Time To Start New Characters

[alias]

Well, after a skillslot nerf my old battle-comedian is no longer looking like such a great character to keep up with, he still needs more skillslots and he's way overspent.  I don't even want to open his stats up to see how badly.
So now it's time to pick what to abandon in my quest for most powerfulest battle-comedian evar--my initial goal since that's a good starting goal for trying to finish a game that isn't balanced yet.

Things he needs:

Social Skills
*Conversation
*Intimidation (because mecha salvage is nicer when it's not shot up)
*Leadership
*Performance (don't want this anymore but comes with)
*Shopping
*Taunt (comes with)

Mecha Driving Skills
*Electronic Warfare
*Initiative
*Mecha Artillery
*Mecha Fighting
*Mecha Gunnery
*Mecha Piloting
*Mecha Repair
*(I'll do without Weapons)
*Spot Weakness

Combat Skills
*Armed Combat
*Awareness
*Dodge
*Heavy Weapons
*Resistance (comes with and useful)
*Stealth

Not Fail At Life Skills
*Athletics
*Concentration
*Weight Lifting

Cool Stuff
*Code Breaking
*Insight
*Mecha Engineering
*Robotics
*Science

If Only Skillslots Were Free
*Acrobatics?
*Biotech
*Cybertech
*Dominate Animal
*First Aid
*Flirtation
*General Repair
*Martial Arts
*Medicine
*Mysticism
*Small Arms
*Survival
*Vitality?

UGH!
*Pick Pockets

Any suggestions on which to shift lists?

[jefftest]

That's about my list, Code Breaking WAY over Insight (til stuff is coded for it  anyway).  Leadership a little later, Probably Mecha Artillery too.

General Repair to fix spacesuits  I love Mecha Engineering too much, I can't imagine doing without it.   I could skip Science, right now it's mainly for the cool but not-really-important robot bits.

And when you start getting lancemates, how do you avoid absolutely needing either General Repair or Medicine?

I will see how tight it is, might have to do without Taunt

[alias]

Those lists are alphabetical, although if we actually get to the relative level of included content of GH1 insight ought to be at least as lucrative and helpful as code breaking.
If you read the comment you'd see that he says you're not supposed to get over 30 skillslots, not that you could very easily anyway.  The idea is that you make your minions take the repair skills since they've got extra room since they don't need social ones if you've got them.
And let's see what our new formula is....
My new battle comedian with a starting knowledge of 15 gets 23 slots at first.  Took stunt driving so he's gonna have a fun time in the arena first before I send him off to renown-fudging territory.
Uh, a character with 33 knowledge and savant gets gets 34 slots.  At first glance it looks like he put a hard-cap on knowledge skillslots at 29, and even if he didn't the cost of trying to raise knowledge from 15 to 33 (essentially eleventy-billion XP) is enough that you'll never achieve it for a very long time without the help of cyberware or something.  I know there's no content for it yet but I like having character goals and personality....
Y'know what I really want now?  Cyberware that explicitly gives me extra skillslots.  If you could load enough it'd be worth the extropian talent and eleventy-billion XP dropped straight on cybertech.

[jefftest]

Right, but how do lancemates repair themselves when they're dead?  Or does it still stay selectable in the menu somehow?

[alias]

If you've got one or two, that could be a problem.  If you've got five, they can help each other, no?

[jefftest]

The new limit is one  though, right?  Two with a Talent?  I haven't been getting far enough in the story to get more than 1 lately, so I'm only repeating what somebody mentioned here.

Plus some plot-related guys who don't count for the limit, apparently.  Even so, there's a while that it's pretty shaky, even with  "stay in the back" orders...

[alias]

That's one for free, leadership still works doesn't it?  I haven't gotten that far.

[Francisco Munoz]

Leadership allows to take lancemates with better skills than your Renown will allow (otherwise you got the not-yet-able-to-go-with-you response).
 As jefftest said to have more than one lancemate (2) you need now a Talent.

[alias]

....Dang, so I can't deploy a half-dozen robot pilots of my construction?  I need to rethink this--leadership seems relatively useless now if that's all it does.

[EarthquakeDamage]

Leadership apparently also reduces the chance that your lancemates will eject before their mecha is destroyed (i.e. ejection because their limbs were blown off, not ejection to avoid death).

I was under the impression that lancemates gained skill rapidly until they reached a rank appropriate for your Renown + Leadership.  I don't see that in the source, though, so maybe Leadership's not nearly as good as I thought it was...

[Joseph Hewitt]

Quoting: EarthquakeDamage

I don't see that in the source, though, so maybe Leadership's not nearly as good as I thought it was...

It's in arenascript.pp under the XPV code; they level every time you get a script-based experience award.

[EarthquakeDamage]

Quoting: Joseph Hewitt

It's in arenascript.pp under the XPV code; they level every time you get a script-based experience award.

I just overlooked it then.  My bad.

[Joseph Hewitt]

Quoting: EarthquakeDamage

I just overlooked it then. My bad.

Perfectly understandable. Even I sometimes need to grep to find where I put something.