There's a point where you have to let your suspension of disbelief and ability to understand how things have to work stop you from being a pedantic nerd. Posting a picture of a 4 man unit? Obviously we can't run around with 3 companions at once. It's not just balance, they'd have to redesign entire parts of the game to be able to control them.

If you were only using Artifice to make new hilts and you were going broke doing so, you were doing something extremely wrong. Be happy with blues, RE-ing to purple is too high a cost vs. the reward. Actually if you're broke at all getting to 400, you're not doing it right. I was able to keep myself, companions and an alt supplied with hilts, enhancements and shields and always had 6 figures in the bank.

I don't even know what color you're talking about as Legacy, but have you seen any of those items in game? There's your answer. If you're REing purples, you're probably wasting a lot of expensive mats.

Affection has nothing to do with crew skill success. Efficiency only lowers the time it takes to complete. Someone with a +skill or +crit is the best choice. You should also wait to do one-offs until they're green or preferably black. That gives you the best chance to succeed and the best chance to crit.

The problem isn't gouging or even oversaturated markets (as RE takes care of that compared to WoW), it's the silly GTN functionality itself. Like I said, the vast majority of people on my server just stick the item in the Sell box and use whatever price the market tool suggests.

Sith Meditation Sphere ... I just bought Advanced Initiative Enhancement 15 for 1800. Only the 20-22 are in that price range.

I don't know what people are smoking when they say GTN gear is too expensive. Most sellers just use the automatic price. I put in a purple Advanced Defense Enhancement 13 and the suggested price was 1536. If you actually look at the time/credit investment to get the 4 Krayt Dragon Pearls alone, that's probably about 90% off. That's just my example, there are quite a few other purple mods going for really cheap, not to mention the tons of underpriced blues.

Thanks for the reply, but the Artifice trainer only has schematics for Might, Reflex, Resolve and Skill ... which is weird because those are the basic ones Cybertech starts with. However, there's no Guardian.

Starting with rank 15, all I see are mods that are heavy on STR, low on END and have a 3rd stat. There are still enhancements and armoring that are obviously for Jedi Guardian tanks. Were tanking mods just forgotten or is this intentional? It seems silly that there are clear tanking choices for the other slots but for Mods you have to take a hit to Endurance. Please note I am talking about Mod as the specific one that goes in the Mod slot, not modifications in general.

Sorry but that's how it works. You play this game to build up a character. Eventually, that will only be by obtaining new loot. The story element of this game has been much better than I anticipated but there's only so much more they can keep putting out before the player base outpaces it.

No, the point is that crew skills are massive money sinks. You can blow a bunch of credits sending your companions out on missions before you even realize it. Buying every single schematic only adds to the amount of money you waste. Buy what you need to level because you're not going to make money off of most of it. If you don't throw lots of money into crew skills, you have plenty for training your class abilities.

Why do the two have to be mutually exclusive? The story should have been added on top of game mechanics that are already proven to work well. People buy the game for the story, they'll keep playing it for the loot.