Xenonauts (for XCE) - mini FAQ

All the questions you've always wanted to ask but never found the answers about Xenonauts (for the Community Edition)

How to get the Community Edition and what is it?

The Community Edition is available through the Properties->Beta tab in Steam. It will download XCE with everything required to make it work (modules included). It can't be more simple !

This version is like a big patch made by fans to improve the game, fix bugs and rebalance things; This project is supported by the official developpers, which is amazing and rare enough to cheer.

XCE doesn't change the gameplay, it is still the same game, just better.

What are the soldier attributes?

Time Units (TUs) : The ability to move quickly on the field, the more TUs, the more distance you can sprint. It doesn't increase the number of times you can shoot. A quick soldier is also less prone to reaction fire. TUs evolves by using many time units during a mission.

Health : The soldier's thougness, how much he can endure before falling to the ground near-dead. When a soldier reaches zero health points, he's out of combat and has 50% chance of survival at the end of the mission. The further below zero, the lower the survival chances. Using medpacks on a fallen soldier is useless. The length of the mission doesn't change survival chances. Health evolves naturally along the other attributes.

Strength : A strong soldier will throw grenades very far away. He can wear better armors, a medpack, tons of grenades and ammunitions, while a weak soldier won't. To hold heavy-weaponry, the soldier should have at least 70 points of strength, otherwise he'll get a penality when shooting. Strength evolves by wearing heavy gears during a mission.

Accuracy : The better the accurary, the better the probabilities to shoot the enemy at longer distances. An amazing feat for snipers, less useful for assaults or heavy-weapons. Accuracy evolves by shooting at aliens (best training ever).

Reflexes : When you can't shoot an alien hidden behind a wall, survival is often linked to your soldiers reflexes for reaction fires. A soldier with very good reflexes will shoot the alien as soon as he sees him. One with bad reflexes may not shoot at all. Every movement or action in the cone of vision of an enemy may trigger a reaction fire. Reflexes evolves when a reaction fire could have been possible, successful or not.

Bravery : The psychological resistance of a soldier. A brave soldier won't panic and psy-attacks won't work on him as easily as for a coward soldier. Bravery evolves when a soldier is suppressed, or when it panics.

What is Reaction fire?

Reaction-fire is the ability to wait for the enemy to come to you by remaining stationary, or by moving slower than normal. The more TUs you keep at the end of your turn, the easier it will be to have one or more reaction-fires as soon as an alien move in your cone of vision.

The TU reserve (bottom left of the interface) is a simple way to lock your movements and keep enough TUs at the end of the turn. Note that the TU reserve is just a tool, you can do it manually and it will work the same way.

When a reaction-fire is possible, for your soldiers, or for aliens, the game compares your remaining TUs. If the defending unit has more TUs than the attacker, then a reaction-fire have a high chance to trigger. On the opposite, if the attacking unit has more TUs than the defender, the chance of reaction-fire are lowered.

Shotguns have a reaction-fire bonus, making them perfect to protect a close range zone like corners, or doors.

As soon as you see an enemy, make sure you've got plenty of TUs if you want to continue your movement without getting shot.

Is reaction-fire dangerous? Yes... yes it freaking is! Do not underestimate it.

How to prevent reaction-fire?

Ask yourself, did the alien use all its TUs during its turn: Did it move? Did it throw a grenade or shoot at you? Or did it stay perfectly stationnary.

If the answer is "It didn't move at all", then expect an agressive and instant reaction-fire as soon as the alien will see you do something. There are a few ways to prevent this:

Flashbang grenades; If thrown correctly at the alien feet, they will suppress the alien before it can react. Heavily armoured aliens may resist one grenade, but rarely two. The grenade's strength is higher on the spot the grenade landed. Walls and props can negate the grenade effects if they are between the grenade and your target.

Heavy-weapons and suppression fire; Shoot bullets everywhere around your target, no need to hit, everytime a bullet flies closeby, or hits something near an entity, it causes a suppression effect. With enough suppression, the entity will lose all its remaining TUs for this turn, and will start next turn with only half its maximum TUs, making it a lot less dangerous. If you can't fire on the target directly, fire on the ground or a wall nearby. You can force a soldier to fire anywhere with CTRL+Click.

The "tank"; If you can't suppress the target, you can force it to spend its reaction-fire TUs on a "tank". That can be anything with enough resistance and health to take direct shoots. Shielded soldiers with a decent armor make great tanks.

Smoke grenades; Against Caesans, Harridans and Wraiths only. Turn them blind with smoke. They will eventually try to shot at you, but will probably miss. Be very careful though, the closer you get from the aliens, the easier they might hit. Smoke grenades are totally useless against Sebilians and not very effiicient against Androns.

Incendiary grenades (XCE only); Against Sebillians only. They hate fire and are blinded by its light. Throw one and watch them run, easy target.

Robots and reapers are close to immune to suppression so don't even bother.

How to knock the enemy uncounscious?

Capturing an alien is a mandatory step to advance in the campaign, but also to get that nice 10% damage bonus for that race. There are three ways to knock an alien uncounscious:

Stun baton; This is the best way if you can approach an alien close enough to kiss his feet. Two or three hits are enough for most aliens, except for the ones with a helmet. Make sure to succeed, otherwise that alien will be very angry and right in your face.

Stun grenade; This one fills the air with a gaz making breathing impossible. It has a large action zone, and lasts for a few turns which may stun most aliens, except for robots and the ones wearing helmets since they have gaz filters. Make sure to throw the grenade far away or you may find your own soldiers suffocating to the ground. If that occurs, you can wake them up with a medkit.

Electroshock grenade; This one has a more localized, very potent, zone of effect and can stun most biological beings, and explode robotic units.

Flashbang; This is the least efficient, but an enemy close enough to falling uncounscious may be pushed overlimits with a flashbang. To use as a last resort.

Robots are immune to being stun so don't even bother.

How does Mental stability works?

Every alien species have its own behavior, and you may learn to decipher them. Civilian aliens (the red shirt caesan or nude sebilian) will try to flee from combat and take a defensive posture while warriors will be a lot more agressive.

Everytime an alien sees another alien die, it will give him a mental stability hit, lowering its agressivity to the point it will want to hide from your soldiers at all cost, forgetting to shot at you. Kill more aliens, and the whole group, on the whole map, will start to flee from combat to hide. This works for all aliens, robots included, except for the reapers (these are just crazy beasts).

Beware because that Mental stability rule also works on your own soldiers. Seeing an alien kill one of your guys will lower their mental state, making them more prone to panic. It is even worse if one of your own soldiers kill another! The ranks have a strong influence on this. Seeing a Colonel die will have a strong impact, while seeing a Private die will have a lower one. You can mitigate this effect by having a high ranked soldier closeby. Also note that a soldier who is alone on the field will panic a lot more easily than a soldier in a group.

What are Psionic powers?

Some Caesan units have Psionic powers, which means they can try to enter in your soldier's mind and drive them crazy or even take control of their body. The closer you are from the Psionic Caesan, the stronger the effects. A Psi attack can cause a unit to :

Fear; your soldier loses morale and may panic, throws his weapon to the ground and runs away from the aliens for one turn. Just return to the spot he dropped his weapons next turn to pick them back up.

Paralyse; your soldier is paralysed and can't do anything for one turn.

Hallucinate; your soldier goes berserk and attacks something at random thinking it is an alien. This can be an instant, uncontrollable death for a teammate. The best way to mitigate the damage of berserk attacks is to keep your weapons in your backpack, and take them out only when necessary; otherwise, make sure your soldiers are not closeby: a berserker has a low accuracy.

Mind control; only when close to the Psionic alien, your soldier does nothing during the player's turn, but will play during the alien turn. You have this turn to hide, run away, or beat your friend up with stun weapons until it breaks the mind control.

Tips and tricks

Dropping something from your hand to the ground costs very few TUs. If required, you can use this trick to quickly give a grenade or a stun baton to another soldier at a minimum cost. This is also useful to take your medkit and heal yourself, instead of switching the weapon to your backpack, drop it to the ground.

Keep one hand free to throw grenades at a highly reduced cost.

Labs and Workshop are more efficient with many smaller projects than a single big project. For example, a project with 100 workers is 50% efficient, 50 workers 75% efficient, 30 workers 85% efficient, and 15 workers 93% efficient.

Vehicules are not very strong, but they are amazing during night missions thanks to their high-powered lights. If you don't like the hunter car, you will love it during a night mission. Also, reapers do not attack vehicules. (This behavior has been changed in 0.34.2)

Shooting from an elevated position grants a bonus in accuracy. It also exposes you above ground obstacles so all the aliens around can see you.

Foxtrots are amazing, everytime you encounter an enemy ship which is not a fighter or a light scount, your Foxtrots will destroy it easily. For the others, use your Condors.

Foxtrots are useless against fighters. If a vessel is defended, disable the torpedoes with a right-click, and use your afterburner to dodge the fighter's shots. Launch the torpedoes manually to destroy the main vessel, then flee the combat zone. Mission successful!

Always keep soldiers in the barracks at your base at all times, ten or more. You wouldn't like an alien attack on your base while you are away in your Charlie. The base will be instantly destroyed. The newly built bases have a lower chance of attack than an old base, but it can happen, recruit asap!

You can send your planes outside the radar range to find UFOs, they have their own smaller radar. Alien bases are instantly detected if you fly above one. To know if there is an alien base in the world, check for the Forecast; if it goes down but there are no UFOs in the air, then it can be an alien base. Send your planes to find it!

If aliens are high upstairs in a building, drop a few packs of explosives at the root of the building to make it collapse. The aliens won't survive the fall.

The alien doors will close automatically at the end of the turn of the aliens. If that bothers you, just destroy the door with a pack of explosives, a rocket, enough grenades, or a lots of bullets.

Once programmed, a pack of explosives will countdown every turn wherever it is: on the ground, or in your backpack. Don't forget to disable the countdown if you want to cancel an explosion!

Reapers and Wraiths love to attack from behind, don't forget to guard your back.

Have a question? Ask it in the comments.

Useful links

This is for the Vanilla Xenonauts, but it contains a huge amount of great informations:
FAQ/Strategy Guide by dpelectric[www.gamefaqs.com]

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[Ozone]

XCE doesn’t increase the number of UFO incursions—it’s likely just RNG giving you a rough start. You might've been "unlucky" with the encounters (or lucky, if you're good at taking down UFOs). In terms of the tactical gameplay, I’d argue XCE doesn’t make it significantly easier. Sure, the improved grenades offer a bit more flexibility, but overall, it's the same core challenge.

As for the crashes, that sounds unusual; XCE generally improves stability for most players, at least in my experience. Lastly, about save-scumming—while it's tempting, I'd recommend sticking with your losses and adapting to the challenge. Save-scumming can turn a tough game into a breeze, but the real thrill is in managing the unpredictability and enduring the setbacks.

[zanitzeuken]

I can't find a reply to the question "Why does the AI get to do what the fuck it wants whilst I get hammered every turn?". Can anyone explain this?

Sorry I'm late, I just found your question. It's because the AI is trying to tell you it needs its ass kicked. Go get your Foxtrots than get some lasers and stomp them. Use military tactics like bounding, keep TUs available for reactions, and use your secret human power: SAVE SCUMMING. It's like you know the future. Your men will suspect you're a wizard.

[zanitzeuken]

CE doesn't change gameplay per se, but it certainly made the tactical battle easier and overloaded the world map with UFO incursions I couldn't keep up with in the first month. I didn't like that, but the real issue I had with is the constant crashing. CE with Lore+ and Armored Assault only and would either blink away, throwing my hams on the Desktop or locking up my system so bad I had to hit the power. I reinstalled vanilla and cleaved my way to November in game w/o issue, so I know it's the CE.

[Bob of Mage]

The tip about labs and workshops isn't really that true. The projects work by generating points until it hits a certain total. You only waste points if you use a number of workers that aren't dividable by the final increment. Thus you can use a large amount on a project early on with no wastage.

If you are worried about wasting points, then you can finish a project with 10, 5, or 2 workers since all projects as far as i know are dividable by 10. Of course this assumes you haven't used some weird number of works before that point.

[Ozone]

Pleasure. No idea why the english version is gone. You can ask on Reddit, or on the Discord server. The author of XCE lurks there.

[Atari 2600]

I'm very late to this party, but thank you for the guide! Can anyone explain why there's only a French version of "fire in the whole" in the game mod section included with XCE? Is the English version built in somewhere else, or do I need to install it manually?

[Ozone]

Difficult to tell without seeing you playing. But I guess you don't leave enough TUs at the end of your turn for Reaction Shots. (?)

[Robert Locksley]

I can't find a reply to the question "Why does the AI get to do what the fuck it wants whilst I get hammered every turn?". Can anyone explain this?

[Ozone]

Yes, "Fire in the hole" is actually provided in XCE's package.

[Ced]

Is "Fire in the hole" compatable with XCE?