Immersive Leveling and Research [mod request] far future

[FALCmods4all]

Some of this is long term hope, some may just be hard to do for compatibility reasons unless built as a separate system.

To sum up, I miss aspects of the oblivion/skyrim system, feeling like skill improvement is gradual and multiple activities can contribute to growth, and although some mods have started to improve research, it still doesn’t feel immersive either. I guess in the absolute simplest form, this would be 10x or 100x challenge requirements, simple challenges, with every tick toward challenge completion granting a permanent bonus.  

Skills/Lvls

Leveling in starfield feels so mechanical, so start and stop. I’d like slower progression, but with more variety of intuitive ways to improve a skill. Also, if possible, I’d love to see more skills have gradual bonuses rather than only skill point locked bonuses. So I guess simple bonuses to values like accuracy, damage, tank size, etc tied to how many times a skill is used with diminishing returns. Then badge skill ups saved for unique abilities only, and much slower to acquire, but contributed to from more sources. Personally, I’d do away with levels altogether and just have skills auto level up as skills progress toward mastery. Xp and player level just doesn’t seem as immersive individual skill proficiencies that increase over time. I also like the sense of unlimited growth for skills, even if the amount of improvement starts to drop off substantially.

Examples of what skill bonuses etc might look like (I should note, trying to leave accuracy and reloading out of new tweak ideas, as I’m hoping whenever VR comes out it has physical reloading, I also try not to focus too much on dmg amount increases, as I prefer low sponge gameplay where tactical options matter more).

Rifles

Using rifles hundreds of times may greatly improve weak spot damage, but the same extent of improvement may then take 10x as long, with decimal places of improvement becoming ever more infinitesimal. Badges could focus more on unlocking unique abilities, for rifles, breath techniques and new types of weak spots if using scopes.

Lasers

I’m 100% sold on realistic laser mods (lasers as beams instead of projectiles without recoil), so I’d love skills building on that. I think these mods already make their own tweaks around incineration duration etc. So in my model, things like incineration duration would gradually get longer the more lasers are used, or a laser would need to be on target for shorter duration to initiate inflammation. I see laser badges as best suited for techy tricks, like learning the skill to be able to bounce lasers off certain surfaces or liquids or being able to manually control beam density to tweak damage vs range ratios on the fly.

Shotguns

As used, I would gradually increase dismemberment chance/distance. For badges, I see shotguns as most useful against aliens, so perhaps skills that toggle greater recoil/knockback for mobility.

Ballistics

The main thing I see gradually improving as ballistics skill improves via use is recoil. For badges, I’m interested in suit damage/armor piercing as primary skills. I’m hoping for an immersive suit damage mod for player and npc, requiring patching of holes to prevent suffocation or exposure.

Pistols

I’d gradually increase bleed chance with use. For badges, I’d be interested in an option for dual wielding. 

Electromagnetic

I envision this as somewhat static in how it knocks humans out, but gradual improvement against robots as weapons are used (as some mods already do). For badges, I see some ability to manual select frequencies to deal with people, aliens, robots as a desirable skill, with the ability to explode heads of sleeping enemies microwave style as the highest tier badge.

Heavy Weapons

I would gradually increase radius with use. For badges, I’d love a mod that has a grenade/mine only quickslot/quickswap add on.

Carry weight

I would increase this gradually by being over or near capacity. Badges I imagine here would contribute to inventory management once we get more mods related to that. Really, I’d like most physical skills to have interactive work out stations. Similarly, I’d let all conversations very slowly build convo skills, with specific types just being more rapid.

Piloting

I would gradually improve handling just from steering the ship. I would quest lock badges for this as specific licensing exams going up to class M ship unlocking. Class A test, asteroid racing. Class B test, manual docking (I’m hoping for a mod where autopilot can get damaged, forcing hazardous landing and docking minigames until repaired), Class C test, combat, Class M test, naval fleet combat. Alternatively, bribe your sim proctor. I would consider most other ship skills best unlocked via research instead of combat. Main thing I want for ships is the ability to free bind thrusters so hosas don’t have to toggle between flight modes to achieve 6dof. (For ship combat, I’d like more ftl style encounters as ship sizes increase, longer battles, having to stop or hide and do manual system repairs, more complex rock paper scissors dynamics between weapon and defense strengths and weaknesses, having to physically travel in system more, but that’s all ship part modification stuff). 

Research/Ship Type Skills

I’d like to see a system that uses personnel and not just materials as well as research points of interest, where interacting with experiments logically contributes to gradual related research progress. From merely scanning, to using science in combat, from flying a ship into a strange object, to delving into a living chasm. Research also increasing slowly, passively from scientists running experiments in one’s outposts, increasing rates with biome diversity and danger of experiments. Research as a slow, tedious, but occasionally thrilling process. Throw in occasional ethical dilemmas for forking research, potentially risking crew sanity or safety to increase the chance of rare research being unlocked.

Books

Mundane activities like reading books could also gradually contribute to research and skill growth. (I’d love for each book to trigger an audiotape of actual books being read that can save their place, actually listening to guliver’s travels and having that slowly increase persuasion chance, understandably can likely only do this for older, public domain books.)  

I think this describes the general nature of tweaks I’d hope to see for intuitive immersion. 

Edited November 10 by FALCmods4all