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Basically you will have multiple channels where you can gather warscore. We try to balance it that not a single channel dominates the others and instead its best to try to play things where you can combine them. For example play missons where you can rank up pve as well as warscore for the quest completion itself. Same for Reactor challenge where you can also play safer without the risk of getting into PVP. You will get points here for PVE kills as well for the final ranking position. But here is more skill required to be at a top position with your squad. And thats only for the Player Ladder. You can also play conquest each day ~1h to get many skulls through you clan if you like the PVP competition. Hopefully that gives everyone a good way to earn skulls.
Yes it is planned that all items installed in slot 9 have a general weakness that will affect all the item in the same way. There will be a info in the game about that for sure.
As Sirius quests give good cryonite they also should give nice warscore based on it. You need to try out to find the best actions to do to maximize Warscore.
Jup they follow the same structure like the Ancient variants. You get them from differnt type of Skull Item Carriers you need to search for on all the story planets. There is not a fixed farm spot for them and you can find the same skull item in vega and the next time it is in tau ceti.
The old golden skulls where converted into "leagacy skulls" in the time the ladder was still beta and buggy. Players got them added into their player profile so we could reset the ladder with the fixed ladder system. This time though there will be no reset and the golden skulls are kept for all players. We only might every player back to the entry division though as the warscore values will change.
With the planned changes we hope there will be alot more movement towards enabling the pirate mode and also by this get a few pvp battles going on. Risk reward mechanic that hopefully works and is fun for most people.
Players that are able to unlock the 9th slot items will have a lower warscore boost as they already have a high skill level. That mechanic should help players to catch up easier. Sure on direct PVP competition for CQ it can make a difference. Still the 9th skill use will also come with downsides that should help to balance it out a bit.
Not directly but as you need to search these carrier ships first and they are spread around all story planets on all systems it will be difficult for clans to claim them all for their own. We surly will look on how things evolve once it goes live for sure.
1. See answers above or initial post closely
2. & 3. & 5.Who said that the variants are ancient items?
4. Nahh no need to have such thing. Indirectly the current boosters already help to get WS quicker.
Yes most likely all go back to entry division as we change the structe of divisions and also the warscore values. Golden skulls are kept though.
. Obviously, you can't recreate all of that, but it would be fun to include some small moons as settings for battles, composition tests with friends, or similar dynamics where you can land in pirate mode with any type of ship from any system. The moon setting could vary: from an industrial bay to simpler versions of a completely frozen or sterile moon, which would add variety and appeal to making videos. 
