Basics of skill system.

There are two categories of skills. There are passive skills (by their possession, you are allowed to equip some item or perform some function) and active skills (by their posession, some action becomes available to you).

There are tiers of skills, starting at tier 1. A tier 1 skill has no dependencies, and is initially available. Each tier of skills can depend only on the immediately previous tier of skills, and a skill with no dependencies can be introduced at any tier. Tiers are unlocked via mission ranks, by accumulating points. Until you have unlocked a tier, you cannot purchase any skill in it -- even if you have the prerequisites.

Some skills may have faction requirements, and some skills may only be obtained as prizes from certain Episodes and Series. The way to think about this is in Ranma, for example, the hero goes and finds a trainer, learns from the trainer, and is then presented with a challenge where they use the skill to defeat some great foe. Many other Anime use the same theory (Saint Seiya, Dragonball, Slayers, etc.). It might be we end up doing all skills this way, because it actually might be a better limiter than the Eve system.

Each skill has 5 ranks. It is possible to have a skill that exists in multiple tiers. In this case, when the skill is first awarded it should be awarded as "Mechatronics I" (for example). The game would show the rank as "Mechatronics I-4" for example, and then you'd have Mechatronics II depend on Mechatronics to continue the trend.

Feats, Hacks, Alter Codes, Equipment and Items can have named flags as requirements. Skills can provide those named flags. There is always a named flag that matches the name of the skill, and one for each of the 5 ranks within the skill. These are handled programaticly, and do not need to be specified here. Alter Code's are modifiers attached to items that modify the item's functions -- for example, putting a "fire" alter code on a sword results in a sword that is flaming, etc.

In order to use one of the afore mentioned abilities or items, you must have the necessary named flags. To express a "this skill or that skill," you introduce a named flag and allow both skills to grant it. The ability or item depends only on the named flag. That allows and to be specified (require two or more flags), or to be specified (one flag shared by one or more skill), etc. Additionally, you can have a "deny" set of named flags too -- in that case, if the player possesses any named flag in the "deny" list, they will not be allowed to use the ability or equip the item.

Thats an overview -- that should make it easier to work the skill tree into an actual tree. Also, the tiers give us something we can use to rate combat ability, to implement a CON system. A tier 1 player would not have won very many events, and would not have access to most skills and equipment. Meanwhile, a tier 20 player would be expected to have many skills, and diverse and effective equipment. There still would need to be adjustment based on the situation, but it would provide a pretty strong starting point.

Note it also provides a baseline to be used for figuring out how many abilities can be loaded at a time. You could, for example, make an ability take its tier in points to equip, and so if you had 100 points you could either equip 100 tier 1 abilities or 5 tier 20 abilities. Thats just an example, it doesn't mean that is really how we would do it, its just one way we could.

Basic player skills...

OK.. lets get serious here.. what we need is a list of basic skills that all battlers would start out with..

so I figure that most "feats" and "combat moves" should come out of some kind of advanced training.

I'll put down some ideas for now:

Starter Skills

Basic Piloting (just moving around and such..nothing fancy, this usually covers walking, jogging, and simple hops/jumping [no jumpjets])

-Combat Computer Usage (Basic Hacking would check to this)

-Basic Ranged (guns, rockets)

-Brawling (physical combat..simple "hand to hand", or streetfighting)

on top of this.. I belive we can use this as the base for a series of "trees" that branch out from these skills....

for example, the "ranged" skill can open up a number of skills that deal with a specific type of ranged weapon -- meaning you buy different skills for a missile launcher than you would for a rifle.