Every time you defeat an opponent for the first time for each difficulty, you'll be awarded a skillpoint. These skillpoints can be invested in 18 different skills. The skills screen can be accesssed from the overview map.

This is what the skills screen looks like :

Each skill has a '+' and '-' button which allows you to add or remove skillpoints from that skill. The maximum number of points that can be added to each skill is 5.
The reset button removes all skillpoints from all skills and lets you redistribute again as you see fit.

Mouse over each skill to get more info about what it does and how it is affected by adding more skillpoints.

From left to right and top to bottom, these are the available skills in Ultranought :

Row one contains 6 skills that affect your ships, from left to right, these increase the speed, the armor HP, the regeneration, the damage resistance, the damage output and the combat range of your ships.

The second row first lists 4 skills that increase the production rate of the 4 factories of your Ultranought, in this order : ship frames, armor plates, weapons and engines.
The 5th skill in row two lowers the time needed to perform upgrades during combat, and the 6th skill lowers the build time for ships.

Row three starts with a skill to increase the rate at which your Ultranought produces energy and a skill which increase your Ultranought's HP and regeneration. Next are 4 skills that improve the effectiveness of the 4 actions, in this order : Regenerate, Charge, Barrage and Retask.

Pages on the NULLL forum :
Ultranought forum.

Wiki pages:
Main page
Game manual
Overview map
Combat
Screenshots & more