For me the problem lies in the strange way attributes affect Ep progression. I have two accounts: 1 pure combat and 1 pure indi. When I created them I didn't put much work into planning them but I've read up on the forums that "pure" is the way to go so thats what I did.

Yesterday I started wondering if there are any alternatives I've missed so I spent 2-3 hrs on the planner and guess what... everyone was right.

There is simply no scenario in which putting attributes into anything else than pure indy or pure combat is worth it. Well there is one build I managed to come up with. It's combat build specialized in the electronic warfare ONLY, which is better off if you put a little bit (e.g. just last choice of spark ) in the research and developement but only if you skip any weapon skills (which makes it kinda pointless imo) and the return is few days worth of EP anyway!

All other builds whether is pure mining indy, pure production indy, all combat builds etc is severly gimped if you make creation choice other than 4x combat or 4x indy.

So my question is why put attributes at all? The simpler and less painfull solution is to just make people choose between combat or industial class. Yea it's less sandbox but right now the freedom we have is an illusion. We're only free to have a same char as everyone else or a gimped char.

Or just fix the attribute system so the primary attribute for the given skill bears less weight comparing to the secondary attribute for the same skill than it is now. That would enable some more flexibility in terms of builds. For example almost all mining skills have Mechatronics as a secondary attribute. Wouldn't it make sense to be better off putting at least few points into this attribute if you want only mining char and thus be a little different than other standard builds (right now its all indy)?