I think Dust might be better served by a suit/role/skill bonus somewhat more similar to EVE, and this is relevant to the current suit bonus discussion. This also ties in with making the basic suits useful, and I think KAGEHOSHI's thread about adjusting the stats on those suits is also quite relevant there.

Basically, the idea is removing the passive bonuses from the suit skills and adding them to the items themselves (suit types/classes). This allows for an easier introduction of special suits, pirate suits, and more flexible use of bonuses. This is the same as it works with standard vs. tier-2 ships in EVE. In short, you have a basic ship (i.e. - racial frigate in EVE, basic racial medium in Dust) and your basic ship has some sort of bonus that is modified by that skill. You also have specialist ships (i.e. - assault frigate in EVE, assault suit in Dust) and that ship has bonuses that are modified by both the basic and specialist skills.

This is also discussed directly in KAGEHOSHI's threadnought as well, but I figured it bore repeating as we go into feedback on suits-mode. Also, I wanted to emphasize the distinction of merely having a skill bonus on the basic suit skill (status quo), vs. bonuses on the suit that are modified.

So, examples... take these skills:
Amarr Medium
Amarr Logistics
Amarr Assault

Rather than a bonus on the skill, the skills modify the suit bonus. Basic suits receive no "role" bonuses, but have medium bonuses. Role-specific suits receive both the basic bonus and role bonus, but not necessarily the same bonuses per skill level. The only part that's iffy in my opinion as that there's some vacillation in terms of build for the races dev-side (e.g. - Amarr being "dual-tanked" apparently vs. armor tanking... vs. armor repping?). Examples (with bonuses just made up):

Amarr Basic Suits:
3% bonus to laser weapon cooldown and 3% bonus to armor plate hp per rank of Amarr Medium

Amarr Assault Suits:
5% bonus to laser weapon cooldown and 5% bonus to armor plate hp per rank of Amarr Medium
&
1% bonus to light weapon damage and 5% bonus to stamina per rank of Amarr Assault

Amarr Logistics Suits:
3% bonus to armor repper efficacy and 3% bonus to armor plate hp per rank of Amarr Medium
&
5% bonus to PG/CPU fitting of equipment and -10% bonus to spawn time of Drop Uplinks per rank of Amarr Logistics

Taken in tandem with the suit adjustments that Kagehoshi suggests, we have basic skills and suits that are actually useful.

With skill bonuses on suits, we could transition easily to having special suits as tournament rewards, pirate suits, etc:

Amarr Tournament Champion Suit:
7% bonus to laser weapon cooldown and 5% bonus to armor plate hp per rank of Amarr Medium
&
3% bonus to shield resistance vs. blaster and 3% bonus to armor resistance vs. projectile per rank of Amarr LogisticsorAssault.

and/or

Sansha Assault suit (requires Caldari AND Amarr skills):
6% bonus to laser weapon cooldown and 2% bonus to laser weapon damage per rank of Amarr Assault
&
5% bonus to shield extender efficacy and 2% shield resistance per rank of Caldari Assault

Neither special suit requires making new skills, and the items scale off and provide variety in bonuses off existing skills. This makes for much more interesting special suit options because rather than the excitement of "slightly more shields or fitting... woo" (the Master Recruiter suit is an example of this) on some putative event reward, you can have something with a meaningful effect that's interesting... but wouldn't imbalance the game if handed out at a rate of 3-5 suits for a set of tournament winners.

No putting them on the suits allow both tiericide as well as suit variety.

The point is the suit provides a bonus based on your relevant skills. Not you have to get a new skill for every new goddamned dropsuit that comes out.

No.
It will encourage players to play proto even more.

This is the interests of "Passive skillls"

So... if they don't release any different suits, and just move the current (or 1.8 bonuses) to the suits instead of skills... then it's functionally identical to our current system? The numbers are just in a different place?

i agree that skills and how their applied to a certain suit should be more like eve, although the exact way to do it its debatable

Agree. This also allows for different versions of same tied suits within a role such as dedicated medics and dedicated supply runners or av assaults as well as AP assaults etc

Also the cross skilling to give suits a different purpose to their intended role is nice. Scout/ logo would create a blockade runner. Heavy/logi would create the heavy logistics suit for running with heavies.

I'm going to bed now, hopefully there will be a reply when I wake up.

One of the nice things is that it works with or without tiericide.

As an additional bonus, it solves a problem the pilot suits seemed to have:

The largest problem with pilot suits as they were presented before is that they were like most of our dropsuits: the passive bonus from the suit skill applies in full regardless of the suit.

Presumably a "pilot" wants to be a dedicated vehicle jockey, right? What does it matter what the suit stats are then? Once you hit rank 5 and get the full skill bonus, you have no reason to ever step into a proto-model suit, as you can get the same bonuses to your vehicle by wearing the standard suit. Your vehicle is your shield, so the suit models become largely superfluous. Seems a bit backwards.

With bonuses on the suits themselves, they could make the pilot suit an "exception" to the normal passive skill rule by scaling the bonus amounts on the suit tiers. That way, you have to run the proto suit to get the maximum bonus to your vehicle. It seems appropriate for that one scenario because pilots present a unique problem with their vehicle bonuses otherwise.

Actually the problem with the Pilot Suit is that it is redundant. You already skill into vehicles the same way that you skill into Dropsuits, effectively making the vehicle itself a Dropsuit. Adding a Pilot Suit on top of that just doesn't make any sense.

Add to that the difficulty that CCP has already faced when trying to balance vehicles, giving them something else that adds more bonuses above and beyond anything that dropsuits can get is just going flood the forums with more "Nerf Vehicle" threads.