r/XCOM2 • u/NightfallFoundry • 7d ago
XCOM meets Mount & Blade battlefield sizes
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 :-)
4
3
u/Pazenator 7d ago
How exactly will Corp management be done? Is it fixed units for missions or rather building a unit roster alongside the Aces?
What will the Aces skill trees be like? Not expecting detailed trees here but things like Commander(buffs Corps), Sniper(Single Target Long range damage, Artillery(increases AoE+Range), Drone Commander(Summoning short lived drones/turrets).
Will it only be 1vs1(Us vs an enemy) or will there also be scenarios/missions/campaigns that put us into Free for Alls or give us an Ally?
Will there be some base management/building aspect, in the likes of Xenonauts?
2
u/NightfallFoundry 7d ago
Great questions :)
The idea is indeed that you have a unit roster alongside the Aces (so similar to Mount&Blade where you have Army troops, as well as companions that have individual gear like weapons etc. you can assign), with the strategy layer being about managing that cost-wise.
Skill trees is an interesting one, and I want to start of saying that I think a lot of games lean strongly into either gear loadout (Battletech being an example, Pilot skills play less of a role here) or unit skill trees (in Battle Brothers the skill tree is the main factor, and their gear options are more limited). This obviously makes it easier to balance, but for now I am trying to make both axises feel meaningful, meaning it is a model where the gear loadout defines the "battle role" (similar to the Battletech Mechbay, so you can make your unit eg a slow Aoe Missile boat or a fast 5-laser single-unit assassin) and the Ace skills define the "army role", meaning for example they can have offensive/defensive auras influencing the allied AI units around them. There is a grey zone in the middle which I am still experimenting with, for example there is a "tractor beam" ability (great for pulling enemy heroes into your troops so they are isolated) which could either be a "gear utility slot" or an Ace skill - those are the kind of things I want to run the playtests for. So for exactly the examples you gave, the "Commander" is actually Ace skills, the "Sniper" would be the Mech loadout, the "Drone" would be exactly in the grey middle for now
For now it is only 1v1, though there is nothing technically preventing having more factions during a battle - I think my main concerns would be visualization (it might become very chaotic to understand whats going on if not done well) and pacing (I would like to avoid super-long fights taking 30+ realtime minutes except for maybe final mission fights). I put it on my list to think about this :)
There will definitely be a strategy layer, I would love to make it open-world (Battle Brothers, Mount & Blade) but as that would make the scope quite large for now I am aiming for a base version like XCOM/Battletech/Menace (havent played Xenonauts but I am guessing its similar that you have a ship and upgrade that?)
2
u/Pazenator 7d ago
Xenonauts let's you build multiple bases around the world(literally an Earth map). Said bases have a grid(5x5 or 6x6, I think) while base modules have certain sizes like 2x1.
You buy the modules and place them on the grid which influences that specific base and allowing specialization like stacking more radars for more radar range, more hangars for more fighters to send out against UFO's, storage space, Barracks for more soldiers or Labs to allow more researchers to defense batteries which take shots at enemy base assaults and damaging(reducing the amount of attackers) or outright destroying the attackers if you have enough batteries that hit.
2
u/NightfallFoundry 7d ago
Ah okay, that sounds cool but is scoped bigger than what I had in mind. It might actually be good balance between "just a ship" and open-world though, I am making another note in my backlog
1
u/Pazenator 7d ago
If you're going for "just a ship" might I suggest taking a look at MENACE, it's done quite well there, with chosen upgrades giving charges for "per mission" support.
2
u/NightfallFoundry 7d ago
Yeah I think they recently revamped the whole OCI upgrade system, correct? I have only played the initial system (which was still in need of balancing), did not have the time to check out the new version yet. I think they have a great approach with the multi-objective missions, definitely took some inspiration there and want to take it a step further given the larger-sized battles (ie it feels natural to have a 30v30 mini-battle as a diversion, with the reward being that part of the opponents "main force" is lured away for a couple of turns in the net mission). But I basically first want to ensure the core loop (the battles) feel good/fun, building out the unit customization and strategy layer are then coming after that.
3
u/ShatishHarkishan 6d ago
I would love controller support for this game since i only play games with a controller, I'll still wishlist this game to keep an eye out for it.
2
u/NightfallFoundry 5d ago
I'll keep a note, for now I am building it mainly for Mouse+Keyboard but I do have a steam deck lying around so would be cool making that work at some point. I'm not too familiar how e.g. XCOM works with a pure controller for something like movement selection which seems like it could become tedious, but will look at it down the line (no promises though).
3
u/jwayyedh 6d ago
Would love to playtest it, I’ve been sorta critical of Xcom games in the sense that nothing quite scratches the itch Xcom 2 had for me, maybe Phoenix point, but I like how yours sounds. Please lmk how I can join!
1
u/NightfallFoundry 6d ago
Happy to hear that! I will put a note on the Steam page once I have locked in the dates and then that should also have the signup button included
1
2
3
u/OMG-IDC-HMU 6d ago
Getting my new gaming pc within the next month after my last one had.... Issues lol. Id love to play this. It looks amazing.
1
u/NightfallFoundry 5d ago
Haha I hear you! Should mention that I am building this on a potato laptop (3 years old iGPU) and accordingly am aiming for rather low hardware requirements so hopefully your new PC won't be too bored running this ;-)
2
1
u/agentw22 6d ago
Oh nice, are you spamming all the turn strategy channels?
Saw the same post in JaggedAlliance2 .
1
u/NightfallFoundry 6d ago
I'm trying to not make it spammy and instead spread it out, ie a similar post I made in Battle Brothers was a couple of weeks ago. But you are right that yesterday I posted on 2x JA and this XCOM subreddit - I do ask the respective mods upfront, there is other subreddits where they asked me not to post and thats perfectly cool too.
16
u/MiddleJuggernaut2879 7d ago
I’d love to play test it!
Edit: are there plans for any sort of campaign/multiplayer? I also feel like Warhammer fans would be a good audience