Please reduce the minimum amount of points you need to put in the tiers before you move to the next tier. At this point, I expect every starship captain that flys mostly space missions will just take all of the tier 1 abilities, even if they don't really want them.
How about reducing the required points to spend in tier 1-4 to 25% of what it is currently. The increase of skill point usage for the higher trees has it's own balancing factor when taking them.
If a person chooses to spend less on the lower tiers and spend on higher tiers anyway, does it really matter?
Many of those skills are 2-5x as expensive, so buying 9 ranks of a tier 1 skill is the same cost as buying 3 ranks of a tier 3, and 1 rank at a tier 5.
In my opinion, it sort of balances itself out on its own by the higher cost of point spendature on each tier.
Comments