The story for the IA has been awesome to me. I really enjoy playing an ambiguous line between light and dark and having my choices actually be explainable from an rp perspective. I've been lvling as medic and it's perfect for me to be able to solo, since I enjoy questing but my pace doesn't really match anyone else I know. I feel like I have the tools to back up Kaliyo with dmg as well as healing. Stealth is also a blessing for a soloer because I can skip a lot of camps and even do certain heroics alone if I'm clever. I'm not much of a pvper (although I do play on a pvp server), but as far as balance goes, I know that it changes by patch cycle, and there will be cycles that I'm powerful and cycles that I'm weak. No beef, I'll either play against a handicap and feel good when I win, or faceroll and feel good when I win. League of Legends has pretty much scoured away any rage at losing I could ever have hah. I also enjoy the role I play in groups when I do join up, mostly because I enjoy managing my energy and TA while healing, it feels like a fun challenge. Really I'm motivated to play op because it seems to fit both my soloing play style and group play style, as well as my aesthetic for looks and storyline. If you don't feel this way, maybe Op wasn't right for you in the first place.

You can get more orange schematics from underworld trading randomly, supposedly any green piece can be obtained this way.

A good example would be having investigation on your main to gather recipes as you lvl to give to future alts (this works a little with Underworld Trading as well). I don't run a crafting skill right now because I don't feel like managing it really, so I replaced it with a mission skill to maybe find recipes.

If my understanding is correct, there might be an orange version of that piece with a very rare recipe obtainable via Underworld Trading. Somewhat speculation on my part based on what I've read about armor crafting. Probably doesn't help you much but you could be on the lookout on GTN.

Does it work if this is what you always do while playing SWTOR, or do you have to get in bed and pretend to sleep for 10 minutes before you get back up and do the boxer pizza roll trick again?

The difference is that in one case the credits on lockbox missions are fabricated when you open the lockbox. In the other case, the credits are coming from another player. To the person running the missions, credits are credits, but to the economy as a whole they are different things. I don't pretend to be wise enough to predict the consequences of the difference, but I can see that it is there. As an anaolgy, running slicing missions for a constant profit is akin to sending workers out to print money, while gathering is akin to owning a lumberyard, sending your workers to go chop wood, and then later selling the wood to other people. Probably a terrible analogy but it's just the gist of how I think about it. Are people taking issue with the slicing mission nerf running a craft skill? If so, why take slicing when clearly craft skills require two gather/mission skills to make good stuff. You can also level your craft skill without making blues or purples with just a gathering skill, and take slicing for the nodes and extra money early. I do this, and don't have to bother with crafting much while I'm doing story and leveling/exploring the world right now. I guess I'm just curious what category of players wanted to send all of their companions out on slicing constantly, that just inherently seems silly. If I'm trying to craft good stuff, I send my people out on mission skills, or crafting if I have some good mats. If I'm trying to level crafting, I make sure to gather nodes while I'm out and craft stuff. If I'm trying to level my gathering skill, I send my people on gathering missions for what I assume (possibly incorrectly) should be a net loss on materials I can find myself. I suppose if I just wanted tons of money for no apparent goal I would run slicing, a gathering profession, and a mission profession. Use the slicing nodes to fund the missions for rare stuff to sell, and use my secondary gathering profession nodes to sell mats for profits. This actually sounds like a good way to gather all the mats for a crafting skill and then swap slicing for the craft later. I'm still pretty low level and I'm trying to wrap my head around the crew skills world, but all of my potential goals seem inherently achievable with the system, what specific issue do people have with slicing as is? If it's not good enough, don't take it and make money some other way. I find it useful for my play style. There has to be other people who are finding slicing convenient and useful like me who aren't posting because they don't care and things are working out great.