What does skills actually do?

[Flickmann]

Anyone can take up any job - the interior council requires administration skills for taxation, tariffs etc. But what difference does a very poor 0 skill leader make compared to a 100 skill expert? How does a leader well versed in inventing and science make a better military research council leader than anyone else?

[FourGreenFields]

AfaIk it simply adds that value (not the raw skill, but the number on the right of the UI, factoring in feat and stat bonuses) to the skill-roll (except some special ones, like 6. sense)

What exactly a higher roll does depends on the roll in question. For many jobs it just adds a multiplier, e.g. to the research progress. But there are exceptions.

[Magic]

They provide various bonus/skill rolls. For example administration of interior council contributes to rolls of (many) strategems, if you ever use "wargame" or "grand convention" the difficulty is at 100, the roll it self is a dice of 100, and then it adds up the administration skill and relation bonus. "Inventor" gives the leader bonus of discovering tech, while "science" gives the bonus of research tech.

[Flickmann]

Interesting, cheers. How does this work when it comes to unit commanders? If I assign someone with 100 tank tactics to lead my tank brigades, how much better will they perform over a novice?

[FourGreenFields]

Originally posted by Flickmann:

Interesting, cheers. How does this work when it comes to unit commanders? If I assign someone with 100 tank tactics to lead my tank brigades, how much better will they perform over a novice?

Honestly? Best to check in-game.

Both the (sub-)units and the commander should have info on that, buried somewhere within the UI. (May want to take a look at several units or during several turns, because of the randomness of skill-rolls)

[cranky corvid]

Originally posted by Flickmann:

Interesting, cheers. How does this work when it comes to unit commanders? If I assign someone with 100 tank tactics to lead my tank brigades, how much better will they perform over a novice?

In each combat, for each relevant skill, they roll a number between 1 (or maybe 0?) and 100 and add their skill total. Generally, of the portion of the result in excess of 100, half is converted into a percentage bonus - what it applies to varies by skill, but for example, if a leader rolls 124 on Operational Command, all subunits under their command would get +12% to their attack and hitpoint scores for the combat.

Multiple leader skills can apply at once - in most circumstances, subunits can get bonuses to attack, hitpoints or both from Operational Command, one of Offensive/Defensive Tactics depending on if their side is the attacker and one of Infantry/Tank/Gun Tactics depending on their model type. There are also several more specialized combat skills that give special benefits under specific conditions.

Skill bonuses (and most other combat modifiers) stack multiplicatively, meaning, for example, if three different skill rolls are each giving +50% to a subunit's hitpoints, the final multiplier to HP will be calculated as 1.5 * 1.5 * 1.5 = 3.375, rather than 1 + 0.5 + 0.5 + 0.5 = 2.5.

I find I usually end up developing (or lucking into) between 1 to 3 OHQ leaders with skill totals in the 100+ range per game, and with a 150+ average roll, they can make their troops multiple times more effective than baseline, so a really good leader is definitely one of the biggest force multipliers available in the game.

[Hasefrexx]

Good leaders is critical to success. Particularly in research jobs (BP invested is soft capped so you don't research two times as fast with two times more BP), model design (allows for having a higher chance to design better models), eco council (good rolls on peripheral mining means more metal to mine), interior (wargames, cabinet retreat, most HR stratagems), all military leaders (SHQ obviously but a good OHQ, while having a lower impact nation wise will have a lot more impact locally than the SHQ).

[mergele]

OHQ leaders can have an insane impact. If you get a nice young cap 4 leader with 40 war and give her a tank unit she will win you wars on her own.

[Sneaky_Koala]

"Her" yeah whatever. I guess you can live out your fantasies of reality through a game. Name me a mere three brilliant female strategists (I'll wait) and I'll give you 200 men.

Even my wife (a normal everyday lass) cringed at that. We had a good laugh.

[Pain]

I normally use whatever leader I have left for OHQs, so I'd say there is a 50% chance it will be a woman.

Leaders are at least brigade generals, so I don't think their physicality is very important (unless you have a crazy one who wants to be at the front for some reason), Their war score is the important part.

Plus, keep in mind, we are far far in the future with this scenario. So I think women in military officer roles could be more normalized than they are today.

Even so for a today's example, look at the IDF (Israeli Defense Forces) where all women of the general population must serve 2 years just like men. I'm sure they have their fair share of female officers as well.

[soldier6661111]

Originally posted by Marasmusine:

Originally posted by Sneaky_Koala:

"Her" yeah whatever. I guess you can live out your fantasies of reality through a game. Name me a mere three brilliant female strategists (I'll wait) and I'll give you 200 men.

Even my wife (a normal everyday lass) cringed at that. We had a good laugh.

The ratio between men and women in commanding roles is not the issue. After thousands of years of women being second class citizens, its only in the past few decades that opportunity and recognition is being afforded to women.

I LOL'd at this

[Marasmusine]

Originally posted by soldier6661111:

I LOL'd at this

It was silly of me to try and respond to the bigotry (someone should've replied to me "Sir, this is a Wendys"). I think I'll just delete my post. Anyone who actually cares can easily do a search, they'll find the Generals I mentioned.