If however skill checks are used as a way to get alternative and more flavorful solutions to a situation, to get hints and extra intel about some events, or maybe even more subtle: alternate lines from some characters depending on the player's specialty, then I would tend to say they can have a place in the game.
This is one of those things that would be super cool, but I don't think makes sense for an indie game of this size. With 40 skills in play, the development time cost vs. payoff in terms of how many players would see that content vs. putting that effort somewhere else doesn't make it worthwhile. In a project of a certain scale, maybe with 10+ developers you could probably assign writing these as someone's full time job for a couple months and make it really shine. Alas!
[edit] Skill checks could also be used the other way around, to warn a player that they may have troubles with a particular assignment if their combat skills are too limited, the travel might be arduous without logistic skills, you might get the option to get extra help at low level and so on.
This is getting into Alex territory, but my impression is that simply as UX policy he tries to have the game warn players about wandering into situations where they may be ill-equipped. The people hurt most of these things are newer, and in this sort of game you really don't want to kill your young when the learning curve is already so steep. So while this is a cool idea from a verisimilitude standpoint, I think making a more accessible game has to take priority.
(Haha, man, sorry for just shooting down everything you're saying. But I hope the reasoning for these design decisions makes sense, though admittedly they're out-of-game considerations.)
There's nothing more annoying and immersion breaking than being presented with dialogue options and thinking "okay, but what am I actually choosing here..."
Ah, the example you raise is an interesting one - one of our 'quest experiments' - and I think critically examining it is worthwhile. It does potentially let the player lose themselves an opportunity; I think we've been more conscious of this sort of thing in work that's gone into this upcoming patch.
My hope is that players can trust the game enough that they will be able to make choices as role-playing rather than trying to consciously min-max (w/ the consideration that one can roleplay as a power-hungry captain of course). This is our challenge to meet, basically.
Btw, have you guys ever seriously considered text to speech options? I would love the option to have stuff read to me from time to time. And a computerized voice would even be thematically fitting.
Aesthetically, I'm afraid that I can't see this not being super janky. I don't think the technology can support it properly, and even hinting at anything near voice work is dangerous from a production cost standpoint.
I could imagine that as an accessibility option, though I wouldn't know where to even begin with it, and uh ... I wouldn't want to make any more trouble for Alex than I already have.
Of all the writing presently in the game, my two favorite pieces are just tiny little descriptions, but I'd still like to praise them.
First, the description of the Gremlin-class frigate. And secondly, the short little bit of text describing the experience of flying through an inert ring.
Thank you. It's really rewarding to hear that you connected with those, because I definitely those two as places where, oh I don't know how to explain it, but inspiration struck and I knew instantly that I had to do something a little weird and a little different.
The Human Hive is the best faction, by the way.
SMAC is such a well-written game. I think Chairman Yang is super compelling because his statements can be extremely unsettling, but he's not wrong.
The writing in starsector is somehow my favorite part of the game, David, so I dug the blog! glad to see a brigador shoutout in the footnotes. Will we get any brush-ins with Orcus Rao or Marshal Baikul Daud?
Thank you! And ... (should I answer this? I think I kinda already have) ... yeah, what the heck: the player will indeed have the opportunity to talk to someone very important in the Hegemony.