Unfortunately, this game is decline.
This is not like the original Age of Decadence, or more recent games like Underrail, or what ever you might be thinking of when you hear classic RPG, or tactical turn based RPG. In those games you can get away with making a slightly sub-optimal, or even sub-optimal character. With games like Underrail it is hard to survive when you do this, but despite the brutality you can do it if you are smart and you use all the resources given to you. This game is not like that. It is very, very limited in what you can do in each section of the game; especially the start.
I can see what the developers of the game were going for, what they are trying to do. It is easy to see because they comment about it on nearly every review, and nearly every thread. More specifically, they post the builds you should use for this game. The most popular guides for this game are character builds and walkthroughs. Why? Because if you make your character even slightly poorly, even a little bit out of line with what the developers had in mind for the type of character wanted you to make, you will die, or get stuck and not be able to proceed.
It is fine to have a strong idea of how your game should be played. A good idea would be to lock off side sections of the game, extra bits full of extra stuff that you may not get into if your character does not fit just exactly right. But, this game gatekeeps... the entire game, almost from the start, if you do not make your character in line with what was envisioned for them by the devs.
I played through the game and beat it with as combat specialist that just killed things. It was boring and not fun. It was then interesting to go and check out the guides, and see how they wring every little bit of exp out of every single encounter in every single location in this game; and yet still come up short now.
The reason why I think this is because they are everywhere. In almost every review, in nearly every thread, etc. They will probably comment on this too. Normally that would be a good thing. The devs of a game giving feedback, helping people out, and communicating with players, that is fantastic! But never have I once read 'yeah, we did make that encounter a bit too hard, we will tweak it so it is a bit easier' or a 'yeah you are right, you should be able to loot those corpses there' or a 'yeah, that thing you did deserves some extra skill points as a reward.' It is always a justification of why they did things the way they did; always a double down, never a compromise. That is fine, it is their game, but honestly, I don't like this game.
I would like to say that in all of these hours of playing I had fun, but honestly, I didn't really. I was either bored out of my mind hyper focusing a killing character, or bored out of my mind hyper focusing on a talking character, or trying my best to have fun but failing and dying with everything else. If it does look like it interests you, perhaps get it on sale. But honestly, I could have done without the experience. If you are interested in this genre and type of game, best to spend your money on something like Pillars of Eternity, Kingmaker, Divinity Original Sin, or if you want something more difficult, Wasteland 2 or Underrail. These games are different from Colony Ship, in that they actually a lot of fun.