Concerning the Gunnery Implants vs Energy Weapon Mastery debate, perhaps try changing it to a ballistic weapons boost vs an energy weapons boost? I'm not sure where everyone is on the "one or the other" type of gameplay mechanic, but I do like being shepherded towards choosing a specific faction or at least technology level of ship design to stick with, it helps with the RPG elements of the game in my opinion.
I really don't like the range limitations on the vanilla EWM skill, that alone makes it substantially less attractive to me than gunnery mastery.
That wouldn't work out well due to the skills being chosen randomly by Officer. If you are playing a High tech fleet and you got a 7 skills Officer with ballistic skill instead, that would be a shame. That's why I'm thinking, a universal modifier would fit better.
@MorrokainThose additional Elite skills for flagship don't look half bad and would definitely work in my favor as I'm kind of a guy who goes all out for a support build. (in 0.9.1 I can still put some leftover points in combat but not this time around) The least important ship usually becomes my flagship and all the top tiers go to my capable Officers other than myself lol. I'm drifting in my command center, Tempest.
The colony skills have been moved down to tier 2 so they are more accessible. In general my thought process is that campaign level bonuses < combat level bonuses.
I must be at almost Max level to think about setting up a colony but it might be able to save me some skill point as I'm currently required to have additional admins for 6 colonies. No AI Allow.
That makes me think that the Elite skill for Automated ship should be an unlimited cap off REDACTED ships, so you are basically one with the REDACTED, flip all diplomatic relation to permanent hostile but REDACTED, even Tri-tach will hate you for taking their priced possession. And also allow REDACTED to expand as a faction with you supplying them with more metal, lol, 3rd sector war.
1) Move specialization bonuses to tier 5 options for the most part. They should be strong bonuses that will noticeably impact a playstyle and give incentive to max or loop around the tree.
I'm currently don't see the point of doing a loop as the total skill point is too low and too many garbage skills are in the way to T5. The skill in all 3 trees apart from combat is equally important and it's impossible to complete a certain tree individually. Unless the level cap is raised to 20 then I will think about completing at least one skill set.