Introduction
I’ve seen other posts about researching and related, but most of all I’ve seen were straight rip-offs of Rust’s research system for crafting. With this post, I offer an unique set of research methods for UII that will serve to unlocking/improving crafting recipes and also unlocking new actions to perform in the different fields and specializations that could be featured in the game.
Warning: very long post; tons of details. TL;DR at the bottom.
Researching mechanics
Essay, error and improve
First steps towards knowledge
To unlock new basic crafting blueprints, upgrade existing ones and trying out to perform new actions, you have to reach ideas which must have put in practice to be learnt by your own, after doing so many times what you already know.
How so?
You perform certain actions or craft some stuff, and you gain experience in that determined field by doing it over an over. At certain point, your character would realize that there might be a better way to perform such action or think of a new/better item to be made.
This could be affected by an intellect sort of skill; the higher it is, the faster your character will come up to new inventions. And also practice and dexterity; once you get the idea, you have to perform it in order to learn it, because at the start it won’t be as much as effective and could also be prone to failure.
Examples
-
You’re fishing with a fishing rod because it’s the obvious thing. At certain point when you reach high xp (paired with intelect), you’ll be able to try out other new methods on which you aren’t that good but might be more effective, like net fishing or spearing, etc…
-
You make wooden doors to stay safe at nights in a building you captured. At some time you reach xp from repairing it over and over, your character want to try out upgrading it, so it doesn’t get broken that many times, then you look out to fix some thin metal plating into it. As you perform it, quality of the work gets better with every trial, when at the start plates could’ve got poorly fixed, or other issues.
This would be the most natural form to unlock new actions/crafting recipes and it should allow players to unlock some of the most basic survival techniques.
Manual examining and investigation
A more scientific method
It’s similar to previous method, but in this case it’s all based upon inspecting what you find, so you might get to something slightly more advanced that you might not know at all, and you have to dismount and examine it in order to know how was it made, how it works and how can you use it.
This should be also limited by overall intellect level, so you can’t know how to dismount, re-assemble and maintain a HMG just 2 min after superficially inspectioning it.
Pretty obvious tho, seen before
Not exactly. Unlike in Rust, what you investigate shouldn’t be necessarily destroyed; you only disassemble or dismount it, or just examine it superficially, then you remit to previous method in order to reassemble the item/object if needed and unlock the repair/crafting options based in your experience and intellect level.
Notice that this method should not require a workbench to be performed upon early to mid tier articles, but having the right tools is necessary in some cases and having a workbench should definitely help to a faster examination and a safer way to save the blueprints.
All assemblable items/objects must get damaged parts scrapped if these can’t be fixed in order to be researched, keeping the still functional parts to replace damaged ones.
Other more simple or non-disassemblable items or objects can be inspected superficially without scrapping it. Some of these kind of items are scrapped during process if very damaged.
This whole method is intended for learning to craft and maintain basic to intermediate stuff, and generally assemblables, like some tools, guns, vehicles, barricades, utilities, etc., but overall every single item and object ingame should be inspectable to discover its potential usefulness.
List of options and exceptions here
-
Superficially inspectables (not dissassembled/scrapped/destroyed or optional)
- Craftmade edibles (while eaten)
- Clothes and basic gear
- Basic tools and melee
- Supplies and raw materials
- Ammunition and explosives
- Basic and/or acknowledged buildables
- Basic and/or acknowledged furniture
-
Scrapped upon inspection if damaged
- Clothes and gear
- Tools and melee
- Guns and other ranged weapons
- All buildables
- Vehicles
- Utilities and electromechanics
And the list may go on as new stuff with unique properties keeps being added.
Knowledge sources
Following the written
Everything can’t just come up from mere invention, like it was in 3 and 2, so in II you shouldn’t rely purely on your experience to reach all crafting recipes; you can only do some things if your character has learnt them via existing sources of information, and these things go along very basic up to endgame stuff.
Books and manuals have been suggested a lot previously, but it’s been unclear how should they work and be balanced. My approach is to make them a slight shortcut and also unlockers for new stuff without discarding both previous methods, and also make them actually interesting to have.
So well, what’s your plan?
First off, make books and manuals truly interactive, and with this I mean that you actually read the manual or book. Books and manuals can look like Minecraft ones when opened and have summarized content with drawings and sketches very similar to those from this post. It is interesting because it might bring some charm to ingame reading, but that’s only for the aesthetics to not make books boring items and would also add up to balance, as it allows to implement non-frustrating measures to negate exploits.
These measures would be (again) based on overall intellect level, so the higher, the better for reading.
How texts should work
-
When reading a book or manual, each page should have a set of summarized information plus sketches, which upon reading can either:
- Unlock a new crafting recipe
- Unlock a new action or method
- Accomplish faster research of an item or object.
- Give an xp and efficiency boost on already acknowledged recipes or actions (unless mastered).
-
Reading a book doesn’t discard both prev. methods listed in the post; once you read a book, you must practice what you’ve read in order to learn it. E.g.: if you’ve read how to make a new cooking recipe, you have to perform it as in the 1st method via essay and error to learn it off from the book. Regardless, having the text in your inventory should give you the efficiency boost on itself, as you should “follow” the instructions while crafting/performing by default.
-
There should be a limit on how much and how fast your character can memorize at a time, based on intellect level, so you don’t become a the smartest and most skilled in 10 minutes at library. Just as a placeholder suggestion, at the lowest level of reading memory, your char. could memorize 3 pages, reading each one for 5 IRL seconds.
The content not being applied or put in practice for learning can be forgotten after some time, and the further the intellect level, the more and faster you can memorize recipes and techniques without forgetting them for a bit longer.
- Once you have mastered a technique or recipe, these are permanent in the player’s UI and the said content of text can no longer have any effect on the player. If player does ever forget or loses practice with a recipe or technique, it’s possible to read the book again and restart the learning process.
All of these steps are meant to make books useful and ensure faster grinding, yet not making them a key to becoming a jack-of-all-trades in few minutes.
It’s important to state that there could be multiple texts towards a single field and can also come up in tiers. Everything you should be able to learn from books and manuals:
- Survival techniques
- Exercises and martial arts
- Medical techniques
- Building and barricading
- Crafting blueprints and techniques
- Electromechanics
- Farming techniques
- Cooking recipes and techniques
- Fishing and hunting techniques
- Metalworks and smithing
- Advanced gun maintenance and gunsmithing
- Advanced vehicles handling
And probably the list could go even further…
Important note: it should be possible to master some of these fields without reading any text, yet not knowing alternate techniques, whereas you need info to reach the more advanced levels in other of these skills.
TL;DR
- Actions performed get better over time, allowing you to try out new ones.
- Smartly examining usable articles of all kind for research.
- Books as a decent support for faster recipe/technique learning.
Pretty detailed and long post, I hope you’ve enjoyed. Let me know your thoughts!
- It’s all very nice! Realistic and balanced enough
- It needs changes. It could be much better if… (comment)
- Didn’t like it, not fair nor fun
