This update is also only accessible by switching to our Experimental branches (instructions on how to do so here[www.goldhawkinteractive.com]) - although note they have slower load times and worse performance than normal builds due to the extra logging they contain!

A few more fixes for bugs, including the "bald soldiers" bug that reappeared in the previous experimental build. This is hopefully now the final update needed for Milestone 3!

• Fixed some soldiers being bald in combat missions. This bug has reoccured several times now due to Unity shenanigans, so we've entirely rewritten the system responsible to ensure it stays fixed - but please let us know if this has caused any further bugs!
  
• Fixed an issue where the three "On Mission" soldiers would get permanently stuck in the dropship after returning to base if you flew to a Soldier Extraction mission site, then aborted the mission and returned to base.
  
• Fixed pressing Esc on the Transfer Items screen not returning to the Geoscape like it does on other strategy UI screens.

We've now released our Milestone 3.8.0 patch onto our standard Steam branches, which fixes several more stability and gameplay issues.

Although our primary focus is now working on the next major update (Milestone 4) we will continue to fix and patch Milestone 3, so please do report any bugs or issues you encounter.

• Selling an aircraft now returns any equipped items on that aircraft to the base stores, rather than just deleting them.
  
• Secton eyes now glow when Psionic Triangulation is active.
  
• Fixed large amounts of text not appearing correctly in Chinese languages.
  
• Fixed a large number of text lines being vertically misaligned in non-English languages.

• Fixed a situation where players could interrupt alien reaction fire, causing them to gain control of the alien unit that had been trying to attack them.
  
• Fixed another way in which the blast doors in the ATLAS base mission could get out of sync, and appear visually open when actually being closed (or vice versa).
  
• Fixed planned soldier loadouts (on unassigned soldiers) not reflecting changes to soldier stats that will be caused by equipped items. 
  
• Fixed double-clicking on a soldier in the list on the Soldier Equip screen not allowing you to replace them with a different soldier.
  
• Fixed the "custom" button on the campaign settings menu remaining selected if you change back to a different difficulty setting.
  
• Fixed some display issues users could experience if using multiple monitors while mirroring one of them to different screen.
  
• Attempted to fix panning the camera in the air combat being broken if users were using mouse and keyboard while also having a touchscreen or touch peripheral plugged in.

Greetings Commanders,

With Xenonauts 2 on sale for 30% off until April 17, it's the perfect time to test your tactical genius. Through turn-based tactics and managing covert bases, your decisions will lead to mankind's victory or downfall amidst the shadows of a Cold War that never cooled.

Your command will determine the fate of human resistance against the aliens, blending turn-based combat with comprehensive base management.

https://steamproxy.net/steamstore/app/538030/Xenonauts_2/

Hello everyone - hope you all had a good Easter! It's time for our monthly update on the progress we've made on Xenonauts 2.

A lot of our time has been spent fixing bugs in Milestone 3 recently, with five patches being released in the last month. Many of these issues were minor problems caused by our Unity 2022 upgrade, but there's also been fixes for various older bugs and some improvements made to the foreign language translations of the game too. These updates should have collectively improved player experience quite a bit.

One highlight was finally finding a fix for a long-standing bug that turned the screen black whenever any unit fired a weapon. This bug only affected a small number of users and there was a workaround (disabling the "camera shake" setting), but it made the game basically unplayable for anyone who did not know that - so it's definitely a relief to have it fixed!

We've also been hard at work on the content for Milestone 4, and the new maps needed for the largest UFO crash sites are the biggest component of this. These are progressing well - we're aiming to have 3 large maps per biome when Milestone 4 comes out, and we're about 80% of the way there now. In addition to this, the update will also contain numerous new Alien Base maps that were made the previous month.

Furthermore, a new environment artist contractor has joined the team to help us improve our existing environments and eventually finish off the Soviet Town biome that we plan to add to the game before final release. We've already updated the command room in the ATLAS Base map so it more closely resembles what we have in our artwork (with a command table and proper wall screens), and now we're working on some underground earth textures for use in the Alien Base maps.

I'm planning on using these to address one of the gameplay issues with the Alien Base maps - that all the walls are indestructible (even the ones between rooms). Under this new setup all walls will be destructible, so it'll be possible to destroy both internal walls and the external ones around the edge of rooms. Doing this will reveal the earth tiles behind the walls, and these themselves will also be destructible.

This should allow more realistic gameplay where powerful weapons and explosives will be able to gouge holes in the walls, and theoretically it would also allow players to dynamically "mine" through the earth and breach other rooms if they sufficiently powerful weapons. Be aware this idea is still at the testing phase so I can't promise it will definitely work as planned... but all our testing so far looks good!

Our updated Androns have now been finished and will be marching into battle against humanity in Milestone 4. We've also retextured the basic Sectons, as these are the first aliens that new players encounter but previously had fairly basic textures. We're currently retexturing the Wraiths so their basic non-combatants have a simple military uniform rather than being completely naked, and this month we'll be creating an additional Wraith variant with heavier armour that will appear towards the end of the game.

We're also in the process of hiring a contract audio engineer to improve the game's sound design in general, which will include creating some new sounds for the aliens to try and give them a bit more character (like new injury / death sounds, or unique footsteps etc).

We've also completed several small features this month that were requested by the community. Firstly, the dropship screen (where you can position your soldiers within the dropship) now shows the soldier role icons on the green soldier tiles, making the process much more straightforward than it was previously.

Secondly, we've finally got "destruction linking" working properly, which allows us to have walkable tiles placed on top of large multi-tile objects like shipping containers and have them remove themselves if the underlying object is destroyed. This means there's now a lot more objects in the game that allow you to land on top of them and walk around (shipping containers, caravans, buses, certain fuel tanks, etc), and fewer cases of aliens mysteriously standing in mid-air on invisible tiles.

Work was also done on the end of turn camera, which now better shows regeneration healing and Bleeding Wounds damage on any visible units at end of turn. We also rewitten the item assignment logic that occurs after a completed mission, because players were getting some strange loadout problems when running a second mission with the same dropship (some weapons not starting with a clip loaded, etc), which was just down to the primitive way in which the game assigned items to your soldiers if there wasn't enough to equip the whole squad.

Finally, a surprisingly popular request was an upgrade for the basic Combat Knife weapon that is available for your soldiers, so we've designed an upgraded Energy Knife that will unlock off Alien Electronics and should allow the weapon to remain relevant for much longer.

That's everything for this month - lots of smaller tasks that together represent good progress on the project. Hopefully we'll have an early version of Milestone 4 out for testing on the Experimental branch later this month!

This update is also only accessible by switching to our Experimental branches (instructions on how to do so here[www.goldhawkinteractive.com]) - although note they have slower load times and worse performance than normal builds due to the extra logging they contain!

This is just a small update for 3.7.0 as we had a few more fixes we wanted to release for public testing before the Easter weekend.

• Selling an aircraft now returns any equipped items on that aircraft to the base stores, rather than just deleting them.
  
• Secton eyes now glow when Psionic Triangulation is active.
  
• Fixed a situation where players could interrupt alien reaction fire, causing them to gain control of the alien unit that had been trying to attack them.
  
• Fixed some display issues users could experience if using multiple monitors while mirroring one or them to different screen.
  
• Attempted to fix panning the camera in the air combat being broken if users were using mouse and keyboard while also having a touchscreen or touch peripheral plugged in.

We've now released our Milestone 3.6.0 patch onto our standard Steam branches, which fixes several stability and gameplay issues that existed in 3.3.0.

Although our primary focus is working on the next major update (Milestone 4) we will continue to fix and patch Milestone 3, so please do report any bugs or issues you encounter.

• Mentarch can now be suppressed again. However, it now has 80 Bravery instead of 50 Bravery so it is harder to suppress than it was in Milestone 2.
  
• Added correct white silhouette images for the MARS vehicle weapons (used in the unit minitabs at the top of the tactical UI).
  
• Wraith autopsy research project no longer incorrectly awards $100k on completion.
  
• Fixed soldiers being unable to crouch if another soldier was already moving.
  
• Updated the code so that if you press the Crouch button when a soldier is moving, they will try to crouch at the end of their move. We've now capped this to one attempted crouch action, so pressing the button multiple times will no longer waste TU by queueing up crouch / uncrouch actions.

• Fixed the entire screen permanently going black when a unit fires a weapon in the tactical combat for some players. This bug was linked to the "camera shake" setting, and some users had disabled that setting as a workaround - if so, you should now be able to re-enable it.
  
• Fixed a crash that could occur when quickly switching between the aircraft screen and another strategy screen.
  
• Fixed a crash if you try to launch an aircraft that is already airborne (it now correctly redirects to the new destination).
  
• Fixed an AI hang that could occur during the enemy turn in the tactical combat.
  
• Fixed the exterior walls of the office on the Cleaner Data Raid missions displaying black on some systems.
  
• Fixed the player being able to hire more engineers / scientists than their workshop / lab capacity should allow if you have excess lab capacity free at a secondary base.
  
• Fixed the heal animation not displaying properly.
  
• Fixed the soldier portraits on the Soldier Equip screen sometimes disappearing.
  
• Fixed the aircraft transfer duration repeating a second time after completion, taking twice as long as intended.
  
• Fixed an issue when completing an engineering project on the 5th or 6th base, which would take you to the workshop screen for the 4th base instead.
  
• Fixed a bug where unassigned soldiers could display the incorrect armour name in the armour dropdown - e.g. be visually equipped with the Warden Armour, but the dropdown would read Tactical Armour.
  
• Fixed being unable to disable the air combat Afterburners / Retreat buttons during the initial aircraft deployment phase.
  
• Fixed movement / turning not being interrupted when sighting an enemy if you were doing it as part of a grenade throw action (it worked fine when firing a weapon).
  
• Fixed the visual flicker that would occur after finishing an air combat battle as the cities briefly appeared on the map and then hid themselves.
  
• Fixed the Cleaner HQ mission sometimes not revealing immediately when you reach 100% on the progress tracker.
  
• Fixed the soldier minitabs at the top of the tactical UI not showing the number of USB sticks on the tile of an unconscious soldier (like it does for dead soldiers).
  
• Fixed a Boreal log pile that had a graphical glitch with one of the logs.

This update is also only accessible by switching to our Experimental branches (instructions on how to do so here[www.goldhawkinteractive.com]) - although note they have slower load times and worse performance than normal builds due to the extra logging they contain!

• Fixed large amounts of text not appearing correctly in Chinese.
  
• Fixed a large number of text lines being vertically misaligned in non-English languages.
  
• Fixed planned soldier loadouts (on unassigned soldiers) not reflecting changes to soldier stats that will be caused by equipped items. 
  
• Fixed double-clicking on a soldier in the list on the Soldier Equip screen not allowing you to replace them with a different soldier.
  
• Fixed the "custom" button on the campaign settings menu remaining selected if you change back to a different difficulty setting.

This update is also only accessible by switching to our Experimental branches (instructions on how to do so here[www.goldhawkinteractive.com]) - although note they have slower load times and worse performance than normal builds due to the extra logging they contain!

Another few fixes for crashes and hangs identified by the community in 3.5.0.

• Fixed a crash if you try to launch an aircraft that is already airborne (it now correctly redirects to the new destination).
  
• Fixed a crash that could occur at the end of turn in a tactical mission when a unit is killed by reaction fire with certain AI actions still queued.
  
• Fixed an AI hang that could occur during the enemy turn in the tactical combat.
  
• Wraith autopsy research project no longer incorrectly awards $100k on completion.

This update is also only accessible by switching to our Experimental branches (instructions on how to do so here[www.goldhawkinteractive.com]) - although note they have slower load times and worse performance than normal builds due to the extra logging they contain!

This hotfix addresses a few bugs we introduced in our last Experimental hotfix, as well as several additional bugs in the current public builds.

• Fixed a bug where players were unable to hire scientists / engineers in some circumstances.
  
• Fixed a bug where unassigned soldiers could display the incorrect armour name in the armour dropdown - e.g. be visually equipped with the Warden Armour, but the dropdown would read Tactical Armour.
  
• Fixed soldiers being unable to crouch if another soldier was already moving.
  
• Updated the code so that if you press the Crouch button when a soldier is moving, they will try to crouch at the end of their move. We've now capped this to one attempted crouch action, so pressing the button multiple times will no longer waste TU by queueing up crouch / uncrouch actions.
  
• Fixed being unable to disable the air combat Afterburners / Retreat buttons during the initial deployment phase.
  
• Fixed movement / turning not being interrupted when sighting an enemy if you were doing it as part of a grenade throw action (it worked fine when firing a weapon).
  
• Fixed the visual flicker that would occur after finishing an air combat battle as the cities briefly appeared on the map and then hid themselves.
  
• Fixed the tactical UI displaying a white soldier portrait outline if you have no soldier selected (usually occurs if the selected soldier is killed).
  
• Fixed the Cleaner HQ mission sometimes not revealing immediately when you reach 100% on the progress tracker.
  
• Fixed the soldier minitabs at the top of the tactical UI not showing the number of USB sticks on the tile of an unconscious soldier (like it does for dead soldiers).
  
• Fixed a Boreal log pile that had a graphical glitch with one of the logs.

These bugs appear hardware linked and none of the dev team can reproduce them, so we're relying on affected users to let us know whether the fixes worked!

• Attempted a fix for the issue some people are experiencing where the exterior walls of the office on the Cleaner Data Raid missions display black.
  
• Attempted a fix for the entire screen going black when a unit fires a weapon in the tactical combat (this is the bug that could be fixed by disabling the "camera shake" setting).