Not at all... none of the first 3 space missions require upgrades. You can purchase all of the level 1 upgrades for peanuts though which will cut the time it takes to achieve your objectives down.

I got on the phone to them the other day after trying to login to the forums from my work pc i forgot the answer to one of my questions so i ended up with a locked account. It was 7:30 am EST, and within 10 minutes my issue was solved. Very happy with the service I received.

There is a UI glitch, a relog will sort it out. Not sure if ctrl+u 2x will solve it. The items are equal

I ran into this finding myself landing on Balmorra at lvl 18. So I just did my class quests and thats it and have now just landed on nar Shadaa at lvl 19 so back in line.

Yes they are though there is a tooltip display bug that may make them appear not to be. Relogging usually resolves it. Not sure if ctrl+u 2x will resolve it or not.

I've turned off companion abilties such as the harpoon thing, because I didn't want corso bringing the enemy to me (i'm ranged) but he turns it back on whenever he feels like it. I'd like to see these settings stick better too.

Its a little better since the most recent update. They added what looks like floating text over nodes that have not been harvested by someone recently I think. So if you don't see the text, it likely has already been harvested. Just a theory though...

Any orange item (non-crafted) will have the same stats as a similar item (hvy armor chest vs heavy armor chest) with no mods applied. So that heavy chest you got at lvl 9 will have the same stats as that level 40 heavy chest once all mods are removed. Tooltips are currently bugged and may not update the stats without a reload or relog to reflect this.

Advantage? Who are you competing with and what for?

I've gone slicing, Arch, treasure hunting right now on my Sith Inq. I will eventually pick up artificer in place of slicing once I have a good stockpile of everything, including cash. At least thats the thought behind it.

I have an 18 Sith Inq heal spec and solo'ing just fine including heroic 2's and 2+ Though once in awhile it takes a couple of tries on the 2+

But you are not kicked off the server.. you are just kicked back to character selection so no queue to deal with...

I haven't seen many planets, but GTN is on planets.. at least there is one on Drommund Kaas, and Corusant(sp)