Incline Colony Ship RELEASE THREAD

[lukaszek]

finally made my nearly perfect solo hybrid in act 1, or at least pre factory, dunno when acts start/finish. Full clear

Spoiler

couldnt make it work with daggers, main issue was dmg output. With revolver you can just drop those hypno toads faster. With daggers it was a failure and I could never take of hitting annoying wall at lvl 4.
Tagged combat, skillz into computers, electronics, lockpick and streetwise. That last one was wrong choice, go with bio instead as it took me forever to equip heart. Other implant i have is dex one.

few tactics I had to deploy:
- creeper: use energy gun, heart transplant, firefighter helmet, energy armor(that one wasnt needed in the end)
- big toad fight: heart+firefighter helmet + zapping gizmo
- mega psychic encounter: heart + damaged riot helmet + all the stims + cloaking gizmo (start encounter cloaked so you deny full turn of those tentacles, drop toad on your turn)
- last court fight: surprisingly easy. Gas+stasis ranged dudes, kill melee. Then just kited around from cover to cover

sided with mercy, never used disruptor. only fight i walked away from was one in hydrophonics with scavengers and toads. Should have saved it for later.

 

[Tigranes]

Dedicated melee murderhobo guy reporting in:

*Late game, 8 Evasion (tagged halfway), 8 Armour, no defense feats
*With smoke grenades (melee solo), can consistently rely on most ranged attackers missing; some will graze/crit based on their build (e.g. glass cannon sharpshooter enemy, SMGs). Notice a big difference when up against turrets as energy DR is lower and smoke doesn't hurt them (at all, right?)
*Red Hydro 3 creepers fight - am able to fully dodge half the creeper attacks, some of which result in reactions, meaning there is a significant advantage over having to kill creepers in 1 turn or risk them getting all their HP back. (And then, nothing like killing 1 floater & 3 bullfrogs in one turn with Second Wind.)

Edit: Forgot to pick up creeper hunter until after the battle. So that's another +12 evasion right there.

Edit 2: Old bub (now with 9 Evasion), solo, no Romeo: dead in 3 turns. Most hits were grazes; a couple of misses & reactions; when it went for a leg graze (my weakest armour) showing 0 Crit / 5 Hit / 60 Graze. So definitely plays a role.

 

[Alpharius]

sided with mercy, never used disruptor. only fight i walked away from was one in hydrophonics with scavengers and toads. Should have saved it for later.

Nice. How did you manage to side with Mercy with 4 charisma? I intended to do it too but was always short of 1 disposition even when passing all the speech checks. Or is it possible to side with her without persuading her to join Braxton first?
My (later) failed solo hybrid before factory for comparison.

Spoiler

 

[Tigranes]

sided with mercy, never used disruptor. only fight i walked away from was one in hydrophonics with scavengers and toads. Should have saved it for later.

Nice. How did you manage to side with Mercy with 4 charisma? I intended to do it too but was always short of 1 disposition even when passing all the speech checks. Or is it possible to side with her without persuading her to join Braxton first?
My (later) failed solo hybrid before factory for comparison.

Spoiler

The initial streetwise is a trap - there's a combination starting with "And yet, we're still talking" that might just get you over the line, I think (though I may be misremembering and you also need 0 Initial Disposition)

It's a hint of the kind of speech checks AOD had where you had to read the actual options very carefully and match it against what you learned about this character. It's very unfortunate that this is largely lost in CSG, and you just click whatever has the higher number half the time.

 

[lukaszek]

The initial streetwise is a trap - there's a combination starting with "And yet, we're still talking" that might just get you over the line, I think (though I may be misremembering and you also need 0 Initial Disposition)

It's a hint of the kind of speech checks AOD had where you had to read the actual options very carefully and match it against what you learned about this character. It's very unfortunate that this is largely lost in CSG, and you just click whatever has the higher number half the time.

exactly this, possibly other streetwise options were a trap too and only last one with 4 check was important. Cant remember, did few tries

 

[Sibelius]

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.

I also have the Soldier of Fortune missing description bug, had to look at the quest guide on the Wiki to figure out who had given me the quest and what I had to do. I never use guides and now I feel dirty. I also don't seem to be getting Steam Achievements. I don't really care about those, but just thought I would give a heads up. I launch the game using the Winshipping exe from my quick launch bar rather than launching from Steam, could that be the problem? The game also still launches Steam VR when I launch the game.

 

[*-*/\--/\~]

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

So the damn monks have 219 accuracy. Whoever designed that should be repeatedly punched in every genital they own.

 

[lukaszek]

any pointers for detroit fight? Its my solo pistolero.
smiles is alive(wasted disruptor) and i no longer care for her to live.
I got single disruptor, other grenades plenty, no stasis.
tried to run into passage north and make my stand with disruptor and gas, but ultimately 2 guys with rifles and insane accuracy wreck me. I suspect that any valid tactic will mean engaging them first, but then grouping enemies for disruptor+gas is hard and I need that hammertime guy to go down quickly. Maybe will try later with disruption field instead, perhaps it will manage to keep those pesky marksmen in check

EDIT: managed to clear carange whole factory. Ive put my free feat into master blaster, equipped energy revolver + zapping field and somehow managed to do it after losing most of the consumables that I had. Smiles almost made it actually, propably would be alive if I kept her in the far far corner towards the end

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

Another question...

So I slapped Romeo back into shape, charged and upgraded it a bit in the Mission Control. But how do I use it now? I have an option to send it to the Armory but what does that even do?

 

[jackofshadows]

So I slapped Romeo back into shape, charged and upgraded it a bit in the Mission Control. But how do I use it now? I have an option to send it to the Armory but what does that even do?

It can help you in some fights on the lower mission control levels. Alternatively or afterwards you can send it to the Armory yeah so he could help you in some upcoming fights. You'll see according options right before said fights so just save before any encounter and figure out whether or not you need it. After clearing mission control you'll be able to send him anyway provided you have enough % of charge (20% or a bit less just to transfer as far as I remember).

 

[Sibelius]

Question is, do you have any objections to me sharing this for other people interested in making the game a bit more beautiful? ... Is there a reason this is now seen as a must have non-optional feature in CRPGs?

I appreciate you liking the work I did on the environment, and I play without the permanent outlines on (the one in our settings). But seeing at the screenshots it really makes the game a lot harder to read (especially where you can move on, the grid doesn't perfectly match the visuals in some areas) and I wouldn't recommend any new player to use it as it can create a lot of confusion and conflicting visual feedback (where to walk, what to interact with, etc). It could make debugging and wading through false reports harder. But go ahead, it's part of the job =)

Finally got the game added to Nexus mods and added the mod. Here you go, for anyone wanting to try the game without highlights/outlines and the combat grid. Images are on page 42 of this thread, or you can check them on the mod page.

https://www.nexusmods.com/colonyshipapostearthrpg/mods/1

 

[Iluvcheezcake]

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.

50% reaction is not much, aim higher. Ie a Pipe dream rifle gives 25% reaction in itself

 

[lukaszek]

So I slapped Romeo back into shape, charged and upgraded it a bit in the Mission Control. But how do I use it now? I have an option to send it to the Armory but what does that even do?

It can help you in some fights on the lower mission control levels. Alternatively or afterwards you can send it to the Armory yeah so he could help you in some upcoming fights. You'll see according options right before said fights so just save before any encounter and figure out whether or not you need it. After clearing mission control you'll be able to send him anyway provided you have enough % of charge (20% or a bit less just to transfer as far as I remember).

basically you can send it between charging stations. Then if you have romeo somewhere in the area where you are about to fight, you get option to request his assistance.

 

[Nikanuur]

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.

This is weird, something must be amiss.
I mean, I believe you, then again, situations like my teammates shooting two to four times per enemy round, sometimes even bringing one or two enemies from full to half HP happened with as low as 35-50% reaction did happened to me on a, say, pretty regular basis. Definitely not every round, true, but every now and then for sure.

 

[Tigranes]

I think there was an early version ~'20 where reaction used different damage rolls and you could do multiple reactions against movement. It was 'broken' in the sense that you could basically build to kill enemies entirely on enemy phase.

But yes, I'd be looking to hit 100% reaction to really lean into it, which isn't impossible at all.

 

[Saduj]

So I took a peak at Mission Control last night before sleep and I think I my have gotten myself gated out.

I'm in Act 3 and have the eye. My main character has Pistols, Persuasion and Computers tagged and he's responsible for all social and science skills. Social skills are at Persuasion 9, Streetwise 7, Impersonate 6. My science is at Computers 7, Electronics 5, Biotech 5 (latter two are about 60% of the way to 6). I may have missed something, but I have prioritized the science skills every chance I get (tokens, trainers, using them every time possible) and just don't see any more points available until they level. Evan and Jed are pure ranged combat, rifle and shotgun, and feel really strong at this point. Faythe has all the stealth perks at level 5. In combat, she just cloaks and takes pot shots with a pistol.

Why I think I'm screwed

I haven't tried it yet, but I don't think I can beat the fight against Shadow, his crew and those turrets. I believe that I need Electronics 6 to affect the turrets before the fight. I have done all the non-Mission Control related quests except the "bad job" gun for hire quest you get in the Pit after Act 2. I have gone through every area and think I've explored everything that I can. I have a head, gyro and two power cells for Romeo. I tried to install the head and gyro at the same Electronics skill level previously and it didn't seem to do anything for either my character or Romeo so no help there?

So my options are:

I will definitely try to beat the fight. I have weapons I haven't tried yet: the crappy energy pistol, low tier energy rifle and can buy an energy shotgun. I have the xtra strength gas grenade and flashbang from the Protector's vendor. I have two EMP grenades or whatever they are called and two stasis grenades. I still expect to get torn up by the turrets.

I also haven't done the fight against the floaters yet but I don't think beating that is going to help me get to the lower level. Obviously, I'm still going to check it out.

I can go back to Romeo and see if having two power cells changes anything. When I tried to install parts in the past, the game just says "You hope you know what you're doing", the parts exit my inventory and nothing else happens. I don't think he'll be helping in the fight or raising my electronics skill to level 6.

My character has one open cyber slot and I have a datajack. Installing it will increase my intelligence but I think that will only increase XP towards my next level and not my skill bars. I didn't want to use this slot on this but I'll test it out and if it gets me to Mission Control, I will do it.

Pretty sure I'm just screwed if I can't win that "fuck you, you ain't winning this" fight but if anyone has advice, it would be welcome.

 

[Hellraiser]

Saduj

I had the same problem on my second playthrough, in the end I reloaded a save from before going to the inner sanctum, got a level-up from some other quests I had yet to finish and took skill monkey (already got educated earlier and used it on computers). I also looted a granting +electronics from the gas hatch in maintenance deck that I got, but I think skill-monkey alone was enough to get electronics to 6.

Another option is to get the neural jack and overclock it for 2k to get +2 INT, this will allow you to tag another skill, if your INT is an odd number you would get the tag skill even without overclocking it, as even numbers of INT grant extra skill tags.

 

[Tigranes]

So I took a peak at Mission Control last night before sleep and I think I my have gotten myself gated out.

I'm in Act 3 and have the eye. My main character has Pistols, Persuasion and Computers tagged and he's responsible for all social and science skills. Social skills are at Persuasion 9, Streetwise 7, Impersonate 6. My science is at Computers 7, Electronics 5, Biotech 5 (latter two are about 60% of the way to 6). I may have missed something, but I have prioritized the science skills every chance I get (tokens, trainers, using them every time possible) and just don't see any more points available until they level. Evan and Jed are pure ranged combat, rifle and shotgun, and feel really strong at this point. Faythe has all the stealth perks at level 5. In combat, she just cloaks and takes pot shots with a pistol.

Why I think I'm screwed

I haven't tried it yet, but I don't think I can beat the fight against Shadow, his crew and those turrets. I believe that I need Electronics 6 to affect the turrets before the fight. I have done all the non-Mission Control related quests except the "bad job" gun for hire quest you get in the Pit after Act 2. I have gone through every area and think I've explored everything that I can. I have a head, gyro and two power cells for Romeo. I tried to install the head and gyro at the same Electronics skill level previously and it didn't seem to do anything for either my character or Romeo so no help there?

So my options are:

I will definitely try to beat the fight. I have weapons I haven't tried yet: the crappy energy pistol, low tier energy rifle and can buy an energy shotgun. I have the xtra strength gas grenade and flashbang from the Protector's vendor. I have two EMP grenades or whatever they are called and two stasis grenades. I still expect to get torn up by the turrets.

I also haven't done the fight against the floaters yet but I don't think beating that is going to help me get to the lower level. Obviously, I'm still going to check it out.

I can go back to Romeo and see if having two power cells changes anything. When I tried to install parts in the past, the game just says "You hope you know what you're doing", the parts exit my inventory and nothing else happens. I don't think he'll be helping in the fight or raising my electronics skill to level 6.

My character has one open cyber slot and I have a datajack. Installing it will increase my intelligence but I think that will only increase XP towards my next level and not my skill bars. I didn't want to use this slot on this but I'll test it out and if it gets me to Mission Control, I will do it.

Pretty sure I'm just screwed if I can't win that "fuck you, you ain't winning this" fight but if anyone has advice, it would be welcome.

Computer 6 / Electronic 6 / Lockpick 6 I think is the single most important 'basic threshold' for any playthrough where you want to see most of the content and to get access to a lot of things.

When tagged, you can reach 6 on all of these skills before going to the Factory on a dedicated character (even without Skill Monkey), so there's a lot you may have missed.

Re. Mission Control / Shadow, C6/E6 is key to affecting the encounter, but without it, there are still many things you can do to get through:

Spoiler

You can do almost all of the game and tackle this just before the point of no return. There is only one level afterwards. But you can't leave this level if you've started it so you'd have to reload from before that. You should at this point have some proper energy weapons of appropriate type for your character and dozens of cells, as well as pulse grenades, to quickly disable the turrets. You should be able to fix Romeo and have him come into the fight - check wiki for the specific requirements - though your skills may be too low to upgrade him to high power; it sounds like you haven't found all the parts. It is possible for a solo character to do the Shadow fight with no help, so there might be tactical things you can try if you tell us your party.

At worst, nothing wrong with leaving it for another playthrough.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

So I slapped Romeo back into shape, charged and upgraded it a bit in the Mission Control. But how do I use it now? I have an option to send it to the Armory but what does that even do?

It can help you in some fights on the lower mission control levels. Alternatively or afterwards you can send it to the Armory yeah so he could help you in some upcoming fights. You'll see according options right before said fights so just save before any encounter and figure out whether or not you need it. After clearing mission control you'll be able to send him anyway provided you have enough % of charge (20% or a bit less just to transfer as far as I remember).

So I slapped Romeo back into shape, charged and upgraded it a bit in the Mission Control. But how do I use it now? I have an option to send it to the Armory but what does that even do?

It can help you in some fights on the lower mission control levels. Alternatively or afterwards you can send it to the Armory yeah so he could help you in some upcoming fights. You'll see according options right before said fights so just save before any encounter and figure out whether or not you need it. After clearing mission control you'll be able to send him anyway provided you have enough % of charge (20% or a bit less just to transfer as far as I remember).

I thought it was something like that. The issue I'm having is that I don't see that option when...

Romeo no deploy

the first faction comes knocking on my vault door to take my Machine and they aren't ready to take 'no' for an answer. I know the vault is at the moment closed but I could really use that robot right now.

EDIT: No wait, I see it. I was a dialogue option.
EDIT2: Although it is a shame that there is no option after a stealth section ends.

 

[Tigranes]

Romeo:
1/ You install the key pieces (gyroscope and CPU? from the two robot corpses in MC, the light armour plates from the MC hidden room, a fuel cell) then get it running
2/ You upgrade & refuel through the MC stations and use it in MC combats you want
3/ You use 20% fuel to send it on a one-way trip to the Armoury THEN you get option to use it in Armoury battle
4/ Then you bring it with you for the final parade

 

[*-*/\--/\~]

On a side note, the game currently has 1538 reviews on Steam, sitting at 88% positive.

If we assume roughly fifty purchases per review (this ratio varies, starting around 20 and going over 150 for some games, but let's assume somewhat conservative 50) at 39€ (the price I see there), we're looking at nearly three million going to Iron Tower.

Hard to estimate how deep do steam share, unreal share, discounts and 7 years of development cut into this... what is the Codex consensus on profitability of the game? Will we see another?

 

[Tyranicon]

what is the Codex consensus on profitability of the game? Will we see another?

It's really hard to "guestimate" revenue without the dev offering hard numbers, but I'd wager that the launch is at least a moderate success for a tiny studio.

Is it enough to pay for the years of gamdev that preceded it and fund future projects? Only Iron Tower will know for sure.

Earlier in the thread Vince said they needed to look at several months of sales, and not just launch, which is reasonable for this type of game.

For what it's worth here's the steamdb estimation on copies owned:

Hopefully they will be able to keep going. Now that the technical work for CS is mostly done, making future games with the same framework should be easier, if that's something Iron Tower wants.

 

[agris]

what is the Codex consensus on profitability of the game? Will we see another?

It's really hard to "guestimate" revenue without the dev offering hard numbers, but I'd wager that the launch is at least a moderate success for a tiny studio.

Is it enough to pay for the years of gamdev that preceded it and fund future projects? Only Iron Tower will know for sure.

Earlier in the thread Vince said they needed to look at several months of sales, and not just launch, which is reasonable for this type of game.

For what it's worth here's the steamdb estimation on copies owned:

View attachment 43880

Hopefully they will be able to keep going. Now that the technical work for CS is mostly done, making future games with the same framework should be easier, if that's something Iron Tower wants.

I think that their next game, god willing, should go back to a single protagonist ala-AoD. Or, DR-level companions at the most.

Programming and scripting was a consistent bottleneck for CS iirc, and I think Vince has even said that he and the team significantly underestimated the amount of dev resources it took to implement the party members in CS. For a studio with very limited resources, I'm sure that impacted other aspects of CS's development.

I love CS, and while I hope that there IS a next ITS game, I think I want that game to go back to a single main character so that they can flesh out the world more.

 

[Infinitron]

Let's revisit this discussion from 2017:

I'm not saying that's a good attitude, but it does seem to be a pretty accurate one. Look at the ambition of CSG vs. AOD, and Vault Dweller is a pretty grounded and realistic guy. This is what always happens...

For the sake of lowering expectations:

I hope that the CSG will be a much better game because we've learned much and because I know what we did well, what was overlooked, and where we failed. So that "much better" won't come from making the game more epic with more classes and locations but from tightening up the overall design. The CSG will have 16 locations (AoD had 22 but many had a single point of interest), 21 skills (AoD had 23), 3 main factions and 3 smaller groups instead of 7 factions with parallell questlines in AoD. Some new features like learn by use and implants are based on AoD's designs (in AoD we had 3 skill pools: combat, civic, and general; now we'll have a pool for each skill so design-wise it's not some new and unexplored ground). The new features are party-based combat (but that's what DR was all about - focusing on combat exclusively to gain the experience), TB stealth (we had some rough designs for AoD but didn't have time), and gadgets/grenades which should be manageable since we won't have crafting or alchemy.

So the ambition is to make a better game, not a bigger game.

I would say that just the addition of a party makes the game's scope "bigger" in a pretty meaningful sense, though.

In what ways? Combat? After DR we have the template and experience. Party members affecting quests? Relatively easy to script and write. Much easier than the parallel questlines in AoD which was a scripting nightmare.

What Aenra said, basically. Developers like Obsidian talk about companions as being a large investment, so you may be underestimating this.

The single, most time consuming, complex aspect of AoD was the parallel questlines. Compared to it, writing and scripting party members is a walk in the park. It's still a relatively complex task but a very manageable one.

As for Obsidian, their remark should be seen in the context of the overall design of their games. While they like reactivity, it's usually a welcome bonus not the focus. They make combat-focused RPG where killing enemies is about 60-80% of the game. From this perspective, writing and scripting something as reactive as party members (i.e. not a single case of reactivity) is a great investment compared to populating a map with enemies to kill. Additionally, Obsidian usually operates under strict time constraints, which means they really have to pick their battles wisely, whereas we can easily add another year if needed.

It seems to me that depending on their complexity, companions can be a lot like "parallel questlines".

I assure you they can't. Not even close.

They have their own independent states that evolve in "parallel" with the rest of the game. Basically every companion is like a sort of questline that can touch anything in the game where you take that companion (including other companions).

Meaning multiple quest solutions at most (i.e. sometimes they provide a new solution, sometimes they alter your options), which will be done by default even if we had no party members. The party members are merely another layer. Plus reactivity and comments. Plus unique content, which too would be done by default. We'll do as many quests as we can say, let's say a hundred which is less than what AoD had. So 10 quests/events would be gated by the party members.

whereas we can easily add another year if needed

Can you now? Interesting to know.

I think that goes without saying. I have a certain game in mind. I think we can do it in 4 years but if we can't and it takes 6 years then that's what it's going to take. Simple as that.

It took six years!

 

[Saduj]

Computer 6 / Electronic 6 / Lockpick 6 I think is the single most important 'basic threshold' for any playthrough where you want to see most of the content and to get access to a lot of things.

Yeah, I knew these would gate a lot of content. I had only played the game for about 2 hours with a couple of characters before I settled on this one. It seemed to me, based on the little I had seen, that Computers had less chances to level up so I tagged that. I thought I could get away with 6 INT plus Educated. Thought wrong.

I had the same problem on my second playthrough, in the end I reloaded a save from before going to the inner sanctum, got a level-up from some other quests I had yet to finish and took skill monkey (already got educated earlier and used it on computers). I also looted a granting +electronics from the gas hatch in maintenance deck that I got, but I think skill-monkey alone was enough to get electronics to 6.

Another option is to get the neural jack and overclock it for 2k to get +2 INT, this will allow you to tag another skill, if your INT is an odd number you would get the tag skill even without overclocking it, as even numbers of INT grant extra skill tags.

I did the first thing you said and was planning on taking Skill Monkey the whole time only to realize that you need 8 INT, which I don't have. I must have seen it as an option available to Faythe and didn't pay attention to the INT requirement.

But that second option should work! I have the open slot, the jack and the money to do it. Thanks!