[MidnightLich]

Yarnek is starting to shape up! Now that we have his special ability, we're going to figure out the skills to go with. This is a more complicated step, because it's going to be two votes: a standard poll-based vote to determine how many regular skills Yarnek gets, and a weighted vote to determine what those skills might be. Let me explain exactly how this will work:

In the poll on this thread, there is a vote to determine how many regular skills we're going to give to Yarnek. It's impossible to predict exactly how many skills will fit in a text box, because some skills (Stellar Cartography) are much longer than others (Law). I've done my best to give you estimates for how many will fit on which template (see below), but those are just estimates. It's extremely rare to make personnel with more than five (5) regular skills, so for our purposes that will be the upper limit. The poll will give you these choices; here is an approximate idea of which personnel template will result:

0, 1, or 2 Regular Skills - Standard 3/2 Template
3 Regular Skills - Could Go Either Way
4 or 5 Regular Skills - Extended 2/3 Template

(3/2 means three lines for lore and 2 lines for game text; 2/3 is two lines for lore and 3 for gametext.)

This means there are six choices in this poll; each of you can vote for 1 option. If there isn't a clear winner (50.1% of votes), we'll go to a runoff.

The second vote is a weighted vote, and you participate in this by replying to this thread. In this type of vote, you rank your five (5) choices for regular skills in order; then, the first choice is worth 5 points, the second worth 4, etc. down to the 5th choice for 1 point. At the end, the value of each skill is tallied up and the choices are ranked in total score. This is what will determine which skills go on Yarnek.

The biggest difference between this weighted vote and the mission affiliation weighted vote is that we have to account for double and triple skills. For weighted voting purposes, we will consider Honor x2 as a different entry than Honor, but when it comes to putting skills on the finished personnel, we'll only use the quantity with the highest total.

With that in mind, let me give you a simplified example:

Daniel votes for 2 skills on Yarnek: Geology x2 is his first choice, Geology is his second choice, and he leaves the rest of his ballot blank.

Justin votes for 4 skills; his weighted ballot gives Leadership, SECURITY, Geology, ENGINEER, and Geology x2 in that order.

Ross votes for 4 skills. In order, he wants Yarnek to have Leadership x2, Geology x2, Leadership, Geology, and MEDICAL.

The winner of the standard poll is 4 skills, so that's the number of skills we want to put onto Yarnek. Totaling up the votes for the weighted vote, we end up with:

Geology x2 = 5 + 1 + 4 = 10
Geology = 4 + 3 + 2 = 9
Leadership = 0 + 5 + 3 = 8
Leadership x2 = 0 + 0 + 5 = 5
SECURITY = 0 + 4 + 0 = 4
ENGINEER = 0 + 2 + 0 = 2
MEDICAL = 0 + 0 + 1 = 1

Geology x2 has the highest weighted score, so it goes on; we then skip past Geology as it would be redundant. With Leadership, single Leadership has more votes than Leadership x2, so we go with single Leadership, skipping the x2 option. That leaves SECURITY and ENGINEER as the final two skills.

So Yarnek will have, in order: Geology x2 Leadership SECURITY ENGINEER. This will almost certainly put him on an extended template.

Please note that we aren't voting on classification here; that will be another vote. It's okay to have classifications as skills as part of your weighted votes, but it won't have anything to do with what goes in the classification box.

To recap, this voting step comes in two parts. The first part is a standard, poll-based vote (like all the previous steps) where you can vote for one (1) choice that represents the number of regular skills you want to see on Yarnek.

The second step is a weighted vote by post. Each of you - no matter if or how you vote in the poll - can list five regular skills you want to see on Yarnek in the order you value them. Please note that double skills count separately from single skills. The first vote gets 5 points, the second gets 4, and so on down to the 5th choice which gets 1 point. After voting closes, the totals will be combined to generate a weighted list of skills. The winning number of skills will be picked from that list in order.

To make it easier, please reply to this thread and put your votes in this format:

1. Law x2
2. Law
3. Smuggling
4. Cybernetics
5. Physics x10

You don't need to pick five regular skills, you can submit less. There are forty-six (46) regular skills, but quite a few of them are affiliation specific. I'm not going to take any of them off of the table, and instead allow all of you to judge the Trek Sense of any skills. For a complete list of available skills, I suggest looking at the First Edition card search page; about two-thirds of the way down is a complete list of skills.

The skills will appear, if at all possible, in their weighted order. The only reason they would change is if it allows the finished card to appear on a standard (vs extended) template with some creative rearranging.

You can edit your original post to change your votes up until the poll closes on Sunday. You can also change your vote in the poll in the same time frame. Good luck and have fun. Let me know if there are any questions.

-crp

[GooeyChewie]

1. Geology x2
2. Anthropology
3. Geology
4. Archaeology
5. Law

[frakkingoff]

1. Leadership x 1/2 (0.5)
2. Geology
3. Anthropology


Explanation:

1. Leadership x1/2 because he knows "something" about leadership, but he's studying it - it's all theoretical, not put into practice (whereas other personnel with this skill have demonstrated some attempt at leadership). Toral and Ja'rod are precedents for half-leadership skill, and I like being able to provide alternatives to making either one of them more useful (rather than forcing one to use both of those, now we have more of a choice).

2. Geology because he's a rock monster. It's boring and obvious and kind of stupid (does every carbon-based life-form have biology? No.), but I feel kind of hamstrung because he needs to have a skill to use on the mission requirements (otherwise, why make a native?), and if he doesn't really understand the difference between Good and Evil, he's probably not going to have Honor or Treachery.

3. Anthropology because he's a social scientist.

Alternatives: I'm considering Empathy or Diplomacy, to reflect the Excalbian's desire to "understand" their subjects and their commentary (perhaps they have telepathic abilities to help with this? Perhaps their interactions with subjects are mediated by diplomacy? The episode is too fuzzy for me, I'd have to see it again first).

Also, I don't know what classification we're going to go with. I think he should have SCIENCE if he's trying to do a study with test subjects - so if that's not his classification, then it should be his skill....

I really think we should have voted on classification first, as that choice will inform what other choices we nominate for skills (i.e., do we have to nominate something for his skill if it didn't make it as his classification?).

[frakkingoff]

The skills will appear, if at all possible, in their weighted order. The only reason they would change is if it allows the finished card to appear on a standard (vs extended) template with some creative rearranging.

I'm sorry I keep ragging on your voting process decisions, but...

...I don't think this is the best way to pick skill order.

Weighted order just gives us the skills in the order of consensus or desire for the personnel to have.

But ordering on the card also has gameplay implications - generally, I think the most "useful" skills should come first (as those are most likely to be nullified by the effects of a dilemma).

A vote for one should not be a vote for the other. I appreciate that you can save time by condensing decisions and votes like this...but it's not like these cards aren't going to take a long time to produce anyhow, so why not do it with the same precision and exactitude given to any other cards the CC designs?

(Example: I put "Leadership x1/2" as my first vote, because I wanted to give it 5 points since I feel most strongly about that skill - but it's also the least useful, and so shouldn't be placed first on his card)

[DarkSabre]

1) Geology
2) Empathy
3) Anthropology

[nobthehobbit]

1. Geology
2. Anthropology
3. Empathy
4. Law
5. Diplomacy

[pfti]

Athro, Dip

[MattgomeryScott]

1. Empathy
2. Anthropology
3. Exobiology
4. Geology
5. Science

Empathy because to me the Excalbians being an Empathic/Telepathic species makes most sense for how they are able to draw from Kirk and Spock's memories to create Lincoln, Surak, Kahless etc, (especially if the other participants were themselves Excalbians who were "acting" the roles.)

Anthropology because it's literally the study of other societies and the way they behave, which is what he was doing in the episode.

Exobiology because to me that's the other side of studying the other species and being able to create such realistic duplicates.

Geology because he's a rock creature (though I put it low down because assuming a rock based lifeform must know Geology is like assuming every human knows Biology. )

Science because I think he should have Science classification, but on the off chance he doesn't he should in my view definitely have it as a skill.

All the Best,

Mattgomery Scott.

[MidnightLich]

I'm sorry I keep ragging on your voting process decisions, but...

...I don't think this is the best way to pick skill order.

Weighted order just gives us the skills in the order of consensus or desire for the personnel to have.

But ordering on the card also has gameplay implications - generally, I think the most "useful" skills should come first (as those are most likely to be nullified by the effects of a dilemma).

A vote for one should not be a vote for the other. I appreciate that you can save time by condensing decisions and votes like this...but it's not like these cards aren't going to take a long time to produce anyhow, so why not do it with the same precision and exactitude given to any other cards the CC designs?

(Example: I put "Leadership x1/2" as my first vote, because I wanted to give it 5 points since I feel most strongly about that skill - but it's also the least useful, and so shouldn't be placed first on his card)

Rag away, as long as it comes from the same place my decisions do: to make this fun for people and make the game as good as it can be. And I see your point, but I think there is a large degree of overlap between "the skill I most want Yarnek to have" and "the skill that is most important to Yarnek."

Perhaps as I compromise I can put up a vote as part of the next step that's to the effect of "Are you happy with this skill order?"

-crp

[aabecame]

Geology
Leadership
Empathy
Anthropology

[Davey1983]

1. Science
2. Anthropology x 2
3. Geology x 2
4. Anthropology
5. Leadership

[Iron Prime]

1. Geology x2
2. Anthropology
3. Law x2
4. Security

[scox]

1. Anthropology
2. Geology
3. Empathy

[Not_always_but_often]

1. Anthropology
2. Geology
3. Exobiology
4. Empathy
5. Transporter Skill

Anthropology - since the Excalbians had studied humanity enough to already determine who's good and who's evil, and then also because that is what Yarnek was interested in studying

Geology - not just because he's a rock person, but also because the Excalbians had the ability to reshape their planet from molten lava to M-class atmosphere at will. Since Yarnek is the only Excalbian we ever saw in his natural form, I'm willing to attribute some of what the Excalbians as a people did to him, as their only representative.

Exobiology - They were able to recreate humans and Vulcans perfectly, as far as we saw.

Empathy - It's at least implied that the Excalbians were able to read the Enterprise's crew's minds.

Transporter Skill - somehow the Excalbians disarmed Kirk and Spock as they beamed down... I suppose that takes some skill with transporters.

[Armus]

Geology x2
Geology
Empathy
Anthropology*
--------------------------------
Diplomacy**

*I think the lore is important enough to warrant the full three lines so if Anthropology is too long, don't include it.

**This assumes Yarnek is SCIENCE classification. If not, I'd want SCIENCE in front of Anthropology and Diplomacy to fall off the list.