Interests and skill points

[TheMule]

Hi there!

I know that when dups spend time performing a task that matches one interest of theirs, they gain extra skill points. Some interests are quite obvious, the bonus related to Digging kicks in when, well, the dups are digging.
How about those less obvious, like Suit Wearing. It grants you extra starting points in Athletics. Does that mean that the dups get extra skill points when running? Or on a hamster wheel? Or is it just when they are wearing a suit (making it useless at the start).

Also, there's a Supplying interest... do those hybrid errands (like Ranching/Supplying) grant the bonus to dups who have either interest? Does a dup with both Ranching and Supplying interests get double bonus? Or is the modifier applied only once?

In case it wasn't clear, I'm evaluting things only for maxing skill point gain, out of curiosity. I'm fully aware this isn't the best criteria for choosing dups, generally speaking.

TIA

[Gurgel]

I only ever notice my researcher going maybe 20% faster to the next skill point. But I am sure the usual crazies have exact details and measurements on this

[mathmanican]

37 minutes ago, Gurgel said:

the usual crazies

Was this a passive aggressive dig. 

I have not explored this case. I just go full researcher quick learner.

[Angpaur]

Click a building and go to errand tab and if there are any exisintg errand you can hover mouse over it to check what type it is connected to.

For example manual generators are connected with operating - dupes with interest in that will get 50% more experience for next skill point from running on the generator. That is why it is a very good method for traning new dupes - you print the ones with operating interest and then you make them run on the generator to get skills faster and also to level up atrributes: athletic and machinery.

[Gurgel]

5 hours ago, mathmanican said:

Was this a passive aggressive dig. 

Oops, I am sooo sorry! Please replace "the usual crazies" with "the usual crazies the fine explorers of unexpected behavior here". My apologies!

[TheMule]

3 hours ago, mathmanican said:

Was this a passive aggressive dig. 

I have not explored this case. I just go full researcher quick learner.

For all the starting dups? It did that. Well, not precisely that, but I played with a self-imposed limit to accept only dups with al least 6 as starting science.

It's either +7 science single interest dups (+10 possibly) or +3 and Quick Learner.

It works well, they're so fast in attribute gaining that they catch up with differently skilled dups in very few cycles. Just they are a bit slow in skill points gaining (only the actual researcher gains points fast).

The experience with that colony it's exactly what made me thing about the issue.

Supplying, if it applies to all errands (including the hybrid ones) it's quite interesting. So is Suit Wearing if it applies to walking/generating power. I just wonder if someone already did the research, before I start myself with it.

[Yaswanth]

There is a mod to track the attribute progress. Install it and the tasks which are currently generating exp will light up in bold. Very useful to track.

[impyre]

From your post, it sounds like you're confusing interests, skills, and attributes a little.

23 hours ago, TheMule said:

Some interests are quite obvious, the bonus related to Digging kicks in when, well, the dups are digging.

They're all definitely related, and you clearly have a basic understanding of it. I can't be sure what you know and don't know, so I'll explain everything just in case and hope I hit the right point.

Interests: Dupes can have an "interest" in various skills. This is represented on the skill screen by those skills which have a heart next to them.

Attributes: These represent the dupe's proficiency at a given action. They can be found on the dupe's info page. Athletics directly affects run/climb speed, strength affects carry capacity, dig affects dig speed, and science affects how quickly they research (as well as provides a boost to how quickly they master new skills) A full list of attributes and what effects they have can be found here.

Spoiler

Skills: Many people think of these as "jobs" and some may refer to them as "hats" or "promotions", but all of them are found in the skills page. They include things like Improved Farming I and Hard Digging.

If a dupe has an "interest" in digging, that means they will master digging skills faster, they will get one extra morale from every digging skill they learn, will gain more experience from doing digging-related tasks, and I believe they increase their excavation attribute faster (but I can't be sure). Also worth noting, if you go to the page I mentioned above and click on the links for each attribute you can also see exactly what types of tasks improve them. (Or you could use the mod Yaswanth mentioned above)

The interest you mentioned, suit wearing, lets them master suit wearing skills faster, gives extra morale for being assigned those skills, and gain more experience from wearing suits. This includes atmo suits and jetpacks. The suit wearing skills are tied to the athletics attribute, but also have other perks (like decreasing the athletics penalty associated with wearing suits). It's much quicker and easier to train an astronaut who has an interest in suit wearing. Combining this interest with an interest in supplying and especially researching can drastically reduce total training time and morale requirements. I think it's 21 total morale required for top-tier astronaut, but if they have interests in supplying, researching, and suit wearing, they gain an additional 8 morale from their skill assignments along the way, decreasing the overall requirement to 13 morale.

In general, skills primarily affect bonuses, attributes, and morale... but don't *directly* affect the time required to complete tasks. A dupe with no farming skills assigned, but with an agriculture attribute of 20 will farm at the same speed as a dupe with all farming skills who also has an agriculture attribute of 20. That said, the farming skills add up to an additional 6 agriculture points and enable the use of farming stations... so that dupe only had to earn 14 of those agriculture points by labor.

[TheMule]

10 hours ago, impyre said:

From your post, it sounds like you're confusing interests, skills, and attributes a little.

I think my questions are very specific. I see no confusion.

 

10 hours ago, impyre said:

If a dupe has an "interest" in digging, that means they will master digging skills faster,

Not really. They master any skill faster while digging.

 

10 hours ago, impyre said:

will gain more experience from doing digging-related tasks,

What you call experience, I call skill points. My original question was about skill point gain. Or experience gain if you will. This:

10 hours ago, impyre said:

f you go to the page I mentioned above and click on the links for each attribute you can also see exactly what types of tasks improve them.

Yes. That's what I meant when I wrote that for most interests it's obvious.
But Suit Wearing is associated with Athletics. Hence my question: do dups get skill points faster when just walking/climbing or when they walk/climb in a suit? I asked specifically if anyone has tested it.

 

10 hours ago, impyre said:

The interest you mentioned, suit wearing, lets them master suit wearing skills faster

Doing activities the dup is interested in makes the dup gain skill points faster. Skill points are generic, you can assign them where you want. So I don't know what you mean. Dups gain skill points, you assign them. There's no relation between what the dups have been doing and where I assign the skill points (other than the morale bonus but I'm not interested in that).

 

10 hours ago, impyre said:

gain more experience from wearing suits.

That's what I was asking. Skill points, specifically how fast dups gain them, is the only thing I'm interested in for the purpose of this thread. Since the related attribute is athletics, it's ambiguos. If dups get extra skill points only when wearing a suit (as opposted to any acrivity that's related to athetics, suit or no suit), the interest is kinda a lesser one, as it kicks in way too later compared to the others. One key point (to my gameplay) is being able to get suits ASAP. I usually have both the tech and the materials when dups have only 3 skills, which are not enough for Exosuit Training. So I'm interested in anything that makes them aquire skill points faster (i.e interests) before I put them suits. An interest that kicks in only when they are in a suit already kinda defeats its purpose.

 

10 hours ago, impyre said:

It's much quicker and easier to train an astronaut who has an interest in suit wearing. Combining this interest with an interest in supplying and especially researching can drastically reduce total training time and morale requirements.

I don't see how it would be faster, expecially if you need to have the dup in a suit before the bonus kicks in. It's actually faster to get dups with other interests and force them to perform the related tasks.
Researching is has zero impact on skill points, per se, unless the dup is actually performing science tasks. But it's usually a different dup, you don't want to send your researcher away with the first rocket for sure.

10 hours ago, impyre said:

In general, skills primarily affect bonuses, attributes, and morale... but don't *directly* affect the time required to complete tasks. A dupe with no farming skills assigned, but with an agriculture attribute of 20 will farm at the same speed as a dupe with all farming skills who also has an agriculture attribute of 20. That said, the farming skills add up to an additional 6 agriculture points and enable the use of farming stations... so that dupe only had to earn 14 of those agriculture points by labor.

I'm very familiar with that. Not my questions, tho.

Nothing you wrote is new to me. I have specific questions.

Suit Wearing interest: which activities exactly grant the skill points bonus? Just wearing a suit? Those activities related to athletics? Or has to be both? My question was: has someone ever tested it? You claim it's "wearing a suit". Have you actually tested it? Is it doing anything while wearing a suit or is it specific activities? Or is it anything related to athletics, even without wearing a suit? That would make a big difference.

Supplying interest: since most supplying tasks are hybryd tasks. Like this:

 

hence my second question. Has someone tested if dups with both Cooking and Supplying gains even more skill points for these hybrid tasks? Or is the bonus applied only once?
 

[impyre]

The whole "mastering *insert skill here* faster" is a vestigial remnant from back when there were no skill points. You assigned a dupe a "job" like Advanced Farming, then they began to gain experience in that job, and once they had enough they "mastered" it. They couldn't continue on to later jobs in the skill tree until they had mastered earlier ones. As for the interest's effect, it mainly means they gain experience more quickly while doing tasks for that skill, and gain extra morale. 

Also, I meant no offense when I said you sounded like you were confusing some things... In any case, I think I see what you're getting at. I don't have the answers though unfortunately. I assume that they get more experience from doing suit-wearing things... I know it's vague lol. Supplying is an interesting one in that most tasks could benefit from supplying bonus. If I find out for sure if the bonus stacks, I'll definitely report back here. I would guess that it does not stack though, based on the wording. "Cooking or supplying" suggests that the task basically fits into both categories, so a dupe assigned to only perform cooking tasks will fetch ingredients and the like. I imagine that just narrows down who has the task enabled. EG: Dupe A has supplying interest, Dupe B has cooking interest. Dupe B runs and gets food for the grill. Since the "cook supply" task falls under either cooking or supplying he gets bonus experience from doing a cooking task... even though it's not actually cooking. If Dupe A does the task, he gets the bonus experience too because it counts as a supplying task. Dupe C has supplying and cooking interests, I would guess that whichever is the higher priority would take precedence here. If his supplying is set to really high priority... he'd get bonus experience for completing a supply task... if it were cooking set to high priority, he'd get bonus experience for completing a cooking task. Both bonuses should be the same (just "the interest bonus").

Again, I'm just spitballing here, and have no proof one way or the other... but I've never seen a task in the dupe's task list take on more than one task type. It's always either-or.

[TheMule]

5 hours ago, impyre said:

I assume that they get more experience from doing suit-wearing things... I know it's vague lol.

I think we need to test it. But it's not the easiest task to test this kind of things. I could probably test hamster wheels easily (just lock 2 dups, one with Cooking as the only interest, and the other with Suit wearing, inside a room with just manual generators, food and somewhere to pee).

 

BTW, the mod you mentioned doesn't help.

The XP it shows it for attribute gaining, not skill points.

Unless it's another mod I wasn't able to locate.

[Angpaur]

20 hours ago, impyre said:

science affects how quickly they research (as well as provides a boost to how quickly they master new skills)

Looks like you confused something here. Science boosts how quickly dupes raise their attributes, not skills. But I don't blame you - it is Klei fault of not having upated Science tooltip for such a long time.