Hello everyone - today we're releasing v7.22.3 from the Experimental branch onto the standard branch for everyone to play. The full patch notes are included at the bottom of this post, but first there's a few quick development updates to cover!
UPCOMING HOTFIXES
We'll be releasing v7.23.0 onto the Experimental branch for testing in the next few days. The main focus of this build remains to iron out remaining stability issues and localisation problems - although we're now getting towards the end of this work, we're still tidying up some of the more obscure crashes and awkward translation fixes that players have encountered,
Once this is done, we'll be able to shift our attention back towards the mod tools and gameplay improvements.
DLC PLANS
One of the most frequent questions we get asked is about our DLC plans. Now the dust has started to settle on the 1.0 launch, we've taken some time to collect our thoughts - and everyone on the team is indeed keen to continue expanding the game via DLC.
We're still in the early stages of production, so we're not ready to reveal details quite yet. But rest assured there will be at least one expansion pack arriving for Xenonauts 2 in the future!
v7.22.3 PATCH NOTES
Balance Changes:
Reduced miss shot deviation by about 20% for the average shot, and 40% for the maximum deviation shot. This means you're no longer able to hit a diagonally adjacent soldier on a miss if you're shooting directly forward.
Humans can no longer use alien grenades.
Fixed late-game Wraith terror sites sometimes having enemies equipped with Plasma weapons rather than Fusion weapons.
Gemini now has 12 starting armour (previously 15). Shielded Plating for interceptors now offers +24 armour (previously 25). Together these two changes prevent the Gemini getting more than 60 Armour (previously it could get 65), as going above this level breaks the air combat UI.
Set the Western Town restaurant exterior wall pillars to not block movement, or offer cover (as they're too small to realistically do either).
Gameplay Improvements:
The game now indicates on the Campaign Victory / Loss screen if you were playing Ironman mode (it puts it in brackets after the Difficulty Level if so).
Added more explanation to the tooltips for the concept of damage drop-off on explosions.
Improved the tooltips for Flashbang Grenades and Smoke Grenades.
Removed the Roadmap button on the Main Menu, as it is no longer relevant.
Bugfixes:
Updated the localisation files to incorporate the latest batch of translation fixes. This should fix the bulk of the remaining translation issues in the game.
Fixed a rare Geoscape crash that could occur if a UFO took off at the exact moment a nearby radar structure finished contruction.
Fixed a crash that could occur when loading a tactical save on particular maps.
Fixed a crash that could occur loading a save made after a Cyberdrone exploded.
Fixed a crash that could occur if picking up items in the tactical inventory from near an area with interactive objective props (Cleaner Desks, Abduction tubes, etc).
Fixed a rare crash that could occur when an AI unit suffered a morale break.
Fixed the game detecting the same object twice when clicking an icon on the Geoscape, and asking you to choose from a list that contains two identical entries.
Fixed the Engineering Capacity slider on the Manage Engineers screen not displaying correct numbers if you have more Engineers than you have Workshop space available.
Fixed unique upgrade projects in the Engineering queue of a destroyed base becoming being permanently inaccessible to the player.
Fixed melee weapon hit chance information being incorrect in the bottom left "shot calculation" UI element. It now shows the base accuracy of the weapon as (say) 65% rather than the incorrect x1.65 formatting it used before.
Fixed an issue where a planned move (the move + shoot action using Ctrl+Shift) could move the soldier onto a teleporter when using a medkit or melee weapon, causing the teleporter to trigger before the action occurred. The teleporter will now not trigger in such situations.
Fixed tooltips showing an error if they are linking a hotkey that the player has unbound.
Fixed the reload quick button always showing, even when the soldier doesn't have a clip available to reload their gun with.
Fixed smoke being unable to spawn on certain water edge tiles.
Fixed dead bodies on the ground showing damage numbers if hit by bullets.
Fixed the Colossus Power Fist being dropped on the ground when the wearer is killed or stunned.
Various fixes to support modding.
Fixed the Tooltip Lock / Unlock Time settings being controlled by the wrong slider if accessed from the Main Menu.
Fixed various missing / incorrect button tooltips.
Fixed the game automatically rebinding keybinds on startup that had been intentionally left unbound.
Fixed the Alien Plasma Machinegun using the same 2d tile art as the Alien Plasma Rifle.
Fixed the Aircraft fuel tooltip still incorrectly talking about aircraft running out of fuel in air combat.
Fixed a typo in the Alien Plasma Weapons xenopedia entry.
STEAM REVIEWS: YOUR FEEDBACK MATTERS
If you haven’t already, please consider leaving us a review on Steam. We’re very grateful for the feedback players have shared so far, and reviews do a lot to help the game’s visibility. They also help inform future patches and what the team focuses on next. If you’re enjoying Xenonauts 2, or just want to support the dev team, leaving a review would really help.
COMMUNITY RESOURCES
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.