Could you guys please stop the panic regarding 'I can fly it now, but I don't have skill X' ?

Those additional skills are requirements for your current ship's SKILL, not for the SHIP.
Since you guys can already FLY the ship, you obviously already HAVE the skill that has now some other requirements.

So obviously you will still be able to fly that ship, you could just not learn it the same way with a new toon.

*Chokes*..

All command links to 5 to use Command Ships? Even if they're completely irrelevant to the ship being flown?

Correct!

Looks like it. Because the skill "command ships" is generic, not racial. But as other stuff has been removed, the total training time is about the same.

There will be alot of freighter pilots in that state. Few got advanced spaceship command at V. But all will still be able to fly their freighters.

Ideally, yes, but we wanted to keep close hard training times, so we had to take a pick between the Doomsday and the Jump Portal.

The ORE branch (Venture, Noctis, Orca, Rorqual plus all mining barge variations) has been tweaked to a consistent progression. For instance, the Rorqual will not need Mining Barges 5 to be flown anymore, but will instead require the Industrial Command Ship skill at 3, itself requiring ORE Industrial at 3.

We aren't adding Freighters 5 as the Jump Freighter requirement, at least not for a good while. We considered it, but the prospect of giving 7 million skill points extra wasn't appealing.

Correct!

Freighters are assbackwards (not that I particularly care):

The primary skill requirement after the change is already contained in the secondary skill requirement. You might want to just nuke the primary skill requirement altogether.

(if you had Racial Freighter as the primary skill and someone had already trained it then ASC V wouldn't be required amirite)

Can you please answer directly: do we have to train skill prerequisites to progress in that skill?
To level Freighters V without Advanced Spaceships Command V, or to maximize Command ships V without all those useless links?
I dont worry about "you will able to fly" thing. I want to know if I need to maximize skills now to skip useless skills that you introduced as prerequisites for command ships today.

If you are going to be flying a command ship in a fleet, you really already should have all those skills to V anyway, to provide those benefits to your fleet.

The problem is that what are called the field command ships (absolution, sleipnir, astarte and nighthawk) are often flown as combat ships, not as support ships. What I would like to see done (though this would add yet more sp to clones) would be to make the fleet command ships the only command ships, and make the field command ships a separate ship entirely, like a heavy assault battlecruiser - that is essentially how they are used now in everything but the alliance tournament. I'm sure someone will jump in and say how they use the nighthawk in place of the vulture for some kind of fleet, or something similar, but outlying cases don't disqualify the larger issue at hand.

While we are fine with time sinks, they should be related to the field you are specializing into and not push you into hulls you are not interested in.

Can you please answer directly: do we have to train skill prerequisites to progress in that skill?
To level Freighters V without Advanced Spaceships Command V, or to maximize Command ships V without all those useless links?
I dont worry about "you will able to fly" thing. I want to know if I need to maximize skills now to skip useless skills that you introduced as prerequisites for command ships today.

But we are still forced to specialize in small weapons before we can specialize in large ones. Tis doesnt make sense and it was stated earlier that this issue will be discussed. So when we now can specialize directly into the ships we want, why are we still pushed into weapons we are not interested in?

Independent of ships if the skill training requirements change, then yes. In order to train those skills after the expansion hits you will need those skills trained.

So for the Fenrir you will need to first have Advanced Spaceship Command at level V before you can start training Minmatar Freighter, but the prerequisite for that skill has changed.