as per this as I thought it warranted its own thread:

Talvieno wrote: I need to work on general knowledge rules so you can only have a limited number of boosts per character, with the number dependent on your GK. Don't want it to be too many, but don't want it to be too limiting either. GK's primary strength is in giving extra boosts. I may even pre-define a ton of "abilities" you can unlock with general knowledge, depending on your level... but that would be an absolute ton of work, even if the idea itself sounds very cool. We'll see. Depends on if people like the idea. If people do, it may be the start of a major addition to the game.

I like the idea of having a set of abilities to "choose" from, as it might make it easier for people to use their general knowledge. (it's hard to use.) As long as we still get to be creative outside that system, cause that's fun.
Don't agree at all with the cap on boosts though, for several reasons.

• GK is already hardly used by the people that have it and hard to use, it doesn't exactly need what amounts to a nerf. If it ain't broken, don't fix it
• Most of the boosts we gain are very situational (weak points on a HAMMER, morse code, piloting a frigate) and capping the amount of boosts would prevent people for using GK for specific situations out of fear of reaching their cap, which takes away a lot of the fun of using it.
• I tried to "abuse" the system the latter half of last mission by using it each turn, and I don't really think it made me OP.
• Your fear is that people will get OP by eventually getting boosts for all the things. I think there are better ways of preventing that, without capping:
  • Boosts cannot stack. Knowing 50 martial arts doesn't help you more than knowing one, except that you're awesome (flavour), since you can only use one at a time.
  • Be careful with the kind of boost you assign if it's not a situation-specific one. You've done that very well so far - my parkour only work if I play in my own, Dino-y way, and only for unarmed combat or traversal. Foreigner's Tatketsai only works in unarmed combat and if he didn't initiate the fight. If you do it that way (instead of "+1 to all rifle rolls" or something) the GK abilities are more "extra tools" for the player than they are flat boosts. i.e. you don't become OP, you just have more ways of doing things, but they require some creativity.

Thoughts?

I find that a fair system in all honesty, in fact you could make a background based gk skill for characters just to add flavour and make backstory more relevant. Using Kalah as an example, she was both a criminal and a cadet at one point. Meaning she would probably know how to hotwire a ship that's not her own, or a good idea of when someone is lying/hiding something due to so many deals and double deals that she had to make, or hell, she might know something about making pipe bombs from home chemicals, endless possibilities that you could choose to either assign them, or make the creator choose between one or another.

Wouldn't be that hard to keep track of really. Squad 1 walks into a lab and while Cha0zz goes about collecting samples I'd probably write something along the lines of;
based on her past as a criminal, Kalah looks around to see if she can't find anything to make a home bomb that she'll leave as a present for any enemies that come after them

All in all I'm just for the set bonuses due to the extra flavor it adds based of backstories

You have -1 GK, however

Indeed So I'm not likely at all to get a passive bonus, for those who do have a reasonable GK it could be applied though yes?

I like that. Making them specific to certain situations DOES make them more useful but someone will have to remember to keep track of this. I tend to be bad at remembering these things, so I'd probably make a file for REKT that I keep open.

We keep a list of them on each character's wiki page (the ones that are useful more than once, at least), so no worries there

For science, I made a list of all my GK usages last mission:

Before mission: remember if I know how to fly a frigate (success, very useful for that mission)
Turn 4: try to find something interesting in the shieldmaiden’s controls (succes, found afterburner and power routing, not sure if that ever came in useful though)
((not sure if that was GK or perception))
Turn 9: try to remember if I know parkour (success, AWESOME)
Turn 10: try to remember if I know the weak spots of a HAMMER (success, think that was used once or twice after)
Turn 11: I try to remember if I have previous practice with picking up moving stuff with my ship (failure)
Turn 12: Try to remember if I know how to fire a plasma streamer. (success, not that I ever hit anything with it except for the boarbear )
Turn 14: if one of [the enemies] has [a weapon] I don't have yet (preferably a melee weapon), take it and try to figure out if I can use it. (situation never came up)
Turn 15: I try to remember whether I recognise the beast, and if I do, what its weak spots are. (failure)
Turn 17: If one of the enemies has one of those nice plasma batons and/or plasma bomb launcher, steal it if I can do so somewhat safely at some point and try to remember if know how to use it. (situation never came up)
and then I died

If we then look at usefulness in the future:

Frigate piloting: only if we come upon a boardable frigate/corvette again
Shieldmaiden controls: probably not unless we come upon another shieldmaiden
Parkour: universally usable in infantry, very very in-char and cool
HAMMER weak spots: not unless we come upon other HAMMERs, at which point we might have all forgotten I knew this
Plasma Streamer: useless as it's now Tartarus equipment

So, even with very frequent use I only got 1 universally useful boost from an entire mission.

I generally agree with Dino. Make it more situational and no nerfs pls

I got Morse Code in the first mission, piloting a frigate and a HAMMER in the second. Morse code was very situational and might not come up again since we have unlocked comms now; piloting stuff came in really handy (was essential, in fact), but it will be useless for missions with no ships to board.

And I got a martial art during my Tartarus brawl; yeah, it's useful on Tartarus where people can attack me without weapons and where I don't have weapons; I'm not sure such a situation ever comes during a mission. I mean, if you're reduced to hand-to-hand combat in a gunfight there must be something deeply wrong with the way you fought before :V

I'll totally roll GK for iaido or iaijitsu, though. A bonus on drawing the sword when attacked would come in handy, even though it won't be decisive

Mixing in a kick or punch in armed melee combat can be useful (like when I kicked that Mimir merc out of cover last mission) but it depends on the situation and needs some player creativity, which is, imo, a good thing.

Things I got out of it:

• Knows where to find potentiometers in the hacking systems and the resistors are that change radio frequencies in the transmitters/receivers..
• The XRD on the PDA
• Fail: frigate-flying
• Fail: morse-code

The first one is probably only useful if I ever plan on tinkering with the hacking system or looting it for parts.
The second one is generally useful but only for a character that has good robotics

((I feel like I'm underusing it >.>))

You forgot the Rubber Ducky
In all seriousness, you didn't use yours a lot last mission.

Dinosawer wrote:You forgot the Rubber Ducky
In all seriousness, you didn't use yours a lot last mission.

I read the manual for that for a whole turn, no knowledge roll :V

Okay, so I have learned from this topic to try it occasionally and maybe I'll get something good out of it, but to not be disappointed if I don't.

Yup. Well, you get something useful most of the time (if your roll succeeds), but generally it's only useful once.
However, sometimes a +1 to that one roll is all you need

Cha0zz wrote:Things I got out of it:

• Knows where to find potentiometers in the hacking systems and the resistors are that change radio frequencies in the transmitters/receivers..

My engineering sense screams in pain :V

But then, realistic systems are at best software hackable, makes for less fun :V