Pilot abilities, outside of a very select few, have never been useful enough to justify outside of a handful of situations. The benefits are so slim and take so long to get from them that they are effectively gone by the time the ability ends.
Take Emergency Weapons' original function: 5x damage and EPS reduction for anywhere between 10 to 90 seconds. With a huge window like that, it was extremely inconsistent and could leave you with your pants down if you were mid-engagement and the ability ended. Let's also not forget that Imperial ships only ever had 2 weapon slots maximum until the TIE Defender came along. (Excluding ordnance, obviously.)
Now take Emergency Shields. It disables your weapons and increases your shield's recharge rate by 10x for anywhere between 30 to 60 seconds. This skill could also end early, and you were basically defenseless while this ability was active.
Emergency thrust increases engine output by 30% for the same window as Emergency Weapons. This, arguably would be more busted than E-Weapons and Shields put together.
Additionally, IFF Scramble is a necessity for convoy content unless you want to run the risk of taking too long and failing, and yet Imperials don't have access to that skill. Pilot abilities gradually became far, far less useful by the game's end of service than they likely were in the earlier years pre-Adv. X-Wing and TIE Defenders.
Given what's being worked on, these windows and their bonuses are being re-evaluated, along with certain droid commands as they are literally useless.
EDIT: Not to mention the Bomber Strikes, Pirate Trap, Jumpstart/Vrepair, etc. It's all being considered carefully.
Absolutely agreed on the Emergency-skills lines... They are worse than useless, and very niche use in the most Pollyanna-optimistic point of view. Same with Nebula Blast.
In Flight Repair/Rearm/both are so quirky and difficult to get to fire that they are virtually in the same category. And let's not talk about the garbage that rearming is
when you do get it to fire.
Pirate Trap
could be useful, if it grew with you. It's only useful as extra mobs to distract. They're too-low of a level for the skill to be useful later in life.
Vampiric Repair/Other is still very niche, but not without its uses. It's just super-rare for someone/yourself to survive that level of damage
and find enough of a lull to use the skills. Jump Start is in the same class, IMO. Generally speaking, the stars rarely align in such a way that allows for Jump Start to be utilized - but when they do, it's ridiculously useful. For reference, I've not been in such circumstances on Evolve yet...
Technically speaking, Imperial Pilots are more independent agents than regular Navy, and IFF Jamming is something they should have in that context. That's something I think everyone should have - as pilots, we're all more smuggler/militia than actual military. I do disagree about its necessity for Convoys, but that's a method/preference matter, so I'll concede that point on that basis.
Bomber Strike is the place where I think we need to be careful in the extreme... I've made my opinion clear as far as how the Imps get the short end of... well... everything prior to Tier 4. Bomber Strike is pretty much the only equalizer they get until then. Even then, It takes skill (or lots of help from your shipwright friends) and knowledge to rebound at 4-2. Negative changes for the Imperials with Bomber Strike could do a great deal of damage from my point of view.
When it comes to droid programming, I already know that I'm an oddity here compared to everyone else based on the regularly available chips on the market. While I rarely use the Rebel Shield Adjustment chips, I avidly use the reinforcement chips (for those that don't know, with one side of your shields heavily damaged, if you use a reinforcement to transfer energy to the more-damaged side before a shunt, you have a better chance of restoring your shield back to full. Reinforcements resolve almost immediately). With some of the droid-chips, I think this is mostly a matter of ignorance of what you can do with them. That said, the skills that reduce weapon power, reduce engine power... Why??? There's no good or reasonable need for these that I'm aware of. I do agree that there are aspect of this that need love badly, but I will also caution that some of this is not bad - rather a matter of a lack of awareness.
I'm thrilled to see the attention this is getting, and I'm also pleased to see the apparent caution, diligence, and thoroughness that it's been approached from. Just please be careful that the threads you tug and trim don't unravel other things.
