Incline Colony Ship RELEASE THREAD

[Tigranes]

It also feels to me like melee is the worst type of gameplay liability, where it's a liability for the player but not the AI. Meaning, to get into melee you typically have to rush through half the map, drawing reaction fire, before finally getting into someone's face and having enough AP left to stab him maybe once or twice, and then you're left standing there in the open like a moron and get your ass capped before you can move again. Obviously this is upsetting and you'll prefer not to do that. However, the AI cares none for self-preservation, so enemy melees are typically HP 60 dudes with big maces that can't be eliminated before acting, so what happens is they take ~50 damage, then rush towards you, somehow having enough HP to cross the entire map and bash you three times to near-kill (or kill) one of your dudes, before dying on their next turn. It's the local equivalent of exploding zombies in shooters.

Furthermore, I hate 'graze' as a mechanic everywhere it appears, and this is no exception. You try to move anywhere and you can bet your ass that SMG fag with a reaction score of 99 will 'graze' you with a burst of -5 -5 -5 and you might as well reload already. Grazes are usually also the way for lazy designers to make their combat encounters cheat, and this is once again no exception, and boy is it my pet peeve when enemies don't play by the fucking rules. Sure enough, special effects from aimed shots don't work on grazes, there's at least that. But then I run into the creeper in hydroponix, I try to bait it with Faythe's high evasion + full turn skip and what do I see, with all that stacked evasion it STILL has 100% to 'graze' on its hook attack to get her closer (with a to hit of ~30 or something), because lazy faggot designer would cry if the player somehow managed to not get hooked on a feeling by this clever monster encounter. I believe the frogges can also blind and poison you on grazes but of that I'm not sure.

Other legit criticism aside, this is just first impressions being first impressions. Melee PCs can be extremely powerful with a lot of ways to mitigate movement risk, and I actually prefer them over ranged. Enemy melee tends to be very dangerous when they get to you and that raises the tactical problem of stopping them getting to you, which is also what makes reactions so central.

There's pros and cons to grazes, but the interaction between grazes and special effects are usually consistent. The ranged froggers can be rendered completely irrelevant with shields. Human enemies never land special effects with grazes. The creeper complaint seems to be more about THC. Humans can also build into grazes and really widen the graze window.

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

After finishing the Pit and dicking around in Hydroponix, I can say this game upsets me more than it doesn't.

For starters, the basic premise and everything about it is just extremely unappealing to me, mostly because of the standard-issue edgy modernist nihilism that has to pervade everything these days. When everything is shit, everyone is an asshole, everywhere smells and there's nothing but the creaking of old rusty garbage that's about to drop on my head any moment and delicious recycler tube soylent green, I find it a little hard to give a damn about anything that's going on, which means that at this point I'm just going from one place of interest to another to press buttons and gain XP because the way people dialogue at me with their dickery simply doesn't grab me. What do I care if it's Braxton or Jonas who takes over this local part of the rustbucket? No, really, give me one reason. Also, it's suffering from very significant Pillarsofeternitis in the way that it seems like the interesting stuff all happened long ago and all that's left for you is sifting through the ashes left in the aftermath, now ain't that effin exciting.

I'm very bothered by the combat, specifically the encounter design. The pre-combat placement zones are all profoundly retarded, no exceptions - I don't think I've seen any that would not be blatantly offensive yet. The placement options are always either in the middle of nowhere or possibly with some cover nearby, but obviously starting in that cover (or even moving toward it) will have you bunched up and conveniently one of the enemies has 999 initiative and lobs a grenade on you with his first action, wow exciting. If your idea of combat placement is telling the player that you're about to fuck him up the ass, then you might as well drop the pretence altogether.

It also feels to me like melee is the worst type of gameplay liability, where it's a liability for the player but not the AI. Meaning, to get into melee you typically have to rush through half the map, drawing reaction fire, before finally getting into someone's face and having enough AP left to stab him maybe once or twice, and then you're left standing there in the open like a moron and get your ass capped before you can move again. Obviously this is upsetting and you'll prefer not to do that. However, the AI cares none for self-preservation, so enemy melees are typically HP 60 dudes with big maces that can't be eliminated before acting, so what happens is they take ~50 damage, then rush towards you, somehow having enough HP to cross the entire map and bash you three times to near-kill (or kill) one of your dudes, before dying on their next turn. It's the local equivalent of exploding zombies in shooters.

Furthermore, I hate 'graze' as a mechanic everywhere it appears, and this is no exception. You try to move anywhere and you can bet your ass that SMG fag with a reaction score of 99 will 'graze' you with a burst of -5 -5 -5 and you might as well reload already. Grazes are usually also the way for lazy designers to make their combat encounters cheat, and this is once again no exception, and boy is it my pet peeve when enemies don't play by the fucking rules. Sure enough, special effects from aimed shots don't work on grazes, there's at least that. But then I run into the creeper in hydroponix, I try to bait it with Faythe's high evasion + full turn skip and what do I see, with all that stacked evasion it STILL has 100% to 'graze' on its hook attack to get her closer (with a to hit of ~30 or something), because lazy faggot designer would cry if the player somehow managed to not get hooked on a feeling by this clever monster encounter. I believe the frogges can also blind and poison you on grazes but of that I'm not sure.

Finally, the combat encounters feel very limited to me, especially compared to AOD/DR. Where in AOD/DR I had a lot of different ways of approach and leeway for experimentation when something didn't go my way, as well as differentiation between weapons of the same type which here is a joke in comparison, in CS I get the impression like the encounters have maybe 20% of the same breadth, and I hardly get any opportunity to let my character build shine in a way others don't. You just start in a tiny arena, the enemies are either in your face or popping moles from far ahead depending on what profits them, and das it. You either have the stats to win or have to help yourself with nades and such - might as well replace combat with autoresolve based on skill counts.


edit: getting brofisted by whisper makes me want to reconsider my opinioun

Reading all of this makes me kind of sad, in a non mean, not trollish way.

 

[Hellraiser]

Darth Roxor I don't agree with the paragraph about melee for 4 reasons:
1) If you stack reaction on your party you can have the AI be on the receiving end eating a ton of bullets before they get close, you mentioned this yourself, kind of undermines your point about it not being a liability to the AI but only to the player.

2) My experience, although only from using Jed specifically on two playthroughs, is that enemy reaction fire is not an issue if you use the distortion field (forgot how soon you can get it in Act 1, but I think you can maybe even buy it somewhere in the Pit?) and occasionally smoke grenades (melee suffers a lot less from smoke).

3) Charging the enemy first rather than waiting for them to eat your reaction shots while they charge your position only makes sense in very specific circumstances and some encounters. Could be because I used Jed as a tank punching bag negro (that and he broke limbs/skulls). Only sometimes it was worth it to bumrush a sniper or some other target to lock them down in melee.

4) If a guy charges half of the map and can get 3 strikes to bash in the head of your character and kill them it means your positioning sucks or your armor sucks or you are not using gadgets. The enemy scripting is rather predictable (or at least consistent within a given encounter), so the deployment phase turns into a puzzle of who takes the initial hits from whom if your initiative sucks. Even when getting charged and whacked by a berserker is unavoidable due to low initiative or other variables you cannot really influence like a cramped encounter map, you can mitigate this and prevent the party member going down with gadgets which can be activated during deployment. Sometimes you swap gadgets between characters before a given encounter, so that whoever is getting charged can survive a bit longer. Or worst case you could just stack very heavy armor, damn the penalties from lack of skill and become a near useless metal punching bag while the rest of the party kills shit.

tl;dr git gud

I do agree on the deployment areas being shit small though and often very disadvantageous, initiative or whatever should have made the pre-combat deployment area larger. Currently initiative is rather binary, either you have enough to throw a grenade or run to cover or maybe cripple/shoot before the enemy or you don't. Alternatively the player should have more stealth run possibilities, as you can use those to setup ambushes and better positioning even if your skills suck making the initial positioning far less arbitrary and far less beyond the player's control.

 

[Infinitron]

The way deployment areas are being described makes it sound like they're the same type of thing as this:

 

[Darth Roxor]

1) If you stack reaction on your party you can have the AI be on the receiving end eating a ton of bullets before they get close, you mentioned this yourself, kind of undermines your point about it not being a liability to the AI but only to the player.

Maybe I'm just super unlucky or I'm missing something, but with ~50% reaction scores on all my dudes, I almost never trigger that shit, while the enemies seem to trigger it all the effin time.

 

[Hellraiser]

Maybe I'm just super unlucky or I'm missing something, but with ~50% reaction scores on all my dudes, I almost never trigger that shit, while the enemies seem to trigger it all the effin time.

Weird, it works on my machine



In all seriousness though it might be a matter of needing feat stacking or weapon bonuses to overcome high enemy scores in some stat/skill (Evasion? Maybe the combat log mentions what kind of roll is made, I don't pay attention to it.) that lowers odds of triggering a reaction shot. Not sure if it is explained anywhere how exactly this works.

I did notice that my 10 PER ninja with 0 reaction feats barely ever triggers it when people walk nearly into his face, despite a base value of 30+whatever the currently equipped SMG grants.

OTOH my gunslinger that had 9 PER and feats would always get these if an enemy got close enough, multiple times per turn by the endgame.

Same goes to Evans on both playthroughs, he almost always gets a sniper rifle reaction shot off. Even early on it is noticable that he gets reaction shots fairly often.

 

[The_Mask]

It also feels to me like melee is the worst type of gameplay liability, where it's a liability for the player but not the AI. Meaning, to get into melee you typically have to rush through half the map, drawing reaction fire, before finally getting into someone's face and having enough AP left to stab him maybe once or twice, and then you're left standing there in the open like a moron and get your ass capped before you can move again. Obviously this is upsetting and you'll prefer not to do that. However, the AI cares none for self-preservation, so enemy melees are typically HP 60 dudes with big maces that can't be eliminated before acting, so what happens is they take ~50 damage, then rush towards you, somehow having enough HP to cross the entire map and bash you three times to near-kill (or kill) one of your dudes, before dying on their next turn. It's the local equivalent of exploding zombies in shooters.

Everything else Roxor said proves he is a weak man in his 80's and he requires a new set of balls, or a coffin. But this one is absolutely true. The AI thinks like an AI, not like a human being. And add that with the PC placement, and you get an very bad initial impression.

I would absolutely love to see the stats on some of the enemies we face.

That being said, for me it's not a deal braker, and I'm still enjoying the game. It just feels like the game has constant "hard gates". Maybe I'll change my mind the more I play and get to know the game/encounters.

 

[Hellraiser]

The AI thinks like an AI, not like a human being.

A human being in front of the monitor or a human being if they were in-universe and in an actual combat situation such as those the game depicts though?

My immersion/realism-leaning take on this is that enemies should have some irrationality to them and behavioral patterns based on their background. A machete-wielding raider or a zealot (this is a very "religious" setting after all) should have too much, possibly chemically-augmented, bravado and obvious lack of survival instinct when judged from a safe distance by autists.

A soldier can be more disciplined, acting following some kind of tactical manual and training, but also possibly even be fanatical or berserk in some circumstances - the setting does have subliminal messaging capable of making the player character unwillingly enthusiastically participate in a 5 minutes of hate rally in the protector's hab. On the other hand of the spectrum we should have outright cowardly characters if "realistic" behaviour is the goal, especially when a fight starts unexpectedly. Then you have ancient wisdom like "no plan survives contact with the enemy", things are never fully as predicted/expected so rational responses can't always be expected.

If you have the AI acting under the same kind of "winning conditions" as the player you would get rather samey enemy behavior across the whole game solidifying a feeling of playing against a machine. And in such a scenario it would also metagame, only similarly to the player rather than like machine unconcerned with casualties

Not justifying the way the AI acts in this game, in general it seems optimized around providing the biggest challenge with the enemies/gear it has available, and indeed acts like a bot rather than in-universe group of NPCs or a human player. Just sharing some autistic thoughts I had on this after reading the quoted line.

 

[Daedalos]

After finishing the Pit and dicking around in Hydroponix, I can say this game upsets me more than it doesn't.

For starters, the basic premise and everything about it is just extremely unappealing to me, mostly because of the standard-issue edgy modernist nihilism that has to pervade everything these days. When everything is shit, everyone is an asshole, everywhere smells and there's nothing but the creaking of old rusty garbage that's about to drop on my head any moment and delicious recycler tube soylent green, I find it a little hard to give a damn about anything that's going on, which means that at this point I'm just going from one place of interest to another to press buttons and gain XP because the way people dialogue at me with their dickery simply doesn't grab me. What do I care if it's Braxton or Jonas who takes over this local part of the rustbucket? No, really, give me one reason. Also, it's suffering from very significant Pillarsofeternitis in the way that it seems like the interesting stuff all happened long ago and all that's left for you is sifting through the ashes left in the aftermath, now ain't that effin exciting.

I'm very bothered by the combat, specifically the encounter design. The pre-combat placement zones are all profoundly retarded, no exceptions - I don't think I've seen any that would not be blatantly offensive yet. The placement options are always either in the middle of nowhere or possibly with some cover nearby, but obviously starting in that cover (or even moving toward it) will have you bunched up and conveniently one of the enemies has 999 initiative and lobs a grenade on you with his first action, wow exciting. If your idea of combat placement is telling the player that you're about to fuck him up the ass, then you might as well drop the pretence altogether.

It also feels to me like melee is the worst type of gameplay liability, where it's a liability for the player but not the AI. Meaning, to get into melee you typically have to rush through half the map, drawing reaction fire, before finally getting into someone's face and having enough AP left to stab him maybe once or twice, and then you're left standing there in the open like a moron and get your ass capped before you can move again. Obviously this is upsetting and you'll prefer not to do that. However, the AI cares none for self-preservation, so enemy melees are typically HP 60 dudes with big maces that can't be eliminated before acting, so what happens is they take ~50 damage, then rush towards you, somehow having enough HP to cross the entire map and bash you three times to near-kill (or kill) one of your dudes, before dying on their next turn. It's the local equivalent of exploding zombies in shooters.

Furthermore, I hate 'graze' as a mechanic everywhere it appears, and this is no exception. You try to move anywhere and you can bet your ass that SMG fag with a reaction score of 99 will 'graze' you with a burst of -5 -5 -5 and you might as well reload already. Grazes are usually also the way for lazy designers to make their combat encounters cheat, and this is once again no exception, and boy is it my pet peeve when enemies don't play by the fucking rules. Sure enough, special effects from aimed shots don't work on grazes, there's at least that. But then I run into the creeper in hydroponix, I try to bait it with Faythe's high evasion + full turn skip and what do I see, with all that stacked evasion it STILL has 100% to 'graze' on its hook attack to get her closer (with a to hit of ~30 or something), because lazy faggot designer would cry if the player somehow managed to not get hooked on a feeling by this clever monster encounter. I believe the frogges can also blind and poison you on grazes but of that I'm not sure.

Finally, the combat encounters feel very limited to me, especially compared to AOD/DR. Where in AOD/DR I had a lot of different ways of approach and leeway for experimentation when something didn't go my way, as well as differentiation between weapons of the same type which here is a joke in comparison, in CS I get the impression like the encounters have maybe 20% of the same breadth, and I hardly get any opportunity to let my character build shine in a way others don't. You just start in a tiny arena, the enemies are either in your face or popping moles from far ahead depending on what profits them, and das it. You either have the stats to win or have to help yourself with nades and such - might as well replace combat with autoresolve based on skill counts.


edit: getting brofisted by whisper makes me want to reconsider my opinioun

Bitching about a game being TOO grimdark, kodex never changes, eh? Muh immershun. What the fuck did you expect? niggas living on a floating spaceship in which they will never seen anything else, that basically BREATHES nihilism, so its perfectly in line with the setting and lore.
You don't like backstory? plenty of that in Fallout 1 too, and its great.

Now obviously, since its contained to a ship, it's not gonna have a huge world to play with like fallout etc as a backdrop, and the story is more contained. it is what it is. maybe thats just not for you.
What does life and whatever you say or do anyway matter? Remember that. It's all gonna end anyway, and isn't that just a little of something?

In terms of the rest of your complaints, sounds like a skill issue.
despite your complaints, ratboy, the game is still far and beyond whatever else garbage gets released nowadays, BG3, being the exception and a few others.

For an effort for a studio this fucking small, it's quite an achievement comparetively to underrail and obviously AoD as you pointed out.

 

[Jrpgfan]

We're happy space folks in a soon to be oxygen deprived tin can floating around in space with no apparent destination, eating protein tabs made of recycled dead people, breathing air that smells like oil and metal, and drinking water that tastes as if it came out of a car radiator.

Let's all hold hands and sing kumbaya.

 

[Jrpgfan]

It would be so much more interesting if instead of factions at war, lawless cities and thugs everywhere, we had smiling farmers tending to the crops in Hydroponics.

Instead of Colony Ship the game should be called Space Farming Simulator or Harvest Ship.

ITS could finance their next game by releasing periodic DLCs with new creatures. Like the Happy Jellyfish that helps our happy farmer by sprinkling water onto the crops

The cute sandworm that helps him fertilize the soil

Or the happy frogs that protect the crops against all kinds of pests

 

[Technomancer]

The AI thinks like an AI

I mean suicide attacks didn't make sense before when it was win or die situation. But now when game added bleed out counter, melee kamikaze rushes kinda make sense coz they know their bros will carry them to the doc if they win.

I would absolutely love to see the stats on some of the enemies we face.

There is a thread on discord with datamined stats.

 

[kangaxx]

Completely forgot this was coming out in November, what a bonus.

Before I dive in, is this the kind of game where any build is viable?

 

[AdolfSatan]

The world is filled with dangerous shitholes and people living in them still make jokes and get laid. Contrast is an essential tool in every art, it’s what gives meaning to whatever the main argument might be. The writing in CS isn’t consistent, it’s monotonous, and that works in its detriment. Roxor’s complaint is solid, there’s no reason to care over one character/faction over the other when all of them sound like VD with a slightly different mask.

Before I dive in, is this the kind of game where any build is viable?

As long as you stick to your initial choices all the way thru, yes. If you pivot to respec halfway you’re screwed tho.

 

[Hellraiser]

There is a thread ... with datamined stats.

...on discord...

Why the fuck people put such things on discord, FFS.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

Can someone tell me how am I supposed to return to the Pit now? Because there doesn't seem to be an option to do that, unless I am supposed to offer the Machine to one of the factions?

Vault Dweller Also, there seems to be a bug with the 'Soldier of Fortune' quest missing description on the quest tab.

 

[Technomancer]

Why the fuck people put such things on discord, FFS.

Actually, checking back it doesn't seem to be on discord.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1YTF-gZuTDgkRp9tHs8q7p6vz1aYmx0iX

 

[lukaszek]

Can someone tell me how am I supposed to return to the Pit now? Because there doesn't seem to be an option to do that, unless I am supposed to offer the Machine to one of the factions?

you need to progress holy grail

 

[Darth Roxor]

Elhoim there's a bug with poison. Had it happen with the creeper in Hydroponics.

Faythe had 46 initiative and moved first before the creeper (42). After getting hit with the gas, her initiative would fall under the creeper (I think 40), but on the next turn she'd skip her turn instead of taking it later.

After dunking her initiative with full riot gear and making sure she goes second from the get-go, this no longer happened.

 

[kangaxx]

Is the pathfinding/just moving around the map a known issue with this game? I'm finding it really unresponsive.

 

[Saduj]

Is the pathfinding/just moving around the map a known issue with this game? I'm finding it really unresponsive

I’ve only noticed that when there is an obstacle between me and where I clicked. Something you have to click on to climb, crawl under, squeeze through, etc. I have had characters get stuck where they can’t move at all and I have to use map teleport to release them.

 

[Lhynn]

getting brofisted by whisper makes me want to reconsider my opinioun

dildolos is hating on you, so it balances out

 

[TheDarkUrge]

Is the pathfinding/just moving around the map a known issue with this game? I'm finding it really unresponsive.

Are you in mission control? It's probably the most annoying place to navigate in the game because of all the barriers and impassable terrain. Not pathfinding issue just a very intentionally fucked up area (it's where the main fight occurred IIRC)

 

[kangaxx]

Is the pathfinding/just moving around the map a known issue with this game? I'm finding it really unresponsive.

Are you in mission control? It's probably the most annoying place to navigate in the game because of all the barriers and impassable terrain. Not pathfinding issue just a very intentionally fucked up area (it's where the main fight occurred IIRC)

No, the first area. It's ok I've worked it out, just seems that a lot of terrain is impassable when it really doesn't look like it.

 

[Humanophage]

After finishing the Pit and dicking around in Hydroponix, I can say this game upsets me more than it doesn't.

For starters, the basic premise and everything about it is just extremely unappealing to me, mostly because of the standard-issue edgy modernist nihilism that has to pervade everything these days. When everything is shit, everyone is an asshole, everywhere smells and there's nothing but the creaking of old rusty garbage that's about to drop on my head any moment and delicious recycler tube soylent green, I find it a little hard to give a damn about anything that's going on, which means that at this point I'm just going from one place of interest to another to press buttons and gain XP because the way people dialogue at me with their dickery simply doesn't grab me. What do I care if it's Braxton or Jonas who takes over this local part of the rustbucket? No, really, give me one reason. Also, it's suffering from very significant Pillarsofeternitis in the way that it seems like the interesting stuff all happened long ago and all that's left for you is sifting through the ashes left in the aftermath, now ain't that effin exciting.

I'm very bothered by the combat, specifically the encounter design. The pre-combat placement zones are all profoundly retarded, no exceptions - I don't think I've seen any that would not be blatantly offensive yet. The placement options are always either in the middle of nowhere or possibly with some cover nearby, but obviously starting in that cover (or even moving toward it) will have you bunched up and conveniently one of the enemies has 999 initiative and lobs a grenade on you with his first action, wow exciting. If your idea of combat placement is telling the player that you're about to fuck him up the ass, then you might as well drop the pretence altogether.

It also feels to me like melee is the worst type of gameplay liability, where it's a liability for the player but not the AI. Meaning, to get into melee you typically have to rush through half the map, drawing reaction fire, before finally getting into someone's face and having enough AP left to stab him maybe once or twice, and then you're left standing there in the open like a moron and get your ass capped before you can move again. Obviously this is upsetting and you'll prefer not to do that. However, the AI cares none for self-preservation, so enemy melees are typically HP 60 dudes with big maces that can't be eliminated before acting, so what happens is they take ~50 damage, then rush towards you, somehow having enough HP to cross the entire map and bash you three times to near-kill (or kill) one of your dudes, before dying on their next turn. It's the local equivalent of exploding zombies in shooters.

Spoiler

Furthermore, I hate 'graze' as a mechanic everywhere it appears, and this is no exception. You try to move anywhere and you can bet your ass that SMG fag with a reaction score of 99 will 'graze' you with a burst of -5 -5 -5 and you might as well reload already. Grazes are usually also the way for lazy designers to make their combat encounters cheat, and this is once again no exception, and boy is it my pet peeve when enemies don't play by the fucking rules. Sure enough, special effects from aimed shots don't work on grazes, there's at least that. But then I run into the creeper in hydroponix, I try to bait it with Faythe's high evasion + full turn skip and what do I see, with all that stacked evasion it STILL has 100% to 'graze' on its hook attack to get her closer (with a to hit of ~30 or something), because lazy faggot designer would cry if the player somehow managed to not get hooked on a feeling by this clever monster encounter. I believe the frogges can also blind and poison you on grazes but of that I'm not sure.

Finally, the combat encounters feel very limited to me, especially compared to AOD/DR. Where in AOD/DR I had a lot of different ways of approach and leeway for experimentation when something didn't go my way, as well as differentiation between weapons of the same type which here is a joke in comparison, in CS I get the impression like the encounters have maybe 20% of the same breadth, and I hardly get any opportunity to let my character build shine in a way others don't. You just start in a tiny arena, the enemies are either in your face or popping moles from far ahead depending on what profits them, and das it. You either have the stats to win or have to help yourself with nades and such - might as well replace combat with autoresolve based on skill counts.

edit: getting brofisted by whisper makes me want to reconsider my opinioun

Yes.

Honestly, I'm playing melee and it's fun. Melee Jed was just fine, but if initiative is so disturbing, just... get high initiative? I had 3 characters going first in every encounter most of the time. I even had to artificially suppress overly high initiative.