Best and worst skills in A16

[SpaceDorf]

That, and predators competing with you. Ponds would attract (polar) bears, seals. Ponds wouldn't regenerate fast enough to be worth building a base around. Fishes would be small animals, you'd need to catch a lot of them so to be cost effective you would have to build small fishing cabins around the map with temporary fish stockpiles. Also, you need some kind of bait. A colonist with low Animals skill would use too much food for bait because of more failed attempts.

Thats the same direction I was thinking and I also thought better skilled animal trainers could feed the fish population to raise them faster.

[J_Dawg_27]

I'm thinking Boom-Trout or a manhunter pack of flying fish.

[b0rsuk]

what about coasts?

Polar bears in longboats.

Also, you need some kind of bait. A colonist with low Animals skill would use too much food for bait because of more failed attempts.

This would compound the already existing serious problem of the animal skill - its useless at low levels but you can't train it up because...its useless at low levels

Just make it so every attempt trains, not every success. So you would initially spend grain or bugmeat or whatever to go fishing, but you would train Animals at the same time. Actually it would fix the low Animals problem. "Too much food" as in "too much food to be profitable". Early on, you lose money on tailoring or sculpting too.

I'm thinking Boom-Trout or a manhunter pack of flying fish.

Fishing ambushes could be a thing. Your dog attacked by a catfish, or your colonist by a tentaclerape monster.

[XeoNovaDan]

this sounds like something that should be on the 'we make horrible suggestions and come up with terrible ideas' thread

[zeidrich]

Worst: Melee.  Melee skill increases melee accuracy very marginally and nothing else.  Even ignoring issues with melee combat, the skill is kind of terrible.  You can actually raise it easily enough, it trains very quickly compared to shooting, but the accuracy benefit is too marginal.  Replacing it with an "Athletics" skill that both increased melee capability and movement speed might be good.  This would help out melee combat in general by letting them close in on range more easily, and give general utility to passionate "Athletic" characters.

Strongest: Crafting.  This skill does so much. Crafting, Tailoring, Drugs, Smithing, Smelting.  Everything trains it, and it affects quality of everything which is often a huge deal.

Favorite design: Growing.  The speed increase from having a good grower is quite noticeable.  Having a very strong grower is like having two weak growers, and the better your growing crew is generally, the faster you plant fields.  This is a bit different from other skills in that they're limited by other things.  For instance, 2 slow growers for most crops are as good as 1 strong grower, but 2 weak doctors aren't as good as 1 strong doctor, or 2 weak crafters aren't as good as 1 strong crafter.  It seems like it scales more fairly for the game.

Special mention: Handling.  Handling is fine for the most part, but a common issue is that you need a base level of skill before you can tame wild animals, and you have to tame wild animals to train it up.   I like it generally as a skill, but the threshold for many wild animals is just too high.  The pawn should at least be able to try with a 0.5% chance when his skill is too low rather than flat out not be allowed. 

I feel similarly about any other skill that has hard skill level requirement to do.  Like planting medicine or devilstrand, or crafting medicine.  The requirements of doctoring and crafting on medicine for instance are very awkward.  I'd rather see a critical failure or something.  Chance to lose the materials, or in planting a failure to plant properly that isn't noticed until the plant dies in a few days, or has an extra long growing time.

[PetWolverine]

I'm thinking Boom-Trout or a manhunter pack of flying fish.

Carp. If there's going to be a dangerous fish, it has to be carp. (Dwarf Fortress reference.)

[SpaceDorf]

I'm thinking Boom-Trout or a manhunter pack of flying fish.

Carp. If there's going to be a dangerous fish, it has to be carp. (Dwarf Fortress reference.)

I would actually prefer the boom-trout .. or boom-crab for the rimworld touch.
Rimworld is not yet ready for carp .. it's still in the elephant phase


Crap .. someone mod this please -- > boom-crabs
a mixture between boomrat and the elder scrolls mudcrab.
The ultimate IED.

Lets Make Colonists Afraid Again !!

[Pathing]

Construction - Important since construction will be used until the end of the game.

Growing - not important. I always use hydroponic basins. When I need to grow something, I command all colonists to do it.

Medicine - not important. I use glitter world medicine on serious cases. There are many ways not to take any damage at all in rimworld.

Cooking - I always use nutrient paste dispenser. This skill is useless to me.

Crafting - important. Crafting for colonists and money is always a full-time job.

Shooting - not important. My colonists shoot randomly at endless hordes of enemies. Accuracy is not an important factor here. If ones miss, others will get shot, thus, they rarely miss.

Mining - not important. I always have nothing left to mine for 90+% of my play time in 1 colony.

Research - BEAST! It is very important especially on boundary condition scenarios. The ability to access all technologies is crucial which will decide life & death.

Social - not important. If you do not have goods, you can not sell it and I mass-product goods like China...

Animal - not important. My pawns are always better than 1 animal. I would prefer 100 colonists to 100 chickens.

Melee - not important. In contrary, I want to keep this low to avoid dying from using fists.

Art - important. Money is important so Art is important.

[MisterSpock]

I group the skills as follow:

Early game needed: Growing/Mining/Building (this allow you to set food in RW)
Secondary skills: Researching/Social (getting more pawns and hydroponics/gunturrets is important)
Lategame skills: Crafting/Cooking (increases mood and gives you better gear)

[b0rsuk]

Another idea for Social:

Traits are hidden. They get revealed over time after the colonist joins you. This would prevent the formulaic, knee-jerk reactions like "depressive = don't recruit". Prisoners and fresh recruits wouldn't display traits. Not only that, they would deliberately "act normal" to avoid detection.

Traits could be detected using Social skill during the recruitment process (also called "chatting with the prisoner"). Currently it's beneficial to recruit prisoners as fast as possible. But leaving a prisoner on "friendly chat" for longer would give an increased chance to detect his traits, because there would be more Social checks.