Cascade Skills

[Maccat]

There are no cascade skills. Cascade skills are for example:
(Carouse/2)=Steward
Carouse 2= steward 1, carouse 4=steward 2
(Admin-1) = Advocacy
Eng (P/M/J) = Eng (P/N/J) -1 (this allows an engineer to have better than engineer 0 for running a full set of drives if they have eng 2, rather than require 3 specialties just to be able to maintain the drives of a ship. Unless I'm missing something ships aren't going to require 3 engineers, and a 3xspecialty seems a very big hit to have a functional engineer for a ship. I remain unconvinced Eng-0 is "ok" for the other drives, and this solves that while still keeping the "new" electronics (now an engineer specialty rather than mechanic which is still separate, errr) and eng (ife support) (which i quite like).

I AM a navigator, astrogation/navigation is not a good division of skills, they are the same skill.

The version 2 playtest stuff is MUCH better, like the way it's forming up. I still feel uncomfortable with the heavy endurance hits in combat, it feels imbalanced somehow massively favoring high end characters. Too much JOT for the scouts (all scouts should not have JOT at level 3 or whatever). Skill tables are better, but i feel they still need some work, roughly most enlistments use INT/EDU. There's a kind of balance involved, and the ability to switch careers is a great thing, i would add if you get no muster out/benefit rolls at the end of char gen roll one.
Career skills/balancing issue: Certain careers favor certain attributes (like navy flyer DEX), also have certain stat bonuses more common (like merchant STR), and certain skill "specialties" (Scouts will very likely learn starship piloting, Army has Heavy Weapons). A character when rolled will have strengths and weaknesses (a high soc, a low endurance), character careers are used to enhance existing strengths (the fastest draw in the west) or make up for shortcomings (years of long hard dock work brought Jamison up to an average atrength). the current set-up in the careers doesn't quite work that way it seems, it needs more balancing somehow i feel. Careers using ships (or getting shares for them in muster tables) should have somehow crew positions be fillable from within the field.
Looking forward to version 3, sorry if this is rambling I'll try and update this more precisely later.

 

[SableWyvern]

I AM a navigator, astrogation/navigation is not a good division of skills, they are the same skill.

I'd say that plotting jumps, orbital geometries and gravity well sling-shots can easily be argued to be significantly different from plotting terrestrial courses. There is some cross-over, sure, but I'm confident that a typical aeronautical or naval navigator would be at a significant loss if you asked him to give you the most effecient plot for a trip to Triton.

Similarly, there's no reason to assume that a NASA mission planner has developed map-to-ground skills or can read a sextant.

Regarding Engineering and cascades, I stand by my position in other threads that a 0-level skill should be adequate for getting the job done. If a character manages 3 or 4 levels in Engineering, they simply have to make a call as to whether they should be hyper-specialised and merely competent in related fields, or less specialised but with deeper understanding across the breadth of the field.

 

[AKAramis]

I'm good with the no-cascades, no serves-as, no-clusters.

 

[Gruffty the Hiver]

I'm good with the no-cascades, no serves-as, no-clusters.

Ditto. I like how Mongoose and arranged the skills in the playtest documents.

 

[TrippyHippy]

For the most part, I've always found that cluster skills are an unnecessary complication. I too prefer the arrangement of skills, and specialisations where appropriate.