Exception: Your first companion generally does not have a moddable weapon to start with, though any future quest weapons for them will be. Almost all other companions start with a moddable weapon, so I generally do not replace those weapons until much later on when a future reward also provides decent mod and enhancement upgrades - for the most part I just upgrade their hilts/barrels and call it good.

If you're still subscribed on July 15th, I believe you do get some bonus rooms with the Nar Shadda palace, yes. We still don't have concrete details how strongholds work yet though.

As has been stated, almost all disadvantages can be solved with cartel locks. Almost. I think preferred players lose access to their emergency fleet pass and have to use single use cartel market ones. They also have a hard cap to their credits - 350k and the rest goes into escrow. Those are two things you can't unlock completely. Other differences: Character Slots =Subs: 12 Pref: 6 - You don't lose characters over 6 when you go back to pref, but only 6 can be active at any one time. Logging in any character with more than 350k will send excess credits into the escrow account. Mail = Subs: Can mail credits and items between characters Pref: Can only mail items, not credits Crew skills = Subs: 3 on every character. Pref: 2 - can add one more with Cartel unlock Cargo Bay: Subs have one by default. I don't think you lose it on characters that have it when you drop down, but I can't be absolutely certain. Quickbars: Subs have access to all six. Preferred have four - extra unlockable with cartel unlock

Odd. Maybe we should get reports per server and compare. I flew a lot yesterday on EH (More than I have in months) and didn't hear a peep out of people from anyone seeing anything unusual.

I think it might be better as 'Just do it casually once a day when it comes out, and don't worry about the rep.' Just do it a few times every time the event comes out and it will end up adding up eventually. Just think of it this way: It's far better than gree, which comes out only once or twice a year and you have to really sink time into a lot of alts in an attempt to get up your rep.

I wouldn't mind seeing it a few times a year. Though after leveling new GSF toons it really does put some things in perspective. The baseline requisition gains probably could stand to be about 50% higher than what they are. Leveling as a F2P player must feel agonizingly slow by comparison - especially if you get streaks of losing matches. I'm going to go into serious withdrawl when the bonus ends.

Not to mention if you pick up the quests in the supplies section, you can run a flashpoint that will give you extra comms. Ten comms for a random daily flashpoint. Five to ten comms for running the daily quest that is attached to the flashpoint you just ran. Five comms for running Kuat. (Up to three extra comms from killing bosses/bonus bosses in there as well - so that's eight). So comms add up fast if you do any extra content at all. It's not hard to keep a weapon and two or three pieces of gear well modded as you level. And that gear will be about 4-8 levels baseline above the planet you just completed so long as you stay about the right level as the planet - and much better if you are slightly overleveled for a planet. You can get through with green gear if you wish to not take as much time to manage your gear, but even small gains at that level can be large increases to kill speed and survivability.

I'm sorry I cannot for a moment grasp your logic in how that is lowering the skillcap. Before it was usually best to place mines close to the sats or near fins to protect them against being sniped. Now they have to make decisions whether they want them more in the open for maximum detonation coverage, or close in to protect the mine itself. And if anything it raises the skillcap for manual detonation since now the pilot has to add LoS to potential targets in their consideration whether to detonate something. I don't know about you, but maintaining near constant environmental awareness of where my opponents are relative to myself and my mines takes a very large amount of practice and effort. True, they could use something while out in the open.... but maybe it's fine as is. Until Bioware can solve the problem of minelayers exponentially increasing their effectiveness as you increase their number on a point they really need to have huge disadvantage elsewhere. No other ship is as useless at TDM - but no other ship is as potentially effective at Domination either.

Kul mostly answered this question, but I have an addendum. The name of the planet of the vendor on the fleet is a good guideline for level of mods or equipment that they sell. The planetary comms eventually outlive their usefulness once hit max level. For max level weeklies, dailies, and operations award you a higher level version of the comms used to purchase higher level gear. They are still useful even then since you can buy some 140 grade mods for yourself or to outfit your companions. Check the mission terminal in the Supplies section. It offers daily and weekly quests for flashpoints you can do to earn extra commendations. There are three 'types' of crew skills. There is the crafting skill - which any character can only have one of. There are gathering skills - which allow you to harvest materials such as metal, crystals, or bio samples out in the world as well as sending a companion out on a mission. The third type is a mission skill. These are used to gather advanced materials for crafting skills. Prototype (blue) quality and higher items require materials from these missions to be crafted. Generally a crafter will have a single crafting skill, and the gathering and mission skill that goes with it. If you did the mission on a terminal when you first arrived on the fleet it sent you to the crew skill section. The codex section tells you which skills go together and roughly what the crew skill is used for. Kul was right that Biochem is considered one of the best crew skills for a character. The reason for this is that Biochemists are the only characters who can craft (and use) the purple infinitely re-usable medpacs and stims. (To learn these recipes you need to reverse engineer things. You need to craft a medpac, then reverse engineer it. You have a 20% chance to learn the schematic for the blue quality. Craft those - which will require materials from diplomacy - and you can reverse engineer those for a chance to learn the re-usable version. Once you make one of those - or buy it from someone - you can use it forever). I'm of a slightly different opinion for a first character though. If you want credits invest in a second gathering skill and sell what you get on the GTN. Or for less micro managing get slicing to open lockboxes you find. Though that probably won't net you as much money until max level slicing. That's pretty much it until you have a high enough legacy level to purchase cooldown reduction on your fleet pass. \

Well that's what the e-mail welcoming you to ROTHC was for. It gave you five basic comms and warned you that while you don't need to finish your class story, it might contain spoilers. (Yeah, not sure how you were supposed to know that clicking your holoterminal after level 47 would start the expansion stuff)

That seems a little complicated for your average bomber pilot to be able to understand. Maybe you should simplify it a bit more.

Well I also bought a few on the GTN, but the price was relatively decent, so I don't regret that as much as the 1200 CCs I spent.

Oh Cartel people... I hate you so much. I just bought two of these last month.

Which may not work if he has a drone or a Clarion/Imperium of his own. I had a frustrating match today where every time I got a bomber down to about 10% I'd get killed by something and there would be a new drone deployed by the time I got back and I'd have to start all over again.

In the future you might want to consult a website like MMOterms to help you understand the acronyms and abbreviations that are common to most MMOs. These are the specific ones you asked about: GCD: Global Cool Down - this is the minimum amount of time between abilities. When you use an ability, all abilities are temporarily unusable - roughly for a space of 1 to 1 1/2 seconds. This is basically just the thing that keeps you from mashing five different attacks all at once. Some abilities are 'off the global cooldown' which means they can be activated at the same time as another ability. For example a smuggler/agent's shield probe can be used at the same time they are attacking or using another defensive ability.! Proc: Varying opinions on what this stands for. Some people thing 'process.' Others a slightly more official sounding 'Programmed Random Occurance.' In practical terms it usually means an ability to cause another effect to happen. Some procs reset the cooldown on abilities, allowing them to be used immediately. Some reduce the cooldown on some abilities, or even allow an ability to be used that normally cannot be. Almost all procs are caused by an ability in your skill tree. Very few of them occur as a baseline part of your class. Bolster: This one - at least the term - is more unique to SWTOR. It's most visible in the Kuat Driveyards tactical flashpoint and PvP warzones. It is an effect that increases your stats while you are inside the flashpoint or warzone to bring you slightly more on the same level as everyone out. This is done to help new people in PvP or to assist in balancing PvE encounters.

Unless you run ops on a regular basis, you aren't likely to hit any kind of practical cap. To even hit the weekly cap on basic comms you would need to do all of the weeklies every week as well as a random flashpoint every day. You'd probably also have to do some oricon and makeb dailies to reach it. So unless you are running ops, you really only need to pay attention to the total cap of each type of comm, and so long as you buy something once in awhile, you really don't need to concern yourself much with that.

Also be careful if your toons have a lot of credits on them. If you log them in before you sub again anything over 350k goes into escrow. I'm very unclear if you need to get a cartel escrow cartel authorization to get your credits back out again, but it sounds like you do. So either A: Don't log your characters with over 350k credits until you sub again or B: Buy a lot of GTN stuff (Cartel unlocks don't noticably depreciate, and you may even find it useful if you plan ot play once sub lapses) until your toons are under 350k credits.

I think that's reading far too much into it. Most of the time they don't even try to hint at things unless they have concrete plans for something. It may happen again sometime, but I'm guessing for now it is a one time thing. Would kind of be a nice thing to have two or three times a year or so though.

Enjoy the dogfights you get, but don't get too caught up in the mindset. Far too many people have come in expecting this to be TIE fighter or X-Wing in SWTOR. Then they come up against the space snipers and bombers and get totally disabused of the notion, then come in here saying that the ship types don't 'fit'. It isn't dogfighting. It's space PvP. There are dogfighters, yes. But there are also snipers and healers and tanks. It's about adapting to the situation, playing for objectives, and helping your team. And on most servers most importantly - it's about not being a jerk about it if your team has the upper hand. (Oh, and don't get cocky. Far too many teams get complacent when they are ahead. So don't let your guard down. And never give up. I've seen a lot of nice underdog wins just because nobody voices the 'We're screwed' type of comment.)

Sure there is. Everyone in cutscenes will be speaking to your belly instead of you, and plenty of people will be walking over your tail. (Helooo there remastered episode IV!) That's part of the reason they don't use size disparity. It's not laziness. It's just simply not worth the hundreds or thousands of man hours it would take to reprogram every cutscene in the game so there is proper perspective and people aren't talking to your crotch/over your head. It's exactly the same reason a lot of times in cutscenes classes that can use big rifles or assault cannons use a blaster instead. The vast scope of the game means they have to make certain assumptions when programming cutscenes. Whether you like it or not, the leveling experience is still a large part of the experience of the game, and a lot of the conventions are built around it.

Yes, it's kind of broken and borked. But you know what? It doesn't really matter. if the reward was something significant I might care, but most of the awards are barely worth the fleet req reward from half a match or a full match. I only tend to really care if something actually breaks an achievement to keep it from completing.

I'm not as fond of the idea of a sage in your case because they don't make particularly efficient hybrid dps/healers except in short fights. Mercs and operatives can reasonably get to some of their signature abilities - and more importantly - a lot of the efficiency talents that make it so you can maintain a reasonable rotation by the middle of their skill trees. A sage's most important resource tool - not impeded their force regen from using their sacrifice ability - is much higher in the tree. So you'll either have to sacrifice from damage or healing more than another class would using the same kind of build.

Scoundrel (Sawbones) - Corso: Just keep their back pointed toward me, and I'll do the rest! Gunslinger: Bowdaar - Keep their attention for a few seconds while I blow them up Guardian (Defense): Kira - It just needs to die fast. Healer/tank often just kills too slow to be efficient and still have to rest between fights Sage (Telekenetics): Nadia - Just like killing things quickly. Shields and self heal makes up for lack of healer Commando (Medic/Assault hybrid): HK in most cases, Jorgan if I want some AoE backup Vanguard (Assault): Dorne Juggernaut (Immortal): Vette or Jaesa. Usually Vette. Marauder: Quinn - Too squishy otherwise, alas. Once I get Pierce I'll see how that works out. Assasin (Darkness): Andronikos or Xalek in damage mode. They can clean house pretty easily Mercenery (Pyro): All Mako, all the time. Can we please space Skadge out the airlock? Operative 1 (Medic): Temple - I keep them up, you take them down Operative 2 (Lethality): Lokin - the direct approach.

Seriously... you either need to stop raging about it all the time and organize some of your own groups to counteract that or move servers. You're not contributing anything productive to these threads.

This rancor isn't very productive. Let's get the thread back on track.