Game News Colony Ship RPG Update #1: Setting, Character System

[Roqua]

Dark Sun definitely had recruitable NPCs, but I don't think you had any control over them. I remember having a couple of them in the final fight -- a lady with a cape, I think, some other guy.

I am only counting them as recruitable if you see their portrait in your GUI along with your party and can see their equipment, etc.

 

[MRY]

Dark Sun definitely had recruitable NPCs, but I don't think you had any control over them. I remember having a couple of them in the final fight -- a lady with a cape, I think, some other guy.

I am only counting them as recruitable if you see their portrait in your GUI along with your party and can see their equipment, etc.

I thought you listed "Fallouts" as examples of games with recruitable NPCs? FO1 NPCs function identically to Dark Sun's, IIRC.

 

[Roqua]

Dark Sun definitely had recruitable NPCs, but I don't think you had any control over them. I remember having a couple of them in the final fight -- a lady with a cape, I think, some other guy.

I am only counting them as recruitable if you see their portrait in your GUI along with your party and can see their equipment, etc.

I thought you listed "Fallouts" as examples of games with recruitable NPCs? FO1 NPCs function identically to Dark Sun's, IIRC.

You kind of got me there for the most part. You are definitely technically right.

But in Dar Sun they don't follow you around forever and you can't get more with a higher charisma score or trade equipment with them. You can just get extra people in the last battle if, going off memory, you help and unit the three tribes?

 

[MRY]

It has been close to 20 years since I played the game, but I vaguely recall them following you around, perhaps only after the final battle, but I'm not sure. I'd forgotten that you could barter/steal with NPCs in FO to give them different gear, so that is a point of difference. Anyway, this is pretty tangential. I think the best rejoinder is obviously Jagged Alliance: though it's debatable whether it qualifies as an RPG, there's no reason that its success couldn't be replicated in an RPG.

Incidentally, this touches upon a grievance of mine: has there ever been an RPG where there is a pre-rolled party (not of Bioware-style characters, just a proposed party composition) where the characters were actually sensibly rolled/built? It's always struck me as profoundly weird that for years RPGs basically offered to let you bypass character creation but only at the cost of a cripppled party.

 

[Saduj]

Is insta-travel between known locations on the ship confirmed? I appreciated this feature in AOD even before I started Underrail but now I fully understand its genius.

Also, the ship is on permanent auto-pilot? There is no way to take control of the ship?

Lastly, Roqua is right about Dark Sun. The "NPCs" don't travel with you and only join for the last fight. Aside from the three main cities, there are optional smaller groups you can help. Could never figure out if having these smaller factions on your side actually effects the final fight. The game leads you to believe it does but I don't think so.

 

[Roqua]

It has been close to 20 years since I played the game, but I vaguely recall them following you around, perhaps only after the final battle, but I'm not sure. I'd forgotten that you could barter/steal with NPCs in FO to give them different gear, so that is a point of difference. Anyway, this is pretty tangential. I think the best rejoinder is obviously Jagged Alliance: though it's debatable whether it qualifies as an RPG, there's no reason that its success couldn't be replicated in an RPG.

Incidentally, this touches upon a grievance of mine: has there ever been an RPG where there is a pre-rolled party (not of Bioware-style characters, just a proposed party composition) where the characters were actually sensibly rolled/built? It's always struck me as profoundly weird that for years RPGs basically offered to let you bypass character creation but only at the cost of a cripppled party.

In my opinion no. For some reason they are always gimped and inefficient. It is my theory that the devs come up with this what they think is a lovable, adorable "quirky" character and his or her backstory and try to make there stat and skill selection as "quirky" as their character.

I do have to admit that Scotchmo and the old man that was the security chief for the bombing clan guy in WL2 were awesome characters done very well. If all recruitables were as good as these two, I would not complain, even with their inefficiencies. "These aren't my pants. Someone shit in these pants."

 

[Vault Dweller]

Vault Dweller have you considered making every party member a nonstandard character in gameplay terms? That is, none of the NPCs could ever have been rolled by the player, in the same way you could not roll Nordom in PST. This obviously means you couldn't design 10+ companions, but I think it fixes a lot of the issues and makes things a lot more interesting.

Consider the typical issues where you have a primarily skill-based character system and parties without party creation. Nobody wants Jack the Rugged Sniper to be so good at sniping that the PC feels inadequate when rolling a sniper - but people also get frustrated by lugging around Jack the Blind Sniper with suboptimal stats. Furthermore, as you say so yourself in the update, symmetrical party members means it is far too easy to cover most/all skills. Even if we gate party members with CHA, it just becomes really tricky to balance; it'll be easy to have situations where CHA becomes a must-have stat and people run around with a party that can do anything.

But what if the kind of NPCs one recruited were unique mechanically? Not just at the level of Minsc has only 2 quick slots, but built in ways that the PC simply cannot be. Morte has his own unique skillset and equipment, such that he's never quite the same as a second fighter TNO. Obviously this is part of PST's JRPG influences, so that you can look at FF9's Quina, whose ability to learn and reproduce enemy skills is unique. Of course, the characters would have varying levels of mechanics overlap - so that maybe one guy has a unique weaponset but can learn many of the PC's non-combat skills, etc.

Obvious downsides are the effort involved and that the lore may forbid sufficiently interesting ways for the characters to be unique. But after the delight of AOD, I would hate to see the colony ship become like WL2 where it really doesn't matter wha5t the skill check is because every party has every single skill imaginable.

PST had the best NPCs bar none, but the setting where weird things are the norm helped a lot: a floating skull, a burning man, an animated suit of armor, a succubus, a modron, etc. It would be a lot harder to pull it off in a low-key colony ship setting. Sure, you can recruit a mutant or two and we can be fairly creative there, but there should be many human party members as well.

I agree with you that the party members should never be better or worse than the player's character. I agree that a combat character should not have crappy stats. Neither case is an issue as we had fairly reasonable characters in AoD. The easiest way to give the party member an extra bonus is in-game knowledge that would allow you to handle quests differently, access different areas, talk to different people.

Ideally, I want you to change your party members from time to time. Sticking with the same person all the time would result in a more experienced party member (more XP, higher level) but it should cost you in missed opportunities too.

This is the kind of choice I find cool in RPGs. if I ever made an RPG, it would be like Planet Escape: Tournament, where every companion is unique - but would give a crazy downside to each of them. Recruiting someone should be a careful choice, not a no-brainer cause your party ins't full yet.

That's the idea.

Taking each person with you should have pros and cons. It should never be about selecting a guy with the best stats and damage output. Who they are, what they want, whom they are affiliated with, how they get along with each other, how they might react to what you have in mind should matter a lot.

I wish we could create an entire party from scratch, but I guess this is less a dungeon crawler in space and more a story based game.

A lot more.

One thing: Any chance for Psionics or the like? I really hope you put this in. Psionics doesn't have to be magic in space, so there is plenty you can do with this. I would suggest using SYstem Shock 2's psionic powers as a starting point, those were quite flavorful and fitting, yet low powered.

Not at the moment but we might add it later when we put the combat system together.

 

[Grotesque]

There was a game proposed on kickstarter, isometric with a cyberpunk/steampunk feeling which was settled also on a decrepit spaceship. The weapons was also cropped together and the setting was dark.
Does anybody remember its name?

 

[Tigranes]

Vault Dweller I agree that going all out in this setting would be difficult. It might be worthwhile to keep it as a possibility when the situation is right, depending on how development goes; they can't all be Morte but I'd think they can be more than 'the thief I could roll in 2 minutes'. The in-game knowledge also sounds like a way to make CHA worthwhile even if party members don't exponentially increase combat power.

I think there's several creative ways to balance the power problem. E.g. without being 'level scaling', it can make perfect in-world sense for the PC's antagonists to think that 3-4 people could ambush the lone PC, but that were he always seen traveling with several others, they might invest into a larger ambush. Or factions which treat the PC with greater suspicion and refuse certain rewards or help if that dickface is in the party.

 

[Vault Dweller]

There was a game proposed on kickstarter, isometric with a cyberpunk/steampunk feeling which was settled also on a decrepit spaceship. The weapons was also cropped together and the setting was dark.
Does anybody remember its name?

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1892480689/insomnia-an-rpg-set-in-a-brutal-dieselpunk-univers

They lost me at co-op.

Vault Dweller I agree that going all out in this setting would be difficult. It might be worthwhile to keep it as a possibility when the situation is right, depending on how development goes; they can't all be Morte but I'd think they can be more than 'the thief I could roll in 2 minutes'. The in-game knowledge also sounds like a way to make CHA worthwhile even if party members don't exponentially increase combat power.

I'll dedicate the next update to the party members and present all my thoughts and goals properly.

 

[roshan]

I actually prefer rotatable cameras. Worked great in Silent Storm, iirc. Its absence bothered me in Pillars.

I think these are a nightmare gameplay-wise. I guess if you enjoy rotating cameras - but I feel like with games such as Wasteland 2, Divinity OS and Age of Decadence, so much more time is spent rotating the camera rather than playing the game. I also really hate it when random objects pop out and block your view, or when you need to fiddle with the camera just to see what's behind the wall.

RPGs such as Fallout, the IE games and Underrail are already designed to be played from one perspective, so there's really no need to play with the camera, the content is served in such a way that you can focus on playing the game rather than fiddling with the camera. Pillars of Eternity on the other hand is an abomination of design, the lower camera angle (I think it's 35 or 40 degrees) means that characters always obscure each other, buildings often block one's line of sight, and coupled with those spell effects and engagement lines everywhere, it makes it impossible to tell what's happening in combat.

I really hope that future Iron Tower games could be 2D isometric, or at least feature fixed cameras. A good compromise is to have the camera flippable in four different directions (so that you can see behind objects or buildings), with a fixed 45 degree angle. This was what Invisible Inc did and also what Joe and Hannah have planned for Copper Dreams.

 

[Sceptic]

Incidentally, this touches upon a grievance of mine: has there ever been an RPG where there is a pre-rolled party (not of Bioware-style characters, just a proposed party composition) where the characters were actually sensibly rolled/built?

Most of the Might and Magic games had excellent pre-rolled parties. MM1 party had in fact very high attributes, you'd have to roll a LONG time to generate one that was better. WOX party had a ranger, which isn't optimal (though by no means useless), but the other 5 PCs were very well built. MM3 had a problem in party composition by lacking any Druid spellcasting, and Walk on Water was essential, but the party was otherwise well balanced and the individual members had good stats (and you could recruit a Druid NPC exactly 2 seconds into the game, without any previous knowledge or metagaming). I don't know if you count the later games since they worked on point-buy and not rolling, but if you only consider party composition, MM6's was excellently balanced (I'd say it was the optimal party for anyone not familiar with the game) and MM7's was very good too, and in fact after playing around with other compositions it's still my favourite as far as more balanced parties go.

I think M&M is the only series where I've actually used pre-generated parties though.

 

[Roqua]

Also about camera somewhat, 2d games age very well, and 3d games age very poorly. If you are switching engines you might as well go full civilized and go 2d. Look how good the IE games still look. So does the Fall Outs. Dark Sun still looks good too. ToEE, same. Hell, Spiderweb games from WW2 look almost the same as they do today and they don't look bad at all. PoE was beautiful if nothing else. Just think how awesome your game would look in 2d. Antherion and KotC play at 1982 CRT resolutions and still look decent. WL2 would have been gorgeous if designed in 2d and had almost none of the fucking graphics whiners crying like bitches about whatever they didn't think was pixely enough. Look how good Star Crawlers looks. Balrum and Underrail look great too.

Its pretty much undisputable scientific fact that 2d isometric games are not just cheaper, easier, and superior in every way to design for, but also play. Rotating cameras are for console idiots.

Its time to join team science and start winning. I say you have a poll on steam and ask the people who paid money for your last game if they want stupid gay 3d with rotating cameras, or the more progressive 3d with fixed camera, or the clearly superior and most civilized and science approved choice - 2d isometric. Hopefully you will respect the outcome of the poll and not tell people filthy lies like you told me when you lied horribly to me and almost made me cry.

 

[vean]

I actually prefer rotatable cameras. Worked great in Silent Storm, iirc. Its absence bothered me in Pillars.

Silent Storm was a TBS with guns and precision movement & aiming where the level geometry played a huge role, so the pain of 3D was acceptable for the extra gameplay you got over something like the 2D, tile-based JA. Not to mention it's the sort of the game where

None of that applies to AoD, which would've been better if it had intelligently designed 2d levels.

 

[Goral]

https://www.reddit.com/r/rpg/comments/2rgwzh/help_me_out_with_some_challenges_for_a_colony/
http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?751655-Mother-ship-colony-ship-needed-for-my-next-sci-fi-RPG

Looks like some people have read about VD's idea for an RPG (even though the links are about 1 year old VD has talked about it way earlier). It would be bad if before IT Colony Ship RPG one or more titles like this would be released.

 

[Athelas]

I suggest contacting a lawyer, I think you have believable grounds to sue here.

 

[hivemind]

Its pretty much undisputable scientific fact that 2d isometric games are not just cheaper, easier, and superior in every way to design for, but also play. Rotating cameras are for console idiots.

fixed cameras are for braindead casuals who literally can't handle freedom of perspective and get motion sickness from video games
'people' who prefer fixed cameras want to be spoonfed a streamlined perspective by the developer rather than explore the world as they wish by themselves

I suggest contacting a lawyer, I think you have believable grounds to sue here.

I assume this is a joke but a bunch of guys running a PnP campaign with a certain broad setting because they liked the idea is hardly a 'threat' to ITS next title.

Goral both of those links are about tabletop RPGs, what makes you assume that this would in any way result in a cRPG title(s) being released?

Also those people might have just been inspired by previous literature as much as VD was.

 

[Shadenuat]

Vault Dweller any plans on how much are you going to rely on CYOA gameplay this time? Are you guys going to try your hand in systemic gameplay, like stealth, NPC reaction systems, environmetal interactions, destructible objects?

 

[Goral]

Goral both of those links are about tabletop RPGs, what makes you assume that this would in any way result in a cRPG title(s) being released?

Nothing, I'm just worrying in advance . It's a great idea for an RPG setting and it will take many years until IT will finish it (if ever) but I'm afraid that during that time someone might take VD's ideas and implement them in his game. See my comment here: http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/index.php?threads/colony-ship-rpg-update-1.106579/page-3#post-4351603
Bethesda might want to expand their portfolio in response to CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077 and Bioware's Mass Effect.

 

[likaq]

Its pretty much undisputable scientific fact that Rogua is a troll at best or at worst he is fully retarded.

 

[Bubbles]

Its pretty much undisputable scientific fact that Rogua is a troll at best or at worst he is fully retarded.

I think he's just really old.

 

[HobGoblin42]

Actually, Rogua made a valid point regarding 2D and 3D when it comes to low budget game productions.

Better find a nice unique art style in 2D (see Stasis, Banner Saga, PoE, Darkest Dungeon, Battle Brothers, KoC) than creating a 3D game that basically looks like 2005.

Even Wasteland 2 with >$4 mio USD funding had massive problems to deliver proper 3D assets in the first place (those came later with the enhanced edition).

 

[Eyestabber]

If you do have a rotatable camera do a better job of it. The camera wrestling minigame was the worst part of AOD.

Camera faggotry. There is a complaint I never understood. I played AoD for almost 4 hours straight with only small adjustments here and there. Some people are easily triggered I guess. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[likaq]

LOL @ Battle Brothers as a example of nice art style, what's next? undertale?

than creating a 3D game that basically looks like 2005.

You mean like Chaos Chronicles?

 

[Zorba the Hutt]

Nothing, I'm just worrying in advance . It's a great idea for an RPG setting and it will take many years until IT will finish it (if ever) but I'm afraid that during that time someone might take VD's ideas and implement them in his game.

Fortunately nobody did that with AoD or it could have eaten into VD's obscene profits