My problem with skill decay.

Started by Klomster, July 23, 2018, 03:22:37 AM

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Klomster

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.

pablo603

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.

Lightzy

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.

5thHorseman

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.
Toolboxifier - Soil Clarifier
I never got how pawns in the game could have such insanely bad reactions to such mundane things.
Then I came to the forums.

mcduff

I had no idea it was that brutal! Is that the same across all difficulties or is it tuned higher in different circumstances?

Serenity

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

5thHorseman

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.
Toolboxifier - Soil Clarifier
I never got how pawns in the game could have such insanely bad reactions to such mundane things.
Then I came to the forums.

Ser Kitteh

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!

AileTheAlien

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.

pablo603

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.

Planetfall

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
Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.
_Carl Sagan_

NTJedi

Is there a mod which nerfs the skill decay?  Seems like the game is unbalanced with this skill decay.

Klomster

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.

Koek

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 :)

Bolgfred

#14
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
"The earth has only been lent to us,
but no one has said anything about returning."
-J.R. Van Devil