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- Jan 28, 2011
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Tags: Colony Ship; Iron Tower Studio; Vince D. Weller
It's been so long since Vault Dweller talked about Colony Ship's skills that I'd almost forgotten that he'd decided to employ a learn-by-use system. It was a somewhat controversial decision not to stick with a more classic level-up system, but we knew that he had plans to ensure that it wasn't exploitable. This month's development update explains in detail how he achieved that goal, skill by skill. First of all though, we've got some new images of the Pit. They're animated GIFs, so I guess that's one step closer to actual gameplay footage. The game's art direction seems to be coming together nicely.
Combat skills
Weapon skills – increase your to-hit chance by 10% per rank.
Evasion – reduces the enemy’s to-hit chance with guns by 5% per rank, with melee by 10% per rank.
Armor – reduces armor penalties by 10% per rank.
Critical Strike – increases your chance to score a critical hit by 5% per rank
Our goal here is to raise skills you’re using the most, ideally reinforcing your gameplay style, while eliminating all possible exploits to raise skill fast. Here is the design overview:
XP – experience points that go toward increasing your character level and gaining feats
LP - learning points that go toward increasing your skill level
Read the rest of the update to learn how the game will handle science skills (Medical, Mechanics, Electronics), stealth skills (Lockpicking, Hacking, Sneaking) and speech skills (Persuasion, Streetwise, Impersonate). It's well thought out, and should give you an idea of the sorts of things you'll be doing onboard the colony ship.
It's been so long since Vault Dweller talked about Colony Ship's skills that I'd almost forgotten that he'd decided to employ a learn-by-use system. It was a somewhat controversial decision not to stick with a more classic level-up system, but we knew that he had plans to ensure that it wasn't exploitable. This month's development update explains in detail how he achieved that goal, skill by skill. First of all though, we've got some new images of the Pit. They're animated GIFs, so I guess that's one step closer to actual gameplay footage. The game's art direction seems to be coming together nicely.
Combat skills
Weapon skills – increase your to-hit chance by 10% per rank.
Evasion – reduces the enemy’s to-hit chance with guns by 5% per rank, with melee by 10% per rank.
Armor – reduces armor penalties by 10% per rank.
Critical Strike – increases your chance to score a critical hit by 5% per rank
Our goal here is to raise skills you’re using the most, ideally reinforcing your gameplay style, while eliminating all possible exploits to raise skill fast. Here is the design overview:
XP – experience points that go toward increasing your character level and gaining feats
LP - learning points that go toward increasing your skill level
- Each attack that does X points of damage gives you X learning points multiplied by the enemy-specific modifier; the points go to the skill matching the weapon used. So if you hit an enemy for 8 points of damage and the modifier reflecting the enemy’s type is 1.5, you get 12 learning points.
- Each critical strike gives the character who scored it 10+[critical damage] lp, so if you critically hits enemy for 17 points of damage, he gains 27lp. Certain weapon and attack types increase your CS chance and/or CS damage multiplier, so to put things in perspective, if you play a Riddick like character your CS skill will be much higher than if you play a Conan like character.
- Evasion & Armor. This is where it gets a bit tricky as we have to limit exploits (the obvious one would be rotating your characters while letting the last remaining enemy to attack them to milk every last drop of LP). Each enemy will have a pool of learning points (i.e. what you can learn about defensive skills while fighting this enemy). Once the pool is depleted, the lesson is over. The points can go to one character or split evenly, based on how you fight. The frontliners will get the highest share while your sniper will learn very little or nothing at all.
- Evasion: When the enemy targets your character and misses, that character gains 5 lp x the modifier until the above mentioned LP pool is depleted.
- Armor: When the enemy hits your party member, that character gains learning points equal to damage resisted by the armor until the pool is depleted, so the heavier the armor the faster you’d develop the skill. Keep in mind that the pool is the same for both Evasion and Armor, so which skills gain learning points depends on which characters will be targeted first and whether the enemies hit or miss.
- Each fight gives your party Y xp that's divided between the party members, so if you have 4 guys and you got 100 xp after a fight, each gets 25xp; if you have 2 guys, each gets 50xp. You’d gain most XP from solving quests though.
