Incline Colony Ship RELEASE THREAD

[Tavar]

Wasn't that... literal description from the game's tooltip? 100% sure didn't look that parcticular one up.

The description of the feat in the character screen is "Yellow tiles range increased to 30 (from 15)". I'm not sure whether this is the tooltip you mean or whether I missed some additional one.

I'd thought that with in-game description it's intuitively clear that some red tiles will turn yellow and likewise some yellow tiles will turn green. The meta explanation does little since we cannot see the tile's difficulty anyway (we don't, right?).

I you press ALT while sneaking you'll see some numbers but these don't really help:

Even with these number it makes "increasing the range of yellow tiles" makes no sense.

 

[Diggfinger]

Game of year no doubt, realistic plot, looking good and runs fast even on computers made from washing machines chips and very stable, there was no pat on the head and, crashes and wtf moments I got playing Rouge Trader early Beta... sorry 1.062 version.

And all of this on shoe string budget too, congratulations to the team.

Is it superior to Fallout...3?

 

[Lhynn]

Lhynn
How shit is this game?

Its boring, so very boring. Nothing interesting or of note happens, its what happens when DM fiat is done, he is falling asleep, but you want to keep playing so he soldiers on.
This shit has no reason to exist, it has no right to exist when underrail exists, its banal shit boring slop.

Its incredible to me that people are praising the writing, theres nothing worth reading there, its like it was written by AI, but then carefully curated so any interesting idea doesnt make it into the game. I have yet to see a single codexer quote a passage that they liked, its all empty praise by people that are too fake to speak their minds and I view every one of them with disgust.

The combat is the most by the numbers turn based combat ive seen, how can anyone ever say its good or even acceptable is beyond me. It is exactly what you imagine turn based is before you add interesting or cool shit to it.
AoDs and dungeon rats combat was interesting because there was some depth to your weapon of choice and how you leveraged it, here it barely matters, and different weapon types are not interesting.

 

[Abu Antar]

 

[Tavar]

Regarding Romeo in the current patch: I just managed to repair him even though I didn't have the head. Just make sure you have the gyroscope, the armor plates and a heavy power cell in your inventory and repair him in one go. I think repairing him one at a time is bugged.

 

[Cpt. Dallas]

I had no issues with Romeo other than getting the final upgrade that required a 10 in Electronics. Remember to interact with every charging station you find.

 

[AwesomeButton]

First playthrough took me just under 32 hours.

The ending I took

After seeing Hydroponics Yellow and Red, I decided to hand over the machine to the Monks and went with uniting the Habitat factions. Took the quick way out by taking a lander.

I went with a roleplaying-oriented, non-metagamed character - a high-persuasion biotechnician with 4s in STR and CON, and 10 CHA, As soon as I could, I built up a party with the usual suspects - Ethan, Jed and Faythe. By the way, aunt Dhalia has always reminded us to carefully avoid women who insist on a strange spelling of their names.

Thinking on the story and structure of the game, the first thing that comes to mind is that the game is by no means short. Yeah, you can rush through it very quickly, but there is a lot of stuff that can happen in terms of story progression in that short time, and lots of branching, up to the moment you reach the endgame chapter.

I found the story engaging as concieved, but lacking in development and in narrative and plot embellishments. Same as AoD, CS is walking a narrow path striving to utilize the player's imagination and interpretation ability optimally, in order to economize development resources. And it's doing that on both the presentation and narrative layer. However, with CS's bigger scope, I'm afraid the narrative ends up feeling a bit too bare, spread thin over a lot of possile branches and characters, which end up feeling more sketched than properly developed.

People in the thread have complained of linearity in CS' plot compared to AoD. I can't comment on that yet, because I've only finished it once, but I want to make a disclaimer right now that I don't count as "branching endings" something like giving me all the endgame branching in the last 10 minutes as an equivalent to "choose your ending slides".

It's notable that whereas in AoD we had basically two hubs wherein we were set loose - Theron and Maadoran - in CS this is only really accomplished in the Pit. Even there, it's soon clear which the main plot thread is. The fate of the machine is never really doubted as the major motivaton for the player progressing, never relegated to a secondary priority in the player's attention, or augmented by another thread. By comparison in AoD I could go off on many subplot tangents. I would have welcomed, for example, a solution to the Shuttle Bay refugee problem where the player discovers and conquers some other previously untamed part of the ship and settles there to live with the refugees, discarding the whole "main plot" mission.

Roxor's frustration about the overall bleakness of the writing's tone, utilized as an easy nihilistic way out for the writer, is something I can also subscribe to. I think it would have been possible to give some redeeming features to the Habitat factions, so as to give the player something to ponder over. At present they are portrayed as essentially the same dictatorship with a different caot of paint and propaganda voice. Maybe that was intended, but if yes, then this swerve into the domain of satire doesn't work well with the rest of the worldbuilding and the more rational and grounded portrayal of other factions. The insufficient characterization of the factions, whether done by choice or by neccessity, aslo diminishes the player's sense of agency when having to choose a faction to work with.

The best evidence that the writing gives up on characterizing the factions is when the player is presented with a choice lumping the factions together, roughly summed up as "Go with the Monks or with either of the three factions".

Again in relation with the factions, I saw their appearance as the lowest point in the game's story. The game felt strongest narratively when it was least predictable, and as an oldtime player I was feeling enstranged, asking my self "what will the game do if I do this or that now". The moment the factions appeared, predictability set in and the game lost some of its main appeal. At this point of our gaming history, it's harder and harder to find the sense of surprise and wonder which early RPGs used to provide us easily 20-30 years ago.

Moving on to impressions of the systems, the persuasion minigame felt very promising, but as a system again it's more proof-of-concept than fully developed. I can elaborate on that but I think most people here will know what I mean, the devs included. With high enough Charisma, and stacked bonuses from feats, tagged skill, and later on from reputation, a persuasion-based character is unstoppable, and with skillcheck results being pre-determined, the familiar problem of all-or-nothing specialization surfaces in Colony Ship as it did in AoD. I don't think this version of the persuasion minigame is really what Iron Tower were envisioning.

To add to that, I have not been blind to the lip service paid to the other social skills. I didn't see even half as much utility of Impersonate as I saw of Persuasion, and practically everywhere when Persuasion was an option in dialogue, there was also Streetwise. Apparently the game got released before a good editing pass had been done on the dialogues and some balancing of the social skills' opportunities for usage had been performed. As it stands it doesn't matter which skill you would choose to progress, because they move in tandem. I finished the game with 10 Persuasion and 8 Streetwise, without ever using Streetwise, except very early on, where I picked it for RP reasons.

The aforementioned "all-or-nothing" philosophy seems to apply to the other skills. Looks like this is the consequence of the (also aforementioned) linearity of the story, which predetermines when the player will find himself in an area and thus the "expected" skill ratings and difficulty of skillchecks for that area. I had stealing on my character developed to 3, but after some point there was nowhere to practice it so I had to stop using it, so I basically couldn't steal anything any more by the time I reached the Habitat. Same with sneaking on Faythe. It was good enough for the early game, but once I started taking persuasion solutions to quests, her sneak skill fell behind the difficulty curve and was useless for the rest of the game.

I only used sneaking and stealing once - in Hydroponics green, to sneak into the bunk room and steal some medkits. As with stealth in most all RPGs, it's a pastime reserved for people who love save-load cycles.

The companions were really great. I like how their interjections are sparse but meaningful, and how they have their backstory within the game's world, but don't overwhelm you with exposition. When they make comments they simultaneously present opinions, inform the player of the world, and demonstrate their own connection to the world. You can definetly say there was a coherent vision in the writing, and the benefits of *not* having "OMG, 10 writers" are clearly there.

Overall, I had much fun finding my way through the game despite some very barebones areas and concluding story beats. My party gradually became outclassed by the combat encounters so I only took the minimum of combat, but I'll make a more-combat oriented second run and have more impressions there.

As a preliminary comment I felt like pistols in particular were underperforming compared to rifles and shotguns, and against genetically modified critters the energy weapons were the only viable choice. Also, damage reduction is apparently much superior to evasion, I can hardly think of instances where I was grazed or missed thanks to evasion. It's better to take more hits for less damage thanks to DR than hope to dodge the same number of attacks yet take more damage from each one you didn't dodge.

On the whole it's a great game, and I'll play through it at least one more time, recommend it on steam, and probably gift it to one colleague who is also into RPGs with an old school feel.

 

[Lhynn]

I found the story engaging as concieved

Agree, it has potential

but lacking in development and in narrative and plot embellishments

Agree, its boring

I'm afraid the narrative ends up feeling a bit too bare, spread thin over a lot of possile branches and characters, which end up feeling more sketched than properly developed.

Agree, exactly

ven there, it's soon clear which the main plot thread is. The fate of the machine is never really doubted as the major motivaton for the player progressing, never relegated to a secondary priority in the player's attention, or augmented by another thread. By comparison in AoD I could go off on many subplot tangents.

Agree, AoD was better

Roxor's frustration about the overall bleakness of the writing's tone, utilized as an easy nihilistic way out for the writer, is something I can also subscribe to.

Agree, everything hates you, Im still laughing at the line "Some dude full autos the loot as he dies to keep you from it, HAHA". Fuck you too Vault Dweller

Moving on to impressions of the systems, the persuasion minigame felt very promising, but as a system again it's more proof-of-concept than fully developed.

Agree, it doesnt work, could have used another year in the oven, like the rest of the fucking game.

The aforementioned "all-or-nothing" philosophy seems to apply to the other skills.

Agree, learn by doing is fucking retarded in this game, its exactly the type of game where it shouldnt have been used.

The companions were really great.

I found Fayth to be alright, couldnt stand Evans, didnt have them with me for long though, I focused on playing solo.

On the whole it's a great game, and I'll play through it at least one more time, recommend it on steam, and probably gift it to one colleague who is also into RPGs with an old school feel.

Ag... Wait, what? What the fuck?
Did I skip a paragraph?

 

[AwesomeButton]

Ag... Wait, what? What the fuck?

At some point during writing I started wondering the same - what was it about this game that I liked after all? I'm sure that I enjoyed it, but what was it that caught my interest strong enough to finish it in a week of playing during the after hours. There has to be something, or a number of things for a low-production values, economically written game on a shoestring budget to be more gripping than multi-hundred people teams' RPGs, produced on ~$10 milliion budgets.

If you prefer you could rephrase the question "what I liked" into "what made me give it a pass for its flaws".

It's much easier to put your finger on the things that annoyed you than the ones that kept you going. I guess it's because those that annoy you tend to annoy you all the time throughout the whole game, while the good things manifest themselves in a single moment, although multiple times, i.e. multiple single moments to prevent you from losing interest.

First, as with every game, the lack of complete understanding of the systems on the player's part is the fig leaf that covers some of the flaws in the systems design. Similiarly, the lack of complete knowledge of all the story branches conceals the fact that most C&C is smoke and mirrors. The game designer always counts on the player not having complete information and not being able to fully process the information the game is giving him.

Which takes me to the first positive - exploring the systems and the story was fun, even if I could tell both had been scaled down and simplified from the original concept. Most players don't have the eye for these flaws, but we've been playing these games for a while, so let's not set the bar for everyone else too high. So, the first one should be "exploring is fun".

Continuing from this, I think we can generalize it further. As I mentioned in the previous post, the game on the whole is at its strongest when it surprises you and keeps you guessing. And at its weakest when it retreats into the realm of tropes - "pick a faction to aid you". It's nonsensical - "aid me in what?" "In fixing the ship, what else?" "But dear Game, at what point did you decide I want to fix the ship in the first place?!".

So, another point. On the whole, at least until the final chapter, the game respects the player's intelligence both in terms of writing and in terms of expectations it puts on the player for overcoming challenges with the tools he is given. This is much more than can be said of present day RPGs, where the player is assumed to be an amoeba from the get go and until the end.

If you notice, through its succint style, the writing serves the same purpose - to encourage exploration. Contrast to the lore dumps and even "specialized lore-dump NPCs" in mainstream RPGs. The fact that this has lead to many NPCs sounding with the same voice is a problem I chalk up to lack of editing than to "bad writing" in general.

The narrative point that moved me most

Witnessing the hell that the factions (i.e. "humanity") have created with their attempts at genetical engineering made me feel actual fear and revulsion to the idea of unleashing us on an unsuspecting new planet. The way in which the awful complete picture was gradually revealed was worthy of a sci-fi horror novel. I'm not familiar with horror and sci-fi as genres, so these may be classic tropes, but still my hat is off to VaultDweller and company.

Going back to my disclaimer about not being completely familiar with the systems, I also appreciated that I was behind the curve in most skills - I was ahead of the curve in Social skills, ahead of the curve in Electronics and Computers, and just at the top of the curve in Biotech. I finished the game at Biotech lvl 7 and only had two lvl 8 checks I couldn't pass, but they were irrelevant as I was already past the point where I cared about implants. I had fallen a bit behind in Lockpick, and was behind in Sneak and Steal. With a 4-person party I guess I could have done way better, but on a first playthrough I wanted to go for RP and immersion, and see if I'll hit a wall somewhere due to not being optimized enough. I eneded up not hitting a wall anywhere. There was a path provided for my playstyle which from an RPG design perspective is successful design, and correcting some of the complaints about prescience being a requirement to finish AoD.

Why I say "I appreciated I was behind the curve in most skills" - because in the typical AA(A) Eye & Dopamine Candy Power Fantasy RPG, you tend to be ahead of all curves by the midgame. From persuasion to big guns to having a couple of romances going on simultaneously So this not being the case in CS speaks of some amount of balancing work that went on. It's not perfect, and against a commited player with prescient knowledge of the systems, the skillchecks and the plot, no designer can win. But as first impression go, CS is making a great impression on a first-time player.

So the takeaway is, adjust your perspective when evaluating a game - who am I playing as, and who is the game expecting me to play as, in terms of metagame knowledge.

But even before praising the game for not allowing me to feel OP in areas I didn't specialize in, let's give it credit for allowing me to specialize in separate areas to begin with. Most RPG designers nowadays, and not just nowadays, take the easy way out for themselves by making combat the only area within which you can do specialization, and even there the specialization is superficial - "choose in what way you wish to be awesome". Do you want to smash monsters with brown magic spells, or burn them to death with orange magic spells.

OK, it's time for TLDR because I've been going on for too long.

TLDR: what sets CS apart is that it's an actual (c)RPG. It lets you explore its story and its systems by means of specializing in one system or another and seeing how the story unfolds differently, while preventing you from feeling like you excel in everything and your build choices don't matter. The latter would soon lead to a feeling that your story choices don't matter either.

Now, I'm once again making the disclaimer that I need more knowledge of the systems and the story branching to say how firmly CS achieves this effect. How soon will the magic fall apart as I learn its systems and story, I can't say yet. But I can say the "magic" is there in this game. From what I've read here, it does fall apart much sooner than in AoD. That's still fine by me, I'll take "not as good as AoD" as a final score in a review as being way better than the average.

 

[Parabalus]

AoD was better but CS is still in a fine game, just doesn't have the 'WOOOW' factor.

The Dumpsterfire comparison comes to mind, regardless of how bad you consider PoE, the sequel did some things in nicer way, but it didn't help since it was missing a soul.

 

[AwesomeButton]

AoD was better but CS is still in a fine game, just doesn't have the 'WOOOW' factor.

The Dumpsterfire comparison comes to mind, regardless of how bad you consider PoE, the sequel did some things in nicer way, but it didn't help since it was missing a soul.

I would reverse the logic for more accuracy - "PoE had going for it only the fact that it was new. Deadfire had everything else going for it, but it wasn't enough because it wasn't seen as new."

And being "not new" with PoE as your predecessor is a heavy burden. AoD and PoE are both tough acts to follow, though for completely opposite reasons.

 

[Irminsul]

This shit has no reason to exist, it has no right to exist when underrail exists

I haven't played Underrail yet and don't know much about it, is it actually similar to this?
I agree with the core of most of your criticisms, but somehow I also still enjoyed the game quite a bit, it's hard to really put my finger on it.

Despite the habitat I think the biggest letdowns for me were the exclusively nihilistic backstabbing characters - I know they fit the setting but I was really tired of that by the time I was done with AoD and had hoped VD knew another tune than only that - and the music. Half of it was fine, half of it was rather bad, while pretty much every single track in AoD was great. If you ask me to spend hours at a time with a single looping song, reading dialogues, the music better be really good.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I haven't played Underrail yet and don't know much about it, is it actually similar to this?

Underrail doesn't put emphasis on quest and story branching (although there is some story branching) but on non-linear exploration of the world and emergent gameplay. It's a must-play, so no point asking for comparisons, just get the game and try it.

 

[jackofshadows]

I haven't played Underrail yet and don't know much about it, is it actually similar to this?

Not exactly. No party option and there's a huge focus on combat and exploration (even though there's plenty of quests, NPCs to talk to etc). Also the game world there is fucking massive compared to this. This is small-scoped, multi-playthrough oriented (much less so than AoD, obviously), UR is huge-scoped, exploration adventure oriented I'd say, especially so if you'd buy the first expansion which literally calls "Expedition" right away. Think mission control location but multiplied by 666. At any rate, I echo the sentence from the post above, it's a must-play so you know what needs to be done.

 

[Darth Roxor]

what makes underrail and colony ship similar is that they're both shit

 

[Tavar]

(...)
The combat is the most by the numbers turn based combat ive seen, how can anyone ever say its good or even acceptable is beyond me. It is exactly what you imagine turn based is before you add interesting or cool shit to it.
AoDs and dungeon rats combat was interesting because there was some depth to your weapon of choice and how you leveraged it, here it barely matters, and different weapon types are not interesting.

Statements like this make me wonder whether you have actually played the game (or at least how far you've played it). Colony Ship's combat is more complex than Fallout's was back in the day. How can a combat system be "by the numbers" when it places a heavy emphasis on debuff grenades and features reaction attacks, aimed shots as well as timed gadgets? And of course it matters which weapon you use and how. There are tough enemies in the game which take very little damage unless you use energy weapons or improve the penetration of your regular attacks via special attacks which cost more APs.

 

[nimateb]

what makes underrail and colony ship similar is that they're both shit

Staff member btw

 

[Modron]

Staff member btw

So? VD was a staff member when he started making AoD.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Staff member btw

So? VD was a staff member when he started making AoD.

The Codex is in decline.

 

[Lhynn]

what makes underrail and colony ship similar is that they're both shit

You are just mad the first enemies in UD are rats. I wonder what the early life section of your wikipedia page would say.

 

[SixDead]

It seems I failed my first playthrough, as I predicted. Stuck at the end of Act 3.

Spooilerz

Attack on Armory. I can't win the battle, attackers' robot molests me and I intentionally made my companions bad at combat (because Fayth is a woman and Evans is a beta-male). I also can't bring Romeo to battle, since quest to repair him is bugged. Stealth is not an option, I can't reach motherfuckers and I couldn't obtain upgrades for cloacking field, don't have right skills for that. The only way to progress is to join enemies, the Brotherhood. But I don't want to! They are liberals. Can I at least betray them in the future, if I join?

I did it, it was easy, cut off Garret's dick in stealth and fucked the robot in his robotic ass. Maybe my guys suck, but even a woman and a beta male turn into killing machines if you give 'em energy weapons.
Now Azrael rapes my poor asshole, and I' m sad that I can't get Romeo, maybe this encounter will be easier with him. Fix this bug and help me, Vault Dweller

 

[Cologno]

what makes underrail and colony ship similar is that they're both shit

Yo mama's the shit.

 

[Tavar]

I started the run and I'm currently following this bladed build. Currently, I still carry Evans around, but I'm not sure whether having one party member is worth it.

ditch Evans, he's slowing you down. See how the build you referenced has Lone Wolf as the second feat? And that in the character screen there's no party members?

rather than blindly follow a build when you don't have a good idea of the game or systems, play on hero mode and make a character that feels fun for you. learn the ropes, and then try a murder solo run. i would never recommend what you're trying to do as a way to experience the game for the first time. this build you're referencing is a cool novelty for someone who knows the ins and outs of CS

That's my third run of the game, so I have at least some idea what I'm doing . Yes, I saw that the reference build uses "Lone Wolf" but I wasn't sure whether the creator just wanted to do a solo run or if he considers this the optimal build for a melee fighter. So, I figured I'd just take it for test drive and see how it plays. Results are mixed so far: Evans is useful at least at the very start of the game, but he's also fragile compared to my main character. Will be interesting to see how it plays out.

I've finished the run by now. This "Healing Factor" melee build feels very strong as you are very tanky but losing aimed attacks hurts until you have weapons with decent penetration stats. The build also gets much more powerful once you get the distortion field.

While playing without party members is fine for most of the game, having a single party member serve as a meat-shield can be helpful in certain fights. Taking Evans or Jed along makes fighting these frogs in the early game much easier. I also used Harbinger in a couple of fights mainly to have her throw grenades and to absorb some blows. Speech absolutely sucks with this build, though, as you have low charisma, intelligence and little practice. I tagged "Streetwise" which was a mistake. I'm not sure why the creator of this build picked "Prowler", I suspect it is to steal a certain item, but I skipped it and never regretted it.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Apart from costing 2 AP to activate, usually done before combat starts, there doesn't seem to be any cost attached to using the energy shield gadget. Was this always the way it worked? It seems like a no-brainer choice.

 

[Trithne]

Apart from costing 2 AP to activate, usually done before combat starts, there doesn't seem to be any cost attached to using the energy shield gadget. Was this always the way it worked? It seems like a no-brainer choice.

I recall in the early access you couldn't use ranged weapons with it active - I'm not sure that's still the case?

All the gadgets only cost AP to activate anyway though.