Expand the benefits of high level non-combat skills

[Fentanylreactor]

As of now, most skills serve more as a simple check for crafting recipes without affecting gameplay in any other way.

The only ones that directly affect the gameplay in a visible way are the combat skills and computers.

Suggestion:
Add bonuses to other skills to make a high levels of certain skills worth more.

Example:
Driving levels could gradually reduce fuel costs for vehicles (10-30% for cars, 10-20% for boats (or more to make them compete with cars and helis) and a few percent for helis so it's not wasted but there's an incentive to consider cars)
First aid would speed up dissection, medication and bionic installation time by 10-20%
Electronics and such would speed up the time to disassemble and craft electronics.
Computers affects bionic installation speed by another 10-15%
Mechanics with either recovering occasionally an extra part/a big chance to save a destroyed component /lower repair costs
Fabrication being a crafting speed bonus to everything at a 5-10%

No clue about tailoring and the others but I hope my point has come across

[RobbieNeko]

Driving affects how tightly you can turn in a sense (more accurately, how many left or right arrows you can get in a single second)
First aid does come into play with bionic installation already iirc (mostly to do with the chance of successfully installing) and of course affects what you get out of bandages dramatically
I forget whether it's Electronics or Computers, but one of the two does also go with First Aid into bionic install chances (or maybe it was recovering them from dissections?)

Overall, you're not wrong that we could do with giving more uses outside of crafting to the very craft-y skills

[Fentanylreactor]

Autodoc is first aid, electronics and computers iirc
First aid also increases chance of recovering bionics
It's imo the skill that does the most things directly in your gameplay outside of the combat skills

I think electronics helped with dissection as well?
Computers with hacking and Autodocs

Anyways key point was making the others do more than just number checks
Like survial could also increase the amount of harvested materials ig?

Also realistically 99% of the time you're autodriving

[chaosvolt]

Most forage results do scale with survival, and turning checks will still be relevant even when autodriving since it taking slow turns may still screw it up if it decides it wants to take a 90-degree turn.

Making driving skill affect fuel consumption is an interesting idea though, since "does driving angry use more fuel" is a thing I know mythbusters tested in the past...

[Fentanylreactor]

Some sources suggest that improvements of up to 50% or more over the manufacturer's stated mpg figures are possible with advanced hypermiling practices.
For instance, an Edmunds experiment reported that hypermiling could add 35.4% more miles per gallon from a Land Rover LR3.
In specific cases, such as the 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid, a world record of 81 mpg was achieved, more than double the vehicle's EPA rating of 39 mpg

I don't think we'd straight up double it but i think this could be a good way to buff cars to make them compete with choppers
(those seem to only get a few percents of efficiency while boats seem to be around 10-20%?)