I am gonna be frank (hi Frank!) i really don't like the skill decay.
I think it removes from my hard work to raise my colonists skills and makes some skills barely worth investing in.
But Tynan added it because he wanted it SOOOO.
I suggest lowering skill decay.
Even if i want it to be non existent, it's in for a reason. But for the moment shooting and even more importantly melee have hard times being kept fresh.
This together with no useful way of raising these skills without resorting to silly shenanigans (at least for melee, downing animals and cycling between healing them and beating them up IIRC is the best melee training)
Since there are no training dummies or fighting training actions you can perform, and i don't remember if you can set someone to shoot at a wall anymore to gain skill.
Even so there's even the horseshoes for shooting, NOTHING for melee.
So if i even bother with raising my melee scores (which i don't, it's a waste of effort) it all settles back to BEFORE where i started within a day or two....
Sure, this is only on very high levels but come on?
Why even have high melee skill levels? It's not like one can reach them or maintain them in game.
So i suggest removing skill decay.
That won't happen so i suggest lowering it. A lot.
Raising pawn skills is an important part of the game and the biggest sense of progress for me.
Since it is so rough to raise them. At least for some, my builder usually end up a construction god whether i want to or not.
Growing is the one that shines the most for me when i realise i can finally plant that healroot (xeregium, it should be in the description).
I'd even go so far to suggest that skill decay can never lower a full skill level. Apart from 20 to 19, since maintaining such a fantastical level should be hard so fair enough.
But one does not simply forget skills at the rate suggested by the game. But having it remove your progress to the next level is a working alternative if skill decay is to be in the game as is.
I agree. My level 20 medic who has got a "great memory" trait lost half of his maximum experience on level 20 (from 30000 to 15000) in just a couple of days.
Skill decay doesn't even really make sense.
Once a person crosses a certain mastery threshold they cannot get below that until they get very old. This is true for every skill other than physical activity related skills such as swimming etc.
Yeah watching the numbers on my cook opened my eyes, it's crazy that it goes down in the seconds he takes to get the supplies for the next meal.
I had no idea it was that brutal! Is that the same across all difficulties or is it tuned higher in different circumstances?
Quote from: 5thHorseman on July 23, 2018, 05:59:43 AM
Yeah watching the numbers on my cook opened my eyes, it's crazy that it goes down in the seconds he takes to get the supplies for the next meal.
That in particular has always annoyed me. It might make some sense for skills to decay if they haven't been used in a while. Maybe not as far as realism is concerned, but from a gaming perspective. But not that
Quote from: mcduff on July 23, 2018, 07:07:29 AM
I had no idea it was that brutal! Is that the same across all difficulties or is it tuned higher in different circumstances?
I play on Medium but have a single cook and that's basically his entire day in a colony of 16 people so his skill level is pretty high. I don't know it offhand and am not running the game right now but I'd not be surprised if it was in the high teens. I'd also not be surprised if 20 (that's the max?) is impossible because before then there's probably a break-even point where he's losing the points grabbing ingredients that he's getting for making the meal.
I would be fine if skill decay past a point. Currently in 1.0, you can have a skill be up to level 9 and never drop. Why not do this every 5 levels? By the time you're a level 20 Doctor you're pretty much the best damn doctor on the planet. This is especially frustrating for Shooting and Melee, 2 skills that can only be properly levelled up only once in a while. And no, I don't consider beating up prisoners as "proper" training.
It's understandable if you're a boxer and you haven't sparred in a year your skill will go away, but considering that "aging" is not really that much a thing and RW only has a rudimentary health system (which is still more advanced than most games by the way), you might as well have a stop gap after a certain point. Real life people stop pursuing their passions because of age and health. Rimworld doesn't actually have those things and even then some of those problems are completely fixable!
Maybe just tweak the skill-decay, so it only decays to a certain amount below the lifetime maximum for that pawn? For example, maybe max-level minus 5 levels? If Jill has attained level 19, it will slowly decay back down to 14, but not below that? Or if Joe has attained level 9, it slowly decays down to 4? Something like that might be good, especially since how it works right now, every pawn pretty much gets to level 10 over time. Skills lower than 10 basically don't decay (or don't decay at all?), and higher skills decay faster.
Another thing to consider would be multiple skills; It should still be hard to have high skills in everything. I'm sure you could make up some formula, so that for a single skill, you could get to level 20, but for a handful of skills you could only get to around level 15, and for a lot of skills you'd be stuck around 10 or lower.
Or make it so if a pawn forgets some levels he can gain them quickly. It's the same in real life. If you don't use a skill you forget it, but when you start using it again you re-learn it much faster and you don't have to learn it again like in school or something.
I do like skill decay in that it helps my disbelief at the fact that after a few years in my colonies every person becomes a master at their craft yet almost everyone outside are plebes.
I do think the system could use some work though. I especially like the idea of relearning a skill being faster.
Even if the skill decay is rebalancedi think things like shooting ranges and sparing dummies should be stock. Heck conbine that with the School mod for dojos :D
Is there a mod which nerfs the skill decay? Seems like the game is unbalanced with this skill decay.
It's not really unbalanced, your good cook will still be good, same with the grower and medic. But the high skill levels are nearly unobtainable for some skills.
At the moment for example melee is basically forever stuck at what you start with.
I think it should be more balanced about the colony.
Sure, training dummies are practical, now you can train melee all day long.
"Isn't that unfair though? Now all my guys can be epic at melee?"
Nope, the thing is, when they are training, they aren't doing anything else, which means they still eat their share and aren't constructing or farming etc.
Which would make the medieval thing that a bunch of people work, while a few are selected as man at arms, who are kept in tip top condition to be able to fight off dangers to the society.
While the rest of the rag tag gang will of course help in a bind.
In old tv series there is usually one or two battler types, i assume they aren't just sitting on their ass or cooking, only cooking. They are training to keep their skills in trim and to improve themselves so when the next episode comes, they can handle the baddies.
This is of course off camera since watching sweaty muscular men training martial arts only gets a certain kind of viewers.
Having a skill at 10 gives good results on any taks they perform. Have you ever done something you haven't in years? It takes time to reaquire some, if not all, lost skill, which brings me to my point:
Each time you level up you get bonus experience on each performed task if you ever have to reattain that level. For example, you need 100 repetitions to get from level 14 to 15 but due to not using that skill a while you drop back to 14. to get to level 15 again you need 75 repetitions to get to that level again. You drop again to 14, 60 repetitions to get back to 15, all down to some set minimum amount.
Doesn't mean we need ways to level up the least trainable skills like melee. I support the idea of training dummies or drastically lowering the needed xp to level up melee.
cheers :)
About skills in common there is a big point being forgotten. I don't know when, but Sir Tynan himself once said, he never wants everyone to reach skill 20 as this should be a rare special thing. Same so for masterwork/legendary stuff.
As being said like that, skil decay start at lvl 10 does probably exactly fit this solution as it ensures every pawn a skill level 10, but anything beyond that has to be seen as a bonus.
So much for the officials.
For skill decay in common: it's annoying.
I truely know the feeling when I am watching my mastercrafter dropping back to skill 17 after I forgot about him, because I had all my clothing/weapon demands done.
Anyway, as mentioned above, decay is wished and wanted, and I think even if you are pissed about it, there is no reason to remove it.
Still there should be ways to deal with these things to make extrem levels less a pain in the asteroid to achieve. Here I have two things in mind:
1. The max level of a skill should always be remembered.
For every level lost to decay they shall get a x% gain bonus per level lost. By this a skill can decay over time, but the master can get back on top faster, as he shall remember being gread
Example: Doctor 17 dropped to 14. For every level lost he gets 50% learning bonus. Being 150% at 14, 100% at 15 and 50% at 16.
2. Skill decay shouldn't start immediately.
For training causes it's super annoying if your you cook 14 goes to bed, and wakes up as a 13.
Decay wouldn't be so annoying if it starts over time.
Example: 10% after 6 hours, 25% after 12, 50% after 18 and 100% after 24
Personally the reason I don't like high decay is that it forces your colonists to have exactly one speciality, maaaaaaybe 2 if you're short on colonists. That doesn't feel so realistic, many people have expertise in many areas.
If colonists with level 20 being rare is the goal, it would be better for the skill chart to be adapted accordingly instead. E.g. going from level 19 to 20 takes 25,000 points or so, without decay you'd use maybe 100,000. Or 80,000 if using a really tiny decay like 10 times lower.
Quote from: Greep on July 24, 2018, 07:26:32 AM
Personally the reason I don't like high decay is that it forces your colonists to have exactly one speciality, maaaaaaybe 2 if you're short on colonists. That doesn't feel so realistic, many people have expertise in many areas.
Yes, but only the most gifted individuals achieve high levels of proficiency or mastery in multiple disciplines. We have traits to represent gifted individuals (fast learning and now great memory), but even then it takes incredible effort. And in the real world, if it's an evolving discipline it means staying on top of the latest developments. Things like tech work and medicine are examples. Because of the amount of innovation occurring on an annual basis, it can be a time-consuming challenge to remain on the cutting edge.
I think skill decay is a good feature, but it's fairly aggressive. I wouldn't mind seeing it scaled back, especially at lower difficulties. I also wouldn't mind seeing it scale with time spent not performing a task; ie, if your builder isn't working on construction things daily, he'll start losing skill, but not if he's staying busy.
Quote from: Koek on July 24, 2018, 06:24:46 AM
Having a skill at 10 gives good results on any taks they perform. Have you ever done something you haven't in years? It takes time to reaquire some, if not all, lost skill, which brings me to my point:
Yes, several times.
It usually takes between a couple minutes to a day depending on what before i'm back to trim.
My problem isn't skill decay over several years.
It's that it takes SECONDS for pawns to begin forgetting what they learned.
As in an example above, someone can forget what they learned that morning while sleeping the same night.
The what?
But anyway, i knew people and Tynan would like skill decay to be in, but it's far to aggressive at the moment.
Since it's impossible to get some skills high.
While f'ex construction easily go into the double digits, and fast.
Quote from: Klomster on July 24, 2018, 10:03:48 AM
Since it's impossible to get some skills high.
While f'ex construction easily go into the double digits, and fast.
I think this is evidence that it's unbalanced. I too usually wind up with at least one if not more pawns at level 20 in construction, but it's the only skill that I max out with regularity. Crafting/Art is probably possible if you keep them grinding things out. Combat skills are impossible to max.
Skill decay does add to the game. It's silly to have colonists build up to 20/20 in everything, but it doesn't really matter anyway. Pawns only have enough time to work one major job and maybe 2-3 minor tasks. When you give them dedicated jobs it's easy to reach 18+ skill in their profession, regardless of their traits.
Granted there is some imbalance between skill rates. Construction skill goes up CRAZY fast especially when working with the extended stone build times. Carpenters are always the first to hit level 20. Social skill seems hard to keep up past low teens, doctors are nearly impossible to train outside of war crimes, and cooks are painfully slow to learn. Shooting and melee are obviously the most difficult to train since you can't learn them outside of subjecting your pawn to unlimited scars, infections and chances to die. There needs to be more ways to learn skills without killing your pawns.
My biggest annoyances are that non passion grows too slowly and some traits hit the XP growth cap too quickly. Oh a carpenter is super passionate and a fast learner, that means you get 5000XP per day instead of 4000XP. Why even bother. Passion should play a role in XP skill caps and maybe decay rates. For example:
- Non passion learns at 80% but burns out early so he caps at 2000XP per day. Skill decay starts at lvl 7 so each level decays 3 tiers faster.
- Passionate keeps on learning up to 4000XP, with vanilla skill decay.
- Extreme learns at 120-150% and caps at 6000XP, and skill decay starts at level 13 so each level decays 3 tiers slower.
- Fast learner gives 1.3-1.5x learning rate and 50% more XP cap.
Something like that. This way all pawns can learn skills up to a decent level, but only passionate pawns can become experts.
Dunno.
There's lots of people who do jobs they don't like but get darn good at it IRL.
It would be odd that only people who really love something gets good at it. Sure, they will learn more swiftly and have fun doing it, but often they don't get unnaturally better, it has more to do with traits.
Even with no skill decay it would take such an astronomical time to reach so many 20s the entire colony will have either been annihilated, they left or have lived long enough there's an entirely new generation of colonists.
The need for a passion to learn at a decent speed is already reasonable and learning non passions take a good long time.
Only one that's easy to get 20 with having no skill decay is construction.
The easiest fix would probably set in a start time before the decay.
A day, a week, a month, something. Since the whole "I learned how to make better surgeries today, but since i went to sleep i forgot how to do it." is rather silly and having a simple start timer on decay would do a lot.
Random thought: What if it worked exactly like it does right now, but the game also remembers the maximum skill your pawn was at and THAT is the skill level of the pawn? So your surgeon won't unlearn how to do surgeries but doing one won't increase his actual level if his decayed level is too low.
Well if the idea is to make sure colonists don't end up with 19-20 in every or multiple skills, that would fail: you could just reach 20 then move onto the next.
Personally I'm a bit tired of hearing "Someone could invest hours of of micromanagement into this to game it so we're going to mess it up for the rest of you." I'm trying to meet them halfway.
There's a fancy way of doing this, but it requires an extra field for each skill.
It's fairly simple:
- The first layer is the main skill level. It grows when the skill is used, there is no decay.
- The second layer decays when the skill isn't used, and grows towards the first layer when the skill is used.
So if a pawn has been using other skills for some period, you'll need a bit of time to recover the original level.
I'm not sure if it's worth the effort, but it does seem to be intuitive.
My first thought is to tweek the decay delay. Especially for cooking. I agree they really shouldn't be forgetting how to cook seconds after leaving the stove.
But that really doesn't solve the issue with maintaining what Tynnan wants in preventing lvl 20 spam.
So, I have had an additional idea Ive had for other skill developing game types, but may be a bit complex...
Results based skill advancement:
- Any skill below 5 will grow while the pawn does the task, AND gain a single shot bonus growth after the task is complete if the task fails, succeeds, or succeeds with poor results.
- Any skill between 6 and 10 will grow while the pawn does the task, AND gain a single shot bonus growth after the task is complete if the task fails, or succeeds with poor results.
- Any skill between 11 and 15 will grow SLOWLY while the pawn does the task, AND gain a single shot bonus growth after the task is complete if the task FAILED.
- Any skill between 16 and 20 will NEVER grow while the pawn does the task, AND ONLY gain a single shot bonus growth after the task is complete if the task FAILED.
This will of course require rebalancing the growth rates to account for the single shot bonus growth that comes at task completion. And obviously wouldn't work for skills where failure is a REGULAR occurrence even at 15+ levels.
(I don't recall ever having a 15+ Warden, but recruitment is an example of a task that fails alot before succeeding even at higher levels in my experience)
The idea is that when the pawn is still a noob at a skill, they are learning the skill and knowledge from EVERYTHING they do. But as the pawn becomes better at it, advancement transitions from being about learning the basics, to practice, then honing the craft to perfection by catch what few mistake are left to be made.
Skill decay isn't bad, but some of the skill growth rates are definitely not balanced. Cooking skill is way too slow and construction skill is way too fast. The fault for the latter can be blamed on non passion being too crippling because Tynan wants constructors to be viable regardless of learning rate. The current 33% rate for non passion means it takes 3x longer to learn things. So in order for a non passion to learn construction and not completely break your starting game, the default XP rate needs to be ridiculous or they can't learn at all. Buff non passion and nerf construction XP at the same time.
Non passion shouldn't make a pawn full on retarded. Lacking passion simply means the pawn isn't interested in becoming good at a skill. XP caps can stifle skill growth, and decay rates can be modified to hit non passion harder. That way a non passion can still reach a viable 5-8 skill level without pulling your hair out. The learning rate shouldn't be any worse than 50%. Taking twice the time to learn PLUS the a skill decay that goes down to 7-8 means they'll probably never hit more than 13 skill at the absolute max. That's not unreasonable for making a pawn live and breathe something they don't like.
Currently a lack of passion is a stone's throw away from being completely incapable. It hits too hard IMO.
Quote from: 5thHorseman on July 25, 2018, 08:36:42 PM
Random thought: What if it worked exactly like it does right now, but the game also remembers the maximum skill your pawn was at and THAT is the skill level of the pawn? So your surgeon won't unlearn how to do surgeries but doing one won't increase his actual level if his decayed level is too low.
The idea isn't bad but doesn't really solve the problems.
Sure, it makes it so that one cannot randomly drop learnt levels, but the whole forgetting things is sort of still there.
And the problem of theoretically having 20 in all skills still persist.
But isn't a bad idea.
Personally i think giving a skill decay start limit is the main deal. Doesn't matter how long it is (Although an ingame hour minimum, preferably a day or week).
That way, one cannot "just" raise up all the skills to 20, which would still take a silly amount of time.
Quote from: AileTheAlien on July 23, 2018, 02:31:24 PM
...
Another thing to consider would be multiple skills; It should still be hard to have high skills in everything. I'm sure you could make up some formula, so that for a single skill, you could get to level 20, but for a handful of skills you could only get to around level 15, and for a lot of skills you'd be stuck around 10 or lower.
decay = c * (s(1)^2 + s(2)^2 + ... + s(n)^2 - s(i)^2)
Where c is a constant, s() is the list of skills, and i is the index of the skill under decay.
In words: Decay is proportional to the sum of the squares of all other skills.
Effect: If you have only one high skill, there's (virtually) no decay.
If you have a few high skills, there's decay.
You can't get many high skills, there would be too much decay.
It would probably take a lot of tweaking to implement this in a balanced way. :)
To be honest I think skill decay on any particular skill should slow down as the skill level gets higher. Other than that I think skill decay is fine. It encourages specialization.
If skill decay was reduced at high levels, you'd be able to get pawns to max level in multiple skills, which is definitely not specialized.
Quote from: Brainsample on July 26, 2018, 02:20:51 PM
Quote from: AileTheAlien on July 23, 2018, 02:31:24 PM
...
Another thing to consider would be multiple skills; It should still be hard to have high skills in everything. I'm sure you could make up some formula, so that for a single skill, you could get to level 20, but for a handful of skills you could only get to around level 15, and for a lot of skills you'd be stuck around 10 or lower.
decay = c * (s(1)^2 + s(2)^2 + ... + s(n)^2 - s(i)^2)
Where c is a constant, s() is the list of skills, and i is the index of the skill under decay.
In words: Decay is proportional to the sum of the squares of all other skills.
Effect: If you have only one high skill, there's (virtually) no decay.
If you have a few high skills, there's decay.
You can't get many high skills, there would be too much decay.
It would probably take a lot of tweaking to implement this in a balanced way. :)
This. Summed up much better than I could have.
I like the idea of decaying skill based on other skills, but what if perhaps it was simpler and your skills didn't decay unless you were advancing another skill?
Like, gaining 2xp in a skill removes 1xp from a random other skill? And maybe that ratio changes as you go so there is a maximum total xp pool you can reach and when you get to that maximum, getting 1xp in one skill removes 1xp from another skill?
Then determine what the maximum total xp should be, slap a formula around it, and bam. Then, at the lower levels you'd not lose any (or barely any) xp as you gain, but as you get more and more good at something you'll slowly lose the other skills, or if you maintain multiple skills it's a bit harder to keep them all up but you can do it, but not all the way to 20 (or even high teens) with them.
Quote from: 5thHorseman on July 26, 2018, 09:47:04 PM
...
Like, gaining 2xp in a skill removes 1xp from a random other skill? And maybe that ratio changes as you go so there is a maximum total xp pool you can reach and when you get to that maximum, getting 1xp in one skill removes 1xp from another skill?
...
Yes, ultimately it comes down to limiting the length of a n-dimensional vector (normalization).
If I'm not mistaken, the amount of xp you need for the next skill level grows quadratically.
So normalization would be equivalent to a maximum total xp pool.
just a +1 for OP.
a complicated rewrite of compromises is not necessary it's just a bad mechanic.
Skill decay for certain skills especially like medicine and social mean even though they may be the sole person doing this work in your settlement you will still never see one hit 20. On other pawns it's just annoying that your hunter/defender doesn't shoot a gun for x-amount of time and suddenly has lost his skill up.
I don't even think it is really going to affect balance, a skill of 14 instead of 15, for example, it is simply annoying.
I don't know why everyone is so focused on balancing things.
No pawn is gonna get high everything during a normal game, it would be hard even if one focused solely on skill leveling.
So i don't see the need for other skills to suffer when raising one, or to have the maximum amount of skills affect how fast one learns skills.
Raising skills is one of the few ways you can combat the vast amount of dangers present in rimworld and the longer you play the harder it gets since you try to improve your colony all the time thus raising its wealth.
Since it is hard to get new pawns, especially ones who are useful you are constantly outnumbered.
So i'd at least want to be able to get a skill advantage.
Right now one can't do that in combat stats(not in an ethical way at least) and enemies frequently spawn with more skill levels than sense.
Enemies with melee 18 isn't that uncommon.
While i can be happy if i got 12. And can never raise it really.
Plus the fact that in a colony, most will be useless in a fight since they either have like 4 in the combat stats, or are incapable.
I don't know how it is for others, but in my normal colonies, out of 8 pawns. 2 are battlers, 2 are eeeeh but can fight (and have to most of the encounters) in a pinch, the rest are pacifists or otherwise incapable of violence.
It always end up that way, roughly 50% of all pawns in rimworld are useless in combat.
That combined with not being able to raise combat skills become a real problem.
And i can't make a good defencive structure, since static defences are constantly nerfed.
That's the balance now.
And people keep going on how it would be 'OP' with lots of skills?
The colony is dead before one gets a single 20, and that's in construction.
YES, i am overreacting, but come on. I just want to have a high melee guy and not lose him because of skill decay, since i like melee.
The game basically don't want any high skills, everyone should just barely be able to do anything. I guess it adds 'drama', or it just promotes save scumming since my incompetent pawns keep getting eaten by snakes and squirrels.
I am not promoting that everyone should get 20 in stats easy, and i am not promoting that pawns should be 20 everything. If i'd want that i'd just always activate the maximise pawn skills cheat and just play the game like that. But i don't.
But at the moment, i can't improve the defence of my colony except through turrets and traps. Which are both being nerfed to 1.0.
So the feeling i'm getting is that our colonies should be destroyed, which i feel sad about because i like success stories, not constant fail stories.
Yes prevail through hardships and all that, but soon prevailing feels like an unattainable goal.
Quote from: Klomster on July 27, 2018, 05:28:25 AM
I don't know why everyone is so focused on balancing things.
My only concern is that the devs won't look at an idea that doesn't consider balancing them. I pretty much agree with you. If I put 30 hours into maxing out 4 skills on a pawn... how exactly is that OP?
Why does a pawn need any skills above level 10? High level skills are a luxury, not a requirement. Most of a colony can survive on level 5-8 skills, which is exactly where non passion skills should let you level up to. Currently non passion makes it too difficult to get even that.
Some skill ups aren't even meaningful. For example the difference between 95% and 96% accuracy doesn't matter. A lvl 20 anime-tier marksman will still hit cover 80% of the time and his shots get harmlessly deflected by armor just like everyone else.
Quote from: bobucles on July 27, 2018, 11:17:57 AM
Why does a pawn need any skills above level 10?
Uhhh... I don't know. Maybe because there are skill requirements for certain things like building and taming? Maybe because raising a skill makes the pawn work faster for jobs that require that skill? Compare this speed. A guy who is level 8 in researching is much much much slower (120 % of research speed) than a guy who is level 18 in researching (270 % faster research speed). This is because every point in intellectual skill a pawn gains +15% research speed.
A guy who is level 7 melee stands no chances against a guy with level 20 melee (the level 7 stands only a chance if he has a much better weapon than the level 20 guy for example a plastell gladius vs a steel knife/mace and even then he will get heavily injured)
A guy with construction of 8 will construct less quality objects and fail very often. A guy with construction level of 20 will construct maximum quality objects and almost never fail plus he will build things much faster as each point in construction skill speeds up his work by 15 %
A guy with cooking of level 8 will poison food more likely than a guy with level 20
Information straight from the wiki:
QuoteEach point decreases cooking time by 11%
Each point decreases butchering time by 10%
Each point increases meat and leather amount by 2.5%, up to a max. of 100%
And I don't agree with shooting too. The accuracy is counted PER TILE
Information straight from the wiki:
QuoteA colonist with shooting accuracy of 99% has a base accuracy of 72.5% against a target 32 tiles away.
With 98% accuracy, the base accuracy against the same target becomes only 52.4%.
See the huge difference?
Here is the rate of decay for each level in a table:
level decay
10 1
11 2
12 4
13 6
14 10
15 18
16 28
17 40
18 60
19 80
20 120
Suppose you have a pawn with all 12 skills at level 10. Such a pawn has 660,000 total xp, that's quite a lot. You can use the same amount of xp to make a specialist. The specialist would have two skills at level 20 and one skill at level 15. This table shows more combinations of skills with 660,000 total xp, and how much xp they lose by decay:
#levels remainder total decay
2 x 20 15 258
3 x 18 4 180
4 x 16 3 112
5 x 15 2 90
6 x 14 4 60
7 x 12 4 28
8 x 12 1 32
9 x 11 2 18
10 x 11 1 20
12 x 10 0 12
As you can see, the specialist loses xp 21.5 times faster than the Jack of all trades. Of course that's because the levels below 10 are protected, which is something we definitely want to keep.
___
All things considered, I think this would be an elegant solution:
- Use the current decay system as base value.
- Multiply the base value by a number between zero and one.
- The multiplier is zero when total xp is 265,000 or lower.
- The multiplier is one when total xp is 530,000 or higher.
- In between, the multiplier gradually rises in a linear way.
If a pawn has one skill at level 20 and all the rest is zero, there is no decay.
If the pawn has two skills at level 20 and all the rest is zero, there is maximum decay.
This would be easy to code, easy on the CPU, and fairly easy to explain on the wiki.
Tweaking wouldn't be too hard either, there are only two parameters to adjust.
Hmmm, and also: These two parameters could be a way to make skill decay moddable. :)
What about skills below 10? One of my problems with the current system (and your proposed change), is that all pawns eventually get to level 10 in every skill. That's a lot of usefulness, because pawns fail tasks a lot at levels below 10.
Quote from: AileTheAlien on July 29, 2018, 01:31:13 PM
What about skills below 10? One of my problems with the current system (and your proposed change), is that all pawns eventually get to level 10 in every skill. That's a lot of usefulness, because pawns fail tasks a lot at levels below 10.
That's yet another excellent point, but it would require a rewrite of the existing code.
I tried to make the smallest addition to the existing code, offering the most flexibility.
I like a lot of these suggestions. Especially any sort of training capabilities (target practice dummies, dojo areas, libraries, etc) for skills that are otherwise difficult to perform regularly.
I wouldn't seeing soft skill caps that are different for each pawn. Basically imagine a learning curve for each skill for each pawn. A hidden curve that could be any shape (but similar to a ease out cubic: https://easings.net/#easeOutCubic ) might be too complicated but would model things nicely. More simply you could just think of it as a max. You could get over your max, but that's when the decay would kick in, below your max the decay would either be delayed considerably or reduced (I prefer delayed).
By default pawns would cap out around 10-12, but you could get a rare few with caps of 20 making things very interesting if you find a 20 cap pawn with some bad traits.
If you have to use anything more fancy than the 4 basic operators +-*/ then it's probably too complicated. The system should be as simple and straight forward as possible while getting the intended mechanic across.
Giving pawns an arbitrary "brain space" will create extreme differences in pawns with incapable traits. Most pawns have modest skills across the board, so they will end up moderately bad at everything. Incapable pawns have a load of 0's so their few remaining skills will reach insane heights. I'm not sure that's a good thing but it would make for interesting colonies.
Squares and cubic equations are... no. Just stop. There's always a better way.
Skill growth gets messed up when traits hit the field. Passionate fast learning pawns keep hitting the XP cap so they end up learning at the same speed as everyone else. It's pretty silly.
Reading (skimming) over most of this thread again, it seems like there's a lot of different problems with skill-learning and skill-decay, but that the broad strokes of the system are not too bad. Let's see if I can accurately summarize this, and also propose some relatively small changes to the existing system...
Problems:
0. Game-balance is hard.
1. Fast skill decay on specialist / (formerly-)highly-skilled pawns feels bad.
2. Some skills are (trivially) easy to raise, while others are very time-consuming to raise.
3. Some skills have in-game, obvious ways to raise them, while others must be raised by methods that feel like cheats / exploits (or simply don't get raised by new players).
4. The maximum-experience-per-day mechanic feels bad. (If the player is sacrificing pawn mood or food to train skills...why not let them?)
Proposed Changes: (plus misc. thoughts / notes)
1. Balance the different skills that are out of whack. Make all balances assuming a pawn spending X hours per day / week, for any given skill. (All pawn specialties / game mechanics / player strategies should be equally viable.)
2. Add in training buildings for skills that don't already have some type of long-term, pawn-use building. (These might need to be weaker than "real" activity. Balance is assumed for this, and all later numbered points...) For example, cooking is already trained by the pawn cooking at a stove all day; A player should be able to have a pawn train at a shooting target, or practice medicine on a training dummy, rather than having them shoot at sleeping spots, and chop up pirate prisoners all day.
3. Remove the maximum-experience-per-day mechanic. This should be un-needed, since there's a maximum number of hours per day for pawns to train, and training rates, and experience for things like surgery, can be balanced.
4. Passions should affect skill decay speed, not just skill learning speed. (Or maybe just affect skill decay instead?) Passionate pawns could still learn skills quickly, but they wouldn't lose skills that they should be masters in.
5. Another balance-pass, to make sure the traits like Fast Learner and Great Memory still line up with the skills and passions. :)
I think this is a good summary.
For my own pet gripe, melee, and as you mention medicine is difficult to raise when it should be as simple as set up some simple training sessions.
For melee, sparring, or dummies. Medecine, corpses from animals and if one feels inclined, humans. (With some possible mood debuffs if one feels like it "I cut up a human just to learn how it ticks." -3mood or something.)
And if one as well as making every skill trainable in some way (doesn't need to be fast) combined with a one day decay timer, i think it would add up to a very good balance actually.
Since yes, i can train melee on a dummy. But that person is as said before "not doing anything productive" and adds very little to the colony in terms of construction and logistics. But it's being improved.
It's a tradeoff.
And as long as something is a tradeoff, it's usually not too imbalanced.
Perhaps a doctor could get a miniscule doctor xp when butchering animals? Or only to a certain level?
Perhaps we could add a glass floor mirror, where pawns can practice speaking ala sims?
Or an action "Practice discussions." Which trains social with a chance to insult, but it also builds friendship?
As long as there is something one can always do to train the skill so decay doesn't destroy the skills. Even if i'm ready to put this pawn into train melee only, there is no way for me to train it.
Apart from unethical ways, and i'm not going to beat up animals, heal them with medicine and then beat them up in a cycle to level my medic and my melee.
Since that is the only real way to train melee.
Shooting has hunting. But can't i hunt with the sword? Yes, but anything too small and i just one-shot it, gaining no xp.
Too big and suddenly it goes ape-shit mode, and every hunt my pawn is all beat up, risking body-part loss further risking them becoming useless or costly to fix.
I could have two of my pawns fistfight all day long, but they'd suffer tremendous wounds and actually not learn that much from it, since melee doesn't get much xp in my experience.
Overall, this is something i'd love Ludeon to add to the game.
I'm gonna figure out what skills can be trained. Methods marked with D means Difficult or exploity things or outright dangerous ones. ? for those i'm not sure about.
Shooting.
Combat D, Hunting (chance of danger), Horseshoes.
Melee.
Combat D, Fistfights D, Torturing D.
Social.
Trading D?, Prisoner interaction.
Animals.
Taming animals D, Training animals.
Medicine.
Wound treatment, Surgeries D, Evil surgeries D, Torture exploit D.
Cooking.
Making meals, Butchering?.
Construction.
Build stuff (super easy), Deconstruct stuff (one could even construct, deconstruct, repeat)
Growing.
Grow plants (nice safe and easy).
Mining.
Mining (Duh).
Artistic.
Make sculptures.
Crafting.
Make stuff, Cut stone blocks (very easy).
Research.
Chess table, Researching.
Do tell if i missed something.
As one can see, most activities have a nice and safe activity one can do to raise the skill.
The problems lie in melee, having no way to raise skills safely or ethically, medicine requiring your colony to be beat up to be able to level, which is something you don't want, surgeries are dangerous and often expensive or pointless and if done to poor prisoners will ruin your colony mood.
Social doesn't rise that much either, while construction and growing tend to get high rather fast since they are done so much.
So yeah, the skill leveling isn't too bad. But the decay is since often you can't do the task all the time, and as soon you stop, you lose xp.
Hard earned xp.
And as often is with melee, xp you are NEVER getting back.
Lots of discussions, but who are developing mods for fixing the issue ? If this is beyond the scope of mods and can only be fixed by developers are they planning to fix this issue?
Would be nice to see two or three different mods as options for players.
Some skills are very susceptible to power creep (research). Others are almost impossible to keep at high levels because you can't just (safely) use them at will (medicine, melee). Skill decay is a mechanic that punishes some sklls while balancing out others. The obvious solution is to vary skill decay depending on skill type.
Quote from: cultist on August 03, 2018, 12:56:38 PM
Some skills are very susceptible to power creep (research). Others are almost impossible to keep at high levels because you can't just (safely) use them at will (medicine, melee). Skill decay is a mechanic that punishes some sklls while balancing out others. The obvious solution is to vary skill decay depending on skill type.
That was the point of my previous posting... are solutions being created with mods or is a better improvement from developers only possible? I am sure some senior members know some modders. We need less talk and more action.
Quote from: NTJedi on August 03, 2018, 04:00:10 PM
... are solutions being created with mods or is a better improvement from developers only possible? I am sure some senior members know some modders. We need less talk and more action.
Actually, I think the all talk in this thread has been fruitful. :)
No, skill decay is currently not 'moddable', which in my opinion is a missed opportunity.
Many improvements in Rimworld started as a mod once.
Quote from: NTJedi on August 03, 2018, 04:00:10 PMare solutions being created with mods or is a better improvement from developers only possible?
This is possible to mod, but the only mods are for old versions of the game. See the Practice Target mod (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=724766205) which is older than B18, and the Misc Training mod (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=717575199&searchtext=misc), which works in B18 but not 1.0.
It would be relatively simple to make a broken-ish training building (which is the method I believe that the "Misc Training" mod, going by the comments; I could check...if I downgraded from 1.0, and I'm busy playing a game), by copying off of the billiards table. The way the billiards table / horseshoes / hoopstone ring buildigns work, is that pawns gain a specific skill while they gain recreation; That skill appears to just be an XML tag you can set, along with the experience amount. However, the reason that's not very good, is that you'd have a lot of stressed out pawns (or an over-powered recreation building), because they'd always be trying to raise their recreation with a building that doesn't raise recreation (assuming you balanced it for training).
EDIT:
(Originally had a large paragraph about how this would be hard to make a UI for.)
Another way to train skills (can't do with just XML, though, I think) would be to have crafting-bench-like objects, where you can get pawns to train. Other crafting benches can already raise skills, and recipes can be balanced by requiring resources or time. This is definitely do-able, I think, at least if you're comfortable making C# mods, or if we get some official XML tags/hooks in the base game. There's the Medical Dissection (https://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=40515.0) mod which shows how this could work. The bench uses bills, and pawns interact with it like other bill-able tables, so most of the game's existing UI / pawn-restrictions would work.
Quote from: cultist on August 03, 2018, 12:56:38 PM
Some skills are very susceptible to power creep (research). Others are almost impossible to keep at high levels because you can't just (safely) use them at will (medicine, melee). Skill decay is a mechanic that punishes some sklls while balancing out others. The obvious solution is to vary skill decay depending on skill type.
Varying skill decay is nice, but it doesn't solve the fact that once cannot train melee reasonably.
But it helps, so i'm all for varying skill decay. And of course varying skill gain. Depending on skill.
While i like having a super advanced builder because of the high stuff that he builds, it's silly easy to get hold of one so getting a good one to begin with as important as getting a burning passion builder and just use that one.
I'd like to see a floor tile type called "sparring mat" that melee pawns can go to for sparring time that would train melee. Brawlers and bloodlust could get a mood boost from it as a joy activity, too. Likewise, there should be shooting targets that could be used to establish a shooting range where pawns could train shooting.
The rate of skill gain is what would make this balanced because the time spent training is time the pawn can't do other tasks.
Got on my bike today ,was couple of months ago,if Tynan had his way I would have felt flat on my face.
"Yeah, I might be a bit rusty, but don't underestimate me. That deer is good as dead."
I think there should be a "mastery" factor that reduces slightly over time. If your mastery is at 100%, there is zero decay, but at 0% the decay proceeds like vanilla. It should also allow a higher "no decay" zone. Mastery basically is there as a proof that the pawn does have a long-term understanding of a skill, independent on mechanical capability to do it at the time. Mastery should also allow a pawn to get back up to speed faster.
This mechanic will obviously reduce the effectiveness of neurotrainers, but I think that should be okay. How I imagine is that neurotrainers are supposed to be supplementary to manual learning, not as a complete replacement.
Mastery reduces faster (from 100% to 0%) if a pawn has brain dysfunction.
The mastery idea is actually kinda cool.
Does this issue still exist?
Nothing's changed in the base game, so "yes", although it looks like the Misc. Training mod (https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=717575199&searchtext=misc) has been updated for 1.0. (Some quick searching shows that other mods that allow for training have been updated for 1.0 too, but they either only do combat skills, or have artwork that doesn't match the base game, so I'm only linking this one. :)
It's too bad this was never fixed.
Totally agree with OP.
Since we got EXP gain cap at 4000 point per day already (might be wrong in number :P ). The skill decay it's a bane to me.
IMO, skill decay shouldn't reduce colonist level that fast. They should just stay at 0 EXP on that level so that make them harder to climb on to the next level. Maybe make it decay faster if the colonist discard the skill for some time.
If the skill stay at 0 EXP for a long time, the level reduce :)