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[Deshara]

I'm... weirdly a fan of the idea of missiles being made into a fundamentally different missile with the use of a hullmod. I'd prefer if ECCM somehow did the same thing to all missiles

[Goumindong]

It does. And skills make them even better.

Squalls will turn on a time when launched with ECCM meaning that you can fire them without a direct line.

MIRVS will converge on a single point.

Most of the others just become fast enough to be very valuable

[Megas]

It does. And skills make them even better.

Yeah, although there are not enough points for everything.  If I get campaign skills (Navigation, anything for colonies) or even zombie combat skills (like first three Industry skills), there is no way I can grab all of the skills.  Missile Specialization appears to be one of the easiest to cut off unless I plan to stick with Reaper Harbinger as my primary flagship.  (Harbinger ship needs Missile Specialization to one-shot several ships and station sections that can otherwise barely survive hits from three Reapers.)

So far, I really enjoy colony skills (three in Industry, Colony Management, and Industrial Planning... and possibly three more in Planetary Operations).  If I cut those out and abuse alpha cores, I might be able to afford more combat skills.

Player should be able to spend some points in non-combat stuff without being gimped at combat.

[intrinsic_parity]

I think it should be viable to use alpha cores in place of colony skills. It feels to me like colonies are much worse without either the skills or a core though. Enough for it be semi mandatory to have one or the other if you want profitable colonies, I’d like to see administrators buffed a bit.

[Megas]

With max colony skills, player is better than admins or cores when he governs fewer colonies than the limit since +2 per unused colony slot is a big deal.   Once player reaches max colonies, admins and/or cores appear more attractive.  At first, player is encouraged to stay below the colony limit until his main colonies can grow big enough to get a stability bonus just from being bigger (and getting luxury goods demand met).

Cores seem most useful when you want a huge empire with more than seven or eight colonies.  I would expect Alpha cores to eventually declare independence and become new Nexus stations, but instead, they become a sticky cursed item (of awesome) like the One Ring or jealous yandere girlfriend that cannot take "NO" to unwanted affection.  Alpha cores' quirk of refusing removal is not a penalty if player never wants to remove the core.

Two skill admins are very rare... and expensive.  One with both Fleet Logistics (more accessibility) and Industrial Planning (commodity demand) are very good.  Other admins of lesser skill are mostly useful for maintaining size 3 waystations or tech mines that are not meant to be big money makers.

Yes, it feels like either skills or cores are mandatory.  Industrial Planning is practically required on major colonies.  Relying on cores feels like chance since you need to find them first.  As for admins, you need skills to get more than one to begin with.

[Null Ganymede]

You don't need skills to keep colonies profitable unless you're compensating for some mix of hostile factions, poor accessibility, high hazard rating, and pirate/pather bases. Not just one or two of those. Several.

[intrinsic_parity]

Colonies are very volatile, their profits can change by hundreds of thousands from one event. Even with skills, medium size colonies can suddenly start losing money if one or two bad events happened. Once you hit size 8-9-10 you don't have to worry as much, but during the part of the game where you are not infinitely wealthy, there is a very real risk that a colony can cripple you if you are unlucky/not careful and skills mitigate that.

Also, finding good worlds is not the baseline. I found one single Terran world in my entire first sector and it was a 150 hazard world. I found a few decent desert worlds also but nothing particularly nice. The game shouldn't be balanced around the optimal colony.

[TaLaR]

You can simply choose not to start a colony until you find 75-125% world. 100% without any resources and not too far from core is already good enough.

[SCC]

I apparently have a much different experience, since I consider colony skills nice to have, but absolutely not necessary for anything. I never get them, since if I really have to (which doesn't happen often), I just slap a good admin or an alpha core on that one colony that needs it. Looking for 125% or less hazard colony might be tedious, but it pays off. Then again, looking for these worlds is actually a secondary activity, where the primary is exploring and hunting for blueprints; without that to kill the time, good worlds could've felt way rarer. Never enough blueprints.