Proposal: RND replacement, skills, crafting

[AndrewL97]

Proposal:

Players hold tech points, rather than a research server. They increase tech points by gaining experience, through breaking down items or creating items in relevant tech-trees, performing related activities, etc.

Reasoning:

• Player development

  • allows you to dedicate time to become an asset to your faction/town/team. A generally improved crafting system, which uses a tree rather than a flat list of recipes.

• Hostile interactions

  • At the moment, your character holds little value beyond what you're carrying, and there is very little downside to shooting first, asking later.
  • If a player is potentially a high level doctor, engineer, gunsmith, etc. they are more valuable if kept alive. This gives factions the ability to fight over players themselves, either by kidnapping skilled players, or rescuing them. This also allows the player in question a chance to keep playing, without dying and starting over.

How it will work:

• Components

  • Some misc components will be added, springs, screws, vacuum tubes, etc. will be added as /stack/material/ items. This way they can stack, and can be added to items material list. Parts for machinery will be reskinned to make more sense, i.e manipulators will be circuit boards, advanced circuit boards, military circuit boards, etc.

• Toolsets

  • Toolsets are items that allow you to transform a table into a particular type of workbench.
  • The lower tier ones are made by combining normal tools (wrench, wirecutters, etc).
  • More advanced ones (for higher level gun-smithing, engineering, etc.) will require a high level metal worker using a tool schematic. The relevant tool schematics are made by somebody skilled in that particular area. i.e. a master gunsmith needs precise gunsmithing tools. They make a schematic for these, and run them over to the town's master metal worker to make.

• Workbenches

  • Workbenches are table types that allow certain crafting trees or actions. Functionally, they will act as a nearby tool (i.e. some recipes require a screwdriver, so under this system most guns will require a certain level of weapon workbench)
  • Crafted by using a toolset on a table. Can be turned back into a table by clicking the workbench with an empty hand (this allows you to upgrade your workbenches, by swapping the tools for higher level ones).

Crafting Recipes

• Most skills will act to replace the RND tech trees (power, data, engineering, etc.).

  • Recipes will usually require a certain skill level in one or more skill trees (i.e a generator might need Power level 4 and Engineering level 2)

• Additionally, new categories will be added to the crafting UI, to break the list of crafting recipes up into smaller lists, so they are more searchable.

• The list of available designs will not directly come from RND, as AI, Telecoms, etc. shouldn't be craftable. There will be lots of things stripped out/added, etc.

• Quality of life updates, if easily resolved, will be sorting by skill requirements

Increasing "Skills"

• Tinker bench

  • Requires tinkering tools to build. Similar to the deconstructor, you place items onto the bench and deconstruct them to gain experience points. When using the tinker bench, only a few (if any) components are returned.

• Scrap bench

  • Designed for getting the most components out of something. You get a tiny amount of experience, because you only care about getting everything useful out of something.

• General use

  • Creating items, weapons, etc. will give you experience (with diminishing returns) towards its tech group.
  • Certain skills have related activities that give experience.
    • Botany
      • Harvesting, Fertilizing, Seeding, Watering, Weeding, etc. increase Botany.
      • This in turn increases the chance of "Good" stats increasing when seeding plants, and can increase yield when harvesting.
    • Medicine
      • Performing Surgery, Applying bandages or medicines to others. Remember, surgery can be performed on corpses.
      • This decrease chances of failure from using poor-quality surgical tools, as well as unlocking more medical recipes to craft.

• Books

  • Added to loot tables, are tech books with varying levels of expertise (novice, master, etc.). Once a certain level is reached, you can read them for a quick boost of experience points. (think of it as, somebody with no experience in physics will benefit reading a book on advanced quantum theory).
  • I am open to the idea of high level players being able to write out their own books, with plenty of paper and time, but unsure how gamey this will become. Potentially capped at teaching up to a quarter of their level, so they can't powerlevel people.

• Equipment

  • flag for armor (probably rename + use special_defence) to add bonus points to skills, similar to actual fallout. +1 or +2 flags, etc. Perhaps things like +x% experience gain.

Gameplay example:

Tinkerer Tim (Tim, for short) wants to make generators, so needs to learn engineering + power (if say, a General Generator needs level 2 Engineering, and Level 4 Power).

Tim has already reached level 2 Engineering, when found an old warehouse with some tools to break down, and an instruction manual.

Tim puts his Notepad on his belt slot for +5% experience gain.

He crafts Tinkering Tools using a screwdriver, wrench, pen and glass (for magnification of course).

Tim has recently found a large duffelbag of batteries, some high powered, but mostly basic power cells. He also has some spare tools he doesn't need.
He won't get much experience from the high powered cells yet, because he is too low level. So he starts off by tinkering down the basic power cells, which will give him the most efficient experience rate. After reaching level 2 power, he isn't getting as much from the basic cells, so breaks down the few high-powered cells he has.

This only just pushes him to level 3, so he has to either craft some Power items (like batteries), or find something new to tinker down. He decides to sacrifice his laser pistol, which also nets him a bit of gunsmithing experience.

Now he has the experience he needs, he needs to craft an machinist workbench to make circuit boards and parts.

The basic machinist tools require 2 screw-driver, a basic power-cell and 5 cables. (a screwdriver, cell and cables gets jury-rigged into a soldering kit).

Tim has now set up his workbench, and traded in town for some more materials to make components. He creates his generator circuitboard, and builds himself a generator. He can finally power his airlock, and build the pillow-fort he wanted.

(Later on, Master Electrician Tim was kidnapped by the brotherhood of steel for his skills, after their only engineer was electrocuted)

[Sansaur]

Even if I find the idea interesting, it still has some problems and creates limitations on a really sandboxy experience that is ss13. I like a lot the idea of people being useful because of them being able to be the only ones able to do X thing.

But the problem here comes from farming experience, getting levels, and all that... on a volatile game, basically before you can be useful you'd have to "farm" it, IF we add this I'd rather have skills to not be farmed at all, they should be thought in detail about what should they do and then added into character creation. The only "farming" there should be is the materials. (EX: "I want to play as an intelligent BOS Scribe that also happens to be a doctor, but oh, before I can do anything correctly, I have to perform 10 surgeries on random dead wastelanders without any regards for my character's backstory")

And final note, "chances" ruin tabletop rpgs for me, let's try to not make any skill about "increasing chances".

[CoconutRanger]

I like the Idea I just think we should have it so you have Stat points to start the game with in your character creation. (10 as a placeholder) lets say you want to be a kickass doctor but want to go a little bit into Mechanics. Put 7 in med and 3 mechanics and work your way up. That way we can still have progression and have the fluff background babys entertained.

[AndrewL97]

@Sansaur @CoconutRanger I am totally up for stat points in character creation.
How do you guys feel about certain starting stats unlocking extra gear to start with?
Like, picking 5+ in medical lets you choose a doctors back, with the usual kit of surgical gear
or botany/survivalist gives you a pouch of random seeds, etc.

Also Sansaur, those chances like increasing plant stats, or failing surgery checks already exist. I am just talking about adding a couple of buffs to them if you're skilled.

[Sansaur]

Hmm, well, that thing of getting extra choices on character creation based on stat is a good idea, yes.

And well, what we need now is the breakdown of skills, which skills should there be? What are they supposed to do? Like I said in Discord, too broad defats the purpose of uniqueness, and too specific makes it too inconvenient.

What I mean with "Too broad" is this:

Crafting, if you have crafting you can craft everything, so if you just want to be a "soldier that can make his own weapons", you also know how to build a cabinet, and reinforced walls, and sculptures, and grenade casings, and machine assemblies, and instruments made out of glass.

And with "Too specific" it'd be breaking down "Crafting" into too many parts

So yeah, I suggest just brainstorming ideas and we pick the better ones, for me I'd suggest something like this alongside a 4 level system:

CRAFTING

• Metalworks: Basically being able to do the Autolathe recipes on crafting stations + the inhand recipes of the sheets in the crafting menu
• Building: Rework buildings into needing special parts that you can do with Building, and also the ability to make crafting stations, and furniture and stuff like that
• Craftmanship: Working with more 'precise' recipes of sorts, also including electronics here, and a focus of parts/materials/products that need to be made with technique.

SCIENCE

• Engineering: Make applying wires to machines or tampering with them take time, and then this reduces said time, some crafting recipes based around electronic material to make items that improve things like cells or advanced energy weaponry, receive a chance to not get electrocuted if you were going to be electrocuted, and make many interactions that don't require time actually require time and Engineering makes said time faster.
• RnD: After we rework RnD make it so producing things take less resources through RnD, give RnD nerds unique interactions with certain terminals (Kinda like hacking?), better or unique chemistry for them, give them the ability to identify certain chemicals inside containers on examination (Or get information of the 'purpose' of chemicals, if they are dangerous, etc...). Also RnD should be the ones with medical recipes like cautery or nanopaste.
• Medicine: Increase the amount of beneficial reagents applied (And reduce the current 'heal all' amount of certain medicines) on injections and on touch, faster and less failible surgery (Also make surgery harder by default), better CPR, and MAYBE increase the speed at which you apply patches, pills or injections to other people (It just makes sense, but it can make a guy with a syiringe full of cyanide more lethal than a deathclaw)

UTILITY

• Farming: Plants you plant have better stats (Also rework plants), and increases the chances of better interactions with animals (Breeding/Taming), also makes manual interactions with plants better, increases the yield of natural plants harvested, increases the yield of wood from trees and gives more information about plants on examination without tools (I don't know how this is on /tg/ sadly)
• And well, I'd put "mining" here, or "cooking", but they are kinda not as useful when there's no mining and there's just rat cooking and shit. We'll think of something else. If we're to put mining I'd say make mining more complex, giving the chance for cave-ins and dangerous stuff happening which better miners can get info before it happens and also increasing the speed at which they mine.

AND IF AND ONLY IF THERE SHOULD ALSO BE "PHYSICAL SKILLS" (To level the playing field with the "smarties")

PHYSICAL

• Strength: Carrying weight, better pain resistance, not as easy to knock down / faster to get up when knocked down, receiving less damage from toxins in bloodstream and better unarmed combat.
• Subterfuge: Faster stealing from other's inventories, ability to silence "certain" sounds (Like opening doors and cabinets, grabbing items from bags, or walking with footwear)
• And maybe a third one or anything.

And well, I've thought of a 4 level structure like this:

BASIC = 0
INTERMEDIATE = 1
ADVANCED = 2
SUPERB = 3

Which, with a 10 point system, you could get 3 things to SUPERB, and 1 to INTERMEDIATE. with an average of 5 things in ADVANCED. (I find this a bit too much and maybe a 6/8 point system with this is better)

And finally, an example for each section

Metalworks 0 = Screwdrivers
Metalworks 1 = Fire extinguishers / Basic Ammo
Metalworks 2 = Better welding tools / Strong Ammo
Metalworks 3 = Turret frames / Machine casings

Medicine 0 = Surgeries almost always fail anywhere that isn't an operating table
Medicine 1 = Surgeries are plausible anywhere but will have failures anyways, +2 beneficial reagents
Medicine 2 = Surgeries are plausible anywhere, +3 beneficial reagents
Medicine 3 = Surgeries are infailible anywhereand really fast , +5 beneficial reagents

Farming 0 = You can't even plant anything that doesn't die outside of the vault (Or outside of hydroponic trays)
Farming 1 = Your plants will have a chance to live outside of the vault, and animals aren't likely to breed but they might
Farming 2 = You can plant outside of the vault and keep an eye of many important factors for plants, animals breed every once in a while.
Farming 3 = Your plants are strong, animals are frisky

Strength 0 = Basic human
Strength 1 = You'll be able to carry a backpack full of stuff and still not be heavily weighted
Strength 2 = You can go around with armors and backpacks at regular speed, and also resistance to toxins
Strength 3 = Higher chance to push on disarm, grabbed people have a lower chance to break free, harm deals more damage, 25% faster getting up after being stunned or weakened and less chance of being knocked down on melee combat.