[Feedback] Dev Diary: Science System Update!

[Tripi]

Surely this is not the thread to continue discussing the costs of science skills.
We've known about the escalating cost of book production for quite a while and that topic has been discussed at length elsewhere (as linked by various prior posters).

As to the Explorer Science Skills:
Looks like the skills and/or descriptive needs a bit of polishing... or are there really 2 skills to increase chance of Titanium Ore and another to increase amount of it?

Mostly I am reserving my judgment until I see the actual tree (and perhaps a re-writing of the skill effects).

I do wonder though if Bean-A-Colada might be a better way of getting magic beans (no bean smiley found) than throwing a load of troops at a fairy tale adventure...

[Thejollyone]

I think the whole point of this venture is not guided as to how fast one may be able to upgrade any specialist, but rather, in the long run, will you want to?

Those of us in the game already will have queries and moans and groans about it, but in a year's time, the newer players will wonder what on earth we were moaning about as it will already be part of their structure

In the interim, what we can do is to clarify exactly how much this will cost them resource-wise

[Ironbobi]

ehhh... the skills will need a lot of work as i see it now half of them is just some random stuff

[Orreke]

This feels rather unthought-of. I'll take myself as an example to explain my issues with these skill improvements.
I currently have 3 slow and 10 fast explorers. They are all on 24 hour schedules so I only have go and send the whole bunch once a day.
If I shorten the time for an explorer he might come back early, probably 10/20/30% time reduction as with geo's, but what's the point? I wouldn't be around to send it away again anyway and if I would I'd still have to wait for the rest of the bunch. Any books spend on less then 24 hour missions are useless because I don't use them and probably most high levels don't. And everybody turns 50 at some point. Maybe if the search times were halved so you can use them on your slow explorers those skills might be useful there. But I highly doubt it will be implemented like that.
So for any fast explorer that would leave extra map fragments, double adventure chance and bean-a-colada useful. Simply put, not worth the investment and time at all. I like the geo skills but these seem rather pointless. I fear the generals won't be much better so that leaves the economy to wait for.

[Hairy]

How about fixing the problems with the geo skills before bringing in new skills for explorers?

I wanted a geo who was a total marble specialist. It turns out that instead of specialising specialists, we have to be very careful to generalise them instead.
"Find 2 deposits in 1 go" is the most useless *cough* "skill" ever. Despite being a bronze level skill, it wipes out the later silver level "find 24% bigger depos", and gives a 24% chance of finding no deposits at all if there's only 1 deposit left to find.

I now have to reset my marble specialist's skill tree to get rid of the 2 for 1 disaster.


Is there any chance of explorers being specialised to have LESS chance of finding saltpeter & titanium ore..?

[Old___Boy]

Is there any chance of explorers being specialised to have LESS chance of finding saltpeter & titanium ore..?

I'd definitely go for that one! *lol*

[Dorotheus]

Stage 1 science addressed our mines and quarries to that end what we got was quite well balanced for copper, iron, coal, gold, stones, marble. The Island science stage presumably will address pinewood, hardwood, fish, meat. This leaves the raw resources which can only be found by explorers, these are exoticwood, granite, saltpeter & titanium. As it stands for these 4 resource's stage 2 is not balanced. As it stands you are going to have a lot of unhappy level 30+ players.

[Hairy]

I'd like to congratulate BB on giving us 7 utterly useless buildings.

It's quite obvious that the manatees¹ who invented the science system have never actually played Settlers Online, and have absolutely no idea of what players want.

Going on the assumption that BB have done the usual thing & released new content before any form of intelligence has thought it through, and that at some point in the future they'll realise & perform some hideous kludge refunding all books to be used subsequently in a thought-out science system, it seems the best possible thing to do with our books right now, is absolutely nothing.

¹see South Park, season 10, episode 4, "Cartoon Wars Part II"

[Old___Boy]

if this is what we can expect (I know some work still to be done on it), but initially, very disappointing, God only knows how the General science tree will look!

[King-Fero]

God only knows how the General science tree will look!

Haha let's see...

-Increased damage for longbowmen (yet less that crossbowmen do)
-Increased hit points for cannoneers (who should not get hit in the first place)
-First strike ability to general (to wipe out ever-so-significant 1 unit from enemy lines)
-At least one skill that actually worsens the battle's outcome
-A bugged skill that causes the general get intercepted to a blocked camp, making everyone have to reset their vet's skill tree to 0
-And a ton of chance-based incremental improvements that will give a world-class headache to any combat simulator host

Can't wait to get it!