Skills
From Seed
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Skills and abilities
By training your skills you gain access to more advanced gameplay features. Training a skill gives you new abilities, and with these you gain bonuses on repair, you can use more advanced equipment, you can run for administrative posts, and as administrator, you can improve your machines with new add-ons.
Skill window
To start with, you have a limited set of skills, usable for basic repair and administration. By training these, you will get access to more skills and you also automatically get abilities for the improved skill levels.
To see your skills, open the Skill window from the left side button panel. Skills you already have are shown in the bottom list with their current levels.
Click on a skill in the bottom list to see more details. The details are shown in the top left frame of the skill window. Current train time left for that skill is shown in a tool-tip over the progress bar. The difficulty of the skill is shown above the progress bar – the higher the difficulty, the longer the training takes. Any prerequisite skills are also shown in the top left frame.
The top right frame shows skills and abilities accessible at various levels of the selected skill. If you have selected, e.g., Administration, which you have at level 0 to begin with, the top right frame will show a list item with the number 2, the icon for a skill, and the name Containment Tech. This means that if you train Administration to level 2, you will get the skill Containment Tech at level 0. Training Containment Tech will give you access to adding new functions to the factories for which you are administrator, and thus improving the machines.
Note that the top right frame only shows accessible skills at the next few levels. If you have Administration at level 0, e.g., you won't be able to see what skills you can get at level 4, until you have trained to a higher level in Administration.
Examining windows on factories, blueprints, and items show which skills and abilities are required to use or build them.
With the start skill pack, you only get access to other skills, and no abilities at the first few levels. When you get access to abilities, these will be shown in the top right list with an ability icon – a hand holding a tool. You can click on an ability and select “Examine” to see more details about the ability.
Training a skill
To train a skill, select it from the bottom list. You must have it at level 0 to train it, and you cannot train a skill above level 5. Only skills can be trained – abilities are automatically updated as you increase your skill levels, and they have no level.
Click the Train button to start training the skill. The Train button will disappear, and the progress bar will start increasing. If the train time is very long, it might take a while before the bar shows any visible changes. When a skill is trained to the next level, skill training is stopped. You have to click the Train button again to train further.
You can start training another skill anytime by selecting that skill and click the “Train” button. Training of the previous skill will be paused, with the current train time saved. There is no way to stop training a skill midway without starting another one.
Using abilities
Abilities give bonuses on repair, and allow the use of equipment, installation of factory enhancements, etc.
Most abilities are always active, meaning that they work the instant you get them and cannot be de-activated. Other abilities are known as trade-off abilities – these might increase the speed of, e.g., fixing a repair job, but at the same time add extra stress damage to your tool, since you use it faster than it's designed for.
Trade-off abilities have to be activated explicitly. If you open the skill window and examine the ability, you can see if it is a trade-off ability by looking at the name label at the top of the window. To activate a trade-off ability, open the Trade-off window from the button panel, and drag the ability name from the top right frame of the skill window to the Trade-off window.
You can have at most 3 trade-offs active at the same time. If you want to de-activate a trade-off, drag the name from the Trade-off window and drop it anywhere on the background.
When a trade-off is active, it will apply its bonuses and deductions to whatever job you are currently performing.
Note that currently you must select the skill that gives access to a trade-off ability to see the trade-off ability in the top right frame. This will be improved in later patches.
Inspiration drops
When you repair damage on a repair job, you sometimes receive an inspiration drop in your inventory. It has the same icon as a skill, and it carries the same name as one of the skills your current job depended on.
If you, e.g., were repairing using a function that required the use of Basic Repair, you might receive an inspiration drop with the name Basic Repair. This inspiration drop can be dragged to the Basic Repair skill – this will give a one-time bonus on the training of Basic Repair. You can also trade your inspiration drops with other players.
[List of Skills]
