The Kibble
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Non combat skillsI felt it was worth looking at the academic skills and how they work.
To me there are some clear key skills which you are best off having and some other pointless skills and the rest full in between.
Prime skill currently is Engineering
Followed by Hacking and Communication
Mainly as there is a mechanic to resolve problems with them and also they all have feats which come off them.
Pure maths seems pointless as a skill as I am not aware of any situation it has been used in and solve allows you to do it once per mission.
Ciphers has no real mechanic which has worked as far as I can tell and could do with being like hacking and comms to be used. I would also like to see problem cards which say can be done with hacking or comms for example or hacking or ciphers etc. (there may be I may just not have seen them)
Astrophysics is useful as a blag skill and I can not deny that so thats fine and I believe similarly with nuclear physics and Material science
all the biological sciences fall into the useful blag skill catergory.
Psychology has an obvious game mechanic so is cool and there used to be feats off it.
Archaelogy etc I am not sure how useful they are we seem to have lost archaelogists as nothing for them to do is this true?
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Woody
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I agree on the engineering comms and hacking points. Ciphers wise then previously I have only come across one problem where ciphers was needed at a rpevious event.
At the time ciphers did have a cards based system similar to coms and hacking do now.
Dual purpose cards I like the sound of but reckon they should be "special" cards, i.e. not available in your starting selection only thorugh later training.
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The Kibble
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I mean dual purpose problems .
E.d Encryption node can be solved with hacking 5 minutes or ciphers in 2 minutes. If have hacking and ciphers and relevant cards can half time.
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MajorMasters
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Non combat skills do need some love.
I mean when have I ever used my pilot submarine skill ;--)
It would be nice to see some long research plots in for people
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The Kibble
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we have had some research plots I believe it is trying to make sure they are persued in downtime.
And goddamit we do need that submarine 
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Freeman
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There's not been much for Archeologists to do of late, although there was one world visited where there was dig near the gate (and now there's a reporter with a bullet hole in his camera).
Perhaps a future visit there could yield useful information.
I seem to recall a dig at the first event at Barnswood - did anything come of it?
It wouldn't be too hard to write some archeology missions for us archeologists out there.
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sm0keyb
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| Freeman wrote: |
I seem to recall a dig at the first event at Barnswood - did anything come of it?
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I think I've got some piccies of that. I'll have a look & put them up with my event 6 pics if I can find them.
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Esther
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| Freeman wrote: |
I seem to recall a dig at the first event at Barnswood - did anything come of it?
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As an archiologist I was too busy saving the world to even see it 
I did rather expect the event to be focused on the dig and for us to need do it to solve the plot but instead it seemed to be an irrelvant side plot which was a shame considerign the effort put into it.
It would have been funny to conscript the military on artifact washing or similar 
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comedyofhate
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One of the things I am looking at is a serious upgrade for ciphers, that makes cyphers useful and have more of them in the storylines, I have a few ideas but it all depends on whether people want to standardize on a card system or not.
As for the other skills, I think crib sheets with the odd exerpt in them that are pertinent to storylines written up in adance could be handy.
The trick is to make the academic skills interesting, without making it a mess of paperwork, and a rod for the refs and players backs.
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Esther
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languges are rather a mixed bunch.. the alien ones are useful which you have to learn In game.
The anchient Earth languages have been used a reasonable amount well Egyptian and Celtic anyway i have never seen any hebrew which I have,
The modern earth langages are not used really used at all in my experience.. Out of my starting skills I've never used either langauge though I have done lots of language stuff.
I've used the archiology a little bit and Phycology a lot.
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Freeman
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In the last two events, my linguistics skill (*which I had from the outset) has been needed a reasonable amount.
Once in Event 5, and a lot in the last event (for obvious reasons)
Archaeology has cropped up a bit, in just estimating dates on stuff (again, event 5 and this last one).
More focus on Archaology would be cool for a mission or two, to let all the base archaeologists work together on some kind of problem ...
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