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[SCC]

I propose that instead of decreasing malfunction threshold to 20% CR chance of malfunctions, it should instead make it impossible for critical malfunctions to occur, so that all functionality loss is only temporary. Skill levels 1 and 3 already sort of do the same thing that level 2 does (extend the time the ship is combat capable), perhaps it's better to make level 2 more unique.
...I swear it once decreased malfunction to 20% CR.

[Megas]

...I swear it once decreased malfunction to 20% CR.

That is Safety Procedures in Industry.

[FooF]

I agree that CE 2 is by far the weakest link. If I'm getting below 50% CR, I'm a.) using SO b.) using a Frigate or c.) both Even Destroyers tend to stay in peak time during most fights. This means that CE 2 never really comes into play.

I've advocated for a long time that the CR bonuses need to have more of a gradient to them rather than them be all-or-none. If CE 2 gave a 5% CR bonus + the % chance reduction and CE 3 gave a +10% CR bonus, you'd get the same total benefit but have a tiny more gradient to the CR bonus. (The same could go for Fleet Logistics 2 & 3, too).

Alternatively, CE 2 could auto-restore some % of CR after a battle (but not in-between) for free. Maybe 25%.

[Megas]

If my ships run out of peak performance, it usually gets retreated immediately (so that it does not get to malfunction territory).  If I keep the ship in because I need it, then the bonus will not help for long because it will decay to zero soon enough, and the bonus will not matter.

Combat Endurance 2 seems to be designed primarily as an enemy AI skill, who gladly keeps ships in combat until they spontaneous combust.  It is the poster-boy of a junk perk in the game.

[RawCode]

there are no reasons to keep ships on field over peak time limit, as you can retreat and reengage instantly and get peak time refresh at fixed cost.

this perk is waste of skill point, just like final perk that gives 15 CR for piloted ship (as you can get 15CR to ALL ships at same cost)

[Grievous69]

Not sure if you knew but being over 70% CR gives you bonuses to ship stats.

[Megas]

Combat Endurance 3 is good... for officers.  For player, it is not bad, but the opportunity cost is too high (thanks in part to junk perk in 2), as he has other and better skills to get.  If player really needs Combat Endurance 3, better to get more Officer Management and steal that officer's ship after deploying it.

[RawCode]

Not sure if you knew but being over 70% CR gives you bonuses to ship stats.

wooping +3% to speed and damage, absolutely worth 6 skill points.

[Cosmitz]

Not sure if you knew but being over 70% CR gives you bonuses to ship stats.

wooping +3% to speed and damage, absolutely worth 6 skill points.

It's 15% max CR, which if you have the relevant Fleet skill which already puts you at 85% past normal max 70, and get 100% it is a whole 10% damage reduction (and 10% damage application). One more thing, at 50 you get Standard autofire accuracy, and at 80 you gen 'excellent' autofire accuracy. That aside that 15% on an Apogee for example means you get to deploy that ship one more time in a subsequent fights.

Also, 'worth six skill points', that's only if you take zero combat skills, and in that case, why would you even be interested in a skill that boosts just your own ship? You're probably playing an Industry/Leadership build anyway. It's only a discussion if it's worth one skill point within the skill itself, or if it's worth the 3 point investment just to get to it, and to both of these i say yes. It's not a must-have, but it does compete with other skills within the combat tree.

What my build ends up being at level 50, for context: https://imgur.com/XUOQ8eS

[SapphireSage]

Not sure if you knew but being over 70% CR gives you bonuses to ship stats.

wooping +3% to speed and damage, absolutely worth 6 skill points.

I feel like CR might get a bad rap for effectiveness due to the small percentages given from bonuses above 70%, but while the amounts are tiny the combination of them can be fairly strong. For reference, CR will improve maneuverability, speed, damage taken, damage dealt, auto-fire accuracy, and fighter refit time. Between these CR skill can be one of the better ones for anti-missile due to the combination of improved damage dealt and autofire accuracy. Also, CR is one of two ways to reduce fighter refit time AFAIK (The other way being fighter doctrine/ carrier command skills). CR at 70%+ is more of a jack of all trades bonus than anything and good if you want to improve all aspects of your personal ship for few skill points. But I agree that level 2 isn't a very desirable level of combat endurance skill as I will generally, though not always, retreat and reengage if I start running out of CR in a fight.

[RawCode]

issue with CR is quite simple...

getting skill will give you +25% peak time and level 3 will give one more run

getting one more ship of equal design give you 100% peak time and two deployments for quite easy to farm "money" (if you chain deploy)
and you can scale this by getting more ships.

as soon as you get industry and blueprints, all ships instantly become disposable, ever capitals, as you can recover any losses, and ever play trope "we have reserves" and act quite similar to AI not ever trying to minimize losses.

this is reason, why 75% of skills are trash and rest are must have.

[Cosmitz]

and you can scale this by getting more ships.

You are limited by 30 fleet slots, of which 3-4 always end up for logistics ships. Not saying extra ships to pilot don't help, but it's a different character build, as we've said, if you decide not to go combat.

quite easy to farm "money"

Uh, yeah, i guess if you are good at combat and kills stuff and get the loot you do deserve to get the money, but not like defeating enemies on its own makes for a good inflow of cash or time investment.

all ships instantly become disposable, ever capitals, as you can recover any losses

Ships are disposable, colony or not. It may not always be profitable to throw ships into the grinder, but sometimes you do have to fight superior numbers/quality of ships. And you can argue that once you reach the point where you can produce money without too much effort and have a stable supply of ships you already mostly 'won' the game, and it doesn't have any other challenge to throw your way. At that point you just throw twenty Paragons in a fleet and just GG throw out 5 Paragons for each fight and cycle them out to recover CR and can reasonably handle most encounters in the game.

75% of skills are trash and rest are must have.

Combat skills (including Gunnery Implants and Fighter Wing skills) exist because the game at its core is an arcade top-down shooter piloting a single ship at a time and most of the time you spend in the game /is/ spent in combat. Those are about 55% of the availible skills. 35% are campaign-map things that help your fleet as a whole, and 10% deal with colonies or things that don't affect your fleet. Saying 75% of those are crap is disingenuous.

[RawCode]

probably we should count useful skills then?

combat is:
affinity 1
combat endurance 1
speed 1
evasion 1

4 of 27 wooping 15% of actually universally useful skills, rest is conditional or not actually worth skill points if you take in account other skills, especially technology branch, that have every skill quite useful.

[SapphireSage]

probably we should count useful skills then?

combat is:
affinity 1
combat endurance 1
speed 1
evasion 1

4 of 27 wooping 15% of actually universally useful skills, rest is conditional or not actually worth skill points if you take in account other skills, especially technology branch, that have every skill quite useful.

I can understand you not being a major fan of "only affects my ship" skills if you don't want to commit to being only a combat vessel or carrier type to begin with, but even Helmsmanship 1 and Evasive Maneuvers 1 can be situational if you plan on being say, a frigate or fast destroyer all game since they already have enough maneuverability to begin with. Though you'll be taking Helmsmanship 2 anyway for the extra speed. But I feel as though most skills can be perfectly viable.

Really though, although it seems pretty situational combat skills can be pretty strong as a force multiplier for the human on the board. In my 0.8 modded game, my Diable fleet was able to (barely due to CR running out by the end) destroy the Interstellar Imperium's siege fleet with all of their guard fleets and a couple minor patrols at once in no small part thanks to some of the combat skills I had like Impact mitigation 3 (Though it was, and is, bugged it turns out. Details in spoiler below.), Evasive maneuvers 3, and Damage Control 2 to afford me extra aggressiveness and thus faster kills.

I suppose I may as well list out my personal thoughts on each skill in-game as well. From here

Spoiler

Combat:

• Combat Endurance is actually a pretty nice skill to get assuming you decide to put points into combat tree. Level 3 stacks with Fleet Logistics 3 and can give your (officers') ship additional combat bonuses from higher CR. Also having extra PPT for lasting power is very nice in general and even necessary for smaller destroyers and frigates. That said its a skill generally only gotten with 1 or 3 points.
• Missile spec can be absolutely devastating if you want to live in a Gryphon cruiser or Harbinger for the rest of your life in SS. Otherwise, it might be useful as a backline carrier but there are other things you can spend points on.
• Between Ordnance Expertise and Target Analysis I believe Target Analysis does a bit better at taking down enemy armor, but of course it loses out at hitting the hull aside from knocking out enemy weapons/engines better. Can pair well with Ion though at level 1. Naturally, Ordnance Expertise 1 has a bit better effective DPS due to missing less shots on faster targets.
• Damage Control's best level is actually level 2 for the faster turn around time with engine/gun repairs. No matter how good you are you'll have to contend with Ion and the only non-skill reducer to that is Resistant Flux Conduits(hullmod, RFC). Having a fast turnaround time on your engines/weapons means you're less concerned with them getting knocked out and if you have the OP to fit Automated repair unit(hullmod, ARU) allows you to just about ignore it.
• IIRC Impact Mitigation is currently borked and instead of increasing armor values linearly, it increases armor by 150% on level 1 right now, though Alex has stated that its fixed for next patch. The short answer though is that armor works exponentially so even if it was a flat 150 it works much better for heavier ships, but a flat 150 would be good for frigates too. Here's a handy link for more in-depth look into armor here!
• Defensive Systems is generally good, but it needs to be cautious about level 3. While faster phase cloak can be useful, most of the phase ships don't need it and ultimately it gives less lasting power.
• With proper shield use Advanced Countermeasures can actually provide better shield buffs than defensive systems. I believe Thaago had also described a good use for them, by putting them on some of your officers you can effectively shutdown enemy fighter/missile superiority even with mostly warships.
• Level 1 of Evasive Action is generally the most popular one, but its level 3 armor perk is pretty good only falling a bit behind Impact Mitigation for effectiveness and pairs very strongly with it.
• Helmsmanship isn't nearly as good to max out as it used to be in 0.7. Now that carriers no longer abuse it with their fighters (It automatically raises flux above 5% to engage with fighters.) 5% flux is really only good to run around with 0-flux boost with your shield up w/o taking damage and firing only token low flux PD.

Leadership:

• Command & Control is there if you want to play SS like a RTS game really. There's a quite number of people that prefer to autopilot their flagship, but in actuality HULMUT discovered that it was better to slam OPS center onto a hound, sit in the corner and command from a far. Generally pairs well with Officer management.
• Officer Management can be really good depending on your fleet preference and your max battle size. 6 extra officers technically means 42 extra skill points in your fleet as well as 6 ships with a different behaviour then your assigned fleet doctrine.
• Fleet Logistics really is overtuned right now IMO. lower supply costs, nearly guaranteed ship recovery for officered and your own ship, and CR on top of colony Accessibility bonuses easily makes this one of the best skills in-game with the honor of all levels being very useful on its own.
• Coordinated Maneuvers is very good to get for level 1 so that you're just about guaranteed the bonus 10% depending on deployments and lets you completely ignore the nav objectives in combat. That said the higher levels have diminishing rewards with only 5% max raise so they're only good if you're using faster ships. Though it should be stated that unlike Electronic warfare, the extra levels are independent of the enemy and always useful based on deployment.
• Fighter Doctrine is generally always good if you plan on using carriers in your fleet. Not only does it provide vital fighter replacement rate help, it will also guarantee you expanded deck crew at level 3 which is the Integrated Targeting Unit(hullmod, ITU) of dedicated carriers.
• Carrier Command and Wing/Strike Commander are carrier skills. If you plan on commanding a carrier then these are vital to fighter performance.
• Planetary Operations can be take it or leave it. Additionally the +2 stability can be an extra colony if you desire, since being above/below the administration limit means a 2 stability penalty/bonus for each count to the limit.

Technology:

• Gunnery Implants is very good if you plan on piloting gunships. +range is always very useful and the weapon recoil helps a lot with weapons that have poor accuracy like the mortars. The autofire is mostly useful for hitting missiles, fighters, and fast frigates.
• Power Grid Modulation is also very good if you plan on piloting gunships but not necessary if you want to pilot carriers. That said you can either go for level 2 or 3 IMO. More flux dissipation is nice, but the level 2 I feel is the best bonus as it means you active vent much faster lowering your vulnerability window.
• Electronic Warfare is extremely useful at level 1. Without level 1 you can suffer up to 20% range penalty depending on the enemy while with it you can protect your range or nerf the enemy's range by 10%. Higher levels are not so useful do to it being compared against the enemy's ECM stat so if they have EW1 its unlikely that you'd get the full bonus and if you do then you severely outmatched them anyway. That said, enemy's rarely have this skill aside from the high tech Tri-tach and maybe Perean League?
• Loadout Design is considered one of the best explicitly for its level 3 perk for giving more OP for ships. Otherwise, its not so good as you need OP to take advantage of its level 1 and 2 perks.
• Sensors feels like a bit of a convenience skill for the sensor game. Neutrino detector can help with finding objects not near celestial objects. Meanwhile I'd say level 2 is the only really neccessary level for this if you choose to get it. Now with Logistical hullmods its possible to keep your profile lower and level 2 will help keep your sensor higher than your profile and give you the added bonus of a mobile asteroid field cover with "Go Dark" ability. Level 3's movement during active sensors doesn't seem as useful.
• Navigation's level 2 is good for fuel conservation, but drams and phaetons carry more than enough fuel anyway. Personally, while +1/2 burn speed is nice I believe that Transverse Jump is the best part about level 3 as it allows you to completely bypass the jump gates. Very good for sneaking into enemy territory as well as saving time (and occasionally supplies).

Industry: I can't be very descriptive with this one since I never used much of it in 0.8, but its good for a fleet of makeshift junk. Its claim to fame in 0.9 are the colony skills.

• Safety Procedures is good for going through hyperspace storms and saving up supplies at level 2. Can also let you spam E-burn like AI did in 0.7 and 0.8.
• Recovery Operations seems like it'd be good for gathering weapons, ships, and fighters early on but could fall behind in the end once you have colonies running and a fair stash of blueprints. Still it could nab you that specific thing you don't have a blueprint for.
• Field Repairs is good for saving supplies in the long run with a fleet of clunkers, but since its level 3 skill applies to D-mod ships it loses its luster once you start producing/restoring your own pristine ships. Also I believe that its faster ship repairs applies specifically to hull/armor damage and not CR which is typically the bottleneck with post-combat recovery.
• Salvaging is good for getting the rare things for the colonies. I would recommend not using up any orbital habitats/mining/research stations and just noting where they are if you plan to max this out. Also, when salvaging from those locations, salvage the debris fields too until there's absolutely nothing left. Its possible you might salvage the field 6 or 7 times before being sure of nothing more coming out of it.
• Colony Management is a colony skill. Good if you want more colonies or you want more stability for your fewer colonies.
• Industrial Planning is a definitely good skill if you want to go in on colony skills. Maxing it out helps increase your colonies market share while importing less if necessary (Though that just means less potential of losing output currently). The last skill of course just prints a hefty 30% colony income for you.

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