Textbook
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Textbook
A book which focuses on teaching skills.
Base Stats
- Type
- Exotic item – Book
- Market Value
- 160
- Stack Limit
- 1
- Mass
- 0.5 kg
- HP
- 60
- Deterioration Rate
- 5
- Flammability
- 100%
- Rotatable
- True
- defName
- TextBook
Acquisition
Textbooks, like all books, can be purchased from exotic goods traders and faction bases, or earned through quests.
When starting a new game, there is a chance for your starting colonists to carry books as possessions based on their traits or backstory.
Summary
Textbooks can be read by colonists as a recreation activity.
Each textbook has one or more associated skills. Colonists who read the book will gradually gain experience in those skills. The rate at which experience is gained and the maximum level to which the skill can be improved are both determined by the quality of the textbook.
| Quality | XP Rate | Max level |
|---|---|---|
| Awful | 125 / Hour | 2 |
| Poor | 188 / Hour | 5 |
| Normal | 250 / Hour | 8 |
| Good | 312 / Hour | 10 |
| Excellent | 375 / Hour | 12 |
| Masterwork | 438 / Hour | 14 |
| Legendary | 500 / Hour | 16 |
All books can be efficiently stored in bookcases, allowing them to provide a bonus to any reading and research activities taking place within the same room. Each book stored in a nearby bookcase will increase the rate at which XP is gained from reading textbooks.
Analysis
Textbooks are generally an excellent way of raising the skills of your colonists. In this regard, it easily outclasses other forms of recreation for training purposes. For reference, a billiards table will provide 0.004 shooting XP per 1 tick (0.02 secs), for a learning rate of 10 XP per hour.
However, it should be noted that textbooks are the only recreation source with a maximum skill limit. An awful-quality textbook will train shooting faster than a billiards table only if the reader has a skill level below 2, and is utterly ineffective otherwise.
Textbooks that teach the shooting and melee skills are highly valuable, as colony defense remains an important concern for all colonists at all times. Textbooks teaching other skills are also valuable for training up new recruits with low skills, or re-specializing colonists with nothing better to do.
However, since colonists appear to select books at random when reading for joy, it may be useful to pick and choose which books you use to stock your library.
- Consumables
- Antigrain warhead • Healer mech serum • Resurrector mech serum • Orbital bombardment targeter • Orbital power beam targeter • Techprof subpersona core • Tornado generator
- Structures
- Infinite chemreactor • Psychic emanator • Vanometric power cell
- Body parts
- Archotech arm • Archotech eye • Archotech leg
- Others
- Persona core
