Hmmmm I dont think this should be allowed.
Or maybe, people could chose a primay tree and a secondary tree: if fighter is the primary, they can train the skills to 20 (as today), and on the secondary they can train only to 5 or something...

Well I think we should all be used to not being able to adapt our current equipment to changes after all those years

I think being able to take both is kinda the point. In a game where the primary way to get experience and thus skill points is by killing stuff and where there should be a decent ammount of pvp, emp runs, all characters should be good at combat in one way or another. Right now that isn't true though.

Hmm, ok but then... how do you do that? Because for example it'd be a tad broken to have MF + Merchant & EE with 5 excomms (EE giving 20% dmg to mining, merch giving hull for huge weaps)

Or any skill + CA.. CA 20 giving 5% to everything

I would think they would take the combat bonuses off those skills. Otherwise, yeah, it would be massively broken!

Assuming they make sure to get the balance right, I think it's a good idea. The biggest problem with SS classes right now is if you make money, you can't fight, and if you fight, you're probably not making money! This would solve that I think.

Calypso

Not quite true Caly, you can do both, but yes I see your point, its not easy. Of course fighting ai is different, but second you fight another player keeping bases and slaves alive is a lot harder, so a balance between the two would be good.

I have a very bad feeling about that .... The first problem I see is every character being CA or EE, and we would need a univeres twice as big.

How would this be a problem? Each person can only use one of their characters, and most people have multiple characters to subidize for their fighting main. With this, it will just allow for better defended galaxies.

So if CA and StaMaster are both trade skills, you can't get both? Or EE and StaMaster? How will that going to work?

hmm, so if the entire skill tree is gonna be changed, can we all get resets?

Presumably

CA+SM
EE+SM+Merch
SM+DM+SM
Others

Would be in the trade tree

Monkey
Sniper
RadX (after a severe beefing*hint hint*)
MF
Others

Would be in the combat tree

And you could pick 1 from each this is kind of what I suggested about 6months ago and yes would be a very good improvement and stop a lot of muling and low level alts to certain extent.

In theory you could probably get rid of Station Mastery make bases as strong as a full mastery base now then maybe the Tweaking skills will be used to buff the bases.

Add in some slow building IK Bp's for terraforming (or maybe a Teraforming Trade skill) and you'll have a somewhat decent comprehensive skill tree.

Then once bases are strong again the game will open up and things will be a lot less stagnant.

Also concourse needs opening up its pretty dead atm.

The merchant skill will never be a trade skill. Despite its name it is a combat skill through and through. Sniper, MF, Speed Demon, Rad Exp, or DM mixed with Merchant would be horrendously broken.... and certain skills like Shield Monkey kinda need it.

Very true... Shm without merch poltices and hull for stuff like Gig misD, os GnT, gig sponge charger etc would be too lame, specially after already being nerfed...