I believe this can be done in a way that appeals to both free players and paying players.

In Eve pirate factions require two racial skills trained to fly them. In Dust, it would make sense for this to hold true, but I would also introduce "pirate racial" skills as AUR only books.

Let's take the example of the Gurista Assault. If we follow EVE, you'd have to train up Caldari and Gallente racial skills. With the proposed "Gurista" skill book, you can train up exactly what you want, without the fat, saving you a pile of SP. But Gurista skills don't help you wear Caldari suits and Gallente suits at all. It is a shortcut in the sense that you are skipping training racial suits you weren't interested in, but it is also balanced in that you skipped those racial suits you weren't interested in . Without buying these AUR books, yes you have to spend more SP to get pirate suits, but you also get the two empire suits; even if you didn't want them, they are still options you now posses that the pirate does not with his lesser sp investment.

What does the community think about such items? I believe this is a win-win, especially after player trading finally arrives. I think such 1 time but limited utility purchases should be in the $1 - $3 range. What would you suggest?

-_- This isnt the greatest idea see as CCP wants AUR to not be a big thing just something that helps to balance the free players to the one who use some money. Reason is many players will be outdone by people who put in lots of money into the game.

Have you looked in the store lately? With aur versions of EVERYTHING, even first level stuff, I'm going to have to call bullshit on that. It is extremely obvious that ccp wants people to spend **** tons on aur, and make it into a massive deal.

Actually, this idea is quite well thought out. I feel like the advantage of being able to circumvent several level of racial skills to get into pirate gear is reasonable and balanced. If done though the pirate skill books should have a high enough training modifier to make the skill cost 1.5x more than a standard racial varient. this would slight red of uce the benefit of the skill but still make it worth it to players who want pirate gear without getting skills in two racial variants.

Another advantage of this skill would be giving newer players access to high level gear more quickly, which is currently one of the benefits of AUR gear. This would reduce power differential caused by pirate gear across the board since newer players could have it too.

In eve the factik. Ships requires the skills from both. Allowing someone to train up and get both races bonuses without actually training he falls under p2w. Becuase you have to decide how much you want to skill up for those bonuses.

Letting someone train a second cheaper skill for cash is bad.

Also faction ships are better than there non faction siblings. So I have to say nay.

I believe this can be done in a way that appeals to both free players and paying players.

In Eve pirate factions require two racial skills trained to fly them. In Dust, it would make sense for this to hold true, but I would also introduce "pirate racial" skills as AUR only books.

Let's take the example of the Gurista Assault. If we follow EVE, you'd have to train up Caldari and Gallente racial skills. With the proposed "Gurista" skill book, you can train up exactly what you want, without the fat, saving you a pile of SP. But Gurista skills don't help you wear Caldari suits and Gallente suits at all. It is a shortcut in the sense that you are skipping training racial suits you weren't interested in, but it is also balanced in that you skipped those racial suits you weren't interested in . Without buying these AUR books, yes you have to spend more SP to get pirate suits, but you also get the two empire suits; even if you didn't want them, they are still options you now posses that the pirate does not with his lesser sp investment.

What does the community think about such items? I believe this is a win-win, especially after player trading finally arrives. I think such 1 time but limited utility purchases should be in the $1 - $3 range. What would you suggest?

Edit: Cleanup

This is suggestion adding a new "pirate racial" skill path, that costs AUR for the books, that serves as an alternative qualification to using pirate gear. You can still gain access through training two empire skills up. Training the pirate skill does not give you ability in empire gear.