FOREWORD

This document is designed to accompany a pre-order build of the

independently-developed strategy game Xenonauts.

Weve put this together for several reasons. Firstly, to give users an idea of how
the final product will look and to help them understand where were going and
how were getting there. Secondly, to aid bugtesting it should help users work
whether an issue is an actual bug that needs reporting on our forums, or just a
feature thats not yet been implemented.

It also gives full details of the in-game controls, as not everyone who plays the
game is an X-Com veteran (and even those who are will find weve added to the
original substantially). Theres also some developer commentary thrown in in the
odd place, to give you some idea of our thought processes behind what were
doing.

If you feel theres anything in this document that is missing or does not provide a
satisfactory explanation, post up on our forums here and let us know. This
document will form the basis of the manual for the final game, so do let us know
if youve any thoughts on how we can improve it.

We very much appreciate the support youve shown for the project by paying for
an incomplete game. So a big thank you from all of us here at Goldhawk, and we
hope you enjoy what weve made so far.

Chris.
(Xenonauts Project Lead)
GEOSCAPE:
The Geoscape is the strategic map that you use to build bases and control your
interceptors on. The large blue circles around your first base represents radar
range the solid circle is detection radar range, and the faint dotted circle is
tracking radar range.

UFOs will only be detected by radar inside the detection range, but once they are
detected the signal will not be lost unless they pass beyond tracking range.

Key Controls:
You can scroll the map with your mouse, and the mousewheel controls
map zoom.
The buttons in the top-left of the screen control the flow of time.
The Launch Interceptors button at the bottom of the screen allows the
player to launch aircraft on patrol.
o Send fighters to a UFO to engage in Air Combat.
o Send a dropship to a Crash Site or landed UFO to attempt to capture
it and recover the alien technology.
o Select up to three aircraft from the same base to launch them as a
squadron.
o Shift-click when setting a destination to set waypoints for the
aircraft.
The various management screens can be accessed by clicking the tabs
along the top of the screen. Specific base management screens can be
accessed by double-clicking on the icon for the desired base.
Spacebar acts as a panic button that will automatically set the game to
the slowest time speed and zoom the view out to its farthest zoom setting.

COUNTRY RELATIONS & EVENTS SYSTEM:

The Xenonauts receive their funding from each of the ten map regions. It is
delivered on a monthly basis, and is reached by multiplying each regions
Relations Score by a fixed multiple that represents how developed / large the
region is. Each Relations Score starts the game at 500, and is increased or
decreased throughout the game based on the players performance. If it reaches
0, that region is lost to the aliens and turns black on the Geoscape.

The Relations Score is affected by the players actions if they shoot down a
UFO, destroy an alien base, respond to a terror site or perform other such
positive actions, a score boost is received in the appropriate region. Similarly,
alien activity will reduce the Relations Score for any areas affected.

In the original X-Com, it was not always clear why your performance was good or
bad if a UFO spawns on the other side of the world to your base, youll never
know it had been there. To make this more intuitive, Xenonauts employs the
Events system. Each UFO mission type has a % chance per minute to generate
an event, which takes the form of a report from the local regional authorities
and causes damage to the Relations Score (the UFO simply flying around causes
no damage).

The events take different forms depending on the mission that generates them,
and are represented by a ping and some accompanying text on the Geoscape.
For example, a UFO on a Research mission has a chance to generate an
Abduction event, whilst one on an Air Superiority mission has a chance to
generate an Airliner Destroyed event. These cause relations damage with the
affected region relative to their severity.

INVASION AI:
The alien invasion AI is based on a simple ticker, which starts at 0 and can only
count upwards. It is increased most frequently when an Event is generated, but
some missions generate ticker points simply by the UFO flying around the map.

The aliens start off with only a couple of missions available to them, but as the
invasion ticker ticks up past certain points, new mission types are unlocked. Each
mission is performed by a specific UFO type between a range of values, and is
replaced by a more powerful UFO type when the ticker moves past that range. A
UFO is more likely to be generated with escorts towards the upper end of its
range.

There are two types of mission, passive and aggressive missions. The passive
missions are the background invasion escalation missions, which spawn
randomly across the map. The aggressive missions are the alien response to the
Xenonaut threat, so spawn around areas of high player activity (ie, Air Superiority
missions are spawned in areas where the most UFOs have been lost).

Upcoming Features:
The Geoscape is nearly complete mechanically, as we only have a handful of
systems remaining to put in place:
The crew of each UFO need to be assigned on spawn, and then adjusted
for damage taken to provide the number of surviving crew (and the
number of dead bodies) to the Ground Combat when missions are
launched against Crash Sites.
Were working on a GUI that is a lot more appealing and immersive than
the current one. Please see the Future Plans document for details.

Developer Commentary: Im quite proud of the Events system I think its

one of the most effective additions weve made to the X-Com formula, despite
being a relatively simple system. Though it does serve a purpose mechanically,
for me the biggest reason why I included it was that I felt like I was operating in
a vacuum when playing in the original game whereas in reality, an alien
invasion would naturally dominate the worlds attention!
The Events try to give the player a real sense that humanity is relying on them
to save the world, as well as providing a sense of intelligent invasion escalation
as the events change from abductions, crop circles and strange weather all the
way up to bombing attacks on vital civilian and military infrastructure.
BASE MANAGEMENT SCREEN
This screen provides a top-down view of the base, showing the structures
currently built and those under construction. The sidebar allows the construction
of new buildings and provides information on the capacity and maintenance
costs.

Key Controls:
Clicking the Construct New Building button on the bottom of the sidebar
switches the sidebar between Construct and Base Information modes.
Mouseover of a structure provides detailed information on it.
Right-click on a structure can be used to demolish structures.
The Base Selector in the centre of the topbar allows the player to quickly
switch between bases if they have built more than one.

BASE MAP:
This is the main component of the screen. A player requires good base facilities if
they are to support their combat, research and manufacturing efforts, and
structures and viewed and constructed on the map here. A popular feature that
remains from the original X-Com is that if the aliens launch an attack on your
base, an exact replica of your base will be used as the battle map, and if
structures are destroyed in the attack they are lost on the Geoscape too!

The majority of the talking points on this screen are changes to how some base
structures work, compared to the original:
The first building placed is now the Command Centre, which must be
defended at all costs in base defence missions (as it houses the bases
nuclear reactor).
Storerooms now have unlimited space. Only one is required for the entire
base.
There is a new Medical Bay structure which speeds up the healing of up to
eight wounded soldiers.
There is a Garage structure, which acts as a Hangar but for vehicles.

Upcoming Features:
Redo the map and the map tiles to make them look a bit more appealing.
This will be done as part of the wider GUI reworking.
The code for the base map generation in base defence missions needs to
be finished.
The Garages will be changed to 1 tile building that hold 1 vehicle, while
the Hangars will be changed to 2x1 tile buildings that hold 1 aircraft.
These units will then appear on the base map when assigned to a building.

Developer Commentary: This screen is a bit of a challenge, as finding an artist

to do the top-down tiles has been troublesome (it is very specialised work, and I
dont think the current tileset has really come off). Ideally, when we redo the
tiles, well set up a system so that corridors are intelligently placed between
structures too, so the base looks more lifelike than it does at the moment.
RESEARCH & MANUFACTURING
SCREENS:
These screens are listed together because they work in quite similar ways,
allowing you to manage the research efforts of the Xenonaut scientists and the
manufacturing projects of your engineers respectively. At present, ALL research
requires captured alien artefacts, so you must complete a ground combat
mission before you can begin any research.

Key Controls:
Available projects are listed in the sidebar on the right-hand side of the
screen. Each category heading has the number of available projects in it in
brackets next to its name.
A projected is started by clicking the Start button on the picture in the
bottom left of the screen.
The number of scientists / engineers assigned to a project can be
increased with the up and down arrows on either side of the number.
o Left-click increases or decreases the personnel assigned by 1 (it can
be held down to progressively speed up assignment).
o Right-click increases/decreases the personnel assigned by 5.
o Ctrl+ Left Click assigns / removes all available personnel.
Projects can be cancelled by clicking on the icon in the Cancel column.

RESEARCH / MANUFACTURING
This system allows the player to research captured alien technology, which
appear in the available projects in the sidebar. Successful research unlocks a
page on the technology, providing some artwork and explanatory flavour text on
the results of the research (this page can be accessed at any time in the
Xenopedia).

In a change to the original game, research projects are shared between different
bases and scientists can collaborate remotely on the same project to get it
finished faster. Assigning more scientists to a project speeds it up, but there are
diminishing returns on the number of scientists used.

The research tree in Xenonauts is extensive, with many more items and
technology to unlock compared to the original game. Were trying to make it so
that every item of research has a benefit in game terms, as well as providing
interesting background on the aliens. For instance, studying the corpse of a dead
alien may provide a damage bonus to your soldiers when they fight aliens of that
type (in the previous game, it just gave you some background information on
them).

Were also trying to stop research bottlenecks by having most new human
weapons and technologies have several possible requirements to unlock, of
which only one is required. This should make sure that nobody misses out on
technology because a UFO carrying a certain item / alien race never spawned in
their game.

The Manufacturing screen of the game allows the player to build the aircraft,
vehicles and battlefield equipment they have researched. Unlike the Research
screen, projects are not shared between bases, and there are additional
monetary costs incurred (beyond the engineer / scientist wages) for the items
produced. In all other respects, the screen operates in the same way,

Upcoming Features:
The Workshop screen will be renamed the Manufacturing screen when we
redo the GUI. At the moment the name is too long to fit on the tab.
To make the Research tree easier to use, we are looking at adding a
Science Advisor to the game as part of the GUI rework. He would give
suggestions of what technology should be prioritised to be captured or
researched, and the technology that would become available if this
happened.

Developer Commentary: Not too much to say about this screen, really. I think
weve made the sensible changes to the original to make the game more
accessible, whilst adding depth. I suppose the most important thing is making all
the research useful in the original it was always annoying when you researched
something and there was no obvious benefit, as you felt youd wasted your time.
It also meant once you were an experienced player, you never researched things
like Alien Entertainment. We dont want this to happen in Xenonauts.

Looking to the future, I think adding the Science Advisor on this screen would be
a good idea. It would make your research choices less of a lottery without
spoiling the surprise and discovery too much.
PERSONNEL SCREEN:
The Personnel screen is used to hire / fire soldiers, researchers and engineers
and to manage your soldiers. The top-right pane is used for hiring and firing
purposes, whereas the large spreadsheet at the bottom of the screen shows
detailed information on all of your soldiers. The top-right panel was intended to
be used for training purposes, but this element of the game has not yet been
implemented.

Key Controls:
Hiring / Firing Personnel:
o Clicking on the arrows next to the personnel level will increase /
decrease the level of personnel of that type at the base. This will
only take effect once you press the Hire button.
o The monthly wages will change colour and update to give you a
preview of the new wage level.
o Left-clicking on the arrow will add 1 quantity, right-clicking will add
10. Ctrl + clicking will maximise / minimise the number.
Soldier panel:
o Clicking any column heading will sort the soldiers by that attribute.
o Double clicking a soldier name will take you to the appropriate
Soldier Equip profile.
o If a soldier is wounded or injured, his recovery time will be shown on
his Status tab.

This screen is a new addition to the X-Com formula and allows the player to
manage their troops across multiple dropships much more easily, particularly
when troops are wounded.

Upcoming Features:
We need to add a method of transferring personnel between bases.
We need toad the basic training course for new recruits.

Developer Commentary: This screen is useful but dull at the moment it just
looks like a spreadsheet. We will be updating it to be a bit more visually
appealing, with better use of colour-coding so it is easier to see the skill level of
each soldier at a glance.

The Training panel does not work. It is likely we will remove the training system
from the game, except for a single one-week course you can send new recruits
on to give them a small stat increase and a boost in rank (and thus morale). This
is a slower but safer way of training up rookies compared to throwing them into
the grinder and hoping they survive their first mission. The training system was
originally intended to be more extensive, but we had trouble fitting it into the
design so have abandoned it.
STORES:
The stores screen is used to transfer items from base to base. It is of limited use
during the early game as starting equipment is available in unlimited quantities,
but items will begin to show up on the Stores screen when you begin to
manufacture equipment and capture supplies from the aliens.

Key Controls:
Click the quantity arrows to increase / decrease the number of each item
type to be sold or transferred to another base.
To change the destination base, click the drop-down on the top of the
right-hand element. A base must have a storeroom to receive transfers.
Click the Make Sale / Transfer button to order the change.

Xenonauts operates a more streamlined storeroom system compared to X-Com.

As it doesnt really make sense for an elite global special forces organisation to
have limited access to weapons and ammunition, all starting battlefield
equipment is available in unlimited amounts.

Similarly, alien equipment recovered from the battlefield falls into different
categories some operate normally (these are usually construction materials like
alien alloys), while others only need one to unlock the research and there is no
need for any others. The latter are automatically sold to generate revenue after
each ground combat mission (the first being sent to the labs to unlock any
associated research) and thus do not appear in the Storeroom.

The stores therefore show manufactured items and some recovered item types,
but wont be as busy as they were in the original X-Com games. As a result of
this, the base storeroom has unlimited storage space.

Upcoming Features:
We need to add the aircraft and vehicles stationed at the base to this
screen. At present theres no way of transferring them to another base.
This will also make the screen look a bit less empty at the start of the
game.

Developer Commentary: Again, this screen will receive a visual update before
release as its very spreadsheet-esque at the moment. The new stores system
can seem confusing to X-Com veterans at first, but you get used to it pretty fast
theres more interesting things to do than spend your days micromanaging the
levels of rifle clips and air-to-air missiles in your storerooms.

It also means that even in the late game your troops will always have access to
SOME kind of weapon, even if ballistic weapons are pretty underpowered at that
stage.
SOLDIER EQUIP:
The Soldier Equip screen is how you manage the battlefield equipment of your
soldiers. The items they are issued with on this screen are the loadouts they will
have on any battlefield they are deployed to.

The stats panel on the left shows the rank attributes of each soldier. These
increase with battlefield experience, making the soldier more effective in
combat. It pays to keep your soldiers alive, so be careful!

Key Controls:
You can equip a soldier with an item by dragging it from the base stores
panel on the right of the screen into his inventory. Right-clicking an item in
the soldier inventory instantly unequips it.
You can change the equipped armour of a soldier by clicking the drop-
down arrow beside his armour type.
There are sections for both Weapons and Equipment on the Armoury
panel. As you research new technology, additional ones will open up for
example, a Laser tab will appear beside the Ballistics tab on the Weapons
section when researched.
If a soldier is overloaded, he will not have his full Action Points each turn in
battle. The weight bars to the left of the soldier show this.
You can change soldier by clicking the Previous / Next buttons on his stat
panel. This will cycle through all soldiers in his category.
To change soldier category, click on the names in the Assignment tab in
the bottom left.
You can rename the soldier by clicking Change Callsign beneath his
name.

This screen is one of the more useful in the game. Soldiers remember their
loadouts from mission to mission and will automatically restock their weapons if
possible. This persistent inventory system replaces the system of the dropship
having an 80-item inventory that all soldiers were equipped from, and is much
more streamlined than before.

Weve put a fair amount of effort into the soldier background system, so when
soldiers are generated they have a nationality, name and portrait that should
match up together, as well as a historically accurate previous regiment and prior
combat experience. This is just to add a little more personality to your soldiers.

The starting soldiers have slightly higher stats than new recruits and are one
rank above Private, which reflects the fact they were in the Xenonauts before the
alien invasion began. This means that they are more able than normal troops and
you should try to keep them alive if you can! The starting squad also have an
intelligent loadout system the highest accuracy soldier is given the Sniper Rifle,
the strongest soldier the Rocket Launcher and the best soldier is promoted to
Sergeant etc.

Upcoming Features:
We will add a graphical representation (i.e. bar charts) of the soldier stats
to make it easier to see the soldiers abilities at a glance.

Developer Commentary: This screen works pretty well. The soldiers in X-Com
are what makes the game what it is the real story of the game is the story of
your brave squad of men surviving countless missions and narrowly escaping
death (or not) as you defeat the alien invasion. Weve spent a bit of time trying
to add a bit more character to the soldiers, but keeping them blank slates, and I
think its worked well.

A couple of features that were looking at adding are Medals and Role Badges.
The former would be given for particular actions (killing 5 aliens, surviving 10
missions) and would have small stat boosts attached, but would mostly give the
soldiers a bit more personality and add to the emergent gameplay.

The Role Badges would be used to assign the soldiers a particular battlefield
role, such as a Sniper or Assault troop. This would just be for ease of sorting your
soldiers, but would also incorporate customisable default loadouts to make
equipping soldiers even quicker and easier than it currently is.
VEHICLE EQUIP:
The Vehicle Equip screen is where you equip your vehicles for battle. It functions
much like the Soldier Equip screen.

Key Controls:
To change the weapons on the vehicle, click the drop-down menu on the
right of the screen.
To assign or unassign a vehicle to a dropship, use the Assignment drop-
down on the left screen. There must be sufficient space in the dropship to
allow the vehicle to be assigned to it (a Hunter takes up 4 personnel slots).
To change the vehicle, either click the specific icon in the bottom-left of
the screen or press the Previous / Next buttons on the right-hand panel.
To rename the vehicle, press the Change Callsign button underneath the
vehicle.
To scrap the vehicle, click the Decommission Vehicle button below the
left-hand panel.
To purchase a new vehicle, click on an empty slot in the bottom-left part of
the screen.

The Vehicle Equip screen is a lot like the Soldier Equip screen, but much less
complex. Vehicles do not have inventories, simply a weapon choice. Unlike the
X-Com games, the turret weapon of a vehicle can freely be changed and new
weapons can be fixed to older chassis you can fit laser weaponry to the
Hunters once you have researched it. New vehicles are unlocked via research
and built in the Workshop.

Developer Commentary: This screen is functional and is due to get a minor

graphical update when we improve the GUIs, but most of the elements are
already there and functioning fine.
AIRCRAFT EQUIP:
The Aircraft Equip screen is used to equip your interceptors for battle and to
arrange your troops inside the dropship to suit your preferences.

Key controls:
There are two tabs on the right-hand pane, Interceptors and Dropships.
When the Interceptors are selected, you can change the armament by
clicking on a weapon tab and selecting your preferred weapon from the
drop-down menu (this cannot be done when the aircraft is in flight). There
are three classes of weapon slot Cannon, Light and Heavy. Cannons may
only equip cannons, Light slots may only equip light weapons, but Heavy
slots may equip both light or heavy missiles.
When the Dropships are selected, a top-down representation of the
dropship cargo bay is shown. You can drag troops around on this
representation to change the default troop arrangement to your personal
preference.

The aircraft equip screen contains all the details of your interceptors, and allows
you to customise their weapon loadout. The ability to arrange your troops inside
the hold of the dropship is an improvement over X-Com, where the arrangement
was seemingly random now you do not have to have your most experienced
troops first down the ramp and into the teeth of the alien guns!

The basic principles behind the three types of interceptor weapons are:
Cannons (Autocannon) are good against small, agile alien fighters.
Light missiles (Sidewinders) are good general purpose weapons that do
moderate damage and can often hit their target.
Heavy missiles (Avalanches) are slow, powerful missiles that are good
against lumbering alien vessels with a lot of armour.

There are two types of starting interceptor, with the following properties:
F-17 Condor: This is a durable general-purpose aircraft, able to perform
the evasive roll and mounting a cannon. It can dogfight effectively but is
not particularly fast so cannot catch the fastest UFOs. It is best used in
packs.
MiG-32 Foxtrot: This is a fragile high speed interceptor that can carry
Heavy missiles but has no cannon and cannot evasive roll. It can be used
to counter lone scout UFOs (using light missiles) or to easily deal with
heavy UFOs (using heavy missiles) but is a poor dogfighter and vulnerable
to alien fighters, which are difficult to hit with missiles.

Developer Commentary: The improvements to the air combat and dropship

troop arrangement are both significant advances over X-Com for Xenonauts. The
air combat still requires further refinement but has the potential to be much
more interesting than the old air combat model, with multiple types of
interceptor and different weapon classes (as well as lots of UFOs).

I think the art on this screen works well too some of the later researchable
interceptors look really cool (theyre not included in this build of the game
unfortunately, youll have to wait till beta!)

AIR COMBAT:
The Air Combat screen is initiated when a squadron of interceptors reaches
combat range of a squadron of UFOs on the Geoscape. There are up to three
combatants on each side.

Key Controls:
Interceptors can be deployed in squadrons of up to three. To launch
multiple interceptors as a squadron, select up to three names on the
Launch Interceptors window. There is safety in numbers!
Clicking on an aircraft on the map (or one of the panels) lets you control
its heading with a left-click on your chosen destination. Clicking on a UFO
causes the interceptor to fly an intercept course.
Air combat is pausable by pressing the spacebar. Do this often it gives
you time to think and to time your evasive rolls and turns correctly.
Fuel is the primary resource of air combat. It is burned continuously by
your aircraft during combat, and burned even faster when using special
abilities such as Afterburner or Evasive Roll. Fuel levels are imported from
the Geoscape and aircraft have to disengage from combat when they
reach the minimum level of fuel required to return to base. If you engage
enemies a long way from base you'll have to conclude the fight quickly!

Missiles need to be in range and need missile lock to fire missile lock is
reached when the number in (brackets) next to the weapon name reaches
zero. By default, light missiles are set to autofire and heavy missiles must
be manually triggered by pressing their button when it turns green.
The F-17 jets are capable of Evasive Rolls on a cooldown. These have a
fuel cost but act as a strafe command, allowing F-17s to dodge incoming
fire. The MiG-32 is not able to Roll and is therefore much more vulnerable
in combat.

The air combat is much more complex than in X-Com. The shaded green / red
areas in front of some of the combatants represent fire arcs for cannons, which
will autofire when an enemy combatant enters the fire arc (stay out of them if
you can).

The weapons, fuel level and health for each aircraft is shown on its right-hand
panel. Afterburner / Evasive Roll can be activated by clicking on the buttons. The
weapon slots below the aircraft display the status of the weapon using the
following colour codes (clicking will cycle the setting):
 Green Ready to fire (Cannons will autofire on this setting, missiles will
fire on click)
Yellow Out of Range, set to autofire
Red Out of Range, not set to autofire
Grey Weapon ammo exhausted / weapon destroyed

Each time an interceptor takes 10% damage, there is a 10% chance it will cause
additional system damage. This is shown by an orange overlay on the aircraft
picture, and has additional effects on the interceptor. Mouseover the damage to
see the additional effects. These also apply to UFOs, but it is not displayed on-
screen when they suffer system damage so youll have to deduce it from their
reduced performance.

The following hotkeys are in place:

F1-3 Select interceptor 1-3
F4 Select all interceptors
1-4 Fire / Cycle setting for Weapon 1-4
5 Fire all weapons

Developer Commentary: Air combat is a major improvement over X-Com,

though it is not yet finished. It does require some getting used to as weve not
had the chance to make the controls fully intuitive, so it can initially be quite
difficult until youve got the hang of it. Well make the controls a bit more
streamlined for the final game. Check the Xenonauts wiki for basic tips on the air
combat.

The GUI is also going to receive a substantial upgrade, which will retain the basic
look but make the various elements look a lot more polished.

The air combat has only been basically balanced and it will receive a lot of
attention in the beta as it is the only area of the game that is not heavily based
on the original X-Com formula.
GROUND COMBAT:
The Ground Combat section of the game is initiated when a dropship (the
Chinook is the starting dropship) containing a combat team is sent to a combat
zone, usually a crash site or a terror site.

The objective is to complete the mission by eliminating all alien units, or by

completing alternate victory targets. For a crash site, it is possible to win a
mission by clearing the UFO and holding it for five turns.

The ground combat is turn based, so each unit has a number of Action Points to
use each turn. Once they are exhausted, you must click End Turn to allow the
aliens their turn.

Key Controls:
Select a soldier by clicking on him or his number above the GUI. You can
also press the corresponding keyboard number to select him.
You can fire at aliens by mouseovering them. A fire cursor will appear for
the selected weapon.
You can right-click the mouse to add accuracy to the shot at the cost of
extra APs.
You can switch fire mode from single shot to burst fire (on most weapons)
by clicking the icons in the bottom left of the GUI weapon panel. Burst fire
will fire three shots.
You can also activate manual fire mode by clicking on a weapon, which will
allow you to target non-hostile. Press Escape to cancel this mode.
Press the Backpack button to open the soldier inventory. This is where you
choose what weapons are equipped and reload weapons.

The battlefield in Xenonauts is semi-randomly generated each battle. The way

that this occurs is described in brief in this article. All objects on the battlefield
except the dropship and the UFO are fully destructible, so can be destroyed if
sufficient firepower is applied.

Though units have a certain number of Action Points to use each turn, they do
not have to be spent during the players turn. Any Action Points left over when
the player ends his turn can be spent during the alien turn as Reaction Fire,
which is when your soldiers spot an alien unit as it enters their sight lines and fire
their weapons at it. A soldier will always spend as many APs as possible for each
reaction fire shot, and their chances of successfully making a reaction fire shot
are based on their Reflexes attribute. Alien units are also capable of reaction fire.

The mechanics of the ground combat are too numerous and complex to cover
here. For full details of the mechanics at work, it is best to look at the Xenonauts
wiki.
Developer Commentary: The ground combat is the meat of the game. At the
moment it is only loading a single map with a set number of enemies and a
crashed UFO, but the final game will feature multiple tilesets, dozens of enemy
types and variations like night missions (we are animating / coding these right
now). The alien AI also needs more work, as it is currently very basic and not
following the same rules as the human units have to, but were recruiting an AI
programmer now.