Incline Colony Ship Combat Beta Thread

I had distortion shield, but sold it after some time thinking. Imho description for gadgets a bit vague. Thank you very much for advises.

 

You've screwed yourself with the itemization - you should not have sold that 9mm SMG. The one you're having is a great one but it reaction fires in single shots only. Whereas even your initial one reacts in full bursts.

Selling distortion is also a mistake but slighter one for this build - because of how CS works, it prohibits you from developing your evasion naturally and so you're not that evasive as you'd be with the other builds. But, as you're mostly sticking to faraway cover, that's still better than shield, I suppose.

Otherwise, your build is rather fine.


In other news, I've done a huge review video for the demo's RPG system. Mostly a critical one - found it to be rather disappointing in comparison to AoD. There's barely any progress, less things to try out as the system is simpler instead of being more developed, and the balancing/design of the feats is really, really bad.

 

All smg that sold in stores are 9mm, but yeah I sold initial smg because thought that in later fights it would be like mosqito bite to my enemies and decided to have a bit of money instead. I find it really fucking strange that more expensive and refined smg can't give a burst towards running enemy, while some junk weapon able to do so. Really strange design decision. Thanks for advice.

 

Actually I watched your video, cannot say that I 100% agree with first half where you talking about business and shit, but some critique on system is spot on. I do hope devs will do some re-balance (call me fabulously optimistic, but still) and it would be better. I wish there was more feats with some special qualities besides "+% for some thing". Yeah I know, in Fallout games these feats was mostly useless, but still.

 

SMG builds are insanely powerful but you can easily eat all your credits by wasting too many bullets with unnecessary bursts. Another mistake is spending all your credits on powerful weapons early on. It is not worth it because you will need those credits. This is the first 5 vs 1 scenario, so you are always fucked. Even if you decide to play lonewolf you should accept some help. You can use them at any given time for your personal convenience. Once they die in the battle your lonewolf bonuses kick in. There is also a stasis grenade that can freeze three enemies for three(?) turns, but it is expensive.

 

Check the machine between doc and general store for implant installation.

 

We can't re-balance the game every time someone says 'it's bad, you have to change it'.

I didn't watch the video (I don't have time to watch an hour long video but I'll gladly read a summary if someone post it).

 

I cannot make summary of all video, but can bring points on which I agree (If I understood these points correctly):
1) shotgun feels more like like supplementary weapon school to melee schools, too short ranged and not very powerful for separate school. Shotguns don't have an interesting mechanic besides debuffs, shooting from them feels like shooting from other weapon,but with short range. (I actually tried shotgun build when game came out, turns out for my character it was easier to slash enemies to death, instead of filling them with shrapnel)

2) Rifle underpowered, yes, it can be efficiently used in party (aka you knockdown enemy and there someone who can use it to advantage), but for solo it will be suffering against group enemies. (I tried rifle build only a bit and action point cost is enemy much tougher than criminals)

3) If I correctly understood, debufs is not stacking on each other, so only first shot in legs will have effect besides direct damage and if main character in party - party members should focus on different body parts (this is feels weird to me, since it's logical to shoot in legs of fast opponent to the point when it looses legs, instead of debuffing target once and praying that it will be enough)

4) There no choice between armor and evasion, even person in heaviest of armors (which needs also high strength because armor skills gives not al ot armor handling) should have high evasion, because otherwise he will be buttfucked by shots that ignore armor almost entirely. Wanna have medium armor? High str + high armor + high evasion, for heavy armor you need even more evasion because of penalties. You can't make pure evasion build without armor either, because some level is needed to protect from basic attacks...Both skills depends on each other very much and don't feels like separate schools of defense. (personally I did not tested that, but whole concept sounds weird for me and annoying for people who want heavy armor).

5) Feats have same problem as it was in Fallout is that many of them bad and several are broken. Nerd goes explain why every feat bad(gifted, cult leader, healing factor, juggernaut,mastermind etc/broken(fast runner as one eample I can recall), but for me main concern was why there almost no feats for non combat skills and all feats is just +stat or +%stat without defining style of gameplay qualities.

Nerd also complained that Intelligence do nothing for combat builds, but I not sure it bad thing or not.

Sorry if I misinterpreted points in video or explained poorly, it's just right now I can't focus myself enough on explaining almost 2 hour video in text form.

 

Thanks. Based on the players' feedback shotguns are very powerful (I'd say that 40% of player submitted builds are shotgunners)

Rifles were the top weapon when the combatants would start at the opposite ends of the arena, which is perfect. Obviously, they lost their status when we moved the combatants closer to simulate 'urban warfare' but they will be plenty of fights with enough room for sniping.

Debuffs aren't stacking, so you get a single effect and that's it. If you feel the effect is too weak we can consider it, but we aren't stacking them.

Feats - 1) which ones are broken? 2) all the feats were very useful to some testers who swore up and down that these feats are OP or at least very useful: cult leader is very popular with full party crowds, almost OP, I'd say; there were people who felt that Gifted is so good, why would anyone even take another feat at chargen, etc. Obviously this is a very subjective area, but as long as there's enough support for feats someone doesn't like, we'll keep them in. Why? Because different people play in different ways. We've seen some cool max INT or max CHA builds even before we added the heroic feats that I'd never think of playing myself. 3) There are no non-combat feats because it's a combat demo.

If you or anyone else has suggestions about feats that are more than +% to skills (and won't require extra programming), let us know.

INT does nothing for combat builds - :not sure if serious:

 

Well, then maybe I am wrong and misunderstood how game mechanics work. Sorry about that. As suggestion for feat - I can't invent something right now.

 

Long window from demo release <-> final release 2021 though, and you didnt opt for early access. How much do you expect the basics to change in that period? (enjoyed the demo a lot btw)

 

I have a suggestion - the feats that require 10 in a stat can be picked up after chargen, during regular leveling

 

Pope Amole II, I have enjoyed a lot of your videos, but I would rather you used your vast intelligence to come up with ways of making hardcore games appealing to wider audiences, instead of arguing that hardcore RPGs should not be made.

 

Early access by the end of the year (at least that's the target). Right now the focus is on quests (see the update we posted 2 days ago - https://rpgcodex.net/forums/index.p...date-44-demo-update-and-status-report.132941/) and stealth. I doubt we'd do any significant changes to the combat mechanics before releasing on early access, then we take another look.

Have to be born a hero (the goal is to limit the heroic feats to 1).

 

Ah ok. Anything in the demo you want feedback on though - or just bugs atm?

 

General impressions would be appreciated.

 

Show Spoiler Hide Spoiler

So much difference, so much brain power. I especially like tagged vs non-tagged Armor stat.

First, this presumes that AoD/Colony Ship are hardcore RPGs. Which they're not. Second, I actually know how to do that but, long story short, it's a question of money and it's more than even a succesful team can afford nowadays. If Bethesda or any other big market player would wish to make a hardcore AAA RPG, they'd do it easily. But why would they do it when same investment into mainstream stuff would make better financial returns.

 

Aggressively missing the point here.

 

Yeah, it's just too bad that in AoD Int was a legit combat stat.

 

You keep saying that but real reason they worked was probably op reaction shots. as a weapon rifles simply lack damage output.

what do you have against compensating for bad per with high skill in fallout or crafting ton of grenades in Arcanum?

 

They have accuracy and range, as well as the highest damage per tier (not by far but in a game with low HPs it's more than enough). No reaction shots are necessary (not to mention that rifles have the lowest reaction bonus).

INT gives you tagged skills plus learning rate bonus for non-tagged skills. What more do you need?

 

Everything except Shotguns ends up with enough accuracy and range to land aimed hits fairly ok. damage per tier what does that even mean? high single shot damage just means you rely on that 1 shot to land/crit which makes it more rng heavy. what matters is action economy. reaction shots, I mean no comment, I think even your tryhards seem to stack it regardless of weapon used, there was solorifle build posted in this thread.

Skills seem to grow just fine without int.

What I need is something I can play/game. For example if INT affected starting skills like it does in Fallout where Science is INT x. (number) which allows to get access to something early; or improved performance of your gadgets like shields etc.

Something that affects something you have no control over anyway (because LbU system) is about as interesting as moss growing.

 

Since skills give bonuses in fixed intervals and the xp required to reach the next interval grows quickly a linear boost in xp gained does not translate to an actual combat boost a lot of the time, and even more rarely a combat boost that is worth 1 stat point.

I have this feeling that int will end up a dump stat for most builds the same way charisma was in AoD (high charisma is mandatory on merchant guild questline, great dump stat otherwise). It's not that it does nothing, it's just that it's more efficient to dump it and put the points elsewhere. The exception might be 10 int builds, since getting extra feats is very strong (although this depends on what the level cap is, in demo it takes quite a while before you see the benefit and iirc you 'only' wind up effectively 1 feat ahead).

Don't know what is going on in those screenshots above though. Int and tagging is bad, but not *that* bad.

Gifted is +1 stat right? From what I recall, most feats give way more benefit than what you get from stats (usually something like 1 feat point ~= 2 stat points). Gifted seemed very strong to me when I first read it, and then super weak once I did the math.

 

Have to be born a hero (the goal is to limit the heroic feats to 1).[/QUOTE]

Hm, but doesnt that discourage all-in specialisations, ie, a intelligent, charismatic, weakling? In that case I see no reason to have two stats at 10 at char gen, extreme specialisations, etc ...