Video Game / Colony Ship

Colony Ship: A Post-Earth Role Playing Game is a 2023 Science Fiction Role-Playing Game by Iron Tower Studio.

The game's setting is a Generation Ship headed towards Proxima Centauri. In its long voyage, the ship has become a very troubled place, as its inhabitants know they will live their entire lives without ever seeing Proxima Centauri, nor do they feel any connection to the (now long dead) people of Earth who built the ship in the first place. Factions have arisen, each with their own answers to the seeming pointlessness of their existence, and their infighting continues to threaten the ship's original mission to reach Proxima Centauri.

You are a struggling passenger trying to make their way in the ships lower deck's. One day, you get a job from one of your old colleagues and soon discover there's more to the ship than meets the eye.

The game is similar to Iron Tower Studio's previous game The Age of Decadence, both being turn-based computer role-playing games that allow you to play the game as you choose. You can barge into a situation shooting first then ask questions later, or you could take a diplomatic approach and avoid bloodshed.

The game was released in November 2023.

Tropes featured in Colony Ship include:

• A.K.A.-47: Many of the weapons resemble their real life counterparts but are named differently. Notably the Colt Classic (an M1911) along with the Grim Reaper revolver (the Mateba Model 6 Unica), and the Jackhammer shotgun (the Pancor Jackhammer).
• Absurdly Low Level Cap: The game works on a 1-10 skill and level system and the developers have implemented a soft cap of 10 for the game by the end of a playthrough.
• Action Girl: The player character if they go with a combat oriented character; Fayth one of the Pit party members with enough training along with the faction party members Cobra and Harbinger.
• Adam Smith Hates Your Guts: The cost of goods don't increase during the game but the amount of credits you can obtain is severely limited and the resale value of gear scavenged from dead opponents is only worth a tenth of their listed value. There is no way to increase the amount of money you get from selling items but there is a Feat that gives you a 25% discount.
• Anti-Grinding: Every fight in the game is a set encounter along with limited avenues to gain valuable skill experience outside of your character level experience. And you can miss fights.
• Armor Is Useless: Averted, high armor against specific damage types will greatly reduce damage taken and this is especially true for certain enemies.
• Bulletproof Vest: All armor is a variant of this, with some straight up being called ballistic vests.
• Cyborg: The player character and party members can get implants that improve stats or other benefits, even have them overclocked to improve the effects for an health debuff. Human enemies as well but there is another small society that reside in the ECLSS (Environmental Control and Life Support System) that are more like the Terminator than even a player character with all overclocked implants.
• Deflector Shield: Man sized ones. Currently, the player can use three kinds: a vest that blocks all damage until its charge (HP) is used up and gadgets that either add to your total damage resistance until their HP is gone, or reflectors that reduce the accuracy of ranged attacks and shocking melee attackers.
• Demonic Spiders: Creepers. Giant mutant starfish originally meant for pest control on Proxima Alpha, after Hydroponics fell into disrepair following The Mutiny they mutated into apex predators in that part of the ship. With high AP, HP, and damage resistance, they're hard to kill even with energy weapons. They can use a long range grapple to pull opponents into melee range and regenerate health every turn on top of getting it back from successful melee attacks. And they have a toxic smokescreen that makes them harder to hit with ranged and melee attacks and poisons anyone in range with low Toxic resistance.
• Early Game Hell: Early on, your weapons are weak, you're often outnumbered, and you'll have limited access to grenades and consumables. Compounded if you're playing in Underdog mode, where you're explicitly told there will be fights you should back down from.
• Energy Weapons: Rare, best damage per shot for their weapon category but they burn through ammunition like a fire hose (all of them have a usage multiplier for ammunition, even the melee ones).
• Generation Ships: The eponymous Starfarer is a retrofitted freighter designed to provide for the passengers during the centuries-long voyage.
• Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better: Energy weapons and their ammo are too rare to be used regularly so the times you can kill an enemy with an energy weapon before they burn through all their ammo are a treat indeed.
• Mecha: Come in the man-sized Anti-Riot Robots used to try to quell The Mutiny before the start of the game. You can even find one to repair and bring under your command during the game.
• Multiple-Choice Past: Prior to the game starting players can answer a few prompts regarding their character's backstory and their disposition towards factions.
• Mutants: A bunch! Not only are the animals grown in Hydroponics have become large and ferocious enough to attack humans, people exposed to radiation from the engine have over time mutated and even formed their own society in the ships engine called The Heart.
• Nintendo Hard: The Underdog mode which is recommended by the developers as the default. There's a "Hero mode" that the developers call easy but it's more in line with average difficulty. You're frequently outnumbered by enemies with better skills and more feats or enemies with only few weaknesses. You only gain skill experience from using skills successfully and leveling doesn't give you anything but Feats (which are like Fallout perks with stat requirements).
• Randomized Damage Attack: All weapons feature this, with damage fluctuating on every attack.
• Random Number God: All attacks, both for your party and for enemies, are percentage based, with three options for how they're generated:
  • Heavily Adjusted limits consecutive misses.
  • Lightly Adjusted makes results drawn like a deck of cards with every one being drawn before reshuffling the deck.
  • True Randomizer is as it says.
• Resources Management Gameplay: Besides ballistics ammunition and medkits, grenades are in limited supply with only around a dozen purchasable across the entire current game. Energy weapon ammunition can be purchased in small quantities as well.
• Revolvers Are Just Better: Due to the recycling nature of the ship and limited supplies, revolvers are common as they're easier to manufacture and maintain.
• Sentry Gun: Come in two flavors; ballistic versions and energy weapon versions with deflector shields.
• Short-Range Shotgun: Most only have a range of 2-3 tiles, for reference melee weapons have a range of 1 tile and most pistols have a range of 4 or more tiles at least.
• The Six Stats: The game has six stats: Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Perception, Intelligence and Charisma.
• Skill Scores and Perks: Like The Age of Decadence and Fallout before it, the game has a system with skills and feats. You need fulfill certain requirements before you can take a particular feat.
• So Long, and Thanks for All the Gear: You can't take gear from party members and then dismiss them, they have a "minimum credit amount" worth of equipment they must have on them before they can be switched out. It scales from a few hundred credits worth of gear to along the line of 2,000+ credits.
• Sniper Pistol: Anyone with high enough Pistol skill, Perception and the right Feats count. Especially when using the Hauser 74 pistol (resembles a Mauser C96), which has a whopping effective range of 10 tiles. Only a few rifles have a range higher than that.
• Subsystem Damage: With both melee and most ranged weapons you can aim at certain body parts in combat for specific debuffs on the enemy. The head staggers (stacking Evasion debuff), the arms reduce their accuracy, the legs reduce their evasion. This cuts both ways, so it pays to armor as much of your character's body as you can, too.
• Take Cover!: Many fights feature cover in the form of half and full. Standing next an enemy in cover reduces its effects by half.
• Trick Bomb: Grenades that come in several varieties:
  • Stasis will freeze those caught in the effect for several turns and then debuff them on end of the duration.
  • Gas will cover a large area that will poison enemies and debuff their stats and will last for several turns.
  • Flashbangs will blind opponents in the area and reduce their evasion, to hit chance.
  • Disruptors will cause Panic, a debuff that causes damage over time and reduce reaction and AP.
  • Pulse will cause gadgets to shut down and will also stun enemies with implants as well as machines.
• Turn-Based Combat: Even the stealth sections! You have Action Points with moving costing 1AP per tile moved with attacks and item usage as well.
• 24-Hour Armor: All the gear you put on your characters is visible along with the enemies you'll face. You can get an idea how tough a fight will be by the gear someone wears.
• Used Future: By the time your character enters the picture, it's been centuries since the ship initiated its voyage, and it shows. What was once the cargo hold is now a slum populated by those who want to escape the reign of the established factions, and those factions in turn have all but crippled the whole ship in their fighting.

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