Hi all!
I've noticed that the attribute COG can be overly abused.
I was creating a character, a knowledge based former professor...argonaut infomorph.
Doing so I noticed that he had 15 cog-based skills...so the logical thing to do would be to pump up cog to 30 or even 40 and have loads of points left over.
I don't actually like it though. I used 4 academics, 3 knowledge and 3 interest skills, plus interfacing, hardware, infosec and 2 medicine skills.
I think that upping cog too much is just "powerplaying" a bit though. It's the only aptitude that you can use this way though, as none of the others have more that 10 linked skills.
To fix this I'd say that the "profession" skill should not be necessarly linked to cog but to another aptitude, depending on the nature of the profession...miners would link it to som maybe, negotiators would link it to sav...not too sure if this would work though.
What do you thik ladz??
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Cog and its "overuse"
Mon, 2011-04-11 22:23
#1
det
Cog and its "overuse"
Mon, 2011-04-11 22:49
#2
Yerameyahu
Re: Cog and its "overuse"
A genius is supposed to be great at many fields. Like you said, there are only 3 'real' COG skills: Infosec, Interfacing, and Hardware (with Demolitions and Medicine making more limited showings). The rest are complementary or flavor skills. Great for roleplaying.
Starting with an Apt of 30 (god forbid 40) is a serious investment that leaves you weak or crippled elsewhere.
Tue, 2011-04-12 05:51
#3
Arenamontanus
Re: Cog and its "overuse"
It is the usual problem with systems where skills depend on some attributes: those attributes become rather essential/ripe for abuse.
However, in a way it makes complete in-game sense. Eclipse Phase is a world where mental capacity is super-important. Not just a nice thing to have, but the key to being successful. Physical strength, looks and agility are not really essential for most jobs and can often be augmented with technology. The ability to learn, understand, adapt and think - that is the real transhuman capital. This is why Cognite is so enormous: nobody in their right mind does not pop some cognitive enhancer drugs a few times a week. Skillware allows you to download low-level skills, but to really make them shine (or find the proper use of them) you need the smarts. Brain development is big business. This leads to a brain race, of course.
In real life most professional skills *are* tied to COG (loosely measured by IQ). However, not all - I know one paper showing that loan collector performance depended on their EQ (presumably SAV or even INT). IQ and job performance tend to correlate best in the more academic and abstract jobs (which many jobs in EP have become - ditch diggers direct robot teams rather than strain muscles). So I would agree that some professions might be based on other aptitudes: Profession: Entertainer is of course SAV, while Profession: Teacher might be INT.
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Tue, 2011-04-12 06:44
#4
Axel the Chimeric
Re: Cog and its "overuse"
To get your base COG up to 30, you need to spend 150 CP. That's 15% of your total spending and, given that 700 CP are earmarked for skills, it's half of your available CP. It's also not really as powerful as you might think. While the boundary between thought and physicality is reduced in EP, COG is a great skill for complimenting other things, not really doing them (outside of tearing up your opponent's digital systems and doing [i]SCIENCE![/i] anyway). You'll find tons of situations where one skill lends itself to another, but you'll need to be good at other things to get the full effect, unless you want to spend the whole game sitting in a lab designing your team's latest gear (a useful role but hardly a fun one).
Still, the way I look at it, EP is a roleplaying game. Any game you play will have ways to min-max things, and, if your players are blatantly doing so, they're doing it wrong.
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Wed, 2011-04-13 04:09
#5
Tyrnis
Re: Cog and its "overuse"
I would disagree with the previous poster about 'doing it wrong'.
The big thing to remember is that it's not a problem unless it's impacting the fun that you or your group is having. If one player is hyper-optimizing and it's making them significantly outshine the rest of the group across the board, that's a bad thing, certainly. If you're making your uber-COG academic and your team consists of an Ultimate merc, a Socialite escort, and a Scum enforcer, then it's a pretty safe bet you're not going to be stepping on any toes. As an infomorph, you're going to be pretty weak in the social arena (given double costs, and all), and you've obviously invested a lot of your points outside of combat, so aren't going to be nearly as capable there.
There's certainly nothing wrong with ruling that professions can link to other abilities -- teaching, for instance, could easily be justified as SAV, as I think we've all had brilliant teachers who just weren't that good at imparting what they know. So long as you're at least competent, teaching isn't about being smart, it's about presenting the information in such a way that it captures the student's attention and is memorable.
That said, doing so doesn't solve a powergaming problem at all. The only way you're going to do that is by talking to your group -- COG vs a bunch of individual linked skills is but one way of optimizing, and a fairly niche one at that.