Skill Gaining Mechanics. (Discuss)

[DirtSensei]

Alright, I have been trying to find the way to get the most skill ups with the least amount of money. A couple theorys coming to mind while seeing the skill gains, Which mob I attack, Weapon I use, Shots used, SiB, Etc.

I've gone through a couple things, I've heard if I use an ammo eating weapon with bad durability the game would compensate with skill gains.



I've done a test with a CB5 firing 200 shots, gained 7 BLP weaponry tech and 8 rifle. (Points not green texts) No more SiB active.

Than I fired a B.A.M.F3 200 shots to get 8 BLP weaponry tech and 11 rifle. (Points not green texts) SiB Still active.

The B.A.M takes 3 times as many bullets, so I feel as if there is no compensation here.



I've also tested attacking Punys vs Argo youngs with the same weapon, and the Punys seemingly gave me way more skill but when I first tested this, I was registering the green text and not points...



Can someone shed some light on these skilling thoerys and methods for me? I am currently understanding that Using the weakest weapon that can fire the most amount of times (ISISCB5) against the smallest mob in the game (PUNYS) will give me the most skill gains, though I've been this this was wrong a couple times, the data tells me otherwise.

Discuss.

 

[Phil Surtees]

AFAIK, skill gains come from performing actions, and are not influenced by how much that action costs you.
Skill gains can only slow down as you progress, that's just the way it works since the skill nerf many years ago.
So the more you skill, the more times you must perform the skilling action to get a skill gain.
So: Do the cheapest action in the profession you want skills in, and do it a LOT.
You can search the forum and find charts detailing the declining skill gains vs level

 

[wizzszz]

200 shots = nothing

Repeat both tests 1000 times and do not compare skill points but volume TT ESI (plenty of tools out there for the conversion) - then you may have some comparable results.
(And ofc you should take decay into account, too)


But you are not the first to test this - skill gains are roughly proportional to TT spent - small samples give all kinds of misleading results: skill gains come in waves and may differ a lot over time.

 

[Coop_]

There are different systems for different activities:

Mining: gains are stronly related to ped spent. Add an amp that doubles your per/drop cost and double your gains.
Crafting: combination of # clicks and cost/click. Doubling your cost/click increases your gains, but doesn't double them.
Hunting: relevant factors are the size of the weapon, and the number of kills. Higher weapons give skills faster, and getting more kills gives you more "kill skill bonuses" which greatly impact your skilling speed.

As wizzszz mentioned, skillgains are "dynamic" so you'd need much longer tests to see what's actually going on.

 

[Hijacker27]

There's two part to skill gains in hunting.

One is the PED expendature, you could get skills from just shooting into the air.

The second is the action, such as the mob you're killing. You'll get more skills by killing a higher level creature, but they'll also cost a lot more. In the end, the lower hp mobs give more skills per PED spent, so I'd suggest sticking with those. For reference I did an extensive test of this with rockets on merp and drones, which can be found ---> https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/...-vs-Non-SIB-skill-gains-with-a-V-rex-2000-SGA

 

[Coop_]

There's two part to skill gains in hunting.

One is the PED expendature, you could get skills from just shooting into the air.

Only with grenades and rockets, right? Don't think I've gotten a skillgain from shooting air with pistol (yes, it does happen, usually from forgetting to recheck "Move to Target when Interacting" after being in auction house )

 

[Leona]

Skill TT volume* gains are mainly influenced by 3 factors:

The amount of damage you deal (not per shot but over all)
The size of mob
The kind of mob

Damage
Using standard eco gear the rule of thumb is that you get approx. 1% of your turnover (ammo, amp and weapon decay) in skills. You don't get those skills because of the money spend but because of the damage you deal, but measuring it in turnover makes it easier to handle in praxis.

So in example someone hunting with Breer P5a and an A serie amp (104,105,106) (so we have a reasonable eco) will get roughly 1 Ped TT volume of skills on 100 Ped turnover on an average mob that is reasonable to hunt with that setup. Mid level Argos with P5a are usually a good example for that average.

Lets call that the base value of 1 (1 Ped TT Skills for 100 ped turnover)

The size of mob
On an kill you often get an so called kill bonus, so the more mobs you kill per 100 Ped the more skills you will get. the difference can be significant. Using our base of one it can go from ~ 0.7 to 1.4. In exampe with P5a on could kill Leviathan and get factor 0.7 or mid level molisk and get factor 1.2.

The kind of mob
Some mobs are known to give more skills per turnover, best is you test this yourself.
Also in the past some kind of "secret" skill events happened. This is likely to happen again, so watch out for that. (Factor 1.8 was the highest i ever noticed, then for a few days 3.6 but that was most likely not intentionally from MA ).

To sum it up:

The most eco way also also gives you the best skill gain per Ped turnover because you gain skills for damage dealt.

Small mobs in general skill better, some skill massively better.

Some mobs at some times, for a limited period, give increased skills, thats unannounced (kinda ) and you must find out yourself when this happens.

But, and that is the most important point, all the above doesn't matter so much. Thats just some basic facts about skill mechanics. What really matters is that you need to find a mob that you feel comfortable with grinding long time and that you can about break even on.

It doesn't help you much if you have the best technical skilling strategy and found the best skilling mob / setup if you are then broke all the time. In the end what matters is to use your time the best and maintain a constant, high, turnover. So you need to loot some markup to have an reasonable return and that is what should influence your mob choice the most. Breaking even or profiting is the best motivator for skilling up and a healthy bankroll from markup oriented hunting helps too.

Because of this there is no one single best way to do it. It is always a tradeoff between several things.


* You already seem to know that the green lines are meaningless for tests, but also doing 200 shots and compare skill points isn't very accurate at your levels. Best test are performed with higher turnover per test and jdegres skill scanner and then compare gained skill volumes in TT.
As Phil already mentioned, as you progress the amount of turnover you need to get the same number increase in skill points goes up, however the skill TT volume gained stays fairly stable.

 

[Karmic]

Can someone shed some light on these skilling thoerys and methods for me? I am currently understanding that Using the weakest weapon that can fire the most amount of times (ISISCB5) against the smallest mob in the game (PUNYS) will give me the most skill gains, though I've been this this was wrong a couple times, the data tells me otherwise.

Discuss.

You do get a skill bonus sometimes when a mob dies as Leona says. This skill can be any one of the skills you used to kill the mob which is why you may often find higher skilled avatars hunting small mobs with mindforce or melee weapons or anything else that isn't their main focus.

 

[DirtSensei]

As I've said this data is somewhat faulty due to the fact that I was registering the Green texts and not the number gains, But I figured maybe Ill post it anyway because it might be of some (minor) use.

I conducted an experiment with a Svempa S40(L), Shot 500 rounds using Autoshot into two diffrent groups of mobs. Wearing Rascal for both, repaired before both starts, and never used anything else in between. The first group was Young Argonots and the second group was assorted Punys. The Args were constantly hitting me, the punys never. Heres the data from that.

Skill / Args / Punys
Anatomy: 14 / 39
BLP Weaponry: 21 / 47
Ranged Damage: 2 / 6
Handgun: 16 / 41
Weapon Handle: 1 / 14
Agility: 0 / 3
Perception: 0 / 3
Aim: 0 / 11
Combat Refl: 2 / 3
Evade: 8 / 0
Athletic: 4 / 0
Dex: 1 / 7
ALertness: 2 / 0
Courage: 3 / 6

TOTAL: 74 / 180

Again I'm aware because of how I recorded it the data may be moot, thought it still a HUGE diffrence, especially in skills like Aim where you note I got 11 from Punys and nothing from Argos.

So again I'm still looking for Input (and also Data/Experiments) would be nice, things like:

Does Mob type matter?
Does ammo burn matter?
Does durability matter?
EXPERIMENTAL DATA?

Thanks for all the discussion so far

 

[Amber Knightley]

how many puny vs argo did you kill?
because if considering kill bonus then the amount killed surely will matter as mentioned before...

 

[Immortal]

Your chatlog holds all the answers.

If you can show you gained more TT value per skill messages than I did just hunting randomly, your hypothesis may be worth investigating further.

most recent chatlog

~34kped of melee
48k total

287982 messages
30661 skillgain messages
1684 Attribute gain messages
639 agi (96) (+0.03)
18 intel (80) (+0.02)
40 Psyche (67) (+0.15)
986 strength (98) (+0.06)

attribute gain messages account for 5.4% of total skill messages

average gain 1 strength message per 34ped or one strenght gain per 95±5 swings

5408 heal messages
2857 which were definitely from paramedic, from average 8.5pec=243peds
243/18= one gain per 15peds

 

[Zavy]

Theory you ask: Skill gains are loot. No loot window = skill gains.

Theory: Changing weapons / area / mobs lead to more skill gains. (Because you getting more skill. Using the same thing over and over will only make you so good at it. But you still get better at it, just slower)

Fight above your level get more courage. Don't heal till last second get some other skill, whats it called...ummm...diagnosics. Just example. Who knows.
Serendipity is avoiding a critical hit. Crap like that, just theories.

There could be some method to the madness, but the price for that info devalues the effort, except for future generations.

The cheapest way to get skills is to buy them. But that's my opinion.

 

[JohnCapital]

AFAIK, skill gains come from performing actions, and are not influenced by how much that action costs you.

I have to disagree. There's no way shooting an Opalo gives the same amount of skill gains as, say a DOA. If skill gains are the same using an Opalo then those using bigger weapons are getting seriously screwed.

As for the tests on the argos vs punies, does mob type matter? yes. So does maturities.

 

[Sway]

I am currently testing if you can get more skills using attachments to your gun.
https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/forums/showthread.php?204809-Skill-Bonus-from-Scopes-an-Sights-(januari-2011)

When I'm finnished with this one I can set up some tests to see how some aspects of the skillgain-mechanics might work.
Others can participate to imo, I think we can work together and preform different test for a period of time. that we we can gather tonns of information wich I/we can examine, to get some possible answers.

I don't know who preformed skilltests before and if he/she who did is willing to share alreardy gathered information?

Manny people can help imo, and we can test multiple proffessions.
I can think of
-Hunters testing those skills
-Fappers to test those skills and/or helping hunters in their tests
-Miners and crafters.
-Smart minds who can help setup testsettings and examine data (I don't know much about mining so I can't settup good tests for that.)
-Meybe some software programmers to make even more helpfull software like the famous skillscanner and tracker programs. But als to make programs that can examine data and making calculations or... I don't know....

I'd love to see all kinds of people to help (mid lvl, high skilled, lower skilled, etc.)

If we work together this can be a good test on a verry large scale, so who's willing to help?

This is just some Idea that popped into my mind... meybe it's a good one, meybe not

 

[R4tt3xx]

Theory you ask: Skill gains are loot. No loot window = skill gains.

Theory: Changing weapons / area / mobs lead to more skill gains. (Because you getting more skill. Using the same thing over and over will only make you so good at it. But you still get better at it, just slower)

Fight above your level get more courage. Don't heal till last second get some other skill, whats it called...ummm...diagnosics. Just example. Who knows.
Serendipity is avoiding a critical hit. Crap like that, just theories.

There could be some method to the madness, but the price for that info devalues the effort, except for future generations.

The cheapest way to get skills is to buy them. But that's my opinion.

Num, num, num, sorry I am nibbling on this data. Skill gains are loot, absolutely. If you find something challenging, you will level faster but it costs you more in ped / equipment or time. You pay for it.

Something else. Leveling a skill obviously takes a lot longer to perform the more times it is achieved. To level a skill once, is quick, but to obtain level 50 will take some time ......

I am going to start work on an idea of how to translate skills directly either into more skills at the expense of ped / equipment, or ped at the expense of time and potential skillgains. Does this sound interesting ?