Colony Ship: A Post-Start Roleplaying Summation

"Freezing red deserts turn to dark

Energy here in every part

It's so very lonely, you're six hundred light years from from home"

 

The Rolling Stones - 2000 Light Years From Home

 

 

I actually hadn't planned on doing a play-by play of Colony Ship. Based on my experiences in Iron Tower's previous The Age of Decadence and to a lesser extent Dungeon Rats it didn't seem like it would pay off. For one, I expect a story difficult to discuss without spoilers. For another, play-by-plays are far more entertaining when player experiences can diverge. Iron Tower's strictly controlled XP availability, skill checks and max-difficulty dice-rolling combat simply do not allow enough freedom of action to compare notes. "Oh, it took this guy twenty reloads instead of forty before the RNG went his way?" doesn't make for much of a plot.

Still, they did learn a few lessons from AoD's mixed success. Less useless skill / faction / weapon redundancy with more options in fewer categories, better integration of noncombat skills beyond talking, more attention paid to explanatory explanations and UI elements. Ingredient gathering and crafting have been dropped, but given I used AoD to reference crafting's unsuitability for story-based RPGs that's one loss I don't mind. You can recruit up to 3 party members (depending on charisma) with the caveat that I've run across exactly three in the first chapter, and they're not very interesting. I opted for Jed the down on his luck shotgun-totin' scrounger. You also get more customization options in the form of implants and gear with overlapping functions (e.g. can't wear both a visor and full helm at the same time) and gadgets like a shield or cloaking device. Fewer indoor zones, larger maps make the new map teleportation a real time-saver, especially as you'll be bouncing back and forth around zones endlessly hunting for that next skill-up.

 

In case the title didn't clue you in, this is a SciFi game set among the likely dissolution and degeneration aboard a massive "generation ship" after a few generations have passed. I find the topic interesting enough myself and will never forgive Robert Heinlein for doing it so much better than I ever could with Orphans of the Sky, Colony Ship's biggest influence. Aesthetically the game is short on bells and whistles much like it predecessor, and suffers from some poor handling of verticality/transparency making it difficult at times to know what floor your cursor's hovering over. Still, it does an admirable lot with the little it has.

The Hydroponics zone once again demonstrates the immersiveness of otherwise simple textures and models with properly applied lighting and distance. The rectilinear town built within stacked shipping containers which serves as your starting hub isn't far behind, playing up its bidonville precept as skillfully as more famous titles. The music is still simple yet apt for the most part, with so far one noteworthy track in the factory zone standing out as rather bangin'. Iron Tower's writing was mostly good to begin with and has improved in consistency and attention to detail.

 

I statted up my new self as per my usual support caster preferences.

 

From the start, the xenophilia/phobia alignment suggests an endgame twist of meeting aliens in Alpha Centauri. Plus, if one NPC told me "nah, we'll never live to see it" I'd take it as banter... but when every other person you meet says you'll never see your destination, dramatic irony dictates you'll probably see your destination. Time and plot advancement will tell.

 

One of AoD's main criticisms was its absolute dependence on min-maxing. You had absolutely no reason to half-level secondary skills, as they'd never overcome any challenge. Colony Ship tries to address that with gain by use instead of giving you points every level to allocate, skill tagging for bonus gain and the ability to boost a couple of skills by one point at the start, which in a ten-level campaign actually means something. Also, failed attempts in some encounters can still boost an under-level skill, especially speech. It's worked pretty decently so far, and I've been able to work up just enough non-tagged skill boosts for partial completion... but...

 

Without spoiling too much, by the end of Ch.1 I found myself falling farther and farther behind, relying entirely on save scumming and lucky crits - Mercy, the outskirts gang, the mind worms, the blatantly obvious scav ambush in mission control etc. - which all grows especially odious in long stealth missions where you repeat the same twenty moves thirty times over so you can reach the same few critical dice rolls every time. I did manage to polish off most content except a few skill-barred pieces of loot and the "courthouse" fights. Now, at the doorstep of The Factory, I honestly have no idea whether I'll be able to even finish the game.

 

So I decided why the hell not, let's give Iron Tower its own tag here and devote a future post to a play-by-play of Chapter 2.

At least a few of you might be amused by seeing me fall flat on my face.