So I thought the base game mechanic of going through tiers and then going back to start cool...
Except the choices right now amount to:
1. You often want both skills of a tier and...
2. You often DON'T want any of the skills in a tier.
This is because each tier focus on a different playstyle, instead of you choosen BETWEEN playstyles.
I think a easier way to design this would be imagine the players can pick 8 "classes" for their cahracter, with them being grouped in pairs.
So example for industry:
The skill that increase common but not rare salvage, NEED the skill of better cargo. Meanwhile a salvage-oriented player will be probably avoiding combat, or doesn't have a combat-focused flagship, thus the tier where both skills give combat bonuses for the piloted ship is useless.
so instead a salvager would want the extra cargo in tier 1, and extra salvage in tier 2...
meanwhile a pirate would want one industry flagship combat bonus in tier 1, and the other industry flagship combat bonus in tier 2.
You want to be governor? You should be allowed to pick each tier for colony skills... Right now isntead you are forced to max out 2 entire lines, because you want 4 tier 5 skills, something that is impossible anyway!
You don't need to nerf colony governors by doing that, if you put all colony skills on a straight line, players would be already spending a third of their levels on colony skills, thus making them weaker in combat skills anyway.
Also this way you would allow colony governors to spend their remaining poitns any way they wish... right now you can't be a colony governor that love missiles.