An Alternative Skill Overhaul

[SkeletalElite]

So I was thinking that rather than all this stuff about skills and skill grinding, instead of using skills as something to grind, you just make skills something you have roundstart depending on your job.
It's good because instead of encouraging people to grind up useful skills or grind skills at all, you just use the system as a mechanical reason for jobs to actually matter

Doctors can have a high medical skill to make them outright better at healing than other people.
Engineer's can have a construction skill that gives them an action speed bonus to building/deconstructing stuff
Assistants can have negative skill so they're just worse at stuff.
As more job related skills get added, those can be applied to their relevant jobs.
Fluff skills like the gamer skill can stay the same since they don't matter.

[kopoba]

and antags have all skills!

[Armhulen]

Disguising is already way way better than it should be right now, so I like this idea. You should be able to steal someone's clothes, not their main job on the station. CHANGELINGS, OF COURSE, SHOULD THOUGH.

[PKPenguin321]

Terrible. Disguising should be good, the hard part of it should be playing your role well and hiding any evidence that you're not who you claim.
Part of the main draw of /tg/ over other servers is that, in a pinch, you can do any job without any code restrictions or admins breathing down your neck. Emergency surgery with a pen and some wire as a janitor? Go for it. Giving jobs stat-based inherent advantages is already pretty lame where it exists and has a tendency to get moved to being granted through objects (things like sterile gloves letting you lift people up faster, krav maga being tied to gloves, bartender's drink throwing book, etc). Exceptions like chaplain and mime are already distasteful enough imo.

[oranges]

An alternative skill overhaul: delete skills

[wesoda25]

An alternative skill overhaul: delete skills

So was that a joke or...?

[Armhulen]

An alternative skill overhaul: delete skills

So was that a joke or...?

Definitely isn't, oranges is pretty against skills in general. too game-y is what i hear from em but i'll let him justify it himself

[Shadowflame909]

An alternative skill overhaul: delete skills

So was that a joke or...?

Definitely isn't, oranges is pretty against skills in general. too game-y is what i hear from em but i'll let him justify it himself

I think learning stuff should be a progression mechanic in the library anyways.

[wesoda25]

Definitely isn't, oranges is pretty against skills in general. too game-y is what i hear from em but i'll let him justify it himself

Was he not headcoder when skills were added?

[Cobby]

We try not to go over each other, especially when it doesnt hurt to try out the system.

In regards to the topic, Im not interested in skills being used to disadvantage people because they didnt roll for the right job, as I expect people to be able to take up the mantle when portions of the station go to heck.

For instance if someone culls the entirety of medbay, you now have to not only do medbay but do it slower than they would have by default.

[Armhulen]

We try not to go over each other, especially when it doesnt hurt to try out the system.

In regards to the topic, Im not interested in skills being used to disadvantage people because they didnt roll for the right job, as I expect people to be able to take up the mantle when portions of the station go to heck.

For instance if someone culls the entirety of medbay, you now have to not only do medbay but do it slower than they would have by default.

Traitors having a visible effect on station performance by who they kill is really interesting

Edit: I'd also like to point out that if you want to hurt a department, traitors have a ton of ways of fucking up a department in ways that aren't "you still work but slower" they can make departments not EXIST anymore

[BeeSting12]

An alternative skill overhaul: delete skills

I agree

[SkeletalElite]

In regards to the topic, Im not interested in skills being used to disadvantage people because they didnt roll for the right job, as I expect people to be able to take up the mantle when portions of the station go to heck.

For instance if someone culls the entirety of medbay, you now have to not only do medbay but do it slower than they would have by default.

It's not disadvantaging anyone to just make doctors do surgery slightly faster than anyone else. I'm not saying to restrict things to job skill CM style. Just to make rolling a job make you slightly better at that job than a regular person would.

As for the argument about disguising, if someone suspects you out because you're not as skilled at the job as who you're pretending to be, that seems like emergent gameplay to me. Changelings of course can inherit the skills of whoever they're impersonating. Plus the vast majority of people "disguising" are just throwing on some different clothes/ID, they're generally not replacing people unless they're lings.

It won't work as an antag test either, since if you reach the point of suspicious that you're "antag testing" someone, then you can just forcefully remove their disguise.

[Cobby]

No, they are equivalent.

Boosting surgery speed for only doctors is the same as slowing surgery down for everyone else. The only difference is how you're presenting that number.

Traitors having a visible effect on station performance by who they kill is really interesting

Edit: I'd also like to point out that if you want to hurt a department, traitors have a ton of ways of fucking up a department in ways that aren't "you still work but slower" they can make departments not EXIST anymore

I agree it does sound interesting but the overarching issue is that actions have to be compared to the benefits/costs of the shuttle being called. If you make it so the hill is too steep, people will just decide to go around it instead.

[NecromancerAnne]

If a traitor is wiping the station of life, you or that traitor should call the shuttle. No amount of healing or single player action is going to reverse this damage in a fun or sufficient manner. Skills have nothing to do with this. This is purely an issue with enabling people to murderbone on a per round basis. Gotta live with that, basically.

[Cobby]

murderboning is an acceptable practice so it doesnt really make sense to not consider that in how you balance the game. Yes, you "live with it", but that doesnt mean you ignore it from the discussion because we as coders do not have the ability to change it.

[NecromancerAnne]

Alternatively, a badman killing all the medical staff having a noticable impact on the effects of being able to utilize a station benefit is emergent gameplay. The fact that doing this right now has no appreciable impact whatsoever is to the games detriment, as there is nothing that matters in a role and nothing that makes any of them significant in any form. They are just labels. And the core reason why people play nothing but assistant, since in that position not only are they afforded no significant identifiers, but are at no TRUE disadvantage. Nothing is out of reach of the greyshirt.

You basically could have a station of greymen and nothing will change.

[Cobby]

We are now full circle. I am fully aware of the pro of "btfoing" assistants should this be done.

I still come to the conclusion that the pro "haha greytiders are now X% slower doing surgery, scared?" does not outweigh the con of someone who wants to either change jobs or for whatever reason needs to be in the surgery position not being as good as the person who won job lottery.

[NecromancerAnne]

This strikes me as very weird given I have never seen most roles with more than 4 slots entirely filled except on extremely high population rounds. Job changes forcing you to start from the bottom seems entirely fine from a role perspective simply because, yes, you are doing something that is outside of your role.

If we want to assume space is about roleplaying, the simpliest and easiest divide you can make is simply making those who are already in the role better able to use the tools found in that role, and everyone else lag behind. A few seconds difference is not an appreciable impact in low stress or low danger, short of tend wounds, which only really matters in high danger situations.

It isn't about making the people who lost the 'role lottery' feel bad, it's establishing you are out of your characters depth. The only thing you shouldn't do is completely bar players from doing it at all.