Skill Points?

[BAC33]

I searched but could find nothing specific about Skill Points. I see in the details of various players that overall score does not seem to correspond to the number of skill points acquired.

Would someone be willing to share some specifics as to how and what contributes to skill points earned?

[ChickenHawk07]

I'm not 100% sure, but I believe the skill points are tied directly to the research tree.

[Skeith27]

From my observations, Skill Points are the total number of technologies you have developed (including each rank in those skills). For example, if you have Rank 9 Advanced Materials Collection and Rank 1 in Offensive Initiative, you would have 10 skill points in total.

Since I believe the skill points are related to how fast you can access the center of the map (and presumably obtain artifacts), this opens up the strategic option of focusing on fast to research, low-tier technologies, sacrificing access to powerful abilities for the opportunity to get first crack at an alternate win condition.

[ChickenHawk07]

That's a very real possibility, as in Ningal, which ends August 4th, or sooner if Romars ends it with Solar Taps, and I'm at 43 skill points. Most of those are very high level skills though, and I still can't access the center. I also have not noticed the center shrinking, as you stated in a previous post.

[ChickenHawk07]

Definitely no shrinkage of the center in Ningal. And I'm at 44 Skillpoints and 1555 Skills. And my ships/fleets still die attempting to
Cross the DMZ.

[Enforc3r]

Just noticed on Nanshe the center seems to be way smaller than the other servers. But it is also only 4 Galaxy server.
They probably adjusted it to fit a smaller map. Ill keep trying to send probes in though. Pretty sure it will be impossiballs
to try it on the tutorial server. Because they would want win conditions turned off.

[Tsagoth]

The centre does scale to the size of the universe which was spawned.

The points for a skill are the Tier * rank. Your tech level is your points / (max points/10). Until you reach TL 6 your ships will vanish in the centre.

[Enforc3r]

What is max points exactly

[Jean Arnaud]

I see "Skills" and "Skill Pts", but nothing labeled "tech level." Skill Pts matches accordingly with the number of items I have researched (including 1 point for each of the 9 levels I have in AMC), but I do not see a correlation with that and the value I see listed on my details sheet for Skills. I.e. I can't figure out how the value for Skills is determined.

Further, this explanation didn't help me determine when I have "TL 6".

[VanderLegion]

I see "Skills" and "Skill Pts", but nothing labeled "tech level." Skill Pts matches accordingly with the number of items I have researched (including 1 point for each of the 9 levels I have in AMC), but I do not see a correlation with that and the value I see listed on my details sheet for Skills. I.e. I can't figure out how the value for Skills is determined.

Further, this explanation didn't help me determine when I have "TL 6".

As soon as you've researched a tier 6 research item I'd imagine.

[ChickenHawk07]

Ah ha! So we now finally know what is required to get into the center. It isn't a set number of points, per say, it's just researching a tier 6. So, looks like I might be able to get into the Center finally.

[WhiteLion]

Can we get any clarification on this?

I'm not understanding how to figure out what TL I am at. I am trying to get to the centre.

[ChickenHawk07]

Each technology you research has a Tier Level associated with it. You must research a Tier 1 technology before researching a Tier 2, and so on and so forth. I believe you can check where you stand by going through your research tree and looking at each tech you have researched. Look for the highest ones and see which Tier they fall under. Just be advised, Tier 6 takes 192 Hours to research, so it basically takes about 1 month or more get to that level, depending on your research pattern.

[WhiteLion]

This doesn't seem to work on the tutorial server. Haven't been able to get to centre and I have tier6 skills.

[ChickenHawk07]

Not sure about the Tutorial Server. I would assume since there are no win conditions in the Tutorial Server, that maybe there is no way to get into the center?

[WhiteLion]

Doubtful, the tutorial server should allow you to get to the centre and find artifacts… I would think the tutorial server simply has no win conditions.

[Jean Arnaud]

I've been waiting a week to comment on this because I did not want anyone on Belitlli to know I had reached tier 6, but tier 6 is NOT the ticket to gaining entry to the center of the universe. I researched Gravitron physics and my probes still died at the dividing line. I tried several more times while I was running the solar core taps as I researched additional lower tier items, but I never gained entry. I cannot recall the exact numbers of research I had during my last attempt, but I believe it was about 38 skills and 270-ish "skill points", whatever that is (i'm less sure of this last number).

I never believed simply reaching tier 6 was the key anyway. For one, it unfairly favors researchers, who are already at an advantage with win conditions. Further, Tsagoth's explanation did not (in my mind) make any reference to tier 6 research, so I was surprised when people interpreted it that way. Rather it discusses "tech level 6" and in a context that implies that it is something not mentioned in the in-game menus. I have no idea what tech level is and Tsagoth did not explain it, but it appears to be something in the code that we can obtain, but there is no indication how tech level is calculated.

[WhiteLion]

I agree with Jean Arnaud, as he pointed out Tsagoth's explanation wasn't very clear.

I never believed it was just a T6 skill.

I already won one game by solar tapping, and I only did that because I couldn't enter the center after having that skill.

I actually suspect it's a combination of skills much like viewing black holes. I suspect it's leveling up certain skills to level 6 (this might be Tech6), as well as combining other skills. On Lamashtu I've made some friends who will allow me to experiment until I figure it out.

I suspect the center requires being able to detect anomolies as well as being able to to cloak... I also suspect it requires being able take heavy damage... so there's some Level6 skills required... to take damage.

[Jean Arnaud]

Your suspicions are way too specifiic given what we know. There is no indication that any specific skill is required here.

I mean, we know the formula (I think), but we do not know how to determine each variable:

Tech Level = Sum(Tier*Rank) / (Max Points/10)

When tech level reaches 6, we can enter the center, though tech level is not displayed in game. As an aside, the "Skills" stat in the details sheet does not have any connection to any of this as far as I can tell because it is always way too high. For example, on Nergal, I only have 15 Skill Pts. (15 researched items), but my "Skills" is 244! That is 16+ points per skill researched and so those numbers must not be actually related. I had a much different (lower) ratio on Belitlli. In any event, I don't believe this is connected to the formula above.

Calculating the sum of the skills (tier*rank) should be fairly easy, but "max points" is not clear. There are 48 skills (12 fleet, 10 combat, 12 science, and 14 trade). Multiplied by 9, there are 432 possible skills. Dividing by 10 gives us 43.2, and if 6*43.2 is the goal, then we would need 260 points to enter the center area. I believe this to be
max points" and the remaining analysis uses this assumption, though again, the term "max points" is not clear to us yet.

Of course, given that formula and the way training subsequent levels of higher tier skills works (24 hours for each level after first training that skill), the fastest way to reach tech level 6 is to train up to tier 6 skills immediately and then max them out. Take any one skill tree for example, and it takes 504 hours (21 days) to reach and finish tier 6, plus another 8 days to max it out. Thus in the first 29 days, a non-researcher would have 69 points. If 43.2 is the correct denominator, this is only a tech level of 1.6.

Maxing out a second tier 6 skill in the same tech tree would yield an additional 54 points after 384 more hours (16 days). Thus, after 45 days, a non-researcher would have 123 points. Given that there are only 2 tier 6 skills in each tree, we would then need to max out the tier 5 skills in that tree (24 hours per level), which I believe would be more efficient that starting over in a new tree to research to tier 6. I am not aware of any trees having 3+ tier 6 skills, though I have only played as a researcher. So taking another 8 days to max whichever tier 5 skill was used to attain tier 6, we would then have 163 after 53 days, or a tech level of 3.77.

Now at this point, the server is about to end on its own (2 months have almost passed) even if some researcher hasn't finished it off yet (unlikely). Further, we would have to research the next tier 5 skill from level 1, which is 6 days of research for only 5 points. In other words, there is no chance for a non-researcher to attain tech level 6 if the math above is correct. It is literally impossible.

As several people have already noted, this method for attaining the center clearly favors researchers, though they would have to know what they were doing as even in a relatively long game, they would not necessarily achieve a high enough tech level if they were researching a lot of low tier skills (increasing fleet size, planetology, rare ore collection), though these tier 1 skills are important for other reasons.

However, even at researcher speeds, I do not believe it is possible to attain 260 points in 2 months. Using the calculations above, we would note that after 39.75 days, the researcher would have attained the 163 points above. This still leaves more than 20 days to gain the reamining 97 points. Let's see. Another 10.5 days to max the second tier 5 skill (45 points) for a total of 208. At this point, I might go for aiming for another tier 6 skill in another tree rather than maxing both tier 4 skills, though 6 days of maxing the already researched tier 4 skill would provide 32 points (240 total now), which is a decent return on time. In any event, attaining another tier 6 takes the researcher 15.75 days, which means we have run out of time without making it to 260, since we would need 15.75 plus another 6 days to get the full benefit of a tier 6 (69 points from tier 1 to max tier 6).

I acknowledge there may be a slightly more efficient ways to focus on tier 6 versus on tier 6 skills, but I can't imagine it would save more than a couple of days. Feel free to mess around with this strategy and the numbers, and let me know how it goes. I don't want to write down each possible permutation, but doing it in my head, I do not see a way to get to 260 in 2 months, even at 75% research time. The closest I have come to 260 in running numbers (using the tier 6 down method above) is 252 after 60.25 days (researcher). I'll let you know if I spot something further.

[Jean Arnaud]

One bit of knowledge that highlights the difficulty here (and the importance of targeting the tier 6 skills) is that if we focused only on tier 1 and tier 2 skills, after 60 days, we would have only 120 points (non-researcher) or 160 points (researcher).

[WhiteLion]

Astrophysics at level 7, and still no access to the centre of the map.

Working on Hyperspace Physics now.

I'm also pretty sure I am TL6… but maybe I calculated wrong… I just don't know….

[Jean Arnaud]

Astrophysics at level 7, and still no access to the centre of the map.

Working on Hyperspace Physics now.

I'm also pretty sure I am TL6… but maybe I calculated wrong… I just don't know….

Again, I don't think that specific techs have any bearing. What calculation are you using to conclude that you are at tech level 6? Take a look at my posts on page 2 of this thread. I do not believe tech level 6 is currently possible even for researchers. The best I could caclulate (before the server ends) using various math permutations was 252 points, which is tech level 5.833.

[Tsagoth]

Max points is what you would have if you had all skills trained to rank 9. The server calculates this when the game starts based on the number of skills it loads from the database. I don't know what the number is offhand, since it isn't hardcoded.

It's not about the highest tier trained; having a Tier 6 skill doesn't give you Tech level 6.

Edit: I pulled this from the log during a launch:

There are 51 skills loaded
Total skill points are 1566
Points per tech level is 156

So it looks like you would need 936 pts for TL 6.

[Tsagoth]

I have patched Nergal to remove the TL 6 requirement to explore the centre, since the mechanic is clearly broken.

[WhiteLion]

Crap I just saw your post…. I got all excited I finally figured the mystery out…

Thought all you had to do was use your Tech 6 skill once… like Solar Tap or PK and you achieve TL6 advancement. Kind of like how some games require you to launch an atom bomb or satellite to move from one revolution to the next. (Civilizations is the example I used).

[Tsagoth]

I'd like to keep the idea of making the centre offlimits until you reach a certain level. When we redid the skills, we forgot to think about the fact that you could no longer get as many skill points, so the tech level thing just didn't work any more. I'm not sure what will replace it, I guess we need to spreadsheet out what the possible range of skillpoints might be after four weeks.

[Jean Arnaud]

I'd like to keep the idea of making the centre offlimits until you reach a certain level. When we redid the skills, we forgot to think about the fact that you could no longer get as many skill points, so the tech level thing just didn't work any more. I'm not sure what will replace it, I guess we need to spreadsheet out what the possible range of skillpoints might be after four weeks.

Keep in mind that basing access to the center on skill points makes gives Researchers an advantage, and it is already easier to win as a Researcher.