Colony Ship Early Access Release Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[Jaedar]

The story is disappointing compared to AoD. The old-world locations were fascinating with their mysteries and it was really satisfying to get through them despite (or maybe because of) metagaming. What we have instead is shitty journal in the lander (though it's a low point, others are somewhat more interesting). Without a historical setting, the authors are out of their depth.

The story is better I think but the worldbuilding is not as cool. AoD did fall apart once you looked at it closely (iirc they invented crossbows, nukes and nanotech at essentially the same time), colony ship feels like it doesn't have enough material to look closely at. But there's a lot of weird stuff even here, like the factions being at war but you just walk the 50m between their hqs while heavily armed. Or how can shuttle bay possibly ally with the pit when they're on complete opposite sides of the ship?

Still a cool game though.

 

[motherfucker]

I feel like they should've set the game during the Mutiny. "We didn't choose to be born into this" makes for a great plot hook, but not when it's ancient history. "We're essentially born prisoners on a ship that might not even make it" when there's enough resources and space to go around so nobody has to fight for survival does not work nearly as well. It doesn't present any interesting ethical questions because the life barely differs from what we have in the real world. They might have set it on today's real Earth and it would have been largely the same.

 

[Jaedar]

I feel like they should've set the game during the Mutiny. "We didn't choose to be born into this" makes for a great plot hook, but not when it's ancient history. "We're essentially born prisoners on a ship that might not even make it" when there's enough resources and space to go around so nobody has to fight for survival does not work nearly as well. It doesn't present any interesting ethical questions because the life barely differs from what we have in the real world. They might have set it on today's real Earth and it would have been largely the same.

Maybe not during the mutiny, but closer would be a bit better I think. It seems to be hundreds of years afterwards, which creates the fallout 3 problem of how come no one looted all this stuff already.

 

[Elhoim]

Fixed the hydro bug, and we have the new music tracks. The final mix hydro one, which sounds amazing, plus a very cool new track for armory and MC.

 

[notpl]

Might I suggest putting AoD on sale alongside Colony Ship's release? Make it a more appealing impulse buy to any new fans you may win over.

 

[Tyranicon]

Might I suggest putting AoD on sale alongside Colony Ship's release? Make it a more appealing impulse buy to any new fans you may win over.

Better yet, might think about packaging them together for a slightly lower overall cost to grab new players.

 

[TheDarkUrge]

Might I suggest

No you may not

 

[Sòren]

Fixed the hydro bug, and we have the new music tracks. The final mix hydro one, which sounds amazing, plus a very cool new track for armory and MC.

new tracks are amazing.

 

[std::namespace]

Games like JA2 worked because you've had to constantly outplay your enemies, especially in the beginning.

the delusions i read on the dex everyday...

 

[Sacibengala]

So, it's already november 9th somewhere...

 

[None]

Fixed the hydro bug, and we have the new music tracks. The final mix hydro one, which sounds amazing, plus a very cool new track for armory and MC.

new tracks are amazing.

Thank God. I was getting a little tired of playing through the whole game with what seemed like only a couple of soundtracks on loop.

Excited for the release, not sure how I'll tackle my playthrough as I've already essentially beaten the game once.

 

[HoboForEternity]

Release when frens

 

[Jaedar]

Release when frens

9am EST (most likely).
^From VD on steam.
So in about 4 hours?

In theory you can check out the public test branch whenever. I guess there won't be that many changes, or any, changes to the first parts in an eventual day 0 patch. I think there will be a launch day sale though.

 

[Shaki]

Also yeah, optimizing is required here in order to play on default difficulty, that's a given. That's why most of us here for, in fact.

Except there's not enough tactical depth. Cover is simplistic and combat area design is atrociously bad. Positioning is more of a puzzle and a case of trial and error than anything else. What you have is build depth and story/quest depth but that's wasted in a party-based and ranged-weapons-based system.

The story is disappointing compared to AoD. The old-world locations were fascinating with their mysteries and it was really satisfying to get through them despite (or maybe because of) metagaming. What we have instead is shitty journal in the lander (though it's a low point, others are somewhat more interesting). Without a historical setting, the authors are out of their depth.

When the subjects were history and the Mythos, ITS' games worked just fine. The hard scifi setting is appropriately designed but they haven't done anything interesting with it. Aliens are almost-human bipedals, aka the dreaded 'rubber forehead aliens' (semi-spoiler, Vince talked about it a long while ago around the time the game was released in EA). Rocketry and orbital mechanics and even life support are a very interesting and complex subject, just play KSP RP-1+Kerbalism or even plain KSP or SimpleRockets/Juno, or watch a video by the Pressure-Fed Astronaut.

Edit: if you want to see a good approach at writing a first contact with alien species story, read S. Lem's Eden.

Honestly in terms of colony ship settings and stories that can be told even the visual novel by the proto-SJW woman had more interesting writing (as long as you can stomach weeb-SJW shit) and exploration of the human condition. The Golden Age of Science-Fiction had too many stories that could be adapted/synthesized especially by writers underappreciated in mass culture. Could've made the factions, locations and side quests borrow from Cordwainer Smith or even PKD's (still underappreciated!) paranoid Cold War style with a large dose of delusions of reference that was his specialty. Instead they've done nothing at all of the sort, and the story is almost perfunctory.
Still worth buying twice over.

Shut up, combat is perfect and story is perfect, and it's winning Codex GOTY over BG3

 

[Shaki]

The story is disappointing compared to AoD. The old-world locations were fascinating with their mysteries and it was really satisfying to get through them despite (or maybe because of) metagaming. What we have instead is shitty journal in the lander (though it's a low point, others are somewhat more interesting). Without a historical setting, the authors are out of their depth.

The story is better I think but the worldbuilding is not as cool. AoD did fall apart once you looked at it closely (iirc they invented crossbows, nukes and nanotech at essentially the same time), colony ship feels like it doesn't have enough material to look closely at. But there's a lot of weird stuff even here, like the factions being at war but you just walk the 50m between their hqs while heavily armed. Or how can shuttle bay possibly ally with the pit when they're on complete opposite sides of the ship?

Still a cool game though.

Coolest thing about AoD was it being full of mysteries that you might not even begin to touch depending on what character you played, every playthrough I did would uncover some mind blowing shit

 

[Üstad]

The story is disappointing compared to AoD. The old-world locations were fascinating with their mysteries and it was really satisfying to get through them despite (or maybe because of) metagaming. What we have instead is shitty journal in the lander (though it's a low point, others are somewhat more interesting). Without a historical setting, the authors are out of their depth.

The story is better I think but the worldbuilding is not as cool. AoD did fall apart once you looked at it closely (iirc they invented crossbows, nukes and nanotech at essentially the same time), colony ship feels like it doesn't have enough material to look closely at. But there's a lot of weird stuff even here, like the factions being at war but you just walk the 50m between their hqs while heavily armed. Or how can shuttle bay possibly ally with the pit when they're on complete opposite sides of the ship?

Still a cool game though.

Coolest thing about AoD was it being full of mysteries that you might not even begin to touch depending on what character you played, every playthrough I did would uncover some mind blowing shit

Especially 50 shades of getting fucked by Militiades.

 

[CaesarCzech]

The story is disappointing compared to AoD. The old-world locations were fascinating with their mysteries and it was really satisfying to get through them despite (or maybe because of) metagaming. What we have instead is shitty journal in the lander (though it's a low point, others are somewhat more interesting). Without a historical setting, the authors are out of their depth.

The story is better I think but the worldbuilding is not as cool. AoD did fall apart once you looked at it closely (iirc they invented crossbows, nukes and nanotech at essentially the same time), colony ship feels like it doesn't have enough material to look closely at. But there's a lot of weird stuff even here, like the factions being at war but you just walk the 50m between their hqs while heavily armed. Or how can shuttle bay possibly ally with the pit when they're on complete opposite sides of the ship?

Still a cool game though.

Coolest thing about AoD was it being full of mysteries that you might not even begin to touch depending on what character you played, every playthrough I did would uncover some mind blowing shit

Honestly Aod had advantage of post apo rome making sense for the lore being sparse because it was lost and at the same time being very rewarding puzzle once you put the pieces together, while still having enough missing stuff giving way to several different interpretations. made you feel like an archeologist when you went Loremaster, which IMHO means it was well done.