I grow my own carrots, you should try it.

try being a logi. **** you proto equipment... **** you.

Yep, with a Logi you have equipment added to the mix as well. Doesn't help that much of the equipment skills are rear-loaded, the best stuff by far being level V only. Triage and Allotek (R) Nanohives, Core Focused Repair... then there's fitting skills to fit them in, Prototype Logisuits at an extra 2.5 mil SP jump from Advanced for the extra equipment, amplified fitting, boosted passives...

This is all before considering such trivialities as weapons and tanking skills.

Those particular multipliers are a little pricey for the passive effects.
But, you have access to those super handy Complex CPU and PG modules now.
Complex Kinetic Catalyzers have been the bane of my grindage for a little while.
Which will then probably mean taking Electronics & Engineering from 3s to 5s just to get the Complex modules.
So, there's the next 3 months of my game life planned out.
Yay?

My god, these threads are getting ridiculous. Surprise, you can't just fit max everything even if you have tons of SP. Personally, I find it fun to figure out how much I can fit on my suit within the constraints I have to work with. I know how bad ass I can get and I work for that. Bad players confuse skill and SP far too often.

After having my primary weapon broken/too buggy to be competitive 3 times... I have finally managed to scrimp and save for my last level in drop suit engineering.

I am awarded with 3.whatever units of extra powergrid, I rejoice.

Now I can fit a level 4 scrambler pistol sidearm instead of a level 3... oh the humanity.

If I take my mass driver fitting upgrades to 5, I might be able to fit a proto scrambler pistol on... although I won't be able to carry any grenades.

Anyone else feel at 15 mil+ SP there is little incentive to work for additional upgrades? The SP requirements to fill out my entire suit are staggering, I'm looking at 2 mil SP Just to be able to fit my sidearm to prototype (regardless of the SP i need to advance it). That's approximately 2 months of capping out with boosters every week, just to fit my sidearm. There is a reason why I NEVER take a weapon beyond 5 base and 2 in specialization (because in a month CCP might break/nerf it). I really don't want to spend this amount of SP on one upgrade so that I can fit a DIFFERENT weapon.

I guess I'll just take light weapon and sidearm to operation to get more bang for my buck in case the mass driver gets nerfed. This way I can play with my cpu and put on an engineering mod instead.

I never understood not giving out partial respecs, as a marketing standpoint would you rather:

A. Remove the larger carrot, and replace it with a smaller, less appealing carrot on a longer stick.

B. Remove the larger carrot, and replace it with an equally sized, different tasting but not necessarily less appealing carrot on a stick.

Which option gets your customers to play the game for longer, and be more likely to "BUY AURUM!!!!"?

I take it you've never played Eve, which is ok, but if you had, you'd realize that there is a diminishing return on value-per-sp-spent the higher level you go into things. That is by design. It is meant to reward those players that want to eek out that little extra on the top end to be "that" much better, have "that" much more stats, so to speak.

You can assess whether that extra 5% power grid is worth it, or you could branch out and try an entirely new suit and weapon with that sp. The level 5 skills are high-sp-low-return for a reason. It lets you eek out that *little* bit extra damage from your gun or power from your suit and be "that much better" than your opponents, but you have to want to commit to it.

I think in Eve it's somewhat easier to bear with this knowledge, since it's all passively accrued sp. I simply tell my skill queue what to train, and 30 days later it's finished. I eek out that little extra epeen at the end of the time, but I'm not particularly aware that I'm "spending" 1.5 million sp like I do in Dust. Maybe that's what somewhat makes it unpalatable.

EVE has another benefit (for now; Dust will get it eventually) to getting skills to lv5...Tech-II.

For example, getting the racial cruiser to 5, along with Long-Range Targeting and Signature Analysis to 5 unlocks Logistics Cruisers.

I spend the month or two training all the requirements for Large Autocannon specialization, I can use T2 Large Autocannons (and T2 Small and Medium on the way).

Generally, its a good idea to get T2 mods, especially the ones that have low requirements. Yes, you can use faction or Meta 4, but they cost more ISK (faction a lot more ISK, which makes you a nice gank target), but its still a very good idea to get T2 eventually.

True, but you could argue that level 5 skills in Dust unlocks prototype weapons and mods. The level 5 support skills, which is what we're talking about in this thread, would be akin to Recon V or something even more diminishing-return-per-level like Autocannon Specialization V, where you'd only get 2% more weapon damage for 30 days of training.

That's really what its about: eeking out that 2% over what your similarly-skilled opponent would have at AC spec IV. High commitment for little return.

Welcome to new Eden, where returns are diminished drastically. It's hard to believe the first 4 levels combined cost as much SP as the last level. Try getting to level 5 in all your core skills in EVE, took me almost a year, but I did it, and I don't regret it one bit. Core skills are the way to go, they are essentially immune to all the stat changes.

Um I am going to disagree, with your assertion that the Core Skills are immune to STAT Changes, why because my suit got nerfed out of 20/28/40 cpu from the 3 levels of suits -- rather recently. Why because ccp gave it the Shield Extender Bonus, then said it was too powerful so in addition to taking away that bonus to modules we feel it is necessary to remove this extra CPU we think you have laying around because a good % of the people using it are doing so in a way we didn't intend.

Anyone else feel at 15 mil+ SP there is little incentive to work for additional upgrades?

Do you realize what a core skill is? It is not the numbers that are generated on a suit. It's the % increase that the skill gives you. Electronics gives you +5% CPU per level. Nothing CCP has done has reduced the 5% gained per skill level. You'd have to be way off base to think that there wouldn't be balancing changes, buffs, nerfs, etc. to individual numbers in the game. The fact remains that if a number is cut from 100 to 50, say, my Electronics V is still going to give me 5% more CPU than your skill will at IV.