*V1.1*
Implemented combat skills with first balance pass.
*V1.0*
Adjusted Loadout Design to spread bonuses across all ranks.
Most Combat aptitude skills spread about 20% of their bonus across all ships in your fleet. No longer do you have to feel like you're wasting lategame potential by picking some up early. As a side effect, officers are only about 80% as effective.
Under consideration:
Change the way aptitudes work so that you get them for putting points into those skills, instead of needing them TO put points into skills. This would in my opinion allow a more reactive selection of skills, and eliminate dead levels. It does however require the first level of skills to actually be worth taking without the ability to quickly hop up to the second or third levels though.
Won't this have strange effects in AI fleets?
If you make it 3 points an aptitude level, and you start with 1 point in every aptitude, then it takes 1 fewer total skill points to get level 1 in a given skill, exactly as many to get level 2, and 1 more to get level 3. Plus now instead of wasting points in aptitudes, you've got (0,2,4) points in other skills, ones you would probably have gotten anyway. So it doesn't really matter if the first level skills aren't worth taking, you come out ahead unless you really wanted only that one level 3 skill