Changing intelligence to... something more

Game Talk The Drawing Board
21

No, actually we want to add more map memory. Kevin is the only one who wants to add more forgetting and he didn’t work on the game for like a year.
But let’s not change the topic - this is about uses of intelligence (or general “mind” stat), not specific details about one feature that could get affected by it.

This one sounds OK. Having intelligence decrease chances of negative effects procing (stun) and getting applied (grab) could be helpful and not too far-fetched.

Though it would make more sense to also rename it to willpower or something like that.

You mean just chance to crit or crit scaling?
If chance, it would need to replace dexterity (otherwise strength would be the only stat not affecting crit rate).
Scaling could be interesting, though then we’d have 3 skills affecting crits, so dex should still stop affecting crits. Having perception affect crit rate and intelligence affect crit scaling could be a good idea.

Alternatively, intelligence could help with armor piercing.

Int should be QoL, since int is, irl, a tool of culture and QoL.

If intelligence can’t be anything but QoL, then it shouldn’t be in the game. Could be replaced with willpower.

Experience gained would not help with the biggest problem intelligence has: not being useful after a while. In this case when intelligence boosts (most likely flat) would be countered by quadratically increasing requirements.

Multiplier on “effective skill level” could work, but it would require a whole lot of redesigning in the code. And could possibly be very hard to balance, with strong characters improving dramatically with slight boost, but weak ones not noticing the difference between 8 and 20 intelligence.

[quote=“Rot, post:7, topic:13046”]Does intelligence have an effect on how well you can treat yourself with first aid? If not, on a high-int character could receive a decent bonus when using healing items.

As mentioned by another person, high-intelligence characters receiving a flat bonus to all skills would be immensely useful.[/quote]

First aid boost would only really help early on, when you don’t have enough of the skill. At the moment first aid is pretty broken and you can heal from the brink of death to full with a stack of bandages, which in turn are very cheap later on, making HP recovery boosts rather unimportant.

Flat boost to skills sounds very hard (if at all possible) to balance. Later on, it would stay useful (good), but early on it would turn the balance upside-down, with lanky, clumsy, four-eyed nerds beating up hulks due to intelligence boosting the skills to mid-range levels. Alternatively, it would be too weak to really matter.

22

Pretty sure at least something in first aid is boosted by int

23

What if we go the other way? High INT + low skill = more randomness, but still higher learning speed. Have high INT actually affect combat NEGATIVELY for a long time. The rationale could be that high INT perceives more threats, so he hesitates more, and struggles more to cover each potential miniscule danger. Later in the game, with higher combat skill (experience), high INT could actually turn out to be much deadlier with higher combat skills. Low INT could convey that one is just too ignorant or boneheaded to perceive and understand danger.

In a nutshell:
High INT + low combat skill = higher than normal combat penalties (though learns faster)
High INT + high combat skill = higher than normal combat bonuses
Low INT = steadier, more predictable combat, steadier progress, but doesn’t end up being as deadly as high INT would

Or we could go like:

High INT + low combat skill = much more fickle combat for longer time, much more unreliable hits, unpredictable hit success rate and damage. Generally more RNG.

Could apply this backwards thinking to other skills as well. I mean, there would have to be a tipping point - a skill level - after which high INT, together with the skill level, turns into a tangible benefit, greater than with average INT or low INT.

Of course all this might be more about personality than INT. You can have high INT but that doesn’t dictate whether you’re aggressive, decisive, confident, methodical, observant, calm, hesitant, careful, cowardly, etc.

24

[quote=“BeerBeer, post:23, topic:13046”]What if we go the other way? High INT + low skill = more randomness, but still higher learning speed. Have high INT actually affect combat NEGATIVELY for a long time. The rationale could be that high INT perceives more threats, so he hesitates more, and struggles more to cover each potential miniscule danger. Later in the game, with higher combat skill (experience), high INT could actually turn out to be much deadlier with higher combat skills. Low INT could convey that one is just too ignorant or boneheaded to perceive and understand danger.

In a nutshell:
High INT + low combat skill = higher than normal combat penalties (though learns faster)
High INT + high combat skill = higher than normal combat bonuses
Low INT = steadier, more predictable combat, steadier progress, but doesn’t end up being as deadly as high INT would

Or we could go like:

High INT + low combat skill = much more fickle combat for longer time, much more unreliable hits, unpredictable hit success rate and damage. Generally more RNG.

Could apply this backwards thinking to other skills as well. I mean, there would have to be a tipping point - a skill level - after which high INT, together with the skill level, turns into a tangible benefit, greater than with average INT or low INT.

Of course all this might be more about personality than INT. You can have high INT but that doesn’t dictate whether you’re aggressive, decisive, confident, methodical, observant, calm, hesitant, careful, cowardly, etc.[/quote]

It looks nice, but I can see this being more of a negative perk that you pick via chargen vs. just having it in without the player’s say.

25

id suport int being the cumulative if wisdom, willpower, and learning capacity

26

Personally I favor intelligence offering passive benefits. Skills are an obvious immediate influence related to int that already gives bonuses such as damage and crit. To a point it makes sense that someone highly skilled yet with varied gifts can compete well enough due to the virtue of higher skill already compensating for the complexities related to said skill. It could remain unique by offering numerous small benefits that feed into each other the higher it goes. Something like reading speed getting better each increment but more complicated. Individually it would be small, yet powerful if the player gives effort to take advantage of and maintain it.

Base strength could increases stimulant benefit cap and intelligence increases elated benefit cap. As I understand it, strength already reduces the length of stimulants. Intelligence could do something similar with elated by way of longer morale positives and negatives. These are a nice means to get stats when you need it while not simply having it without effort. The cap manipulation is there to avoid runaway issues post scarcity, and again higher intelligence would make it easier to raise or maintain while offering something the other stats never will. Investment into intelligence would be less painful if you can get the others for long stretches of time as well.

Focus can be a modifier to skill and speed a modifier for crafting if it is not already. Intelligence making elated and morale better gives it an edge for time and resources spent. If it is compounded with smaller benefits from intelligence directly you can have a situation where plain investment is inefficient but appreciated, but more effort applies “exponential” gains. You might want to replace exponential with something more balanced.

Finally intelligence could be used to “get more out of life.” Like eating food slower for greater morale benefits should there be an opportunity. Or a small chance to create extras from small crafting exercises and faster crafting on larger ones. Something like a more structured and opportunistic version of luck. It would be nice if intelligence could take advantage of something more cheaply that when added to other persuits due to reduced costs it competes with its peers. Morale gains from books and the limited number that can be read during a period of time exemplifies it. A character at half read speeds can have the same bonus for longer or double the bonus for the same time. Perhaps use morale as something that influences willpower.

27

[quote=“ZoneWizard, post:11, topic:13046”]How about like real life?

2 forms of brain activity to sentient beings: Intellect and Wisdom

Intellect: What you can learn from a book.

Wisdom: Logic ; innate mental abilities and deciding what to do with the current capacity of intellect.

Example-
Reading a book is intellect and how fast you read and absorb the information there in. Wisdom would be recipes scaled to the amount of wisdom and the quality of the creation.[/quote]

LitPunk asked how to implement this. Well obviously it would be a bit of an overhaul of the item/recipe system as well as touching the first-aid and CBM systems etc. It would be a base faculty like strength, so it would touch a lot.

Idea for items and crafting:
Items would have to have a quality measure. Either written or simplify it to a number from 1-100. This could either be a small change to “Damage” while keeping the exact number hidden unless you have a trait like “Merchants Eye”; Being able to accurately judge the quality of items. Which would be less jarring to the player, keeping the 1-100 quality hidden with the names/bars unless the player has that said trait.

Int. could be for recipes you learn from books and the max amount you could be able to learn in a 24 hour span(seriously, you don’t retain everything you read all at once…CBM brain augment?). Wisdom would gauge the percentage to learn a recipe. Wis. would also act as the Quality modifier for many skills. If you have low wisdom. You may fumble a repair. You make a poor quality item.

Small tangent of First-Aid:
The healing system should be overhauled to heal over a faster than normal(for game purposes) time awake and slightly faster while sleeping.

Hate to say it but Unreal World has a really good healing/first aid system. Takes 2 seconds to ask Sami for help on his forum. Seriously he really is pretty open to helping last I knew.

Not sure how well Int. and Wis. could help with every skill to be honest. But it really could have 1 base “Intelligence” and branch as needed per individual skill. Such with Crafting and repairs. Just my 2 cents >_>

28

As a side note before the actual suggestion, I still think…

INT should be MIND
STRENGTH should be BODY
DEX should be REFLEX
PERCEPTION should be AWARENESS

that out of the way INT could provide–in the same way strength provides HP–a pool of resolve or willpower that acts a MENTAL HP. Measuring your soundness of mind, how well you function under stress etc. etc. So long as this value isn’t at ZERO you shake off:

*Nether shenanigans like paralysis, teleportation and the like
*Morale lowering images/events
*That pacification gas from the non-murdery riot bot
etc.

Essentially anything that stems from a state of mind. So no resisting being stunned from a brute or hulk. A blow to the head should be resisted with strength, trust me when I say Mike Tyson will shake off a sucker punch faster than Stephan Hawking.

29

I am not convinced. I think the reason why mike tyson will not go down as fast from a punch is because he knows how to avoid taking dmg to the head. So his dex/reflex/melee exp. If two people take a similar hit and do not mitigate the impact somehow they ll probably be effected equally. Your strength would matter if you somehow block an attack, reducing the damage. AS a game mechanic it might work though if you say that strength = body but then again if you are being that general with your stats then it would make more sense to leave it to the mind as its something you resist directly with what makes up your mind, the brain. Using mind as intelligence willpower and overall integrity and resilience of your brain.

30

No, actually we want to add more map memory. Kevin is the only one who wants to add more forgetting and he didn’t work on the game for like a year.[/quote]
Some minor corrections.
The linked issue was in fact calling for additional map memory, and I was resistant to giving all characters mega-eidetic memory of every map feature and item ever seen.

Your, “like a year” is 6 months, which I can remember since that’s how old my son is.

Also, I’m back.

31

You weren’t back when I wrote that.
OK, it’s closer to half a year than a year.
But most of your commits (as reported by github) from that time are merges. Implementing forgetting would essentially be another mechanic on top of map memory. Possibly a lot of work, depending on scope.
By your commit history, it was pretty safe to assume that, at that time, you were quite busy with things not related to the game.

Map memory would have to start of eidetic just because that’s the simplest way to implement it without hacks. Without someone to implement the option to forget, it would stay at that level (possibly locked behind an option).

32

Aside from my earlier suggestion the only reasonable way I can conceive of INT being a game long priority is if certain recipes were INT gated. This could be done one of two ways (and one need not exclude the other)

*The no doubt unpopular pick is to state quite frankly if someone just isn’t clever enough to build their own guns, make their own medicine and tailor survivor gear. These things don’t necessarily require you to be a genius though, so it’s more to deter dropping it down to nothing and still expecting to be able to make mutagen.

*The second option would be to have special high-intel recipes (at or beyond ALPHA levels) that give players fancy toys or new ways to play should they have managed to push what must have been an initially high IQ even further

Thoughts?

33

One thing I don’t like about INT-gating recipes is that it would require a special case for NPC crafting: whereas all other recipes could be learned and used just fine, the high-INT ones would require both the crafter and the player to have high INT. Just so that the crafter can be ordered to craft a high-INT item.

But then, NPC crafting is future plans.

34

Just a thought,

Maybe Int could be used to create a % modifier to decrease the time to perform all non-physical tasks. Int already reduces reading time. I don’t think it would be a stretch to see how a intelligent person could craft and repair items faster. Another possibility could be making very high Int give a small chance of an automatic do over on an failure roll on attacking, shooting crafting, first aid, installing bionics, driving. I am new to CDDA and have never gotten past mid-game so i do not know if my suggestions would effect the end game at all.

For my first month playing i was on the stable and Int decreased skill rust.

35

Going to again reiterate that INT should represent all mental fortitude, and that it should be a ‘booksmarts’ stat whereas awareness or perception is a ‘streetsmarts’ or quick adaptative stat.

INT should encompass willpower and focus, while per should be intuition or what it is now.

So, yes I approve of a modifyer taken off all crafting or reading or et al for int and per, but Im also okay splitting or renaming int to something else.

The two (per and int) can share the mental/spiritual aspect while dex/str are the physical. Its not a bad choice to head into.

36

Another factor that’s not ready for implementation by a long shot but could be put on the roadmap would be for INT to be the single most important stat when it comes to the logistics of running your own faction. Effecting:

*How fast you teach/can be taught
*How effectively you organize your workforce, I.E. the yield of NPC tasks you assign that are abstracted or take place outside the reality bubble. Farming, mining, assigning construction. Etc.
etc.

I’d keep listing possibilities by they’d start to sound more and more like another suggestion best put to its own topic.

…

I believe someone already mentioned the possibility of quality modifiers to crafting. I think that idea is just grand. Even if we don’t decide Joe Blow is too dumb to make his own mutagen/CBMs/Nuclear Powered Gizmos/etc surely it is fair for them to get slapped with a FAULTY or BUNGLED flag that effects their base stats? Like armor being more cumbersome/less protective, guns jamming, mutagens having worse odds and radiation leaking where appropriate.

…

Just had an idea that works independent of skill rust for high int as a boon. Every so many points of INT could be a milestone that lets you tag a skill for CONTEMPLATION. Skills your character is pondering for the sake of improvement. Activities like reading, construction, repairing and crafting give you ample opportunity to take a thin on the matter and marginally improve. The higher your INT the more you gain from learning this way and the higher a skill can improve in the absence of practical experience.

…

A possibility I think was mentioned earlier. Have INT push MAX skill level higher every so many points over average intel. Aside from the slight advantage having 11 or 12 over 10 in a skill might add this is how you could intel gate recipes. Have some really cool stuff take 11 or 12 in a skill. Since you can’t just drug yourself up over a skill threshold. This stops players from popping some pills to cheese the system. Likewise you could have int BELOW average LOWER max skill levels at the same rate. A sufficiently dumb fellow only able to rise to 9, 8 or god forbid 7. Now that I write this all out, I think this sounds like a pretty good way of doing it.

37

If push comes to shove and Int just doesn’t seem to be going anywhere as a stat, there’s nothing that says it can’t just be collapsed into Per (or vice versa) - which would make it quite a powerful stat. Maybe trim off some of the less significant features of both to even it out a bit.

Three stats is a pretty common ‘core’ for RPG’s and its easy to work with, if the fourth is having trouble sustaining itself in terms of game mechanics.

38

[quote=“Logrin, post:36, topic:13046”]Another factor that’s not ready for implementation by a long shot but could be put on the roadmap would be for INT to be the single most important stat when it comes to the logistics of running your own faction. Effecting:

*How fast you teach/can be taught
*How effectively you organize your workforce, I.E. the yield of NPC tasks you assign that are abstracted or take place outside the reality bubble. Farming, mining, assigning construction. Etc.
etc.[/quote]

Just had an idea that works independent of skill rust for high int as a boon. Every so many points of INT could be a milestone that lets you tag a skill for CONTEMPLATION. Skills your character is pondering for the sake of improvement. Activities like reading, construction, repairing and crafting give you ample opportunity to take a thin on the matter and marginally improve. The higher your INT the more you gain from learning this way and the higher a skill can improve in the absence of practical experience.
A possibility I think was mentioned earlier. Have INT push MAX skill level higher every so many points over average intel. Aside from the slight advantage having 11 or 12 over 10 in a skill might add this is how you could intel gate recipes. Have some really cool stuff take 11 or 12 in a skill. Since you can't just drug yourself up over a skill threshold. This stops players from popping some pills to cheese the system. Likewise you could have int BELOW average LOWER max skill levels at the same rate. A sufficiently dumb fellow only able to rise to 9, 8 or god forbid 7. Now that I write this all out, I think this sounds like a pretty good way of doing it.

I don’t usually participate in discussions revolving around skills, stats, multipliers, scaling etc. because I’m not very good with numbers, but I really wanted to take a moment and commend you on coming up with these ideas. It’s nothing revolutionary, I’m sure, but it’s the first time I read these and I didn’t know I wanted something like that in my game until I read them. These are some of the few suggestions I felt I could really agree with in the thread. Well done! I’m sure once the NPC/AI aspect of the game improves you could make great use of your companions, or hostile factions via manipulation, assuming your INT is high enough. Perhaps have a better ability to scale other humans’ stats up, or guess what they think of you in a more accurate manner. Teach them skills and recipes more effectively, maybe even have their actual trust value change based on your INT - some personalities might feel more comfortable around somebody who knows what they’re doing, others may think you’re plotting against them and stay distant. Of course with INT high enough you might even know what kind of personality it is right away! That’d be great.

I’d also like to have both other suggestions implemented actually - the ability to choose a skill to “ponder” upon so that you can improve it at a faster rate, but have some form of limitation on it to balance things out. Have INT decide how many skills you can be “passionate” about, whether it’s a single one or two or even three at a time. Perhaps the higher INT is, the shorter the “passion” lock time is after you level up a skill you wished to acquire. As for the other suggestion, I like the fact you’re indirectly locking recipes behind levels you cannot reach, which requires some think-ahead and makes INT more viable to pick at char gen. I do think stat limitations are the way to go to “nerf” powerful endgame characters - say, not allow people to go over STR 20, but that’s kinda irrelevant so I’ll leave it at that.

This, on the other hand, could be a bad idea in my opinion. At least if not implemented right, but even then it would be kind of irritating to deal with. Basically, to make the penalty something significant, something people would want to avoid, you’d have to make it a penalty that scales the same way for all the skills inside the skill pool. You’d also need to let people know exact percentages/multiplier values, sort of like you do with “ranged penalty” for PER. If you don’t do the latter, you risk the addition being simply annoying to deal with; new players will not understand why a weapon in perfect condition randomly jams, and why they weren’t told it would jam in the item/skill description or otherwise. Omitting the former would make the learning curve for the game steeper and memorizing stat thresholds/specific skill penalties that much more of a chore.

39

Doesn’t INT provide a higher chance to resist being paralyzed by Monsters with “Fear” attacks? That’s one benefit it has, although a tinfoil hat also does the job just fine, too…

40

tinfoil hats provide a whooping 6 cut prot.

which stops the cut attacks of most vanilla monsters
cut damage can cause bleeding

and bullets deal cut damage. your tinfoil hat is half a kevlar vest for your face