Colony Ship: A Post-Earth Role Playing Game News

Your adventure continues: now you can visit the lower levels of Mission Control, fight Ol' Beelzebub, fix and deploy Romeo, further upgrade your implants, enjoy quality of life and balance improvements, and learn more about the Ship:

Like oversized Tarot cards, these elaborately decorated panels tell the visitors their past, present, and future.

The first panel, named Hell, depicts a fragment of urban life on Earth: a dark sub-level - you can't really call it a street - lit by angry fires that have nothing left to consume.

Nothing can thrive or grow down there, nothing but pale, malnourished castaways, clinging to life with the tenacity of despair.

Far above is a glimpse of a railway overpass, its warning lights unable to pierce the darkness below. Higher still are the towers, reaching for the polluted sky, and the silvery traffic network between them.

The bottom dwellers dream of landing a factory job and taking a train to work one day; the wage-slaves riding the trains are driven by the fear of ending up at the bottom and the dream of making it into one of those towers; and in the towers, an empty man surrounded by nothing but material possessions yearns for death.

Waves of despair wash over you, until you step back, beyond the range of the hidden broadcaster.

The next panel is titled Purgatory and it depicts the Ship as it once was or perhaps how it was imagined back on Earth. Generations of colonists working tirelessly to create the tools the future generations would use to tame Proxima. Their lives are hard, but they're driven by purpose and hope, which is what separates them from their squalor-dwelling brethren back on Earth.

Through this sacrifice the wretched will be purified and the children of their children will be admitted into New Eden. This is the true gift of the Founding Fathers...

The broadcaster kicks in full gear, filling you with gratitude and a desire to purge away your sins through labor.

And finally the last panel. You don't need to read the sign to know what this is - a homesteader's paradise.

A land - *your* land, suggests the broadcaster, planting the idea in your head - stretching green as far as the eye can see, blue sky, free of smog and traffic, and your very own home, a place you will build with your own hands.

The more you stare at the shifting images, the more you want it and you can't tell for sure if it's the broadcaster selling you the dream or a deeply supressed desire.

You'll never know if things were as bleak as the panels paint it, but the colonists needed to believe their ancestors made the right call escaping hellish Old Earth and setting out for the paradise of New Eden.

As we're getting closer (85% of the game is done and available on Early Access), let's go over what's left and the remaining update schedule.

1. Mission Control (lower levels) - released
   
   With this update we hit two major milestones:
   
   
   • all work on non-human characters is finally done and our programmer can fully focus on other tasks
     
   • all locations and level design are also done, which takes about 60% of work for every update. From this point on we'll focus on pure content (scripting quests and setting up fights), which will speed things up considerably.
2. The Grangers' Alliance, Attack on the Armory, Delivery - released on the beta branch
   
   
3. The Habitat's Questlines - released on the beta branch
   
   
4. The Pit's Alliance - End of Sep.
   
   
5. The Bridge and the Endgame - End of Oct.
   
   The level design (including unique props) is done ahead of schedule, the extensive text (interacting with the central computer) is done too, so we'll be able to focus on the endgame events. The Armory's level 3 (also done) is part of the endgame events.

Overall, we're looking at 5-6 increasingly less stressful months of work left. The hardest part of work is behind us now and we want to thank all those who supported us during the last two years. We wouldn't have made it this far without you.

Now you can try the demo and see for yourself if the design is to your liking.

The demo gives you the entire first chapter and three party members (you'd have to explore the starting town to recruit them; your party size is tied to your main character's Charisma).

Should you choose to buy the game and continue your adventure, you'll be able to keep playing without starting a new game as the demo saves are compatible with the full game.

Some tips for new adventurers:

- Buy and use gadgets like the Distortion Field or the Energy Shield for every fight. You can find them at Cole's Gadgets store in the Pit and activate before a fight.

- Don't neglect the combat feats. If you're playing a fighter, pick the feat related to your primary weapon: Pistolero, Rifleman, etc. To understand how your to-hit chance is calculated, press ALT while hovering over a target to see the full breakdown.

- Use stimulants and grenades: smoke grenades will make you harder to hit (very useful for melee fighters), poison grenades will weaken your enemies, especially those without gas masks, flashbangs will disorient them, etc.

- Heavier armor isn't necessarily better, especially if your character has low Armor skill and no Armor handling feat.

- Don't use the same attack over and over. Aimed: Legs attack can reduce your enemies' Evasion, making them easier to hit, while Aimed: Weak Point will reduce the enemies' Damage Resistance (DR).

- The textbox in the right corner provides a lot of info: your damage, enemies' DR, and even your rolls. It also shows which attacks the enemies are using. The enemies use the same system (stats, skills, feats, inventory) and play by the same rule. Paying attention to what they do will help you figure out the rules faster.

If you have any questions about the mechanics, we'll be happy to answer.

IMPROVEMENTS

- Heavily improved the performance of the save/load screen, especially when lots of saves are present.
- Added the option to delete all saves related to a character.
- Disabled the possibility of tagging speech skills on party members.

CHANGES

- Tweaked the price of broken and damaged implants.
- Tweaked Zeta's heart and armor implant.

FIXES

- Fixed the save/load screen resetting when a save was deleted.
- Fixed missing or wrong LP gains.
- Fixed 5th Daughter lack of gadget.
- Fixed wrong computers reward in electronics check in Red Zone.
- Fixed wrong reference with Nico's dialogue and Nazar.
- Tweaked code on Shotgunner so it increases only shotgun accuracy.
- Fixed issue with party members remaining invisible if you loaded a savegame in which they were inside the building and the PC outside.

You can continue your adventure and explore Hydroponics Yellow and Red Zones:
Esteemed members of the Synod,

Our division has been tasked with protecting the precious crops and plants, the everlasting gift of Mother Earth to Proxima, our promised land.

We know that the dangers will be many: pests, fungi, pathogens, even the soil itself, but with the right tools the pests can be driven off, the fungi controlled, the soil enriched.

Our Forefathers have given us these tools: keystone species that define entire ecosystems and hold them together, and like any tools they must be shaped and even reforged, if needed, to fit the task at hand.

These species will be our first line of defence in the battle that's yet to come. They will safeguard our fields and tirelessly protect them from any local threat that burrows, crawls, or flies in the most humane and environmentally-conscious way possible.

Our floaters can disrupt brain waves, gently turning away anyone approaching a designated perimeter. Should it fail they can rapidly generate an electric charge of up to 1,200 volts - more than enough to make the trespasser leave and never return.

The frogs can easily hunt down any intruders ... but you've already seen what they're capable of. Suffice it to say, our little friends have shown a remarkable capacity for learning, and their genetic variety makes the possibilities truly endless.

Our most interesting project is a sand striker, uniquely suitable for any desert environment. It's an ambush predator that can detect vibrations and anticipate its prey's movements.

What's fascinating is that its nutrient-rich waste is a perfect fertilizer that can enrich the soil and feed the plants. In this way, it turns threats into gifts that will help grow the land.
This update brings us closer to the release, so let's take a look at what's left:

- Mission Control lower levels and the Armory, level 3
- Bridge
- Endgame events

It will probably take us 3 months to do the next two updates, so by the end of July we should be done with level design and creatures, and we'll be able to fully focus on the endgame events.

Thank you for playing.