Colony Ship - Major Update

Iron Tower Studios released a major update.

First System Update

Welcome to the first system update. The game was released on Early Access in April and until now our focus was on new locations and content. After releasing the Shuttle Bay we took a 3-week 'break' and worked on nothing but the systems.

These changes and improvements reflect the feedback we received over the last 7 months and we'd like to thank everyone who posted suggestions, shared builds, and participated in discussions. That's what Early Access is all about.

Thematically we can split the changes into 7 categories:

Difficulty & Tutorial

Despite our best efforts to keep the difficulty manageable and engage players who struggle, some players find the game frustrating and unplayable rather than challenging. Needless to say, frustrating people was never our goal, so we added Easy difficulty mode and a tutorial explaining key concepts.

Coincidentally, now that we don't have to worry about first-time players, we can make the Hard difficulty a bit more challenging.

Feats & Derived Stats

Charisma now adds Neural Resistance (see Psi Overhaul below). We added 3 new feats (Master Trader, Frog Hunter, Slow Metabolism) and 3 new mutually exclusive mutation feats as quest rewards. Plus balance changes to the existing feats as suggested by the players.

[… Weapons & Armor, Combat & Stealth AI, PSI Overhaul, Fight Balance, Misc …]

More information.

There's another long post with the patch notes.

Heh. Did they keep this light-on-dark log on the right? So uncomfortable to read long texts, I was hoping they'd fix that. Or am I the only one feeling that way?

"Coincidentally, now that we don't have to worry about first-time players, we can make the Hard difficulty a bit more challenging."

That's potentially bad news for me. I have a feeling I'll be stuck between choosing a difficulty level that's boring because it's far too easy and one that just aggravates me.

Originally Posted by Redglyph
There's another long post with the patch notes.

Heh. Did they keep this light-on-dark log on the right? So uncomfortable to read long texts, I was hoping they'd fix that. Or am I the only one feeling that way?

I put damn near everything in dark mode, so I'm probably not the person to ask, haha.

Originally Posted by JFarrell71
I put damn near everything in dark mode, so I'm probably not the person to ask, haha.

Ah damn, I knew it wouldn't be a popular complaint

I'm often editing code in dark mode, curiously, but the contrast is different and a good choice of font / colour highlighting helps a lot.

Originally Posted by JFarrell71
"Coincidentally, now that we don't have to worry about first-time players, we can make the Hard difficulty a bit more challenging."

That's potentially bad news for me. I have a feeling I'll be stuck between choosing a difficulty level that's boring because it's far too easy and one that just aggravates me.

I understood this as they will have three difficulty levels. Current difficulty will be normal, hard will be harder and easy will be easier.

Originally Posted by BlackVoid
I understood this as they will have three difficulty levels. Current difficulty will be normal, hard will be harder and easy will be easier.

Oh, hopefully so.

Originally Posted by JFarrell71
Oh, hopefully so.

That's what they had for dungeon rats. So I'm assuming it'll be the same here.

I am just so, so stoked about this game. The last game I was this stoked about was Vagrus and it's as awesome and as different as I hoped. I've been wanting to play this since it was rumored after playing Age of Decadence, still one of the coolest… experiences, we'll say, I've ever had with a game. I think the storytelling in it was better than the much-vaunted Torment game.

I am really trying not to play this EA at all because I want to play the finished game in all its glory.

Originally Posted by Pladio
That's what they had for dungeon rats. So I'm assuming it'll be the same here.

No, as of last year, VD was saying that Colony Ship would not have multiple difficulty levels at all. So it was never the plan to have the same setup as Dungeon Rats.

I interpret this update as saying they've added a 2nd difficulty that they're calling "Easy", and that the original/default difficulty is now named "Hard" - two difficulty levels total.

I suppose the psionics gives it a magic-like element. Is it only for enemies, I wonder?