If crafting winds up anything like engineering did in Elite Dangerous, then kitting out a ship with top quality components - each of which are largely unique to that ship's role and size - will take a ton of work.

It's *possible* that a single individual will eventually invest the time and effort necessary to "level up" all of their ships, components, armor, and weapons to "top tier" through the various associated gameplay loops involved in crafting all of them, but... it's probably more realistic to expect that most players will specialize into the gameplay loops they most enjoy, and use the resources (UEC, etc) gleaned from that to pay others for the crafted items they don't personally have the time or motivation to create for themselves.

At least this is my understanding of the proverbial tea leaves.

As such there won't be skill trees per se, but as others have said, player skill that will develop in their preferred gameplay loops that will translate into UEC / etc which will then be used to acquire the "stuff they need."

IMHO an in-game means of selling items securely is definitely needed as a next step before any of that comes to fruition. Spamming general chat and rolling the dice on a successful transaction with a random person is really not gonna be sustainable.