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Game News Colony Ship Update #30: New Title, Monsters

Infinitron

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Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Tags: Colony Ship; Iron Tower Studio; Vince D. Weller

How ironic! After much discussion and two rounds of voting, The New World has gone back to being simply Colony Ship, the working title it used before it was officially named. The latest development update wastes no time dwelling on that, however. It's all about the monsters of the colony ship. They're the mutated descendants of various animals that the colonists brought with them to help terraform Proxima Centauri. The goal is to make them more tactically interesting than the monsters from Dungeon Rats.

In AoD/DR most critters were melee ‘fighters’, half of them poisonous, with high DEX (to close the distance fast) and two attack types. Predictably, this design didn’t bring anything new to the table and what little it did bring got old fast.

So when it comes to creatures our goals are:
  • Tactical flexibility
  • Unique abilities that humans don’t have
  • Focus on various effects rather than direct damage (i.e. no 'fighters')
  • Different enemies working together or taking advantage of other critters’ abilities
  • Effective counters of ranged parties
Of course, having lofty goals is one thing, achieving them is another, so we’d like to run some ideas by our core audience and see what you guys think. Nothing is set in stone yet as we won’t start implementing the creatures until 2019, so we can easily make change at this point. We’re planning to have 6 creatures, mostly found in the Hydroponics and Wasteland. Let’s start with the creatures’ origin.

The Ship is en route to Proxima B, an Earth-like planet orbiting Proxima Centauri. Ninety percent of its surface is covered with water, but the planet is slightly bigger than Earth, providing approximately half of Earth’s landmass.

Losing Terran plants and crops to local pests and fungus would be catastrophic, so the Hydroponics Division was tasked with adapting the plants to the anticipated environment of Proxima B and developing biological forms of pest control (introducing predators from old Earth to change the native ecosystem and eliminate all local threats was the most cost-effective way to ensure that the colony would survive and grow).

Extensive gene-editing was employed to develop resistance to alien fungi and pests, and accelerated adaptation hacked into the plants' genetic code. Like many other critical systems, Hydroponics was abandoned during the Mutiny. The carefully cultivated flora and fauna was left on its own in harsh environs designed to propagate rapid and brutal evolutionary cycles.

When human beings finally decided to reclaim Hydroponics, they discovered an environment as wild and hostile as any Earth jungle...
The update describes three of Colony Ship's six monster types:

Frogs: Frogs are already used in agriculture as a form of biological pest control as they have a healthy appetite for insects and are highly resistant to insecticide. Plus they have a wide range of natural abilities: jumping, toxic venom, hallucinogen, even retractable spikes (the wolverine frog), which would make them a top choice when it comes to cost-effective terraforming.

The frog is a 'hard to hit, easy to kill' critter (high evasion due to the small size and mobility, low hit points and no damage resistance). They will attack in packs and come in 3 varieties: fighter, poison spitter, and 'mind flayer'. It's a low level critter that prefers easy prey (i.e. low level, poorly equipped parties). They aren't very aggressive and won't attack unless threatened. When you run into them for the first time, they'll be busy feasting on a corpse. If you want to go through that corpse's pockets, you'll have to kill the frogs first.

Starfish: An avid predator and an opportunistic feeder, the starfish is one of the keystone species which makes it an excellent addition to any terraforming arsenal. It can regenerate damaged parts, swallow its prey whole, and it even comes with its own body armor (hardened plates and spines).

The mutated version will shoot its stomach (yeah, it's actually a thing) to drag the victim within the attack range. It will also release a spore cloud, greatly reducing the visibility and your THC with ranged weapons. During its turn, the starfish will envelop you and drain your HP, regenerating some of the damage it sustains during the fight.

Unlike the frog, the starfish is easy to hit (with melee weapons) but hard to kill due to DR and accelerated regeneration. One starfish isn’t a serious threat but 2-3 would be able to ruin your day pretty quick.

Floaters: It’s a mutated jellyfish originally adapted from the Portuguese man o'war and designed to hover over crops and zap insects, while turning away larger animals. Things got a bit out of hand during the Mutiny when the mutation cycles ran wild and now the few remaining floaters haunt the ruins of the Mission Control Center.

Upon detecting oversized insects, the floater will slowly move to intercept them. Bullets have no effect on it but energy weapons would bring it down in no time. In the absence of such weapons or cells to power them up, you can hack it to pieces, which isn’t an ideal solution because the floater will zap every enemy next to it (crowd control), dealing energy damage. On top of it, the floater is equipped with a primitive version of brainwave disruptor, so the closer you get, the higher the chance to forget what you were doing and just stand there, drooling like an idiot (aka skip turn).

In short, the floater is easy to kill if you have energy cells to spare or hard to kill with melee weapons if you don’t. Certain implants and helmet will increase mental resistance. Other creatures and rival parties might (surely will) attack while you’re busy fighting the floaters.
See the full update for concept art of these three creatures, which helpfully shows their size compared to a human being. The other three creatures sound like they might be more exotic - the Wasteland's "Old Beelzebub" is one of them.
 

The Wall

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Everything sounds great but Colony Ship? Really? Fo realz?

If you were guided by straightforwardness in choosing the name you might have as well called it Space RPG. It captures what game will be about (RPG in space) plus those 2 words are among most popular Steam search tags. Voila! Name efficiency and Steam searchbility + 148%

Or just call it The Newer World. Or simply halal name: Hajj to New Mecca, might bring new customers, few mail bombs and smaller scale jihad...

Or simple and elegant: To(ward) New World. Eh?
 

Deleted Member 22431

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I was gonna recommend Mustawd RPG but it’s too late now. RIP Iron Tower’s second game.

MUSTARD: A PRE-HOT DOG ROLE PLAYING GAME

http%3A%2F%2Fi.huffpost.com%2Fgen%2F3596402%2Fimages%2Fn-HOT-DOG-EATING-628x314.jpg
 

J_C

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Project: Eternity Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag. Pathfinder: Wrath
There is no title in the world which is liked by everyone, but looking at the poll in the appropriate thread, the current title won my a landslide. I like it.
 

Tigranes

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Given the quality of most other suggestions, including ones in this very thread, I am ecstatic that the new title does not actively tingle the retard sensors.
 

Bohr

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I am a certified farseer (BA in Astrology) and let me tell you the next title gonna be 'ITS 3rd Game'

Think you're onto something here, could solve all these naming problems in a reasonably prestigious fashion

ELpFGaP3_o.jpg
 

Shadenuat

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Name it roleplaying game the game whatever don't care; waiting for more freedom C&C and even harder combat

nice poster

seems like there will be mutants afterall and they said there won't be many mutantos :shittydog:
 

The Wall

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Oh look, the guy who suggested The Newer World is upset with my words
Hahaha Codex bro if you thought that was serious suggestion then I dunno what to say.

My only semi-serious suggestions (and I can't go through both double digit pages long threads where Codex tries to name 2nd ITS baby to see but I'm surpised noone thought of it) are To New World and Toward New World. Unless Vince can't use words 'New' and 'World' next to each other then it's min. edit of name and I'd even argue that it makes title more catchy.

To New World/ Toward New World/For New World - all sound especially in combination with cover very good. At least to my ears...

Btw. we gotta enable rating ratings. Also we all know why you posted, so that you'd make me leave lurk cover and be open for your rating fire. Well...whatcha waintin fo! Shoot boi or be hit with butthurt, retadred or worse! This thread aint big enough fo both of us! *spits*

 

The Wall

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Don't tell me that on Codex of all places nobody thought of one minor, tiny, miniscule, single letter change which could make game's OG title much, much, mucho more...kosher:troll:
 

Tigranes

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Oh look, the guy who suggested The Newer World is upset with my words
Hahaha Codex bro if you thought that was serious suggestion then I dunno what to say.

My only semi-serious suggestions (and I can't go through both double digit pages long threads where Codex tries to name 2nd ITS baby to see but I'm surpised noone thought of it) are To New World and Toward New World. Unless Vince can't use words 'New' and 'World' next to each other then it's min. edit of name and I'd even argue that it makes title more catchy.

To New World/ Toward New World/For New World - all sound especially in combination with cover very good. At least to my ears...

Btw. we gotta enable rating ratings. Also we all know why you posted, so that you'd make me leave lurk cover and be open for your rating fire. Well...whatcha waintin fo! Shoot boi or be hit with butthurt, retadred or worse! This thread aint big enough fo both of us! *spits*

Uh, what lurk cover and what?

I simply think coming up with names is very difficult, far more than people think. While Colony Ship isn't particularly amazing, tons of people sat there going "hey that sucks I can think of better names in 10 seconds"... and it's mostly terrible.

I vastly prefer Colony Ship to those New World variants.
 

The Wall

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It's not bad title it's just meh, which is sometimes worse then bad cause bad is sometimes so bad that it becomes good. Like Schwarzenegger's acting, for example.

As I see it calling game that takes place on colony ship - Colony Ship is akin to movie Titanic instead being named Ship. That's all. Ship.

At least they could and should come up with some cool name for colony ship itself and then can call the game after it. That would make sense and be logical. In the end Colony Ship is least bad but most meh solution, at least imo
 

Deleted Member 22431

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I think people rationalise their personal preferences for names way too much. They imagine how their favorite title will make the game look cool or increase its chances of success, but the name is the least important thing. The great games makes their titles memorable, not the other way around. “Fallout” is a simple name, but it was attached to a game that is a landmark in the history of cRPGs. Now it seems like a great title because it is the title of a great game.
 

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