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In FTL: Advanced Edition, when a character on a ship with a cloning bay dies, they are cloned. That character loses some skill points.

How many skill points? Is it a percentage or set number?

Aside from "avoid dying" is there any way to reduce the amount of skill point loss?

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Having just sabotaged a perfectly good attempt to finish an EASY run (Yes, I play on EASY -- I'm a pansy), I discovered the following:

  • Skill loss is a flat amount.
  • Skill loss is applied to all skills.
  • Skill loss is not random.
  • Skill loss is different for different skills!
  • Piloting is affected -20% of a bar (-3 dodges)
  • Engineering is affected -20% of a bar (-3 dodges)
  • Gunnery is affected -20% of a bar (-13 shots)
  • Shielding is affected -20% of a bar (-11 impacts)
  • Repair is affected about -16% of a bar. (-3 repairs)
  • Combat is affected -12.5% of a bar. (-1 kill)

Thus, if you had perfect skills (full yellow bar) it would take 10 deaths to empty out piloting, engineering, gunnery, and shielding. It would take 12 deaths to empty out repair, and it would take 16 deaths to empty out combat.

Additionally, there is nothing magical about having reached a full green bar with a skill that prevents loss at all, although that might be kinda neat were it the case. So if you have 16 dodges in your piloting skill (a full green bar and 1 dodge beyond) and are cloned, you lose 3 dodges, removing your green bar benefits, leaving you at 13 dodges (about 87% of a green bar.)

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    Sounds like some awesome SCIENCE! was done here, but I wonder if this is true across all difficulty levels; I wouldn't be surprised if the skill loss is higher on harder runs. Then again, maybe it isn't, and it just relies as usual on the game just plain being harder...
    – Kromey
    Apr 8, 2014 at 14:37
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    I'll look into that on harder difficulties, but honestly, I'm not good enough at the game to make that a simple task. Doing this required getting a crew member to maximum skill in every field of expertise (no, I'm not going to tell you how, but it wasn't cheating!) Doing that on normal/hard sounds like a huge pain.
    – BlackVegetable
    Apr 8, 2014 at 14:38
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    Hey, if I had the skills to make a go of it at Normal/Hard I would -- but you've already out-classed my lackluster abilities! Besides, maybe somebody else will see your methods and my comments and fill in the void for the both of us. :)
    – Kromey
    Apr 8, 2014 at 14:44
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    Leveling piloting, dodge, shield and weapons from zero to max is trivial in a single battle, if you have enough patience, and more shield than the enemy has firepower. The rest not so much.
    – vsz
    Apr 8, 2014 at 16:14
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    @Robotnik Cloning has no impact on the maximum skill levels.
    – BlackVegetable
    Apr 9, 2014 at 0:03

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