📢 Attention War Star Empire, Mars Frontier, Thunder Run, and Days of Valor Commanders:
Welcome to the 6th installment of the Battlehouse Dev Blog, a place where fans of all Battlehouse games can enjoy regular behind the scenes peaks into the minds of Battlehouse Developers. Last week, bh-nirgal took a deep dive into some of the current projects he’s working on for Battlefront Mars, and this week he’s providing us all some updates on his War Star Empire, Mars Frontier, Thunder Run, and Days of Valor projects. So without further adieu, here’s bh-nirgal:
War Star Empire and Mars Frontier Developments
War Star Empire has received a lot of dev cycles over the past year, thanks mostly to the presence of Promethium in the game. The three currencies allowed a 1 to 1 conversion and reskin of the turret system in Thunder Run, Days of Valor and Firestrike. I have a few minor changes in the pipeline, but I want to give players time to finish off the Central Computer L8 tier of content. I do have some questions for players:
- Would you prefer more levels of existing units, elite versions of existing units, both, or neither?
- Would you like more defenses like mines, or no?
- Would you like to be able to swap out the security teams on your buildings with ones made up of different units?
Mars Frontier is our quietest group of fans. Other than making an Opportunity Rover building security team add-on in memorial to our little rover friend, I haven’t spent much time working on Mars Frontier, and I’ve never received any requests or feedback from the player base. Is there anything you all would like to see, or are you pretty happy right now?
Thunder Run and Days of Valor Developments
Days of Valor has had the economy portion of the TOC12 patch for two weeks, and will get the Infantry patch tomorrow. Thunder Run is getting the economy portion of the TOC12 patch tomorrow. Portions of this patch will automatically unlock through January.
Now that this project has shipped, I’ll be tackling a major redesign of the introduction tutorial and rebalance of lower levels of content. There are two versions of the new player tutorial being tested in Days of Valor. We try to test and fine-tune things like these to see if we can figure out what will acquire and retain more new players. Based on the numbers in Days of Valor, we’ll either incorporate the new tutorial into Thunder Run as-is, or make tweaks to both the Days of Valor and Thunder Run versions. Once this is ready, we’ll be launching some new ad campaigns. I hope this will answer some of the good player questions we had on what we’re doing to grow the game.
While this is going on, I am working on some small UI changes and improvements. I’m testing the ability to move buildings that are being constructed, repaired, or are crafting in Days of Valor. Its release to the other games is pending.
I added in the ability to toggle the advisor and opponent AI portraits. It was deployed to Days of Valor for testing on October 26, and will be added to Thunder Run on October 31.
Looking for an update on where the Dev Team currently stands regarding various recent community suggestions? Check out our new “Voice of the Commander” trackers below:
- War Star Empire Voice of the Commander: Declassified
- Thunder Run Voice of the Commander: Declassified
- (the Mars Frontier and Days of Valor feedback trackers are currently empty – let us know what you want to see over on Discord!)
Like what you see in this Dev Blog, or have suggestions on things you’d like to see addressed in our “Voice of the Commander” trackers? Let us know over on our Thunder Run Discord Server!