A lot of things require a skill point to access. Plus, it's not a requirement, as you can still manually find the station as before, it's just not optimally efficient; you spend a skillpoint to make it moreso. And if you're going out to hunt a station, it's not so hard to stuff a few volatiles in cargo along with the supplies and fuel for the journey.
Except volatiles is not something stocked by a waystation. Crew, fuel, supplies are everywhere. Metal and machines, I loot from whatever I kill. Volatiles, I need to go somewhere where they are produced to buy them, and they are expensive. (I may not have many colonies with Mining and Volatiles.)
Did you not read the OP? I spent thirty real-life minutes in Penelope's Star searching for the pirate base. I grabbed Neutrino Detector as an absolute last resort. I did not want to use it, but I get tired of spending more time searching for a pirate base I could not find. (It was in the huge asteroid belt at the fringe.) I did all of the tricks that normally reveal pirate bases, but they did not work this time. It is not like I could give up and ignore the pirate base (even though I wanted to). It needed to be dealt with.
I really did not want to spend a skill point on Neutrino Detector, something I only used as an absolute last resort at finding pirate bases in gigantic systems when they are not next to planets. I already do not have enough points to get all of the combat skills I want or high Officer Management. (I already have points in colony skills, which was a mistake, but I am not restarting the game.)
I like the neutrino detector, It's really not that hard to use once you understand how to identify false positive. I often times turn it on while I fly between planets in an unexplored system and on many occasions, it has found me stations in weird places I otherwise wouldn't have looked. I wish it did not cost a skill point though. Hopefully it can be unlocked in a quest or something in the future.
It takes time to reveal the false positive, on an aura that is already a pain to read. Meanwhile, I am burning up volatiles as I move around and try to make sense out of it and eliminating false positives.
The skill point AND volatiles requirement makes Neutrino Detector something I want to avoid. However, I grudgingly take it because it has been the only way to find pirate bases that are too hard to find with conventional means. I am already short on skill points getting other things I want more.
