Saw it left the market with this update. I sort of put off looking at it too much while I already had a passive active, didn't know it was a limited time thing - no text on the market suggested such. Is that going to be coming back at some point (in the 60/90-day flavors perhaps)?

Skill > SP

That said, at least on the passive side, I'm all for keeping the omegas around, and sticking to the regulars on the active side. Primary reason being that it lets players with less time stay a bit more competitive, SP-wise, against those with more time. Meanwhile, the active can be a huge increase to SP for an active player, and it doesn't count against the cap (and based on the sticky, it sounds like it might even keep granting active SP AFTER you hit the cap, which would be really bad). At the same time, player skill still matters more, and the more active players will get better, faster (and have more money to spend on skillbooka and gear; SP doesn't matter if you suck, or just have no money to buy and replace gear).

That doesn't make it pay-to-win, though. This is a common misconception in EVE as well, that you'll never catch up. Here's the thing, though: no matter what, you'll never catch up, without some convoluted and unnecessary sliding scale to reduce gains over time; those that come in later will always be behind on SP compared to the early ones.

The second misconception is that this actually matters. The beauty of the system here and in EVE (and it's been rightfully praised for it) is that a low-SP player can equal a hig-SP player in relatively little time simply by specializing. Can the high SP guy do more than you? Sure, but not simultaneously. He can only bring the skills that apply to his current fit into the fight, just like you.

So at most, you've got a versatility disadvantage, and a slight legitimate disadvantage when you're very new. If you choose to specialize before branching out and diversifying you eliminate the main disadvantage. In very short order the difference between a two month old character and a ten year old character becomes nothing more than skill, eperience, and isk; SP is no longer a factor in your ability to compete (and again, SP wasn't important here to start; if you're good enough, militia works just fine, and that proto fit will cry all the harder when he loses it to you in militia).

Andsince, as has been whinged about, they never said it was temporary, why would people have stockpiled more than a couple? That's a lot of real world money at one time with nothing at all to give any clue that it might be useful to do so.

The only point you have is that it's easier to "reship" in Dust. I'll give you that. That said, if you specialize right at the start, you're already very versatile. So while reshipping in eve is harder, the ships are far more specialized and specific to their roles. In dust it's easier to switch out, but the primary stuff most people would choose to specialize in first are useful in far more places than a ship in eve. It balances out quite well, actually.

You're also still ignoring the fact that SP really just isn't that important in general, and especially not here where the twitch-based gameplay makes skill as a player even more important than in eve.

PS
I have no omegas

No, i really won't, because I mostly run militia and slaughter protos no problem; suck less.

As to your misguided attachment to SP, no. Well, maybe, if you're trying to play this squad-based shooter solo, in which case youdeserve to die. The likelihood of no one having the required skills to bring out the "good stuff" is very low. And again, even if you can only use the militia in your theoretical squad of all noobs, it's enough to do what you need.

As with many newer players to eve, you're focusing too much on SP and not how things actually work. This isn't WoW where level and gear matter more than anything else. This isn't Call of Duty where everybody is equal. This is New Eden, this is the EVE universe. Your decisions have consequences, teamwork matters, and not everything is equal, but everything does have a counter.