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[i2amroy]

-snip-

That really would only work with melee skills, gun skills, and maybe fabrication. All the other skills are designed to encompass their entire field (like cooking) and don't really relate to any other skills (which was the point).

[Sheb]

I'd suggest a system based on repetition - you achieve a level, then it rusts down to a lower level, you re-learn, it decays slower and slower each time you reach a level until it doesn't decay at all, and the number of repeats you need to remember something permanently depends on your INT.

I really like that idea. One simple way to implement it would be to track two values for each skill: the actual skill and the minimal skill. Actual skill is what we have now. Minimal skill would raised in the same manners as actual skill but much slower (and maybe cannot be raised by books). Skill rust would be proportional to (Actual-Minimal)/INT.

This way you could quickly raise a skill, by reading some books or practicing, but it would rust until you've practiced enough to consolidate your knowledge. 

[forsaken1111]

While we're working on skill rust, could we make crafting books work as a reference for skill level and recipe?

Because currently 'learning' every recipe in a book is annoying as hell. Why can't I craft (just as an example) a foodco kitchen buddy if I have the book with the recipe sitting next to me? Why must I commit that recipe to memory?

Another example: say you have previously read a book for skill X to get your skill to 8, but it has since rusted down to 7 or so. Now you wish to craft something that requires skill 8. If you have the book on hand, it should allow you to craft that something anyway while also practicing your skill back up because you have the reference book right there and you had previously attained that skill level. Perhaps it could take extra time or increased difficulty?

[Damiac]

I'd like to see skill rust handled in a similar way to how DCSS does the 'drain' status.  Meaning after a skill sees no use for X time, add to its 'rust' count every so often.  When gaining skill xp, the rust timer for that skill is reset, and then the XP is distributed against both the 'rust count' and the actual skill XP, as follows:

2/3 actual XP gained * 2 is instead applied against skill rust.
1/3 actual XP gained is applies toward actual skill level.

So you're still improving your skill level, even when rusted, but 2/3 of your XP gain is diverted to reducing rust.  Rust comes off 2X as fast as base skill gain.

I feel skill rust is necessary for differentiation of play styles.  If after 1 or 2 years, every survivor is a master of every skill, replayability is severely diminished.  A good skill rust system should make it impossible to be a master of all skills, and int should probably impact how many skills you could master.

Alternatively, skill rust could be tied to XP gain, so in effect you're sharing an XP pool, based on your int, which is spread between all skills.  Once you've filled that pool (for example, a character with 7 in all skills and 11 int), all further skill improvements will take XP from other skills. 



That might be too radical a departure, and either way, it should be an option, just like skill rust is now.

[forsaken1111]

If after 1 or 2 years, every survivor is a master of every skill

Currently you can master most skills in 1-2 weeks, or even less.

[KA101]

Post-threshold mutations feel really disappointing. It feels like you spend ages gathering the resources and skill levels necessary to get enough serum to breach - god knows how many bleach and ammonia runs I had to make when I was trying to become a bear-man - and then when you get it, it's so underwhelming. Things like the one that increases the speed you gain combat skills at; by the time I'm breaching any threshold, I have enough combat skills to kill anything in the game. It's sad when after all the time spent hunting down chemicals and playing mad scientist, the most useful aspect of it is the short time-saving feature of 'Now I can eat raw meat instead of having to cook it first'.

After playing around a bit with various ones, I can definitely say I wouldn't use any that give me a Freakishly Huge body again, as the limits on what you can wear and carry are far too restrictive. Most of the fun of the game for me is finding neat new things that I can use, whether it's a better gun, some cool armour, a useful grenade, etc. When a mutation makes it so that everything I'm finding just gets left where it drops, that fun is gone. Sure, I can kill anything with my bare bear hands now, but what's the point?

A large part of the problem is that so many seem to provide a minor benefit at the expensive of locking out an equipment slot (mouth tentacles letting you eat twice as fast, but no mouth gear is wearable, for example). Which could be a fair trade, but unfortunately the benefit is often far too minor and the equipment that you're prevented from using would be much more useful. And generally finding and swapping in and out equipment is more dynamic and more fun than a static mutation.

I don't really see any reason to breach on anything but Alpha at this point, and will probably avoid most other categories except potentially a bit of roulette with various ones to get High Night Vision so I can read books in the dark, which is always useful.

Good to know.  I've got Rat and Plant on the radar screen at the moment; Bear has always been the biggest pain to breach on, though.  It's intended as a category for folks who like to tank into battle.

There's XL gear of various sorts that bypasses mutation-based restrictions, FWIW, though I understand that it does knock down one's volume capacity quite a bit.  (Especially now that it also blocks dump pouches, belts, and other previously-slotless gear.)

I'd be interested in knowing what sort of benefit you think would be worth blocking conventional gear.  Mouth Tentacles are largely inherited from Whales, forex, so I could theoretically upgrade them.  The tough part is making sure that no one mutation or set thereof becomes so clearly superior that others become useless, and it sounds like Alpha is a bit too popular (even after I doubled its cost) for that balance.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

   A problem with equipment trade offs is that you can do a lot of stuff with equipment. The mouth isn't the best example so lets look at hands. Low encumbrance armor to do ranged, rubber to block shocking, or stacking of armor in general. Depending on the slot depends on what is worth it. With the mouth I wouldn't even consider a mutation that would stop me from wearing some protection against smoke or what have you until I got for instance the cbm that does it for me.

[beorn080]

   A problem with equipment trade offs is that you can do a lot of stuff with equipment. The mouth isn't the best example so lets look at hands. Low encumbrance armor to do ranged, rubber to block shocking, or stacking of armor in general. Depending on the slot depends on what is worth it. With the mouth I wouldn't even consider a mutation that would stop me from wearing some protection against smoke or what have you until I got for instance the cbm that does it for me.

Actually, I'd say mouth/face/eyes are a very good one. For example, you lose access to a few of the full head helmets, the gas masks, and they're protection from boomers that they provide.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

I was looking at diversity of options and mouth options all do about the same stuff overall, they just do a lot.

[Farce]

Perhaps make it, instead of lock out an equipment slot, give minor maluses to the effect?  A mask or whatever on a cthulhuface would maybe halve it's environmental protection, or for something like hand armor, it would provide a small multiplier to the penalties or some sort.

Perhaps also add in more mods to counteract those maluses - customized and specialized cthulhumasks, reshaped armor for tentacle arms, what have you.  I'm not too sure on how that might be implemented - copy-pasting the entire wearable inventory several times for each custom fit would obviously be terrible; coding in a 'prefix' system - the sorta Diablo-like "Godly Wooden Sword" or "Bent Walther PPK" or "Masterwork Throwing Stones" sorta thing, except presumably exclusive for special fittings, would necessitate a whole new thing being added in; and just making a 'Custom fit: ___" mod that you could slap onto whatever would also probably be messy, on top of perhaps a little immersion breaking.

[Mr Space Cat]

If after 1 or 2 years, every survivor is a master of every skill

Currently you can master most skills in 1-2 weeks, or even less.

Would mastering a skill over the course of several in game years be more fun for the player though? One in game day already can take a lot of real life time.

[Grendus]

I think the main problem is that combat scales up way too fast on way too many abilities. Strength, dexterity, melee, cutting/piercing/bashing weapons, weapon to-hit and damage: all of these things can be stacked pretty easily. Weapon degradation helps some, but since you can repair metal weapons with a soldering iron and scrap metal it's not exactly hard to find one good weapon and stay with it. I won't even get started on the martial arts. Once you get the right combination of weapons and skills you can calmly one shot anything in melee range.

[Akhier the Dragon hearted]

   This is partly because you can skill up so fast. A 10 for a combat skill is where the design doc says they stop trying to balance things as thats the high end. With that in mind the fact that any character that survives for me tends to end up with a combat skill of 8 or so even when he doesn't fight all that much says something. If I play an aggressive character that lives it is very rare not to break into the low to mid teens.
   As for the abilities at least those are restrained. They are hard to make go up so barring lucky mutations and CBMs what you start with is what you get and I think the trade off for everything but skills has been fairly evened out.

[DeKaFu]

Well, my new challenge character that I made to bust out of my base/hoarding gameplay slump has been very interesting so far. The rules I set for myself were just: a) No creating stashes, and b) No sleeping more than one night in a given building, ever. Having to rely on only what you can carry certainly makes for more interesting decisions. I also turned on IntCap skill rust as opposed to leaving it off altogether.

The most fun part has actually been rather unexpected. I actually intended to make this guy not mutation-based for once, so decided to forego Robust Genetics. Right out of the shelter, though, I found some dead scientists with a mutagen, which I knocked back and scored... Unstable Genetics. So my wanderer has been slowly but inevitably turning into some kind of...cow? With fangs, apparently. He's gained 5 strength and hooves and just recently sprouted moose antlers.

I'm really enjoying it from a sort of RP perspective. It's one thing intentionally mutating yourself, but another thing altogether to be constantly mutating out of your control. He's found and used a couple purifiers, which took the edge off some of the nastier things (lost light sensitive and, temporarily, ponderous) but without losing Unstable Genetics the poor guy's in a losing battle for his humanity. I've finally located a lab on the other side of the town to tackle as a mid-term goal to hunt for more purifiers.

Should also mention that I found a Nodachi in somebody's basement, so my unintentional minotaur-in-training is clopping around with a trenchcoat and giant katana. While wearing slightly cracked sunglasses. Real cool until you remember the moose antlers.

I enjoy this game.

[Mr Space Cat]

Should also mention that I found a Nodachi in somebody's basement, so my unintentional minotaur-in-training is clopping around with a trenchcoat and giant katana. While wearing slightly cracked sunglasses. Real cool until you remember the moose antlers.

All your minotaur needs now is a fedora.