Skills Pack 2

This pack adds five new skills to the game, one for each skill category. These have new and unique effects, and importantly: all five have custom art assets! These were created in the same way as the base-game art, so they blend in perfectly.

Quietus - Physical, Expert 1: You cause bonus damage to enemies the higher their level. 2: You cause even more damage to enemies the higher their level. 3: You cause much more damage to enemies the higher their level. 4: You gain 10% more experience from all sources. Challenge: Kill 15 enemies of at least level 15/30/50.

Lacuna - Social, Master 1: Failing an attempt at Diplomacy, Intimidation, Instigation, or Manipulation will briefly slow the target. 2: Failing a social skill attempt slows the target for longer. 3: You can re-attempt a social skill after a short cooldown. 4: You cause more 25% more damage to any target of your social skills, whether the attempt succeeded or not. Challenge: Attempt a social skill on 15/30/50 different targets - successful or not!

Gun Kata - Combat, Master 1: Gun bashing does 25% more damage. You take 15% less damage from ranged weapons from enemies within 10m. 2: Gun bashing does 50% more damage. You cause 15% more damage with ranged weapons against enemies within 10m. 3: Gun bashing does 75% more damage. You take 30% less damage from ranged weapons from enemies within 10m. 4: Gun bashing does double damage. You cause 30% more damage with ranged weapons against enemies within 10m. Challenge: Kill 20/40/60 enemies within 10m with a ranged weapon.

Precog - Science, Expert 1: You have a 3% chance to avoid damage from any attack. 2: You have a 6% chance to avoid damage from any attack. 3: You have a 10% chance to avoid damage from any attack. 4: Increase critical hit chance for all weapons and weapon systems by 5%. Challenge: Take 500/1000/1500 combat and/or hull damage.

Waste Allocation Load - Tech, Advanced 1: Jettisoning resources during ship combat will damage the shields of all enemy ships within 500m, based on the value of the items. 2: Jettisoning resources now reaches out to 750m and causes damage to enemy ship weapon systems. 3: Jettisoning resources now reaches out to 1000m and causes damage to all enemy ship systems. 4: Jettisoning resources causes 25% more shield and ship system damage. Challenge: Jettison 1500/3000/5000 credits worth of resources during ship combat.

• Quietus ranks 1-3 give you 1% bonus damage per rank, per 10 levels of the enemy, up to level 100. This means a maximum of +30% damage at rank 3 against enemies level 100 or greater. This is obviously almost nothing against weak enemies, but you don't really need help with those fights. It's potentially a huge bonus that applies to everything you do against bosses. For the record, most enemy types scale into the 70s-90s and Starborn can reach level 100. Because enemy scaling is based on your own level, Quietus ranks 1-3 get better as you level up, so rank 4 helps you to do that faster. Also, ships have levels and this will affect them. Most ships scale up to the 60s-70s.
• Lacuna's slow effect is very strong: -90% movement and animation speed for 5/10 seconds, so it almost totally shuts the target down for the duration. Normally, the "cooldown" on using a social skill on the same enemy again is 86400 seconds (1 real-time day). Lacuna rank 3 drops this to 30 seconds, so you actually get a realistic chance to try again. Rank 4's damage bonus only applies to you, so it won't interfere with Instigation. Finally, Lacuna doesn't say so, but it does also apply to Xenosociology/Robotics using Pacify/Flee/Frenzy/Control.
• Gun Kata is pretty self-explanatory. You can use your scanner to get an idea of how far 10 meters is. It's pretty close range, but still enough to be useful.
• Precog works like the Deft Movement perk from Skyrim in that it gives you a chance to avoid damage from any combat hit, and rank 4 makes you more likely to critically hit with any of your own attacks. Notably, this does affect both on-foot and ship combat, as you might have guessed from its challenge.
• Waste Allocation Load causes 1 shield damage and (with more ranks) 0.2 ship system damage per 1 base credit value of resources (and ONLY resources) that you jettison. Rank 4 improves this to 1.25 shield damage and 0.25 ship system damage per credit. You can jettison items from your ship cargo any time while in space, and their base credit value is listed there. Distance to your current target is displayed in the HUD while flying so you'll at least know if that target is in-range, but this will hit all hostile (and only hostile) ships in its range. Letting you chuck rocks at spaceships is hilarious, but WAL is also potentially game-breakingly powerful: this skill lets you fairly easily win any space battle regardless of the strength of your own ship by totally disabling your enemies. This is balanced by it eating up your valuable crafting materials. Whenever you jettison resource items during ship combat, it'll track the total value of them and then trigger the explosion effects when you close your ship's cargo. Because it's expensive, it's meant for emergency use, but several other skills have good synergy with it, like Commerce, Theft, Deception, Geology, Botany, Zoology, and Payloads. Anything that gives you access to more money and resources can now be used offensively, letting you build a space trucker, pirate, or scientist who's got a secret (and powerful) move.

You probably have caught the movie references in this skills pack. Specifically, these skills are references to Children of Men, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Equilibrium, Minority Report, and WALL-E.

Compatibility: This will conflict with any other mod that changes the skillpatches.swf file, except for Skills Pack 1. Both Skills Pack 1 and Skills Pack 2 are compatible with each other and their load order is irrelevant. This will also conflict with anything that changes the SocialSkill_TargetMarker_Dummy magic effect used by social skills, but I'd be surprised if any mod does, even one that changes the social skills.