Story points, contacts and the new story missions have all been praised as great additions to the game, outside of some minor quibbles. The new skill system is not nearly as universal in its praise and I believe its actually a regression from 9.1 for several reasons but the big one is thematics for at least two of the trees.
Easily the most common complaint is that skill trees are all over the place in theme and unlike the last version's skill system where that wouldn't really matter, here you're forced to take skills that just don't do anything for you in terms of game plan.That doesn't mean the skills are weak or anything, but peoples idea of planning out an archetype of a character and picking choices that help that along doesn't really exist anymore with the new skill system. I think this is an unfortunate side effect of getting rid of a ton of player choice by design, as Alex noticed players getting decision paralysis when confronted with 32 skills to level. Now its 8 choices at a time.
Combat - Still has its theme of "shoot good, fly fast" intact.
Leadership - What used to be the big fleet/carrier tree is now a hodgepodge of random skills that have little to nothing to do with each other.
Old skills - more command points for your large fleet. More officers for your large fleet. Less supply use for your large fleet, boosts to all your ships. Deploying more ship's gives you a bonus. 4 Carrier skills and a thematic boost to colonies and ground combat.
New skills - first option is damage or usable in combat civilian ships? Damage makes sense here as its fleet-wide but why isn't civ ships an industry skill?
Second option is frigate skills you would want both of if your going for a run like that, the first option is fleet-wide but it requires putting officers in frigates. Its not really a skill for large fleets, it just happens to buff them.
Third option is another fleet-wide buff that gets worse the more ships you have and a carrier skill.
Fourth is a choice between better officers or more of them and is the best feeling "They work together and you want both" skills because it don't feel like your losing out on picking one or the other. Fifth is again the thematic boost but not having anything to do with the others feels bad here because your forced to take it if you want to loop around.
Technology - The utility tree is still the utility tree.
Industry - What happened to the Industry tree is a tragedy and the direct reason for this post.
Its had all thematic junker play style support removed from it, has skills that don't belong there, filled with skills that do mostly the same thing instead of choices like other trees, an actual useless skill if you loop it.
I know, I know, derelict contingent is hilariously overpowered, but what fulfills the fantasy of having a junker fleet better?
A 5-dmod ship piloted by an officer being much better than a pristine ship piloted by the same officer?
Or a large collection of D-mod ships that are cheap to run and worse than their pristine counterparts?
Old skills - Every single skill in the old industry tree saved you money or made it in some way.
Less crew loss in combat,
CR loss takes longer for malfunctions, D-mod negative effects reduced by 50%.
More recovered weapons, more recovered ships, more fuel, less D-mods.
Recovered ships start with more CR and hull,
Hull and armor repaired after combat at no cost,
faster repairs,
D-mod maintenance cost reduction.
Rare resources from stations, post battle additional salvage, remote scan. 2 colony skills.
Whats in italics has been nerfed so badly it might as well not exist for large fleets, especially the Hull and armor repair.
Everything bold has been flat out removed from the game, its just gone. A chunk of the entire tree and an entire play style just had all its support vanish with nothing to replace it, why?!
New skills -
First option is more supplies and fuel from stations and a bit extra from fights or the ability to actually carry it, you want both but the cargo space is clearly better now that salvage has been massively nerfed and no longer gives blueprints.
Second option is two skills taken from the combat tree, why are these even in industry? Why are flagship combat bonuses in the industry tree instead of something like the removed better recovery chances on ships and weapons or bonuses to contacts or anything else that would actually make sense in this tree.
Third option is better fuel economy with mostly nerfed less crew loss or better supplies and surveying, you want both again and you would want the combat stuff with supplies and the exploration with the fuel so either way you feel bad about your choice.
Fourth is the most backwards choice in the entire game as well as being one of the most broken, if you want a small elite force you pick the option that wants trashed ships, if you want a big fleet you pick the one that keeps everything pristine, this is totally counter to how anyone would think about D-mods. Its also the only skill choice where getting one makes the other skill literally useless after awhile, this skill choice is an abomination.
Fifth option thematically fits but gets completely invalidated with an item later on and your forced to take it to loop. Its also yet another skill where you want both again because they do nearly the same thing, Industry is plagued with this problem, you get cool choices in the other trees but in this one you feel like your getting half the deal. Give us a choice between a contact boost or colony boost, a choice between better supply economy or combat buffs. An actual choice instead of just picking the better of two things to do almost the same thing or would normally be used together.
The junker play style went from being able to scavenge bundles of weapons and ships with very low maintenance costs, paying less to fix them up and less for our own that got blow up in combat. Having D-mod ships be be better than bad but worse than good. Having nearly every skill synergize with others while still being good on their own.
To having one skill make a few officer'd ships full of d-mods be the best thing in the game. With no other skills doing anything for derelict ships. Horrible horrible horrible change.
TL;DR: Industry is terrible
