Well, I think it might be wise to just try and roll the “auto-learn recipes now require (intelligence-3) to invent” PR alone and see how it fairs.
Maybe that alone will be enough to get the job done.
I’m content to see how that goes, but I’m not certain intelligence is the stat that needs the most help, considering it also affects book learning and a few other things.
Well, that, I agree with.
Hence my initial problem with finding a role for perception.
I think enemy identification and overmap sight range would be the two big ones to look at, and maybe increasing the ranged penalty at low levels. Maybe even a dodge bonus, based on being able to perceive when and how an enemy is making an attack.
Enemy identification will be a nightmare to code…
Overmap sight range, now that I can see as a stand-alone PR.
What about scout trait and binoculars? Should they still double, or should they give flat bonus?
I’m leaning towards flat bonus.…
Multiplier. Perception is about more than just eyesight, it’s awareness and your ability to perceive things. Binoculars and the scout trait basically hit sight and awareness individually, but actually multiply them rather than just flatly increasing them. I.E Vision magnification is multiplicative, scouting knowledge would benefit your awareness but be more about knowing how to make use of it.
Create a Laser Eyes bionic that deals more damage with higher perception, and can shoot ANYWHERE that you can see. Just a little idea.
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This will quickly get pretty ridiculous with high perception. Like, “see the whole overmap” ridiculous. Just saying.
Perception wouldn’t give a large bonus, probably just a tile each point or so, probably. Maybe they don’t have to be multiplicative, it’s a new mechanic so how to balance it will need some discussion.
I hate to say that but: From realism point of view…
Extremalay Min/Max characters are pretty useless. what sport can human with 18/4/4/4 stats do IRL?
High strenght? weightlifting, nothing more without dexterity/speed.
Dexterity? Darts, i guess. Acrobatics need strenght, snooker need INT.
INT? chess or bridge. Sport poker needs PER.
PER? hmm, no idea, but it would be very valuable in hunter-gatherer community 
Anyway, my point is that 18/4/4/4 should be always suboptimal choice, whatever it means. perhaps better than basic 8/8/8/8, but worse that some 14/10/4/4, or 12/12/4/4.
As for PER, Overmap range sounds nice. Maybe some more info about Blinking Z Hordes? size , strongest enemy, something like that. And large game visible from overmap (would be usefull for hunting). better PER = higher range of bonus information.
Better chance for Headshot - cool. Maybe also better chance for special attacks in melee, both from weapons and from fighting styles (you see more opportunities to attack).
Limited Item data is cool too - you can see exact item name from short distance, only category from medium (like “pistol”, “drug”, “plastic bottle”), and not visible from large distance. Visibility should be modified by volume of item (you’ll see fridge from kilometer, but not credit card…), perhaps total volume of all items in a field (…but stack of 1000 cards should be visible from afar), light conditions , terrain type…
In other words, PER is not a first choice, but add some twist (possibilities and/or bonuses) as second/third stat.
PER from how I see it is two main things, how well you can see/hear/sense something and how well deatails are noticed. If I remove my glasses I can no longer read well and only with great difficulty, any precise ranged attack has a significant luck factor (plus I cant zero in shots).
A eagle eyed person can notice, shot is high need to correct for that and when I fire the gun kicks the sight to the left so I need to correct for that. Instead of forcing the gun on target you know how to work with it to lower the effects of recoil and misaligned sights, possibly even allowing a longer maximum effective range.
Right now sensed in general seem to be a mixed bag, as sound keeps you awake and you can see fine until the edge of the map. Maybe have that shadow/fog of war around the edge of sight on a bright day be effected by PER?
I do think that penalties work just as well to curb stat dumping, because you can’t focus on one stat then.
What if it was split so
STR = damage
DEX = melee chance to hit
INT = chance to crit (melee and ranged)
PER = ranged chance to hit
INT being crit because you can identify what natural weak points are. Knowing they are there and applying that knowledge are different things though.
Turn Perception into a hidden stats and add constituition. A constituition stat would be WAYS much more valuable than perception and it would at least help balancing strength
As has been commented, I see lots of ideas for penalize low stats more in this thread, less on how to make high stats attractive. But I agree with the folks saying it’s really the high stat benefits that need help.
For dexterity I like the melee combat ideas that have been suggested. Some ideas:
Dodge: Dexterity benefit for dodge should be additive and significant, in a way that skill training doesn’t eventually make it meaningless. And per someone’s suggestion here if there is a limit to number of dodges/blocks/parries this should increase with dexterity.
Silence: High dexterity should reduce the noise you make, certainly for movement (notch it down every three or so like perception improves night vision), ideally for melee attacks, breaking and crowbaring windows and doors, smashing things, etc as well.
Critical Hits: The current code has very poor benefits to critical hit chance from Dexterity and Perception. This should be improved significantly. (Careful looking at the code, there’s a comment example given there for how it works that is wrong.)
For perception I like the overmap visibility idea suggested, and the ability to avoid flaming eye stares. Some additional thoughts:
Critical Hits: As mentioned for dexterity. Perception bonus should continue to be twice as much as Dexterity bonus.
Demolitions: You have a much better sense for structural weak points. High perception can reduce the cap on breaking down walls and such. My idea is that a high perception regular strength character with an appropriate tool be able to take down barriers that a high strength regular perception character can’t.
Evasion (including scent management): Perception should allow a character to avoid detection even by enemies very close by, something pretty much nothing (?) does at the moment. Uber high perception walks by two squares away unnoticed, if not seen and silent, and low scent. I imagine this having two parts. A) better scent management, higher perception reduces scent emissions due to better awareness and management. B) something extra added to the enemy AI code allowing high perception character to sneak by closer.
Acute Awareness: At high perception characters should start to gain awareness of non-visible enemies within a certain distance, whether they be underground, cloaked, behind a wall, whatever. The distance should increase with perception. (Perception is more than just vision.)
And for fun, and I think a nice fit into the setting, Strange Sense: Player gains a strange sensitivity to certain unnatural locations and objects, allowing them to home in on them from far away. Basicly the idea is to allow something that makes it very easy for high Perception characters to find artifacts and perhaps a few other things.
And here’s one for Intelligence:
Bionic Affinity: Assuming the limits on bionic space get fully implemented at some point, increase the effective space for bionics with increased (base value only) intelligence.
How do these sound?
I really like these ideas. I’m of the same mindset that increasing benefits is the best way to make the less useful stats more attractive.
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I like this one a lot. Being able to notice the grass bending beneath an invisible creature’s footstep is something you’d expect of an eagle-eyed hero in fiction.
It feels like the bonus that goes with the aforementioned idea about not being able to recognize exact items at range, with higher perception scores improving the distance at which you can tell a grenadier from a stock soldier.
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Seeing shady zombies at night several tiles away with 10 or higher per is something I can get behind.
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Especially lategame where they’ve evolved into night stalkers (or whatever) because having a nighttime brute throw me through a building while I’m trying to be stealthy pretty thoroughly counters that strategy in a !!FUN!! ay.
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(Sounds) High Perception could give more insight about source of sound. like Zombie, Large Zombie, Robot, Animal, Engine etc.
That would make sound less of a semi-useless method of threat detection.