xenonauts_2.1.0.10-1.bin)
Changelog for 1.51:
Modular Mod System: Previously mods would be incompatible with one another if they both changed the same file (even if they changed different parts of it), but the modular mod system allows them to interact safely. Of course, you still won't be able to combine contradictory mods; e.g. longer weapon ranges and shorter weapon ranges, but things are much more flexible than before.
Victory Epilogue: We had a lot of complaints about the previous ending being anticlimactic, so we've added an epilogue on the victory screen in the style of a research report from the Chief Scientist that fills in a few more details about what happens after the final mission.
Skitso's Community Maps: There's already well over a hundred maps in Xenonauts, but we get a lot of requests for more variety so we included the most popular community map pack with the base game. Skitso has hand-made over 70 new maps for the game and you can enable his map pack through the Mod Launcher button of the game launcher if you want to use them. While we can't guarantee the quality of non-official maps, a lot of people speak very highly of the Skitso's work.
DETAILED - GAMEPLAY / BALANCE TWEAKS:
Line of Sight Update: The line of sight algorithm in the release game had some oddities in it, particularly with regards to height levels / elevation. The new system should be less frustrating for players.
Alien Psionics Update: Mind Control and Berserk / Hallucinate were not a great deal of fun to play against, making late-game a bit of a chore. We've made a few changes:
Berserk / Hallucinate actually had a bug that meant it always targeted friendly soldiers over enemies and empty tiles, making it much more effective than it should be at killing your soldiers. This bug has now been fixed.
Mind Control was so deadly because a MC’ed soldier would immediately get all their TU back even if they had 0 TU when MC'ed. This has been fixed, so the player now has a turn to flee from / stun / kill a controlled soldier before he opens fire on the rest of your team. He is returned to your control as normal after the second alien turn (during which he has full TU to spend), thus he is still only gone for one player turn.
Air Combat Autoresolve Changes: The air combat autoresolve formula has been tweaked slightly. There should be less instances where the results make little sense, and heavy torpedoes have been made somewhat less effective against escorted UFOs. We think these changes are an improvement but we'll consider reverting them if people find they've changed the game balance too much.
Morale System Update: When a unit suffers a morale event like panic or fleeing, they regain a large amount of morale to prevent low-bravery soldiers being locked in a cycle of chain-panic. Previously this was applied immediately, but this led to confusion when a player clicked on a panicking soldier and found they seemingly had almost full morale. Anyway, this morale regeneration is now applied at the end of the turn so panicking soldiers will correctly show the morale they had at the point they panicked.
Bleed Damage: Bleed damage now occurs at the end of the player turn, rather than the start of the player turn. This eliminates the situation where a soldier survives a shot from an alien weapon but then dies from bleeding damage at the start of the following turn, before the player actually has an opportunity to heal the bleeding wound.
Shield Primary Only: You can now only place combat shields in the Primary weapon slot. This fixes a number of animation issues as well as preventing enterprising players from dual-wielding shields (this is not intended behaviour).
Shields Shield Better: Shields work fine for the soldier holding them, but previously they were no good at shielding units standing behind the shielder. This has now been changed so both humans and aliens are much more likely to hit a shield trooper if they are firing them "through" them to hit another target.
Quantum Cryptology Centre Info: This now provides a detailed breakdown of the alien races in a UFO (e.g. "6 Sebillian, 4 Reaper") rather than just listing the primary race for the UFO ("10 Sebillian") as it did previously.
Updated Soldier Loadouts: The basic soldier loadouts have been updated, mostly to feature more grenades. With only basic armour soldiers previously had plenty of unused carrying capacity.
Easier Finances At Lower Difficulties: Inexperienced players often complained Xenonauts was too hard even on Easy, largely because the financial game punishes you so hard with upkeep costs for building too many bases / interceptors. We’ve therefore reduced maintenance for buildings and aircraft by 25% on Easy and 10% on Normal difficulties.
DETAILED - GEOSCAPE / AIR COMBAT INTERFACE:
Base Radar Range Preview: You now get a preview of all three possible radar ranges (i.e. with one to three Radar Arrays) when placing a base, rather than just the minimum radar range.
Interceptor Info Updates: The log under the Geoscape now includes information on the status of your interceptors, displayed in green. This will tell you when a plane has finished repairing / re-arming / refuelling etc.
Air Combat Time Buttons: The Geoscape time buttons now also appear in the Air Combat, allowing time to be sped up if desired.
Alien Base Size: There are three different sizes of alien base in the game, but previously there was no way of knowing how large a facility you were attacking. They are now labelled as an alien outpost, base or fortress.
Click Masks: We've enlarged the click masks of various Geoscape objects to make clicking on things a bit easier.
DETAILED - GROUND COMBAT INTERFACE:
Quicksave: You can now Quicksave the game by pressing F5.
Cursor Cover Indicators: You now get cover indicators on your mouse when you mouse over a tile. This should make it a bit more obvious what protection is offered by a tile before you decide to move your soldier there.
Cursor Transparency: The mouse now makes walls / props semi-transparent when you mouseover them, which allows much easier selection of units behind walls and generally better visibility of the battlefield.
Hide Walls / Prop Mode: Clicking the Toggle Roof button now cycles through some additional modes. The first makes all walls and props on the level semi-transparent and the second hides them entirely, leaving only units and the ground tiles. Both are useful if you need to see "hidden" units.
Smart Soldier Cycling: You can press Tab to cycle through the soldiers on your team. However, you can now also press Shift + Tab to mark a soldier as “done” and remove from the cycling queue for that turn.
Grenade Throw Paths: Grenades now show a predicted throw path. This often goes into the layer above (as they arc) which can be viewed by changing the camera level upwards.
Nationality Flags: The community came together to draw and implement national flags for every soldier nationality in the game, so now all the soldiers show their national flag on their info panel when in combat.
Burst Fire Cycling: If a weapon is capable of burst fire then burst mode can now be accessed through the standard right-click shot cycling, rather than having to switch to burst mode on the UI.
Reload TU Costs Shown: The reload TU cost of weapons has been added to their tooltips, as we totally forgot to display this information anywhere in the game (oops).
DETAILED - BUGFIXES:
Lots of crashes and general fixes were made that don't affect overall gameplay but will improve stability
Fixed a lot of sprite issues, including missing fire animations, the inability of flying units to rotate properly and instances where aliens magically turned into Caesan non-combatants due to missing animations
Harridans should no longer fly inside the walls of Carrier UFOs and snipe at you
All medals now correctly grant bravery when received
You can no longer assign / unassign soldiers to airborne dropships (sorry!)
We've fixed several instances where equipment could disappear from your base stores
Rocket launchers no longer occasionally forget the type of rocket they are loaded with and wind up with a bog-standard HE rocket instead
We've reduced the file count in the game down from 65k to 45k, which should make installing the game faster.
Thanks and have a nice day :)
We've uploaded a new version of Xenonauts to your game shelves. Please make sure you download the new installer + BIN file in order to get Xenonauts 1.51 (filenames: setup_xenonauts_2.1.0.10.exe and setup_xenonauts_2.1.0.10-1.bin)
Changelog for 1.51:
Modular Mod System: Previously mods would be incompatible with one another if they both changed the same file (even if they changed different parts of it), but the modular mod system allows them to interact safely. Of course, you still won't be able to combine contradictory mods; e.g. longer weapon ranges and shorter weapon ranges, but things are much more flexible than before.
Victory Epilogue: We had a lot of complaints about the previous ending being anticlimactic, so we've added an epilogue on the victory screen in the style of a research report from the Chief Scientist that fills in a few more details about what happens after the final mission.
Skitso's Community Maps: There's already well over a hundred maps in Xenonauts, but we get a lot of requests for more variety so we included the most popular community map pack with the base game. Skitso has hand-made over 70 new maps for the game and you can enable his map pack through the Mod Launcher button of the game launcher if you want to use them. While we can't guarantee the quality of non-official maps, a lot of people speak very highly of the Skitso's work.
DETAILED - GAMEPLAY / BALANCE TWEAKS:
Line of Sight Update: The line of sight algorithm in the release game had some oddities in it, particularly with regards to height levels / elevation. The new system should be less frustrating for players.
Alien Psionics Update: Mind Control and Berserk / Hallucinate were not a great deal of fun to play against, making late-game a bit of a chore. We've made a few changes:
Berserk / Hallucinate actually had a bug that meant it always targeted friendly soldiers over enemies and empty tiles, making it much more effective than it should be at killing your soldiers. This bug has now been fixed.
Mind Control was so deadly because a MC’ed soldier would immediately get all their TU back even if they had 0 TU when MC'ed. This has been fixed, so the player now has a turn to flee from / stun / kill a controlled soldier before he opens fire on the rest of your team. He is returned to your control as normal after the second alien turn (during which he has full TU to spend), thus he is still only gone for one player turn.
Air Combat Autoresolve Changes: The air combat autoresolve formula has been tweaked slightly. There should be less instances where the results make little sense, and heavy torpedoes have been made somewhat less effective against escorted UFOs. We think these changes are an improvement but we'll consider reverting them if people find they've changed the game balance too much.
Morale System Update: When a unit suffers a morale event like panic or fleeing, they regain a large amount of morale to prevent low-bravery soldiers being locked in a cycle of chain-panic. Previously this was applied immediately, but this led to confusion when a player clicked on a panicking soldier and found they seemingly had almost full morale. Anyway, this morale regeneration is now applied at the end of the turn so panicking soldiers will correctly show the morale they had at the point they panicked.
Bleed Damage: Bleed damage now occurs at the end of the player turn, rather than the start of the player turn. This eliminates the situation where a soldier survives a shot from an alien weapon but then dies from bleeding damage at the start of the following turn, before the player actually has an opportunity to heal the bleeding wound.
Shield Primary Only: You can now only place combat shields in the Primary weapon slot. This fixes a number of animation issues as well as preventing enterprising players from dual-wielding shields (this is not intended behaviour).
Shields Shield Better: Shields work fine for the soldier holding them, but previously they were no good at shielding units standing behind the shielder. This has now been changed so both humans and aliens are much more likely to hit a shield trooper if they are firing them "through" them to hit another target.
Quantum Cryptology Centre Info: This now provides a detailed breakdown of the alien races in a UFO (e.g. "6 Sebillian, 4 Reaper") rather than just listing the primary race for the UFO ("10 Sebillian") as it did previously.
Updated Soldier Loadouts: The basic soldier loadouts have been updated, mostly to feature more grenades. With only basic armour soldiers previously had plenty of unused carrying capacity.
Easier Finances At Lower Difficulties: Inexperienced players often complained Xenonauts was too hard even on Easy, largely because the financial game punishes you so hard with upkeep costs for building too many bases / interceptors. We’ve therefore reduced maintenance for buildings and aircraft by 25% on Easy and 10% on Normal difficulties.
DETAILED - GEOSCAPE / AIR COMBAT INTERFACE:
Base Radar Range Preview: You now get a preview of all three possible radar ranges (i.e. with one to three Radar Arrays) when placing a base, rather than just the minimum radar range.
Interceptor Info Updates: The log under the Geoscape now includes information on the status of your interceptors, displayed in green. This will tell you when a plane has finished repairing / re-arming / refuelling etc.
Air Combat Time Buttons: The Geoscape time buttons now also appear in the Air Combat, allowing time to be sped up if desired.
Alien Base Size: There are three different sizes of alien base in the game, but previously there was no way of knowing how large a facility you were attacking. They are now labelled as an alien outpost, base or fortress.
Click Masks: We've enlarged the click masks of various Geoscape objects to make clicking on things a bit easier.
DETAILED - GROUND COMBAT INTERFACE:
Quicksave: You can now Quicksave the game by pressing F5.
Cursor Cover Indicators: You now get cover indicators on your mouse when you mouse over a tile. This should make it a bit more obvious what protection is offered by a tile before you decide to move your soldier there.
Cursor Transparency: The mouse now makes walls / props semi-transparent when you mouseover them, which allows much easier selection of units behind walls and generally better visibility of the battlefield.
Hide Walls / Prop Mode: Clicking the Toggle Roof button now cycles through some additional modes. The first makes all walls and props on the level semi-transparent and the second hides them entirely, leaving only units and the ground tiles. Both are useful if you need to see "hidden" units.
Smart Soldier Cycling: You can press Tab to cycle through the soldiers on your team. However, you can now also press Shift + Tab to mark a soldier as “done” and remove from the cycling queue for that turn.
Grenade Throw Paths: Grenades now show a predicted throw path. This often goes into the layer above (as they arc) which can be viewed by changing the camera level upwards.
Nationality Flags: The community came together to draw and implement national flags for every soldier nationality in the game, so now all the soldiers show their national flag on their info panel when in combat.
Burst Fire Cycling: If a weapon is capable of burst fire then burst mode can now be accessed through the standard right-click shot cycling, rather than having to switch to burst mode on the UI.
Reload TU Costs Shown: The reload TU cost of weapons has been added to their tooltips, as we totally forgot to display this information anywhere in the game (oops).
DETAILED - BUGFIXES:
Lots of crashes and general fixes were made that don't affect overall gameplay but will improve stability
Fixed a lot of sprite issues, including missing fire animations, the inability of flying units to rotate properly and instances where aliens magically turned into Caesan non-combatants due to missing animations
Harridans should no longer fly inside the walls of Carrier UFOs and snipe at you
All medals now correctly grant bravery when received
You can no longer assign / unassign soldiers to airborne dropships (sorry!)
We've fixed several instances where equipment could disappear from your base stores
Rocket launchers no longer occasionally forget the type of rocket they are loaded with and wind up with a bog-standard HE rocket instead
We've reduced the file count in the game down from 65k to 45k, which should make installing the game faster.
Thanks and have a nice day :)
