Skills System Feedback Thread

[Hawk]

He's back:

And oh boy does he still have opinions on combat skills, but I'll try and be brief and not slam people over the skulls with paragraphs, and respect the fact that the system is WIP.

The Good:

I actually quite like Tenacity, I like how it's permissive instead of restrictive, it feels like a cool reward for picking something rather than "Oh shit this character is useless I can't use guns."
Secondly, I like the idea of ministry and leadership, the idea of roleplay interacting with skills, and giving a badass speech that has actual gameplay benefits will encouraging a mixing of the two, rather than wordless TDM once the bullets start flying. 

Now that I've gotten that out of the way let me get my hammer:

The Bad: (Debatably):

I'm really, really not a fan of how Security Officers now don't just get the ability to do combat without random impairment (I've ranted about this previously), but now with Tenacity (which lets be honest most officers are going to take over leadership) combined with military training, means every officer can essentially freely take the skill that makes them just more unkillable, for no cost, or thought. (I am aware Tenacity's bonus is minor and only holds out on braindeath but I feel like this issue could snowball if not addressed once more skills are added.)

We now have a system where officers are:

The only people who get to fight without RNG putting them at a straight disadvantage no matter how well the players perform.
The only people who get to use guns unless someone picks gun training at the detriment of all their other combat skills.
The only people who get to choose freely in a skill tree, which most players only get 4 points in.
And now the only people who get free RNG survivability.

Basically, my suggestion (Making the skills reward players for taking it instead of punishing and removing gameplay for not) still hold in my eyes, though I know how frustrating it is to hear people dunk on a system that's still in progress, and that's by no means my intention:

[OffRoad99]

On 10/06/2026 at 06:21, GreenBoi said:

I've made a PR that finally splits Pilot: Spacecraft into multiple levels. Rest of this will be copy-pasted from the PR desc:

Piloting is now split into three levels like other skills which note what pilot class of vessel you may comfortably pilot.
(Familiar) Shuttle Pilot is for all landables: Spark, Canary, Intrepid, the Quark, and the like are all equal under it.
(Trained) Class II Pilot covers most ships, which are "overmap-only" and unable to land or dock.
(Professional) Class IV Pilot covers only the Horizon normally, but design-wise extends to whatever is the main player ship, or for anything massive

Antags get Professional Pilot, so they can always do ship hijack gimmicks without worry.

As a convenience to make Bridge personnel stand out, Professional/Class IV Pilots can deduce their current overmap coordinate from examining space on help intent for 3s. There's no way to directly link to the overmap, so on the backend, this ability briefly references an existing helm  ship console.

Design

Class II and IV are pre-existing terms in-lore, used on the Interstellar Travel page to refer to civilian size classes.
With how important each level of piloting is, they cost +4 points each instead of going 2 -> 4 -> 8. This lets there exist the occasional pilot character from any background, but it's always an investment and piloting the Horizon stays hard without training.
As Familiar currently costs 6 points, this is effectively a 2-point buff for most cases as you'll rarely have to pilot non-shuttles.

The real meat of this PR...

is that you can now attempt to pilot vessels a level higher than you with penalties, so there's now a failure spectrum should you manage to access an adjacent-class ship rather than always being hard-locked. The penalties affect acceleration, slowing, turning, and rolling. They're most extreme for Shuttle and Class IV to represent how clueless an unlicensed pilot would be and how complex the Horizon realistically is to operate.

With smart usage of autopilot, you can actually find a way to travel normal-ish. I think this is a fun interaction to have for underskilled characters, and makes autopilot actually have a use as it otherwise kills you. Maybe Bridge personnel can give lessons to Class II pilots with it.

Piloting Education Backgrounds

(Editing text after spoilers when it's the end is annoying/impossible, so I'll write here): My favorite mechanic added here is the emergency power bypass for ship consoles, I like it so much I want to have it for all consoles in the future. It's the perfect mix of a useful solution for an emergency without overriding the problem.

  Reveal hidden contents

Coming are THREE piloting education backgrounds: Flight Academy, Fleet Training, and Expeditionary Trade.

ALL GET Familiar Electrical Engineering, Familiar Atmospheric, Mechanical Engineering 

(Edit: Flight Academy is now the only background that gets Familiar Mechanical Engineering, this makes them stand out as being notably handy/utility-ready for emergencies, but other backgrounds can still easily match them with points. Fleet Training has Tenacity down to Trained for character variety, though tenacity is very slight buffs and hard to notice.)

Electrical Engineering now lets you use a power cell on an unpowered ship console to give it emergency battery life based on the charge. This helps with cases of being stranded from an APC broken by a meteor, a high-capacity cell can give 10m or more based on Electrical level. I may expand this bypass mechanic to all consoles in the future.
Atmospherics skill has no implementation currently, but dealing with breaches or cycling on shuttles is too important.

A bit jack of all trades, but it's genuinely needed for emergencies.

Flight Academy - BC, XO, Captain
Professional Piloting, Trained Leadership, Mechanical Engineering

"You are at least 25 years of age, with the best navigation training the Spur can offer and the know-how for reining in or assuring passengers for the voyage."

Flight Academy has Leadership honestly just because I didn't want Fleet Training to look too good, and because I think they can rock the "this is your pilot speaking" in a cool way. Bridge personnel are usually the ones that have to wraggle people on away sites, especially during events.

Mechanical Engineering allows them making machine frames of ship consoles in emergencies.

Fleet Training - BC, XO, Captain
Professional Piloting, Trained Firearms, Professional Trained Tenacity

"You are at least 25 years of age, with the most extensive navigation training possible and military discipline to back it up. You're a steady shot in emergencies and, damn it-- You. Go. Down. With. The. Ship."

This was made because a player informed me many BC and XOs choose military backgrounds, and the +4 points design would prevent that. Fleet Training isn't the same as Military Training, but having all of Piloting gives you 6 points free to match MT if wanted. The high Tenacity is primarily for surviving in ship combat, where you'll probably bleed/suffocate to death.

Expeditionary Trade - Miners, Xenology roles, OM, RD
Familiar Piloting, Familiar Armed Combat, Familiar Medicine

"You've developed trade skills for a career of expeditions. You are at home in a shuttle piloting to and from for an average day's work. You can even get rough or tend to wounds when things eventually get unsafe."

This is for Miner and Xenoarch primarily. An expedition is just any journey with an objective, all roles revolving around piloting shuttles to an objective needs to be able to hold their own if they ever find carp or have an accident, especially since they'll likely be alone.
 

Holyshit this is AWESOME, it's like you made this for my character <3

[Last_stand_crew]

I've took a look at the skills system, and it makes me cry.
1. Engineering.
With the current engineering backgrounds and certification it feels like with the new system, or without it, engineer is still a god of a jack of all trades, whatever the background he has, everything is at trained. I think that's not right, i say that every background should give only familiar on everything else, and either you are a specialist, and have skills in medical, science too, or you are really good at engineering, and nothing else, AND engineering certificate will be TECHNICAL certificate, while giving only familiar for everything, spare points is already unbalanced, so i'm not talking about giving more of them.
2. Medical.
Same bullshit, i'm okay with MD, surgery track, MD, medicine track, paramedic certification, Doctor of Psychology, Doctor of Chemistry, but i'm not okay with MD, Psychiatry track. First WHAT?! Second: THE FUCK?! not only there's two skills backgrounds of same thing, but they are REALLY different, MD, psychiatry track makes you a paramedic, you're good at anatomy, medicine, and even can do basical surgery, why a psychiatrist would need that?! i say there should be only doctor of psychology, after all a doctor degree is something you get through alot of studying, i wonder why he has research skill, and leadership should be on only familiar, but other stuff is balanced, he has minimal skills, like, if he's really needed for help, but he's not specialised in it, and surgery in even trained is banned for him.

I didn't find anything other, but these things make me explode, i really don't understand why they are as they are for now.

[Menroka]

A recent change has removed the ability to immediately see all the wire functions with the electrical skill 4.

Which wires get revealed is seemingly random. When it comes to doors and airlocks, the only wires you most often need are ID and bolts, with power being a sometimes use case. Right now it is completely luck based whether this skill gives you anything, because either these wires get revealed, or they don't.

If they don't get revealed, you have to revert to the old tactic of probing the wires at round start and then memorizing them. I don't have an issue with that, but it does make this skill completely pointless right now, because you cannot rely on it.

[zha everything broken]

2 hours ago, Menroka said:

A recent change has removed the ability to immediately see all the wire functions with the electrical skill 4.

Which wires get revealed is seemingly random. When it comes to doors and airlocks, the only wires you most often need are ID and bolts, with power being a sometimes use case. Right now it is completely luck based whether this skill gives you anything, because either these wires get revealed, or they don't.

If they don't get revealed, you have to revert to the old tactic of probing the wires at round start and then memorizing them. I don't have an issue with that, but it does make this skill completely pointless right now, because you cannot rely on it.

Hard disagree that it makes the skill "completely pointless", but it does makes it no longer the obvious meta solution. The PR containing this change has my justification and additional detail, but Airlock wires in particular use Mechanical Engineering to reveal 75% of all wires automatically.

I also mentioned that something like this was going to happen in the original PR that added the feature, but back then skills were much younger and it was a fun, quick implementation. Wire panels being skill based also opens the door for more wire panel stuff in future.

[Menroka]

You are right, the obvious meta solution now is exactly the same as before the skill system, unless you just get lucky. 

Edited yesterday at 09:06 by Menroka
Removed an unnecessarily snippy comment.