Olympia: New skill system From: skrenta@cbnewsg.att.com (Rich Skrenta) Date: Tue, 19 May 1992 19:35:29 +0000 Why change the skill system? o Multiplexing skills with numbered uses is ugly. o It is awkward to add or change uses with the current system. Sometimes it's hard to cram a new use in. o Sub-uses based on a level cannot make use of a skill rating. Let's say I want to have an observation use, "tracking". Your skill level is the number of hops that you can track someone. But if tracking is observation use 4, then you start off with 4 hops. This is weird. o It requires the lore system to support multiple levels of sheets for each entity. This feature of the lore system isn't used anywhere else, and I'd like to do away with it. Proposal for the new system: o Studying a top-level skill will produce sub-skills as new levels are reached. 107 Shipbuilding, level 4 9xxx Build clipper, experience 0 o Sub-skills may be used as soon as they are obtained. o Sub-skills may not be studied. Use will cause their experience rating to gradually rise, which will have mild positive effects on the sub-skill's use. o Dilution: Subskills would be dependent on knowing the parent skill; if dilution caused the parent to go away, the subskills would go away too. If transfers give a new top-level skill to a unit, then subskill experience can transfer as well. This works well intuitively. It makes sense that if you add some inexperienced men to a master shipbuilder, the average experience of the unit declines. o Assist: Probably anyone could assist, but the value of the help would depend on how much of the subject they knew. You'd rather be assisted by knowledgeable, experienced units than by unskilled workers. If the assisters had a relevant sub-skill, they could pick up experience while helping. -- Rich Skrenta Referenced By Up