The skills screen is the place where you use Improvement Points (IP) to acquire skills in order to qualify for equipment requirements, or to improve your chosen career, such as refining ore.
The ‘IP Cost’ column indicates how many Improvement Points you must have in order to acquire 1 skill point in that skill, if you do not have enough Improvement Points, then you must either wait for another level or complete a mission that gives Improvement Points as a reward.
To acquire skill points, press the ‘Spend‘ button in the increase column, beside the skill you want to increase. Then all you need to do is input the number of skill points you wish to purchase, for example: if you wish to acquire 10 skill in refining, simply enter 10 in the field inside the page for refining skill and press ‘purchase‘.
Please Note: you do NOT need to input the number of Improvement Points required for the skills in the field, simply the number of skill points you wish to buy
You can view information about each Skill simply by pressing the ‘View’ button in the info column, that is beside the skill which you want to look at.
You can also recover any spent Improvement Points that you have used to acquire your skills using an IP reset, you get one of these re-sets free every 20 levels, or you can purchase one from the game store for real money.
Before you re-set your IP, and regain any spent IP, you must first un-equip everything you can, this includes anything and everything on your ship except for your Bio Fuel Engine.
This includes normal equipment, Specials and Pods, any and all implants you have equipped. Plus removal of all buildings that require structure points to place, such as Factories, Rare Ore Refineries, Malls, Extractors and Harvesters you may have placed. Lastly any drones you may have deployed. Once you have removed everything, you may re-set your IP and regain any spent Improvement Points.
Yes, the IP reset is complicated, but it is designed to be used once in a while and not a common occurrence. A Captain must pretty much strip down to his underwear so to speak to use the IP Reset.
To exit out of the Skills Screen, simply press the yellow ‘Exit Skills Screen’ button at the bottom of the page, or at the top of the skills area.