Diversifying skills into sub-skills

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

The idea of splitting cooking into two different skills (cooking and chemistry) is an idea that’s been around the Cataclysm community for a while now. And it should be, because despite how long its been it still makes no sense how knowing how to make the world’s best Lasagna translates into understanding the secrets of rocket fuel, lye powder, and thermite. However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that very few of the skills in Cataclysm actually make sense in their current form. The majority are not skills, but rather extremely simplified “skill-sets” that often times have nothing to do with one another - for instance how does foraging in some bushes for a few hours make one better at butchering corpses, or vice versa? How does simply shooting a bow-and-arrow make one better at actually crafting bows from scratch and fletching arrows? For that reason I’d like to propose that the following skills be “broken down” into smaller, more specific skills.

Archery
-Archery: The actual ability to shoot a bow and arrow accurately and reliably, also effects the speed at which the character can draw another arrow
-Bowery: The ability to cut out, string, and flex a fully fledged bow from scratch
-Fletching: The ability to whittle, balance, tip, and fletch an arrow so that it can fly with aerodynamic precision
Bartering
-Okay as is
Bashing weapons
-Okay as is
Computers
-Okay as is, since for now computer skill revolves entirely around hacking
Construction
-Masonry: Any recipes / constructions having to do with bricks, stones, wells, walls, mortar - also includes clay working and pottery. Stone fireplace is also OP plz nerf.
-Carpentry: Cutting planks and logs, building wooden constructions, assembly and disassembly of wooden furniture (chairs, tables, beds, etc)
Cooking
-Cooking: The actual cooking of raw ingredients into delicious Lasagna
-Chemistry: Synthesizing and combining chemicals
Cutting Weapons
-Okay as is
Dodging
-Okay as is
Driving
-Biking: Riding foot-pedaling bicycles, scooters, or engine-powered motorcycles - anything having less than 3 wheels
-Driving: Driving in its current form, anything involving 3 or more wheels.
Electronics
-Robotics: Creating, disassembling, or modifying things such as turrets, mechs, manhacks, skitterbots, eyebots, riot-bots, etc.
-Cybernetics: Creating, disassembling, installing, uninstalling or modifying CBMs
-Electronics: Electronics in its current form barring the above
Fabrication
-Woodworking: Creating fine crafts and weapons from wood (Do you realize how stupid it is to train your Fabrication up to level 5 by crafting cudgels >> wood needles >> distaff and spindle >> wooden clogs?)
-Metalworking: Creating fine crafts, weapons, and armor from metal - also includes forging. Anything involving anvil/hammer/tongs goes here.
-Gunsmithing: Creating, maintaining, and repairing firearms, ammunition, and gun-mods.
First Aid
-Surgery: Mending broken limbs / organs, as well as installing / uninstalling CBMs
-Wound Care: The skill in its current form, having to do with managing wounds, disinfecting, applying first aid kids, etc
-Pharmacology: Assuming more recipes are added in the future, this would be the skill that involves synthesizing drugs, disinfectants, creating first aid kids, and so forth. For now, maybe these are better off under Chemistry
Handguns
-Okay as is
Launchers
-Okay as is
Marksmanship
-Okay as is
Mechanics
-Structural Engineering: The maintenance, repair, installation, and removal of the “outside” of the vehicle - Wheels, windshields, quarterpanels, doors, etc
-Internal Engineering: The maintenance, repair, installation, and removal of the “insides” of the vehicle - Engines, suspension, transmission, axels, batteries, alternators, etc.
-Hi-Tech: The maintenance, repair, installation, and removal of “high-end” components of a vehicle. Nuclear reactors, solar panels, electric engines, vortex generators, turrets, etc. Making this skill difficult to train up should be a successful counter to every late-game survivor having an unstoppable, mobile doom-fortress. This skill would also be the one used in installing CBMs.
Melee
-Okay as is
Piercing Weapons
-Okay as is
Rifles
-Okay as is
Shotguns
-Okay as is
Speaking
-Okay as is
Submachine Guns
-Okay as is
Survival
-Foraging: Searching for and harvesting useful items and foods from bushes/trees/nests
-Butchery: The “harvesting” of corpses for their meat, sinew, offal, fat, and hide
-Improvisation: The creation of tools and constructions meant to help in survival, meaning the majority of crafting recipes that have a survival requirement (Recommend trapping be merged with this skill)
Swimming
-Okay as is
Tailoring
-Leatherworking: Creating and repairing items made from either Fur or Leather. I would also think this would be the skill that handles tanning hides/furs, which is currently handled by Survival.
-Boneworking: Creating and repairing items made from either Bone or Chitin
-Sewing: Tailoring in its current form, having to do with creating and repairing items made from Wool or Cotton
-Synthetic Tailoring: Anything having to do with creating and repairing items made from synthetic materials such as Kevlar, Polymer, Nomex, Plastic, etc
Throwing
-Okay as is
Trapping
-Should be merged with Improvisation in my opinion
Unarmed Combat
-Okay as is

And that about covers everything. Thoughts?

2

95% against from me.
I don’t see any real benefit from adding more skills. There would be a lot of trouble from multiple skills getting useless or getting “book-walled”.

I’d rather get rid of some of our existing skills (speaking, barter, swimming) because they’re like Dwarf Fortress’ soap making.

3

I’d like to see skills diversified, but maybe the game isn’t on that level yet… maybe in 0.E in the far future?

4

[quote=“Coolthulhu, post:2, topic:11900”]95% against from me.
I don’t see any real benefit from adding more skills. There would be a lot of trouble from multiple skills getting useless or getting “book-walled”.

I’d rather get rid of some of our existing skills (speaking, barter, swimming) because they’re like Dwarf Fortress’ soap making.[/quote]
While I agree with your opposition to skill bloat, I would prefer an expansion of social opportunities over the removal of the social skills.

5

[quote=“voskhod, post:1, topic:11900”]The idea of splitting cooking into two different skills (cooking and chemistry) is an idea that’s been around the Cataclysm community for a while now. And it should be, because despite how long its been it still makes no sense how knowing how to make the world’s best Lasagna translates into understanding the secrets of rocket fuel, lye powder, and thermite. However, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that very few of the skills in Cataclysm actually make sense in their current form. The majority are not skills, but rather extremely simplified “skill-sets” that often times have nothing to do with one another - for instance how does foraging in some bushes for a few hours make one better at butchering corpses, or vice versa? How does simply shooting a bow-and-arrow make one better at actually crafting bows from scratch and fletching arrows? For that reason I’d like to propose that the following skills be “broken down” into smaller, more specific skills.

And that about covers everything. Thoughts?[/quote]
Cooking is basically imprecise chemistry. Survival should be split into Foraging and Butchery.

6

Really think the fletching recipes should be rolled into fabrication. Having them under archery never made much sense to me.

And certainly agree that the cooking/chemistry divide is long overdue. Think, as others have said, though that the full changes here would be complicating things too far for too little gameplay benefit.

7

While honestly I’m somewhat for breaking apart some of the skills we have (not all mind you) the fact that’d there would be a massive amount of work taking away from otherthings to accomplish it without a suitable benefit has me saying no rather strongly.

8

here are my thoughts on some of the skills with some minor changes to your list:

[spoiler]Archery
-Archery: The actual ability to shoot a bow and arrow accurately and reliably, also effects the speed at which the character can draw another arrow
-Bowery: The ability to cut out, string, and flex a fully fledged bow from scratch
-Fletching: The ability to whittle, balance, tip, and fletch an arrow so that it can fly with aerodynamic precision

[b]Bartering

  • Should be tied into speech as bartering is a heavily reliant on charisma and persuasiveness its the act of getting a deal through negotiation[/b]

Construction
-Masonry: Any recipes / constructions having to do with bricks, stones, wells, walls, mortar - also includes clay working and pottery. Stone fireplace is also OP plz nerf.
-Carpentry: Cutting planks and logs, building wooden constructions, assembly and disassembly of wooden furniture (chairs, tables, beds, etc)

Cooking
-Cooking: The actual cooking of raw ingredients into delicious Lasagna
-Butchery: The “harvesting” of corpses for their meat, sinew, offal, fat, and hide, (butchering meat is also a key skill to any cook,
either add to cooking or tie cooking in with it.)

Chemistry: Synthesizing and combining chemicals should be its own tree

Driving
-Biking: Riding foot-pedaling bicycles, scooters, or engine-powered motorcycles - anything having less than 3 wheels
-Driving: Driving in its current form, anything involving 3 or more wheels.

Electronics
-Robotics: Creating, disassembling, or modifying things such as turrets, mechs, manhacks, skitterbots, eyebots, riot-bots, etc.
-Cybernetics: Creating, disassembling, installing, uninstalling or modifying CBMs
-Electronics: Electronics in its current form barring the above
-Computers - this should be merged with electronics

Fabrication
-Woodworking: Creating fine crafts and weapons from wood (Do you realize how stupid it is to train your Fabrication up to level 5 by crafting cudgels >> wood needles >> distaff and spindle >> wooden clogs?)
-Metalworking: Creating fine crafts, weapons, and armor from metal - also includes forging. Anything involving anvil/hammer/tongs goes here.
-Gunsmithing: Creating, maintaining, and repairing firearms, ammunition, and gun-mods.

First Aid = should rename to medicine/doctoring given it effects more then just minor injuries.
-Surgery: Mending broken limbs / organs, as well as installing / uninstalling CBMs
-Wound Care: The skill in its current form, having to do with managing wounds, disinfecting, applying first aid kids, etc
-Pharmacology: Assuming more recipes are added in the future, this would be the skill that involves synthesizing drugs, disinfectants, creating first aid kids, and so forth. For now, maybe these are better off under Chemistry
-Botany: identifying useful plants and herbs with medicinal value.

Mechanics
-Structural Engineering: The maintenance, repair, installation, and removal of the “outside” of the vehicle - Wheels, windshields, quarterpanels, doors, etc
-Internal Engineering: The maintenance, repair, installation, and removal of the “insides” of the vehicle - Engines, suspension, transmission, axels, batteries, alternators, etc.
-Hi-Tech: The maintenance, repair, installation, and removal of “high-end” components of a vehicle. Nuclear reactors, solar panels, electric engines, vortex generators, turrets, etc. Making this skill difficult to train up should be a successful counter to every late-game survivor having an unstoppable, mobile doom-fortress. This skill would also be the one used in installing CBMs.

Survival
-Foraging: Searching for and harvesting useful items and foods from bushes/trees/nests
-Leatherworking: Creating and repairing items made from either Fur or Leather. I would also think this would be the skill that handles tanning hides/furs, which is currently handled by Survival.
-Boneworking: Creating and repairing items made from either Bone or Chitin <<These two are more survival then tailoring IMO
-Improvisation: The creation of tools and constructions meant to help in survival, meaning the majority of crafting recipes that have a survival requirement (Recommend trapping be merged with this skill)
-botany: survival based botany being able to identify edible and toxic plants.
-firemaking: effects your success rate and speeds of producing fires with or without modern methods of ignition.

Tailoring
-Sewing: Tailoring in its current form, having to do with creating and repairing items made from Wool or Cotton
-Synthetic Tailoring: Anything having to do with creating and repairing items made from synthetic materials such as Kevlar, Polymer, Nomex, Plastic, etc
-knitting: the ability to age yourself 50 years :smiley:

Traps
-Should be renamed to represent the ability to arm/disarm and create traps as well as spotting them.
[/spoiler]

9

I reworded the traps description in the recent experimentals. Try 4962.

10

[quote=“stone94, post:8, topic:11900”]here are my thoughts on some of the skills with some minor changes to your list:

[spoiler]Archery
-Archery: The actual ability to shoot a bow and arrow accurately and reliably, also effects the speed at which the character can draw another arrow
-Bowery: The ability to cut out, string, and flex a fully fledged bow from scratch
-Fletching: The ability to whittle, balance, tip, and fletch an arrow so that it can fly with aerodynamic precision

[b]Bartering

  • Should be tied into speech as bartering is a heavily reliant on charisma and persuasiveness its the act of getting a deal through negotiation[/b]

Construction
-Masonry: Any recipes / constructions having to do with bricks, stones, wells, walls, mortar - also includes clay working and pottery. Stone fireplace is also OP plz nerf.
-Carpentry: Cutting planks and logs, building wooden constructions, assembly and disassembly of wooden furniture (chairs, tables, beds, etc)

Cooking
-Cooking: The actual cooking of raw ingredients into delicious Lasagna
-Butchery: The “harvesting” of corpses for their meat, sinew, offal, fat, and hide, (butchering meat is also a key skill to any cook,
either add to cooking or tie cooking in with it.)

Chemistry: Synthesizing and combining chemicals should be its own tree

Driving
-Biking: Riding foot-pedaling bicycles, scooters, or engine-powered motorcycles - anything having less than 3 wheels
-Driving: Driving in its current form, anything involving 3 or more wheels.

Electronics
-Robotics: Creating, disassembling, or modifying things such as turrets, mechs, manhacks, skitterbots, eyebots, riot-bots, etc.
-Cybernetics: Creating, disassembling, installing, uninstalling or modifying CBMs
-Electronics: Electronics in its current form barring the above
-Computers - this should be merged with electronics

Fabrication
-Woodworking: Creating fine crafts and weapons from wood (Do you realize how stupid it is to train your Fabrication up to level 5 by crafting cudgels >> wood needles >> distaff and spindle >> wooden clogs?)
-Metalworking: Creating fine crafts, weapons, and armor from metal - also includes forging. Anything involving anvil/hammer/tongs goes here.
-Gunsmithing: Creating, maintaining, and repairing firearms, ammunition, and gun-mods.

First Aid = should rename to medicine/doctoring given it effects more then just minor injuries.
-Surgery: Mending broken limbs / organs, as well as installing / uninstalling CBMs
-Wound Care: The skill in its current form, having to do with managing wounds, disinfecting, applying first aid kids, etc
-Pharmacology: Assuming more recipes are added in the future, this would be the skill that involves synthesizing drugs, disinfectants, creating first aid kids, and so forth. For now, maybe these are better off under Chemistry
-Botany: identifying useful plants and herbs with medicinal value.

Mechanics
-Structural Engineering: The maintenance, repair, installation, and removal of the “outside” of the vehicle - Wheels, windshields, quarterpanels, doors, etc
-Internal Engineering: The maintenance, repair, installation, and removal of the “insides” of the vehicle - Engines, suspension, transmission, axels, batteries, alternators, etc.
-Hi-Tech: The maintenance, repair, installation, and removal of “high-end” components of a vehicle. Nuclear reactors, solar panels, electric engines, vortex generators, turrets, etc. Making this skill difficult to train up should be a successful counter to every late-game survivor having an unstoppable, mobile doom-fortress. This skill would also be the one used in installing CBMs.

Survival
-Foraging: Searching for and harvesting useful items and foods from bushes/trees/nests
-Leatherworking: Creating and repairing items made from either Fur or Leather. I would also think this would be the skill that handles tanning hides/furs, which is currently handled by Survival.
-Boneworking: Creating and repairing items made from either Bone or Chitin <<These two are more survival then tailoring IMO
-Improvisation: The creation of tools and constructions meant to help in survival, meaning the majority of crafting recipes that have a survival requirement (Recommend trapping be merged with this skill)
-botany: survival based botany being able to identify edible and toxic plants.
-firemaking: effects your success rate and speeds of producing fires with or without modern methods of ignition.

Tailoring
-Sewing: Tailoring in its current form, having to do with creating and repairing items made from Wool or Cotton
-Synthetic Tailoring: Anything having to do with creating and repairing items made from synthetic materials such as Kevlar, Polymer, Nomex, Plastic, etc
-knitting: the ability to age yourself 50 years :smiley:

Traps
-Should be renamed to represent the ability to arm/disarm and create traps as well as spotting them.
[/spoiler][/quote]

I’d essentially Like to see this in the distant future, (as someone else said .E, though probably even later than that) though electronics/computer skill kept separate, Then I’d like to see a more complex system of intertwined cross-influence in the skill-sets, with most things influencing multiple skills and multiple skills influencing most crafting/actions to varying degrees. Id love to see the final product be a network of where your character is knowledgeable, color coded to show where you have book learned, and where you have come up with your own ideas, and inventions/improvements.

As others have said though, the system we have now is fine, And I see no reason to invest time revamping it until some of the other stuff is out of the way.

11

It could be nice with unarmed, I think, concerning martial arts.

Like, say, you find a training manual for boxing. You read the book, and unlock the boxing skill. You choose that style and fight unarmed, and you gain the bonuses of the martial arts style. Having a high skill in unarmed will quickly raise the skill of whatever martial arts your survivor has. Maybe have a limit on the skill levels of martial arts style or something.

Just a random idea.