Change Log (Long War)

This page may be outdated. It is up-to-date for version b15. The latest version is 1.0.

Confirmed bugs only please. New bug reports should go to the developers' feedback thread on the Nexus Forum.

Vanilla game bugs

Here are included bugs that have been deemed unsolvable by the Long War development team and have been present in the original game as well. As it stands, with the limited modding capabilities at hand, the Long War team can not resolve them.

Loading savegames in tactical missions can cause problems, including: recheck of panic when a soldier is critically wounded and awaiting stabilize; cancelling hunker down status; resetting certain flags intended to prevent you from doing things like using Run and Gun and Close Encounters on the same turn, cars exploding on the same turn. These can be exploits and you should feel really, really bad for using it.
Sometimes critically wounded soldiers have a bad z and can't be revived. Save and reload often fixes.
Certain map errors. These are probably hard to tell from other errors, but if the problem is related to something in the map itself, we are unlikely to be able to fix it. This includes: 1) Doors failing to block visibility as you would expect (this includes a hang that occurs when overwatch fire goes through a closed door); 2) Line of sight issues; 3) Bad pieces of terrain you can't climb on or have weird cover interactions with; 4) preactivated pods; 5) Rare alien teleports to get out of bad positioning; 6) ladders blocking flanks
Close Combat Specialist is flaky. We didn't change it; it's unlikely we can fix it.
Rapid double-clicking (such as with a dying mouse that automatically does this inadvertently) can screw up your interactions with the engineering UI and charge you tons of cash for a single transaction.
Periodically, the map script for the XCOM HQ assault mission will be interrupted. Reload an earlier save or (with ironman) use the dev console to restart the mission.
Sharpshooter perk shows in soldier's active abilities list when soldier is in full cover (instead of when target is in full cover). Still WAD on targeting detail.
Female weapon models not aligning with pawn correctly
Flying creatures will sometimes stack on the same tile during movement
If a soldier is next to both Low and High Cover, the perk Low Profile does not trigger and the soldier will have the low cover defense bonus from the appropriate direction.
Squadsight + flanked erratic behavior. Added note to perk text.
For some mod users the game does not load, or loads and crashes in the main menu. Also it has been observed the unability to save the game (both manually and by autosave). This has been resolved by running the game in Steam Offline mode. It has been suspected that this is an error on Steam's side.

Beta 15c2 (April 12, 2015)

BETA 15 to BETA 15b or 15c Issues

If you are well into a campaign and have researched advanced Medikits, all of your soldiers will suddenly have the Deadeye Perk. If you want to remove it, use the Dev Console and the command GivePerk -116 on that soldier in a tactical mission.
Meld costs have doubled (as have meld incomes), so you'll be behind. If you are well into a campaign, workaround is to download dev console and give yourself 2x your current meld using giveresource 7 xxx, where xxx is the amount of meld to give yourself.

BETA 15a to BETA 15b or 15c issues

Because of a 15a bug, some new campaigns will lose their starting country bonus. The workaround is to go into DGC.ini, lines 1420 to 1453, and increase the iCash value on each line by 1, and change the iCash value on line 1419 (Cadre) to 6.

Any Beta 15 campaign to 15c issues

To add the new Drum Mag item to an existing campaign, try the developer console command GiveItem END_SHIP_WEAPONS 99 OR GiveItem Drum Mags 99 for a nearly infinite amount. Any counterfire pods from previous versions will also convert to drum mags.
Reworked trees will require re-selection of perks. You can remove excess perks with GivePerk -(PerkEnum) command in the tactical game, where (PerkEnum) is the number of the perk. See the ArmorKitCodes file for a list of perks.

BETA 15c

NOTE: IF YOU USE THE DEV CONSOLE, YOU WILL NEED TO DOWNLOAD A NEW VERSION OF THE DEV CONSOLE TO WORK WITH BETA 15c. OTHERWISE YOU MAY HAVE SEVERE BUGS WITH THE NEW MAPS.

Fixes:

CTD when fighting Uber ethereal
CTD in harvest location selection logic during periods of high threat and near-total satellite coverage
CTD in research archives, seems more likely in late game
Cleaned up some possibly bad code supporting what perks can appear in Training Roulette (XGStrategySoldier.IsRandomPerkValidToAdd)
Pistols should be equipped properly upon class assignment in Commander's Choice games
Attempted Fix: It appears that Aurora and Vortex Armors and Mind Shield were having their will bonus counted twice in some circumstances (including in the UI to-hit display). This may have impacted balance in favor of the player and we'll want feedback on how effective psi powers are after this. (This involves changing the parameters in a call to native code, so it's hard to be sure exactly what's happening).
Fixed bad jump in Absorbdamage that may have been causing acid debuff to cause extra damage (rather than just remove DR) when a soldier suffers additional damage
Truly amazing amount of map fixes
Alloy SHIV available to build alert should process correctly now on tech acquisition
Corrected Laser Lance and Rail Gun strategy game descriptions
Advanced Suppression Module now actually grants Danger Zone perk as intended
HEAT and Flak Ammo damage bonus to barrage should be working now. Reworked logic in HEAT ammo and warheads application a bit.
Fortiores Una should provide DR bonus now
Blank items should no longer show up in what-got-broke debrief UI
Minimum repair time for items corrected to intended 3 days instead of 3 hours.
Interrogations should no longer remove two captives (if you have more than one), only one.
Resolved remaining issues with conditional aim modifiers that we've modded in
Mindfraying soldiers and aliens should return to cover now
Incinerator module will no longer supply +1 ammo to primary weapon
Temple Ship Heavy Floaters will no longer get excessive aim bonus
Correct subclass icon will show in postmission debrief UI
Attempted Fix: Free actions sometimes granted when soldiers returning to cover after a shot
Blaster Launcher range should scale properly with aim and perks now. Possibly some other fixes to range of free-aim weapon.
UFO Scanners should work properly for raiders and some other UFO classes now
Council Corpse requests should scale better with DW games
Level 7 Outsiders will properly get Damage Control instead of Intimidate
Fixed Triggers to give a couple of aliens special names
Regular soldiers should be able to equip flak ammo now
Quenchguns will now benefit from weapons credit; coilguns will not
Aerospace tech credit will no longer give bonus to all foundry projects, just aerospace ones
Air base attack missions should no longer make alien resource count go haywire
Gave up on attempts to remove bombard perk from Muton Elite, Cyberdiscs and Heavy Floaters and to give it back in certain circumstances, changed triggers for special unit names for leaders in each class. (This doesn't represent any gameplay change; it's basically a failed nerf attempt on aliens being cleaned up.)
Navigators will a 99 value will have perk 100% of time instead of 99%
ITZ will now drop damage correctly with each successive kill
Flashbangs will no longer trigger any VO (It was erroneously triggering an unused hunker down VO)
Rookie icon (double circle) will show up in right places; Genemodded rookies should have proper icon now
Attempted Fix: You should no longer be able to select a specialist covert operative until they have picked a subclass. This is to prevent commander's choice players from picking a covert operative, CC-ing them to a heavy, and then sending them on a mission, which caused crashy behavior because the heavy didn't have a pistol equipped.
Heater reaction range fixed to 30.
Map patches now number 64 distinct files with various fixes to flanking bugs, sightlines, terrain not providing cover and other issues.
Removed one each research outpost, commercial alley and truckstop abduction map entries, now redundant with the multiple start spawn code (may have been causing these maps to appear too often)
Attempted Fix: Attempted to address reports that weapon fragment artifacts may have been retained across mission restarts

Balancing and other changes:

New VO Packs: Polish-accented English Male from Commander Faleg, Irish Male from Adam Miller, South African female from Louise Demée
Neural Feedback no longer requires Floater Interrogation to unlock; it is available at Xenopsionics with MindFray
Crashed destroyer missions will now take place on Overseer maps (with overseer mission-related stuff stripped). Destroyers now carry 4 UFO Power Sources that can be salvaged. They will have a few more aliens than in the past.
Added PierA map to terror roster
More AI work
Reduced req engineers for Adv Suppression Module and Ammo Conservation. Reduced cost of Ammo Cons slightly; increased cost of Tactical Rigging.
Deadeye now provides +15 aim and no crit bonus against fliers
Put a hard cap on alien aggro in DW campaigns so they still run some non-anti-XCOM missions. This is an attempt to address the 5x terror missions per month apparently happening in DW games.
Battle Rifle / Heavy Rifle series of weapons reworked. Compared to the assault rifle of the same tech, they offer +1 damage, -1 mobility and a -10 aim penalty after taking any non-turn-ending costly actions. Crit, base aim, and ammo are equivalent to assault rifle of the same class. They can be equipped by infantry, scouts, assaults, medics and engineers. (These values are subject to change). Some rifle costs lowered to be roughly on par with assault rifles of same tech level.
Terror mission offscreen deaths are now calibrated against activated aliens, not seen ones.
Added Drum Mags small item. They are infinite and available from campaign start. They grant +2 ammo to assault rifle, carbine, and battle rifle series weapons and may not be equipped by snipers, gunners or rocketeers. They cost 2 mobility and 4 aim to equip. They cannot be stacked with Hi Cap Mags item. To add them to an existing campaign, you should use the console command GiveItem END_SHIP_WEAPONS 99 for a nearly infinite amount. Counterfire Pods removed from game.
Modified version of Nuked City map set up as terror map. The UFO is removed and replaced with some debris. Thanks to Liquid911 for making this possible.
Floaters on Normal lose 1 mobility and 5 defense, floaters on classic lose 5 defense.
Heavy Floaters on normal lose 5 defense.
Drones on normal lose 5 defense
Exalt Elites lose 1 hp on Normal
Heavy Floaters on impossible gain 1 mobility
Increased alloy income from UFOs on Normal by 25%, Classic by 10%
Increased frags on classic slightly
Reduced elerium from power sources by 5 on brutal and impossible, increased by 5 on normal
Increased overall monthly cash from sats by 10% on normal
Reduced meld costs of MEC primary weapons by roughly 33% to 50%
Reduced meld costs of MEC secondaries by 15% to 25%. Increased elerium costs on several secondaries.
Reduced meld costs of advanced MEC techs
Changed meld costs for several genemods
Fishing village will no longer spawn chryssys from map objects during terror missions on that map
Made UFO crashes instead of complete destruction for scouts, fighters, raiders and destroyers marginally more likely
For the first 75 days, alien satellite hunts will be conducted by fighters and raiders only. After that, it will be fighters, destroyers and battleships per normal alien supply tests.
Increased "free" minimum alien supply from 7 * Months passed to 9 * Months passed
Hover SHIVs lose 4 defense, 2 flight fuel, 1 mobility, 2 hit points
MEC-6 Vanguard gains +1 mobility
Dormant alien pods will now activate if you fire at them and miss
Dormant alien pods will now activate if you use a flashbang on one of its members
Dormant alien pods will now activate if you use a chem grenade on one of its members
Dormant alien pods will now activate if you drop a prox mine in range of them
Reduced engineer requirements for Enhanced Lasers and Enhanced Beam Optics
Exalt cell panic enhancers will now cause the lesser of 10 or the base panic from the panic event, instead of 15 regardless.
Soldiers may equip only one battlescanner item each (although it still gains bonus charges from various perks, and BS perk is unchanged)
Scout tree reworked
XCOM base on normal gets +2 "free" power
Reduced power requirement for hangar by 1 (essentially +1 free power on all difficulties)
Meld cans will last a little longer before closing
On Dynamic War games < 1, timeouts from fatigue and wounds reduced to balance out mission rates from exalt and council missions (which aren't subject to DW rates).
On Dynamic War games < 1, slowed Exalt activity in accordance with DW setting. This does mean it takes longer for them to build cells as well as run operations, so it will probably take you longer in campaign time to wipe Exalt out, but they should make up a reduced proportion of your missions in any given month.
Removed mobility penalty for taking Shock-Absorbent Armor perk.
All UFOs shot down in first month with generate crash missions and not blow up. I'm selling out because there's zero narrative justification for this being possible.
Thin Men pods will be slightly more common
Floaters lose 1 base mobility, get it back on day 90
Heavy Floaters lose 1 hp during level ups (day 360), gain 2 mobility (360 and 500)
Shifted the extra damage curve on impossible. Earlier aliens don't get bonus damage, later aliens get more.
Titan Armor now costs 8 meld.
Quenchguns anti-DR bouns now 2x base gauss DR, not 3x (so .67 default instead of 1). Reduced price of QG foundry project.
Gave aliens a slight bonus in their saving throws against mimic beacons
Various minor price adjustments
Adjustments to Guardian (starts with Opportunist; Sentinel goes to old Opportunist slot), Archer, Goliath trees
SHIV Defenses foundry tech renamed "Mechanized Unit Defenses" and moved to Carapace. It now unlocks Core Armoring and Alloy-Carbide Plating. Core Armoring now available to MECs. Damage Control Pods unlocked by Heavy Floater Autopsy.
It will be harder to get Terror Ships on research missions.

b15c2 Fixes:

Fixed Quenchguns frags cost
Fixed Core Armoring text

Beta 15b (March 11, 2015)

BETA 15 to BETA 15b Issues

If you are well into a campaign and have researched advanced Medikits, all of your soldiers will suddenly have the Deadeye Perk. If you want to remove it, use the Dev Console and the command GivePerk -116 on that soldier in a tactical mission.
Meld costs have doubled (as have meld incomes), so you'll be behind. If you are well into a campaign, workaround is to download dev console and give yourself 2x your current meld using giveresource 7 xxx, where xxx is the amount of meld to give yourself.

BETA 15a to BETA 15b issues

Because of a 15a bug, some new campaigns will lose their starting country bonus. The workaround is to go into DGC.ini, lines 1420 to 1453, and increase the iCash value on each line by 1, and change the iCash value on line 1419 (Cadre) to 6.

Feature:

Added cheat code functionality with dev console to permanently remove a perk from a soldier in tactical missions (not sure if it works in barracks). Use Giveperk -X where x is the perk number. So giveperk 3 grants Squadsight. Giveperk -3 removes it. To remove Deadeye from a soldier, use Giveperk -116.

Fixes:

CTD on terror mission initialization when DW > 1
Fixed bug when covert extraction on military base map. Workaround, fine StreamingMaps[1]=( MapName="patch_militaryammo", Loc=( X=0, Y=0, Z=0 ), Rot=( Pitch=0, Yaw=0, Roll=0 ) ) from end of line 190 in DefaultMaps.ini, and change the[1] to [2]
Medikit II bonus may not be applying correctly in upgraded campaigns in which you already had it
Some more map patches
Council requests for meld will scale correctly with meld income now
Fixed bug in which upgraded saves were getting wrong country bonus. THIS WILL MESS UP SAVES FROM NEW CAMPAIGNS IN BETA 15a. Workaround is above.
Fixed bug in which DW < 1 dead alien loot drops were way too large and way too small in DW > 1

Balance:

Outsiders now have Muscle Fiber Density
A few more Weapon Fragments on normal
Swapped Lance and Corporal perk choices on Scout tree

Beta 15a (March 11, 2015)

DO NOT LOAD TACTICAL SAVES FROM BETA 15 IF YOU HAVE RESEARCHED ADVANCED MEDIKITS IN THE FOUNDRY. FINISH TACTICAL MISSIONS BEFORE UPGRADING TO 15A.

Features

You will receive a popup after missions displaying which items have been destroyed and damaged.
Perk trees will be revealed on soldier class selection in non-Training Roulette Games. In TR games, it will be hidden by default, but you can change that by setting BLUESHIRT_WILL_MOD to 1 in the file DefaultGameData.ini. (NOTE FILENAME) Unlocked psi powers on psi tree will be revealed as well.
Gave Canada a second starter bonus, "Cadre," which grants 4 corporals at campaign start. (They need to survive the first mission as rookies, more for technical reasons than anything). Old "Cadre" UK country sat bonus remained "Sandhurst."
Activated Deadeye perk, which grants +10 aim and +10 crit against airborne targets. Will be available to Infantry, Scout, Shogun and Pathfinder. Scout tree gets a little rework to accommodate perk.
Added 3rd Australian Male voicepack.

Fixes

CTD when 16+ items finish repair at once. CTD caused by trying to add too many text notices at once, so the geoscape text scroller will not list every item that is fixed if you repair 16+ items at once.
Illuminator Gunsight will no longer show "requires research" and be unequippable if you take ancient artifact
Cinematic Mode ini value restored. Self-fix: Add line ABDUCTION_REWARD_SCI=15 to DGC.ini after ENABLE_SECOND_WAVE=1 line (around 1753). Soldiers previously created in a campaign will not get the better bonus, but new soldiers and aircraft will.
English Male 3 VO pack now in installer. Sorry, Sean.
Numerous map patches fixing bad cover. Removed bugged UFO door on farm map, which should solve a CTD when overwatch fire goes through the door.
Fixed bad ini setting on one of the furies (landed abductor) maps, not sure what effect would have been
Fixed: Incorrect Squadsight perk text (crit hit penalty is -20%)
Improved Combat Exoskeletons will now appear in research UI when requirements are met. Workaround: Dev Console command GiveTech Placeholder_13 may give you the tech
Lots of other text fixes
Adjusted Gauss eng reqs and LMG series costs
Code change that will fix CTD with Training Roulette in Mac/Linux versions
Fixed: Incorrect ini setting with Resourceful start not giving Alloys foundry project. DGC.ini fix: line 1444, change iEng=19 to iEng=25. This will only help new campaigns.
Flak Ammo will display correct inventory image now
Annette and the Furies should receive psi perks appropriate to their levels
Fixed assault-psi icon
Removed Armor-Piercing Ammo unintended crit bonus against hardened targets
Fixed goof in which I intended to decrease big ship speed on the hologlobe (allowing more interceptions) but instead decreased combat speed
Adv Suppression Module will show up in correct build tab in Engineering now
Removed ability to see facility construction UI detail when you can't afford building it. We put this in to let you see time to build and rush costs but it apparently enabled the ability to build themo generators everywhere as well. XGBuildUI_OnChooseFacility
Enhanced Beam Optics and Alloy Jacketed Rounds should equip properly with Laser Lance / Rail Gun now
Fixed up Blaster Launcher range code
Found second place required to change Dense Smoke & Combat Drugs AOE and fixed so Dense is same as SG and CD is much wider.
Many bugfixes to repair and R&R chances that were damaging items far more than intended and creating problems with covert operatives. Individual item damage chances exposed to ini in iWill variable. We're also testing to see if this fixes bug reports that items are simply vanishing after missions.
Any item or facility that requires exactly one of an item to build will not have that item requirement scaled with DW
You can no longer augment specialists per design
Jungle Scouts will now give bonus small slot to Phalanx per design
Cans will supply a minimum of 1 meld (for extreme DW games)
Attempted fix: Attempting to trigger neural feedback will call the code that ends suppression first. Attempt to correct reported CTD. No savegame to test on, so unsure if it will work or not.
Reworked terror mission offscreen kill code that wasn't doing what it should
Fixed a bunch of display bugs related to Reaper Rounds
Removed sound when repairs finished
UFO Scanners should provide damage readout on researched UFOs now
Worked on Mechtoid and overwatch AI
Enhanced Plasma Foundry project provides +1 all purpose plasma damage now.
Old Path country bonus should correctly impact psi training time now
Rapid Fire no longer works with Sawed-off shotgun (it was granting a free shot despite SoS 1 ammo)
DW: Alien loot drops will now scale with DW setting
Heavy Laser Rifle now correctly unlocks at Advanced Beam Lasers

Balance changes

Alien strategic AI will try harder to avoid countries with satellites for harvest missions when they have high aggro
Adjusted down a few meld costs (don't get excited, it's 10-20% on a few items)
Adjusted down a few fragment costs for weapon techs (ditto)
Made Wingtip Sparrowhawks a bit cheaper
Gauss Long Rifle now halves enemy hardened bonus against critical hits (so a hardened target only gets 30% crit protection instead of 60%)
Damn Good Ground now only a mid-level leader perk for Heavy Floaters, DGG on reg floaters will also come only on more advanced leaders. A few other adjustments to alien perk trees.
Swapped back TSGT and GSGT on Gunner tree
Will to Survive consistently provides +3 will on perk trees
Removed most of elerium cost from UFO scanners
Reduced a cooldown variable concerning country requests for same item to b14 levels
Roughly doubled all meld income and meld costs, with a few adjustments here and there. This provides more granularity for repairs and for meld gains from dead aliens. Cans will grant 5 to 30. NOTE: THIS WILL UNBALANCE ONGOING 15 GAMES (unless you've spent all your meld). Fix is to download dev console and use giveresource meld command to double your stockpile.
Total Loss SW option now has an DGD.ini-adjustable chance to lose soldier gear on death. This same variable also governs soldier gear loss on death AND mission failure that is present in regular game.
Inserted code in case of DW > 1 that delays appearance of some hardcoded (difficult) terror mission rosters that were triggered based on how many terror missions you had been on
Slight bump in fragment income on Normal

Beta 15 (March 2, 2015)

A NEW CAMPAIGN IS STRONGLY RECOMMENDED. B14 CAMPAIGNS WILL WORK BUT WILL PROBABLY BE BUGGY IN NUMEROUS AREAS. WE WILL NOT SUPPORT B14 CAMPAIGNS UPGRADED TO B15 AND DO NOT WANT BUG REPORTS FROM THOSE UPGRADED CAMPAIGNS.

Features:

Functionality for new soldier voice packs is in game. Completed voicepacks that will be included in B15 release: British English Male (3), Irish Male (1), Australian Female (1), Australian Male (2), SE Asian Male (1). Voicepacks will be assigned to soldiers of the appropriate nationality and may manually be assigned to any soldier of the designated gender. More voicepacks are in production and this list will be updated when they are complete. Many props to Long War Sound Editor TrackTwo for his tireless efforts getting this working, and special thanks to Firaxis, who helped us with some processing settings to get the voicepacks sounding similar to the vanilla ones.
A new bonuses system is in place: 1) Players may choose from a number of starting bonuses tied to which of the 16 council countries you put your first satellite. You have multiple options for some countries. The bonuses aren't balanced against each other, so to some degree this is a way to play a somewhat customized campaign. 2) When launching a satellite, a player gains a specific country bonus. These are less powerful than the starter bonuses, and some of the countries that offer less monthly $$ have stronger bonuses to make them attractive. Some costs were rebalanced in light of bonuses now available. 3) Continent bonuses are now gained with ONLY full satellite coverage over all countries on the continent. Some have been rebalanced and the OTS discount is no longer tied to any continent. The strength of each bonus, and the country assignment, can be modified in DGC.ini.
XCOM will draw soldiers from roughly 90 new countries (with unique flags) in addition to the existing group, with dozens of new namelists by Uzifeline. Countries include all of Europe (save microstates) and South America, with almost all of Central America and Asia, and lots of African countries. And New Zealand. Players can still control frequency of all countries providing soldiers with ini edits. Van Doorn gets UN flag, because he really represents all of us. SHIVs get XCOM flag in strategy game lists.
Major overhaul to Not-So-Long-War, which has been renamed Dyanmic War. Instead of planning missions monthly, with this option the aliens will check supply and threat to launch most missions constantly. This allows mission frequency in NSLW to be tunable with the ini setting -- even setting it to 1.0 will provide a different feel than regular LW, as missions per month isn't set, but probabilistic (although the variables are set to *on average* generate the same mission count if set to 1.0). You can set it to .3 for a much shorter campaign, or above 1 for even greater mission density.
You can now build seven MEC suits. MEC-1 is tier one, MEC-2 and MEC-3 are tier 2, and MEC-4 through MEC-7 are tier 3. They split along survivability/mobility lines and some grant body shield or jet boot module perks. MEC suit bonus will has gone down somewhat, and some MEC perk trees significantly reworked.
Critical wound bleed out timer now randomized between 2 and 5 turns. The timer is concealed to the player.
Respirator implant item now does the following: (in addition to strangle and partial acid immunity) 1) Causes first death of mission to instead automatically be a critical wound; 2) Adds 2 turns to bleed out timer; 3) Transmits bleed-out timer data to central. It does not prevent will loss. Raised price for item.
Long War classes have distinct icons now
You can always enter build facility detail screen for readout on requirements, even if you have insufficient resources for build
Commander's Choice (pick each soldier class) now available as a Second Wave option. Removed "Alternate Sources" SW option. Thanks to Peasly Wellbott for letting us pick this up.
Missions that can expire now have a countdown timer on the Geoscape UI. Geoscape will also pause when a mission is about to expire.
Activated Tandem Warheads perk, which causes explosives to do full regular and environmental damage to the extent of their area of effect. This will be a high-level perk appearing on the Rocketeer, Engineer and Archer trees.
Added UFO Scanners foundry project. This is an upgrade for your interceptors that will show precise damage taken by UFOs in air combat (using XMarksTheSpot's new interception UI mod) If you have already completed the analysis of the UFO class you are facing.
Small items that grant non-perk bonuses (like Ceramic Plating or Armor Piercing Ammo) will now be described in your F1 HUD in tactical and have an icon with all your perks on the main tactical screen. You'll see a bit of doubling up of icons, 'cause we're out.
Individual aliens and Exalts with certain perks will show different names in F1 detail if you have autopsied the species, giving a clue to their capabilities (and providing some flavor). eg Mutons with "Covering Fire" will be called "Muton Sentry" unless they have a stronger perk that takes precedence.
Spruced up the MEC conversion UI.
Reinstituted MEC repair and added repair of regular soldier items. Many items can now be damaged during (technically, after) combat and will have an increasing chance of needing repair following combat based on how many 'true' (non-armor) hp a soldier has lost. (Items will always function for the duration of a battle.) Armor, weapons, and small items that aren't infinite or fundamentally consumable (like grenades and ammo) are in the mix, although the chances they'll need repair is capped even if a soldier is killed varying on how likely something is to get damaged (armor=higher chances; pistol=lower chances, etc). Cybernetics Lab is now called "Repair Bay," is much cheaper, and may be built from campaign start. Cost to repair an item is initially set of 20% cash, meld, alloy and elerium cost, and a formula for time to repair is also in place that starts with a baseline of 60% of build time but goes down as you develop Advanced Repair and add engineers to your staff (minimum is 72 hours). The following items are ini-adjustable: repair time% of baseline build time, resource cost as% of baseline resource cost, and you can turn off repair requirements entirely with one variable. Removed Second Wave option "More than Human" and replaced with Wear and Tear, which gives a chance that items will be damaged on missions and require repairs even when a soldier isn't hurt. The chance is initially set at 20% per item, and this value is ini-moddable. Many item costs are being adjusted downward to make up for reduced utility when they are in the shop.

Fixes:

Code that was rolling up leaders at somewhat too high of a level and occasionally letting Temple Ship aliens out on regular missions
Restored code allowing 50/50 chance for recovery of gear on soldier MIA/death + mission failure. Also MEC suits from dead soldiers can be recovered again.
Adjusted some spawn code to reduce incidence of aliens spawning in range of soldiers at mission start (without pressing them all against the back wall of the map as was happening previously)
Some overloud stacking sounds (overwatch all and research new-item alert) won't be so loud
You will no longer get meld from failed alien and Exalt base assaults (vanilla bug)
Mayhem will apply +4 damage bonus precision shot for snipers with sniper rifles (instead of +2)
Rounding error that was causing Ethereal Psi Drain to not gain any HP when Ethereal was down only 1 hp
Repair perk will provide correct bonus arc thrower charges now
Flush will not cause flying units to attempt to move
Mimic Beacon throw range correctly limited
Various fixes to Critical Hit chances and interactions. Targeting Module (which isn't broken, contrary to reports) fix to displayed crit chance in some circumstances.
Mayhem will now provide SAW/LMG damage bonus when using Rapid Fire and Flush
Reward soldiers should now adopt your class coloration and headgear settings when class is selected
Building/Tearing Down GeneLab/PsiLab should provide immediate impact on lab bonuses
Having the Snap Shot perk and 1) carrying any primary weapon without the movelimited property (ie strike rifles) or 2) using the second shot of double tap confers a corrective to the snap shot aim penalty, canceling it out in those cases, as long as the calculated to-hit before the corrective is greater than 1%. This mostly corrects a vanilla bug.
Smoke and Dense Smoke will now provide defense to flanked targets on the condition that the attacker's chance to hit is otherwise less than 100. If the chance to hit is 100, smoke/dense smoke provides a flat -10/-20 defense, because we are unable to access how much greater than 100 the pre-smoke to-hit is.
Interceptor aim module now turns two misses into hits, instead of just making sure the next two shots hit regardless of roll. This fixes a bug in which Sparrowhawks were counting as an aim module hit if it was going to hit anyway.
Fixed, at long last: Bug in which flanking bonuses for to-crit and ITZ purposes were not being applied to Squadsight shots.
Fixed bug in which Fortiores Una wasn't conferring enough Damage Reduction. Changed its mechanics so it doubles base cover bonus, (so low is about 1.3, and high is 2.0).
Fixed bug in which Mind Control wasn't supplying PsiXP.
Bring 'Em On now counts enemies at Squadsight ranges in crit bonus calculation
Alien Salvage actually provides salvage now
Council Reward probability shift when you have a bunch of engineers should work properly now
Adrenaline Surge perk actually provides crit bonus now
Chameleon Suit actually provides bonus defense when using Lightning Reflexes (ouch)
Aliens will now run harvest missions as intended at supply 1, threat 4 on mission matrix. Also a couple of other adjustments on the matrix.
A soldier with both Concealment (old Psi Shadow) and Low Profile will no longer conceal, move to low cover, and immediately reveal; instead they won't conceal at all. This should allow a soldier with Lightning Reflexes, Low Profile and Concealment to trigger OW shots and retain high cover bonus by moving to a low cover spot.
Attempted fix: Shouldn't face any fresh panic checks when reloading a game with a critically wounded soldier
Triggering the HQ Defense mission will no longer crash game while Skyranger is in flight
Fixed some map bugs on police station, small scout nuked city, furies

Balancing:

Alien roster for XCOM HQ Assault will scale up in difficulty a little more slowly
Not So Long War SW option now applies modifier to soldier timeout and interceptor repair time -- meaning they will both be out longer
UFO upgrades to accuracy, damage and hit points now stop at 32 months (alien research 960) so interception game doesn't become truly impossible for persistent-game players
Significant nerf to the power of large lab blocks to reduce research time
Packmaster provides +1 Proximity Mine charge instead of +2
Dramatic increase in Weapon Fragments required for various technologies
Increased Neuroregulator psi bonus; wearing it 3 times will reduce missions to level up by 1. Adjusted PsiXP to normalize missions per level at 5 for all levels and 3 on current (.6) NSLW setting. NR grants +10 will.
Armor Piercing Ammo item now nullifies 2 points of enemy DR. Armor Piercing Ammo item now available to MECs, SHIVs and Engineers, but won't help with shotguns or sidearms.
HEAT Ammo and HEAT Warheads damage reduced to +50% from 75%. HEAT Ammo perk made available to engineer class at Gunnery Sergeant rank (in place of RFA). HEAT Ammo will not work if carrying a shotgun. Both HEAT Ammo and HEAT Warheads will provide a minimum of 2 bonus damage. Both HEAT Ammo and HEAT Warheads bonus exposed in separate ini variables, using up our last two spare floats for ini settings.
Weapon-tech damage-bonus items (alloy jacketed rounds, enhanced beam optics, plasma stellerator) now usable by humans, SHIVs and MECs. Depleted Elerium Rounds, Laser Pumper, Zevatron Booster removed from game.
Laser Sight and Hi Cap Mags now usable by humans, SHIVs and MECs. Weapon Gyros and Autoloader removed from game.
Targeting Module now provides +8% crit and +1 base damage when critical hits occur (so 1.5 critical damage).
Abductions will be spaced out over an entire month regardless of how many the aliens plan. Previously they were stacked in the early month. Reduced allowed Abduction response time.
Reduced meld from dead aliens to make you go after cans more. Exposed a couple of alien meld variables to the ini.
Ghost Grenades renamed "Shadow Device" and no longer gain additional charges from Packmaster or Smoke and Mirrors.
Engineers may now use shredder ammo small item. Added engineer-specific item property for additional modding.
Recovering from being strangled reduces your grenade throw range.
Increased damage and reduced AOE of Proximity Mines. AOE and trigger range should now match.
Increased AOE of grenade launcher grenades.
Reaction Fire against Mecs, Mectoids, SHIVs and Sectopods (what we're calling large mechanized units) is more accurate unless the targeted unit has Lightning Reflexes, or attacker has Opportunist / Advanced Fire Control (which already provide this accuracy bonus). Specifically, added a variable to cancel the REACTION_PENALTY (which is 0.7) when firing at these units. Dashing bonus still in effect. This can be removed with an ini edit. Purpose is to reduce effectiveness of big tanky units as super-dodgy Reaction Fire busters (although their DR will still help), and enhance utility of Lightning Reflexes perk on scouts.
Equipping multiple Kinetic Strike Modules now confers +3 damage for each extra module equipped. Stacks with Thumper and MEC Close Combat advances.
Firing a rocket/shredder rocket now grants +1 mobility for the remainder of the mission (for each rocket fired)
Major Rework of rocketeer tree, some changes all other trees
Sightline HUD (red alien heads) will now display up to 20 aliens in view instead of 10
Phoenix Cannon is back (replacing Phoenix Coilgun). It is available at Alien Materials and is probably a middling upgrade to the missiles -- it has base laser cannon armor piercing (enough to do full damage to Raiders) and slightly higher damage per second than Avalanche, and all the shots should mean it should provide more consistent results than the missiles.
Added foundry project "Quenchguns" that triples the anti-DR capability of Gauss weapons (to 1) and is available after researching Advanced Gauss Weapons.
Added foundry project "Phoenix Coilguns" that improves all existing Phoenix Cannon to Phoenix Coilgun stats and is available after researching Gauss Weapons.
Foundry projects will be more moddable in the ini now.
Strategy Game alien resource numbers moddable in the ini now.
Improved impact of Snap Shot for rocketeers.
Mimic Beacon item provides 1 base charge, not 2
Increased "Reasonable Attack Range" for drones and flying units in hopes of reducing derpy behavior
Aliens with Lightning Reflexes will now care much less about overwatchers when deciding what to do
Offscreen kills on terror missions will be proportionally reduced with the number of aliens you can see. To compensate, aliens can rarely kill 3 civilians a turn if you have revealed few or no aliens.
Master Sergeants will roll for a +1 bonus to a random stat (offense, defense, will, hit points) every 4th mission. 10% chance of hit point, 30% chance of one of the other three.
Transports (UFOs) will tend to have more troops than previously.
You will see more alien 'monsters' (level 9 leaders) by the by on alien base assaults, larger UFOs and late-game council missions.
Resources reworked a bit. Reduced base alloys from each UFO class by about 30%. Increased average alloys and elerium recovered on UFO crash missions. Foundry alloy and elerium projects now provide 20% bonus to ALL alloys and elerium recovered from missions. UFO Analysis techs provide 20% bonus to alloys and elerium recovered from that specific class of UFO after mission win (crashed or landed). Slight increase in chances of UFO Power and Nav Computer surviving mission. Altered how EMP Cannon works (bonus to artifact survival instead of flat chance). Slight decrease in alloys recovered from certain alien species. The goal here is to steady out your resource income and force some investment to improve it, particularly in the early game (making bagging a big landed UFO a little less swingey in overall campaign progression), make an early alien materials tech path more enticing, and make crashes somewhat more rewarding.
Reduced base flamethrower damage by 2. Jellied Elerium foundry project now provides only bonus panic chance on its own, but it also unlocks a small item, the Incinerator Module, that provides +3 flamethrower damage.
Reduced Chryssalid will by 10 or 15 or so.
MEC Railgun will now use Minigun model and effects. Laser/Pulse Lance will use Railgun model and effects.
Arc Rifle now available to all squishy classes but gunner and rocketeer. You may now move and fire it without penalty. It still suffers close-range penalties like sniper rifles (This a technical limitation -- disabling shot can't be divorced from short-range penalty), but otherwise operates like a rifle. It no longer operates at beyond visual range. It confers +10 aim.
Alloy Belt item removed from game. Alloy Carbide Plating provides Extra Conditioning bonus (2-4 HP) but no DR.
All MEC units gain +4 hp upon conversion instead of +2. MEC Armors lowered by 2 hp.
Reworked DR calculation formula so additive modifiers are calculated before multiplicative ones, with the exception of cover DR. This reduces the effect of Absorption Fields and Shock Absorbent Armor.
MECs have slightly higher average timeout between missions
New Item: Flak Ammo. Unlocked by Floater Autospy and MEC Warfare Systems. Can be equipped by anybody. Works like HEAT Ammo, granting greater of +2 or +20% base weapon damage against airborne units with primary weapon and rockets, and allows MECs with Collateral Damage to target airborne units with its AOE weapon attack (and gain the damage bonus).
Reduced damage for MEC Minigun, Laser Lance, Railgun by 1, so it scales up by 1 at each tech level like every other weapon.
Combined Arms perk now nullifies 1 point of all DR, not just cover-based DR. (Note all MECs have this perk innately).
Attempted to make EXALT less suicidal in rushing transmitter volume with AI change to GetMaxDangerLevelForMovement
Vital Point Targeting no longer applies to Collateral Damage ability (was never intended to). Ranger, and Shredded effects still do.
HEAT now applies a flat +2 damage bonus when used with collateral damage against robotic enemies.
Increased harder aliens' damage by 2 on Impossible, and easier aliens by 1. Increased alien research rate on Brutal from 105% to 110%, and 120 to 130% on Impossible.
Mid-level Cyberdisc and Sectopod leaders will get HEAT ammo. A few alien leaders/navigators will get Combined Arms.
Increased meld cost to convert a soldier to a MEC. Decreased meld cost of all suits.
Converting to a MEC confers a loss of one level (rank) and a proportionate reduction in XP; that is, a Sergeant 50% of the way to TSGT converts and becomes a Corporal 50% of the way to Sergeant with XP. MSGTs reset to minimum XP to become GSGT.
Gave SHIVs a little armor HP that won't need time in the shop if lost. Regular SHIV now has 15 defense (vice 10); Alloy SHIV has 10 defense (vice 15).
Rework of equip UI so it alerts you when you are equipping an ammo type or other small item that isn't compatible with one of your primary weapons, and unequips the small item if you swap to an incompatible primary weapon. Damage enhancer ammos will no longer apply bonuses to sidearms. If I get another spare item, I"ll think about a pistol damage enhancer item as an option.
Three special ammo items -- Flak, Shredder and AP -- cannot stack.
Moderate rework of some aim and defense: Items will gain aim/crit/defense on a 4/6/8/12 scale rather than a 5/7/10/15. Perk gains unchanged. Soldier aim gains on level ups will range from 18 to 28, with 18 or 21 for most classes (Scout is 25, Sniper is 28 ). Soldier recruit aim range changed from 55 to 75 to 58 to 72. Wider range for MECs, with a peak at 28 again for the Jaeger. (Note MECs can use Scope now.) Adjusted rocketeer scatter so a point of aim is worth slightly more, as they have fewer perk-based options to increase aim. Aliens lose some defense on level-ups. This is intended to do several things: 1) increase value of aim and defense-related perks on the trees, most of which are conditionally activated, challenging you to employ them effectively. 2) Increase value of cover and flanking mid-to-late game by reducing impact of general purpose defense. 3) Make it harder to reach 100 to hit 4) Flatten aim differences between classes somewhat and help supports be somewhat useful riflemen.
Three aim gainers -- Scope, Neural Gunlink and Illuminator Gunsight -- can no longer stack. Neural Gunlink and Illuminator Gunsight now provide +12 aim/crit. Scope provides +8.
Platform Stability now available on Sniper, Gunner and Rocketeer trees. Platform Stability now helps reduce rocket scatter.
Alloy Bipod is now a flat aim/crit gainer equippable only by snipers, providing +6 aim at zero weight.
Slight bump in XP to reach high ranks. (Master Sergeant is 4200 instead of 4000).
Squadsight shots now suffer only a -20% crit penalty
LMG series no longer provides a 5% crit bonus
In the Zone hits do one less damage with each ITZ kill in a round. ITZ crit per kill penalty reduced to -10% per kill from -25%. (And note Squadsight ITZ-related bugfix above).
Titan armor is now .5 DR, 12 HP, and carries the Damage Control perk.
Rework to simplify and bugfix explosives and perk interactions. Sapper now provides +1 damage to HE, AP, Alien, and Grenade Launcher grenades and Prox Mines. Mayhem applies +2 damage to all those weapons and +2 to rockets. Completing the alien grenade foundry project applies +2 damage to Needle and Grenade Launcher grenades and a 60% AOE bonus to HE grenades. So a maxed out Needle Grenade can get 9 damage, alien grenade 8 damage, HE Grenade 6 damage + large AOE, Grenade Launcher grenade 9 damage (with Ranger) and Proximity Mine (again with Ranger) 13 damage. Rockets go from 7, 9 and 12 to top out at 11, 13 and 17 with Mayhem, Ranger, and damage enhancers.
Trying to train drones and Mechtoids not to double move when enemies are around.
Trained drones to use their overload ability in certain special conditions (Without giving up the triggers, I'm showing some restraint here.) Debating whether to up the damage a bit.
Trying to train aliens to set up overwatch walls when they are defending landed ships and their own bases.
Removed Smartgun Kit item (Advanced Fire Control is now on Gunner tree). Replaced with Advanced Suppression Module for SHIVs, which grants Danger Zone perk.
Memorial now displays soldier class of deceased soldiers
Savior now also provides 2 item-free medikit charges and +4 healing bonus.
The first soldier on your roster will always be from XCOM's home country.
Taking Battlescanner perk now lets you throw scanners a distance equivalent to having Grenadier and Bombardier perks. Those perks will also increase BS throw distance, but it won't stack with perk bonus.
Regen Biofield now has a 50/50 chance (in separate rolls) of curing poison and reducing panic duration of nearby soldiers, in addition to healing bonus. Adjusted psi perk tree so Regen Biofield is level 1, Psi Inspiration and Distortion Field are level 2, and Psi Panic and Mind Merge are level 3. (Changed requirements a bit too). Psi fatigue increased to 24 hours for first level, and then to 6 hours for 2nd and 3rd level to increase cost of spamming low-level psis just to get at the gear.
Combat Stims grants adrenaline surge perk (+10 aim, +10 crit if you get wounded) for duration of mission, in addition to current use.
Slowed down pace of country item requests slightly.
Chameleon Suit now provides immunity to Opportunist crits
Psi Shadow perk renamed "Concealment" and removed from Psi Tree. Now a MSGT perk on Scout tree. Hacking an Exalt array and capturing meld now reveals hidden soldiers.
Slight reduction in flight fuel for flying armors and hover shiv
Larger UFOs have more hit points and go slower on the strategic map, allowing for more interceptions while they are on missions.
Dense Smoke perk no longer provides AOE bonus for smoke grenades.
UFO initial base will not be on your starting continent.
Doubled alien alloys and elerium income from UFOs, missions and aliens. Doubled alloys and elerium costs for techs and items. Reduced $$ cost for alloys and elerium. Increased usual amount for council item requests of alloys and elerium. This makes the repair system a little more granular -- the amount of alloys/elerium needed to repair early game items (0/1/2, etc) was making too big a difference in the utility of the item. Otherwise the overall economy should be the same.

Beta 14i (Dec. 4, 2014)

Special toddler at my keyboard edition

Fixes:

Possible CTD when using Heal charge with Field Medic perk and carrying no medikits
Missing Chaingun icon (with ammo count) in tactical
Neural Feedback not doing correct damage

Beta 14h (Dec. 3, 2014)

Features:

You may now adjust arc thrower chances in DGC.ini

Fixes:

CTD when sectopod AI hunting for cluster bomb targets
All-Exalt HQ assault shouldn't occur anymore
Bad XCOM spawns for soldiers 7+ in Linux version and cleaner 7+ spawns overall
Some ghost grenade-related adjustments listed in g that weren't fully implemented
Rebates when buying multiple items should work correctly now
3rd Rapid reaction shot should process now -- missed additional clamp downstream in prior code
Linux/Mac version only: Mind Control + Neural Feedback CTD fixed (CTD not present in PC version)

Beta 14g (Nov. 29, 2014)

Features:

You may now select and equip your soldiers for the HQ defense, with some important limits: You will be required to equip 12 soldiers (this number is moddable in DefaultGameData.ini and LW default may change based on feedback), but only a random five will be available immediately, with three more as reinforcements (one automatic, the other two dependent on losses). The remainder were pinned down somewhere else and will not show up on the mission at all (and receive no fatigue or XP). Blueshirts will be largely unchanged from B14, although reinforcements will almost always arrive based on keep you at 6 XCOM soldiers and 2 blueshirts, so no more gamey sacrifices of those guys. Aliens will also sometimes bring leaders on the HQ Assault, which the leader level and frequency increasing with alien research. They will also work to protect their assault carrier better.
Hangar ship list will contain an icon indicating whether aircraft is a standard interceptor or Firestorm
Critical Wound will penalty now exposed as an ini variable for modding
Added scroller to soldier equip UI allowing more 6 items (armor+weapons+items) to be equipped. Note for modders: Small items in slot 4+ may not supply charges in tactical game; we may try to address this in the future.

Fixes:

CTDs and some other weird behavior at interception initiation (with short-range weapons and maybe Sparrowhawks)
CTD when an ethereal psi-reflects twice in a turn (we think vanilla bug)
Lockup when SHIV tries to reinforce a HQ assault and gets stuck in the door. Shivs will no longer go on these missions.
Lockup when you have covering fire, sentinel and Neural Dampening all on the same soldier, you overwatch, and a mind control is used against you. (Fix: Being dazed cancels any overwatch shots)
Bug in which randomized alien drop downs were not taking place
Added explicit check for panicking in whether Close Combat Specialist triggers
Incidents of zero damage will still do zero damage if targeted is shredded. This is to fix cases of shredded ethereals taking 1 damage when a psi reflect event occurs.
Reworked how item discounts/rush costs are calculated so rounding issues don't make it advantageous to build a single item rather than several.
Ready For Anything will now trigger when Adrenal Neurosympathy fires after a kill
Combat Stims provide immunity to crits when not flanked or exposed
Psi Abilities will no longer apply shredding debuff with Shredder Ammo
Cyrillic font should look nicer now
Officer bonus perks properly removed from MECs now
Removed hyperwave beacon from list of salable items (due to bug in gray market); increased sale price of alien entertainment to compensate
You shouldn't be able to co-equip Psi Grenades and Flashbangs now
XCOM reinforcements in HQ Defense should spawn in order of barracks sorting now
Sectopod AI won't try to clusterbomb airborne units
Medikit preview blinkies will correctly take Smart Macrophages into account in all cases
EMP Cannon should work properly in providing loot chances now; exposed its effectiveness to the ini
You can change hairstyles on special soldiers now (Zhang, etc)
Finishing a lab should correctly update time to completion of current research project in UI
Added IsLocationOccupied check to prevent aliens from dropping on tiles already occupied by soldiers.
Reverted Commander spawn points to default for Supply and Battleship UFOs, because of UFO volume not being determined properly for those ships.
You should be able to train Rift before activating Gollop Chamber again if other requirements are fulfilled
Some crit bonuses will no longer be displayed twice in shot detail when attempting precision shot
Field commander rank should show up correctly in barracks now
Drone self-destruct will actually entail them self-destructing and not just taking damage
Panicking units will automatically unstealth, and cannot be stealthed with ghost grenades. This was to fix some buggy behavior but we're fine with the nerf to stealth, too.
Some scrolling improvements
Fixed bug in which abductor research missions were providing no alien research bonus
Attempted Fix (again): Tried to remove Steady Weapon ability from EXALT AI possibilities in a second location in the AI code
Attempted Fix: Found and eliminated case in which you could generate XCOM HQ assaults two months in a row, contrary to design intent for that not to happen
Attempted Fix: Rare cases of units blocking tiles after death.
Attempted Fix: Tile blocking after a suppression-caused reaction fire shot

Balancing:

Lowered sectoid commander aim significantly so their AI decides to use psi powers more often.
Removed brutal and boring Van Doorn map from terror mission roster. Added new gas station map in its place.
Steadfast perk (and Alien Trophies and Mind Shield) now provides immunity to Muton Intimidate ability. Mutons will no longer intimidate XCOM soldiers that they can't see (so at squadsight ranges or hidden).
Mind Merge provides greater DR (1 per 45 will)
Adjusted spawn settings again to better spread out alien pods, but again raising the still-slight risk of a spawn appearing in visual range of XCOM LZ.
Mayhem provides +4 damage (sted +2) for sniper and strike rifles
Thin Men should show up more often in general encounters
Reduced meld provided by mectoids (3 to 2) floaters (.5 to .4), Heavy Floaters (1 to .8 ) and Exalt Elite (1 to .8 )
Slightly changed Commander Pod location randomization algorithm to produce more diverse results.
Rapid Reaction now allows a third overwatch shot if the prior two hit
Buffed will of Temple Ship Muton Elites
Some aliens will have access to Neural Damping perk
MEC-3 armor now has two small item slots instead of one. Removed tactical sense perk from MEC-3 armor. Increased engineer requirements for MEC-2 and MEC-3 armors slightly.
Mimic Beacons now work on a caster will versus alien will mechanism, so aliens have to fail a will-based saving throw to be affected by it. Raised cash price and will penalty of MBs slightly.
Scientist and Engineer Loss on defeat during HQ Assault will cap at 1/3 of current staffing
Increased meld cost of some items and foundry projects
Amped up alien base forces a bit. Aliens will have a higher chance of rolling navigator abilities, and "Itchy Trigger Tentacle" will be activated for the alien side during base assaults (representing them being on the defensive).
Removed some sectoid automatic will upgrades, made some more powerful navigator sectoids instead (so the critters will vary more)
New soldiers and blueshirts will equip assault rifle or assault carbine and tac armor or tac vest based on their aim and mobility rolls. You can set their ability score threshold for equipping them in DGC.ini.
Soldiers will cost $25 on all difficulties.
Increased damage caused by drone self-destruct for big drones.
Increased costs significantly for Ghost Grenades, somewhat for Chem Grenades. You'll need more bodies.
Increased elerium costs for flying and psi armors.
Tweaked up frequency of interceptor base attack.
Frontloaded some rocketeer aim gain to early levels, removing some from later levels.

Beta 14f (Nov. 4, 2014)

Fixes:

Fixed: Major bug since 14d that broke alien resource-gathering
Fixed: Typo in Supercapacitors ini entry that may have made it too cheap or possibly not available at all
Updated Spanish translation

Beta 14e (Nov. 4, 2014)

Fixes:

Fixed: Bug forcing you to reselect Fire In the Hole after each mission
Fixed: Red Fog will apply movement penalties now
Fixed: Shredded effect no longer enhances poison damage. This was causing suicidal AIs.
Fixed: Covering Fire and Steadfast on Infantry tree will provide correct skill bonuses again (+3 aim and +5 will). DGC.ini update
Fixed: Swedish last names not randomizing properly, also removed some special Swedish characters from defaultnamelist.ini that weren't showing up correctly on some machines and possibly bollixing array; updated some other namelists
Fixed: Medikit ability UI will show savior bonus correctly now
Fixed: Ship Weapon card will show correct to-hit for pilots with 11 or more kills
Fixed: Removed Repair Servos from Seeker leaders, as it was showing repair popup while they were cloaked. Gave them Rapid Reaction instead. Wondered briefly how'd they do with Absorption Field.
Fixed: Tactical Mission summary should report correct number of soldiers killed / lost on failed council missions. Suppressed the soldiers-killed report for covert extractions because it wasn't working correctly and we don't have a mechanism to fix it.
Updated French translation

Beta 14d (Nov 2, 2014)

Features:

Damaged UFOs (at 50% damage or greater) will show an explodey effect in the interception UI that will increase in intensity as damage increases. (XMarksTheSpot strikes again)
Distinct name lists for Swedes, Canadians (French and Anglo), Australians, Spanish, Ukrainians, Nigerians and South Africans (thanks to freshman LW contributor Part Time Commie). Note: If you use non-LW custom name lists, you will have to reformat them in accordance with new file standards, which are explained in the file DefaultNameList.ini
Removed some camera angles and replace ALT-F7, ALT-F8 and ALT-F9 keybinds with SLOMO commands (1.0, 1.15, 1.5 -- normal, slightly accelerated, significantly accelerated)
Man of Bronze second wave option. This option enables tactical mission restart option on Ironman campaigns. E-299 SW option will no longer be available.

Fixes:

Fixed: Bullrush CTD
Fixed: Another barracks sort CTD
Fixed: Linux CTD on Seeker behavior, was probably causing some goofy Seeker behavior in Windows
Fixed: Obscure Geoscape CTD when council mission target being selected
Fixed: Improved scrolling in Tactical F1 and on strategy game item cards
Fixed: MedikitHeal/Stabilize abilities will no longer show up on MECs
Fixed: Restorative Mist + Field Medic providing too many charges
Fixed: Remove Steady Weapon entirely from EXALT's options; they're too stupid to use it well
Fixed: Reworked officer promotion UI so it's purdy and doesn't have incorrect perk icons
Fixed: Shredded no longer applies bonus damage to mindfray
Fixed: UFO icon in Sit Room screen will now disappear after aborting landed UFO mission
Fixed: Visual bug in which seekers strangled in incorrect location when strangling a suppressor
Fixed: Bug in which soldiers 7 and 8 on HQ defense are apparently reverted to default loadout
Fixed: Mind Control perk should work again
Fixed: Bombard perk will show in icons stack in lower left corner in tactical missions
Attempted Fix: Tried again to make it impossible for seekers to do double-stealth fail when up against battlescanner
Attempted Fix: F2 camera angle not allowing certain camera movements with controls
Attempted Fix: Small Scout map where soldier can spawn out of map bounds
Adjusted a key spawning variable to spread out aliens on smaller maps a bit more and work around some failed pod placement issues. This slightly increases the still-small chance of seeing members of an unactivated pod upon landing, but the alternative is squishing the aliens into a highly restricted space on some maps.
Sapper, Stay Frosty, Band of Warriors, Legio Patria Nostra, Into the Breach and Fire in the Hole, some others get better perk icons
Some available resources information will appear in more places in the StrategyUI

Balancing:

Made it harder to spawn battleships on hunt missions; a little easier on bombing missions
Expanded conditions in which an interceptor base assault may be generated

Note: Our fixes to Mind Control involved some funny business with the Fire In the Hole perk. The upshot is that if you upgrade a 14/a/b/c campaign, your rocketeers with FITH will have to reselect that perk but also have Mind Control for free. This shouldn't happen with new campaigns or rocketeers who promote to take that perk as the campaign goes on. Obviously, using that perk is an exploit if you don't actually have that soldier up to level 5 psi.

Beta 14c (Oct. 26, 2014)

Fixes:

Fixed: CTD when 'Serkers look for bullrush targets on pod reveal
Fixed: CTDs due to barracks sort code, including CTD after FLIP
Fixed: CTDs when covert operatives hits extraction LZ
Fixed: Colors for hit points and armor points above pawn should be clearer now
Fixed: HP Display can handle up to 80 hp now
Fixed: Healing items will blink hp/ap when considered for use
Fixed: Adjusted Pulse and Beam laser environmental damage so Pulse is higher as intended (relic of switching their roles several Betas back)
Fixed: Civilians will no longer show armor HP
Fixed: Vortex Armor description will note fatigue relief
Fixed: Suppressors will return to cover now
Fixed: Council will only request laser rifles once beam lasers tech is researched
Fixed: Skyranger will automatically empty when a mission expires as long as it's not on a mission -- so soldiers aren't stuck in limbo until next mission pops
Fixed: Field Surgeon will no longer bring back the dead
Fixed: Dead Aliens killed without explosives will provide meld again. As a side effect, killing navigators will net more XP if the navigator has multiple bonuses.
Fixed: Novosibirsk city name will show up now
Fixed: VIPs can escape properly on yellow moves now
Fixed: Durand won't get Close Encounters but instead a psi perk as intended
Fixed: Laser pistol gets beam laser aim bonus
Fixed: New scrolling works in Hangar now
Fixed: Display bug suggesting hidden-but-equipped large weapon was providing mobility bonuses/maluses for covert operative (it wasn't, so no need to go into barracks and add SMG to CO thinking it will give you mob bonus)
Fixed: Apparent longstanding bug in which some bonus ammo + Dr penetration we were granting MECs (via assignment of free Combined Arms perk) was getting removed from MECs after their first mission. This caused Rapid Fire and Collateral Damage to be unavailable when it should have been. To correct MECs on existing campaign, select the MEC and use the dev console command GivePerk 138 during a mission, or give perk 138 to all MEC weapon items in DGC.ini.
Fixed: Gauss Machine Gun and Sentry Gun will have Reaper Ammo FX now
Fixed: Covert operative will be fatigued after mission
Fixed: Suppressors losing LOS to target when in high cover. We may have fixed a couple of other wonky LOS bugs at the same time by forcing a vision check in a certain place.
Attempted Fix: Tried to delay Slingshot start by a couple of weeks in a second place
Updated Spanish translation

Beta 14b (Oct. 20, 2014)

Fixes:

Fixed: Freeze when Progeny mission fires
Fixed: Bad offset when new council mission checked, potential freeze
Fixed: Europe continent bonus will actually apply to OTS projects now
Fixed: More bugs in whether covert ops mission awards intel
Fixed: Van Doorn now says something when he fires a rocket
Fixed: Removed two XCOM spawn points from Grand Cemetery maps that required grapples/flight to extract, which was a little unfair even for us
Fixed: Some spawning issues on fishing village map
Fixed: Corrected Fuel Cell and Cognitive Enhancer inventory images
Fixed: Removed Van Doorn head from heads available to general soldiery (to fix bug where they wouldn't retain hair). Van Doorn's head is unique to that unit. Any soldiers with Male Caucasian Head 14 may need to perform temporary race swap to avoid CTDs.
Fixed: Gauss Weapons should apply anti-DR correctly now
Fixed: Gauss Rifle and a few pulse weapons weren't classified correctly, meaning weapon-tech based bonus items weren't help like they should

Beta 14a (Oct. 19, 2014)

Fixes:

Fixed -- Finishing a covert extraction by escaping will award intel.

Beta 14 (Oct. 19, 2014)

Beta 14 notes: Beta 14 should not require a campaign restart; however, a new campaign is recommended for a balanced and less buggy experience.

Beta 13 to 14 known issues:

Fix to soldier heads can cause CTD in the tactical game. IF A SOLDIER HAS NO PAWN APPEAR IN THE DROPSHIP SCREEN, THE WORKAROUND IS TO CHANGE THE RACE/ETHNICITY OF THESE SOLDIERS (and change it back if desired), WHICH RESETS THEIR HEAD TO A DEFAULT. IF YOU DO NOT DO THIS, YOU WILL GET CRASHES IN THE TACTICAL GAME.
Changes to perk trees will not take effect for existing soldiers, as usual
XCOM Soldiers with Mind Control perk will lose the perk (and get Fire in the Hole Instead). Currently unsure they will be able to retrain it, but they can add it with console command GivePerk 100 or GivePerk PsiControl.
On normal and classic difficulties, new XCOM soldiers no longer get a defense bonus; instead all aliens get an equivalent aim penalty. This will mean existing soldiers will be very hard to hit (as they will maintain their defense, but the aliens will all lose aim). Player upgrading mid-campaign may want to adjust ini values to compensate.

Features:

Most maps will now have start zones and escape LZs in new places.
Aliens will now sometimes attack your interceptor bases, using a map previously available only to MP games. Failure to defend your bases will mean destruction of and damage to many of your aircraft.
Soldier hit points display in tactical UI will differentiate between armor/item HP bonuses and permanent HP
Added sort in engineering UI. Items will be categorized by size, then alphabetically.
Reworked soldier sort in barracks menus; will now sort down fatigued status soldiers below active and above wounded soldiers, and sort primarily by XP and secondarily by officer rank within each status.
Adjusted scrolling behavior in strategy game and savegame menus. Should be a lot easier to use now.
For non-Ironman games, added "Restart Mission" option to pause menu (thanks Drakous79 for unocovering this). This offers a way to get out of bug-induced mission problems (like script interruption on the base assault) and also a perhaps somewhat more honest savescumming method, in that you take the mulligan on an entire mission rather than a single shot.
More new inventory art. More unique HUD images from JCLewis. Art for the new techs and foundry projects.
Added two new options to Interface Options Screen: 1) Default Zoom Level Slider, lets you adjust default zoom level from between 50% and 200% of normal, and 2) A checkbox that lets you activate an alternate set of camera controls, where you can click the middle mouse button to directly control camera yaw and pitch
You may now recruit soldiers from two new countries: Honduras and Bosnia-Herzegovina! (Please don't ask why those two over other deserving countries like Turkey or Iran.) (Sigh. You asked, didn't you? Look, these are perfectly fine countries who want to fight aliens, so consider them representative of two important world regions: Central America and the Balkans.) (The real answer is technical. From what I understand, Firaxis coded in the Honduran and B-H flags in the texture that supplies flags to the back of soldier pawns, along with the 29 flags you are familiar with. These textures are prohibitively difficult to change, while changing all the other stuff to get these countries in the game was fairly simple.)
Brazilian soldiers will now get Brazilian names, rather than Spanish-based ones. Combined English and Australian namelist (please don't hate me) and two Spanish namelists to make this and the new countries happen. Added a bunch of names to multiple nationalities for more variety.
Alien Missions can now take place in a bunch of new cities in council countries
Premission squads are loaded blank. Your premission squad will now be saved if you leave the dropship room and return.
Completing the Exalt HQ assault will net three unique items, a really nice scope (an improved illuminator gunsight usable by any soldier; old IG no longer buildable) and items that respectively grant 20% bonus XP and PsiXP whenever carried on missions.
Added French translation, now available as separate download
Added Field Surgeon perk, which reduces wound recovery time after missions
Gauss Weapons will now use Reaper Ammo sound and visual effects to differentiate them better from ballistics. Reaper Ammo will no longer cause special FX.
Added Hit and Run perk, which allows a free shot against a flanked or exposed target (basically works like Close Encounters, except target status rather than proximity is the trigger). Will be available to scouts, assaults and probably MECs. No, it can't stack with CE (it uses the same resources, for one thing).
Added Fire in the Hole rocketeer Perk, which grants 10 aim for purposes of reducing rocket scatter if your soldier has not moved. Grants 10 aim worth of additional range for blaster launcher.
Added two cheap Base Security foundry projects, which will allow base security to automatically equip any spare laser rifles and phalanx armors during an XCOM HQ assault. Note these will only help if you have unequipped instances of these items in storage.
Geoscape will pause when new recruits arrive.
In rare cases you will get landed assault carriers. These will use battleship maps (which have fires and damage because we only have shot-down battleship maps available to us).
Added ini settings to control likelihood of new soldiers coming from a given country
Added ini settings to set costs (meld, money and days in the tank) for genemods. Also added ini settings to set extra fatigue timeout for individual genemods and psi powers, and fatigue timeout per officer rank.
Added ini setting to set initial alien bonus research
Added ini setting to increase/decrease meld from cans (multiplier)

Fixes:

Fixed: Hang when alien panics
Fixed: CTD/Hangup when MEC troopers forced into base defense mission without any available MEC armor to be equipped
Fixed: Potential CTD bug with seeker AI
Fixed: CTD when reloading mission with lots of aliens
Fixed: CTD when reloading Exalt HQ assault*Fixed: Geoscape rarely becomes semi-frozen after missions (clock doesn't roll for item construction, Skyranger does not return from mission site). Apparently a vanilla issue that failed to give Skyranger return-to-base mission in some cases; it may be more likely to occur in LW for some reason; added an error check that should prevent it.
Attempted Fix: Altered hardcoded defaultloadouts in attempt to catch versions of Sectoid Commander crash that isn't fixed by our prior fix for reasons we do not understand
Attempted fix: Found bad local in CalcHitRolls that may have been messing up HEAT/Shredding damage modifiers when applied to Rapid Fire and In the Zone. We think this will fix the Rapid-Fire-2nd-shot-always-missing-bug.
Fixed: Aliens sometimes start out in view of squad
Fixed: Lock N' Load perk will now work for MECs; turn ends on reload
Fixed: Lock N' Load perk will no longer allow a reload+turn for sidearms, as designed
Fixed: UFO command pod sometimes spawning on UFO roof, which is a problem if spawn point is inaccessible or invisible
Fixed: Can no longer sell Ethereal Device on Gray market. Increased price of Hyperwave Detector so it's worth selling after multiple base raids. Lowered alien entertainment price somewhat so base raids don't get that much better.
Adjustment/Fix: Gave sectoids, sectoid commanders and seekers "Gunslinger" perk and reduced their plasma pistol damage by 1, effectively leaving their weapon damage unchanged but removing range penalties. Their AI probably isn't smart enough to know how to compensate for the range penalties.
Fixed: Hi Cap Mags and Autoloader will no longer show "Lock N' Load" perk when equipped. These items and the +1 ammo from LnL will still stack.
Fixed: Scatter Laser, Alloy Cannon and AP Grenade showing inaccurate damage in equipping UI card sometimes; cards for Grenade Launcher, Kinetic Strike Module and Flamethrower damage will now reflect bonuses from foundry projects
Fixed: Precision Shot will not give crit bonuses to strike rifles (only sniper rifles) per design
Fixed: Marksman's Rifle icon looks more impressive now in the HUD
Fixed: Hyperwave and Gollop Chamber do not require Hyperwave/Ethereal Device to build on top of research requirement that consumes those items. Research requirement will consume items; after which you don't need them to build the facilities.
Updated Spanish translation.
Adjusted: MEC conversion will return to 9a mechanism: set to fixed stats (what you'd get with strict screening on the same difficulty level), except a measure of very high will will be retained.
Fixed: Removed soldier heads of Ken, Sid and Carter from being available to random soldiers in the mod. These were bugged when combined with various headgear options.
Attempted Fix: Exalts floating in during "fliers-only" part of HQ assault
Fixed: Lightning Reflexes will now apply to reaction fire shots that otherwise have a 100% chance to hit. Vanilla issue.
Attempted Fix: Last round of your clip with Ammo Conservation doesn't seem to allow to set overwatch. You can steady weapon, fire that round, can't overwatch with it. It's faded out and says "not enough ammo."
Attempted Fix: RFA still allowing multiple overwatch shots on a berserker.
Fixed: Dismissed officers do not see billet recycled back; vanilla bug manifesting (Recycling code in MoveToMorgue; not present in DismissSoldier)
Fixed: Targeting Reticle now shows expected scatter instead of % when aiming with rockets
Fixed, sort of: Getting some UFOs being spawned outside the range of designed ships, causing the "Independence Day virus" in which you get free kills on nameless UFOs. Can't figure out cause, but added some code to catch these errors and spawn mission-appropriate craft instead.
Fixed: Blueshirts will properly level up and be assessed fatigue if they survive the base defense mission
Fixed: Catching Breath (and probably freshly revived) soldier cannot draw sidearm.
Fixed: Plasma Pistol no longer confers -10 aim.
Fixed: Skeleton key now consumed by base assault
Fixed: Removed Automated Threat Assessment from Alien perk list
Renamed Rocketeer perk "Shock and Awe" to avoid confusion with class name
Fixed: Missing to-hit percentage on sidearm
Fixed: Text errors for Sniper Rifle series, Heavy Plasma Rifle, Plasma Mauler, Seraph Armor (which was also renamed), Titan Armor, Archangel Armor, Mind Shield, Alien Trophy, Shredder Ammo perk, Steadfast perk, Secondary Heart perk, MEC Close Combat foundry project, Smartgun Kit, Laser Pumper, Packmaster; Added armor mobility benes to text and clarified Sprinter perk
Fixed/workaround: Firestorms stuck at zero hours repairing if you reduce ini setting INTERCEPTOR_REPAIR_HOURS to below 75 (or possibly even 168). Solution: Don't do this (added warning in ini). Fix manually by setting IRH to 800 or so, then switching back.
Attempted Fix: Arc Thrower showing 0% or 1% chance when circumstances suggest it should be much higher (in the 40s or 50s); some reports that this is a display error only.
Fixed: Touchpad + Expanded perk tree perk selection bug
Fixed: Tactical Sense perk no longer confers immunity to being exposed/flanked (an unintended bonus)
Fixed: Being suppressed and/or poisoned should properly apply scatter penalties to rockets
Fixed: Aliens will no longer attempt reaction fire when hit by Disabling Shot
Fixed: Soldiers with squadsight will no longer get a couple of squadsight-range tiles for their non-long-range-weapons (like sidearms).
Fixed: Alien Entertainment council request unlocks with Hyperwave sted Sectoid Commander Autopsy
Added text to clarify Rift only works if you are wearing Aurora or Vortex armors
Added text to clarify suppression doesn't cancel overwatch; it prevents reaction shots from taking place (so the eye is working correctly; overwatch is still there is suppression ends for some reason)
Fixed: Psi Inspiration does not help allies on a different Z
Fixed: Lone Wolf crit bonus always applied, instead of selectively
Fixed: Steady weapon bonus maintained through grapple action when it should go away
Fixed: DR popup not always appearing even when applied
Fixed: A bunch of under-the-hood references that were generating log warnings but no known game effects; who knows, maybe we'll fix something
Fixed: Lock N' Load doesn't reset UI and refill ammo in HUD gun icon
Fixed: MEC small items give IMG placeholder in select-squad dropship UI. The are fine in barracks equipping view. The same small items appear fine on SHIVs.
Fixed: Paramedic use still not refreshing ability icons
Fixed: Alien AI wasn't getting angry enough when you assault one of their bases
Fixed: Plasma Sniper bonus crit put in line with other sniper rifles
Fixed: Rework of Sitroom objectives display with a lot of corrections and clarifications on how to move the plot forward
Fixed: Interrogation techs still being available even if you sold/lost your captives
Attempted fix: Psi Inspiration should remove multiple mindfrays.
Fixed: Soldier suppressing from high cover and taking reaction shot now returns properly to cover after shot. At long freaking last.
Attempted Fix: Mind Control beginning and ending should clear all suppression
Fixed: Mind Control beginning and ending should clear all panic
Fixed: Will penalty from being Mind Mergee.
Attempted Fix: Cyberdisc spin attack is sometimes at the wrong altitude, doing no damage. Vanilla. Attempted to teach CD AI that it only works on same altitude.
Fixed: Mind Control not showing correct to-hit in some cases.
Fixed: Suppressing pawn ends suppression with messed up (twisty) pose.
Attempted Fix: Critically wounded soldiers not showing up as dead on post-mission popup in tactical game. Update: Occurs only on squadwipe.
Fixed: You may no longer suppress using shotguns or sniper/marksman rifles. (The latter wasn't possible anyway by class setup)
Fixed: Some bugs in Exalt cell placement AI that might lead to them selecting Russia over and over.
Fixed: Having a VO underway when a council request registers will no longer oddly freeze the geoscape but instead popup the request.
Attempted Fix: Pods should no longer spawn outside playable area on L-Shaped Highway 1 map. (Thanks WGhost for fix)
Fixed: Added a series of restrictions for overwatch all button to work on an individual soldier, such as if it is panicking.
Fixed: Tech image for Thin Man Autopsy
Attempted Fix: Removed goofy death animations
Attempted Fix: Vahlen should stop nagging about psi testing so much
Fixed: Double Tap won't trigger when no targets in view, or you are out of ammo.
Fixed: During extractions, Covert operatives now actually leave the map when finishing a mission, rather than just go invisible. (vanilla bug)
Fixed: New MEC available descriptions popping up when armor tech completed but other key research isn't
Fixed: A soldier throwing a battlescanner can no longer have her tile occupied by another soldier if she does NOT step out of cover to make the throw.
Fixed: Battlescanners no longer occupy a tile and make it impassible.
Fixed: Platform Stability no longer applies to second shot of LEM, consistent with Double Tap.
Fixed: To-hit score on red heads now consistent with ability being considered for use, rather than always standard shot.
Fixed: Mindcontrolled XCOM personnel no longer acquire "dead allies" debuff when an alien is killed.
Fixed: Scientists will not float in weird places on the ant farm after an interrogation.
Fixed: Mindfray targeting now blinks 1 hp off an enemy's HP bars, instead of 5
Fixed: Unequip all will strip gear from fatigued, injured, psi-testing, augmenting in addition to active soldiers. These guys should have been stripped in most cases anyway.
Fixed: Expired meld containers no longer provide cover when destroyed
Attempted Fix: Rapid Fire shouldn't pop up extra "missed" if miss then hit occurs
Fixed: Progeny characters should now get purple psi overlay on character cards
Fixed: Non-damaging Psychokinetic Strike no longer triggers you-will-hurt-allies warning when friendly troops are in range
Fixed: Rocket Launcher shot following Shredder rocket shot should now do proper damage through cover
Fixed: Reactive Targeting Sensors will no longer trigger on Rift or Psi Inpsiration
Fixed: Can no longer enter psi labs from covert operative selection screen, removing ability to be simultaneously on covert op and psi training
Fixed: Geoscape should pause properly when a UFO is overhead and a fighter refuels or repairs
Fixed: Reaction shots against drop-in aliens will now check weapon range
Fixed: SHIVs will no longer count +1 for total ranks for OTS purposes
Fixed: Item stat bonuses now show correct for covert operative
Partially Fixed: On escort missions, the escortee suffers an acid hit and can't extract, and is instead treated like a regular soldier, and you get queries to abort mission (which you shouldn't do). WORKAROUND: Save and reload. Then move escortee out of Skyranger's LZ and back, and escortee should extract properly.
Fixed: Mission debrief Promotion UI now displays promoted officers ranks correctly
Fixed: Combat Stims no longer gives out of ammo message when used
Fixed: Steady Weapon button suppressed when you are out of ammo for all weapons that can benefit from the ability (including rockets)
Fixed: Bradford sometimes says "densely populated urban area" for UFO missions to rural places
Fixed: Female Voice 6 plays "I'm suppressed" when she means "I'm suppressing."
Attempted Fix: Mechtoid AI double-moving when firing is a much better choice (vanilla; I wonder if Mechtoids had a melee weapon at some point)
Attempted Fix: Capped alien rosters at 50 on supply barges and alien base in a vain attempt to prevent the loadgame CTD. The two reproducible examples I have received, along with other anecdotal reports, suggest the CTD occurs when alien rosters are greater than 50, but I have no idea if this will be partially/fully effective.
Fixed: Fixed loadgame CTDs in alien base assault.
Attempted Fix: Tried alternate method of canceling phone-home for users reporting slowdowns during play. Until B14, solution is to play in offline mode.
Fixed: Made sure AbsorbDamage was tested in KSM kill animation
Fixed: Collateral Damage range limited to MEC Weapon range
Fixed: Exalt shouldn't use steady weapon ability if they have no ammo.
Attempted Fix: Mayhem perk should now work as advertised with proximity mine and grenade launchers.
Fixed: Rift abilty icon suppressed if you have incorrect armor
Fixed: Clarified Hunker Down info to say it doesn't mitigate crit penalties if you are flanked
Fixed: Acidified aliens will no longer attempt to suppress in team-attack mode
Fixed: Civilians on terror missions can not be randomly killed if they are within sight distance with one of your soldiers, regardless of whether that soldier can be seen.
Fixed: Promotion available VO won't happen as much
Fixed: Mayhem+Suppression properly costs more ammo now
Fixed: So Shall You Fight has icon now
Fixed: Failing / skipping a terror mission in a country you've already lost should no longer penalize your monthly income again for the lost country, but instead only incur continental panic
Fixed: if you have low profile and psi shadow, reload or go into overwatch for the smidgen between the end of the running/crouching animation and the deactivation, the ghosting effect stays on for the rest of the mission (unless the soldier is moved to half cover again to 'reactivate' it): the soldier can now just stand invisible and unharrassed out in the open. But: Will drops like a rock (I think 15 a round).
Lame Fix: SHIVS for some reason don't extract on mission aborts if they fire in the round they extract. Added warning to SHIV item text that they need extra time to load on the Skyranger and should not take any actions in extraction zone
Fixed: Multiple mindfrays not wearing off in temple ship mission
Fixed: Ethereal AI should be able to target Rift effectively at flying soldiers
Fixed: Dodge consumable only appearing to provide 1 dodge. This was a display error; we fixed it by having aircraft formerly with short-range weapons (laser, phoenix, EMP) close distance to the UFO. We believe that those weapons don't lose any shots during the closing of the gap; their actual range remains as long as the other weapons.
Fixed: Aggression and Lone Wolf crit bonuses should show up correctly at squadsight range.
Fixed: Suppressors no longer get free shots at drop-down alienses
Fixed: Goofy double pawn in barracks after soldier finishes augmentation

Balancing:

Reworked Mind Merge again. For humans, it no longer will grant hit points, doing away with unlimited healing exploit. It instead grants damage reduction to the recipient of the merge, scaling upward with caster will (sort of like a shield). For aliens it will behave more or less like it did originally, with bonus hp scaling up with caster will (it's somewhat off in B13). This change addresses the reported issue of variable feedback damage on caster kill.
Significantly increased opportunities to get reward soldiers from council requests, particularly in the late game
Alien research bonus from dead and left-behind XCOM on mission failure sharply reduced (4 to 1 per), giving squadwipes and lost missions with heavy casualties less impact on alien progression
Alien Grenades require foundry project to be completed before you are able to equip them. You can no longer sell alien grenades as loot.
Neural Gunlink provides +10 crit
SMG series granted "steady weapon" ability
Reduced resources required to build phalanx armor, slight increase in resources for Advanced Body Armor, minor increase in research time for Mobile Power Armor and Pulse Lasers
Reworked UFO mission panic and bonus research mechanics slightly; now you can eliminate alien bonus research from UFO missions if you reduce the UFO's hit points to below 50% of max, and only have a 50/50 chance of a bonus research if the UFO takes any damage at all. This also eliminates the last possible gamey bonus from engaging a UFO and fleeing immediately (previously, doing so always reduced change of bonus research to 50/50, regardless of whether you fired on the UFO or not). Damaging a UFO also can now reduce the panic it generates if it escapes. (Previously this only happened with air raid missions).
Primary Weapon aim bonuses/penalties (like the +7 with carbine or -15 with heavy rifles) no longer apply to rocket launchers. All other aim bonuses (small items, steady weapon) still apply.
Made Gauss Weapons generally cheaper and gave some more ammo; made pulse weapons slightly more expensive. Pulse weapons now require Alien Power Systems instead of Elerium as a tech prereq.
Made Laser Cannon and Supercapacitors foundry project more expensive.
Gave Phoenix Coilgun a bit more damage.
MEC subsystems (Flamethrower, etc.) now all have a mobility penalty, while the mobility bonus granted by the armors have been increased to compensate. This means you can leave off subsystems for greater mobility.
Removing many mobility bonuses from perk trees; between all the ways to gain mobility from armor and weapons this is growing unnecessary
Rocketeers can now use Heavy Rifles
Infantry, Medics, Assaults, and Engineers can now use Arc Rifles (along with snipers and scouts), gave Arc Rifles unlimited range for squadsighted soldiers
Removed randomness from number of Steam Vents in campaign start; it's now exactly what the ini setting says it is. Changed ini setting to 2.
Increased area of effect of Combat Drugs.
Gauss tech weapons reduce enemy DR by 0.33. Exposed this amount to a variable in the ini
Armor Piercing Ammo item now reduces enemy DR by 1.33.
Chem Grenades and alien acid now nullify up to a maximum of 3 DR.
Transports gain a few more resources from successful harvest missions.
Reduced resource loss slightly when aliens lose various UFOs.
Adjusted alien AI so that they will consider paying some resources to find a country without an XCOM satellite to send harvest missions. The chances of this increase when they perceive a greater threat from XCOM.
Enhanced Plasma foundry project now grants +1 damage to all plasma-tier weapons in addition to unlocking Plasma damage enhancer item. Increased reqs to get project.
Made hit and dodge interceptor consumables a bit cheaper.
Adjusted some MEC / SHIV weapon combat values.
Adjusted some UFO hit point / gain values.
Adjusted some alien perks and level ups.
Reworked Flamethrower panic chances to make it less than perfect; Elerium fuel now increases panic chances.
Aliens' will will be generally be higher and will slowly increase during campaign. We've left low will a weakness on some species.
Pistol I crit bonus reduced to +10%
Increased primary alien research modifier on all difficulties, with a small increase on normal and larger increase on greater difficulties. Our observation is we significantly overcompensated for the error in this setting in B9a and earlier, as the aliens can't keep up with the humans.
Dead Exalt Elites provide 1 meld as loot if you don't kill them with explosives. Floaters and Heavy Floaters provide a bit more meld.
Defeating the Exalt base provides a lot more bonus meld
Aliens will tend toward more dangerous UFOs once they develop sufficient research
Wearing Vortex Armor eliminates all post-mission fatigue
Aurora and Vortex Armor no longer requires meld
Alien Operations tech now requires Xenopsionics as an additional prerequisite (along with any interrogation)
Destroyers will get a late-game armor upgrade to ensure they remain a threat.
Increased variance of most Hidden Potential rolls.
Increased starting roster to 40 soldiers and cost of recruiting a rookie to $25 ($30 on advanced difficulties). (Working numbers; may alter these before release). New recruits now take nine days to arrive at base.
Increased engineers needed to build each Nexus
Sentinel Drone foundry project made significantly more expensive. It no longer provides unlimited healing but instead the Repair Servos perk.
All Exalts lose 2 hp on Normal; 1 hp on Classic
Initial country panic will now show more variance between countries; added ini setting to allow you to mod degree of variance
Battle Computer can now be equipped by SHIVs
Council missions won't always be Thin Men in regualr pods. Dynamic alien drop-downs on council/DLC missions now drop to randomized locations (thanks WGhost!)
Using Psi Inspire on a panicked soldier will grant that soldier a yellow move only, like revive.
Removed MoveLimited and Snap Shot from Marksman's / Strike Rifle series
Gave aliens a small buffer within high panic to roll to capture a country (95+). This means a single UFO shootdown or abduction victory late in the month will not save a country at max panic from defecting, but launching a satellite still will. This is necessary because countries can't go above 100 panic.
Adjusted aiming angles SW option so cover provides 120 degrees of full protection instead of 90.
Added explicit warning to equip top soldiers if a UFO on an XCOM HQ assault mission is detected.
Aliens get 50 days of free research if you incorrectly accuse an EXALT country
PFCs (Rookies) may no longer be covert operatives
Panicking units caught out of cover will no longer get free move to cover, eliminating advantage of panicking in those situations. Panicking units in cover will still hunker down.
Increased cash reward from exalt missions
Increased Zhang mobility
Gave Annette level 2 psi power
Gave Furies level 1 psi power
EMP Cannon does less damage with higher ROF, increasing chance of shootdowns vice total destruction
Messed around with oppo forces on EXALT missions; covert extractions will now often have a kind of singular guard / big QRF setup.
Marksman's Scope item reworked to give Squadsight to scouts (useful only when they equip Marksman's/Strike Rifles). Will be available with Alien Weaponry tech.
Soldiers who are injured get max fatigue timeout (144 hrs) instead of rolling 96+d48 like uninjured soldiers
Field Medic perk now gives 1 free medikit charge and +1 charges for carried medikits. Packmaster applies bonus to free charge and each medikit. Field Medic unchanged for restorative mist (+2 charges, no freebies)
AI: Made pod-level AI less likely to decide to flee. Robot pods will never flee at the pod-level AI.
Psi Lab now provides lab adjacency bonus
Eight XCOM soldiers and six security personnel comprise the HQ defense, rather than 6+8.
Walker Servos now available to all soldiers. Made slightly more expensive to reflect increased utility.
Battleships should show up a little more often
In lieu of too-complex-to-code learning, Thin men have a 50/50 chance to avoid using acid spit on completely immune (genemodded) soldiers every time they consider spit targets. Also turned down freq of spit usage.
Alien AI will consider overwatch perks in deciding whether to overwatch.
Reworked the shooting/hasvulnerabletarget/team attack/haspotentialkillshot AI a bit to take into account improved cover and low aim, meaning some low-aim aliens will more likely to consider sub-50% shots a better option than overwatching yet again. Exposed a couple of AI variables to the ini in this regard. To help the aliens think, XCOM soldiers no longer will get a defense bonus on lower difficulties; instead the aliens all receive equivalent aim penalties. This will create oddities in normal and classic upgrades from B13 to B14 -- existing soldiers will keep their defense, but aliens will have worse aim, so you may want to edit these values back for the duration of your save.
Mayhem perk now applies to grenades, offering +1 damage for frag and needle and +2 for alien. Mayhem perk added to Engineer tree. Sapper perk should now apply bonus regular (non-env) damage to grenade launchers and proximity mines.
Civilians on terror missions will move around a lot more on their turn
Psi XP reworked; you no longer gain psi xp for successful use of contested powers; instead, every psi power at the same level grants the same psi xp per mission as long as the mission is an Xcom success.
Psi Panic attacks will be a bit more difficult now, controllable by ini setting
AIiens with target only in squadsight range should now seek cover if they are still kinda close to the battle
Savior heals more
Thumper hurts more
Precision Shot + Sniper Rifle series cancels -30% long-range crit penalty, in addition to +30 bonus crit and extra damage. So basically +30 crit when using PS at squadsight ranges with sniper rifle
Bullrush: Does less damage, smashes through more stuff. OH YEAH.
Adjusted Firestorm and Plasma weapon build requirements
Berserkers all receive muscle-fiber density genemod
Meld positioning now randomized on maps
Uber Ethereal gets some help
Toggling Flight Mode on a flying armor now costs 1 fuel. Increased fuel slightly available to those armors.
Adjusted council mission rewards, including those from Newfoundland mission
Various adjustments to perk trees and item and project costs
Europe now provides discount to OTS projects. Asia no longer provides OTS discount.
Progeny missions no longer trigger on XCOM HQ Assault. Will leave you to figure out new trigger.
Chameleon Suit now scout only, provides +5 defense and helps reduce chance of getting hit when LR fires
Danger Zone + Suppression covers wider area (and exposed area var to ini)
EXALT will no longer spawn in target volume on Capture and Hold Missions
Slight reduction in strength of mobility debuffs. Alien AI was cracking up when unable to move.
Due to psychic strain, soldiers may now only carry 1 ghost grenade item. It still gains charge bonuses from S&M and Packmaster.

Beta 13 ( July 07, 2014)

Fixes:

Fixed: Inventory/hp/fatigue bug. Known issue: Mind Merge will heal too many hit points.
Fixed: Blowing up abductor or harvester causes CTD
Fixed: Perk and related descriptions for Platform Stability, Double Tap and Snap Shot to change "without moving" to "without using a costly action" to clarify you lose bonuses by taking any action that consumes one of your actions, like the benefits that the Lock N' Load or Smoke Grenade perks provide. Also item descriptions for sniper rifles, strike rifles, and LMG weapons.
Fixed: Removed all Vahlen nagging about outsiders/arc thrower
Fixed (Reported): Jump Boots / Leg genemod animation gone screwy
Updated Spanish translation
Game can hang when an alien is panicked.
CTD/Hangup when MEC troopers forced into base defense mission without any available MEC armor to be equipped
Geoscape rarely becomes semi-frozen after missions (clock doesn't roll for item construction, Skyranger does not return from mission site). (Similarly: Scan for Activity will roll forward one minute then freeze with no event notice. Exiting and re-entering the Geoscape shows a country had made a resource request but the window saying as much was not being shown.)
Aliens sometimes start out in view of squad
Lock N' Load perk doesn't work for MECs; turn ends on reload
Female weapon models not aligning with pawn correctly
MEC small items give IMG placeholder in select-squad dropship UI. The are fine in barracks equipping view. The same small items appear fine on SHIVs.
Reaper Rounds FX not working on Battle Rifle.
Precision Shot gives crit bonuses to strike rifles (should be only sniper rifles)
Marksman's Rifle looks a little small in the HUD
Alloy Cannon showing 7-13 damage in inventory item detail, but showing correct 8 base damage in tactical mission.
Dismissed officers do not see billet recycled back
The UI for the Covert Operations is overlayed on top of the select soldier UI if you click too fast. image
Very rarely, an AP grenade will be unable to damage a unit, regardless of whether they are in cover or not and regardless of the position of the thrown grenade. (Noticed when an EXALT operative did not glow red when free aiming the grenade, even though he was not in any cover.) image
Removing all equipment on a trooper armed with a Sawed-Off Shotgun will display the IMG placeholder. (Visual bug only, does not prevent any secondary weapon from being assigned to the trooper.)
Unable to overwatch using the last shot in a clip granted by Ammo Conservation project.

Beta 12 ( June 29, 2014)

Features:

Inventory art for ammo variants by Obstbananae
Unique HUD images for ballistic weapons
¡Spanish translation!

Fixes:

Fixed: Plasma techs will be accessible. Overhauled how item requirements were processed; this may lead to some unexpected consequences, because certain intended item requirements for techs may not have been previously processed correctly.
Fixed: Removed Gatling Laser meld cost
Attempted Fix: Verified CTD on March Site Recon when prespawned zombie tries to birth a chryssie in view of a soldier
Attempted Fix: Drone AI has gone stupid
Fixed: Using AP, Alien and HE Grenades on successive turns on a soldier with Grenadier and/or Packmaster prevents the ability to employ one of those grenades for the rest of the mission even when charges remain.
Fixed: Duplicate running pawn in barracks after Mec augmentation
Fixed: CTD apparently due to Sectoid Commander loadouts. This will not fix tactical saves from B11 or earlier with SC's in them.
Fixed: Laser Lance and Pulse Lance causes MECs to use normal soldier animations in mission. Unfortunatley, this required having the lance weapons revert to Railgun and Particle Gun models.
Fixed: Gave into the silent masses and renamed the Saburai the Shogun
Attempted Fix: Far-off Aliens occasionally appearing in LOS for squadsighted soldiers for no good reason
Fixed: Clarified precision shot help text
Fixed: Game hang when seekers are destealthed beyond range of battlescanner by battlescanner
Fixed: Drone pod leader doing nothing on reveal
Fixed: Removed limit preventing Sectopod from overwatching or using itchy trigger tentacle when pod activated
Attempted Fix: Extended time allowed for Suppression animation to complete to 4 seconds, this will hopefully eliminate failed returned to original spot error.
Fixed: Small item crit bonuses not showing up in list of bonuses in UI (but being applied correctly and appearing in total)
Fixed: Using Paramedic and Smoke Grenade doesn't refresh abilities without switching to another soldier
Fixed: Vahlen will no longer nag you about an Outsider after you already got one
Fixed: Clicking one number key and then Double-clicking another in tactical game to rapidly activate ability should work again -- it may take an extra click.
Fixed: Grapples should work again
Fixed: New Economy, randomization isn't applied
Mostly Fixed: Ammo fill in tactical HUD sometimes only gets 1/4 of image
Fixed: Vanilla exploit that hamstrings Exalt's ability to run operations against you
Fixed: Commercial Restaurant abduction will display clue correctly.
Fixed: Bug in uninstaller that wasn't restoring vanilla executable. (Leftover changes to exe wouldn't disable regular gameplay, so people wouldn't notice any difference)
Fixed: Mind Merge / inventory bugs
Fixed: Ready For Anything (and maybe Covering Fire) interacts weirdly with Berserker charge

Balancing:

Reworked pistol stuff again to include long-range penalties that are now negated by Gunslinger perk. Also, aim-bonus small items (SCOPE, Neural Gunlink, Laser Sight, Laser Designator) no longer provide aim bonuses to pistol-slot weapons. Removed other accuracy penalty from pistols and lowered machine pistol accuracy penalty to -10 (-3 for heaters).
Reinforced Armor provides +1 hit point and noted in description.
Scout perk tree adjusted to reemphasize scouting perks and gain squadsight at GSGT, Rocketeer gains opportunist
Removed Laser Designator item, added Targeting Module item
Battle Rifles +5 crit chance
Scouts can no longer use sniper rifles
Marksman's Rifles gain movelimited penalty and Snap Shot perk, so net effect is -10 aim when moving and firing.
Increased flying creatures' flight fuel; they were running out while on patrol (this didn't happen when patrols teleported)

Beta 11 (June 22, 2014)

Features:

Added capability to include unique HUD icons for new weapons. For now, we're using squashed/extended versions of regular icons but will be adding fresh icons in the future.
New look for soldier character card in barracks - Unique Kestrel, Aurora, Tac, Phalanx and Corsair Armor Inventory images, and Alien Trophy image - Easier access to your psi abilities in barracks

Fixes:

Fixed: CTD when EXALT mission fires. (Workaround until B11 out -- don't send covert operatives on missions.)
Fixed: Slight relative will penalty on levelups with Hidden Potential (probably costing you 1 will relative to non-HP games)
Fixed: Completing excavation will stop Geoscape again.
Fixed: Head Shot (renamed Precision Shot) should work now. We've also given it a different capability for strike rifles ... it will instead allow you an infinite range SquadSight shot (like it was a sniper rifle), but with no damage or crit bonuses.
Fixed: Sawed-off shotgun should reaction fire against aliens consistently
Fixed: Interceptor stances should map correctly to buttons now
Fixed: Adjusted the cyan glow for a few new items
Fixed: RFA triggering multiple overwatches after every action
Fixed: Sawed-off shotgun now only equippable by Infantry, Scout, Assault, Medic and Engineer
Fixed: Aegis Armor inventory image has black background, rather than see-through
Fixed: CTD after completion of soldier augmentation
Fixed: Workshops providing massive rebates (looks like 1-x instead of x)
Fixed incorrect engineering text about class-limited items
Fixed: Fast build on certain (possibly aerospace) items not reducing time (at early engineers -- it works when cheating in 10k engineers)
Fixed removed some duplicate heads
Fixed again: Acid on a soldier with Shredder perk is still applying Shredded popup (and effect?) to that soldier

Balancing:

Returned hard range cap on pistols, standard shotguns, and Machine Pistols to visual range. Gave pistols and Machine Pistols -10 and -20 aim penalties, respectively. Shotgun long-range aim falloff penalties have been increased by 50%. Gunslinger now gives +10 aim bonus for sidearms instead of increasing effective range (and still provides +1 damage).
All SMG-class weapons have 1 less ammo.
Reduced Sawed-off shotgun damage by one.
Increased some early game engineer requirements
Increased mobility bonus from covert ops armor, lowered defense bonus
Adjusted SHIV rebuild project requirements so more engineers / rush-building can help

NOTE: IF YOU CONTINUE BETA 10 CAMPAIGN, SOME OF YOUR SOLDIERS MAY HAVE LOST THEIR HEAD BECAUSE OF A BUGFIX, WHICH COULD CAUSE CTDS. IF YOU HAVE INVISIBLE OR HEADLESS SOLDIERS, CHANGE THEIR CHARACTERISTICS IN THE BARRACKS SO THEY APPEAR.

Beta 10 (June 21, 2014)

Features:

Before most missions you will receive some general information on the type of map you'll be on. This won't apply on council missions.
Many new types and classes of weapons will be available, including a line of Marksman rifles (for scouts and snipers), machine pistols, submachineguns, battle rifles and LMGs. Scatter Blaster and Reflex Cannon will no longer be foundry projects but distinct weapons. MECs will have access to laser weapons, and SHIVs a new laser weapon. The Arc Rifle (with Disabling Shot perk) and a sawed*off shotgun (equippable in pistol slot) will also be available. These will use existing models, but they will be sized differently than other weapons of the same "look." LMGs and Marksman's and Strike Rifles can shoot 5 tiles beyond visual range (M&S Rifles require Sniper's Squadsight and are only weapon that can react beyond visual range; LMGs grant squadsight to Gunner when equipped)
Some aliens will occasionally have Extended or Squadsight range weapons.
A more involved encumbrance system will now be in use. The net effect is that some powerful and large small items will impose larger movement penalties on soldiers, and you can gain mobility by taking no small item at all. In general, you will be trading off mobility, offense and defense when you equip items. Some extant items balanced against new standards.
You may now set a combat stance for your interceptors as they launch on a mission. Aggressive gives +15% to hit for both you and the UFO; balanced plays out like normal, and Defensive gives *15% to hit for both you and the UFO. You may not use the dodge consumable when aggressive and you may not use the autohit consumable when defensive.
Added Ready for Anything (overwatch after firing if you didn't move) and Paramedic (free action to use medikit once per turn) perks
You now receive feedback on panic rolls and help from Steadfast perk
You now can see who is on overwatch (eye) and who has steadied weapon (small yellow ring)
Added a bunch of soldier heads
Exposed Red Fog penalties to DGC.ini for player modding
New Items: Reinforced Armor, Chameleon Suit, MEC Battle Computer, Fuel Cell, and a little number we call "The Thumper." Deprecated SHIV Targeting Computer.
Keybinds Alt*1 through Alt*8 select individual soldiers
Made some changes to weapon ranges. Shotguns, pistols and machine pistols now capped at 2/3 visual range. (Gunslinger now provides +1 pistol damage and pushes most sidearms to visual range). Jaeger and Pathfinder can have Squadsight at Master Sergeant, allowing shots for 5*7 tiles beyond visual range.
Overhaul of engineering capabilities. Workshops and WS adjacencies now provide cash discounts and rebates on alloys and elerium, via a diminishing return function approaching 50%. Engineers no longer provided by building workshops. Engineers now reduce build times. There are no engineer minimums to build items; instead, having too few relative to the item requirement significantly increases the time to build. Engineer minimums for additional workshops increased, and for radars they are still in place.
Reworked starting stats to reduce some extremes and SW options affecting stats
New Foundry Project: Wingtip Sparrowhawks, a secondary weapon system that is applied immediately to all interceptors and fires alongside your primary weapon. They have all Stingray stats except they do half damage relative to Stingrays.
Alien HP bars now show up to 60 hit points. This should cover almost every alien. Almost.
"Cinematic Mode" Second Wave option (replaces High Stakes)
- All soldiers, SHIVs and interceptors get +15 to hit in all cases. This bonus can be adjusted by an ini change.
Adding new inventory images as received from contributors

Fixes:

Fixed: You can now shoot down the Overseer instead of just blowing it up
Fixed: Ghost Grenade, Psi Shield, Neural Gunlink will now be equippable by psis
Fixed: Laser and Pulse carbine strat game texts
Fixed: Borked Phalanx/Carapace and other decos
Attempted fix: Altitude strings being buggy; shortened to NOE (old Low), Low (old High) and High (old Very High/Suborbital)
Attempted fix: Intact UFO Power Supplies blowing up after a turn
Fixed: Acidized rocketeer fires shredder rocket and gets shredded effect
Fixed: You can't sell "rebuild SHIV" projects in the Gray Market
Fixed: Bugged settings for alien upgrades; they should scale properly with difficulty now
Attempted Fix: Rapid Fire does not work on Carbine weapons
Attempted Fix: Certain items applying Alien Grenade charges
Attempted Fix: Ammo Conservation failing sporadically with soldiers
Fixed: Seekers re*strangling targets when they should be running away.
Fixed: Seeker AI also trying to cloak repeatedly when in range of battlescanner. Reported CTDs possibly related to this (or vanilla bug)
Fixed: Suppression bugfixes leaving space formerly occupied by suppressor closed off and interfering with sightlines
Fixed: Should be able to equip advanced MEC weapons now
Fixed: Soldiers should properly load saved loadouts during alien base assault
Attempted fix: Satellites being randomly shot down with no visible hunt mission at end of month
Attempted fix: Implemented updated pod randomization code to eliminate bad spawns and mix up the altitude an alien will appear at on multi*level maps
Fixed: SCOPE upgrade bonus not appearing for SCOPES in crit line items (but is appearing for laser sights)
Fixed: Rush*building a Foundry project initially displays the wrong (unrushed) time in the upcoming events list.
Fixed: Rush*building a facility is confusing. In the upcoming events list, it displays the full time required to build, which then decrements twice as fast. In the facilities UI, it is displayed correctly.
Fixed: Proportional meld on rush build projects not working
Fixed: "Click to remove" option in gene lab (after picking a gene mod, and then trying to remove it) doesn't remove the gene mod from your queue
Fixed: Covert operative loadout doesn't report hp bonuses from covert ops armor/plating items
Fixed: You sometimes have a "build the arc thrower" objective after building an arc thrower
Fixed: Removed Neural Damping from aliens (was causing lockups)
Fixed: Animations firing at odd times when using certain carbines
Fixed: Psi soldiers can no longer select neural damping
Fixed: Too much psi training success
Fixed: Removed ability to build alien grenades after they are made infinite
Fixed: Panic bars for terror alerts and exalt propaganda should work correctly now
Fixed: All new campaigns will automatically reset the map cycler, so there should be no more need to do this on your own
Fixed: Bombardier and Grenadier perks will now properly increase range for MEC long*range weapons
Fixed: Random stats on level up SW option was giving WAY TOO MUCH STATAGE, now fixed
Fixed: Some work on malfunctioning psi*related AI that should make sectoids take flanking shots way more often
Fixed: CTD on using Flush on a brainsucking seeker
Fixed: Soldier mind*merge / heal issue
Fixed: Vanilla*rooted exploit that gave you unlimited rocket launcher range
Fixed: More work on psi*related AI so they are smart about when to shoot
Fixed: Removed too*buggy launch ability from seraphim armor, and improved SA's mobility & defense stat instead
Fixed: Disabling Shot can no longer cause critical hits
Fixed: Mayhem bonus damage now applies to Head Shots
Fixed: Repairing SHIVs with an Arc Thrower will now remove Red Fog penalties
Fixed: Upsized aliens will remain upsized upon reloading tactical save games
Fixed: VANILLA bug in which ITZ didn't trigger if kill was caused by bonus shredder or HEAT damage
Fixed: VANILLA bug in which the Aim interceptor module DID NOTHING HELP YOU AT ALL. SERIOUSLY. THIS HAS NEVER WORKED.
Fixed: Bug in which unequip all button gave SHIVs an assault rifle
Fixed: Too*large MEC armor inventory images
Lame Fix: Updated XCOM database text to explain that all construction and research stops during combat missions, as all personnel are busy providing mission support

Balancing:

Spaced out early Drone DR upgrades
Spaced out EXALT trooper upgrades
Scaled back pace of difficulty increase of Exalt missions
Sniper Rifles and Marksman Rifles will have much greater aim falloff at close ranges
Adjusted several perk trees
Ignored UFOs raise panic by 2 (just like damaged ones), so there's no reason to game the system by quick*intercepting/retreating UFOs
Adjusted panic rolling so the chances of catastrophic panic outcomes are lower, but panic remains a problem for longer in the campaign. You will now get some onscreen feedback about your panic rolls.
HEAT Ammo perk now only applies to your primary weapon.
Using training roulette means you no longer get stat bonuses from specific perk selections
Eliminated multi*country Exalt clues, meaning it's gonna take awhile to find their base
Lock N' Load now grants +1 ammo in all cases, and if you take it as a perk ability, using reload as your first action does not end your turn
Adjusted Diminishing Returns SW option to be compatible with LW
Red Fog aim penalty capped at *40 instead of *50.
NSLW: Increased threshold for XCOM HQ Assault to occur
Captured plasma weapons may no longer be used directly by XCOM; instead they are necessary for XCOM to construct their own plasma weapons of any type
Significant increases in many mid/late game research times and engineer requirements
Foundry buildable at start
New foundry project to unlock air consumables, available at alien materials. UFO Tracking (Boost) unlocked with project; Aim and Dodge unlocked with project and prior techs. Some changes to costs of all consumables.
EMP Cannon effectiveness at causing artifacts to survive a crash reduced to keep late*game economy from getting out of control.
Increased engineer and scientist minimums to build more workshops and labs
Reworked some council item requests to grant more engineers
Rookies will equip alien grenades instead of HE grenades once you finish the alien grenades foundry project (when they randomly roll up that kind of grenade)
Significant rebalancing of Not*So*Long*War SW option so the economy scales properly with reduced mission density; removed most time*related settings impacted by NSLW
Improved Ethereal Psi Drain ability
Abduction cash reward now scales a little with mission difficulty
Removed short*range interceptor weapon quality entirely from the game; all interceptor weapons will now fire from the same (long) range. Balanced several weapon values and alien UFO upgrades in light of this increased capability for certain weapons.
Interceptor experience now provides +3% to hit per kill (up to + 30%) and +1% damage per kill (with no top limit)
Genemods now have variable timeouts that scale with their utility; Amount of extra timeouts for genemods and psi powers now described in perk texts (current +12 for all psi powers, +3 to +12 for genemods)
Added condition that will force alien assault on XCOM HQ late in the game if you haven't had one yet.
Smart Macrophages genemod now also confers complete immunity to poison and acid
Repair Servos perk made more interesting, now heals up to half your HP at rate of 2 per turn (total healable amount goes down as you take more damage)
In The Zone confers a cumulative critical hit % penalty after each successive shot
Lotsa little stuff
Crash to desktop when covert operation completes. Fixed in beta 11.

Beta 9 (May 10, 2014)

Fixes:

Fixed: Some campaigns still lock up on start because of armor deco settings for reasons I can't fathom. Going forward, armor deco will be set to default (*1) to avoid this, but can be changed by players in DefaultGameCore.ini.
Fixed: CTD Bug when alien regenerates when offscreen
Fixed: Carbines now have armorkits, meaning you won't lose armor decos when equipping carbines
Fixed: North America will supply proper number of scientists with 3 countries on Normal and Classic
Fixed: Phoenix Coilgun unlocked by Gauss Weapons again (erroneously put under Advanced Gauss in B7/B
Attempted fix: Changed text string "Suborbital" to "Very High" to address missing altitude text strings on hunts
Attempted fix: Swapping weapons after activating run n gun initializes the regular set of ability options
Fixed: CTD when finishing Tactical Rigging project

Balancing:

Larger pods will now be distributed over a wider area when spawned
Adjusted starting cash
- Can now set starting cash bonus as specific to starting continent ... South America and Africa get a large relative boost; Asia a small one, Europe stays the same and North America a small reduction
Rewrote mechanism that generates satellite hunts from scout missions; now damaging a scout and/or native country defense (the shield thingey) reduce chances of a hunt, while alien research increases it. This does not change whether a hunt is successful, or the direct generation of hunt missions without scout missions that can occur. Also slightly reduced conditions under which a destroyer will spawn on a hunt and increased conditions under which you'll get a fighter instead
Swapped the effects/themes of pulse and beam lasers on the tech tree, with beam lasers doing less damage and pulse more. The aim*bonus*beam laser is available early (with lower overall damage), and the crit*bonus*pulse laser late (with higher overall damage), possibly making them more interesting alternatives to plasma.
Enemy tech progression difficulty inverted, so aliens on Normal teched up at Impossible rate and vice versa. Fixed in beta 10, Manual fix here.
Overseer UFO always explodes if sucessfully attacked. Fixed in Beta 10 onwards, workaround hex*edit fix available in Nexus Forums.

Beta 8 (May 8, 2014)

Fixes:

Fixed: CTDs on map selection for Fighter, Raider, Terror Ship and Assault Carrier UFOs.
Fixed: Various typos
Fixed: Psionic Alien AI should now weigh its situation differently and use psi powers in a more measured and dangerous way, rather than spamming
Fixed: CTD when killing a mindmerger*sectoid
Fixed: Randomized subclass selection option sometimes picking from the pair of subclasses you don't want
Fixed: Regeneration always fully healing aliens; now it should just heal the proper amount
Attempted fix: Some animation hangs when seekers try to stealth near a stealth*denying unit
Fixed: On NSLW various projects that require an item to complete will no longer drop 1*item requirements (so rebuild SHIV projects will now properly require 1 SHIV chassis)
Attempted Fix: Gave outsiders some movement related settings so they can jump off a UFO roof if necessary
Damage when poisoned will now say "ACID" so it makes more sense when a robot takes this kind of damage
Fixed: Panicking suppressor will now move to cover before hunkering down
Fixed: Unlimited moves bug when swapping to pistol
Fixed: Exploit in which swapping weapons transferred some bonuses that shouldn't be transferring
Attempted Fix: Removed Vanilla EU Tutorial map from rotation to attempt to address Mid*mission CTDs
Fixed: New Economy
Attempted Fix: pawn weirdness in mission setup
Attempted Fix: Removed a set of conditions that could generate a hunt mission in an attempt to address satellites randomly blowing up.
Fixed: Hitting alt*O during a dash lets dashing soldier go into overwatch. You may now only hit alt*O and get results when the active unit isn't doing anything, and it will only apply to other units with moves left and aren't doing anything.
Fix try 2: Dead officer billets not cycling back to availability after a few missions
Fixed: Alien flags visible in fog of war
Sorta fixed: Battlescanner showing poisoned if thrown through poison cloud (Attempting to address). Should now show "immune"
Fixed: Put in LR adjustment code that was noted in Beta 7 (code was using Beta 6 version of Lightning Reflexes)

Balancing:

Alien Trophies and Mind Shield now grant "Steadfast" perk. Alien Trophies no longer provide will bonus; MS will bonus reduced to 25 from 30.
New explosives damage falloff code will use a different calculation for how much damage at a given location. Net effect should be more damage near the center of an explosion. Lowered AOE of AP grenade so it's equal with HE; reduced base throw range of all alien grenades, so they max at visual range with grenadier+bombardier. Returned rocket launcher damage to Beta 6 levels.
Acid (Poison) damage will be assessed no longer every turn; instead, it will ONLY be assessed when you take any action other than hunker down (head down for civilians). Skipping your turn and doing nothing will also prevent this damage. Alien AI trained to know this, as well.

Beta 7 (May 4, 2014)

Features:

You will now see chief soldier stats (Health, Mobility, Will, Aim, Defense) in most soldier lists
Alien spawns will now be randomized on maps (thanks WGhost). Added a few maps back into various rotations.
Significant overhaul of Grenade, Poison spit and Rocket launcher mechanics. New calculation method for rocket scatter, and a number of abilities (suppression, disorientation, poisoned, mindfrayed) apply penalties to range (for grenades, spit, Exalt rocket launchers) or accuracy (for XCom rocket launchers).
You may now set rookie headgear in DGC.ini
Included a list of candidate colors & decos in a text file for use in changing ini settings
Gas Grenade is now a "chem grenade." Against unprotected targets, it applies a mobility penalty plus damage for every action you take, but hunkering down or standing still reduces the damage. Against all targets who aren't poisonous themselves (including robots, but not Thin Men, Zombies or Chryssies), it also acts as acid, reducing non*cover based damage reduction and conferring an aim penalty. This effect also applies to Chyrssalid and Thin Man poison (which is basically the same stuff).
Soldier supra*class (Tactical, Weapons, etc.) will now tilt toward the class you have the least of, with a 50/50 chance of being that class; otherwise it will be one of the other three. Added ini setting so you can adjust chance of getting least common class.
Progeny now activated by default
Temple Ship mission should be quite a bit more challenging now
Added Super Skyranger foundry project, which gives +2 squad size on alien base and Exalt HQ assaults, and +4 on the Temple Ship (max of 12, even if you mod the game to give a higher base)
Surviving Blueshirts from base defense missions join XCOM as PFCs
Deceased Blueshirts from base defense missions are honored on the memorial wall
Added Alien Nucleonics foundry project to increase elerium extracted from UFO power sources
Added Improved Salvage Techniques foundry project that increases Weapon Fragments from missions by 25%
Added Fast Mover perk that functions as a half*power sprinter (but can be stacked with sprinter). This will generally be attached to items.
UFO alerts now include an altitude indicator, providing a clue of the UFO's mission (and whether it will land)
Landed UFOs will now infrequently be ambushes, with many, many extra troops than a normal landed UFO. This will become more likely if the aliens are suffering serious losses at the hands of XCOM.
Rewrote critical hit code from scratch to fix vanilla issues with smoke grenade. Should mostly work the same, with following changes: Sharpshooter gives +10% crit in all cases. Executioner gives +10% crit when targeting a unit at 50% or less health. Foundry Scope upgrade gives +5% crit chance to laser sight. Squadsight*range shots face a severe crit penalty, but it isn't eliminated entirely.
Four new primary weapons are available: Assault Carbine, Gauss Carbine, Pulse Carbine, Laser Carbine. They all get an aim bonus, crit penalty and do *1 damage relative to the equivalent rifle. They all (along with the plasma carbine) grant the "Fast Mover" perk.
You may now use the F1*F7 keys in the Geoscape view to shift the camera to focus on your five interceptor bases, plus the north and south poles.
Added a series of UFO class*specific UFO Analysis technologies that are unlocked by Alien Materials & a successful raid on a UFO of that class. It will provide +10% damage on all hits on UFOs of that class (as well as some guidance in the text about effective weapons against this particular UFO). They'll be quick research projects for the most part ** shorter than autopsies.
Significant overhaul of seeker AI and capabilities.
You can now build a skeleton key before orbiting a satellite over an occupied country.
Aliens will now steadily introduce pod leaders with new capabilities, and higher*level leaders will grow more frequent in the late game and on alien base assaults.
Aliens able to field monsters and other unique opponents on a few terror missions now.
Exalt now has a true boss and some lieutenants.
Damage popups now display Damage reduction effects (if any)
Suppressing with an LMG*class weapon now temporarily grants Opportunist perk and bonuses if an suppressed target tries to move; removed Opportunist from Gunner tree
Added New Combat Systems foundry project that unlocks some heavy* and assault* specific small items, such as Reaper Rounds, Alloy Bipod (with Alien Materials), Armor Piercing Ammo (with Alien Materials), Smartgun Kit (Gauss LMG also renamed Gauss Autorifle to avoid confusion) for Heavy and Breaching Ammo (with Alien Materials), Shredder Ammo With Alien Materials) and Impact Vest (with Mobile Power Armor) for Assault; Marksman's Scope, Illuminator Gunsight, and Laser Designator for Scout, and Chem Grenade (with Thin Man Autopsy) for everyone
Added Walker Servos, an assault*only item granting Fast Mover perk, granted by Advanced Servomotors Foundry project
Added Psi Warfare Systems Foundry project, necessary to unlock certain psi*only items that provide significant bonuses: Aurora Armor (with Improved Body Armor), Psi Grenade, Psi Screen (with Mectoid Autopsy), Neural Gunlink (with Alien Biocybernetics), Ghost Grenade (with Seeker Autopsy), Mind Shield (with Sectoid Commander Autopsy). Ghost Grenade is now Psi*only. Some Psi*only items temporarily draw down the soldier's will, while others raise it.
Added Tactical Sensors MEC small item, conferring, you guessed it, Tactical Sense perk
Added Shredder Ammo perk (reworked Shredder Rocket). Functions as before for Rocketeers; On other classes it adds shredder effect from hits from gun. Added to Gunner, Valkyrie and Jaeger trees.
On Covert Ops Data recovery missions (not Capture and Hold), you may only bring a maximum of four soldiers. (Thanks to whoever suggested this!
"ALT*O" key combo now puts all soldiers with moves remaining on overwatch (with no confirm, so be careful ** and remember snipers don't fire overwatch shots at squadsight ranges)
Added ability to repair destroyed SHIVs via engineering projects. Adjusted SHIV build costs and reduced regular repair times.
Explosive damage now scales downward from point of detonation (although it is still moderately randomized) to edge of area of effect. Adjusted some explosives stats to compensate.
When leveling up rookies, you now have a third "random subclass" option if you want to go for something other than the pair presented.
Added "Psychokinetic Strike" psi power that allows psi soldier to blow up cover
MEC gear (except armor) will now appear in "vehicles" tab with SHIV gear instead in regular soldier gear tab. This allows us to combine a half*dozen small items to make them equippable by both MECs and SHIVs.
Completion of rearming, refueling, repairing or transfer of an aircraft on a continent when a UFO is overhead will now pause the geoscape, allowing you to launch an interception

Fixes:

Fixed: Messed up decos on Phalanx, Carapace, Banshee and Corsair armor
Fixed: Bug preventing sectoids from Mind*merging most of the time
Fixed: Some interrogation texts, Experimental Warfare text, Chryssy autopsy text, Smart Macrophages description, Mec*1 and Mec*2 descriptions
Fixed: Bug causing too much critical damage
Fixed: Some behind*the*scenes bugs generating log warnings
Fixed: Soldiers appearing on wrong plinth with expanded squads
Fixed: SHIV items not displaying more detailed tactical text in engineering UI (when you hit the question mark)
Fixed: Targeting Detail displays incorrect total crit % chance
Fixed: Muton Elites showing up as Mectoid escorts
Fixed: Some cases where tutorial*related code was triggering
Fixed: Psi troopers should now be able to equip Mind Shield
Fixed: Vanilla bug in which targeting a piece of cover granted perfect rocket accuracy
Returned BattleScanner to default settings because we've been getting a bunch of reports about bugs related to battlescanner but I really don't know if this will do anything
Fixed: Bug in RestoreBackedUpInventory which wasn't restoring your first small item
Fixed: Text bug misreporting possible Mindfray damage
Fixed: So Others May Live text
Fixed: Bug in NSLW code that granted too little elerium from Power Sources
Fixed: Bugged code for Site Recon mission preventing chryssalids from showing up in sufficient numbers
Fixed: CTD when volunteer tries to change equipment
Fixed: Psi Grenade animation & displacement issues
Fixed: Bad leader assignments of Sharpshooter perk
Fixed: Text bug when you don't have OTS prereqs
Fixed: Some bugs with perks when tearing down/rebuilding OTS and Foundry; you can no longer remove those buildings once built
"Fixed": Distortion Field not giving bonus to psi who has the ability, even in cover. We can't change this, so this is no longer a bug but a feature.
Fixed: Superheavy Plasma inventory image.
Fixed: In the Zone perk should work now
Fixed: Core Armoring SHIV item should display correct inventory image
Fixed: Holo*Targeter text
Fixed: Basic and Pulse weapons should display proper images in HUD
Fixed: Reaper Rounds will now work with Alloy Cannon
Fixed: Text reporting various plating items don't help covert operative
Fixed: Muton Elite late game tertiary escort options
Fixed: Aliens not regenerating when out of view
Fixed: CTD when you lose your 21st country (meaning you've retaken and lost several)
Fixed: MECs sometimes showing up as eligible for Psi training, also added doublechecks to ensure officers and SHIVs aren't eligible
Fixed: To Hit detail displays incorrect total %stun chance
Attempted Fix: CTD when MEC panics
Fixed: Some replacement soldier orders getting lost (when one is already queued up) VANILLA BUG, THANK YOU
Attempted Fix of reports of MECs getting unearned wounds from first mission (set fatigued flag to false when MEC undergoes conversion)
Attempted fix: Officer promotions not cycling back after soldier deaths in designed time frame
Fixed: Red Fog display in target screen showing up as bonus instead of penalty
Attempted fix: Nasty Vanilla suppression bugs when soldier becomes "unglued" from terrain
Fixed: Outsider shard creates two distinct items in gray market (will no longer be available for sale)
Fixed: Soldier can mind*merge with a battlescanner
"Fixed": Updated psi*power text to better fit inability to use both mind*merge and psi inspiration on same soldier
"Fixed": Lowered Cyberdisc death blossom preference to almost nothing (the attack wasn't working right, so this deals with the bug by preventing them from using it)
Fixed: Bad pod support alien call when rolling up an elite operative, could be causing black screens on mission start
Fixed: Losing or dismissing an interceptor or Firestorm wasn't decrementing correct item
Fixed: Int and FS Maintenance costs incorrectly calculated
Fixed: CTD bug when overseer blows up (no longer reachable in any case)
Fixed: Balanced to get additional HP on level up with random stat increase SW option
Fixed: Reversed Plasma Carbine and Plasma Rifle item requests
Fixed: Alien plasma Weapon crit chances were zeroed out instead of being equal to crit chances of comparable XCOM plasma weapons
Fixed: Mectoids unable to reload after being hit with Disabling shot
Fixed: Swapping weapons on damaged fighters sometimes resets repair time
Fixed: Adjusted AI governing psi powers so ethereals should use psilance more
Fixed: Vanilla bug preventing mouse control from rotating geospace
Fixed: Set a check and a default Armor Deco value of *1, meaning the game should ignore the special code for altering initial decos and go with vanilla default; you can still set it manually (in case this is causing first*mission lockups)
Partial Fix: Airborne AI units sometimes freeze ** seen a suppressed floater and an unsuppressed drone appear to do nothing (we think this was a vanilla bug)
Workaround: Setting starting armor deco to 67 (kevlar deco 0 ... sleeveless with no elbow pads) causes lockup: Set it to *1 (or 0 in Beta 6)
Fixed: Pilots reverting from Cmdr. to Col. after 10th kill.
Fixed: Leaders were upgrading defense and not aim from aim stat
Fixed (I think) Weird pawn appearance on plinth before mission, related to cybernetic augmentation. Newly modified soldier maintains some elements of prior deco until deco modified when MEC suit added.
Fixed: Furies unable to level up for Psis
Fixed: Bug in which canister meld was granted when you fled mission
Attempted fix: Finishing Tactical Rigging would overwrite (and destroy) whatever items were in your second slot
Fixed: Perks assigned to SHIV AutoSentry Turret and Adapative Tracking Pods corrected to what text says the should be doing
Fixed: Buggy assignment of Fire Rocket to Engineer subclass
Fixed: Removed Rapid Reaction from list of perks exposed to Training Roulette because it was still showing up on trees with Sentinel
Fixed: Soldier jumping genemod perk animation sometimes missing. This fix may fix some other perk*related animation issues as well.
Attempted Fix: Continent bonuses not being properly restored upon liberation of base (satellite sometimes providing it over country before base is liberated)
Fixed: Banshee armor inventory image missing, incorrect depleted elerium rounds inv image
Fixed: Missing mission*based PsiXP for Psi Shadow

Balancing:

UFOs that are to land on harvest and research missions will now head straight for their destination rather than fly around like a great big target, giving you less time to shoot them down. This means that you should see more landed small UFO missions (which have been too easy to miss because they are fairly easy to shoot down). In addition, larger UFOs on certain missions will fly in ways that give a clue to the nature of the mission and what's coming next.
Hunter UFOs are now visible anywhere in the world, regardless of satellite or interceptor coverage. This gives you a mechanism to prevent undetected UFOs on hunts shooting down satellites as you launch them.
Reduced array of conditions that will generate a Hunter UFO.
Thin Man poison spit range reduced slightly; Suppression now reduces it by half, gave Thin Men access to perks that can increases its range
Minor AI changes to sectoid and in a few other places
Increased some perk bonuses when selecting on level*up. Taking Steadfast, for example, should give +5 will. Covering Fire will give better aim bonuses.
Steadfast perk should now protect against chain panic
Various grenade*throwing aliens no longer receive Bombard perk by default; instead it can show up as a leader or navigator perk.
Significant rework of Interception Armor/Armor Piercing numbers. The intent (we'll see how it plays out) is to create smoother tiers of both weapons and ships
Using a fatigued soldier on a mission deals 1 wound, not 2
Scaled down some damage upgrades for various aliens
Aliens take research hit when they lose a base
Gray market will offer 20% item value instead of 50% for non*artifact item sales; workshop rebates significantly reduced; cash rebates will be capped at 25% of item value (instead of total value * 1). This is to prevent exploit of selling items for more than their manufacture cost.
Reduced outsider accuracy on Normal difficulty
Stretched out many alien upgrades so they will happen over longer timeframe (general easing of difficulty)
Reworked UFO encounter table some, should impact alien resource*gathering and frequency of raiders/destroyers in particular
Blueshirts no longer receive will and HP nerfs
Little more meld; little less in NSLW
Increased cyberdisc frequency
General increase in engineer requirements for many items, with a particular increase for mid* to late*game items
Adjusted council requests for weaponry
Engineer receives *1 mobility upon first promotion. (Solution: Use a carbine)
Gene mods made cheaper again; extra timeout per genemod reduced to 6 hours
Slightly reduced alloy recovery on normal (which I'd bumped in a prior Beta, but it's still more than other levels) and increased fragment recovery on all difficulties
Adjustments to some research times
Aliens marginally less likely to retreat, particularly in large pods that have taken losses
Capped many council item request rewards at 2 scientists / engineers instead of 3
Reduced Infantry and Goliath aim bonuses on level up slightly, increased Guardian aim bonuses slightly
Adjustments to some soldier armor stats; added an early armor tech for greater granularity in developing upgrades. Phalanx Armor is reasonably accessible early on; Carapace and Kestrel moved to "Advanced Body Armor."
Chance of UFO blowing up versus crash*landing now scales with UFO size. Small UFOs slightly more likely to blow up; mediums the same as prior Betas; larger ones less likely. Overseer will never blow up, 'cause I think Insufferable Smartypants will blow a gasket when he finally kills an Overseer and it goes boom.
MEC adjustments: Absorption Fields perk nerfed to cap at 40 percent damage reduction (vice 50), all MECs get +10 defense and 1 DR (2 DR if using One For All), and they get the Combined Arms perk, nullifying 1 point of enemy Cover DR; MEC*3 suit gets Tactical Sense perk automatically (see also new Tactical Sensors item for MEC*1 and MEC*2)
Basic and Alloy SHIVs given +10 defense. (Hover SHIV gets +10 from new air evade bonus)
Adjusted all MEC perk trees except Archer, removing Tactical Sense and Lock N' Load
Adjusted Rocketeer tree to put Javelin Rockets at Master Sergeant
Significant rewrite of Exalt mission code; elites should appear in a timely fashion and difficulty will ramp up as time goes on. Did some sprucing up of Exalt HQ raid, too.
Set minimum damage on Neural Feedback to 1 (if it did 0 damage, it would appear it did nothing sometimes)
Kinetic Strike Module now does variable damage
Flamethrower now causes a panic roll, not auto*panic
Railgun and Particle Cannon now get 3 ammo before reload is required (instead of 2)
Lightning Reflexes now provides a 90% reaction fire to*hit penalty on the first shot, and 70% penalty on 2nd and additional shots
Alien Neurology no longer requires so many fragements, but some sectoid corpses instead
All environmental damage somewhat randomized; aliens now apply damage bonus to environmental damage as well.
Defeating the Exalt base grants 25 meld
You may sell SHIV chassis (from destroyed or dismantled SHIVs) on the gray market
Alien AI will have a lower threshhold of determining a target vulnerable, which should making them a bit more shooty
Telekinetic Field psi perk improved to not apply bonuses to enemies within field
Neural Feedback now has a chance to protect nearby friendlies from psi attack
Removed smoke grenade from TR exposed perks, added Vital Point Targeting in its place
Medics and Scouts may now use shotgun*class weapons. Scouts may now use Sniper Rifles. Scout tree adjusted for Snap Shot at Gunnery Sergeant (and some other balancing moves). Scout won't have access to squadsight. This is to see if scouts can work as an optional "designated marksman" role that differs a bit from snipers.
Lowered mission*based Psi XP from non*contested power

Beta 6 (March 29, 2014)

Features:

Aliens now employ a UFO to assault XCOM's base. Losing the base mission does not mean the end of the game, but instead inflicts heavy damage on your resources. The aliens can now assault XCOM's base multiple times.
Added ability that lets you set soldiers' initial armor deco and color via repurposed DefaultGameCore.ini entries, and one*time class*dependent color and headgear change upon promotion to specialist
Added Alien Metallurgy Foundry project, which increases the alloys you recover from UFOs you shoot down
Added small items: Alloy Belt for SHIVs (Alien Materials) and Alloy Hauberk for MECs (MEC Warfare) (provide bonus HP); Psi Grenade (enhanced Flashbang for Psi Troopers)
Added some armor deco choices. Genemods will no longer be restricted to eight genemod*specific decos.
You may now transfer damaged interceptors to other continents for repair.
You may now rearm damaged interceptors, freeing up their weapon for other aircraft. Rearming an aircraft now takes 7 days for all weapons derived from alien techs; 12 hours for basic missile weapons.
Interceptors and UFOs may now score (and suffer) from critical hits, in which a hit does double damage. Armor Piercing weapons increase the chance of critical hits, while armor (not hit points) reduces it. This may lead to interceptors being shot down more often.
Using Steady Weapon ability now plays overwatch sound effect
You may now sell captives directly on the gray market. The amount of money offered is low; the primary purpose for you to check your inventory of captives at any give time. (Thanks for the suggestion!
Added a few of the larger abduction maps to the terror mission rotation

Fixes:

Kinetic Strike Module, Electropulse will correctly have multiple uses (instead of 1)
Aliens can now shoot down your satellites again
Rookies are properly made ineligible for MEC conversion (and other fixes to MEC conversion candidacy)
Fixed: Incorrect prompts for level 4 psi to finish game by entering gallop chamber.
Fixed: Possibility for negative meld collection from containers. Also adjusted meld reward amounts to be more granular.
Added missing text for Sectoid Commander prisoner transfer
Fixed potential CTDs on most UFO missions after alien research gets particularly high (Thanks Minoitos and Teemredd31 for the savegames! )
Removed Combined Arms from showing up in Valkyrie perk tree and corrected with Packmaster
Fixed: Aliens should use grenades again
Fixed problem with Advanced Servomotors with workaround by creating new MEC small item that grants sprinter perk. Still applies general mobility bonus to all SHIVs.
Reduced northernmost parts of UK and Germany slightly to see if that will reduce North Pole bug
Fixed bug causing newly freed countries to be at max panic, should now be freed around 80 panic
Fixed: You should no longer be able to access the vanilla MEC construction interface
Attempted Fix: Using disabling shot on an alien in overwatch should no longer give the alien unlimited overwatch shots.
Attempted Fix to CTD ** Suppressed sectoids will no longer try mind*merge
Attempted Fix: Sending an interceptor after a landing UFO should abort interception after the UFO goes to ground
Fixed: Prereqs for Alien Propulsion
Fixed: Damage Control Pods should function now
Fixed: Accidentally swapped SHIV Heal and Drone Capture requirements and tech tree position.
Fixed: Alloy*Carbide Applique should show up as SHIV inventory item
Fixed: Phoenix Cannon shows up under Gauss Weapons in line with posted tech tree (instead of Advanced Gauss Weapons)
Fixed: Full list of unlocked foundry projects should appear when you complete a tech
Fixed: Removed Suppression from candidate Training Roulette perks to avoid conflicts with class skills
Fixed: Heavy Plasma tech now correctly requires Heavy Plasma items
Reworked Rush build, adjusted some costs and bonuses (it should generally be better). Still one display bug, noted in Confirmed issues.
Restorative Mist should show charges in equip UI now
Set range of alien supply to keep things from getting out of hand (in either direction) and avoid weirdness of negative numbers
Reduced size of largest big aliens to avoid graphical glitches
Rewrote code that determines Exalt HQ assault forces
Attempted to fix issues with multiple UFOs spawning simultaneously by randomizing their appearance time
Psi icon will glow purple at level 1 sted 4
Fixed: Psi Training time should show correctly in barracks listing
Fixed: Hyperwave should show correct alien counts
Fixed: Bug in BuildPod preventing second main alien from being added
Fixed: MEC suits will be available for use again if their driver is killed
Fixed: Code to send best pilots to Firestorms should work now
Rewrote tech credit code from scratch to better apply techs to credits
Returned MEC weapon env damage to default
Attempted fix: Reinforcements during base mission should show up properly now
Fixed: Equipping multiple units of MEC large items now grant bonus charges
Fixed: Each dead civilian on terror missions should be +3 panic in country, +1 on continent, instead of +4/+1
Fixed: You should properly get high mission XP from tough missions (such as terror missions) now, instead of zero
Fixed: UFOs on certain types of missions will appear further away from their targets, giving you time to intercept them.
Fatigued Soldiers defending against a base assault should no longer suffer exhaustion wounds, just more fatigue
SHIVs may get called up for base assault defense

Balancing:

Testing increased throw and scan range of battlescanner
Mec*1 and Mec*2 get 1 extra small item slot
Basic SHIV gets +1 hp and 1 extra small item slot
Increased Meld recovered from canisters; when playing with Not*So*Long*War second wave option you should get A LOT more
Reduced cost of some genemods
Reduced timeout per genemod to 8 hours per
Reduced cost of Alloy SHIV to $250 and Hover Shiv to $350, Increased Alloy SHIV engineer requirements and moved to Improved Body Armor as prereq
Added Alien Materials as prereq for Alien Biocybernetics
Significantly reduced chance to lose countries with max panic each month if you have a satellite there
Reduced cyber's preference for death blossom
Increased MEC trooper conversion time to 10 days
It will take longer for aliens to begin accumulating significant "bonus" research; Also lowered somewhat multiplier determining when aliens level up on lower difficulties
Tanks now get same defense bonus as XCom on lower difficulties
Lowered build times but increased cost of mid*tier interceptor weapons
Improvements and stronger upgrades for sectoid, thin man, outsider, Muton
Rocketeer gets a more aim on level*ups, less hit points
Spread out level*up will bonuses quite a bit more
You now should generally have more time to engage UFOs on missions
Cyberdisc Death Blossom should be more hurty now
Increased panic chance when nearby soldiers panicking
Aurora Armor now limited to Psis only
Rework of HEAT and explosives damage code to provide more even bonuses
Reduced base crit chance provided by gauss sniper rifle
Reworked seeker AI
Reduced some alien damage upgrades
All MEC armors have +2 hit points
Little more damage from EMP Cannon, little less expensive
Significant reworks to Goliath (Damage*absorbing monster) and Guardian (not forced into medic path, best overwatch perks), with adjustments to most of the other MEC classes
Mimic Beacon now psionic*only item and much cheaper
Increased mectoid accuracy

Beta 5 (March 15, 2014)

Features:

Pilots (if you rename them) will now carry ranks commensurate with the number of kills they have achieved

Fixes:

Fixed: SHIV unloading Tread Deck after mission and equipping kevlar armor instead
Fixed: Extra Conditioning should work with all armors now
Fixed: Psis should no longer be locked out from all items
Fixed: Tech report for Advanced Beam Lasers should display properly now
Fixed: HEAT Ammo and Shredder Rocket text on damage bonuses
Attempted Fix: CTD after alien grenades foundry project completed
Fixed: CTD when Berserker uses Bullrush ability
Attempted Fix: Hang when defeating second alien base
Removed poorly performing terror maps (dam and fishing village) from terror mission rotation
Attempted fixes to unimpressive enemy forces on Exalt missions

Balancing:

Some adjustments to alien encounter table, net effect will be slight easing of difficulty
Adjusted when council missions may occur

Beta 4 (March 13, 2014)

Rebuilt to work with EW Patch 3 (March 10, 2014 patch)

Features:

Close and Personal renamed Close Encounters, because Hicks

Fixes:

Terror Missions should properly scale up now
Game no longer freezes when you finish Iron Skin or Smart Macrophages projects (there will be no cinematic for these)
Removed nonfunctioning Squadsight from Jaeger tree and reworked tree a bit
Fixed: Medikits (and possibly other items) provide charges in Slot 2 regardless of loadout
Rewrote malfunctioning supra*class selection code to just randomly pick after the one of each of the first four classes have been awarded
Code to prevent alien grenades from being sell*able in the gray market once they are infinite

Balancing:

Alien unit upgrades significantly slowed on lower difficulties.
Alien Computers council request now for 2 instead of 5 units
Alien Power Source council request now for 2 instead of 3 units
Increased Sectoid Will gain over time
Slight reduction in Pulse Laser, Xenopsionics, Xenogenetics and Alien Biocybernetics research time and resources required
Slight increase in Advanced Aerospace Concepts research time
Significant reduction in cost and maintenance requirements for psilabs
Relative increase in drone pods after first few months
Aliens will launch terror missions in a few more strategic situations
HEAT Ammo, HEAT Warheads and Shredder Rockets made somewhat more effective
Alien Grenades foundry project upgrades needle grenades by +2 damage

Beta 3 (March 9, 2014)

Features:

Alt*F1 toggles HUD in tactical game
Alt*F2 through Alt*F9 offers some new camera angles
Grenadier now applies +1 greande to direct*damage grenades only
Smoke and Mirrors now applies +1 grenade for all support grenades
Lightning Reflexes now applies a severe aim penalty to all reaction/overwatch fire directed at the unit, rather than affording perfect defense against the first shot. This mean units activating LR can always be hit, but it should be pretty rare.
When a unit is suppressed and breaks cover to run, the reaction shot now takes effect *after* the unit has left cover, making doing so more dangerous
Fixed: Scatter Laser now properly becomes available with Advanced Pulse Lasers tech
Attempted Fix: Covert Operative not fatiguing properly

Fixes:

Soldier deploys on cover on pier council mission.
Bug in Assault perk tree (Close and Personal)
Bug in Rocketeer perk*based stat upgrades (mobility)
Training Roulette fixed
A bunch of text fixes for items (including Phalanx and Aegis armors, also council item thank yous shouldn't overflow into reward line anymore)
Certain MEC "items" that shouldn't appear in engineering won't appear in engineering
Attempted fix: Installation fails when XCom isn't in primary Steam folder. Hex edit solution appended downforum.
Probably fixed: Some users reporting rotating through a very small set of maps
Fixed MEC Warfare Systems foundry project not initializing
Fixed War Weariness.
Fixed Results Driven.
Fixed MEC equipping problems.
Fixed bugged XP check for Psi level*ups.
Fixed some problematic base assault code
Fixed Xenopsionics not showing up in research archives
Fixed SHIV Suppression and MEC Close Combat not appearing in Foundry list when tech tree says it should
Fixed Sectoid corpse council item request (was requesting alloys for cash, should now request corpses for scientists).
Fixed live Berserker and Muton requests
Requests should now properly alert you that they include panic reduction as a reward
CTD in genemod selection (occurs sporadically after several clicks on double*click of brain damping and maybe another mod)
CTD when Exalt Heavy fires rocket; also issues with ranging
Attempted fix to seeker staying stealthed indefinitely
Attempted fix soldier not always leveling up when selecting Steadfast
Attempted fix: Certain gear changes not being properly saved; Loadouts after missions should be saved; any changes made in barracks will overwrite saved loadout and generate new saved loadout
Fixed: CTD in psi selection, and some other bad code
Item cards should now display correct charge information (including perk info in equipping screen)
Some inventory image fixes
Fixed: Completing Armored Fighters project leaves fighters "injured" but not repairing
Fixed: Game freezing when applying flush and panic*move effects on hunkered soldiers and aliens; hunker now provides immunity to any forced*moves
Fixed: * Mind merge animation doesn't always disappear when sectoids get zapped
Fixed some discrepancies in rush build code, not sure if was causing problems or not
Attempted fix for mindmerge*Mectoid shield misbehavior
Fixed bug that was providing wrong cash payouts for blowing up UFOs
Attempted fix to Arc Thrower stun fails
Fixed bug in which using keyboard to select soldiers allowed you to violate squad size limits

Balancing:

Made Phalanx Armor a little more expensive and removed defense bonus.
Reduced initial Cyberdisc DR by 1.
Reduced flashbang effect duration by 1/2 turn.
Reduced Psi Training time
Swapped Dense Smoke and Smoke and Mirrors on Engineer tree
Reworked psi XP to avoid gamey opportunities to get more
Rush*building any item costs a minimum of 1 meld
Rush*building facilities costs 10 meld
AP Grenade now ignores cover*based DR (and will do more damage)
Blowing up UFOs entirely provides some alloy salvage
Floaters now offer a little alloy salvage; Seekers now offer alloy and elerium salvage
Aliens will be grow more annoyed at XCOM when they lose a big ship relative to losing a little ship
Fighters and Destroyers a little better at initiating hunts
NSLW: Officers have reduced requirement for missions in grade before being eligible for promotion to next officer level
Gauss Sniper Rifle starts with one*round magazine
Adjusted several level*up perks with bonus status to make them more enticing
Slight increase in rocket accuracy

Beta 2 (March 2, 2014)

Fixes:

Fixed bug in which soldiers never hit on normal difficulty.
Fixed bug in World Diversity Code granting thousands of hit points.
Fixed bug that was displaying AI debug code in objectives window.

Beta 1 (March 2, 2014)

First Beta v3.0 release.

Note: Versions 2.12 and earlier are Long War for EU.

Change Log (Long War)

Contents

Vanilla game bugs

Beta 15c2 (April 12, 2015)

Beta 15b (March 11, 2015)

Beta 15a (March 11, 2015)

Beta 15 (March 2, 2015)

Beta 14i (Dec. 4, 2014)

Beta 14h (Dec. 3, 2014)

Beta 14g (Nov. 29, 2014)

Beta 14f (Nov. 4, 2014)

Beta 14e (Nov. 4, 2014)

Beta 14d (Nov 2, 2014)

Beta 14c (Oct. 26, 2014)

Beta 14b (Oct. 20, 2014)

Beta 14a (Oct. 19, 2014)

Beta 14 (Oct. 19, 2014)

Beta 13 ( July 07, 2014)

Beta 12 ( June 29, 2014)

Beta 11 (June 22, 2014)

Beta 10 (June 21, 2014)

Beta 9 (May 10, 2014)

Beta 8 (May 8, 2014)

Beta 7 (May 4, 2014)

Beta 6 (March 29, 2014)

Beta 5 (March 15, 2014)

Beta 4 (March 13, 2014)

Beta 3 (March 9, 2014)

Beta 2 (March 2, 2014)

Beta 1 (March 2, 2014)

See also

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