Agent skills

Each agent holds an experience stock and level per skill. Doing a task adds experience at a rate scaled by learning modifiers; crossing thresholds raises the level, and some games decay unused high levels. Level feeds work speed, success or botch chance, output quality, and minimum-level gates. RimWorld uses levels 0-20; experience to the next level rises from 1,000 at level 0 to 30,000 at level 19; passion sets learning to 35% (none), 100%, or 150%; skills above 9 decay by 30 to 3,600 XP per day; a daily cap of 4,000 XP per skill cuts further gains to 20%; construction speed is 50% plus 15% per level; some backstories make pawns incapable of a work type. The Sims raises skills through objects such as bookshelves and easels and gates promotions on them; Dwarf Fortress dwarves improve by repeating labors. Inputs: task time, learning modifiers. Outputs: speed, quality, eligibility for tasks.

Agents become individuals with track records. The player assigns specialists, trains newcomers on low-stakes work, and feels the loss when a master crafter dies. Skill growth gives each character a slow progression arc that runs alongside the base's growth.

• experience curve shape and level cap
• learning-rate modifiers such as passions, traits, age, and teachers
• decay of unused skills and daily learning caps
• effect curves per level on speed, quality, and failure chance
• hard gates (minimum level, incapable) versus soft penalties

• Uncapped or linear growth turns every long-lived agent into a master, flattening differences between characters.
• Grinding: players set agents to repeat cheap tasks to farm experience, which RimWorld counters with a daily learning cap.
• Steep effect curves make low-skill recruits useless, so new agents are dead weight rather than trainees.
• Decay without clear feedback reads as random loss of competence.

• Specialization snowballs: the best agent at a job gets assigned it, which raises that skill further and widens gaps.
• Losing a specialist opens a capability hole that forces retraining or recruitment; with permadeath this is a common crisis.
• Coupled with quality tiers, item value depends on who made it, so assignment becomes an economic decision.

• Can skills be represented as learned competence (policies that actually improve) rather than numeric multipliers, and does that change player attachment?
• Which decay and cap settings keep specialization meaningful without rewarding grinding?