Mechanical Skills

[geeves]

IMPORTANT: This is a Geeves PR, not an Aurora Devs PR. I made this of my own volition, the dev team did not plan this. If the greater dev team wants it shut down, it will be shut down.

 

With that out of the way- I jiggled our skill system thing around to be similar to CM's in the backend. At the moment, the PR only makes vaulting take longer or be faster depending on your athletics skill. In the future, difficult tasks such as surgery or hacking might require that you meet a minimum skill level, such as anatomy or electrical engineering. For now, this is what we got.

The PR is actually pretty simple, but I figure having an avenue for discussion here would be good, if you have any questions for me or something.

 

PR link: https://github.com/Aurorastation/Aurora.3/pull/12363

[Butterrobber202]

This thread will go well.

anyways! I'm in favor for atleast a test merge if all works out. 

Edit: Clarification, in your vision of the system, will we be assigned skills based on our job, or have them be selectable? Because I wouldn't be a huge fan of losing all my character's knowledge and experience if I spawn as a Visitor.

Edited August 20, 2021 by Butterrobber202

[geeves]

Skills will be character based, not job based.

[greenjoe]

will there be different factors that change how many skill points you get to use or will be it a set amount for every character?

[Happy_Fox]

FINALLY I've been wanting this for so long.

[HunterRS]

My only critique and I think the critique others have in for a skill system is powergamers, because some stuff down the line could pose an issue if they assist or CQC or Aiming, or just antags who normally don't have the skills they need doing things they aren't can't mechanically do and being forced to do the same set of stuff because they can't hack doors for example. Just something to keep in mind for the future on maybe adding an antag exception so they can do whatever and not get bogged down.

[canon35]

Do you have any ways in mind for antags to be able to change their skills? IE changing out your skills on spawn as a ninja/merc, or paying for something that gives you a skill with telecrystals. 

[Carver]

I do love this, particularly character-based skills, but I'd also hope that antags get some basic boost - even as simple as 'buying anything from the uplink's ranged weapon category gives you intermediate firearms skills'. Integration with those face/species changing machines used by off-station antags would also be handy.

[ClemTheDuck]

I really do like the introduction of some mechanical skills, I’m not too worried about people powergaming them because the fact that you have finite skill points will mean that you can only really become truly powerful in one aspect. Plus in terms of security and EMTs having increased agility and being able to climb faster kinda feels right. 

[Peppermint]

I don't see what these skills add. Like, everyone is going to take the same ones for each job. And we already have rules regarding cross-departmental knowledge.

[Carver]

1 hour ago, Peppermint said:

I don't see what these skills add. Like, everyone is going to take the same ones for each job. And we already have rules regarding cross-departmental knowledge.

I disagree, not a single one of my characters even within the exact same role have the same skillset. A number of factors like background, hobbies and the like mean they're all very well different. Plus, if the following is to be believed, those rules will be far less important given mechanics can cover for excessive oversight:

Quote

In the future, difficult tasks such as surgery or hacking might require that you meet a minimum skill level, such as anatomy or electrical engineering.

In addition, it's nice to have characters that play differently not only in personality but mechanical gameplay as well. If such variance wasn't so important, then every species would function exactly the same.

[Lmwevil]

On 21/08/2021 at 04:09, Peppermint said:

I don't see what these skills add. Like, everyone is going to take the same ones for each job. And we already have rules regarding cross-departmental knowledge.

[mod-edit: removed a personal attack against the quoted person]

 

On 21/08/2021 at 06:12, Carver said:

I disagree, not a single one of my characters even within the exact same role have the same skillset. A number of factors like background, hobbies and the like mean they're all very well different. Plus, if the following is to be believed, those rules will be far less important given mechanics can cover for excessive oversight:

In addition, it's nice to have characters that play differently not only in personality but mechanical gameplay as well. If such variance wasn't so important, then every species would function exactly the same.

exactly, for example if we merged surgeon and physician we might not have physicians who are masters at surgery, engineers who maybe are better at the engine than engineers who are good at wiring - the reality is that this shows an actual difference in characters. I mean shit, sec could have people take only whatever makes them better at valids but maybe one guy in sec is a super good chef, or maybe they know basic first aid. 

TL;DR this is long overdue

[geeves]

12 hours ago, greenjoe said:

will there be different factors that change how many skill points you get to use or will be it a set amount for every character?

not entirely sure yet, i'll solve that problem in this PR by ignoring it. a followup with more brainpower applied to it will probably figure it out. in my personal opinion, i'd like to provide a single point pool that you can assign across all skills

 

12 hours ago, HunterRS said:

My only critique and I think the critique others have in for a skill system is powergamers, because some stuff down the line could pose an issue if they assist or CQC or Aiming, or just antags who normally don't have the skills they need doing things they aren't can't mechanically do and being forced to do the same set of stuff because they can't hack doors for example. Just something to keep in mind for the future on maybe adding an antag exception so they can do whatever and not get bogged down.

powergamers will be an issue regardless, the game will be balanced around people having various skill points in various places, so i'm not too concerned. the system is INCREDIBLY simple to use, so anyone can tweak it to balance it. antags could probably be given minimum skill requirements, if they don't meet those skills, their level will be bumped up upon being antag. we'll see, though

 

11 hours ago, canon35 said:

Do you have any ways in mind for antags to be able to change their skills? IE changing out your skills on spawn as a ninja/merc, or paying for something that gives you a skill with telecrystals. 

fallout style skill selection for off-station characters, in-game skillbooks for traitors maybe?

 

10 hours ago, Peppermint said:

I don't see what these skills add. Like, everyone is going to take the same ones for each job. And we already have rules regarding cross-departmental knowledge.

i'm of the opinion that it's way better to mechanically restrict people than to hope they adhere to rules. sure, there will be baseline requirements for jobs, but certain characters can have other minor skills, or someone can go above and beyond and be really good at their job and trash and everything else. kinda like how in RPGs, it's a roleplaying game but you can use skills to really flesh out the niche of a character

 

in all, i was also heavily against adding mechanical skills, i figured it'd be a hamper on RP. but then I played on CM, and saw it had potential for characters to be fundamentally different based on their skills and past experiences, rather than just boasting about the skill literally everyone else can also do. so i can relate to people who aren't fond of the idea, but i'd heavily encourage you to try it out on something like CM or whatever

[Peppermint]

7 minutes ago, geeves said:

 

 

i'm of the opinion that it's way better to mechanically restrict people than to hope they adhere to rules. sure, there will be baseline requirements for jobs, but certain characters can have other minor skills, or someone can go above and beyond and be really good at their job and trash and everything else. kinda like how in RPGs, it's a roleplaying game but you can use skills to really flesh out the niche of a character

 

in all, i was also heavily against adding mechanical skills, i figured it'd be a hamper on RP. but then I played on CM, and saw it had potential for characters to be fundamentally different based on their skills and past experiences, rather than just boasting about the skill literally everyone else can also do. so i can relate to people who aren't fond of the idea, but i'd heavily encourage you to try it out on something like CM or whatever

I think this is a much better argument for them than the one someone else quoted me for - with strange amounts of hostility, might I add? -and I think it would depend greatly on implementation. I've played on servers where they were a thing, and it tended to have most folks just using the exact same skills for each job. Though I imagine it'll depend greatly on how they work, and I would always vote for a standard 'baseline' for things, with skills making you better rather than their absence making them worse. Either way, I'd love to see a test merge to see how it goes. 

The only part I really disagree with though is on the OOC admin/rule side. As right now, it's much easier to rule on interdepartmental knowledge whilst it becomes a lot greyer if you throw skills into the mix. For example, a sec officer rn is really not allowed to hack anything as a balance concern rather than 'this is literally impossible IC'. Yet if they took skills for it at the sacrifice of something else, surely they'd have a case that they should? Though that's a wider issue that would have to be looked at.

If this does go through however, I just request we avoid things like age restrictions used on (Iirc?) Bay, as they kinda suck. 

[Boggle08]

@Peppermint Voices my sentiments about the skill system as a means of reducing administrative oversight. It may or may not reduce tickets, and our current system of how we handle skills and extradepartmental knowledge isn't broken at all. Some kinds of tickets are never going away, regardless if we have this system or not. Roboticists will not be allowed to touch the protolathe, surgery will continue to be subject to the autism of medical hierarchy, security officers that spec into broad cross departmental skills are going to get the stink eye, etc.

I have two primary concerns with a serious implementation of this system:

1. The system could encourage people to overspec into mechanical skills relative to their department, neglecting everything else about the character. Our current system of administrative oversight allows for characters to have specializations where they need them, and broad, unspecific low level skills in other areas. Putting points into life skills like accounting, fitness, or cooking takes away from being more efficient at the video game, which is the bottom line of the medium we've decided to place our setting in. For the same reason, I hope we don't have it so that putting little or no points into certain skills absolutely cripples your ability to work in that particular area. I saw people on discord talkin about how on Bay12 you needed to spec a lot into cooking just for the privilege of being able to use the microwave without burning everything, shit like that.

2. Station antag roles have a large equipment disparity to security, as does security have a large equipment disparity in relation to the crew they protect and occasionally monitor. I really, really, really am not a fan of making this gap between security, crew, and antag even wider by implementing a skill system that cripples your ability to fight back if you don't spec into it (and if you aren't security, cripples your ability to do your job if you do spec into it). We already have this disparity in the form of items, armor, and weapons, a crippling skill system would be overkill.

 

The above concerns can be addressed mostly by just altering what the flavor description says for each skill level, and potentially granting some leeway for skills at the low or unspecced level. As an example of what I don't want, if you don't take cooking in bay, the untrained field describes you as being a retard that barely knows how to feed yourself, and has the saving grace of knowing how to work a vending machine or put water in ramen.

The amount of leeway and freedom each skill gives you varies upon the skill, of course. For surgery, we can directly base the procedures you can perform using the chart we have on the wiki, as an example.

For combat skills, I hope we don't have them at all. If we have to have them, I don't want them to turn into speccable stat-sticks that increase your weapon accuracy or other qualities to the point of incontestability.

 

As a final note, I think it would be fun to experiment with having negative skills. Failing to spec into a skill on bay sometimes has negative effects on your character, like shitty conditioning for athletics. Using that athletics example, I want to have it so adequacy is the baseline for not speccing into athletics, and that you can negatively spec your character into having Paul Blartt conditioning in exchange for bonus points you can put somewhere else.

 

Otherwise, I remain wary of mechanical skills. I understand this is done in the spirit of character building and dynamics, but it isn't solving problems our current system wasn't monitoring, and it's long term implementation could turn restrictive and gamey.

Edited August 21, 2021 by Boggle08

[Arrow768]

3 hours ago, Boggle08 said:

As a final note, I think it would be fun to experiment with having negative skills. Failing to spec into a skill on bay sometimes has negative effects on your character, like shitty conditioning for athletics. 

Imho this is a very interesting take.

As mentioned above, a lot of jobs are already pretty closely regulated by ooc guidelines which determine what you can and can not do.
Therefore I think the skill system would be more useful in applying certain (mechanical) restrictions to the character, if the player so chooses.
I.e. that could be a inability to perform certain tasks, taking slightly more damage, ...

[Carver]

3 hours ago, Boggle08 said:

2. Station antag roles have a large equipment disparity to security, as does security have a large equipment disparity in relation to the crew they protect and occasionally monitor. I really, really, really am not a fan of making this gap between security, crew, and antag even wider by implementing a skill system that cripples your ability to fight back if you don't spec into it (and if you aren't security, cripples your ability to do your job if you do spec into it). We already have this disparity in the form of items, armor, and weapons, a crippling skill system would be overkill.

Is this not also covered by the disparity in numbers? Antags that have the best equipment, have the fewest numbers. Security with it's middling equipment, has numbers in the middle of the road. The crew without science or cargo has low-grade improvised equipment, but vastly outnumbers both antags and security. The only roles to break this are the mass-recruitment antag roles, who traditionally are fairly underequipped compared to solo/small group roles.

10 hours ago, Peppermint said:

The only part I really disagree with though is on the OOC admin/rule side. As right now, it's much easier to rule on interdepartmental knowledge whilst it becomes a lot greyer if you throw skills into the mix. For example, a sec officer rn is really not allowed to hack anything as a balance concern rather than 'this is literally impossible IC'. Yet if they took skills for it at the sacrifice of something else, surely they'd have a case that they should? Though that's a wider issue that would have to be looked at.

If this does go through however, I just request we avoid things like age restrictions used on (Iirc?) Bay, as they kinda suck. 

I never really understood having balance concerns about characters on an HRP server, where the primary focus has been storytelling for several years. Will some people powergame hard, sure, but those who do are almost immediately obvious as they're usually IPCs. If someone is good at wiring doors or the like, then they're already sacrificing time and precious inventory space by often having to interact and requisition gloves and tools from Engineering. They're also cutting away from their own abilities elsewhere.

[Boggle08]

23 hours ago, Carver said:

Is this not also covered by the disparity in numbers? Antags that have the best equipment, have the fewest numbers. Security with it's middling equipment, has numbers in the middle of the road. The crew without science or cargo has low-grade improvised equipment, but vastly outnumbers both antags and security. The only roles to break this are the mass-recruitment antag roles, who traditionally are fairly underequipped compared to solo/small group roles.

It's more I don't want to get into a scenario where you need to max out combat skills as a base requirement to fight people who've maxed out theirs, regardless of who has what equipment.

Equipment can be looted, replaced, or ordered in. Skills can't.

 

Edited August 22, 2021 by Boggle08

[Carver]

5 hours ago, Boggle08 said:

It's more I don't want to get into a scenario where you need to max out combat skills as a base requirement to fight people who've maxed out theirs, regardless of who has what equipment.

Equipment can be looted, replaced, or ordered in. Skills can't.

 

There are already species with objectively superior mechanics for combat such as Unathi and IPCs, where the difference can't be ordered. I can't imagine someone having slightly better aim will make near as much of a difference as those two.

[Boggle08]

1 hour ago, Carver said:

There are already species with objectively superior mechanics for combat such as Unathi and IPCs, where the difference can't be ordered. I can't imagine someone having slightly better aim will make near as much of a difference as those two.

It doesn't matter to me if that's all it is. Inconsequentially better aim or QoL skill augments, more for flavor rather than to powergame or gatekeep combat. The precedents set forth by fear/pain RP and the disparity in equipment already do a very good job of keeping people bystanders when they should be.

 

Maaaaybe they can turn into something more substantial down the line, but with nearly every single round centering around conflict that's physical and antagonistic, I feel we're a long ways off.

Edited August 23, 2021 by Boggle08

[geeves]

Matt and I have discussed combat skills. Both of us agree we don't want to make skills have a large impact on combat to the point where skills are needed to stand a chance. Personally, untrained combat character might be a bit weaker, but trained would be where we are right now, and maybe professional has extra QoL features like tactical reloads or whatever. Combat is largely still an OOC skill check, I reckon. We can figure out how it'll work out when we get to adding skills to combat, though.

[Faris]

In general, I think a test merge where feedback is given to modify and improve the system is a good measure. You can have jobs mandate a minimum amount of skill in certain skills. 
 

I think the administrative side might be tricky but given time and communication between the moderation team and development team I’m sure some kind of functional system can be made to minimize abuse. I don’t think we can ever nullify it but I think abuse of what systems we have can be minimized. 
 

But like all implementations, if it unfortunately did not work out during testing then we can always go back. I think it’s worth a try.

[Boggle08]

3 hours ago, Faris said:

In general, I think a test merge where feedback is given to modify and improve the system is a good measure. You can have jobs mandate a minimum amount of skill in certain skills. 
 

I think the administrative side might be tricky but given time and communication between the moderation team and development team I’m sure some kind of functional system can be made to minimize abuse. I don’t think we can ever nullify it but I think abuse of what systems we have can be minimized. 
 

But like all implementations, if it unfortunately did not work out during testing then we can always go back. I think it’s worth a try.

Leniency in things like basic first aid, construction, gardening, food/beverages, EVA, and physical conditioning are some things to consider. For food and beverages specifically, we might even have it so how good something tastes scales proportionally to the skill

I think where we'll see the strictest conditions, and potentially the most administrative benefit, is in skills pertaining to the department operation of medical. We'll have that additional layer of mechanical tiers to help keep that hyper-structured environment organized. I think some skills at the basic first aid level should be given leeway, however. Putting amateur into the related skill should give you the ability to use advanced kits and splints, and maybe even syringe use.

Engineering is something I sweat a little over. It could be used to enforce a mechanical distinction from atmos techs to regular engineers, but if we were to put that into effect with the feature bare state engineering's in right now, it would just damage interest in the department further. It's worth considering eventually, because both roles have become extremely irreverent about the distinctions of what they do and the equipment they use.

Something like this skill system is going to exist parallel and separate to our current administrative way of handling things, but I think one thing that can help is using the flavor descriptions for each skill as a means of guiding the expectations for what you pick and use; especially since these skills are tied to character rather than to job.

Edited August 24, 2021 by Boggle08

[Zelmana]

Skill systems like these, you can mess a whole lot of stuff up.
Consider the amount of knowledge an average individual has. Do I know how to use syringes? Yeah. Do I know how to flush my engine and change tires? Yeah. Do I know how to field strip an AK? You bet'cha.

Skills vary and restricting them in code is for me, something that should be done extremely carefully. Time-based adjustments may be fine, yes. Full restrictions I would be careful on.

[VeteranGary]

On 24/08/2021 at 13:27, Zelmana said:

Skill systems like these, you can mess a whole lot of stuff up.
Consider the amount of knowledge an average individual has. Do I know how to use syringes? Yeah. Do I know how to flush my engine and change tires? Yeah. Do I know how to field strip an AK? You bet'cha.

Skills vary and restricting them in code is for me, something that should be done extremely carefully. Time-based adjustments may be fine, yes. Full restrictions I would be careful on.

 

I get these kind of issues, but to be fair we are on a station, not just a casual cul de sac where any neighbor can do almost anything. Most of the stuff you might have to replace as a normal crewmember is probably some lightbulbs, and anything like station windows, hull, broken machines, and the sorts will probably be left up to those specialized in it. Stuff like basic medical knowledge is pretty much almost everywhere on station, and I doubt people are going to be restricted from using gauze, an autoinjector or just a regular syringe. Hardcoded restrictions are more of an obstacle than anything useful for this server's setting, to be fair.

Then again, I believe the mechanic system would just be better off as a convenience entirely, to avoid running into most of these issues where someone is entirely blocked off from doing something by lacking the skill, even if the situation permits the use of it. So, higher skill just effects the time delay it takes to do that action, or as already suggested gives some extra features. Currently, non-lethal CQC is extremely simple, anything special is locked for antagonists, which is fine for the lethal fighting styles. You have grabs, armlocks, dislocations, and disarms. The former is extremely hard to use because of the weird stun and delay grabs punish the user for some reason.

As for firearms just bring back jamming for most weapons(for energy guns too), since currently it seems restricted to improvised firearms. This way the firearm skill has at least some application, though I don't really see a huge reason for anyone to be a firearms master on the station, except maybe the captain or HoS. Try to avoid straight benefits toward stuff like 'improved fire delay' or 'increased accuracy' as that should be left as it is already. Certain features of the skill like the tac-reloading is a good idea which really just provides convenience if anything, as there is only the .45 available to security.

Practical skills/engineering would be rather simple, make building faster, and why not more efficient. Maybe you use less fuel if you're good at welding, or less material if you are good at constructing. Athletics could contribute to stuff like climbing, vaulting, slipping or falling, and lifting into fireman carries. EVA skill could also contribute to how falling is calculated, such as the damage you take, or how long it takes to put on an EVA suit/hardsuit. Science is the one thing I'm not sure about, because there is definitely a lot of overlapping between departments there. Medical skills should also give the same convenience, speedier times and more effective treatments.