It's a known issue, check the known issues thread. Sometimes ship preview shows ships that aren't available.

Lol I know what it feels like. If it helps, I turn down my shader quality to very low which makes it somewhat easier for me to track enemies

Had it happen to me occasionally. Strafing briefly in the same direction again breaks that lock and resumes normal flight for me

That's probably due to the somewhat lower accuracy of the pods, plus, rocket pods are in fact affected by evasion. It's not a matter of it applying by rng. It never applies as of last Tuesday.

Having the same issue, tried clicking extra range and then the dot again. But no success. Also tried loading a sabotage probe and then properly setting the rocket pods again. Still the plasma warhead dot does not apply.

Of course it can come down to a matter of taste but I personally feel that snipers have been changed a lot compared to 1.7. Marksman now has a much more fluent feel to it. Engineering gets a nice dot on your SoS and snipes. Lethality gets to do takedown on any health level after a cull proc. My damage output in marksman spec has never been this good. Just give it a couple of hours and you will definitely fall in love with your sniper again. If anything I feel a bit OP at this moment

You probably want to look up the Xenotech Enforcer's Jacket Got that one myself, though I can't recall in which operation it dropped. Good luck!

I recently bought 2 of these babies from the GTN on The Red Eclipse. So yeah they are still very much around!! Spent a few weeks lurking in the GTN for it to finally appear there. Patience is key!

Concerning the ' what rifle is that' question.. The rifle is the Battlemaster/Rakata one. Same shell, different stats. The battlemaster one is most easy to acquire of course..

having the same issue after 1.3 in the black hole area on corellia havent checked if its the same in KuS but i suspect it to be a general flashlight probe bug

What's that chestpiece in the last link? It looks very nice!