Interaction and Empathy are vital, which is quite reasonable given the nature of the game. I think it's possible to work round everything else if sufficiently cautious.
Science has been incredibly useful - far more so than expected despite not taking the most obvious use for it. Whether I get it through Zorana or an advisor, it's likely to be in the back of my mind on any run now. I do like how Science being the first Skill Check (even an impossible one) subtly hints at the value of this.
I don't seem to have had much use for physical combat skills yet (apart from a couple of random ones) nor anything involving a planet's surface, although that's probably because I've so far only had 3 losses and 1 win. That can't possibly cover this game's entire possibility space, so I expect to find uses for these later.