I understand the original aim, to have another aspect where progress can be made, one that takes long time so people with 100s hours in their game still have something to achieve.
But what causes this problem is rather the possibility to acquire anything in the game extremely quickly.
I mean things like possibility to board L/XL class ships in starting ship, difference in margin for normal trading and ship production, very rapid reputation increase etc.
That train is gone though, not possible to make substantial balancing changes after release.
But to make this work NPC skills should allow extra features, not just be a cheap limiter for accessing preexisting mandatory features.
Really, i could imagine tons of things that require no substantial dev work but provide bonuses that are worth the effort or at least block features that are absolutely not required during gameplay.
couple examples
- working with other race ships/equipment
- slightly accelerated or targeted skill gains for crew (what pilot has on 5*)
- increased crew capacity
- crew transfer without docking
- range modifier (scanner and attack/evade)
- increased trade range so at 5* they get close to be able to trade across the whole universe
- some slight dps modifier with 4* on 100%, 5% on 103% or such (any param from turret rotation to actual bullet damage that is easy to alter based on pilot)
Of course implementing more features and bind those to skills would be the best solution.
There could easily be trade scripts with a different mindset then autotraders - like CAG and CLS which all had their specific usaceses that still exist but is real hard to manage now.
Or more complex defence scripts that prioritise targets over several sectors and let player set priorities,
Or any of the 1000s of bettter ideas then i have
