Why does Skyrim have ID numbers for skills?

Hey community,

I have been pondering lately the best way to approach the billions of upcoming variables that will be created which will make up all of the stats, attributes, perks and skills in my game. I noticed that Skyrim has individual ID numbers for each one the skills and wondered what exactly they were for. I already use an ID system for my inventory and all of the items, but wondered how that would work for skills and such.

Thanks for any info!

Same concept for anything. Each skill might have a structure tied to it. Structure might contain something like: base damage, skill type, cast time, and so on. But the structure would also contain an ID, something that makes it easy to look up. Most likely you would have an array of these structures. So you essentially assign data clusters (items, skills, perks) an ID so the info is easy to find. An ID could also be an index in the array.

Because it’s easier to manage with ID. If everything driven by Skill ID, knowing only one number would give you ability to find all data from some excel doc only by this number. I do same thing for my Ability System.