Skills Pack 1

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.

Ouroboros - Physical, Master 1: When you are at critical health, become immune for 3 seconds, then recover but take environmental damage. Cooldown 20 minutes. 2: Immunity now lasts for 6 seconds and cooldown is reduced to 15 minutes. Take less environmental damage when Ouroboros ends. 3: Immunity now lasts for 9 seconds and cooldown is reduced to 10 minutes. Take even less environmental damage when Ouroboros ends. 4: Immunity lasts 15 seconds. Time slows down and you do doubled damage while immune. You no longer take environmental damage when Ouroboros ends. Challenge: Cheat death 2/3/4 times in combat.

Astrology - Social, Expert 1: Your Power recovers 25% faster. 2: Your have 25% more Power. 3: Your Power recovers 50% faster. 4: Your have 50% more Power. Challenge: Use Powers on enemies 25/50/100 times in combat.

Pyromania - Combat, Expert 1: Fire effects burn 50% longer. 2: Fire effects burn twice as long. 3: Fire effects burn 150% longer. 4: All fire weapons and effects cause 25% more damage. Challenge: Light enemies on fire 15/30/60 times.

Metaheuristics - Science, Expert 1: Using your hand scanner while sneaking highlights all hostile enemies within 20m. 2: Using your hand scanner while sneaking highlights all hostile enemies within 40m. 3: Using your hand scanner while sneaking highlights all hostile enemies within 60m. 4: Using your hand scanner while sneaking highlights all hostile enemies within 80m. You are much harder to detect while sneaking with your hand scanner active. Challenge: Highlight 30/60/150 enemies with your scanner.

Dynamo Systems - Tech, Master 1: Boosting will charge your shields, even under fire. 2: Boosting charges your shields faster. 3: Boosting slowly repairs damaged ship systems. 4: Boosting charges your shields and repairs damaged ship systems quickly. Challenge: Restore 1000/2500/5000 shield points while boosting in combat.

• Ouroboros is updated from the original version to a method that should work for all players again, even in lower-framerate situations. The new effect triggers when you drop to 20% health or under. During the duration, you take 1% damage and won't gain ailments. When the effect ends, you recover to full health, but take 30/20/10/0 environmental damage. The 20% health threshold is a global so that PC users can change it with the console if they want (and don't mind losing achievements). The global is CCSkill_OuroborosTheshold and its default value is 0.2.
• Astrology boosts maximum power and power regeneration for using Artifact powers.
• Pyromania extends all damage-over-time fire effects. The fourth rank improves fire effect damage, plus the damage of any weapon that can in any way cause fire damage. This includes White Hot, Ignition Beams, Incendiary, Elemental, and all laser weapons if you have Lasers rank 4. As a note, the energy damage portion of incendiary grenades and mines won't show as being improved by rank 4, but I'm not sure why because it actually is.
• Metaheuristics highlights all nearby enemies while sneaking and scanning. Normally, scanning highlights enemies only within the cone of the scan effect, doesn't work through walls, and doesn't last any duration. This enhances it to apply a recon effect (same as recon scopes and recon lasers) to all hostile enemies within a given range. It lasts 10 seconds (like recon scopes and lasers), so it persists after you drop scan mode. This has good uses both mid-combat and for reconnaissance. Each rank extends the range, and the final rank also provides a 50% bonus to sneaking while scanning.
• Dynamo Systems makes boosting charge your shields. It's independent of normal shield charging (so it will work even if shields were recently damaged), it stacks with normal shield charge, and it doesn't use the shield's regeneration value (instead growing stronger with skill rank). It does factor shield maximum because it restores a percentage. Ranks 3 and 4 also let you restore ship systems health while boosting (also a percentage, but a lower value). The values are fair for a Master skill, so when combined with Engine Systems for longer boosting, you can expect vastly more durability in ship combat by boosting a lot.

Compatibility: This will conflict with any other mod that changes the skillpatches.swf file, except for Skills Pack 2. Both Skills Pack 1 and Skills Pack 2 are compatible with each other and their load order is irrelevant.