u/NightfallFoundry

Hi everyone, with the mods permission I would like to share my own turn-based strategy game I am working on called Contract Corps: Lead your Aces.

It's heavily inspired by squad games like Jagged Alliance and others like XCOM/Battletech/Battle Brothers, but with the idea of putting your squad within much larger 200v200 conflicts. To avoid long turn times watching the AI I split the game mechanics:

• Your units: during your player phase you move/use abilities/attack with your elite units (called Aces) sequentially, so pretty standard
• The wider army:  the remaining AI units operate on a WeGo model. This means that they all plan their turn independently, but the execution and visualization of their actions happen in parallel. You are able to influence your allied units (your Corps) indirectly (e.g. by marking an enemy hero as a priority target), but they act on their own.

It's still early days, but the Steam page with the first Devlogs is up, and there I go into more details about the Design Philosophy in general, design challenges such as visualizing important events in a 200v200 or finding the right "level of control" for the AI units, and so on. 

JA players are pretty much the core audience for the game, so if this sounds up your alley check out Contract Corps: Lead your Aces on Steam and wishlist it here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4813610?utm_source=reddit .

Final note: I am aiming to have a first Closed Playtest towards the end of September and would love feedback from everyone in here to shape the game (again, core audience :-) , so will make another post about that nearer the time.

More than happy to answer any questions or thoughts you might have, I will be hanging around in the comments :-)

Hi everyone, with the mods permission I would like to share my own turn-based strategy game I am working on called Contract Corps: Lead your Aces.

It's heavily inspired by squad games like Jagged Alliance and others like XCOM/Battletech/Battle Brothers, but with the idea of putting your squad within much larger 200v200 conflicts. To avoid long turn times watching the AI I split the game mechanics:

• Your units: during your player phase you move/use abilities/attack with your elite units (called Aces) sequentially, so pretty standard
• The wider army:  the remaining AI units operate on a WeGo model. This means that they all plan their turn independently, but the execution and visualization of their actions happen in parallel. You are able to influence your allied units (your Corps) indirectly (e.g. by marking an enemy hero as a priority target), but they act on their own.

It's still early days, but the Steam page with the first Devlogs is up, and there I go into more details about the Design Philosophy in general, design challenges such as visualizing important events in a 200v200 or finding the right "level of control" for the AI units, and so on. 

JA players are pretty much the core audience for the game, so if this sounds up your alley check out Contract Corps: Lead your Aces on Steam and wishlist it here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4813610?utm_source=reddit .

Final note: I am aiming to have a first Closed Playtest towards the end of September and would love feedback from everyone in here to shape the game (again, core audience :-) , so will make another post about that nearer the time.

More than happy to answer any questions or thoughts you might have, I will be hanging around in the comments :-)

Edit: it seems there is the feeling that this was not really relevant to the sub, so my apologies for that. I genuinely believe it shares the same DNA as JA ("lead a small amount of units whilst having a strategic layer", unit customization etc.), but obviously takes the genre it in a different direction. I have no intentions of spamming though so will refrain from posting here in the future.

Hi everyone, with the mods permission I would like to share my own turn-based strategy game I am working on called Contract Corps: Lead your Aces.

It's heavily inspired by squad games like XCOM and others like Jagged Alliance/Battletech/Battle Brothers, but with the idea of putting your squad within much larger 200v200 conflicts. To avoid long turn times watching the AI I split the game mechanics:

• Your units: during your player phase you move/use abilities/attack with your elite units (called Aces) sequentially, so pretty standard
• The wider army:  the remaining AI units operate on a WeGo model. This means that they all plan their turn independently, but the execution and visualization of their actions happen in parallel. You are able to influence your allied units (your Corps) indirectly (e.g. by marking an enemy hero as a priority target), but they act on their own.

It's still early days, but the Steam page with the first Devlogs is up, and there I go into more details about the Design Philosophy in general, design challenges such as visualizing important events in a 200v200 or finding the right "level of control" for the AI units, and so on. 

XCOM players are pretty much the core audience for the game, so if this sounds up your alley check out Contract Corps: Lead your Aces on Steam and wishlist it here: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4813610?utm_source=reddit .

Final note: I am aiming to have a first Closed Playtest towards the end of September and would love feedback from everyone in here to shape the game (again, core audience :-) , so make sure to keep an eye on that!

More than happy to answer any questions or thoughts you might have, I will be hanging around in the comments :-)

Hi everyone,

I would like to share Contract Corps: Lead your Aces today, a TBS where you only control a handful of units with special abilities directly, being the deciding factor in bigger army fights. Turn times are fast as the wider army executes their turns in parallel, but you can still influence regular troops when you spot an opportunity. Case in point the GIF, which shows off a special ability to successfully gank an enemy hero - Coordinated Strike makes all eligible units focus fire the enemy unit that turn.

 

 I published my second Devlog talking about Core Mechanics and how the Control System works yesterday, if this sounds up your alley check it out on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4813610?utm_source=reddit

A week ago I updated my Steam page with a new Capsule and trailer - while still pretty bare I figured I would then start to do a couple of marketing posts (reddit, instagram, twitter) and see how that converts.

What is surprising to me is that only 3% of the people who came through these actually wishlisted the game - is that a normal ratio? I couldn't find anything about this in Chris Zukowski's benchmark series. My assumption would have been that these are "high-intent shoppers", meaning if they make all the effort to go to the Steam page they would be rather likely to actually wishlist.

With that in mind I am then guessing that the Steam page itself is missing something and would love some input on what might be wrong, e.g.

• is the Capsule (still) bad (have not used a professional artist yet)?
• is the trailer not expressive enough?
• Screenshots not fitting?
• Description no good?
• anything else?

Link itself is https://store.steampowered.com/app/4813610 - would appreciate any thoughts!

I have always enjoyed playing squad strategy games all the way back to Jagged Alliance, but often felt that instead of a couple of units a battle should feel like a massive conflict. I thus started working on my own game Contract Corps: Lead your Aces, which I am excited to share with you today! To avoid long turn times you only control your Elite units directly, while the wider army then executes its actions simultaneously.

 I created my first Devlog talking about the Design Philosophy yesterday, if this sounds up your alley check it out on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4813610?utm_source=reddit

I have always enjoyed playing squad strategy games all the way back to Jagged Alliance, but often felt that instead of a couple of units a battle should feel like a massive conflict. I thus started working on my own game Contract Corps: Lead your Aces, which I am excited to share with you today! To avoid long turn times you only control your Elite units directly, while the wider army then executes its actions simultaneously.

 I created my first Devlog talking about the Design Philosophy yesterday, if this sounds up your alley check it out on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/4813610?utm_source=reddit

I have always enjoyed playing squad strategy games all the way back to Jagged Alliance, but often felt that instead of a couple of units a battle should feel like a massive conflict. I thus started working on my own game Contract Corps: Lead your Aces, which I am excited to share with you today! To avoid long turn times you only control your Elite units directly, while the wider army then executes its actions simultaneously.

Started to capture some footage to do a proper trailer for my game and snapped this beauty...guess the Mech pilot wont be having a good day

I am working on a turn-based squad-level tactics game where you are embedded in a wider battlefield. This then leads to some unique mechanics players might not be familiar with, and I am not sure how to best showcase those.

I tried cutting the above trailer which is basically a 5-step setup on how to kill an enemy hero unit, but

1. its 22 secs long, which presumably is too much if you are not already interested in the game
2. its still cut very aggressively, meaning even with the 22 secs its probably not yet clear enough what is going on for someone who is not familiar with the game

Any advice on how to handle this? Do I just suck at cutting? Or is this type of format maybe just not appropriate for my game/niche, i.e. a more hardcore strategy game? Any thoughts would be appreciated!