Colony Ship: First System Update

[gurugeorge]

What is the cause of hybrids being weaker in CRPGs? I suppose it's to do with the fact that CRPGs are necessarily more combat-centric than tabletop, plus in that context it's also really difficult to implement any sort of system that's more complicated than "damage is king," so all the emphasis goes into min-maxing for just one kind of combat effectiveness.

It's also caused by the fact that resolutions in RPGs tend to be binary in nature, you either have enough points to pass challenge or not. This is a difficult problem to solve because you would need to implement granular outcomes to challenges, which would geometrically increase the amount of work you have to do.

Yeah, and it would also be more of a brain-ache for the player, pulling you out of immersion too much.

 

[Old One]

I just bought this on GOG.com. I'll try to think of some useless comments and suggestions once I'm done ripping it apart.

Normally I would wait until the final release, but I did that with AoD and DR and they kept getting updated with new stuff anyway, so I had to start over anyway. Because of that I didn't see any point in waiting years longer until the game is "finished."

 

[Elhoim]

Yeah. It's also color coded. Subtlety guiding new players to pick blue one because blue is good and red is bad.

 

[Pink Eye]

imma take the blue pill cause the blues one always taste the best. red ones are bitter af. simple maths really.

 

[gurugeorge]

I'm noodling through this again and I'm enjoying it, but I have two small QOL niggles that are striking me:-

1) the UI seems to put style over substance. It looks very nice, but it's not always very readable - e.g. I have to peer at a miniscule, nondescript looking number in the corner if I want to quickly check how much AP I have left, and I have to constantly double-take on things to check I read them right in the character sheet, that sort of thing. Also some small ergonomic problems like having a tiny fiddly drop-down menu for weps/armor/misc, etc., in the inventory, instead of just big buttons to hit once. The result of the accumulation of small things is that it's not so easy to absorb the system, to get into flow state, or a dance, with one's UI control, it's a bit of a jerky, lumpy experience. The other thing is that

2) the game needs more music, and it needs exploration music that's not that mournful zither tapping and downbeat string lamentation. That was very lovely and very apt for AoD, but for this game I'd like to hear something with a bit more more rust, steel, plastic and technology. Good (perhaps even zero-beat) ambient techno with thematic earworms, like in the Shadowrun reboots, Stellar Tactics or EVE Online, and a sense of the vastness and loneliness of space outside with long filter sweeps, cavernous reverb, abstract echoing tinkles, squiggles and plonks and that sort of thing.

 

[Old One]

Never, ever put the Save and Load buttons close together, especially if they look similar.

I'm managing to run this on my almost-14-year-old gaming machine. For comfort I had to turn down all the graphics settings to low and turn off Bloom (which I don't miss at all), and Motion Blur (which I miss only a little bit maybe). I've turned texture quality back up, and will probably end up turning it up to max, because that one makes a huge difference. If texture quality is set to Low, the store signs are unreadable, which is a bother.

The only odd thing is that every time I start the game, a dialogue box pops up alerting me that the game can't start up because of a missing .dll...but then it starts up and runs just fine.

I managed to get killed quickly. I tried fighting the thugs at the General Store with Evans, and I didn't survive. I did put up a pretty good fight though. It came down to a 50/50 shot, and if I'd hit I probably would have won.

Of course I picked Underdog and Pure RNG before beginning.

 

[gurugeorge]

Never, ever put the Save and Load buttons close together, especially if they look similar.

ikr, I lost like 15 mins of gameplay once because of that

 

[Pink Eye]

Wait. You guys don't use Ctrl + s to quick save and Ctrl + L to quickload? I find it faster than pressing esc and manually saving. Though. I sometimes make hard saves when necessary.

 

[gurugeorge]

Wait. You guys don't use Ctrl + s to quick save and Ctrl + L to quickload? I find it faster than pressing esc and manually saving. Though. I sometimes make hard saves when necessary.

I use F5 and F9 too, but with RPGs I like to manually save at a fairly regular pace and before important-looking junctures, so that I can go back and check alternative dialogues and resolutions if I want to. I don't always take advantage of that (as I'm mostly going with the flow), but sometimes it's really intriguing to see what the alternatives would have been, so I've just made a habit of it.

At any rate, yeah, SAVE and LOAD buttons looking nondescript right next to each other - not user-friendly

 

[Abu Antar]

Wait. You guys don't use Ctrl + s to quick save and Ctrl + L to quickload? I find it faster than pressing esc and manually saving. Though. I sometimes make hard saves when necessary.

First, I wait for an auto save, then I quick save, and just to be sure, a regular save.

 

[Pink Eye]

intradasting. u guys gots big brains for thinking like this. its smart. there was steam player who softlocked himself in braxton/jonas siege. he had no consumables and no prior save to reload. so he was stuck in this final fight against braxton, you can't leave the siege unless you finish it, and so he couldnt do it. i tried to help him but since he had no consumables it was too hard for me too!

 

[Abu Antar]

I've played games since the 80's. I have too many horror stories about lost/corrupted saves. It has shaped me into the save-a-holic that I am.

 

[agris]

Five rolling saves plus a start save and quick save. Save your game at critical junctures, and once you get to the fifth save, roll over the first one. And so on, and so forth.

this is like brushing your teeth. Or would be, except we’re talking about gaymerz

 

[gurugeorge]

Finished. I like the changes (e.g. the variety of worn-out armors, implant extraction, etc.) and Hero difficulty level is prima for just rolling through the story as a filthy casual hybrid. I don't know about the system changes, as you can't really tell with that sort of thing on easy mode. I love the quasi-simulationist nature of the intricacy of the systems in theory, but the problem with those types of things is that it's all for naught if simply ultra-min-maxing down to a muscle-bound moron with one weapon, or a big-brained Mekon, is always more impactful. (Has any developer ever solved that problem though?)

I hope they flesh out the Factory and Shuttle Bay more (both quests and exploration), they're not quite intricate enough yet for proper big zones. One's sense of it being a virtual world one is adventuring through sort of peters out about halfway through the Factory. But some of the stuff in the Shuttle Bay looks placeholderey, so I guess that must surely be on the cards.

Just on a minor technical note, there are still occasional pathfinding issues with companions getting stuck in the odd place, but I'm sure that's not news to the devs.

But it's all getting there, and the graphics are future-proof enough that they can still take some time to get it right and fill it up with moar stuff. Keep going boys!

 

[Pink Eye]

I love the quasi-simulationist nature of the intricacy of the system.

This is one of the reasons why I keep coming back to this game. The system is quite flexible with how you can build characters. I've done so many different character builds: Pistolero Faythe, Heavy Armor Fighter Faythe, Shotgun Faythe, SMG Faythe, Two Handed Hammer Faythe, Rifle Faythe, Bladed Faythe - and we haven't gotten to my main character builds either! I've done builds where I rolled a super low STR melee fighter and saw success! There was also another instance where I picked no feats after level one! Love the Colony Ship system!

 

[Old One]

Just as a matter of good form the Save and Load buttons should never be right next to each other in any game. It doesn't matter that there are alternative ways to save and load because you never know what can happen. Not only are corrupt saves a possibility, but the player could suddenly have to some RL situation to attend to and not be paying close enough attention, or he could be bleary-eyed at 3AM. It really doesn't matter. Separate the Save and Load buttons and avoid any problems in the first place - or at least reduce the risk significantly.

When you accidentally save instead of loading, or accidentally load instead of saving, it really stinks.

 

[Whisper]

Combat is very difficult in a number crunchy kind of way and not terribly satisfying. Prepare to watch your elite team of well armed mercenaries get devoured by a couple of poodle sized frogs.

^ love that 'elite team of well-armed mercs' comment referring to some ragtag nobodies with pipe guns (the review was posted when only the first 3 areas were available)

This comments are so awesome.