Help with distrib. experience points

[playingdumb]

Greetin's all ^_^ Been playing through the game for all of a couple of hours, and already I'm enjoying myself; seeing the effect of SEIV components this close up is a rush in and of itself. But getting to the point, one topic I haven't been able to find on this board is how you'd spend your exp; given the low trader job xp, is it even worth trying for a merchant character build? And which of the repair skills have you found most useful, if any? Just hoping to cop a few tips out of you ^_^

[Suicide Junkie]

For P&N physics, I usually buy crew quarters to make up the internal repairs and then use my levelup points for armor repair.
I also make sure to have a few points (0.1 to 0.2 total ability) in hull repair, just in case my repair components take damage.

A repair bay is one of my priorities, and if I can't steal one from the pirates, I'll buy one.

Of course, I'm a cheap penny-pincher, and don't like spending the few bucks it takes to replace damaged armor unless my whole ship is totalled and it would take a few hours of realtime before the self-repair finished. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

[playingdumb]

Thanks muchly for the suggestion; for a newbie those offense/defense stats are mighty tempting, and while I'd like to try and play they plying merchant, I'd hate to have stats so low I'd end up not being able to finish the campaigns.

[Suicide Junkie]

If you find you can't hit very often, try using bolts or seekers instead.

Then you don't need to worry about offense.