---
# System prepended metadata

title: skills

---

# skills

## goal

skills are going to be created to encourage playing within a character's department by making it mechanically beneficial to do so.

furthermore, they will allow for some interesting things e.g. being able to perfectly throw reagent containers, creation of additional/more beneficial foods, automation, etc.

## configuration

probably going to have 

number/skill_point_modifier
number/skill_intensity_modifier
flag/use_skills

when skills are off everything acts as a borderline of having skills or not having skills

e.g. surgery is usable by everyone, but piloting would be usable by everyone *without* the skilled dodge chances + thruster buffs.

## indev

we do not have the systems in place (sec, sci, cargo, etc) to implement some certain skills

skill points will be slightly increased as they're added/rebalanced as necessary.

we aim for eventually four to five skill categories per department.

implementation timeline will be long; skills-customization will likely be added to the codebase ASAP but **disabled via config** until enough integration has been achieved for a smooth gameplay experience.

furthermore, skills are going to be added in (eventual) conjunction to: cybernetics/augments, genemodding/traits, and reworks to species viability/balancing. 

skill checks should allow for external hooks/skill modifiers; the skills customization system is not the only thing that will modify skill checks.

## design

in order of priority:

0. skills shall not **prevent** usage of a feature. this is non-negotiable.
1. skills should not focus on combat if at all possible
2. skills should not focus on adding **delays** if at all possible. player time is valuable.
3. wacky behaviours based on skills are allowed on a case by case basis, e.g. food doubling/slight suspension of disbelief, to account for ss13 mechanics being far less realistic than their life counterparts.

different skills will cost different amounts.

experimental: skills are **not** job based. they're character based. you can, technically, have a character trained for a department but working a different department's job. we shall evaluate this as necessary.

## ~~departments~~ skill categories / overall hierarchy

(not necessarily rendered in this order, or with these names)

\[WIP]

## specializations (name wip)

experimental: allow for picking either a small increase in skill points, or choosing a "specialization" that gives you general **leniency** in a certain category regardless of your skills in it; this will necessarily overlap in some areas.

(names obviously wip this sounds like dnd/zomboid)

- mechanist: anything requiring complexity like hacking, sciences, overmaps, etc
- biologist: anything involving organic organisms like xenobiology, medicine, etc
- athletics: anything involving accurate physical motion e.g. weapons aim, precise piloting, excvation, etc
- artificer: anything requiring construction/synthesis
- none: moderate gain in regular skill points but less automatic leniency/adaptiveness

## skills

(not necessarily with these names)
(not necessarily with these levels)
(not necessarily with this kind of scaling)
(vague on purpose; each requires specific algorithms for resolving skillchecks efficiently)

#### mechs

provides benefits to mech operation.

untrained: no change

adept: automation of controls like keybinded + automatic strafing

trained: full movespeed while turning, automatic-face-mouse, etc

#### piloting

provides benefits to overmaps/overmaps *physics*

(new overmaps provides precise physics simulation, take that into mind, and adds something called flight assist):

handling = small chance to dodge some things like meteors/less severe penalties + general responsiveness increase

untrained: ships naturally have drift/controls take a while to adjust to full strength; turning rate/responsiveness disadvantage when flight assist is on
adept: faster ship response, slightly better handling of small craft; 

trained: slightly better handling of large craft, faster still ship response, very slight thrust increase

experienced: able to dodge at low speeds some hazards in large ships; instant responsiveness/no efficiency loss in flight assist + autopilot mode

#### EVA

provides benefits to zero-gravity and general heavy suit operation

(note: jetpacks will likely be slowed down again across the board regardless of skills)
(note: magboots would eventually become more available on ships)

untrained: slower jetpack operation, chance to slip in space if bay-sprint is added and user is sprinting, chance to slip in space without magboots, small magboot slowdown in space

trained: normal jetpacks & magboots, etc, lower chance to slip without + no magboot slowdown penalty, slight rigsuit buffs

master: faster jetpacks, faster indoors magboots, voidsuit + rigsuit breaches become less severe

#### athletics

general increase to sprint stamina if baysprint is ported, throwing speed, tiredness/hunger/food stuff

#### construction

- modifiers to construction times + tool efficiency
- ability to potentially build some very specific things without an autolathe
- eventual one-click automatic de/construction of objects when tools are available
- lathe efficiency (?)

#### electrical engineering

baseline: some departments might have randomized door wires; hacking damage should be reworked in general to not ash limbs

- lessened shock damage (tiered)
- ability to intuit some wires while hacking
- ability to intuit wires with multitool
- wire t-ray like vision without t-ray (?)
- stuff with assemblies like signallers/etc
- machine interactions 

#### engines

- ability to intuit engine information through examination based on level
- interactions per-engine (?)
- overmaps device overlap

#### atmospherics

- faster rpd operation
- ability to intuit pipenet / room atmos information through examination based on level
- ability to detect ventcrawl/adv pipe info (?)

#### medicine

baseline: depends on medical reworks

per-level: boosted healing efficiency; ability to intuit some wounds (intuiting things like internal bleeding/organ damage should require both this and anatomy)

bay-like health analyzer (NO SCAN DELAYS): display all available information always but add information parsing/easier to read with medical skill

#### chemistry

per-level: increasing ability to granularly mix chemicals with chem dispenser (10u min untrained)

increase automation + add features like being able to remove chemicals with chem dispenser only (traditionally chem-master only) with level

#### anatomy (/surgery)

baseline: surgery is being adjusted to be more intuitive and have better QOL; step duration + failure chances/failure effects are entirely reworked

untrained: requires full surgical suite, powered, with holographic help (either augments or powered surgical computer) to do surgery perfectly; speed penalty

per-level: increased speed

trained: able to do surgery without guidance

master: penalty for unsanity/bad operating area decreased, less chance of infections

#### botany

baseline: not-much change

per-level: increased harvest efficiency, growth speed, allow intuiting of tray statuses, etc

#### cooking

per-level: increased cooking speed/machine speed, add output + higher quality foods

#### complex devices

depends on science rework

- intuit mechanical/machine-like anomalies
- lathe efficiency (?)
- tandem with mecha (?)

#### research (general)

depends on science rework

- ??? 

#### prosthetics/biotechnology

depends on science rework

- surgical buff to augmentations (more powerful than surgery normal skills; roboticists don't need anatomy to do robotics level surgeries only)
- augmentation/prosthetic tinkering (?) persistence :D
- tandem with mecha (?)
- lathe efficiency (?)

#### biology

depends on science rework

- faster/efficient genetics ops
- faster/efficient xenobotany
- new xenobio never (tm), so less slime aggro/intuiting a bit of slime status on examine

#### forensics

baseline: depends on forensic reworks

- intuiting of data without scanner
- intuiting of data with raw scanner/collected 
- faster machine/scanner ops
- read world data (footprints ? heavily rework-dependent)

#### weapons expertise

baseline: aiming stability will replace angular dispersion (regardless of if skills are added); everyone can shoot weapons accurately on the first shot, if not running/constantly firing

per-level: additional chance of automatically disengaging safeties when unholstering/harm-intenting up to perfect at medium level; more aiming stability; higher long-ranged accuracy

baymiss should be tuned down for short range (under 15x15 screen width) in general because we try to avoid rng combat here

automatic/streamlined tactical reloading (?)

#### mining

depends on mining + cargo reworks

- weapons buff to mining tools
- slight excavation strength + speed buff
- *very* roughly intuit mineral densities without scanners
- smithing buffs (?) 

#### logistics (cargo)

depends on cargo reworks

- intuiting of export prices
- qol for new labelling ???

#### abstract/experimental future considerations

- useful informational skills for combat/command roles?
    - intuiting simplemob health (health huds should only view sensor data and i will die on this hill skills or no skills)
    - "look off into distnace"
    - overmaps ship skills other than piloting
- in-character persistence for doing something a lot (very temporary, prevent stacking)
    - on baystation, users with skill can very temporarily "teach" someone else to give them a slight buff
