Xenonauts 2 - Development Update

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A new development update for Xenonauts 2:

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Xenonauts 2 Monthly Development Update!

Hello everyone - as we're now into the early days of November, it's time for an update on what we've been working on! The short answer is this: we made good progress in several areas last month, but frustratingly slow progress in one key area that has delayed the Milestone 5 prototype.

Milestone 5 / Strategic Improvements
Our main focus is still on getting the Milestone 5 prototype into a state where we can release it in beta for public testing. We were hoping that would happen last month, but we weren't able to make enough progress on the new strategy-layer mechanics. There were a few reasons for this, but the main one was that we continued to find new bugs that needed fixing after the Unity editor update mentioned in the previous update.

Thankfully, in the second half of the month we were able to better focus on implementing our new Supporter system. This system places four VIPs in each funding region who can be recruited as supporters by the Xenonauts to provide your organisation with a variety of strategic bonuses (more funding, faster research / engineering, etc.). Or they can be turned into panic-generating Infiltrators by the aliens. If you can recruit all of the supporters in each region, you also unlock a special regional bonus.

The Supporter system itself is now mostly functional, but we're still unsure how long it'll take us to connect it to the other game systems. For instance, the Doomsday Counter that is now active in the early stages of the game also ties into the Supporter system (with alien Infiltrators generating enemy Doomsday progress, and Xenonaut Supporters slowing it). We will also need to update the Infiltration UFO missions to turn neutral VIPs into Infiltrators if successful (where previously they simply generated Panic like other types of UFO mission), and so on.

Given what happened last month I'm not going to make any promises about when the Milestone 5 prototype will be ready - I'll just say we're working hard to get it into the hands of testers as quickly as possible.

New Missions
Milestone 5 adds new mission types - crash sites for the Battleship UFO, the two-part final mission (Operation ENDGAME), and two unique plot missions that take place on an alien orbital station (which appear around the point Cruiser UFOs start appearing).

The Battleship assets and crash site maps were completed some time ago, and this month we finished the final art assets and map setup for both halves of the Operation ENDGAME mission. The first mission on the alien orbital station is also at quite an advanced stage, with the custom art assets for that map now complete, but there's still further work to be done on the second orbital station mission.

Thankfully, this shouldn't cause delays - most of the remaining work is custom art assets, and we don't need the visuals to be final for the Milestone 5 prototype builds.

Alien Updates
Last month we added a new type of alien to the game, the Biter. These small insectoid aliens are more of a living weapon than a proper new species, as certain alien units can fire them towards enemy units - at which point they will charge towards nearby hostiles and try to bite them to death. Biters will expire within a few turns of spawning and have very low HP, but a pack of them can still pose a threat - particularly against units equipped with weapons that cost a lot of TU to fire (e.g. sniper rifles).

We also continued to make changes to our existing aliens to better differentiate them from one another. The main cannon on a Cyberdrone no longer acts like a giant plasma rifle, but is instead now a blast weapon that can inflict major damage across a large area (although it is now less likely to instantly kill a heavily-armoured soldier). We'll be finishing up some changes to the Mantid and Sebillian weapons this month too, which I'll explain in a future blog.

Illustrated UI Backgrounds
One of the coolest features in Xenonauts 1 was that the illustrated backgrounds of the strategic UI screens would upgrade as you progressed through the campaign, showing the way the new technological developments you had unlocked were changing your organisation. By the end of the game, characters had futuristic uniforms and the rooms were full of sci-fi equipment. Lots of players thought this really helped immerse them in the game.

Although implementing this in Xenonauts 2 involves repainting our existing (and perfectly fine) UI background art, we've decided the feature is cool enough that we've found some extra budget for it. Handily, the programming for this feature has already been finished, so as soon as the new artwork is done we can just slot it straight into the game. We started the sketch work for the new Research screen background last week, and hopefully you'll be able to see some results soon!

I'll leave the update there for this month - thanks for reading, and hopefully we'll have some good news on Milestone 5 in the coming weeks!