Tracking stat bonus

[Aeris]

Hello,

This is probably directed at Kaivan or Anarcho. I'm not a T2A academic, so I have no idea how to search for era accuracy documentation, etc. (I'd like to learn, so if you have a few great websites with lots of info, please share them).

I want to know why some skills have a functional stat bonus, and other don't.

For instance, Cartography has a functional stat bonus (it operates on the shown skill level): You can be at 55.9 real Cartography skill, with 100 STR and 100 INT, and you will be able to decipher Level 2 treasure maps, because you're shown skill will be 60.0.

However, Tracking operates on the real skill level, even though the shown skill is significantly higher. I tested this out quite thoroughly, and Tracking is exactly 1 tile distance for every 1.0 real skill. So, someone could be up to 100 tiles West AND 100 tiles North of your character, and if you have 100.0 Tracking, you will spot them. At 10.0 real skill, it's 10 tiles in any direction, even though the shown skill is 24.0 (100 STR and 100 INT).

Was just curious if this is a mistake, or era accurate. In my opinion it seems that it should be one or the other, not the way it is. With a skill like Hiding, for instance, you have 0% chance of success at 0.0 skill; there is no stat bonus that gives you any chance. Shown skill = Real skill all the way from 0.0 to 100.0. Shouldn't Tracking also be this way? Or should I be able to track 24 tiles with 24 shown/10 real?

Thank you for your time!

[Kaivan]

This is actually a somewhat complicated question, and one that I don't actually have the answer to beyond some very general hypothesis. Looking at the demo scripts, there are several different types of skill testing and checking mechanisms that are used to determine whether a skill is successfully used or not. Below are most of the different skill checking functions available to the scripts within the demo:

integer testSkill(object, integer);
integer skillTest(object, integer);
integer testSkillReal(object, integer);
integer skillTestReal(object, integer);
integer getSkillLevel(object, integer);
integer getSkillLevelReal(object, integer);
integer getSkillLevelRealStat(object, integer);
integer getSkillLevelNoStat(object, integer);
integer getSkillLevelNoStatNoMod(object, integer);
integer testAndLearnSkill(object, integer, integer, integer);
integer getSkillSuccessChance(object, integer, integer, integer);

Of the above functions, all are present in the demo scripts except getSkillLevelNoStat and getSkillLevelNoStatNoMod, and for the most part, we can make inferences on what each of the other functions does, based on related functions. For the vast majority of skills, the skill checks are done using skillTest, testSkill, or testAndLearnSkill, but a few skills, such as the crafting skills and anatomy, will utilize things like testSkillReal for determining what skill gain tests are used. This strongly suggests that skills that use the other functions generally take into account stat bonuses. Unfortunately, some skills like tracking have all of their checks done entire within the core of the program, utilizing the script to trigger a special function that handles all skill gain checks, effectively hiding the entire process. As a result, the inner workings of these skills are entirely hidden from us and require the skills of someone who read the program as it's being run.

So, in the end, we can't say for certain that all skills work on displayed skill, nor can we say exactly what those skills do work on, but we have strong inferences that suggest that the vast majority of skills tend to determine their success/failure and skill gains based on their displayed skills.