Question: Does Intelligence have an impact on learning speed (skill boost) ?

MG Mighty said:

I doubt the above test will provide the answers you are looking for.


100 PEDs of decay will provide low ammount of skills so the diference most likelly will not have a significative statistical difference worth for the conclusions you want



AND

it requires another conditions

Both professional levels of the avatars must be identical and the others skills must be already at a very high level so that an increase in the TT value of those chippable skills gained during the tests isn't translated into a major increase on the professional levels.

Meaning even you would need to chip out all non general skills related to the activity and have both avatars with very high and similiar skills in the general tab.






On the other hand I can accept without further testing that high attributes related to the activity will have a 2-3% increase in the amount of skill gains

Although not because the high attributes are causing the increase the skill gains

but due to the fact that the skill gains that should be going to attributes are being distributed to the other skills
(which also explains the halt in the progress of attributes)

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I am not convinced that mindark has a balancing skill distribution in the background running that makes more skill tt value go to lower developed skills, everything that i have gathered from years of skilling vse seems to indicate that skill gains are very straightforward and the only reason why lower skills seem to catch up to higher ones is because of the exponential skill curve that requires more tt value for the next skillpoint the higher you get.
There is no need for mindark to have such a complicated distribution algorithm since they work everywhere in the game with probabilities, so it is fully sufficient for them to assign skill gains based on constant probabilities.
One question thought remains which is if you have 2 avatars in a certain profession of which one has all the unlocks and the other one doesnt - what happens if both avatars were about to receive one of the unlocked skills ?
Would the one without the unlock receive the skill gain in one of the skills he has or would he miss out on that skill gain and only the avatar with the unlocked skill would receive it ?
From what i have gathered so far monitoring my own skill gains compared to others it seems that those who have not unlocked a certain skill would miss out on the respective skill gain and therefor have less total skill gain then those who have the unlock.
If these impressions are correct then it should be fully sufficient to compare a single skill starting from the same skill value to extrapolate on skill gains in general.

John B Knight said:

From what i have gathered so far monitoring my own skill gains compared to others it seems that those who have not unlocked a certain skill would miss out on the respective skill gain and therefor have less total skill gain then those who have the unlock.

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Incorrect, overall skill gain is consistent and divided between the contributing skills that are available.

Already covered this in my previous post.

Oleg said:

Incorrect, overall skill gain is consistent and divided between the contributing skills that are available.

Already covered this in my previous post.

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Could u... hold your horses a bit and explain those things a bit more?
U probably meant this:

Oleg said:

The difference [in skillgains] would be more likely explained by unlocked skills, and the contribution from Intelligence itself.

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Can't figure out how this cause would produce this result? It's probably 'cuz i'm too dumb, i know.
Well anyway, it's an interesting and potentially very important topic. I mean, in case there indeed is a connection between INT and skillgains. It wouldn't hurt to clarify your theory a bit more.

That's a question i wanted to find the answer to and had some evidence from playing with my skill tracking and profession progress estimating code (which depends on the answer for complete accuracy), but i don't remember what it was and could not really say it was conclusive (incidentally, the 100 ped test you propose could not begin to be conclusive about the effect of intelligence on gains due to the way skillgain, along with everything else in game, is dynamic). Some people (lavawalker, i believe, for one) claimed it worked the way you say John B.

I can say that skills are gained in the ratio they contribute to the profession, but that ratio in practice will change at unlocks. Here are the two sides to the question so there's no confusion:

1) John B's version: I think it would make more sense from a progression-reward mechanism to do it that way. E.g. when a profession is performed, if the code decides it's time for a green line, a pseudo-random number is produced (let's say for simplicity it's between one and 100). Every profession has 100% of contributions from a combination of skills and attributes (see entropedia or jdegre's skill calc for the majority), and the random number is used as an index into a vector of all these probabilities. Wherever it lands is the skill to gain, but if locked the gain is essentially lost.

2) It could also happen the way Oleg is saying. When the code decides it's time for a green line, the random number only chooses between the skills the avatar has which are unlocked in proportions scaled to total 100% from their original contributions.

The end result is the same in terms of ratio of skills gained, but in the first case the same actions will produce more skill gains after an unlock than before, all other things being equal. The percentages of most unlocks are small enough that it's very hard to determine that.

Here's an example:

Consider a player which is going to unlock a skill in the Pirate profession, which has four contributing skills:
Bravado (25%)
Jackassery (25%)
Ego (25%) -- will be unlocked
Asininity (25%) -- locked

If mechanism #1 is used by the code, the player's skillgains will most likely increase by 50% after the unlock, as he goes from getting 50% of his skill gain random numbers falling into unlocked skills, to 75% of the gains.

If mechanism #2 is used, there will probably be no difference in skill gain immediately after the unlock.

Thanks Doer, this explains the 1st part. Now only this mysterious "contribution from Intelligence itself" remains. Then again, maybe it's better to leave some mysteries unsolved.

Fifth said:

Thanks Doer, this explains the 1st part. Now only this mysterious "contribution from Intelligence itself" remains. Then again, maybe it's better to leave some mysteries unsolved.

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I'm not sure what you think is mysterious about that Intelligence is one of the contributing skills for the Scan professions. Having 100 points of Intelligence would give you 40% of a level in Animal Investigator.

Oleg said:

I'm not sure what you think is mysterious about that Intelligence is one of the contributing skills for the Scan professions. Having 100 points of Intelligence would give you 40% of a level in Animal Investigator.

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See, this is the problem. Maybe there's a way to explain this differently, but the way i see it -
With 100 INT you have 40% of a level before you start skilling, and you still have the same after u finished your skilling session. It's a static value, thus it can't contribute anything in the skilling process.
Unless INT has some hidden property we're not aware of. If this mysterious property really exists is exactly what we're trying to figure out here.
Now, if my understanding of the problem is too simplistic, i'd be happy if somebody could correct me and explain it differently.

Anyway, i think there's one conclusion we can make out of this. As long as we're not sure if INT could influence the total skillgain indirectly (i.e. by altering the way individual skills inside a profession are distributed?) a conclusive test should avoid any professions that include INT. Just to be on the safe side.