Spoiler
Uh, am I the only one getting this problem? I can't seem to download 0.54a, been getting this error
<Error>
<Code>AccessDenied</Code>
<Message>Access Denied</Message>
<RequestId>DED58357A259CD22</RequestId>
<HostId>
VK1jSGZe5UXgrO629Z0UiYPnXsV2S+IcnOPwSNMhbmXCxLBcf31wjeQ6DAvCk6VC
</HostId>
</Error>
Hi - could you try it from a different browser?
Spoiler
Is there any particular reason Gunnery Implants is a Technology skill and not a Combat one? Given it only effects your ship it would seem to make more sense for the latter.
Similarly, Field Repairs seems more like a Leadership skill, even if it fits in thematically with Technology. Field Repairs is useful for maintaining your fleet, which seems to be the point of Leadership, rather than making your ships stronger, which seems to be the point of Technology. If it is an Industry skill temporarily placed under Technology one could still argue that it makes more sense for Leadership, as I imagine Industry will focus on making money rather than preventing losses, though if ship-building becomes a part of the game and is governed by Industry it would make sense that the same skill for building ships is also used for repairing them.
There also a couple of minor inconsistencies like the Missile Specialization giving hullmods and Ordnance Expertise's second perk affecting the entire fleet, both of which seem like Technology effects despite being part of Combat skills.
All that however are just very minor quibbles with what is otherwise an excellent update. Keep up the good work!
Hmm - I think you're assuming there shouldn't be any crossover between what the different categories of skills do, but this is in fact deliberate. The occasional fleetwide effect on a combat skill, or player-ship-only effect on a tech skill both add some more fine-grained choices. For example, you can decide to invest heavily into Technology, but you can also choose to spend some of that investment on improving combat - but it won't be as strong of a combat build as it would be if you put some points into the combat aptitude.
It also makes it more difficult to to pick up the skills to make you the "absolute best" in a given area (or, indeed, to figure out what that build is, given that you're unlikely to max more than 2 aptitudes, with 4 skills maxed within each).
As for Tech/Leadership/Industry skills, those are bound to get shuffled around after Industry is added.
One thing I paid attention to in the skill description boxes: the expression of per level benefits and current benefits was at first unintuitive. What I mean by that is that you'd get something like "Bonus to X: Y%. (Z% per skill level.) Now, it became clear enough after reading through the text box carefully, but I did first interpret the current bonus for the per level bonus. Not that it lasted long, but I do think that dividing the per level bonus and the current bonus to different lines of text would make the whole thing clearer. Or at least place the per level bonus first and the current bonus in brackets, at least; a person reading about what the skill does will find the per level value more important, so that should come first, I think.
Thanks for sharing that - I'll keep it in mind and see what other people's feedback is. I'm not sure there's room for multiple lines there...
Edit: Also, is it just my imagination or has crew experience gain been boosted by a considerable margin? I got my flagship to an elite status in no time flat, something that I think used to take pretty long.
Hmm, yeah. Somewhat unintended, actually - was tweaking player XP gain, but it's linked to the crew gain at the moment. Well, let's see how that plays out
It would be useful if we could see how much dmg skills add on weapons of our ship. Maybe in refit screen when hover with cursor over weapon and in little windows that appears with that weapon stats should be displayed bonus dmg and other stuff that skills add.
And, maybe, other bonuses to ship vent rate etc.
I'll take another look at some point. Don't remember why I didn't do it - may have been some technical reason that made it tricky, or may have been UI layout related.