USC: Counterforce News

Hello Marines,

A new sci-fi game joins the Firesquid lineup: Xenopurge!

With a very similar theme to USC, but a very different gameplay:

• Fight the alien threat
  
• Command and guide your troops
  
• Manage your soldiers and gears
  

[h3]Check out the game and wishlist![/h3]
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2983410/Xenopurge/

Xenopurge is a real-time tactics game where you take the role of a commander, set up in a base of command, issuing orders remotely to your elite squad on the field. From several computer screens, you see the blueprints of the facilities your units traverse, directing them to search, recover, and destroy. Other than by your direct command, they will adapt to their surroundings, fending off the enemy in their sights.

The ever-present Xeno alien threat permeates every mission. You and your team are a part of the organisation M.A.C.E (Mercer’s Advanced Combat Enterprises), tasked with purging the system of their presence in Xenowarfare. Recruit new members with a variety of skill specialties, upgrade their equipment, and improve your command tactics to achieve this goal, without losing too many of your people along the way.

In this retro-futuristic military world, the grit of warfare hangs heavy on your shoulders. Alien horrors await around every door and corner for your squad. Do not hesitate to make your decisions, as failure means the alien infestation will consume everything.

Hello Marines!
For the Steam Spring Sale, USC: Counterforce is 60% off for the first time!

Enjoy this great discount and fight the alien threat in a place where no one can hear you scream!



Join our Discord to chat with us about USC Counterforce: https://discord.gg/vsxD6n8P8J

Hello Marines!

We're part of the Couch Coop Fest! Play great games with friends and family, including USC: Counterforce!

[h3]USC: Counterforce has this cool feature to play with your friends: Remote Play Together![/h3]

Gear up and take the fight to the enemy, but you don't have to do it alone. Steam Remote Play Together allows you to invite a fellow marine to join your fight. You can play with up to two (you and your friend). One player owns and runs the game using the Remote Play Together feature to invite a friend.

[h3]How to Use Remote Play Together[/h3]
Here's a step-by-step guide to get you started:
Start by launching the game from your Steam library. Once you're in the game, open your Friend List on Steam. From there, send them an invitation to join your game: simply right-click on their name and select the "Invite to Remote Play Together" option. Your friend will receive the invitation and can accept it to join you. You will be sharing and streaming the game for your friend.


To better play USC: Counterforce using Remote Play Together, we recommend that you share your squad files with your friend. If you host the game, add their squad file in your squad folder here: %userprofile%\AppData\LocalLow\Angry Cat Studios\USC Counterforce\squads. You can choose the squads you wish to play with. Only the host will gain XP and get the unlocked items. Once the run ends and your team has won, give your friend's squad file back, so they can have the new statistics and materials stored in that squad file.


[h3]Remote Play Together Features[/h3]
USC: Counterforce's “coop mode”, powered by Remote Play Together, offers some features to enhance your shared game experience:

• Individual or shared controls: You and your friend can control the game using your own keyboards and mice. This means you can coordinate your tactics and strategies effectively. You can also share control of the keyboard and mouse. It's all about teamwork, and this feature allows you to truly work together.
  
• Stream video, audio, and voice: Remote Play Together enables you to stream video, audio, and voice between players. This means you can communicate and strategize in real-time, just like you would if you were playing side-by-side.
  
• Voice chat and game volume: All your voice chat and game volume options are conveniently available in one place, so you can fine-tune your settings to match your preferred style of play.
  

Time to enlist your fellow friends, share the action, and prove that you deserve to be part of the Ultimate Space Commando. Get ready to lock and load, marines!



[h3]But what about online coop outside of Remote Play Together?[/h3]
USC: Counterforce is developed by a team of two developers. While including online coop outside of Remote Play Together would be interesting, it's essential to understand the limitations that led to this decision. Developing a coop mode adds a significant workload to setting up the architecture needed and would potentially delay the full release. Making a stable and enjoyable online coop mode is complex for many reasons. It involves synchronizing game states between multiple players, dealing with latency issues, and ensuring balanced gameplay. This complexity can lead to unforeseen technical challenges and require extensive testing and debugging which significantly increases the scope of QA and testing. Implementing an online coop feature requires a dedicated effort to create and maintain servers and grouping systems. The team needs to thoroughly test the game's server infrastructure and online interactions to ensure a smooth and bug-free experience for all. This process was time-consuming and resource-intensive, preventing us from working on the core features, polish, balance, and bug fixes.

Our goal is to make the best game possible. Choosing to rely on Remote Play Together is a practical choice. It allowed the team to concentrate their efforts on other aspects of the game and deliver a more polished and enjoyable experience for all, but still allows you to play with friends!

The USC: Counterforce team

Hello Marines,

To celebrate the Holidays we're coming with two good news. The game is 50% off on Steam, from December 19th 7PM UTC+1, so don't forget to get your copy.

And we're bringing back the Christmas update!


The event will last for a couple of weeks so don't forget to get your hands on the game this December.

During the event, you can collect X-mas presents in two game modes: Single Mission and Operations, note that the event won't affect the Defend the Base! and Campaign game modes. These presents are items scattered on the ground in three variations, with a total of 15 per mission. Carry them with you when finishing the mission (or extracting) to add them to your total collected amount!

Rewards:
- 100+ presents: "Rambo Ducky" squad logo
- 125+ presents: "Golden Ducky" yellow squad livery
- 150+ presents: A Commanducky-inspired, modified Assault Rifle, the "Quacker" (simultaneously better and worse than the default AR — see if it suits your needs ;) Quack!)

And because everything is better with a Christmas spirit:
- The Wunderwurms will wear Santa hats
- X-mas trees and presents will appear on maps (only in Single Mission and Operations game modes)

FYI the duck reward won't be in the campaign but only in custom missions!


Have fun during the event and let us know what you think. Happy Holidays!

[h3]USC: Counterforce is 50% off for the Turn-based Carnival![/h3]



To celebrate this very cool event, we're coming back on the turn-based mechanics of the game.

[h3]Let's talk about two turn based games that inspired us for USC: Counterforce. From the 1990s, learn more about: Incubation: Time Is Running Out (1997) and Gorky 17 (1999).[/h3]

USC: Counterforce and its prequel, Ultimate Space Commando, also take a lot of inspiration from some lesser-known games, a few „hidden gems” from the late 1990s, the “age of 3D revolution”. While many developers were preoccupied with the evolving graphical capabilities of computers, and the addition of the third dimension, there were still titles that mainly focused on classic, almost tabletop-like gameplay, and still managed to bring something new and cool to the table.

One of these games is Incubation: Time is Running Out (1997) by Blue Byte. It was a turn- and tile-based, squad-oriented tactical game with a heavy focus on management of very limited actions per turn. It was heavily story-based, with a long campaign mode, and squad members you grew attached to and could equip with different gear, gadgets, and weapons, tailoring them to the tactics you wanted to use. During the whole game, you felt like your options were limited, but never your tactics: this game really shined in shoehorning you into situations you could somehow still get out of alive if you found the proper tactics.



There were some very unique mechanics that are not seen in many games: a well-implemented weapon overheat system (instead of ammo); a non-class- or skill-locked overwatch mode that—since most enemies died from 1 or 2 shots—was very often important in stopping an alien before it reached you; a simple, but tactically relevant use of elevations; and the ability to control the battlefield with some items and weapons—for example, if you used the flamethrower, it created an area of impassable terrain for a few turns. Incubation also had a PvP game mode in which up to 4 players could fight against each other in asymmetric objective-based battles. USC is directly inspired by the way Incubation handles overwatch (or “defense mode”) and the importance of facing in the right direction with your units.




Another game to mention is Gorky 17 (also known as Odium, 1999) by Metropolis Software. It was also a very heavily story-driven game in which a small group of NATO operatives had to fight to survive and to reveal the mystery behind the sudden appearance of hybrid creatures in a former Soviet military base in Poland.



There was an “exploration mode” where you moved around with your characters in real-time, discovering items, talking to people, and finding your way, but whenever a combat situation ensued, the game would not only switch to turn-based but you and your enemies were put on a grid-based, not-too-big battlefield, where the actual fighting took place. All weapons and items had their specific, very board game-like mechanics, and that, combined with the often very confined spaces led to some rather interesting battle scenarios. Just like Space Crusade, Space Hulk, or Incubation, the emphasis on smaller spaces and tighter rules was not a constraint, but rather a playground for devising smart tactics.



In fact, I was so hooked on this approach to turn-based mechanics that I perfected dealing with the enemies using only the more basic weapons while stockpiling explosives and all kinds of nasty stuff for those really hard battles and ended up completing the game with a whole nuclear arsenal still in my inventory... All said and done, I think Gorky 17 was not flawless, but still an excellent game, and showed yet another way, another approach to how boardgame-like rules can be applied in a computer game, while making it feel like NOT a board game.

Join our Discord to chat with us of USC Counterforce: https://discord.gg/vsxD6n8P8J

The USC Counterforce team