Rob: at least for unit CO if not for XO and Company Commanders, would you be willing to provide targeted XP for unit specific skills
OK, so here's problem. XP is and always will be a limited pool. The entire point behind
any XP system where XP is "spent" to purchase upgrades to a character is that it's intended to force the player into making difficult choices on how to spend that XP. That's basic game design. There should never be an instance where a player has enough XP - except through a combination of EXTREMELY long gameplay timelines and uncapped XP earning - to buy everything they want to. You (not literally "you", Hat) always have to short something. Because the alternative is that everyone can eventually just buy elite skills in everything.
The CO gets the benefit of being able to distribute salvage as they want to, and making the ultimate decisions on where and when the unit fights. In return, they have more paperwork, and end up having to split their XP between 3 more skills than a normal player does, meaning that their combat skill is by definition going to suffer. Now, I *am* sympathetic to the idea that lack of combat skill means that the CO ends up with MVP XP much less often, creating a death spiral where lack of XP leads to a lack of XP. But I have to balance that with the entire concept behind an XP expenditure system as described above. So I'm going to throw this back at you: what do you think a good way to square this circle would be?
Keep in mind that we don't particularly want to track *more* numbers or modifiers than we already do, and that the Admin/Bureacracy/Negotiation scores (which are really the CO-specific ones; everything else listed are important for *everyone*) don't get skill check rolls for you to earn bonus XP upon, what sort of numbers are you looking at seeing on your character, and how would you like to see XP awarded? Give me something concrete to work with that a) will still force difficult choices, b) doesn't inevitably lead to "being able to be elite at everything" syndrome, and c) doesn't hideously complicate the campaign any more than it already is.