Ngl, I'm underwhelmed if not disappointed by some of the changes. Just to be clear, I've been thrilled with most of the recent blog posts, and love seeing active development. But this one to me just misses the mark, to the point where I actually figured out my darn password and logged in, something I haven't done pretty much since I made my account.
The defensive skills all just getting damage buffs feels wrong to me. I liked some of the flavor and complexity, and it's worth noting that those skills disproportionately benefitted low-tech ships by virtue of their reliance on armor and/or hull tanking.
The DC elite was *huge* if you had to take a reaper on the chin, which, let's face it, is sometimes going to happen, especially as a new player and/or on something like an onslaught wading into a pool of enemy destroyers/frigates. (And if you're supposed to tank it on shield and potentially overload, then the removal of system expertise's reduced overload time is also an indirect nerf). And since it's a skill about reducing the consequences of taking hits, it requires a so-called "loss state" to use any of its benefits. But that's okay, because if I've picked that skill it's because I anticipate taking so much damage that I am eating into hull and getting things disabled, and will still want to stay in the fight when that happens (whether that be because of a build I've made or because I'm new and bad at piloting isn't really relevant). Y'know, damage control, the name of the thing.
With limited points, you have to pick what you're going to specialize in. So, if I want more damage, I can spec into the myriad of skills for that. If I want to be tougher, the skills to be tougher should do almost exclusively that. I saw someone saying the DR elite skills should instead have thematic DR buffs, and I agree. The example they used was elite IM reduces HE damage, DC reduces frag/energy damage, and field modulation reduces kinetic damage. Those make thematic sense more to me than the damage buffs, and they make the choices remain consistent for your limited options.
The proposed version is probably a buff when all the math shakes out, but to me it's less interesting and makes the skill tree less coherent. Plus, it'll just makes high-level officers generically nastier to fight, instead of having thematically noticeable effects. This set of changes makes a lot of skills more generic, and I don't see the good in that.
I'm also going to second the slight disappointment at the ordnance expertise nerf. It opened up builds that didn't work otherwise, and it adds on to my feeling that this set of changes will eat into the ability of the player to focus on a niche and really make it work by building for it. I could keep going, but I've rambled enough and made my point.
I'll close on a happy note and say I REALLY like the improvement to combat endurance. It's an excellent change.
