Before I begin, I want to say that I love your candor and activity on the forums. While I may not always agree with your changes, your presence and responses to the community are deeply appreciated, and I give you a salute good sir.

o7

That said, you are missing one of the biggest assets you have to balance the game. the answer is SKILLBOOKS. So many skillbooks do nothing more than unlock the different tiers. By comparison, I can count the skills that only unlock things in eve on my fingers. Every skill, with very few and very notable exceptions, should give a player a bonus to something, be it a weapon, a suit, a module, whatever.

I'll focus on vehicles since I mainly run vehicles. Let's take large railguns. Combined with damage mods, a no skills railgun can kill any tank in 4 shots or less, and only armor stacked maddies can take that 4th shot. Vehicle TTK is low because of this.

So why not nerf large railgun damage by a flat 15% across the board, and then give the LArge Railgun Operation skill a 3% bonus to large railgun damage per level, returning original damage at level 5? now a no skills character is at a disadvantage, while those of us who invested into it can continue on as we were, without worrying about no skills characters downing our skill and isk invested tanks.

Damage mods are too powerful? Nerf them by a flat 50%, and give 10% efficiency per level of Vehicle Turret Upgrades.

Active Scanners too powerful? Nerf their precision by 10% and give 2% per level of Active Scanner Operation.

Use whatever numbers you feel are best, these are just examples to demonstrate the point. Give those of us who invest the SP gain an advantage over those who do not, beyond unlocking better gear that can be bypassed rather easily with AUR/LP. This also solves some of your railgun issues by nerfing the real problem (people with no skills in vehicles are getting the same benefit as someone with level 5 in everything) while keeping the ones who have invested where they are at.