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[Wyvern]

I'm seeing a general trend of people feeling that seven random skills is all too frequently inferior to six hand-picked skills. So how about we make these officers have specific known-good skill sets? (As a reminder: these officers get seven combat skills, of which five are elite.)

For example, I'd be happy to use officers like these:

Paragon Captain: Target Analysis (Elite), Energy Weapon Mastery (Elite), Field Modulation (Elite), Helmsmanship (Elite), Ordnance Expertise (Elite), Gunnery Implants, Combat Endurance

Onslaught or Legion Captain: Missile Specialization (Elite), Ballistic Mastery (Elite), Impact Mitigation (Elite), Polarized Armor (Elite), Target Analysis (Elite), Ordnance Expertise, Gunnery Implants

What seven skills would you want to see?

[BaBosa]

What about instead of only talking to a mercenary and hiring them, you can talk to a mercenary company and ask for specific skills for a credit cost? Then there’s no possible regrets.
Or getting mercenary officers from military or underworld contacts? And it’s kinda like a custom production order where it takes some time to arrange one to become available.
It might as well also let you order normal officers where you pick personality and acceptable skills and the more important the contact and more in line with the factions doctrine your preference is, the more likely the officer is to start at a higher level like 3, 4 or 5.

[Lawrence Master-blaster]

I really like the idea of giving them fixed skillsets, and I'd even go as far as to give them fixed names/portraits and maybe a bit of lore.

[ANGRYABOUTELVES]

Phase Officer: Combat Endurance, Impact Mitigation (Elite), Field Modulation (Elite), Target Analysis (Elite), Systems Expertise, Energy Weapons Mastery (Elite), Polarized Armor (Elite)

[Realm]

I'd rather just have a way to repick their skills entirely, even if only once and at a firm SP cost - as otherwise in most cases I'd rather just hand build a level 6 Officer myself. In those listed builds for example, I'd never want Missile Spec on an Onslaught Captain or a Legion Captain unless it's an XIV Legion - sooner opting for Point Defense or perhaps Damage Control in both cases.

It's very often I just airlock any level 7s in favour of level 6s with the skills I actually want, and I'd probably continue doing so with the listed fixed skillsets so far.

[BigBrainEnergy]

At the very least, can we tone down the number of officers with both ballistic master and energy mastery? I'm trying to a run with only the officers I find in wrecks and half of them got both these skills.

[Wyvern]

I'd rather just have a way to repick their skills entirely, even if only once and at a firm SP cost - as otherwise in most cases I'd rather just hand build a level 6 Officer myself. In those listed builds for example, I'd never want Missile Spec on an Onslaught Captain or a Legion Captain unless it's an XIV Legion - sooner opting for Point Defense or perhaps Damage Control in both cases.

It's very often I just airlock any level 7s in favour of level 6s with the skills I actually want, and I'd probably continue doing so with the listed fixed skillsets so far.

So what seven skills do you want?

(And, for my curiosity, what six skill combinations would you like better than the various seven-skill sets people have suggested so far?)

And while I'm here, have an extra officer setup:
Generic Okay-At-Anything Officer: Ordnance Expertise (Elite), Field Modulation (Elite), Target Analysis (Elite), Point Defense (Elite), Gunnery Implants (Elite), Helmsmanship, Combat Endurance

(Keeping in mind that you can swap around what skills an officer has at elite, so for example the above could get swapped to elite Helmsmanship if you were planning on putting them in a slower cruiser or capital.)

[PsychoThruster]

Are they truly random? I rescued one from a dominator that seemed appropriately skilled, perhaps not totally optimal but certainly useful. Going off of memory but I think she had: combat endurance, damage control, target analyses, ballistic mastery, and missile spec elited, with ordnance expertise and polarized armor nonelite.

[Wyvern]

Hm... Not a great setup, imo; that one's missing Gunnery Implants and Impact Mitigation. Probably better than a level 5 officer would be, but not competitive with a level six with, say, Impact Mitigation (Elite), Missile Specialization (Elite), Ballistic Mastery, Combat Endurance, Gunnery Implants, Target Analysis.

And yes, they're random - though the RNG may get skewed one way or another; for example, you will almost never find a high level officer that doesn't have at least one of missile spec or systems expertise. There may also be factional preferences involved; an officer that rolled a hegemony origin is more likely to have ballistic mastery and less likely to have energy weapon mastery.

For an example, the one level 7 officer I've found in my current game has combat endurance, ballistic mastery, energy weapon mastery, missile specialization, systems expertise, field modulation, and ordnance expertise - I forget which ones started out elited. ...I should really just fire them; they're missing Gunnery Implants and Target Analysis, both of which are mandatory skill for me.

[PsychoThruster]

I agree with the overall suggestion, just didn't realize it was random.

I've given up on trying to get ideal officers, the ones I train often have two skills I want on a level up that won't be available later, so I'm settling for good enough. Seems to me every skill should be an option at every level, with capstones being level 5/6 options. To that end the level 7's should just be a blank slate.

[snicka]

Would be really appropriate for the historian to be ale to locate them, too..

[Realm]

So what seven skills do you want?

(And, for my curiosity, what six skill combinations would you like better than the various seven-skill sets people have suggested so far?)

And while I'm here, have an extra officer setup:
Generic Okay-At-Anything Officer: Ordnance Expertise (Elite), Field Modulation (Elite), Target Analysis (Elite), Point Defense (Elite), Gunnery Implants (Elite), Helmsmanship, Combat Endurance

(Keeping in mind that you can swap around what skills an officer has at elite, so for example the above could get swapped to elite Helmsmanship if you were planning on putting them in a slower cruiser or capital.)

Truthfully? It depends on the ship and ship's loadout. I'll build an Officer for a ship, not a ship for an Officer. For example, CE I'll only use on civilian ships (Prom. Mk II, Atlas Mk. II notably) to get them up to 100 CR since the rest of my ships have CR 100 between Crew Training and Best of the Best + Hull Restoration.

For example, with Legions/Onslaughts I lean toward: Ballistic Mastery (Elite), Gunnery Implants, Impact Mitigation (Elite), Polarized Armour (Elite on Onslaught), Ordnance Expertise (Elite) and between the two ships PD for Legion (Elite)/Target Analysis for Onslaught. With level 7 I'd add Damage Control to both builds, and have it Elite on the Onslaught in lieu of PA Elite. The build is for the stock Legion, as I prefer it's larges over the XIV Legion's slots.