Skills

[NiteHawk]

Now, skills. Skills can make you better overall by increasing your ship performance or something similar. You'll probably get something like 2 skills (Definable) per rank. Now I'm not sure if they should be only passive skills to prevent the game from being to cheesy or not.

Passive skills are skills that can't be used, but they grant a bonus to your ship. For example, 2% extra weapon damage. Passive skills are generally 'small' boosts.
Active skills are skills you USE, and they remain for a small duration. For example, repair 500 shields instantly, and can be used every 5 minutes. There larger boosts but again, only last for a little while or are instant.


The thing is, I don't want to make the game too cheesy, so I might throw out 'active skills' and just keep passive skills. What does everyone think on this one?

Some passive skills:
2% extra weapon damage.
5% extra shields capacity.
10% extra ship speed
5% extra power capacity.
2% extra power regeneration speed.


Some active skills, if I DO include this, would be:
15% extra weapon damage for 10 seconds, can be used every 2 minutes.
25% extra shield regeneration for 20 seconds, can be used every 5 minutes.
Become invisible on the radar for 30 seconds, can be used every 5 minutes.


Etc. They are just ideas though. I would also think with passive skills, you can use purchase the same one X amount of times, for example, you can get 2% extra weapon damage 5 times, for a total of 10%. It would be mainly better if we did do something like that, that we don't use active skills. Would also be messy to do overall since we don't have much key slots left. Some could possibly be unlocked only after certain medals or a certain rank has been met, but I'm not sure yet.

So to make it easy for everyone to answer, the questions I'm asking:

1. Do you want skills in game?
2. Passive skills only to prevent the game from becoming to unrealistic? Passive would be more realistic, kind of like gaining 'knowledge' or 'experience'.
3. Should you be able to stack certain skills up to X amount? (definable)
4. If you do want active skills, how should they be handled?
5. Anything else skills should do, that you can think of?

[Conker-]

1. Do you want skills in game?
yes. More strats.

2. Passive skills only to prevent the game from becoming to unrealistic? Passive would be more realistic, kind of like gaining 'knowledge' or 'experience'.
No, but don't let skill ''overpower'' someone. Maybe make brain implants (eve like) to add some skills to (again, not to overpower someone).

3. Should you be able to stack certain skills up to X amount? (definable)
Yes.

4. If you do want active skills, how should they be handled?
With every rank a passive skill (upgrade) and with every rank an option to buy/learn (better) active skills which can be lost upon dying.

5. Anything else skills should do, that you can think of?
Can't think of anything atm, maybe in a few hours when the coffee kicks in 

[ChillFactor]

LOL, just read this after medals... Get medals, unlock special skills, but to avoid cheesy-ness make them depending on the current ranks, so If someone on Lieutenant commander unlocks silver combat medal they get like a 5% more dmg on weapons. Some one on a higher rank gets 10% faster shield regen.

[NiteHawk]

I agree about making sure it doesn't 'overpower' people. But implants in this game is a bad idea merely because Eve Online involves not dying for days and is a MMORPG, while our game is mainly more arcade like where you blow up quite often, or at least a few times a day.

Brent and Mars also went on the passive skills only, which I agree with fully, so that's how I'm going to base this, if I am to doing it to prevent too much of a silly change of SF. This should avoid the cheesyness and we don't have to worry about the mess with active skills too. But you have to be careful though about locking skills between ranks because if you allow lets say a deity to get powerful skills, then the cadet is going to get rocked. It needs to be beneficial, but not to the point where its impossible to fight one if your skills are equal.

I suppose we can also allow people to reset there skill points, but in return, you need something crazy for credits to achieve this, like 500mil (half the maximum credits). Future wise you don't have to worry about people exploiting credits

[warfighter67]

How about Skill Points every 'rank'? Say you get 10 skill points per rank and then choose from a wide list of skills. Some of those include...

Piloting - (maybe make higher end ships require a certain piloting skill) Also, adds 10% hull space (volume), 10% speed increase, -3% ship weight loss, etc.

Weaponry - +10% damage and +10% rate of fire (or, in reverse, -5% weapon reload), and +10% range. Also, -1% weapons space (how much volume they take up)

Defense Ops - +10% shields, +10% regeneration, -1% shield space

Offense Ops - +5% weapon damage, +10% power, +10% power regeneration, -1% power/energy space

Covert Ops - +10% cloak duration time, +10% sensor range, -1% cloak space

Support Ops - +10% weapon ammo, +10% tractor range, +10% tractor power, +10% volume

Lightspeed Ops - +10% speed, +10% engine power, -3% total weight, +10% Qdrive speed, +5% Qdrive max weight limit, +10% acceleration

ALL SKILLS have a max of 20. The OPS skills skill points go up by n+1 (i.e. level 1 takes 1 skill point, 2 takes 2 sp, 3 takes 3, etc, etc). All other skills take 2 skill points each level.

Those are the only skill ideas that come to mind so far. I KNOW you're saying "WTFFF OMG SO BROKEN... I COULD GET ALL THOSE SKILLS AND UBER WTF PWNT EVERYTHING!!" Well, if you think about it, in a normal game mode, you get like what, 140 skill points total, after a long while? That's enough to almost max ONE skill, but due to the way the OPS skills increase, it would be probably better to diversify.

THIS IS ALL JUST A ROUGH DRAFT. Things are subject to change and values are just placeholders so it makes sense.