Colony Ship - There Be Monsters

Colony Ship is the new name for The New World. The latest update for Colony Ship discusses monsters.

First things first: we had to change the name so now the game is called Colony Ship. While it's not the most original name, it's the most straightforward one.

Colony Ship Cover Art

Now that we got that out of the way, let's talk about what RPGs are really all about - monsters. As a wise man once said:

“As one would expect, the game shines the most during the fights against humans. This is true because of all the reasons that made AoD combat great – humans are the most tactically diverse in terms of abilities, weaponry, armour, etc, which makes almost every fight against them unique to some extent.

But then you have the monsters, which are more or less the anti-thesis to everything that makes AoD combat good. Sure, the first time a new monster type appears, you might be surprised by what it can do, and act accordingly to counter it. However, monsters don’t really go beyond 2 types (and even that is usually limited to “small scorpion”, “big scorpion”), and don’t present any tactical flexibility. They are simply one-trick ponies that stop being interesting dangerously fast. Scolopendras rush forward and hit you and poison you, and that’s it. Same goes for scorpions and ants. You’ve been to one of these fights, and you’ve been to them all…”

It’s a valid and helpful point, so naturally, we want to do better. In AoD/DR most critters were melee ‘fighters’, half of them poisonous, with high DEX (to close the distance fast) and two attack types. Predictably, this design didn’t bring anything new to the table and what little it did bring got old fast.

So when it comes to creatures our goals are:

• Tactical flexibility
• Unique abilities that humans don’t have
• Focus on various effects rather than direct damage (i.e. no 'fighters')
• Different enemies working together or taking advantage of other critters’ abilities
• Effective counters of ranged parties

Of course, having lofty goals is one thing, achieving them is another, so we’d like to run some ideas by our core audience and see what you guys think. Nothing is set in stone yet as we won’t start implementing the creatures until 2019, so we can easily make change at this point. We’re planning to have 6 creatures, mostly found in the Hydroponics and Wasteland. Let’s start with the creatures’ origin:

The Ship is en route to Proxima B, an Earth-like planet orbiting Proxima Centauri. Ninety percent of its surface is covered with water, but the planet is slightly bigger than Earth, providing approximately half of Earth’s landmass.

Losing Terran plants and crops to local pests and fungus would be catastrophic, so the Hydroponics Division was tasked with adapting the plants to the anticipated environment of Proxima B and developing biological forms of pest control (introducing predators from old Earth to change the native ecosystem and eliminate all local threats was the most cost-effective way to ensure that the colony would survive and grow).

Extensive gene-editing was employed to develop resistance to alien fungi and pests, and accelerated adaptation hacked into the plants' genetic code. Like many other critical systems, Hydroponics was abandoned during the Mutiny. The carefully cultivated flora and fauna was left on its own in harsh environs designed to propagate rapid and brutal evolutionary cycles.

When human beings finally decided to reclaim Hydroponics, they discovered an environment as wild and hostile as any Earth jungle…

So today we’ll show you 3 predators from old Earth:

Frogs

Frogs are already used in agriculture as a form of biological pest control as they have a healthy appetite for insects and are highly resistant to insecticide. Plus they have a wide range of natural abilities: jumping, toxic venom, hallucinogen, even retractable spikes (the wolverine frog), which would make them a top choice when it comes to cost-effective terraforming.

The frog is a 'hard to hit, easy to kill' critter (high evasion due to the small size and mobility, low hit points and no damage resistance). They will attack in packs and come in 3 varieties: fighter, poison spitter, and 'mind flayer'. It's a low level critter that prefers easy prey (i.e. low level, poorly equipped parties). They aren't very aggressive and won't attack unless threatened. When you run into them for the first time, they'll be busy feasting on a corpse. If you want to go through that corpse's pockets, you'll have to kill the frogs first.

Starfish

An avid predator and an opportunistic feeder, the starfish is one of the keystone species which makes it an excellent addition to any terraforming arsenal. It can regenerate damaged parts, swallow its prey whole, and it even comes with its own body armor (hardened plates and spines).

The mutated version will shoot its stomach (yeah, it's actually a thing) to drag the victim within the attack range. It will also release a spore cloud, greatly reducing the visibility and your THC with ranged weapons. During its turn, the starfish will envelop you and drain your HP, regenerating some of the damage it sustains during the fight.

Unlike the frog, the starfish is easy to hit (with melee weapons) but hard to kill due to DR and accelerated regeneration. One starfish isn’t a serious threat but 2-3 would be able to ruin your day pretty quick.

Jellyfish

It’s a mutated jellyfish originally adapted from the Portuguese man o'war and designed to hover over crops and zap insects, while turning away larger animals. Things got a bit out of hand during the Mutiny when the mutation cycles ran wild and now the few remaining floaters haunt the ruins of the Mission Control Center.

Upon detecting oversized insects, the floater will slowly move to intercept them. Bullets have no effect on it but energy weapons would bring it down in no time. In the absence of such weapons or cells to power them up, you can hack it to pieces, which isn’t an ideal solution because the floater will zap every enemy next to it (crowd control), dealing energy damage. On top of it, the floater is equipped with a primitive version of brainwave disruptor, so the closer you get, the higher the chance to forget what you were doing and just stand there, drooling like an idiot (aka skip turn).

In short, the floater is easy to kill if you have energy cells to spare or hard to kill with melee weapons if you don’t. Certain implants and helmet will increase mental resistance. Other creatures and rival parties might (surely will) attack while you’re busy fighting the floaters.

Anyway, if you like these creatures, you'll definitely like the other three, including Old Beelzebub. If not, let's discuss.

More information.

COLONY SHIP is just about the blandest title ever. Even just shortening it to "COLONY" would be better.

Eh, another bad change name. Seems a trend lately. Needs something bit more catching…Shipolony?

Originally Posted by BoboTheMighty
Eh, another bad change name. Seems a trend lately. Needs something bit more catching…Shipolony?

They explained why in the last update I shared on the forums.

Link - http://www.irontowerstudio.com/forum…ic,7609.0.html

We picked the name (The New World) a few months before the first reports about Amazon's MMO hit the net, meaning we didn't know about Amazon's New World back then. Yes, we should have double-checked again before launching the site, but we didn't. Back then it wasn't clear if the MMO is still in development as there were rumors of cancellations, so we decided to wait and see what transpires. Well, as of last week it's clear that Amazon's New World is alive and kicking, which means we have to change the name.

I really liked The New World as it fits the game perfectly and while Amazon hasn't contacted us about the name, their pre- and post-release media campaign would drown us. Fortunately, we haven't done any real marketing yet, so changing the name is relatively easy at this point. All we need is a fitting name, which is where you come in.

We went through a hundred or so names, ranging from absolutely awful to really bad, and settled on these 3 names representing our last, best hope:

1. Starfarer - it's the name of the ship in the game, so there's some relevance. The obvious downside is that it's fairly generic. It works as the ship's name considering the nature of the ship but I'm not sure it makes a good name for anything else. I'd prefer Starfarers describing the people, but it's trademarked up to its eyeballs so…

2. The Journey/Voyage to Proxima Centauri or something similar - the only advantage is that the plot summary is in the title. You don't have to wonder what the game's about.

3. The Pilgrims of Earth - similar meaning as the New World (i.e. the pilgrims of Mayflower), focus on the people not the ship or the journey, nice 50s sci-fi feel, built-in sequel (The Conquerors of Proxima Centauri).

I prefer #3 but I was wrong plenty of times before, so I'd like to know what you think first, before we change the logo, the site, and Steam's page.

Oh, well I've got a few ideas then:

Depths of Depravity..sounds like a pretty grim tale, how they describe it

Star Citizens…the other game is probably being cancelled, so might as well grab the name

Twilight Cruiser…seems fitting for starship setting, plus a great menu song

So hoping this will be a good game. Theoretically it ticks a lot of my interest boxes so hope it works smoothly.
Colony Ship is a pretty crappy name…. reminds me of Colonoscopy.

Colonoscopy Ship. Heh. It's an interstellar probe…

Well the name serves its purpose. They can always append something, like 'Colony Ship: Dystopia'. The monsters look reasonable thus far, although perhaps the floating jellyfish should be hanging from the ceiling and swinging about. I wonder though if there will be genetically modified pets and/or work animals? Like a guard dog with thorns.

So … can we romance and ‘marry’ the monsters????

Many people claim they did marry a monster.

Originally Posted by mesmeris
So … can we romance and ‘marry’ the monsters????

I think the monsters are just misunderstood and being discriminated.

The ones in Colony Ship. The married ones are true.

Originally Posted by mesmeris
So … can we romance and ‘marry’ the monsters????

See I believe that game is called Pokemon or Monster Breeder not Colony Ship.

I sure do like good titles for games…and movies and books. While Colony Ship ain't great, at least they followed my naming guideline: When you can't think of a good name, at least call it what it is.

I'll throw out one I like better: Exodus, or some variation if required, such as Exodus From Earth or Earth's Exodus. Also, I like #3 from Couch's post better.

Originally Posted by Capt. Huggy Face
at least they followed my naming guideline: When you can't think of a good name, at least call it what it is.

I think if you'd read 10 or 12 of Vince's words on the topic, you'd realize this is one piece of advice he definitely did not need.

I'd call it "The Ranae", which sounds cool, and is Latin for "The Frogs".

Originally Posted by Capt. Huggy Face
I sure do like good titles for games…and movies and books. While Colony Ship ain't great, at least they followed my naming guideline: When you can't think of a good name, at least call it what it is.

I'll throw out one I like better: Exodus, or some variation if required, such as Exodus From Earth or Earth's Exodus. Also, I like #3 from Couch's post better.

I like your suggestions. I'd call it Journey to Elysium or maybe The Ruins of Arcadia.