I disagree. standard nova knives are crap.

I come from EVE, where you essentially are paying a subscription for SP. If I forget to reque I get nothing, and lose money. This game will always give you enough free SP passively to get 5 standard weapons a week. If you cap and use boosters then you could get every advanced weapon in less than 2 month. When going into proto your essentially saying I'm going to take one weapon to 5 instead of taking 4 other weapons to 3, and that's fine but the difference between Advanced and Proto is such that you can't argue that proto is the only viable option.

Now for racial variants not released it's reasonable for a respec like in Uprising. The biggest change I've made with a respec is going from Min Logi to Gal Logi, but even in Chrome I never took my logi past standard in case there wasn't a respec. I also agree that if they overhaul vehicle or dropsuit skills like they did post uprising that a respec is fine and who is to say that you can't spec into something totally different. The second respec contributed to the large number of Cal Logis that eventually led to their "nerf" and people demanded a respec out of cal logi, similarly to the flaylock. It's an endless cycle in a game where things will constatly keep changing and being tweaked, there will be no end to people wanting respecs until they stop having them.

Assuming this game is still around in a year and there aren't too many new suits and weapons you'll have plenty of SP to spec into whatever you want. It only takes about 2 months to get enough SP for a new suit and weapon to level 5, play for a year and negelcting cores you at least 5 different full fits. I invest in cores and not new junk for that very reason.

I specced conservatively and have weathered the rebalancings for it. What will I do when my cores are maxed? Vehicles? New Suit? Weapon? Whatever I want, and I'll start at standard and work my way up like I did for my first suit.

Learn to save your SP or learn to spec into low risk skills.