Skill Development

Unlike a Character's ten natural Abilities, his ten Skills may be improved through practice or study (as appropriate) during his Free Time. A Character's available Free Time is something over which you, the Boss, have complete control using the 'Time Allocation' feature found on the Character Profile screen of each character in your personal Organization. With this you say how much time each character should devote to 'Business Operations' (literally, making money), carrying out your 'Orders', and how much time he has free to himself. The more Free Time you allow your men, the more likely they are to spend some of this time improving their various skills. If you never allow your men sufficient free time they will only ever develop their skills very slowly. Skills do also increase simply from using these while running rackets or carrying out your Orders, but nowhere near as fast as do their natural Abilities. For your own Boss character you can specify exactly which Skill he should try to improve in his spare time, but for your underlings you may only make suggestions, choosing 3 from the 10 available in order of priority. The higher priority you assign to a character improving a particular Skill of his, the more likely he will follow your recommendation, but quite often they will just do their own thing. A character in your employ will generally develop more or less as you think best for him, but not always. The Skill Development options for each character will be found on his Character Profile screen. The current settings are always saved and are simply applied whenever necessary (ie. whenever he has enough Free Time), so you only need to change this when you wish to change the Skill Development priority suggestions for a particular character. It should be borne in mind that current ratings for Skills & Abilities are graphically displayed with 1-9 stars in each (including halves), but the numerical range behind the scenes is much greater than just 1-9. This means that a character may be almost constantly improving in a particular skill or ability, but only occasionally will you see the graphical display actually change to reflect an increase. For instance, if the numerical range were 1-90 then on average a character would have to gain 10 points, not 1 point, for the graphical display to change by 1 full star. The end result is that Skills & Abilities improve gradually, and almost imperceptibly, over a period of time, but the longer a character survives in the game the more useful, productive and powerful he will become.