grävling - my character left the tunnels with 5 AP, choosing to spend his XP elsewhere. I am a little worried about suggestions that would keep you in the tunnels too long and possibly cause the situation we are discussing in "Serious Problems" thread. I will make sure that the AP equation is shown to the characters and they are encouraged to raise it by more than one story character.
I think that aarnonius got into his problems because the only piece of advice he got in the tutorial was to put xp into negotiation. So he did that. If I were designing the tutorial I wouldn't have any negotiation missions at all. I think that baby CKs should be told that negotiation and threaten and electronics and hacking are all nice skills to have --but should not be your priority right now because you desperately need AP and athletics.
Indeed, I can write such a text.
Stick this in as part of Mallor's text about resting up before going on the mission to the Vault:
Mallor: And train Attributes and Skills while you are resting!
Me: Mallor, what should I train?
Mallor: That's an intelligent question. You should train Athletics, Dexterity, Perception and Intelligence. Do you know why?
Me: Not really.
Mallor: The key to success as a soldier is mobility. And mobility comes in two parts. The first part is how far you can move every move turn. That's how large the green region surrounding you is on your move turn.
Me: And that is determined by Athletics.
Mallor: Correct, son. You get one more squares' worth of movement for every point of athletics. Up to a maximum of 8. You can increase your athletics beyond 8, but you won't get any more movement squares when you do.
Me: Athletics of 8. So I should just keep putting all my experience into Athletics?
Mallor: That would be foolish. First of all, Athletics is one of the skills that is determined by Strength. So this means that if your Athletics is higher than your Strength, instead of costing 1 XP for every point of your new Athletics rating, it will cost 2 XP points. And if your Athletics is significantly higher, it will cost 3 XP.
Me: This seems very confusing.
Mallor: Try putting some points in Intelligence, son. It's really not that hard to understand. Let us say you have a Strength of 4 and an Athletics of 3. You want to increase your Athletics to 4. Since your desired Athletics is less than your current Strength, the Attribute it depends on, this will cost you -- 4 XP, because 4 is the numerical rating of the skill you want -- Athletics 4.
Mallor: But let us say that your Strength was instead 3, your Athletics was still 3, and again you want to increase your Athletics to 4. Because your desired Athletics rating is higher than your current Strength Attribute score, but not
twice your current Strength Attribute Score, it will cost you 8 XP. 2 times the numerical rating of the skill you want.
Mallor: And if you were a spineless coward with a Strength of 1? And again you wanted an Athletics of 4? That would cost you 12XP, 3 times the numerical rating of the skill you want. And it doesn't get any worse than that.
Me: So that means if I want to increase my Skills, I should first increase the Attributes that they depend upon, so that training them will be cheaper.
Mallor: Now you are thinking like a smart soldier.
Me: You said that I should train Dexterity, Intelligence and Perception. But Mercer said that I should train Negotiation.
Mallor: Max Mercer spends his whole life with his skinny ass parked behind a desk, arguing Mars Corporate Cyber Policy with all the other Mars Cyber Logicians. Then, for excitement, he gets to do the whole thing all over again with Senior Mars Executive Staff. So,
of course, he thinks that the Negotiate Skill is just the bees knees. He'd sell his soul for 3 more points of it - indeed, it is common knowlege that with the implants he is packing,
he already has. But I'm warnng you, son, the cemetaries are full of Cyber Knights who discovered, too late, that there is only one way to Negotiate with a dog that is trying to kill you --
BANG! BANG!Me: So I should increase my combat skills. Firearms and Brawling and ...
Mallor: Well, I am never going to tell you that is
wrong to do so. It's just not always your wisest move. Most new CyberKnights need to increase their Intelligence, Perception and Dexterity more than they need to improve their pathetic combat skills. Remember how I said that mobility is the key to everything?
Me: I do.
Mallor: Well, the second aspect of mobility, beyond Athletics, is your action point (AP) total. Athletics determines how far you can move in a move turn. AP determines
how many move turns you get in a round. Each full move turn costs 3 AP, so to move your maximum distance twice, you will need 6 AP. And until you have a half-way decent score in AP, you should consider all those other skills as non-essential. Remember, corpses don't negotiate very well, and are exceptionally poor at opening locked doors -- har har!
Me: So how do I increase my AP?
Mallor: Don't you listen? I told you already. By increasing your Dexterity, Intelligence and Perception. For every point you have in those three, you get half-an-AP beyond your base allotment of 3.
Me: Half-an-AP?
Mallor: It's just an expression. You cannot really get half of an AP -- it rounds down. So what you do is total your DEX, INT, and PER attributes, divide that sum by 2, (rounding down if necessary) and then add 3. That's your AP allotment for a round. Unless you have Cybernetic AP enhancement (those are implants, son) or chemical assistance -- that AP score is all you are going to get to use, each round.
Me: Chemical assistance?
Mallor: Stims, son. If your MP is 10 or above you will get a randomly determined number of extra APs, between 0 and 2 each round. So always bring plenty of stims and jack yourself up to the roof of the dome before beginning combat. That's smart.
Me: I'll remember that. So I need to rest, train, buy plenty of stims, and come back here to report for duty. Correct?
Mallor: Exactly, solider. Dismissed.
