Incline Colony Ship RELEASE THREAD

[Takamori]

Ok finished the game, it was a nice experience.

Spoiler

Basically my character a huge fucking asshole that let cybermonks control everything given he wasn't so keen to choose one of the three spiked dildos to sit on. The church even being a bit assholes they ended up accepting the pilgrim status as expected. Now have to put space commies and space nazis in their retarded place, but ain't my problem since my character decided to go explore the planet as "recon"

As for general feedback/wishlist/and praise if the game keeps the company afloat and for the next installment

-More portraits to avoid the hey I already saw that guy before, shouldn't be a huge cost in theory to commission those
-Blood decals during combat so you get more impact, the ragdolls are nicely done but it miss the blood. The setting is dark so it missed that dose of violence
-Some icons in the gear hud to be able to to right off the bat know which is damaged, which is normal version and upgraded it was common early game to swap between melee/ranged DR gear depending on the encounter when I had to go back and pick the other version I had to go through each gear icon to see if it was a damaged version or not
-The energy weapons scarcity was really well done as I saw difficult encounter and used accordingly as planned, same for grenades in general. Hope we can get that in the next installment
-Skill system I'm a bit torn apart if I liked it or not, I enjoyed having that feeling "oh now I can unlock X, I can harvest those corpses" but the skill improvement system being behind Intelligence status mainly dictating XP gain of a character in both skills and level experience kinda dictates a rigid meta for the main char given that some events only your character can tackle.
-Allow us to make choices for all companions just like Faythe where she can pick a personal feat that helps build the character in X way early game. Evans feat choice between pistol and sniper is nice but its kinda late in game.

 

[Takamori]

Killed Ol' Bub in Underdog nice fight

At least 3 out of 4 (because we cant see 4th one, bet he also did) got LPs in Armor.

Even screens show that evasion is worthless, especially for full parties.

Balance.

Evasion early game worked, but as the game numbers got higher even putting my Evasion party member in all encounters she didn't manage to keep up against the enemy To hit bonuses. So later fights had to swap her for Jed given that Garret and his pistol is fucking OP so its a must have party member and Evans is built well for combat too.

 

[Pink Eye]

Pink Eye hey What you do to get banned from forums ?

Pink Eye, how the hell did you manage to get banned from the Colony Ship steam forums in the past day or so?

Some fuckwad reported me and I got banned for a few days for calling an annoying faggot a pretentious douche because he was saying Colony Ship isn't a real RPG because it doesn't have "real role playing choices" which thus makes it somehow worse than Wrath of the Righteous. Bunch of thin skinned sons of whores is what.

The post

even tougher robot fight.

the one in

Spoiler

mission control

? I refuse to believe that is soloable without skill checks

think the biggest downside of solo character is that can only bring 3 consumables without spending extra AP on it. throwing stuff does not miss and makes even skill monkey useful in combat mid/late game.

I didn't even attempt that one. When I first saw what kind of enemies were in the encounter I immediately grabbed Faythe then broke the time continuum by reversing reality to an earlier save. After I performed such a reality bending feat I then did all the skill checks with Faythe so we didn't need to fight the robots. Grabbed the loot and ran away. I swear to god that one is a troll from Elhoim, ahaha.

Has anyone ever found a reason to take Steal?

It gets you access to some of the best loot later in the game. There's a very good energy pistol you can steal in the Heart.

Holly molly, the first fight (against the three frogs) made me reconsider everything.

Energy shield gadget, if you haven't already. It's the answer to the spitter - it automatically deflects his ranged ability, as long as the gadget is active. That basically takes one enemy out of the fight and only leaves you with two frogs to deal with.

So are Whisper's takes just typical drama queen currentyear gaymer bitching or is there something to it?

Just another Russian who liked Colony Ship then flip flopped to hating it.

 

[Alienman]

Banned for that? Damn, almost resetera tier moderation.

 

[MiX]

The DR/AOD wasn't like this!" critique is a bit weird since I would say, so far, the biggest flaw of CSG is that it's not different enough from the earlier titles. The learn by doing system is a weird sidegrade because it hasn't really changed the biggest issue with AOD (skill-hoarding metagaming), just changed around the makework necessary to do the same metagaming. The relatively monotone "every NPC has the same specific calculating backstabber attitude per Vault Dweller School of Hard Knocks" has also stayed the same from AOD.

Evasion and armour were always meant to be paired throughout development, but I'm not sure about the current tuning, partly because evasion defenders can spiral into darkness more - get hit once in the legs by a lucky hit (or many other ways to lower evasion) and you're fucked afterwards. At one point it was possible to rely on evasion to trigger reaction and have enemy-phase murderhobos on fire, but I'm not sure how well that works now.

For me right now the level design is a strange one. Some of the areas have really nice atmosphere and generally the 'dungeoneering' levels are done very well, whereas the civilian areas really look bare and always struggling to keep up appearances of the wider setting. It's notable how NWN1-like Habitat is, with three identical faction areas with almost identical NPCs and design (right down to the three archives, the three token NPCs who spit out faction lore, the three skills trainers, etc).

The skill system really brings down the game. You either have to fight everybody or persuade everybody otherwise you are just gimping yourself. Very metagaming reliant.

Also, I thought the worldbuilding was excellent but what about the characters? I don't think there was a single character in the game that developed at all in this game.

I really like their games but Iron Tower really needs to start improving and iterating on their previous titles

 

[JarlFrank]

Finished the habitat and am back to being able to explore. At this point I still like it better than AoD but feel like it shares some of the same issues. Guess that's just Vince's game design approach.

 

[Pink Eye]

The skill system really brings down the game. You either have to fight everybody or persuade everybody otherwise you are just gimping yourself. Very metagaming reliant.

I don't understand how that is Metagaming. You pick one thing. You do that one thing to get good at it. Metagaming is something like going to wiki to figure out how much shit you need to pass a skill or whatever.

 

[Lyre Mors]

I don't understand how that is Metagaming. You pick one thing. You do that one thing to get good at it.

Agreed. I haven't sensed any need to metagame with skill progression yet.

 

[MiX]

The skill system really brings down the game. You either have to fight everybody or persuade everybody otherwise you are just gimping yourself. Very metagaming reliant.

I don't understand how that is Metagaming. You pick one thing. You do that one thing to get good at it.

Sometimes you want to talk your way through situations and sometimes you want to to fight. A lot of people like to play this way and it's annoying the game mechanics work so hard against it. You have the option of being either full combat goon or full charismatic talker.

 

[Lemming42]

Metagaming's the wrong term, but there is a point to be made about how you get locked into a specialisation so firmly and so quickly. Obviously all RPGs reward specialisation but in AoD and CS, the sheer brutality of combat means that you have to either focus entirely on being excellent at combat, or focus entirely on avoiding it. The skill-by-use system amplifies the effect by making it so that speech characters will just spend the game clicking the relevant speech checks, while combat characters will just spend the game in a succession of fights. Despite the great quest design, the effect is that the game feels weirdly railroaded because you can't change up your approach without hobbling yourself later on. Quests are technically diverse and complex, but in practice pretty linear given that you literally can't go off-script or act against type.

I'm not sure what the solution is - I do prefer XP to skill-by-use, but AoD obviously had pretty much the same problem, only with the player being more directly responsible for which skills are advanced and thus having to save skillpoints and reload the game to allocate them before a skill check.

 

[True Ukrainian]

Armor for shotgun / melee frontliners, evasion for gunslingers standing in the rear. Heavy armor imposes AP penalties and gunners need to shoot as much as possible. Gunners also get extra evasion whenever they bank excess AP, including movement AP.

 

[True Ukrainian]

Metagaming's the wrong term, but there is a point to be made about how you get locked into a specialisation so firmly and so quickly. Obviously all RPGs reward specialisation but in AoD and CS, the sheer brutality of combat means that you have to either focus entirely on being excellent at combat, or focus entirely on avoiding it. The skill-by-use system amplifies the effect by making it so that speech characters will just spend the game clicking the relevant speech checks, while combat characters will just spend the game in a succession of fights. Despite the great quest design, the effect is that the game feels weirdly railroaded because you can't change up your approach without hobbling yourself later on. Quests are technically diverse and complex, but in practice pretty linear given that you literally can't go off-script or act against type.

I'm not sure what the solution is - I do prefer XP to skill-by-use, but AoD obviously had pretty much the same problem, only with the player being more directly responsible for which skills are advanced and thus having to save skillpoints and reload the game to allocate them before a skill check.

CS makes hybrid builds more forgiving. And since all conversation skills level with each diplomacy victory, there's no danger of wasting experience on unused convo skill.

AOD was basically a visual novel because you couldn't act against your archetype.

 

[Pink Eye]

I'm not sure what the solution is - I do prefer XP to skill-by-use, but AoD obviously had pretty much the same problem, only with the player being more directly responsible for which skills are advanced and thus having to save skillpoints and reload the game to allocate them before a skill check.

I believe that's just the design intent for these games. Specialization is a core tenant of Iron Tower's games. You can attempt to play a hybrid build; but you'll probably get your teeth pushed in unless you're already familiar with the content. I personally like this design philosophy because it places importance on your skills: your skill mastery actually matters in these games. If you have subpar speech you won't be able to do x content. If you suck with stealth you won't be able to approach a quest in a different way. This is what made Age of Decadence so replayable - going back, trying a different build, then experiencing a quest from a different perspective.

 

[notpl]

Armor for shotgun / melee frontliners, evasion for gunslingers standing in the rear. Heavy armor imposes AP penalties and gunners need to shoot as much as possible. Gunners also get extra evasion whenever they bank excess AP, including movement AP.

The situation you're describing results in enemies just targeting the gunslingers and hitting them 100% of the time.

 

[Raghar]

Unfortunately, this game is decline.
This is not like the original Age of Decadence, or more recent games like Underrail, or what ever you might be thinking of when you hear classic RPG, or tactical turn based RPG. In those games you can get away with making a slightly sub-optimal, or even sub-optimal character. With games like Underrail it is hard to survive when you do this, but despite the brutality you can do it if you are smart and you use all the resources given to you. This game is not like that. It is very, very limited in what you can do in each section of the game; especially the start.

I can see what the developers of the game were going for, what they are trying to do. It is easy to see because they comment about it on nearly every review, and nearly every thread. More specifically, they post the builds you should use for this game. The most popular guides for this game are character builds and walkthroughs. Why? Because if you make your character even slightly poorly, even a little bit out of line with what the developers had in mind for the type of character wanted you to make, you will die, or get stuck and not be able to proceed.

It is fine to have a strong idea of how your game should be played. A good idea would be to lock off side sections of the game, extra bits full of extra stuff that you may not get into if your character does not fit just exactly right. But, this game gatekeeps... the entire game, almost from the start, if you do not make your character in line with what was envisioned for them by the devs.

I played through the game and beat it with as combat specialist that just killed things. It was boring and not fun. It was then interesting to go and check out the guides, and see how they wring every little bit of exp out of every single encounter in every single location in this game; and yet still come up short now.

The reason why I think this is because they are everywhere. In almost every review, in nearly every thread, etc. They will probably comment on this too. Normally that would be a good thing. The devs of a game giving feedback, helping people out, and communicating with players, that is fantastic! But never have I once read 'yeah, we did make that encounter a bit too hard, we will tweak it so it is a bit easier' or a 'yeah you are right, you should be able to loot those corpses there' or a 'yeah, that thing you did deserves some extra skill points as a reward.' It is always a justification of why they did things the way they did; always a double down, never a compromise. That is fine, it is their game, but honestly, I don't like this game.

I would like to say that in all of these hours of playing I had fun, but honestly, I didn't really. I was either bored out of my mind hyper focusing a killing character, or bored out of my mind hyper focusing on a talking character, or trying my best to have fun but failing and dying with everything else. If it does look like it interests you, perhaps get it on sale. But honestly, I could have done without the experience. If you are interested in this genre and type of game, best to spend your money on something like Pillars of Eternity, Kingmaker, Divinity Original Sin, or if you want something more difficult, Wasteland 2 or Underrail. These games are different from Colony Ship, in that they actually a lot of fun.

So is it no fun allowed?

 

[HoboForEternity]

Metagaming's the wrong term, but there is a point to be made about how you get locked into a specialisation so firmly and so quickly. Obviously all RPGs reward specialisation but in AoD and CS, the sheer brutality of combat means that you have to either focus entirely on being excellent at combat, or focus entirely on avoiding it. The skill-by-use system amplifies the effect by making it so that speech characters will just spend the game clicking the relevant speech checks, while combat characters will just spend the game in a succession of fights. Despite the great quest design, the effect is that the game feels weirdly railroaded because you can't change up your approach without hobbling yourself later on. Quests are technically diverse and complex, but in practice pretty linear given that you literally can't go off-script or act against type.

I'm not sure what the solution is - I do prefer XP to skill-by-use, but AoD obviously had pretty much the same problem, only with the player being more directly responsible for which skills are advanced and thus having to save skillpoints and reload the game to allocate them before a skill check.

i havent played other areas, just the pit but i feel the game is a lot more forgiving towards hybrids. in term of metagaming, it feels like everyone can do lockpicking / electronics etc. you dont have to tag the skill. for example, lockpicking, there is an NPC that can teach you up to lv 2 lockpicking in near your room, and around there's low level chest for lockpicking. without skill point, and unlike talking skills where you have a choice whether to talk or to fight (therefore chosing one option sacrifice the other) there is no downside not to pay 200 credits to learn lockpicing then start finding low level locks around the starting area (unless you role play not to). i can feel the specialization is broadened by this system. whereas in AoD, the genius is the class/guild system is your foundation in building specific character that makes sense for your character to have in the context of the world. colony ship doesn't have that. there are many choices plot and quests wise, but the mechanics and specialization are less focused.

i still love the game so far, combat is fun, the setting is very unique and i am starved for scifi games that's not cyberpunk or post-apo and the writing is generally still pretty good, but it's not like AoD, not in a good way (so far) but i wil reserve harsher judgement until after 2-3 runs

 

[Raghar]

Banned for that? Damn, almost resetera tier moderation.

Well Pink Eye called him pretentious.

 

[True Ukrainian]

Armor for shotgun / melee frontliners, evasion for gunslingers standing in the rear. Heavy armor imposes AP penalties and gunners need to shoot as much as possible. Gunners also get extra evasion whenever they bank excess AP, including movement AP.

The situation you're describing results in enemies just targeting the gunslingers and hitting them 100% of the time.

Send Jed to stand right at the front.

 

[Agesilaus]

When you click on the weird glass container "chariot", you are immediately transported to the tower in the bottom left. However, there's no message or slide that tells you what happened.

This is a good point, and illustrates how a base that is used to certain methods and manners can be blind to things that others find questionable. An interstitial dialogue-style pop-up conveying your transport across towers makes a lot of sense. Hell, I think Vault Dweller would do a good job of writing a tension-filled narrative snippet describing your precarious traversal of this old, decrepit piece of tech.

Hmmm, wonder if that’s been mentioned before?

· Using the transit pod should provide some narrative text, like with the elevator and emergency stasis field.

Maybe it just needed to be said by a fellow dev. (checks tags, passes skill check)

You won't understand until you make a shitty gamemaker studio game

 

[Pink Eye]

Send Jed to stand right at the front.

Yep. This is the right idea. Ranged enemies won't target other allies if you place your melee combatant in front of their face, bonus points if you then place your ranged dudes behind your melee combatant to increase them getting shot at. It also means that the enemy will have to switch to snap shots or other attacks that only work in close quarters combat. Another thing is that I believe ranged enemies will take a penalty to accuracy when aiming at other allies while being threatened upon by a melee person. It's a game of chess as you try to figure out the best positions on map to optimize your chances for success.

Here's an example of this wonderful brain tickling combat in action. I start the encounter by placing my Juggernaut in a spot that allows him to walk up to the ranged Scav:

Screenshot

After I killed the melee dude I had Faythe walk up to Jimmy so she'd be safe from Manfred - who is a very dangerous enemy in this encounter - as Jimmy would be body blocking Manfred from targeting her. This means my heavy Juggernaut will be taking all the shots. After I kill the ranged Scav I then have my Juggy step into Manfred's face. This also threatens Jimmy and allows Faythe to reposition on the automatic firearms Guard on the far left side who's been taking cheeky shots at her:

Screenshot

Funny enough that Guard goes down easily as Faythe shotguns him to oblivion. The end result is Manfred relying on less accurate attacks to hit my Juggy while suffering from malaise of after effects from both aggro and regen stim expiration. Which sets me up for easy shots with Faythe's shotgun as I play leap frog switching her in then out to finish Manfred off while my melee dude does aimed leg attacks in between to lower Manfred's evasion:

Screenshot

Woo baby give me that squad leader implant; and that's how you win one of the hardest encounters in the early game with no nade usuage and no consumables except for one regen stim for Faythe just by playing around with positioning.

Screenshot

 

[Darkwind]

The skill system really brings down the game. You either have to fight everybody or persuade everybody otherwise you are just gimping yourself. Very metagaming reliant.

I don't understand how that is Metagaming. You pick one thing. You do that one thing to get good at it.

Sometimes you want to talk your way through situations and sometimes you want to to fight. A lot of people like to play this way and it's annoying the game mechanics work so hard against it. You have the option of being either full combat goon or full charismatic talker.

The explanation for this is that you do a radically different 2nd playthrough playing a combat goon vs. your talkie character on playthrough 1 and also pick different choices, etc. But not everyone has the time or inclination to do that so I agree that more flexibility would be nice. CS -is- more forgiving than AoD though at least in the early part of the game. I'm sure it funnels you later.

 

[Tigranes]

Menzel bug - using sneak and leaving sneakily disables map functionality forever.

 

[Tigranes]

I'm not sure what the solution is - I do prefer XP to skill-by-use, but AoD obviously had pretty much the same problem, only with the player being more directly responsible for which skills are advanced and thus having to save skillpoints and reload the game to allocate them before a skill check.

I believe that's just the design intent for these games. Specialization is a core tenant of Iron Tower's games. You can attempt to play a hybrid build; but you'll probably get your teeth pushed in unless you're already familiar with the content. I personally like this design philosophy because it places importance on your skills: your skill mastery actually matters in these games. If you have subpar speech you won't be able to do x content. If you suck with stealth you won't be able to approach a quest in a different way. This is what made Age of Decadence so replayable - going back, trying a different build, then experiencing a quest from a different perspective.

I'm perfectly fine with specialisation. Here is one thing about CSG, though.

In AOD, when you face a problem, you think: "will my character's specialised skills allow me to find a way to survive?" + "maybe I need to spend my precious hoarded skillpoints on X here." The former is great from gameplay & setting perspective, the latter is controversial.

In CSG, when you face a problem, you think: "which choice will give my party precious, scarce XP into a skill that I need to level up, so that I don't fall behind the curve and become unable to do things with this skill later on?" The party actually makes it easy to cover most skills even with just PC+Faythe, so you are far less likely to get stuck (for good or for ill), but the player ends up spending half the game thinking about how to feed each situation into the XP mill to level up the core skills the way you intend it.

I don't think learn by doing is a disaster here and is meticulously balanced to, as I said, work out fairly similar to AOD - but it's tough to say that it really improves ITS design.

 

[Pink Eye]

the player ends up spending half the game thinking about how to feed each situation into the XP mill to level up the core skills the way you intend it.

It's a good point but for what its worth you do find a few skill tokens here and there to increase stats. For example, I managed to get Faythe's combat stats above the early game curve by feeding her two tokens; one that I got from armory, another I got as a quest award from Boon. Also the developers did add a few skill teachers that can improve stats at the cost of credits.

 

[notpl]

Armor for shotgun / melee frontliners, evasion for gunslingers standing in the rear. Heavy armor imposes AP penalties and gunners need to shoot as much as possible. Gunners also get extra evasion whenever they bank excess AP, including movement AP.

The situation you're describing results in enemies just targeting the gunslingers and hitting them 100% of the time.

Send Jed to stand right at the front.

Neither your post nor the lengthier apologia from Pink Eye are addressing the basic fact that evasion does not do anything. Yes, you're right, you can put armored tank characters - the actual viable combat build - in between an enemy and your squishy in order to protect them from harm. You can also do this with a character who has no evasion whatsoever with no change in result. The point is that evasion doesn't contribute anything.

But you can. A str 10 Juggernaut heavy armor build will shrug off attacks from all but the most lethal enemies, you can park a character like that in the middle of combat and let every enemy wear him down for 2-3 turns while the rest of your party picks the enemies off. If you do the same with a Dex 10 evasion specialist he won't survive past the second smg burst. The two things have an equal opportunity cost but vastly unequal outcomes. It's just bad. It is a mistake. Evasion should either be buffed or removed, as it stands now it is a classic trap option, feats like Artful Dodger simply should not be in the game.