Studying skills

[Psyckosama]

Right now, Research is pretty much useless late game. As are the tables. One idea I had would be to make it so you can STUDY different skills.

Basically you can assign a topic of research that will give someone XP in another skill. For example, assign someone to research cooking. Which would basically be "Sit your ass down and read cookbooks until you know better". The better they are at researching (better at reading ad retaining) the faster they'd complete the studying and the faster they'd learn.

[finicu]

That would be cool!  AMAZING

[nils]

Making research useful again is a good idea, but not sure about studying. At least not without checks. You'd just end up with maxed out characters eventually.

One alternative or change to your idea that might balance it is that you basically need two characters, one who has the skill and one who learns it from him. Both can't work while they train each other. Another option is that you'd need to get those "cookbooks" from a merchant first, and they are limited in how much they can train (say, a max level in the skill). Or the tribal visitors could serve as a trainer, which would have the added bonus of making them more useful than they are now.

Researching should NOT influence learning ability, btw, since characters already have stats (the little flame, enthusiasm or whatever it's called) for each skill which reflects their desire to learn it.

[Mystic]

One alternative or change to your idea that might balance it is that you basically need two characters, one who has the skill and one who learns it from him. Both can't work while they train each other.

I like this.  A few modifications I might suggest are that the one colonist must be assigned to do nothing except train the other as the latter is actually working at tasks (any task - no specific one need be selected), and for as long as that training is occurring, the effect is to increase (double?) the rate at which the working colonist acquires experience in the skill(s) associated with that task.  The limitation would be that the full, doubled rate only is applied until the trained worker has reached a level within, say, about four or five levels of the trainer in that same skill ... thereafter the training multiplier ramps down until there is no benefit at all once the trained colonist is within two or three levels of the trainer.  (The rate of training benefit could also be influenced somewhat by the social skill of the trainer and the research skill, i.e., intellectual capability, of the trainee, if some additional variance is desired.)

E.g., say that a trainer has a cooking skill of 12 and a mining skill of 6.  He/she is assigned to train another colonist with a cooking skill of 4 and a mining skill of 5.  The trained colonist is then assigned to cooking, and the "trainer" simply follows them around and talks to them as they work.  The trained colonist starts accumulating cooking skill at a doubled rate ... but then the current cooking bill is fulfilled and the trained colonist briefly goes off to do some mining instead, while the "trainer" remains assigned to him and follows him.  If the trainer had a higher mining skill (say, 8 or above), then the trained colonist could also accumulate mining skill at a higher rate by virtue of the trainer that is assigned to them ... but since the trainer's mining skill is only 6, the trained colonist gains no benefit from this training.  But when another cooking bill is submitted and the trained colonist returns to cooking (with trainer in tow), he/she once again starts getting that training benefit to the cooking skill, at least until the trainee's cooking skill reaches something around level 7 or 8 or so, at which point the training bonus quickly begins to decrease until it vanishes entirely a couple of levels below the trainer's cooking skill level.

I think this offers the following benefits: it prevents maximizing all of the colonists because it depends upon already having another colonist with the knowledge to do the training; it requires the trained colonist to be doing the work at their lower level for a while; it keeps the trainer from doing any work at all other than training during that period (so you are effectively paying a price for the future betterment of your other colonist); and finally, the training benefit is capped before the trained colonist reaches the equivalent level of the trainer (so attempting to train every colonist to the top level in every category would be quite impossible).

[Matthiasagreen]

this mod has something similar.

http://ludeon.com/forums/index.php?topic=5450.0

you have to have a person with a level 15 or more of the skill. They create an item that can be used my others to level up that skill. It has been integrated into superior crafting, so I don't know how much attention is given to the standalone.