When you arrive at the Imperial Fleet there should be an NPC somewhere that gives you a quest to go see you class trainer (or, an NPC near your class trainer) who tells you about Advanced Classes and gives you the option to pick one. The class trainers are in the top right quadrant of the station. The crew trainers are below them, in the bottom right quadrant.

My understanding is that when you hit the cap for one side and gain more points then it instead reduces that from the other side (if there are any). So In the case where you have 10000 DS and 100 LS and have a score of -9900, if you were awarded another 50 DS points then you would have 10000 DS and 50 LS and a score of -9950.

The armor rating is quick comparison for armor of the same type (light, medium and heavy) and slot. In the case of the boots, I would expect the pair with the lower armor value but higher armor rating to be light armor and the other pair is heavy armor.

Even though I believed the whole time that I was running Slicing missions that it had to be nerfed, I also knew that there really wasn't much use for it at this time. However, I also feel that about my Cybertech and my Underworld. I am sure I might be able to make money, maybe, but if everyone with those skills was selling everything the crafted and received then the market would be flooded and most of it would not sell. So the reality is that most crew skills, at least at the moment, are credit sinks at best. Some give some use along the way. The mods I make and use for myself might be saving me money or something. The hope is that somewhere in the maturation of the game and the economy crafting has some use. Maybe somewhere along the way, those augments and other discoveries from Slicing have some value, but it is hard to know that yet, especially when all we have to base it on are a bunch of relatively low level characters with Slicing nearly maxed out when most other crew skills are more in line with their character levels. In short, Slicing may well be useless now, but at worse if that is the case everyone can drop it and I don't think anyone took a loss on the venture.

Gather Missions let you do two things: 1) Level your skill. For example, let's say you hit level 50 and decide later to change one of your skills, you don't have to run around the lower level zones looking for nodes. Just spend the credits to raise your skill. 2) Gather resources in a pinch. Need a couple materials for a quick craft? Nothing on the market or too expensive or not near the market? Run a gather mission.

That sounds like how an MMO economy should work, as opposed to one where credits flood in at such a level that people can buy everything they want doing the bare minimum.

You may have an argument that Slicing is not worthwhile, but a broken profession that few or none take is better than one that everyone takes and leads to a ruined game. By the way, I don't think anyone who runs Scavenge missions is making a profit selling materials on the market so in that same sense it is losing money.

It does show a problem with the crew skills. I think it is more apparent in other MMOs how much of a credit or time sink crafting is, at least leveling a crafting profession, because it is more interactive. With SWTOR, the time sink is pretty much removed as all this can be done while you are doing other activities, or even AFK. Because it is so easy to just send a crew member to do a task it is easy to lose track of how much those missions are costing. I originally had Cybertech, Scavenging and Underworld Trading and was flat broke trying to level. I then dropped UT for Slicing and started making a lot of money. There were a few factors there though. I started to find more nodes for my salvaging. In fact I rarely had to send a crew member on a scavenge mission. I was no longer paying for UT missions, and instead just focused on crafting green items I could make from just scavenged materials. The other was, of course, that I was making a steady income of credits just by clicking to send my droid out on bountiful and rich missions. And that's the problem. Except for slicing, sending crew on missions is just a credit sink and so they sit idle. So of course Slicing was a no brainer: I cannot afford to level Underworld right now, so why not level Slicing in the meantime because it is pure profit.

Well, this was the first patch for the game, which is usually when these posts spring up.

I didn't even realize that it was cross faction. When I saw it I was going to list some stuff but I didn't see my other sales on there and figured it was just local but didn't think it would include both factions. It will be interesting to see if it catches on as a trading hub.

On one hand it is fair to point out that the GTN suggested prices may be leading to a loss instead of a profit, but I think most people are just trying to make some credits back as the level so they probably won't care.

Do you mean 1.5x(times) as in 150%? So if the GTN suggest 5000, then price it at 7500?

If you want to bring the RL into this, then having slicing at the rate it was is like letting anyone print money. So again, why would anyone take up crafting when they can just create all the credits they want? I had Slicing, I enjoyed the benefits of it greatly, but I could still see how bad it was for the game. Once an MMO economy gets ruined by a flood of credits it can be impossible to recover.

You seem to think the tap has been turned off. Slicing still makes money for zero work though just not as fast. What I don't get is that with the flood of credits you expect to be earning from the early levels, is why even have credits or even crafting for that matter? Why put in a system where some people choose to work to supply good for others who did nothing to earn the credits used in exchange for the goods, and what are crafters going to use those credits for? Why doesn't everyone just take slicing?

From what I have seen the sweet spot is the level 32ish missions that most people will be at now or very soon so that would be a minor adjustment at best.

And when the pre-Nerf slicing ruined the economy in a month and drove prices through the roof and the credit farmers had their army of alts slicing 24/7 then people would be using the same excuse to buy credits. Maybe there is some tweaking that can still or will be done, but I think something had to be done short term that was much more drastic. I think there was more potential damage with a flood of credits than a drought. It is great when a level 50 or some appropriately higher level character can help new players at low levels, but when a new player at level 20 or so can fund several other players from the beginning, something is broken. If the problem really is a lack of credits, the BW needs to address that. It should not be the players role to print money.

If you want your crafted gear to compete with commendations and rewards, RE all of your greens until you get blues. The RE all of them until you get purples. Then sell those. Don't expect to make all your money back off the first purple you sell. Crafting is a business and you need to invest credits and have a plan. Otherwise you are just crafting for your own needs.

My GTN sales are the same as before. Made about 8,000 credits on the 4 lots I posted which were mostly mats and a schematic or mission. I had slicing pre-Nerf and gave it a test afterwards. Ran two higher level Rich missions and made between 30-50% profits. Not bad, but I was going to drop it for Underworld Trading eventually anyway. I don't buy this whole Slicing was propping up the GTN mumbo jumbo. I never spent any of the credits I raked in from Slicing or anything else on the GTN and I am sure most people who took slicing were stockpiling for the future, especially anyone who had the common sense to see this nerf coming. If people don't see a need to buy gear off the GTN now, why would they before? People took slicing because of greed, not stupidity.