Min/Max Aptitud problem | Eclipse Phase

Wed, 2012-12-05 21:48

#2

Undocking

Short Term (Char Gen) vs Long Term (Rez Points)

The Exceptional Aptitude (COG) means you have a capacity to achieve better COG than anyone else. It does not mean that you are better than everyone else at Infosec, only that you have more potential. COG also effects all its linked skills, not just Infosec. Reaching an Infosec of 80 at COG 30 is worth 70 CP. Reaching an Infosec of 80 at COG 40(Exceptional Ap) is worth 80 CP Reaching an Infosec of 90(Expert) at COG 30 is worth 100 CP Reaching an Infosec of 90(Expert) at COG 40(Exceptional Ap) is worth 110 CP I would not recommend picking this up and funnelling the Aptitude points or CP at Character Generation. Pick it up, sure, but don't spend 100 CP boosting COG, unless you can equal it out. There are 6 Active COG skills (counting each of the three Hardwares) and 3 Knowledge COG skills (of which you can have more than one in each category). So the 120 CP (10 Aptitude Points+Exceptional Aptitude) for 10 points works out if you have 12 COG skills. If you have more than you are actually saving points that you can spend elsewhere. For the purpose of this, 1 Rez = 1 CP (which it does). Say I choose a Novacrab and start with a COG of 30 (base 30 no morph bonuses or implants) and have Exceptional Aptitude (COG) on my ego. If, at Character Gen, I chose to spend CP to do the same thing, I would have to spend 10 CP on the COG and 20 CP for 1 skill point for each of those 10 skills. However, this means I can spend 10 Rez to boost my COG to 31 during play—but I must spend 1 Rez per COG linked skill over 60. If I have 10 COG linked skills at 60 or above (not unfeasible) I have to spend 20 Rez. In this case it is a better idea to spend the Rez on it. But it would take 3 or 4 sessions of playtime and saving Rez to gain enough to spend on raising COG and all the linked skills (which could be anywhere between 3-8 sessions depending on how your crew plays). If you think you are planning on min-maxing, as a player, you have to weigh the long term advantage against the chance that you will gain enough Rez (and have enough playtime) for this to be useful. You could also gain it as a morph trait later in play using Favours or Credits but that can be a hassle depending on how high your death rate is and how generous your GM portrays Firewall's/Patron's 'free of charge' resleeving plan.

Wed, 2012-12-05 22:15

#3

kindalas

Ego vs Morph

I think it is important to recognize that an Morph bonus of +10 is a temporary thing that can be taken away. An Ego with an aptitude of 40 is a force to be reckoned with and it is revealing that there are so few morphs with Aptitude bonuses over 30. However if EP in the future bumps their timeline forwards to say 15 or 20 AF I expect to see the Aptitude maximums on morphs to increase and the focus on Morphs with high bonuses to decrease.

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Wed, 2012-12-05 22:51

#4

Undocking

kindalas wrote:If EP in the

kindalas wrote:
If EP in the future bumps their timeline forwards to say 15 or 20 AF I expect to see the Aptitude maximums on morphs to increase and the focus on Morphs with high bonuses to decrease.

If you look at it currently, higher aptitude maximums are hand-in-hand with higher morph bonuses. It would be hard for a character to hit an Aptitude max of 50 COG without morph bonuses.

Wed, 2012-12-05 23:08

#5

kindalas

Undocking wrote:kindalas

Undocking wrote:
kindalas wrote:
If EP in the future bumps their timeline forwards to say 15 or 20 AF I expect to see the Aptitude maximums on morphs to increase and the focus on Morphs with high bonuses to decrease.
If you look at it currently, higher aptitude maximums are hand-in-hand with higher morph bonuses. It would be hard for a character to hit an Aptitude max of 50 COG without morph bonuses.

40 is Max. And I've routinely made character that have 40 in two Aptitudes after morph bonuses. But that's with a +25 to REF and a +25 to SOM and a murder load of implants. But I like my Firewall agents to be all gentle and nice looking until you realize that they're hard to hit, tough, pitch a chunk of ordinance down range, and always go first. But then again 1000 CP characters tend to be more like superheros then most people realize.

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Thu, 2012-12-06 06:15

#6

Janusfaced Janusfaced's picture

"Max 40" cap isn't applied to skills

Dantalion wrote:
In the other side if you have COG 40 and you can add a maximum of 40 points (60CP) to Interfacing and raise it to 80. You can't rise an hability above 40 so you lost any bonus, in this case +10 COG of the Remade. So Interfacing hability reach 80. More dumb you are, more "study" you can... So a smater EGO its less effective than a less smart EGO using Infosec? It isn't sound logic or fair to me. I'm missing something?

I think "Max 40" cap (p. 124) is applied to apptidudes only, not to skills. So If you have COG 40, Infosec 80 and Remade morph (+10 COG), you will have COG 40 and Infosec 80 + 10.

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Thu, 2012-12-06 07:08

#7

Dantalion

thanks!

thanks guys! were very helpful!

Thu, 2012-12-06 07:43

#8

Lorsa

Yes, what you explain is how

Yes, what you explain is how the rules work, although eventually you could raise your skill to 99, which would cost a total of 98 points with 40 COG and 108 points with 30 COG. Of course, the 30 COG guy could for some unknown reason, only raise it to 89 which would be 88 points. That is the strangeness with being sleeved into morphs that makes you smarter unlike a morph that can not make you smarter. However, you can not count on a morph always being available to you which is the real difference. The rules, as you pointed out, are a bit strange in these cases and I think it would be possible to fix this issue if it was something the developers wanted to do.

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Thu, 2012-12-06 11:16

#9

lets adapt lets adapt's picture

I think it should be

I think it should be mentioned that, while it is inefficient to dump a million points into attributes instead of the single skill you are trying to boost, an attribute increase benefits other associated skills, and thus why they are more expensive.

Thu, 2012-12-06 11:52

#10

kindalas

Trust me

Janusfaced wrote:
Dantalion wrote:
In the other side if you have COG 40 and you can add a maximum of 40 points (60CP) to Interfacing and raise it to 80. You can't rise an hability above 40 so you lost any bonus, in this case +10 COG of the Remade. So Interfacing hability reach 80. More dumb you are, more "study" you can... So a smater EGO its less effective than a less smart EGO using Infosec? It isn't sound logic or fair to me. I'm missing something?
I think "Max 40" cap (p. 124) is applied to apptidudes only, not to skills. So If you have COG 40, Infosec 80 and Remade morph (+10 COG), you will have COG 40 and Infosec 80 + 10.

The Aptitude cap is 40 after all bonuses. That number gets fed over to the skills. So in your example If your COG was 40, and you had an additional morph bonus of +10 it would be wasted.

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Fri, 2012-12-07 07:27

#11

Janusfaced Janusfaced's picture

Infosec 99 + 10 is possible, I think

Lorsa wrote:
Yes, what you explain is how the rules work, although eventually you could raise your skill to 99, which would cost a total of 98 points with 40 COG and 108 points with 30 COG. Of course, the 30 COG guy could for some unknown reason, only raise it to 89 which would be 88 points. That is the strangeness with being sleeved into morphs that makes you smarter unlike a morph that can not make you smarter. However, you can not count on a morph always being available to you which is the real difference. The rules, as you pointed out, are a bit strange in these cases and I think it would be possible to fix this issue if it was something the developers wanted to do.

I am interpreting 99-cap of skills isn't hard as 40-cap of aptitudes. Rather, it's like 30-cap of aptitudes. I mean, it is breakable with morph bonus so Infosec 99 + 10 is possible.

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Fri, 2012-12-07 07:42

#12

Janusfaced Janusfaced's picture

calculating steps are confusing a little, but...

kindalas wrote:
The Aptitude cap is 40 after all bonuses. That number gets fed over to the skills. So in your example If your COG was 40, and you had an additional morph bonus of +10 it would be wasted.

I agree the Aptitude cap is 40 after all bonuses. But the corerule says "Any aptitude or skill bonuses provided by the morph are applied after all CP are spent." (p. 136). So I think they are calculated in below steps; 1) buy aptitudes (e.c. COG 40) 2) buy skills, without morph bonuses (e.c. COG 40, Infosec 80) 3) apply morph bonuses on aptitudes and skills (e.c. COG 40 + 10, Infosec 80 + 10) 4) apply 40-cap on aptitudes (e.c. COG 40, Infosec 80 + 10) In other words, morph bonus of +10 on skills would be intact, even if 40-cap triggered.

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Fri, 2012-12-07 11:08

#13

kindalas

Janusfaced wrote:kindalas

Janusfaced wrote:
kindalas wrote:
The Aptitude cap is 40 after all bonuses. That number gets fed over to the skills. So in your example If your COG was 40, and you had an additional morph bonus of +10 it would be wasted.
I agree the Aptitude cap is 40 after all bonuses. But the corerule says "Any aptitude or skill bonuses provided by the morph are applied after all CP are spent." (p. 136). So I think they are calculated in below steps; 1) buy aptitudes (e.c. COG 40) 2) buy skills, without morph bonuses (e.c. COG 40, Infosec 80) 3) apply morph bonuses on aptitudes and skills (e.c. COG 40 + 10, Infosec 80 + 10) 4) apply 40-cap on aptitudes (e.c. COG 40, Infosec 80 + 10) In other words, morph bonus of +10 on skills would be intact, even if 40-cap triggered.

You're beating a dead horse to justify a rules interpretation that you approve of. However everyone else uses the system as stated, I know because I looked into it in great detail when I assembled the Excel Character sheet. In summary to be 100% clear. After calculating a character's total Ego + Morph + Gear + PSI + drug bonuses to an Aptitude. If it is over 40. It is now 40. And that reduction comes from the combined Morph + Gear+ PSI + Drug bonuses being reduced. So when a character with an EGO trait of say 30 and a morph/gear bonus of +20 what happens in the skill maths is that the base skill is 30 +faction and background bonuses and then you can buy it up with CP and then the morph bonus (reduced from +20 to +10) is added on. And then gear/morph specific bonuses are added to it. Like the +30 to climbing from grip pads or an Octomorph's +10 to climbing.

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Fri, 2012-12-07 15:42

#14

Janusfaced Janusfaced's picture

Why morph bonuses on skills (should) fade away?

kindalas wrote:
You're beating a dead horse to justify a rules interpretation that you approve of. However everyone else uses the system as stated, I know because I looked into it in great detail when I assembled the Excel Character sheet. In summary to be 100% clear. After calculating a character's total Ego + Morph + Gear + PSI + drug bonuses to an Aptitude. If it is over 40. It is now 40. And that reduction comes from the combined Morph + Gear+ PSI + Drug bonuses being reduced. So when a character with an EGO trait of say 30 and a morph/gear bonus of +20 what happens in the skill maths is that the base skill is 30 +faction and background bonuses and then you can buy it up with CP and then the morph bonus (reduced from +20 to +10) is added on. And then gear/morph specific bonuses are added to it. Like the +30 to climbing from grip pads or an Octomorph's +10 to climbing.

Thank you for explain what your interpretation is. I think morph bonuses on aptitudes and ones on skills are different things once they are given. So even if the former faded away by 40-cap the latter will be intact. But I see you think the latter will fade away also. Would you like to explain why your interpretation is better? More accurate in grammatical reading? More Logical or make sense? Game balance? I checked your Excel Character sheet v.95, but it has a new concept named "Effective Bonus". I am feeling it is complicate a little and thinking it is a houserule (that said, it might be a good houserule...).

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Thu, 2012-12-20 12:43

#15

Dantalion

thanks!

Thank you all of you guys for the answers! It was really helpful, like A LOT! I was thinking better than 80-top-hability rule is "You only can use 70CP in one single hability during the creation process" So in the same case... COG => to 60 => to 80 (in CP) => Total 40 => 20 => 25 (50CP) => 85 total 30 => 30 => 20 (40CP) => 80 total 20 => 40 => 15 (30CP) => 75 total 10 => 50 => 10 (20CP) => 70 total *In the COG 30 case with a REMADE (+10 COG) you reach 90. And for the trait EXCEPTIONAL APTITUDE say something like this: "If this an EGO trait and it's taken during the creation process you can spend 80CP to raise the related aptitud-habilities." COG => to 60 => to 80 (in CP) => Total 40 => 20 => 30 (60CP) => 90 total *So now COG 30 with REMADE it's the same with COG 40 without one. Same logic applies to EXPERT trait.