Patch day! - All perks for combat skills are now in the game to level 100. FIRST AID and HACKING perks have also been added to level 100. Space-specific skill perk lines for PILOTING, WEAPONRY, ELECTRONICS and TARGETING perks are all in the game for an additional 60 perks. I'll be adjusting all perks over time as other game systems are implemented.

The middle perk line in ELECTRONICS is related to security and will be used at a later time. For now, selecting perks in this line will have no effect.

Mining perks can be selected, however, they are not fully implemented for now. I'll be adding these when I get the ground mining drone system in the game. You do get bonuses from the WEAPONRY skill perks from reload speed and energy efficiency when mining so you should see a boost from those perks.

Perks are useful in a number of ways. For ground combat, they can give you bonuses towards applying various status effects and mitigating different damages types. They are most useful for customizing your team for offensive, balanced or defensive roles. They apply secondary bonuses for applying additional damage, bleeding, hobbled, stunned, crippled, poison and shield strike-through effects. The defensive line provides additional AC and bonus mitigation against status effects.

Healing perks provide additional healing effects and the ability to remove status effects when applying med-kits. At higher levels they can remove stun, poison, bleeding, hobbled and crippled states.

Hacking perks provide bonuses to the length of time you have to select a key when hacking a chest or locker, bonus loot quality, and even auto-completing hacking.

Space perks affect all crew station bonuses displayed on the ship screen [K] - Ship speed, turn rate and evasion - Damage bonuses, reload speed and energy efficiency - scan range, security (not active yet) and shield bonuses - turret lock speed, chance to hit and shield bypass.

Perks can be changed at any time - an unusual design decision. I did not want to lock players into any specific perk decisions. In Stellar Tactics perks are situational and as development continues that will be much more important at higher levels.

As I roll out crafting, repair, salvaging and adjustments to mining, I'll also add perks for those skills. They are all interrelated and each of those skills will need to be worked on at the same time.

The total number of perks currently in the game:
Combat - 135
General - 30
Space - 60
Total - 225 perks

A few additional fixes and updates for this patch:

ADDED - Combat, first aid and hacking perks to level 100.
ADDED - Space combat perks for all space skills to level 100.
UPDATED - You can now rotate the camera with the mouse (right mouse button) while panning with the keyboard (WASD) during ground exploration.
FIXED - If an incursion spawned at your exact location, some ships would enter combat but not fire at you.
FIXED - If an incursion spawned at your exact location, tab targeting could crash the game in some cases.
FIXED - A message - "Press [P] to pause space combat at any time!" would continuously display even after docking or landing at a ground location.
FIXED - Ship shield strike through bonuses are now working correctly.
FIXED - A damage display error in the character info screen.
FIXED - A rare lockup when accepting missions from faction agents.
FIXED - Missile launchers now respect the friendly fire player settings.
FIXED - A bug that caused the action bar background to disappear when characters died, were KO'd or when the last enemy died of bleeding or poison damage.
FIXED: A bug that could place you at an incorrect initial entry point for missions.