Starship Captain Skills: Updated starship captain skills that only affected a single ship type. These skills now provide 25% of their stat improvement to higher tier ships of the same category (cruiser, escort, etc.) This update addresses the concern that Commander and Captain rank starship caption skills were wasted skill points once the player moved into their next tier of ship.
Comments
http://theenginescannaetakeit.wordpress.com/articles-3/starship-mechanics/
Have fun!
Oh well, disregard.
Source: Release Notes - March 24, 2010
See this post for a breakdown as it impacts T5 ships: Captain skills: benefit and builds post-patch