it's not skill to trade with surface stations.
it's just extra time and tedium. that's like saying there is skill in pointing to the escape vector target.
there's no skill in space trucking. it's docking at a station, clicking some ui buttons on a spreadsheet interface, then undocking and repeating effectively the same thing at another station. the only thing that's sets people apart is how much they can stand to focus on it after the nth cycle vs the TV shows they're watching.
is there skill in exploring too? no.
can someone do it with less wasted time than a brand new player? sure. but that's not a difference in skill. if you have two runners and one is a little faster, you don't say it's skill that makes them faster. with trading, there's no special technique to master... it's literally what newbies learn how to do when they first play and that's it. the only thing that changes as you play is the scale at which you space truck in a given cycle.
it has nothing to do with what i enjoy. it's just how the game loop works.
edit: maybe running in general isn't a good analogy, since there is skill differences between pro's and regular people. let's assume we're talking about people who know how to do the activity properly.
Dude. You need to tone down the rage and get off the forums. Reading through 20+ pages and you have contributed NOTHING other than arguing and telling people the way the play is dumb to you.
You say Space trucking is dull and numb. It is to YOU. Others plan routes, scout optimal locations, optimize the ship for cargo hauling, and evade interdictions with a ship that's worse than a brick with wings.
Then there is the face that there's no skill in exploring? Before the recent QOL updates. I was using a habitable zone calculator that used the distance a planet was from the sun vs its heat, size, class, and radius. Now I want you to see how well you can spot Grey/White Bacterium on an Ice planet and tell me there is no skill.
You ain't no pro in anything with how much you are mouthing off. The louder you are the more you are "LOOK HOW GOOD I AM AND YOUR NOT".
You have done nothing but be aggressive to the other forum members constantly for 2 days on a feature thats 4, let me repeat that, 4 DAYS OLD. Chill out on on your fellow CMDRs or several of us will either block or ask that you be moderated. If you dont like whats being done or the way the game is. You dont have to be here. You constantly complaining, along with everyone else, is not conductive to what the devs are asking for in this 95+ page cluster of a thread.
At this point no useful information is going to be handed to the devs with useless chatter like the above quoted. Can we please get back on track. Ohh and his rebuttal in 3... 2... 1...