Which skills are worh raising really high?

[khorboth]

Yes, everything that's a contest can be valuable at high levels. This is adjacent to the combat skills. In a high point-value game, we can assume that opponents are also good, so rolling holdout vs search where both are in the mid-20s wouldn't be unreasonable.

Another broad category I missed was touched on with inventions. TL penalties. If there are TL disparities going on, then it can certainly be worth having high skill to overcome that. Computer Operations/TL7 at 25 would let you muddle through at TL10 with the -15 penalty.

What about taking less time? Lockpicking usually takes 1 minute. I don't remember where rules for taking less time are off the top of my head, but it seems like this is the sort of thing where deliberate penalties would come in to play. Same with computer hacking while the bad guys are approaching or tactics or... whatnot.