Iron Tower Studio Colony Ship RPG Design Update #14

The latest design update for Iron Tower Studio’s Colony Ship RPG describes a bunch of useful tools we’ll be using during our playthroughs. Energy shields, grenades, combat stimulants. All that with some nice new pieces of concept art. Here’s an excerpt:

Originally we planned to go with 10-12 gadgets but after some considerations we turned some gadgets into grenades and stimulants (i.e. turned them into ‘while supplies last’ items), so here are the semi-final categories:

• Gadgets aka upgradeable Earth-made tactical devices
• Earth-made (i.e. high tech) grenades
• Ship-made (i.e. low tech) grenades
• Earth-made combat stimulants

Gadgets:

Energy Shield – generates a shield acting as cover (this way you don’t need to look for cover but can create it yourself); the shield absorbs X damage per attack until depleted, so the stats are:

• damage absorbed
• shield’s HP
• recharge rate

Reality Distortion Field – deflects projectiles, making much harder to hit you (i.e. THC penalty)

• THC penalty
• chance to deflect projectiles
• duration (number of turns)

Hologram Projector aka DnD Simulacrum aka that thing Arnold used in Total Recall – creates a copy of your character, drawing enemy’s fire. Since even today we have small plasma holograms you can interact with, it’s safe to assume that in the future this tech will be a lot more advanced so…

• # of copies
• THC penalty against the copies (distortion field around them)
• copies’ HP

Cloaking Field – makes you very hard to detect

• chance that a guard won’t see you if you’re in his line of sight
• defense against electronic detection systems (rank-based)
• duration

Basically, the bunker (energy shield), commando (disruption field; for characters who have strong offensive (high rate of fire, high crits, etc) as when the effect wears off if you’re still surrounded by enemies, you’re dead), confusion (hologram projector, works best with grenades), ninja-assassin.

Only one gadget can be active at a time but you can activate a different gadget at any time. Keep in mind that activating a gadget will drain its power cell and you’ll have to recharge it which is costly, so you won’t be able to use all gadgets in every single fight. You will be able to upgrade your gadgets by acquiring higher quality power cells, emitters, pulsers, disruptors, reflectors, etc.

Earth-made Grenades (rare; ace up your sleeve type item, save it for when you really need them like that mine fight in AoD):

• Stasis Field – holds enemies within a certain area, they can’t be harmed while in stasis so it’s a divide & conquer thing.
• Brainwave Disruptor – affects the mental state of an enemy, check against CON and INT, the effects range from doing nothing to going berserk XCOM style
• Pulse Grenade – disables all active gadgets in a certain area and does damage to droids

Ship-made Grenades (common and readily available)

• Gas grenades (poison damage per turn, negated by gas masks)
• Flashbang grenades (disorients enemies for 1 turn, PER penalties, negated by combat goggles)
• Smoke grenades (conceals, THC penalties and reduces range for firearms, great for melee fighters, negated by thermal goggles)

Combat Stimulants

• Rapid Cellular Regenerator – restores HP per turn (the only form of healing in combat)
• Motor Cortex Enhancer – same as AoD’s neurostimulant, extra AP per turn, limited duration
• Neurotransmitter – similar to AoD’s berserk