The only ship where Neural Reset is vital is Harbinger, and only because QD was nerfed into uselessness and lost its charges. Without QD, Harbinger is practically an unshielded armor ship like a Vanguard without Rugged Construction when piloted by player. (Piloted by AI, it wastes too much time trying but failing to get behind the enemy using its old assassin behaviors.) Neural Link today is basically a worse variant of Automated Ships that works with a single human ship instead of one or more Derelicts and Remnants, and Automated Ships is only mildly strong with alpha cores (or barely capstone worthy at best). Without cores, Automated Ships is like a campaign Industry skill that offers a fun ability that does not noticeably improve combat power.
Basic Energy Mastery should be universally useful like Ballistic Mastery is. Most of my use of energy weapons is longer ranged (heavy weapons or ePD+IPDAI shenangians on non-SO ships). Energy Mastery without elite is only useful for a subset of ships, primarily SO ships or frigates without any range boosters. On the other hand, ballistic mastery is useful for anything with ballistics, even high-tech ships that are lucky to have a few (Shrike-P, Medusa, Paragon, some phase ships).
