When it comes to starting skills, we all know some of the most popular: Wack, Defense, Stealth, Info... these all have very real in game applications that, in some ways, can define a character.

But who the hell ever maxes out their crime skill? This skill is essentially obsolete within the first couple hours.

Jailbreaking, aka Breaking and Entering, is another skill that is very, very easy to train.

I propose that everyone should start with the same JB and crime skill, and that new skills with actual benefits to gameplay should be added.

Some ideas:

OC skill: How much is earned from OCs (both group max and personal percentage).

At 95/100%, any OC that this person is invited to gets a cash multiplier boost added to it. Perhaps crimes with an OC specialist are guaranteed to earn moderately more money. Additionally, when an OC with an OC specialist takes place, there's an automatic 10% chance that the group's timer isn't activated and another OC can be immediately run. (10% is moderate and could stack with perks and other OC specialists, perhaps up to 50%.)

Anything that builds player interaction sounds great to me. Having a couple specialists in a family who are in high demand for everyone's OCs? Sounds kind cool, right?

Travel Specialty: I think it'd be too hard to code different hours for different people when they fly, etc. But what about the % of not having travel timer used? Someone with over 50% of this category has a 5% chance of not triggering their travel timer, someone with 100% has a 10% chance. This would be beneficial for drug runs, obviously- and it also could be useful in tactical situations. (Although even someone with this skill at 100% and the perk would only have a 15% chance of it hitting, which doesn't seem overpowered.)

If the travel thing might be tough for people worried about wars, then why not just make it a Drug Dealing skill, that at the 50% and 100% level would accomplish a similar thing to the drug dealing perk (5% and 10% chance of getting double profit from a drug sale).

Basically, we've got 6 skills. Let's use all of them for a chance to have people play different, exciting roles to contribute to their family in different ways.

Happy to hear others ideas, of course.

I've mentioned multiple times the need to replace or alter those useless start up rolls. 

I won't lie, I feel like physique should also be included. I get it's supposed to represent your ability to PP but at 5k a pop (max) I feel that it's a pretty useless skill and I can't remember failing on a CA or unprotected player regardless of that skills start up %

as for the OC idea I wouldn't mind if that just went into the current crime stat. If you start with it maxed (say you're going to be a dedicated proer and not interested in being an info mule but want to contribute) you'd boost the success probability for the group, and if enough of the group have a good % of criming ability a chance to pull off the crime so smoothly that you even had time to steal something not in the original plan, just for kicks..

I cannot envisage any person signing up with 'travel' answers when a perk is available to purchase. Even at 10% chance, with a 5% chance above the perk,  is anyone actually going to use this? You'd just replace one underutilised answer set with another. I may be wrong on this however. Perhaps I don't think like other users though.

With OC's you potentially have a collective action problem. Personally, I'd think 'enough other users will do these answers so I don't need to use them to get the extra money/potential 10% perk'. When enough people think like that, suddenly no one is using the answers.

The alternative is that too many people use the answers and users can exploit a game breaking mechanic:

1. Have OC answers
2. Purchase OC perk on market place
3. Invite 6 other players on OC answers
4. Likelihood of not using whole groups timers is now >100% (103%)
5. Infinite money

If you revised this so that the OC answers couldn't stack with other users, the incentive to use them diminishes again. Coupling your own OC answers with a perk (assuming best case scenario), that gives you 43% no timer chance. For simplification, let's conceptualise that as 43% more money from OCS. Best case scenario is you're earning about 120k tops (if memory serves, I've not played in a long time) from trucking depot. You're probably looking at an average of 150k additionally profit per day, if you do each of your OCs. Is that worth it? These numbers are based on trucking depot so you're at least a consig. That's only worth 1 decent drug deal. That's hardly an incentive to choose over an answer set which gives you skills that are impossible to train, makes you harder to kill, or starts you out with a maxed gun. 

The drug dealing answers I do like. Dealing remains far and away the most profitable action on the game and I think answers which boost that would provide a real choice/financial incentive.

I totally agree that some of the answer sets are bogus (that's always been the case, since long before rolling was an option) but I don't think these are the right solutions