The only nasty and really confusing thing in this skill split idea is the fact that racial battlecruiser and destroyer skills would get same ranks as their common counterparts have now. Do you think that command ships alone are that good so people would surely spend 1.5 mil SP for each one of them? I think that they are not that awesome. Most people train commands as a good bonus for having at least two of racial cruisers 5. And even now it would cost only an additional 1.2mil SP to cross-train commands through cruiser skills even if you would ignore the fact that the cruiser 5 skill is a must have skill for any experienced pvp pilot anyway as it provides access to SC, Logistics, Recons, HICs and HACs as weapons of destruction.

I think that you should consider lowering a rank of racial battlecruisers skill at least to rank 5( which cruisers have) or may be even lowering both cruisers and BC skills to rank 4. Personally I already have BC and destroyers V but I still cant forget that damn month I spent training BC V. How do you imagine new players to spend 4 months to get the same result?

Your problem is that I have invested 1.5 mil SP a year ago, and after this change I will just get them back as I dont have gallente cruisers trained. Meanwhile I will still get 3 racial BC's V(4.5mil SP total) literally for free. At which point does that looks fair to those who will come into the game after skill change?

1) Your problem is that I have invested 1.5 mil SP a year ago, and after this change I will just get them back as I dont have gallente cruisers trained. Meanwhile I will still get 3 racial BC's V(4.5mil SP total) literally for free. At which point does that looks fair to those who will come into the game after skill change?

what i found odd about the blog is that all the command ships require training the skills for the 4 main links...
when they are only going to be bonused for 2 links so surely they should only require the 2 links skills they will need

e.g. vulture will be bonused towards

siege warfare link

information warfare links

With regards to 1. No you don't. You get your 3 Racial BC skills, but you get 0 free SP.
Your current BC skill just gets converted into the 3 racials.
Because you have at least one of the racials, you get no refund. The refund only occurs if you have ZERO racials.

For capital ships quite a few days of navigation skills were added, which should compensate somewhat, especially since it's on another mapping entirely.

Also it makes no sense at all to compare the times used to ENTER a ship. There's a ton of skills required to actually fly a ship and those don't change at all.

So what if the lvl 1 skill for Armageddon Navy Issue was reduced from 7 days to 3 days?
Only a moron or a desperate person would fly that thing without at least 100-150 days in support and gunnery skills and to fly the ship efficiently you would also need the BS skill at least at IV, better yet V, which takes longer than BS1 in the first place.

So you're looking at a change from something like 144-184 days to 140-180. Big deal.

Where the new system really shines is if you already have all the support skills and need to change to another race's shis due to guild doctrin, as it severly cuts down on training time.

Maller > reduced from 2 days to 18 hours
Navy Augoror > reduced from 3 days to 21 hours
Oracle > reduced from 4 days 3 hours to 1 day 16 hours
Abaddon > reduced from 8 days 19 hours to 2 days 19 hours
Armageddon Navy Issue > reduced from 7 days 9 hours to 3 days
Orca > 49 days to 17 days

The support skill requirements you have added are pointless, as any Cap pilot would be training them anyway. Having them as a pre-requisite is completely meaningless.

If you dumb the game down any more you will have a bunch of 3 month old characters flying around in Carriers. Like we need that.

Why wouldn't that be good for the game? More young pilots in caps means more isk leaving the game as they explode, theres too much money in the game now, it has almost not point. Anything that sucks it out thats not related to stupid clone costs is a good thing.

I would like to see any confirmation from CCP about this point. I doubt because I cant imagine a char that has no racial frigate skills at level 3 but destroyer skill trained. Same goes for battlecuisers skill. Which makes literally no one eligable for skill points refund if your POV is correct.