Iron Tower Studio Colony Ship Game Design Update #1

It’s going to take quite a while before we can see any gameplay of Iron Tower Studio’s next big project, a cRPG set in a colony ship traveling through space, so to make the wait a little less grating the developers have decided to keep us in the loop with a series of monthly design updates. The first of them includes a detailed write-up on the game’s setting and some information on the early system design.

According to Vince D. Weller, the ship the game takes place on was originally launched by religious zealots, who were all too aware of the fact that it would take thousands of years to reach Alpha Centauri, their promised destination:

The Founding Fathers:

Who’d launch and most importantly pay for an undertaking that costs so much yet delivers so little? Even if Earth were overpopulated, launching a ship to Alpha Centauri a flight that would take hundreds of years if you’re lucky enough to have mystical elven Engines of Speed X10 (thousands of years if you don’t) solves zero problems and thus gets zero cash.

Thus, it would have to be a private enterprise with a pinch of religious zealotry. Would a neo-Christian American foundation pay to establish a 100% Christian God-fearing colony on Alpha Centauri in the distant future? They conquered the New World once and by God’s grace they can do it again – even if it takes a thousand years to get there! Yee-Haw, gentlemen!

The First Generation:

The first generations are zealots who believe in the Mission. No sacrifice is too great, no suffering is too unbearable. They will never see Earth again; they will never see Alpha Centauri either. Their children, grandchildren, and so on are doomed to live and die on the ship in the name of the Mission. They will never see the sunlight, never swim in a sea, never sit under a tree, all because they had the misfortune of being born on the ship, chained to a fate they didn’t choose or want.

By the time the game starts, however, a number of generations have passed, and dissent and unhappiness are extremely common in the ship’s crew. Not everyone, however, agrees on how exactly to respond to the clear problems that have arisen, and various factions have formed:

The Inevitable Mutiny leading to new societies emerging. In any collapse, there is a movement that wants to go back to the good ol’ ways (the South shall rise again!), a radically different movement (freedom for everyone!), and a religious movement (what would Jesus do, hmm?):

• Totalitarian traditionalism – what was good for our fathers is good enough for us; we must maintain the Laws of the Ship. The traditionalists believe that the old laws were necessary and that they were the only way to keep chaos at bay. Open-minded people would recognize the wrongs but see them as necessary and lesser evil.
• Fuck totalitarianism, give power to the people, embrace democracy!
• Democracy? We are on the ship because White Christ wills it so we must accept it and honor He Who Was Reborn as we shall be reborn when the ship reaches the destination.
• Can’t we all just be left the fuck alone? Life’s hard enough without your bullshit getting in the way. :deadwood:

So the idea is to explore how this giant ant-farm is affecting people, how societies and ideas governing them evolve over time (something we didn’t do in AoD), etc.

We want each faction [to] have a range of characters and beliefs, from extremism to liberalism, and I want the player to be able to push your faction toward a preferred end of the spectrum. Democracy, for example, can evolve either into a cheap popularity contest (Idiocracy) or earning the right to vote (Starship Troopers), all the way to ‘˜only the wise and infallible Senators can vote’.

The drastic change of setting will not be the only departure from The Age of Decadence. Iron Tower Studio’s next project is apparently also going to be party-based and employ a level-based system for character progression, rather than the skillpoint-based progression of its predecessor. Ranged combat and exploration will also be significantly more prominent:

The Overall Design

As mentioned previously, we want the CSG to feel and play differently from AoD. The core design (turn-based, choices & consequences, non-linear, text-heavy) would remain the same, of course.

So the new design elements are:

• Party-based. It’s a fundamental change that affects every design aspect, most notably content (gating). If you have 3-4 party members, most likely you’ll have all skills covered.
• Feats. Feats require character levels (another departure from the AoD design) and will replace (and greatly expand) skills’ passive abilities. Our aim is to offer greater customization of your character’s abilities and builds’ support. So far we have the following categories: General (feats like True Grit or Critical Thinker), Specialist (Pistolero, Fast Draw, Paint It Red, etc), On Kill (Bloodlust, Second Wind), Target (anything related to the target: type, number, awareness, etc – Crowd Control, Duelist, Bounty Hunter, etc), Party-related (Warband, Magnificent Five), Combat (Adrenaline Rush, Headhunter), etc. No filler +1 to skill or +5 damage feats but meaningful feats that fit and strengthen your particular gameplay style.
• Focus on ranged combat. While melee builds will be viable, most enemies will use guns. We’ll discuss it in great details later.
• Focus on exploration rather than working your way up in a faction. While factions will get a lot of attention (see above) and play a large role, you won’t join a faction but will remain an outsider, free to work for and deal with all factions, which fits the setting better as these factions aren’t guilds but different hubs. However, many quests would have conflicting interests and reputation would play a stronger and more immediate role than it did in AoD, so you won’t be able to please everyone for long.
• Multiple-piece armor. AoD had a very basic (body armor + helmet) setup. With the CSG, we want to go a bit further: helmet, chest, right arm, left arm, legs. We’re thinking of cumulative DR against general attacks and individual piece’s DR against aimed attacks. We’ll test this system in the dungeon crawler to build up some experience in this area and see how it works.