Game News Colony Ship Update #45: The Armory

[Infinitron]

Tags: Colony Ship: A Post-Earth Role Playing Game; Iron Tower Studio; Vince D. Weller

The latest Colony Ship development update gives us our first look at an area outside the game's starting town. The Armory is a pivotal location where the player character will discover a mysterious device that kicks off the main quest, and it'll eventually become your base of operations. However, before you can unlock the armory door you'll need to deal with the gang of thugs who control the area, as seen in the new batch of screenshots included in the update. The first thing you'll notice is that Iron Tower have moved the game's dialogue box to the side of the screen, Disco Elysium-style. There have been other developments as well. The Pit has been expanded and should be fully scripted and playable by the end of the month, and the first prototype of the stealth system should be ready by then as well. Here are those screenshots and an excerpt from the update:

We're wrapping up the Armory (the second location), so we can finally show you something other than the starting town. Let's start with the intro:

With row after row of gutted depots, the Armory stretches before you as a shell of what it once was. The mutineers hit it fast and hard, overrunning the surprised security forces and stripping it of supplies. Weapons and armor meant for the future colony flooded the Ship, turning the Mutiny into a full-fledged war. The Ship Authority held its own in the end, keeping control of the lower decks, but at a great cost that went far beyond the Armory's lost supplies.

Your destination lies ahead – a reinforced door flanked by twin auto-cannons drawing on a seemingly inexhaustible power supply. No one made it past during the Mutiny, and no one's made it past since. Like the proverbial flaming sword outside of Eden, it sits as a guardian, a symbol of ancient strength, and a promise of marvels beyond.

You get the access card from Tanner (as mentioned in the combat demo), so getting past the automated security on that floor will be easy. However, you'd have to get past the local thugs first. You can fight or talk your way through or simply sneak past them. Multiple quest solutions are one of the cornerstones of our design philosophy.

- The old dialogue box at the bottom of the screen wasn't big enough to fit all the text and PC options in more heated conversations, so we went with a vertical setup. It's still work in progress (we switched to it a week ago) so feel free to offer suggestions for improvement. I can't say I like it but it's either this or what we had in AoD or using a scrollbar to make sure you see all the options.
- We wanted to show the skills (you can see them leveling up while talking) but you'll be using all skills not just speech and there's no room to fit them all. Maybe something like index tabs on the side?
- On the dialogue design itself: in AoD it was easy to fail a check and end up dead or in combat. In Colony Ship failures and successes modify the disposition, giving you a chance to recover from your mistakes.

The access card doesn't give you the keys to the kingdom. If you want to fully explore the Armory you'll need to beat retinal scanners on lower levels. At some point in the game the Armory will become your base of operations and you'll have to reinforce it (not base building but using scavenged parts) and defend against attacks.

Random tidbits for those who read Playboy for the articles:

- We updated the engine from 4.22 to 4.25, which fixed a lot of minor engine-related issues without introducing new ones (well, except for some minor font issues – see below, but that's manageable).
- We implemented 'guest' mechanics when an NPC temporarily joins your party, bypassing the party limit. You control them in combat but don't have access to their inventories.
- We're working on the Pit's (the starting town) quests at the moment and it's going well. The quests should be fully scripted - meaning the Pit's fully playable - by the end of July (half of it is already playable and I don't mean the combat demo).
- The stealth system (the first prototype) should be ready by the end of the month as well. I'm sure it will go through several iterations (meaning it won't be done until the end of summer), but getting something playable is a very important step, if only for quest and level design.
- Speaking of quest design, we expanded the Pit yet again as we added more quests, so now the Pit consists of three areas: Mainstreet, Camptown, and the Outskirts.
- We replaced more animations, added different icons for gadget upgrade parts, redesigned the upgrade screen, and did a bunch of other minor improvements.
- The combat demo was download 5,761 times (3,754 on May 9). Slow but steady...
​

Looking good. See the full update for additional details on the player character's interaction with the sharp-faced leader of the thugs.

 

[CappenVarra]

it's not correct that there are 0 comments, plenty of them in the canonical thread: https://rpgcodex.net/forums/threads/colony-ship-update-45-the-armory.133828

 

[Elhoim]

Disco Elysium-style

It was a bit more inspired by this game with vertical text

No idea why we went with center low at first. I guess we wanted to give it another go, change the style, but it was definitely not good for our long paragraphs.

 

[Mac_Orion]

Nice update, hey Infinitron can you make it so that when opening pictures there is a gallery and so you can go through the gallery instead of opening another page for every screenshot.

 

[Infinitron]

Nice update, hey Infinitron can you make it so that when opening pictures there is a gallery and so you can go through the gallery instead of opening another page for every screenshot.

Our gallery is pretty simple. If you want all the images in full size on one page, you're better off just reading the original update on the Iron Tower forums.

 

[Rincewind]

YES! The expositions and dialogs are concise, well-written and to the point! I'd like to give an award or something to the writers for not trying too hard and ruining it with flowery prose and shit! As a fan of the Gothic, Fallout, Elex, etc. school of no-bullshit writing, this looks just perfect so far. The occasional sarcastic remark is also tastefully done, not too much, just right. The character portraits are pretty cool too.

EDIT: I don't mind the vertical text panel at all, I think I actually prefer it to the more usual horizontal style (less scrolling is better and a narrow column of text is easier to read). Tabs for the skills is not a bad idea, maybe when some stat increases the corresponding tab could be highlighted or even it could be brought to the foreground automatically.

 

[Rincewind]

I've also checked out the screenshots at the Iron Tower forums and I like the text pane on the left side better somehow.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

Looks 100% like AoD in space.

It's a shame because in my opinion, the issue with AoD is that it leaves absolutely no room for mistakes. You either min-maxed enough to win this specific fight or to succeed at this specific skill-check, and you figured out the specific progression order that allows you to succeed, or you WILL die. Because of this you don't have as much freedom as it initially looks, because most of the options available to you are dead-ends.

VD finds it normal and doesn't understand why everyone doesn't appreciate how great his design is, but I suspect it is because he is so familiar with the game that he doesn't have any issue min-maxing characters and progressing in a correct order. Everyone else needs to deal with a ton of trial and error all the time.

You can't go around the world, try out things and do what you want; you have to be extremely focused on min-maxing all the times, and it kills a lot of the fun.

 

[Jrpgfan]

I had no issues whatsoever when I first played AOD, and I went 100% blind(I didn't even know this place existed) with a hybrid build and no point saving. I don't get all this "you have to min-max to win the game" people complain about.

tl;dr: git gud

 

[Thac0]

There are three fights in the very first city that can easily be circumvented, but I cant see how any non combat build could ever win them.

The one where you are lured into a house with a bunch of scammers.
The one where you follow the pickpocket into their hideout.
The one where you get pickpocket and the pickpocket fetches a soldier for backup.

I can see how a hybrid could maybe win the third one. But the other ones? Maybe I was bad back when I started the game, but I see no way to get high enough defense to even survive a few turns surrounded by 3 dudes.
I am very certain that those are winnable for combat builds only. All story necessary fighs are beatable as a hybrid without too much hassle, even when you dont play an overpowered thief.

 

[Humanity has risen!]

I had no issues whatsoever when I first played AOD, and I went 100% blind(I didn't even know this place existed) with a hybrid build and no point saving. I don't get all this "you have to min-max to win the game" people complain about.

tl;dr: git gud

It's because when you make a mistake or mess up and end up in a bad situation, you have no chance to extirpate yourself from it. You will die.

In almost any RPG, you have at least a chance.

 

[Vault Dweller]

There are three fights in the very first city that can easily be circumvented, but I cant see how any non combat build could ever win them.

The one where you are lured into a house with a bunch of scammers.
The one where you follow the pickpocket into their hideout.
The one where you get pickpocket and the pickpocket fetches a soldier for backup.

You don't win them, you stay away from them. Streetwise warns you not to trust Miltiades. Common sense should tell you not to confront the gang of pickpockets if you aren't a fighter (you can leave the house and nobody will stop you). You either walk away from the guard or use the body count if you managed to kill at least 4 people (easily doable for a hybrid).

 

[Vault Dweller]

You either min-maxed enough to win this specific fight or to succeed at this specific skill-check, and you figured out the specific progression order that allows you to succeed, or you WILL die.

Or you play your character's strengths instead of trying to do every quest and situation. Just a thought.

VD finds it normal and doesn't understand why everyone doesn't appreciate how great his design is, but I suspect it is because he is so familiar with the game that he doesn't have any issue min-maxing characters and progressing in a correct order. Everyone else needs to deal with a ton of trial and error all the time.

First, we're well aware that the design won't appeal to everyone and I said it about a million times, including the store page on Steam:

"The Age of Decadence is an experiment, an attempt to explore a different direction, taking you back to the PnP roots of the genre. It doesn’t mean that the game is awesome. In fact, there is a good chance that you won’t like it, precisely because we took too many liberties with the established design."

Second, after a certain point we all look at the game through the eyes of the players. So just like we're aware that there are many players who struggled and min-maxed and rage-quit in frustration, we're aware that even many people didn't. Here's the latest review:

"First combat, die, die, die, die, die. As an assassin its just impossible. I dont see how this is meant to be fun."

I ignore it not because I can beat the first fight without any effort but because many other people have done so.

 

[Maxie]

I had no issues whatsoever when I first played AOD, and I went 100% blind(I didn't even know this place existed) with a hybrid build and no point saving. I don't get all this "you have to min-max to win the game" people complain about.

tl;dr: git gud

It's because when you make a mistake or mess up and end up in a bad situation, you have no chance to extirpate yourself from it. You will die.

In almost any RPG, you have at least a chance.

In almost any RPG, the issue of chance is tied more or less directly to dice roll, with more effective builds for the situation being able to get you more rewarding outcomes, and less effective builds leading you to an early grave. In AoD, the idea of chance is taken away completely - the result is very much a CYOA, with certain paths being available under very specific circumstances, for which you may try to prepare beforehand, but which you cannot fully predict. This is why so many encounters in AoD have an option to walk away, and which is what VD shills for design-wise so very often in so many posts.

What makes me dislike this design is the seemingly random spread of content gates, with some stuff being locked behind attribute scores, some behind combat skills, some behind non-combat skills. It's rather easy, given that you don't suck at fighting, to 'exhaust' your character's content pool, hit a dead end and twiddle your thumbs, ineffectively waiting for anything interesting to happen before you storm the pyramid. It very much enforces keeping a content gate spreadsheet and designing future characters around new paths you want to explore, rather than around some new character archetype you may have envisioned. I find the "play your character's strengths" argument severely lacking, if not simply ingenuine.

 

[Thac0]

I had no issues whatsoever when I first played AOD, and I went 100% blind(I didn't even know this place existed) with a hybrid build and no point saving. I don't get all this "you have to min-max to win the game" people complain about.

tl;dr: git gud

It's because when you make a mistake or mess up and end up in a bad situation, you have no chance to extirpate yourself from it. You will die.

In almost any RPG, you have at least a chance.

In almost any RPG, the issue of chance is tied more or less directly to dice roll, with more effective builds for the situation being able to get you more rewarding outcomes, and less effective builds leading you to an early grave. In AoD, the idea of chance is taken away completely - the result is very much a CYOA, with certain paths being available under very specific circumstances, for which you may try to prepare beforehand, but which you cannot fully predict. This is why so many encounters in AoD have an option to walk away, and which is what VD shills for design-wise so very often in so many posts.

What makes me dislike this design is the seemingly random spread of content gates, with some stuff being locked behind attribute scores, some behind combat skills, some behind non-combat skills. It's rather easy, given that you don't suck at fighting, to 'exhaust' your character's content pool, hit a dead end and twiddle your thumbs, ineffectively waiting for anything interesting to happen before you storm the pyramid. It very much enforces keeping a content gate spreadsheet and designing future characters around new paths you want to explore, rather than around some new character archetype you may have envisioned. I find the "play your character's strengths" argument severely lacking, if not simply ingenuine.

Yeah AoD plays like a shitty CYOA playbook like Lone Wolf. You just go down available routes and see what ending you get. But in an adventure book you can just turn back the page after the game fucks you over for not having a very specific stat. In AoD you get fucked out of content hours after a choice and the only way to redo it is play the entire game again.

 

[Thac0]

Or you play your character's strengths instead of trying to do every quest and situation. Just a thought.

But this approach ironically eliminates player choice. You can not choose wether your merchant character wants to help the merchants or the guard in the conflict in the first town. Siding with the guards is doable as a hybrid but a massive pain in the ass and coupled with a good deal of reloading. Siding with the Commercium with low noncombat stats is literally impossible.
It is ironically less free than any other cookie cutter rpg that allows you to do most stuff with a simple system that makes certain choices lock certain questlines. Because in such a system you can still decide wether you want to do a quest.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Or you play your character's strengths instead of trying to do every quest and situation. Just a thought.

But this approach ironically eliminates player choice. ... You can not choose wether your merchant character wants to help the merchants or the guard in the conflict in the first town. Siding with the guards is doable as a hybrid but a massive pain...

It is, but these aren't the only choices in this questline.

It is ironically less free than any other cookie cutter rpg that allows you to do most stuff with a simple system that makes certain choices lock certain questlines.

In most 'cookie cutter' RPGs you're a great fighter no matter what you do, the rest is a bonus (i.e. investing in speech skills makes you a great diplomat in addition to being a great fighter, so now you have all the freedom you can handle and the some). Some people like it, others don't. Our games are for people who don't.

Yeah AoD plays like a shitty CYOA playbook like Lone Wolf. You just go down available routes and see what ending you get. But in an adventure book you can just turn back the page after the game fucks you over for not having a very specific stat. In AoD you get fucked out of content hours after a choice and the only way to redo it is play the entire game again.

For example?

 

[Thac0]

Or you play your character's strengths instead of trying to do every quest and situation. Just a thought.

But this approach ironically eliminates player choice. ... You can not choose wether your merchant character wants to help the merchants or the guard in the conflict in the first town. Siding with the guards is doable as a hybrid but a massive pain...

It is, but these aren't the only choices in this questline.

But the choice who gets to be leader of Madoraan is not made by the player aswell but by stats. Wether you can convinve the one noble or the regent in the end is dependant on your attributes.

Yeah AoD plays like a shitty CYOA playbook like Lone Wolf. You just go down available routes and see what ending you get. But in an adventure book you can just turn back the page after the game fucks you over for not having a very specific stat. In AoD you get fucked out of content hours after a choice and the only way to redo it is play the entire game again.

For example?

Do play a Loremaster with 7 Perception. Do play a Merchant and sign the contract with the Boatmen of Styx. Talk to the demon in Infuriae on a character that does not get the Crimson Eye (instead of frying him with the pulse for the core)
Just a few examples from the top of my head.

 

[Elhoim]

But the choice who gets to be leader of Madoraan is not made by the player aswell but by stats. Wether you can convinve the one noble or the regent in the end is dependant on your attributes.

So... You should be able to convince him no matter your character's persuasion skill? I'm not sure I like that kind of design.

In any case, CSG will be more flexible than AoD. The game is less chapter locked, there are more side-quests to do and exploration. Dialogues in general are not hard checks but add to the disposition score, so it's not an "auto failure" to fail a check.

To summarize, if anyone's complaint about AoD was that you needed the an exact amount of skill level in a very specific way to be able to pass a dialogue check, or that the lack of exploration limited a lot your options and character development, we heard you and we are improving that area in this game. If your complaint is that NPCs should listen to you just because you are the player, no matter your characters skills, or that you should be able to back away from any bad consequence without consequence, well, you will be disappointed with CSG.

 

[Jaedar]

You either min-maxed enough to win this specific fight or to succeed at this specific skill-check, and you figured out the specific progression order that allows you to succeed, or you WILL die.

Or you play your character's strengths instead of trying to do every quest and situation. Just a thought.

Taking the complaint literally, the problem is not that you cannot win, but rather that the only way to know is to try (and a lot of the time, a try will end in death and reload). I think this is a somewhat valid complaint of AoD, combat difficulty can vary wildly and somewhat unpredictably and once you are in a dialogue chain / combat encounter the only ways out are usually victory or death. It's pretty quick so I don't think it is a very problematic flaw, but it is a very different way of approaching RPG design. In more mainstream titles, getting in over your head is more likely to mean a forced retreat, or spending extra healing potions/etc or just getting a less optimal quest outcome (but still a victory). Takes some getting used to.

 

[Vault Dweller]

But the choice who gets to be leader of Madoraan is not made by the player aswell but by stats. Wether you can convinve the one noble or the regent in the end is dependant on your attributes.

Can you be more specific? As I don't recall a single faction quests that required specific stats.

Do play a Loremaster with 7 Perception.

Are you saying that a low Per loremaster can't finish the game? Or can't do some optional task? Two different things.

Do play a Merchant and sign the contract with the Boatmen of Styx.

You need either Cha 10 to weasel out of it or Persuasion 6 + reputation 10.

Talk to the demon in Infuriae on a character that does not get the Crimson Eye (instead of frying him with the pulse for the core)

You've lost me there.

 

[Thac0]

But the choice who gets to be leader of Madoraan is not made by the player aswell but by stats. Wether you can convinve the one noble or the regent in the end is dependant on your attributes.

So... You should be able to convince him no matter your character's persuasion skill? I'm not sure I like that kind of design.

In any case, CSG will be more flexible than AoD. The game is less chapter locked, there are more side-quests to do and exploration. Dialogues in general are not hard checks but add to the disposition score, so it's not an "auto failure" to fail a check.

To summarize, if anyone's complaint about AoD was that you needed the an exact amount of skill level in a very specific way to be able to pass a dialogue check, or that the lack of exploration limited a lot your options and character development, we heard you and we are improving that area in this game. If your complaint is that NPCs should listen to you just because you are the player, no matter your characters skills, or that you should be able to back away from any bad consequence without consequence, well, you will be disappointed with CSG.

Nice way to misinterpret what I wrote, and those are some impressive leaps in logic. You have a design problem here, where you gate off the decision with a skillcheck on decisions that would be much more interesting as moral decisions. That doesnt mean I do not like persuasion checks in dialogues you colossal retard.

Tell me about one meaningfull decision in the merchant storyline that you can freely make, without one option being gated off by a skillcheck you might not have. Heck tell me one meaningfull decision in the entire game.

An optimal approach would be that you pledge your allegiance to the conspirator more early. Then in the final discussion you can either side with the conspirator or against him, or for a third party. Your persuasion influences how well you can advance the interests of the person you decide to help. After the dialogue anyone you betrayed will be pissed at you, and if you sided with someone and fucked up the skill checks they will be mad at you too. The final decision of the senator then gets made depending on your approaches and successes and the winner will be gratefull if you were on his side.

 

[Vault Dweller]

Tell me about one meaningfull decision in the merchant storyline that you can freely make, without one option being gated off by a skillcheck you might not have. Heck tell me one meaningfull decision in the entire game.

Why should you be able to make *meaningful* choices involving other people and entire factions without demonstrating skills associated with your profession first? So the answer to your question is no, you can't. If you think it's bad design, I don't think you'll like Colony Ship either.

 

[Elhoim]

You have a design problem here, where you gate off the decision with a skillcheck on decisions that would be much more interesting as moral decisions.

I'd say it's more of a design preference. I won't argue that you would find them more interesting.

Tell me about one meaningfull decision in the merchant storyline that you can freely make, without one option being gated off by a skillcheck you might not have. Heck tell me one meaningfull decision in the entire game.

Maybe none, but the idea was to make the game character driving. Maybe we did go a little into the extremes? Probably, but that doesn't make it wrong. As you said above, it might be more interesting to some or many people for the choices to be player driven, but others loved that aspect.

Anyway, we'll see how CSG goes. We do not have our heads up our assess regarding AoD, and we definitely want to improve it. But the core of the experience will be character driven successes and failure. We aim to cut down on the extreme metagame on the "exact skill point" or "save your SP, try, reload, assign, try, reload, etc", but it will be your character skills the ones that will open and close most doors.

For what it's worth, funnily enough, the choice of who controls The Pit in CSG is player driven (except for an alternate choice that requires speech skills). And then when you arrive to the habitats you are free to chose which faction to join. It's kinda like in AoD when you chose your background/faction, but in this game we moved the choice ingame (which can be considered an improvement). You are presented with the factions, you decide who to back/join. Now, if it's there an option to change the leader of the faction, be sure that you'll need a lot of skills to get there.

 

[Thac0]

For example?

Are you saying that a low Per loremaster can't finish the game? Or can't do some optional task? Two different things.

You were asking me for examples where you were fucked out of content for decisions made in the characterbuilder. I delivered.

You've lost me there.

Because you dont understand it or because your head is deep in your colon?

Why should you be able to make *meaningful* choices involving other people and entire factions without demonstrating skills associated with your profession first? So the answer to your question is no, you can't. If you think it's bad design, I don't think you'll like Colony Ship either.

Because in a system where using your skills raises them and gives you better rewards using them is always the right answer. You dont make the choice of whom you want at the head of the city in the courtroom, you make it at character creation.

I am beginning to suspect that AoD feels like a 2/10 game welded to a 9/10 game because one of the devs is pretty good and the other one has low functioning autism.

For what it's worth, funnily enough, the choice of who controls The Pit in CSG is player driven (except for an alternate choice that requires speech skills). And then when you arrive to the habitats you are free to chose which faction to join. It's kinda like in AoD when you chose your background/faction, but in this game we moved the choice ingame (which can be considered an improvement). You are presented with the factions, you decide who to back/join. Now, if it's there an option to change the leader of the faction, be sure that you'll need a lot of skills to get there.

It is absolutely an improvement, and the reason for why I am excited for CSP. AoD is choose your route before the game, then just execute with the retarded reload and spend SP loop your stated. Also percentage based checks do add that missing storybook feature of being able go back three pages and take a different path. Also because Dungeon Rats is really good and shows your combat systems are actually fun and not tedious when you are fighting with more than 1 guy.