The 500th Monthly Skill Debate!

[WaterPumpJohnny]

Okay. Here is my argument in favor of skills.

Skills: people dislike them because on a roleplay server, you can "self-enforce" it and slap people icly and oocly for going outside of their skillset. It also limits you I suppose and is at times nonsensical. Yes, this is true.

There's a but, however. With skills, it ALSO gives you the opportunity to attempt things outside of your skillset with the risk of failure- which ACTUALLY adds tension to scenarios which would impact it.

Example:

The only doctor is seriously wounded. Surgical intervention is required. The paramedics will have to try to do so.

The scenario without skills:

Relies heavily on custom emoting, paramedics are forced to either give up to stay in character or do it with 100% success- while this  could be reasoned as, "they were looking at a manual aheha" or something along those lines, it just isn't as heavy a situation.

The scenario with skills:

The paramedics are not surgeons, so they slip up and maybe damage an organ- however, the life-saving procedure is complete. The surgeon is now in a relatively better condition. The paramedics did not have to choose between two polar opposites (the surgeon living with no downside besides emotional trauma which is hard to roleplay when wounds are cured in 5 seconds to 100% with no lasting damage, I digress.

Another Example:

There's a hand to hand fight between a mercenary out of ammo and a security cadet fighting for his life. The cadet is not a good fighter, but he has no choice. 

 

Without skills:

Cadet easily overpowers the mercenary who is double his size. The situation is almost comedic.

 

With skills:

Cadet is fighting a losing battle. Maybe he has to actually innovate or flee. Cadet is not a black belt in karate.

 

And so on.

 

Skills do have a downside, yes- it can give mechanical advantage over other players. But... is that a SERIOUS problem? Again, it is a roleplay server- this isn't PvP. You could easily limit this to a less severe degree. 

 

My main argument is skills ALLOW people to do things outside of their skillset WITHOUT POWERGAMING (instead adding a mechanically enforced struggle), which is necessary in eventful rounds. It isn't just combat. This is probably going to be another back-and-fourth which results in nothing getting done, but I thought I'd try.

Edited January 13, 2022 by WaterPumpJohnny

[JaceyLessThan3]

Learning and practicing skills as a person is part of the roleplaying in SS13 for me. It makes me feel like an engineer to learn and practice the set-up process for the SM engine. I would much rather keep that, and trust myself and others to limit their player skills to what is reasonable for their character.

[WaterPumpJohnny]

1 hour ago, JaceyLessThan3 said:

Learning and practicing skills as a person is part of the roleplaying in SS13 for me. It makes me feel like an engineer to learn and practice the set-up process for the SM engine. I would much rather keep that, and trust myself and others to limit their player skills to what is reasonable for their character.

You can still learn and practice skills. What's stopping you, perchance? Besides. It's not a matter of trust. Even with trust, if everyone plays by the rules, having no skills still really LIMITS rp potential in my eyes.

Edited January 14, 2022 by WaterPumpJohnny

[Marlon P.]

I made a suggestion about this and I'd only be repeating what I said in the suggestion.

It got totally ignored, so maybe it's a bad idea?

Having degrees of failure for a lack in a skill for something would be nice, rather than a hard wall. DnD-like failure states can be frustrating.

[Karolis2011]

I myself see if this ever should be added it should be opt-in or opt-out feature. I see peaple that want to be free to roleplay there skill and not being able to some things, while others not so familiar with heavy roleplay or just not feeling like roleplaying skills can just use this feature to systematically restrict themselves.

From technical point this would require adding code all over place to make skills affect not only mentioned examples but also other things, like ability to use certain machinery, do some construction and crafting or perform some actions.

[Captain Gecko]

I always thought that the Skill tab in the character setup menu was exactly for that, since it had no effect gameplay-wise, to allow you (and admins since they can look at this, iirc) to get a proper idea of your character's skills, all the while making sure they aren't overpowered.

As far as what skills you should be able to select well... So long as it doesn't make your character overpowered as said above, you can choose anything that makes sense with your character and his story, this is a mostly roleplay-based sever after all! This may also explained by past actions on the station/spaceship too, giving your character a sense of progression... Roleplay is the limit! Or your actual in-game skills, at least.

 

Since I'm not so good with explaining, you can have an exemple here, you'll see my thought process behind giving my character skills:

Sezrak Han'san being in his thirties, he should have some experience in various field already, while still have some more to learn, hence why I went for (15) which is Average/near Above Average (Above Average range from 16 to 20). Unless your character is some kind of genius or the opposite, age should be your scale for the overall skill level of your character, as it basically dictates their experience with everything in life.

I also see these individual skill levels as what they represent and not what they are. IE: A character might have been professionally trained in a field, but due to the rare use of this skill and/or the character's lack of talent in this field, it is still in the "Amateur" level, as in, it is practiced at a level comparable to an amateur's. "Trained" would mean a character is that used to this field, may he be professionally trained or not, and can practice an activity from this field with relative ease and will be able to avoid most incidents (IE: badly setting up the engine and causing a delam). Finally, a Professional skill level would mean that the character is not just well-trained in this field, this is what they excel at, this is beyond what is evne required for the job.

- Command - Amateur : Explained by Sezrak's experience, notably with expeditions. For a little while in late 2462, Sezrak got to partake in a lot of consecutive expeditions, generally with tiny teams of up to four crewmen max. With him being the most experienced in this field and/or being the only NT had Sezrak be the leading element in the team... With more or less success, but in any case, this was experience. Coupled with his desire to become RD at some point, and his work to become one, Sezrak got some experience in leading crewmembers, at least on a smaller scale. Since this is a mostly RP-based skills, this translates to Sezrak basically making himself the leader of operations involving his field, may they be science-related, or EVA related like exploration of shipwrecks; unless the team features an actual command member... To that, you can add the way Sezrak will tend to turn bossy whenever troubles are on their way, and you end up with a fortune, self-proclaimed leader in some situations.

- Cooking - Amateur : Before joining the Han'san fleet, Sezrak's parents made a living of hunting, on Moghes. His father would hunt the game, and together with his wife, they would handle the whole process, from skinning to cooking the meat. Now on Moroz, they still practice this, although in a more recreational way, and so does Sezrak. Both from his practice, and his paren't teachings, Sezrak, thus, knows a fair bit about cooking... At least, so long as meat is involved... And that you're not asking anything too elaborate from him.

- Close Combat and Weapon Expertise - Amateur : Sezrak grew on the Malediction, a ship who's purpose, in the Han'san fleet, was to carry as many raiders as possible (and their family). He was surrounded by guns, blades, and a bunch of big, grizzled Unathi warriors, thus, as far as he can remember, he was exposed to weaponry and fighting from the start (although he never took part in the fighting himself). On Moroz, he did his military service, which was also a good source of knowledge as far as knowledge about the more elaborate kind of weaponry (guns, mainly) went. For Melee, however, most of what he knows comes from pactice. His carp kill-count must be in the hundreds by now, and this is not even counting the various cosmic horros some anomalies can gift him, and to face all of these, his go-to weapon has always been the hand-held drill. Needless to say, while he never got proper training, he's got a some experience in this. In game, this means that Sezrak will be able to handle and operate most guns, although his skills with them is far from being ideal, and in melee, he'll be able to handle most hostile xenofauna, and should theorically be able to hold his own against your typical human... Actually trained fighters, though, that's going to be problematic for him.

- Construction - Amateur : While his military service, anomalist course, and overall life experience may have granted some basic knowledge about construction, most of what he knows in this field comes from practice on the Aurora. As a scientist he's had to build various machines, from tech processors to consoles, but most importantly, his activities in EVA had him learn how to set up some basic structures. Exploring derelict ships and outposts means that sometimes, you have to force your way in, generally by deconstructing a wall. Sometimes he may also encounter anomalies and other finds that have to be contained right now and NOT be touched (such as supermatter shards) which means that this will generally end with Sezrak building a whole wall around it. In practice, this means that Sezrak will be able to build most of the machines a scientist is supposed to know about, as well as being able to build and deconstruct walls, although in a much slower and clumsy way than your usual engineer... Anything more complicated like wiring power networks, setting up pipe systems, or handling atmospherics is something that he knows next to nothing about. Finally he could... Theorically, hack doors, if he's told EXACTLY what wires to cut, but don't expect him to do the whole procedure on his own, unless you hand him the tools, the protections, and some time... Even then, though, Sezrak hacking through doors is an extremely rare sight, and he'll generally choose the alternative (breaking through a wall) if he really has to pass.

- Medecine - Amateur : First aid, basically, that's all he knows, both taught during his military service and his anomalist course, and he had to practice these countless times on station, both on fellow crewmembers and himself. Ask him to do anything other than CPR, or applying gauze, bandages and kits on a booboo, However, and this won't end well, because he knows next to nothing about this... Nor do I, in truth I don't know much about medical. As a side note, I kept chemistry at minimum even though he can be seen practicing it in science, in some rare cases, this is because science PDAs get a Chemistry Codex by default, and Sezrak relies on it. If, say, he was to lose access to said codex one way or the other, he'd be unable to do pretty much anything Chemistry-related.

- EVA - Professional : By this point, Sezrak probably knows the rock like the back of his scaly hand... Or would if it wasn't for the caves being constantly regenerated every shift. Due to the fact that he spent half of his childhood on a spaceship, his intense training during his anomalist course, and practice for way over a year now, it's not a stretch to assume that Sezrak is beyond used to working in the void, it's basically HIS SPECIALITY. This translates in game to Sezrak generally volunteering (if not being selected outright) for most activities involving EVA such as exploring sites (if he didn't find them himself), picking up people from crashed pods, rescuing wounded or dead crewmembers outside if no first responders are aviable, and teaching fellow crewmembers about EVA procedures... Hell, he even wrote a book about EVA procedures!

- Science - Professional : This comes off as no surprise considering that Sezrak is an Anomalist, and by extent, a scientist (technically speaking Anomalist and Xenoarcheologist are just alt-titles for the scientist). With 8 years of formation, a PHD, several books written about theories and such, and several years of practice, Sezrak knows a fair bit about Science. Of course, "Science" is a broad term but it can be anything so long as it does not infrige on the other skills in the Science category... What the "Science" skill refers to exactly is mostly handled in RP! In Sezrak's case, this means that he'll be able to handle various science-department related operation such as RnD, and upgrading machines with more or less ease. His speciality, however, is 100% RP, just like his job, which generally involves creating theories about various finds, or perhaps even (sometimes antag-related) events happening directly on the station.

 

With the right reasoning behind your character's skill, the very reason why they'd have them, all of that while making sure you don't turn overpowered, I believe that any out-of-skill actions can be reasonably explained and allowed. A roboticist knowing about how to hack a machine or door (although with a larger tendency to burn their hands off) due to their experience with wiring up synthetics; A botanist knowing a few things about animals and assisting a xenobitanist due to their experience with life in a farm before working on the station/spaceship; A miner being a decent shooter due to his experience with Kinetic Accelerators, anything is possible, really... So long as it makes sense (and that it's not abused, as far as gameplay goes.)

 

EDIT: TL:DR, all of that to say that yes, I agree with Johnny. IN FACT, as someone who mostly plays on deadhours, I think having a flexible skillset for your character (as long as it makes sense) is NESCESSARY, because you're never going to get that engineer or that physician to save you... And while you shouldn't be able to set up the engine or do surgery without the proper training, if you end up all alone, you better know about the very basics of the powernet, how to survive vents and breaches, and how to do first aid... Else you probably won't live to see the shuttle most of the time.

Edited January 14, 2022 by Captain Gecko