After rereading this post, for whatever its worth, I have to say that I really really dislike these changes and hope there will be a reversion mod. It just feels completely random, unthematic, and boring - just throwing around 5%-10% buffs/nerfs numbers with little other effect. The damage buff on the defense skills is especially off-feeling but more importantly, it just feels very low effort - is this stuff really the best you could come up with?
Personally I have hated the new skill system ever since it came around - if there is one big miss in Starsector, imo, that was it. This does nothing but homogenize it further in a very bland way.
It's always really bothered me that there are just 3 "logistics" skills really that improve your fuel and supply use (including derelict ops, which is silly not to take imo), and that all can be acquired very early, and then you never ever see another benefit to those areas again. Personally I would prefer the old 3-tier skill system, where you cant get the "max" benefit until your character is level 10, or even 15 - late game skills to allow you to field bigger/more expensive fleets at that point in the game.
Currently once you get to level 5 or so you already have the max benefit to what size fleet you can realistically operate and that just feels wrong to me
Recent mod updates seem to have broken something with this - now when entering a nebula, instead of losing 10 speed (which is even what is listed on the sidebar) my ships drop to 20-30 max speed - its more like a quicksand death trap than the annoyance it was before. This just started recently, though I have no idea what might be interfering - the main mods I've updated are LunaLib and Unknown Skies, indEvo and Tahlan
Lustre is definitely overtuned i've been using it as my test ship since it happens to come up on the first panel of the ship select, but goddamn is that thing tough.