Is Computer a useless skill?

[Traf Rellik]

Perhaps it's the way I put it that wrankled everyone. An analogy may help:

Take 80 PED worth of skill in one category (say it's the only skill for profession "a"). The cost to gain it would essentially be the same whether it's a single skill or a dozen, like mentioned above. However, take that same 80 PED and distribute it to those dozen skills and although you have the same level in the profession, you will find it harder to chip that 80 ped in or out, and more costly and much less net value, etc. This effectively "pieces out" the contents into segments that are harder to market. THIS is the watering down effect I am talking about. The gains are not reduced but the effort in inserting or extracting them sure is. Since the OP was discussing chipping "useless" skills out, my post was more about the piece-meal efforts required BECAUSE of the additional categories that we have to deal with. Instead of one "good" skill, we got a bunch of "junk" skills, with penny-ante contents.

Good vs. Bad skills is another matter entirely -- while *all* skills are earned based on the relative contribution, not all of them have the same demand (and subsequent markup). So if 80% of your gains are in a low markup skill, your rise in levels is less meaningful than if 80% of your gains are in a high markup skill that contributes to the same profession. Example: Animal taming has a number of skills, and you can reach a fairly high level and not have *marketable* skills when done. It's deeper than just a "1 ped skills would equal 1 ped no matter which skills they are earned in" response.

Re-reading my post, I can see where I went wrong with the poor explanation, my bad. However, an extrapolation of the two conditions (bringing it down to 1 skill/profession and comparing it to a case with 100 skills/profession -- the "watering down" effect is *real*).

[Oleg]

Originally Posted by Traf Rellik

Perhaps it's the way I put it that wrankled everyone. An analogy may help:

Take 80 PED worth of skill in one category (say it's the only skill for profession "a"). The cost to gain it would essentially be the same whether it's a single skill or a dozen, like mentioned above. However, take that same 80 PED and distribute it to those dozen skills and although you have the same level in the profession, you will find it harder to chip that 80 ped in or out, and more costly and much less net value, etc. This effectively "pieces out" the contents into segments that are harder to market. THIS is the watering down effect I am talking about. The gains are not reduced but the effort in inserting or extracting them sure is. Since the OP was discussing chipping "useless" skills out, my post was more about the piece-meal efforts required BECAUSE of the additional categories that we have to deal with. Instead of one "good" skill, we got a bunch of "junk" skills, with penny-ante contents.

Good vs. Bad skills is another matter entirely -- while *all* skills are earned based on the relative contribution, not all of them have the same demand (and subsequent markup). So if 80% of your gains are in a low markup skill, your rise in levels is less meaningful than if 80% of your gains are in a high markup skill that contributes to the same profession. Example: Animal taming has a number of skills, and you can reach a fairly high level and not have *marketable* skills when done. It's deeper than just a "1 ped skills would equal 1 ped no matter which skills they are earned in" response.

Re-reading my post, I can see where I went wrong with the poor explanation, my bad. However, an extrapolation of the two conditions (bringing it down to 1 skill/profession and comparing it to a case with 100 skills/profession -- the "watering down" effect is *real*).

In my opinion the disadvantage here is much outweighed by the advantage of having such disparate skill gains, which is that you can 'side-skill' other professions while concentrating on a main profession.

You can't call it "watering down" anyway. 1 skill/profession would be a completely different system and is incomparable to the system we actually have.

So I still disagree

[Quint]

Originally Posted by Oleg

.
If I remember correctly, when you get an unlocked skill, any skill gains in those new skills are always in addition to the others that you'd get without it. So you don't see a reduction in Handgun gains, for example, when you unlock Serendipity. You'll still get (roughly) the same amount of Handgun gain as before, and the same for all the other skills, but you'll get Serendipity too.

In other words, say on a 10k ammo hunt you'd normally get 2 PED of Handgun and 2 PED of Marksmanship. Then you unlock Serendipity. Now on that 10k hunt you will get 2 PED of Handgun, 2 PED of Marksmanship and 1.5 PED of Serendipity (numbers totally made up from nowhere).

This is a very interesting statement imo and I hope it's true. Can anyone confirm this or point me to a thread in which this has been discussed ? I am not too lazy to use the Search function, but I have no clue on which words I should search in order to find this... So if you can give me any hints on the words I should search for, I'm happy too.

[PrinceYumil]

Originally Posted by Immortal

Computer relates mining and crafting, just like serendipity relates mining and hunting, or bravado relates mindforce and melee.

Where do you get that Computer relates mining and craftng? As I said in the OP, according to Entropedia Computer only affects scanning, minnig and tailoring. Even for bigshot miners who use big amps and stronger excavators, Computer doesn't have nearly enough of an effect on the mining profession to justify keeping it, so its only legitimate use that I can see is for tailors, and even for that it contributes just 2%, so you would need 5000 computer to gain one professional level. Also, EU doesn't relate mining and tailoring in any way at all, almost all tailoring materials are gained by hunting and the rest come from crafting.

[andyzammy]

Originally Posted by wizzszz

And this is for sure, wrong, too...

If you unlock other skills first before switching to i.e. melee, you will gain them additionally, if not, those possible skill gains are lost.

I think it was stryker who said something like "specialize, skill up, unlock, generalize" somewhere, and i totally agree.

its true you will gain them additionally, but its not true that you will lose them. you cannot lose gain oppertunities.. they're like the monster in ur wardrobe.. always there.

to continue from my analogy, if i was to stick to laser sniper and make it all the way up to coolness w/o touching any other profession, i'd have lvl 1 coolness. now, if i was to then switch to melee (currently lvl 0), then for sure, my screen would be green.. gains everywhere, because i'm using relatively new skills i haven't used before. lets say i did this untill i got to 1k coolness. i might pick up 3 or 4 hp points this way.

now lets go back to when i just unlocked coolness, and lets say i just stuck to using laser rifle. i still get quite a few green, but only from the coolness, as thats my only new skill (rest from laser sniper profession are quite high lvls so very few gains). this way, i'd only gain about 2 hp, because i only got 1k coolness (~400lvls for hp gain), and i didn't gain any other skill that got me hp.

whats happened here is not "lost oppertunity", its quite simple logic. to get what you call the "lost skil/hp" back, i can simply switch from sniper to melee now, but even though i've "used up" the "greeness" of coolness (ie not many noob gains coming now), i can still pick up the couple more hp from the melee skills, so you see they are not lost.. they just came at different times.

the same reasoning can be applied to even earlier, back to when i had lvl 20 laser sniper, and lvl 0 everything else. i won't lose anything if i switch to melee then, i'll just gain everything at different times.. ie, the couple melee hp now, and when i finally unlock coolness, i'll gain those hp when i get 1k coolness, doesn't realy matter what i use to gain the coolness, as its an all-rounder skill.

the only thing that will "change" is the time it takes to get to coolness. ofcourse if you dabble you'll take much longer. thats why striker/whoever said don't generalise.

[itree]

Originally Posted by andyzammy

no skill waters down other skills, it doesn't work like that. you would get the "useless skill gains" on top of the useful ones, not instead of..

another way to back up what i'm saying is to search through EF hard enough.. you'll eventually come across a few threads (one which i wrote myself asking) if its more worthwhile not to dabble before u unlock eg coolness. eg i'm lvl 20 laser sniper, lvl 0 everything else. i wana skill up to get me some hp. should i go over to melee and get the easy gains now? or should i wait untill i hit lvl 40 laser sniper and then switch over, as i'd get more gains then wouldn't i?

answer is it don't make no difference. you'd gain the same skill either way, it'd just all come at different times.

Actually, if I understand Doer's scanning experiment correctly, unlocked skills are not "on top off" but really do "water down" the gains from the other skills. If you do not have all the unlocks yet, such that you can only gain in 86% of the skills, you get about 116% volume in those skills to compensate.

However, some of the unlockable skills are much more useful, at least for hunting, as they raise health and/or defense quite a bit. I'd personally be willing to sacrifice some LWT gains and replace them with Commando ones

[andyzammy]

Originally Posted by itree

Actually, if I understand Doer's scanning experiment correctly, unlocked skills are not "on top off" but really do "water down" the gains from the other skills. If you do not have all the unlocks yet, such that you can only gain in 86% of the skills, you get about 116% volume in those skills to compensate.

However, some of the unlockable skills are much more useful, at least for hunting, as they raise health and/or defense quite a bit. I'd personally be willing to sacrifice some LWT gains and replace them with Commando ones

i thought the conclusion of that thread was that "it is interesting to see that the skills are gained in very nearly the proportions that they contribute"?

i wouldn't really call that watering down though, as you're actually not getting less than you should, but more.

[Immortal]

Originally Posted by PrinceYumil

, according to Entropedia

This is the first step in wrongness. For use as a guide only.

[Sirhc]

Originally Posted by PrinceYumil

According to entropedia it contributes to the scanning professions as well as mining (5%) and Tailoring (2%). However it is pretty useless for mining if you have maxed the TT finder or whatever other one you use, and how many people are tailors? When I get a high enough amount of it I think I'm going to just chip it out.

Many of the skills in EU have not come into their prime utilization yet. Think back before F(L)APs showed up. Medic skills were very cheap and not needed because you could Max out the repairable FAPs at low levels. What do we have now? F(L)APs that take a lot of skill to use and Medic skills that are very expensive.

The skills in general are pretty vague on just what exactly they do and how they really impact what you are doing. I just know if I get more evade, avoidance, or dodge I get hit less. If I have more computer and engineering......well its up to the individual to interpret their results.

To me its just like RL in some aspects. I personally have an eye for artistic composition and some science and mechanical aptitude. I am definitely more skilled in the Arts than I am in the Engineering but I work as a Mechanical Designer/Drafter and utilize my Artistic composition skills in drafting technical drawings which helps me be a better Mechanical Designer. My composition skills may only contribute 5% to what my job entails but if I did not have that strength in skill I would not be growing in the 90% engineering aspect of the rest of my job. Having skill in the Fine Arts might seem contradictory to anything technical but I fall back on that skill everyday.

[Doer]

Originally Posted by andyzammy

i thought the conclusion of that thread was that "it is interesting to see that the skills are gained in very nearly the proportions that they contribute"?

i wouldn't really call that watering down though, as you're actually not getting less than you should, but more.

While that was indeed the main conclusion of that thread, I came away with a belief (can't recall now if it was based on anything more than logic) that the skill gain for an activity is a certain volume of skill distributed within that profession. Therefore, any unlocks would indeed "water down" the previous gains in the primary skills.

That isn't necessarily a bad thing if the unlocked skills bring HP, but the mining unlocks, for example, are actually a negative thing to get IMO because they dilute the HP-giving primary skill gains.

This hasn't been verified AFAIK, but if you consider how skilling works, it seems likely that the gains per activity are in total volume toward the profession, which would support the above.