Metis

To clarify - Trigonometry has a train modifier of 1. It's as easy to learn as Birds. Or Fish, actually. Speaking of the Zoology professor, read Random Event - Zoology Field Trip. I'd like to add that most Zoology random events are some variation of "Today the professor shows off animal X but it has escaped/gone mad/something and is about to eat you. Now what?". One thing I'd like to ask is whether people think classes should be buffed, how much if at all, and why. Personally I'd like to see it buffed to the point where you actually learn something more often than not, they're really not up to standard for what I'd expect from a school like the Academagia.

How much freedom to the teachers have in terms of, well, teaching? Is there a strict(-ish) quota the teachers must fill, are they just assigned a classroom and told to have fun, does no one care so long as students don't fluff exams?

If that stuff is available, and if not from another source. The Zoology professor clearly isn't too busy, and whatever allows a PC to learn Fish from, say, the Mantle of Stars is clearly in possession of the Academagia. It shouldn't take Gates to conjure a fish, Mineta being a floating island or not. That said, I just checked the skill description for Fish and it contains this little gem: "Those who study the Skill of Fish are true believers in Zoology, for only those who truly wish to understand each and every type of animal would bother to study that which seems to have little-to-no value for men.". Clearly Zoology needs to teach it - it has a reputation of uselessness to uphold.

Actual fish may be rare, that doesn't mean people can't learn what they are from records and illustrations. How many people that know what lions are have met one personally? Also, question: If two skill step variances of a single class roll the right numbers so that they fall on the same day, will the class teach both steps on that one day? I assume so, but I thought I'd check to make sure.

Yeah, a lack of calculators would hurt, but than again, magic. Surely there's an "input numbers and do stuff" spell? Also, Trigonometry only has a training modifier of 1. It's not a difficult skill to learn, as least as far as the game is concerned. As for class upgrades, I'd throw on top that Zoology should teach Amphibians, Fish, and Worms. That's a good +30-36 steps right there, and really all classes should teach more steps than they do now. And for those wondering - my obsession with Worms is that it looks incredibly silly to have 10 Zoology, 0 Amphibians, 10 Birds, 0 Fish, 10 Insects, 10 Mammals, 0 Worms.

That's not the most random engine limitation I remember hearing about, no offence to the coding team. That is, however, mystery #1 solved. Now hopefully my rusty math skills can finish the rest. Heck I'll just ask: One game year consists of 900 actions - 500 free actions, 12 exams, and 388 classes, correct? EDIT: I'll just assume I'm right. For science! Anyway. Here's some Academagia class science (or, more accurately put, an exercise in "how consistently can I tap the down arrow while counting" and "how well do I remember basic arithmetic"): Specifically, here's a list of how many skill steps a given class will teach over the course of the entire year, given that the PC never skips/misses a class where a skill step is taught and that I counted correctly. The first thing you might notice is that Professor Monetario isn't very good at his job. The second thing you might notice is that he's not the only one. This means that, in terms of skill steps, the worst set of classes is a student in Avila enrolled in Astronomy/Dialectic/Enchant/Geometry/Music/Zoology for a total of 366 skill steps taught over a single year. The highest, by contrast, is an Aranaz student with Athletics/Botany/Calligraphy/Grammar/History/Negation for a total of 466 skill steps. This means that you get about 0.9 to 1.2 skill steps per "attend classes" action. Per individual class you get a third of that, since one action consists of attending three classes. Even with the best teachers in the Academagia an individual class will still teach you nothing more than half the time. Unless I did math wrong and school taught me nothing more than half the time (spoiler: it did).

That explains part of why I, at least, don't give classes much respect. Because I did not know that. Why, exactly, do classes not rapport on individual skill steps when literally everything else in the game, at least that I've found, does?

Likewise. Question, but if a class gets me, say, +1 SS to Famous Battles and I have that skill at 0/2 SS for the next SL, will the end-of-day summary rapport I got +1 SS or will it only rapport it if I go up a skill level?

If only class days count I'm going to assume the game skips holidays as well, since, you know, no classes on holidays. I'm trying to figure out why classes are so worthless in the game, so that's one theory busted

Questions about the variance classes have. As an example I'll use Geometry that teaches Famous Battles on Pramidi 18 with variance 3. Question 1: This means that Geometry classes held on Pramidi 15 up to and including Pramidi 21 can teach that skill step, right? Question 2: If the variance rolls +2 and the skill step falls on the 20th of Pramidi, which is a Saturday and thus has no classes, is this skill step not taught and thus lost permanently? Question 3: If not, what happens? Does the game hold on to the skill step until the next set of classes (which would be Monday on Pramidi 22 and outside the range of the variance), does it roll the variance again until it rolls a day that has classes, what?

Zoology does train Anatomy and Animal Husbandry once, unlocking the skills for personal training, and while Worms is thrown under an airship it does teach Birds, Insects and Mammals well enough. I also notice it teaches Conceal twice, as well as Practical Jokes once. If there is a conspiracy, I think Professor Pachait is fighting against it.

Yeah, one of the things I'd like to mod or see modded is the curriculum to seriously buff the amount of skill steps classes teach, probably also teaching another skill or two, especially skills like Worms that it's class doesn't teach at all. Call me greedy for more skill step increases, but I'm not really sold on the "super special awesome school for the best and brightest" idea when it's classes barely teach a student with a perfect attendance record enough to pass the exams. In fact looking through the mod tools it looks like Zoology just teaches fewer skill steps when compared to, say, Revision. A whole dozen less. I guess that explains that, if I'm not just seeing things. In the real world I was taught where to find Laos on a map only to forget the location of it and everything else up to and including the Atlantic Ocean a few years later, so I'm not really sold on the "acquire knowledge" part of RL classes. And with Zoology apparently missing out on a dozen skill steps I'm not sold on the Academagia classes either. Is that a bug or is the class just rubbish?

In addition to what Schwarzbart said there's also the problem that often classes outright won't teach you anything on a given day, wasting the timeslot, and many just don't train certain skills at all even though it's part of the class parent skill. Zoology, for example, never teaches Worms despite that being a subskill of Zoology. What I really want to know is whether classes in general are a good thing or a bad thing, in game terms. You get punished for skipping them too much, but at the same time you get rewarded for doing so because they so rarely actually teach anything for how often you devote time to them.

Well, given the choice between reloading and writing a separate stage for every student the answer is both clear and obvious. And that is fetching a pair of dice and warming up the Universe Save And Reload spell. I don't think it'll be too bad, anyway. I doubt there's too many students that would count as having a High relationship at once, I mean High is what, relationship 7 or so?

Yeah, figured. I do hope that Y2 allows for more complex stuff like that, even of the team doesn't end up using it. Not that [Random High Relationship PC] won't work, but it'd be nice if the PC could actually choose, especially for what I am totally not working on at all . You heard nothing. Question, actually: How does [Random X Relationship PC] work? Does the game just make a list of students that have a high/low enough relationship to qualify and draw one at random, or would a relationship 9 clique member be more likely to be rolled than a relationship 7 not in your clique if the game calls for a high relationship student?

Perhaps not the best place to ask, but somehow I feel this won't need it's own topic: Say you have an adventure that requires you to convince a fellow student to volunteer for something during the next adventure stage. Is there a way to allow the PC to actually choose from the list of students, make a roll for trying to convince the chosen victim, and if that roll succeeds spend that turn doing the adventure stage with said NPC in tow? Or will the adventure just have to roll [Random High Relationship PC] and make the rest up? EDIT: Typo

Wait, from my questions? Free asked about tobacco earlier.

Is there an adventure/background option where the PC has a reason to locate someone trained in Mastery to, say, try and help a crazy childhood friend/family member? I again, of course, ask for no reason at all

That...that actually might help me more than a straight answer, all things considered. Well, time to get the nonsense ball rolling. BTW, I don't know if edits mark a post as unread, but in case they don't I posted the proof-read version of my latest adventure. I assume you can find it, if you haven't already.

The "Reign of The Puppet Strings, by Ellia Zeehl" lore mentions the titular Puppet Strings, but "The Puppet Strings could manipulate [it's conjurer's] skill in Mastery through its own will". That doesn't really say anything about control, and really, unless I'm fifteen kinds of genre blind this thing could just be a Familiar. "Strengthen" is something that would fall under "manipulate" just as much as "cripple", after all. ...And hello there Legate. I'll just assume that's code for "make things up" because, eh, there's kind of a lot of lore to read through if neither the Mastery or Zoology searches yield results. And yes, I'm aware of the irony.

Question: Do there exist any non-human creatures in the lore that attack enemies not by simply Rending them, but by Mastering them? If I'm reading the mod tools right there is an enemy called Mastered Pirate, so, eh, who's the one pulling the strings? I ask, of course, for no particular reason whatsoever

As far as I know: #1: Yes, it should be released after Y2 is released #2: Yes if you wish to change/look at anything that DLC 16 added, otherwise no #3: Yes, same story as above.

True, but, eh, it's effort enough to find them in the mod tools, so meh. They really should have been given proper names for easier searching, truth be told.

I'd question what kind of fanbase comes up with such outlandish ideas, but, eh, I get the idea I'm not really in a position to judge . Also slight correction; I found the event in the mod tools (Awesome Community 55) and it's an orang-utan, not a gorilla. I now also regret not putting points into Animal Husbandry, because damn, that exit is awesome.

It's probably possible to add conditions to event triggers to prevent that kind of stuff, but doing that for every encounter and every condition would take a ton of effort. So yeah, the random events in this game are just...all over the place. You can't even take a bath sometimes without a gorilla randomly walking in and stealing your clothes, who than makes way for a tiger forcing you to run for your life. Like, seriously, who came up with that stuff? Who sat down and thought "You know what, we need a random event where a gorilla walks in the PC's bathroom, steals his clothes and makes way for a tiger."? I mean that happened with a PC in Morvidus, but come on.