It's the ghost of Warren Zevon wreaking havoc in the code. "Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner?"

Actually, what I said is I can have two companions on one character that have extra crit on Underworld Trading, not a crafting skill. Since production of items that require purple UT mats is only throttled by their availability, this can be a big plus, in the rare event that every mission you get isn't a gift mission. A good deal of my income revolves around having purple UT mats and I usually keep two to three companions running these constantly. Considering that other factors come in as well, such as base chance and affection bonus, the crit rating isn't a huge deal, but it is significant over time. There's also the ability to buy more than one sensor. If I'm wanting to sit at my computer and run two toons on unending missions with the bonus crit I could do that. If I wanted to switch out for the +synthweaving crit one and make augments I could do that.

A better question, in my opinion, is why does any class have a companion with crit bonuses? If I want my main to be armormech, why should I have to take Trooper to do it instead of Bounty Hunter to get the crit bonus? If I want to be an armstech, why does the smuggler companion get crit for that and not some other class' companions? The ship droid's sensor that lets you choose its skill bonus out of a set group does a little toward this, but it also cuts the other way. Since I have the legacy and money to get it I can now have two companions on my Sith Assassin who can have crit bonuses on Underworld Trading (for example.)

I have over 1400 schematics on my armormech so far.

I agree that it would be more immersive. However, my idea of immersive in this case isn't the "this is cool" effect, it's more the way a sack full of unwanted kittens would feel immersed in a creek. It isn't my idea of fun to run out of the hangar, walk or ride through a spaceport, then go to inconvenient areas. Look at them. On Coruscant, everything's in a basement on the sides of the Senate Plaza. Everything. It's all cramped together in three areas down there too, in a place you'd normally find a gift shop, and about the same size. Now let's look at Dromund Kaas. It has everything again cramped up on one side (except the cantina which is 3/4 of the way across town...) Not to mention that it's all about 200 meters from the spaceport, which SOUNDS good- until you realize to get from the spaceport to this area you have to travel on a speeder path to the middle of the map then go on foot back most of the way because the speeder path stops outside of town.

I'm at 1400+ atm, and not at a wall yet.

237/1263 schematics to tries since 1.2. 18-19%. That's high enough of a count for me to make it seem right and still low enough to account for it not being 20% even. Related music:

I've noticed not having a full complement of returned missions as well. Notably it's been on slicing missions, where I send three out on rank 6 missions and one on a rank 5 (on a level 45) and only get the rank 6 ones back and no indication on the 5. (I've been running as many missions as possible, religiously, since I want all the schematics.) This has happened less than 5 times, though, from my reckoning, and doesn't happen every time.

Armstech uses Investigation for purple materials, not Underworld Trading.

Yes, it was much better when you had an undisclosed chance and your chance would be eaten up by a "You already know that schematic." And as for having 10 items to RE in your inventory, that only works with lottery tickets, not with the game. The real reason why it worked first time is that the moon had risen and was shining over your left shoulder. THAT'S what makes RE work. (Even the Monte Carlo fallacy makes more sense, "I wuz due!" than that.) Do like I'm doing. Track your RE's long-term. Granted, mine are still a small sample, even though I'm nearing 1k myself. I'll also add this for you to think about: I'm RE'ing items fully, meaning I'm getting EVERY prefix in purple- Anti-Armor, Commander's, Endowment, Exactitude, Expert, Fervor, General's Hawkeye, Leadership, Rampart, Supremacy, Tempest, Vehemence and Veracity. I doubt I'll go much further with this from what I've done, but it's clear to me that now when you've eliminated all other iterations you have a 100% chance to get the last on the next discovery roll. (I.E. when you RE something it will give a chance that you will learn something, where formerly you would get the message "you already know that schematic," now it will reroll the second chance to give you one you didn't have. For that alone everyone new to RE should be grateful. Mind you, I'd already RE'd heavy armor to Hawkeye and/or Overkill up to 30 in artifact and most to Endowment in medium in armormech, so I'd already paid the price on the chancy RE's pre-1.2. So I can say, "Back in my day we RE'd uphill- BOTH WAYS. ON HOTH!")

Then send it to me. If you saw a field full of money and knew there were no laws that would make you return it to its rightful owner, would you walk right by it and not pick it up because it was one dollar bills and not ten dollar bills?

Isn't that like saying, "I got strawberry ice cream when I only expected a cone for my money?" "But I don't LIKE strawberry ice cream!!!" While at the same time there are plenty of people getting returns of nothing, effectively a turdsickle who would LOVE your ice cream and at least get something from running the mission and selling the companion gift.

I started reverse engineering like a madman last week. I kept track of how many REs I did and how many schematics I learned. Between then and the patch on Tuesday I learned 73 schematics, taking 406 tries. That's about 17.98% Since Tuesday morning's patch, I've still been at it, and I was shocked to find that I've RE'd 407 more items (just off by one) and have gotten 74 schematics (again, off by one.) That's 18.18(repeating)%. I counted strings of failures, the first long one last night was 22 between discoveries and the second long one was 28. A couple were in the teens, but for the most part it's consistent with what I'd expect if the RE chance were 20%.

I figure the easiest way to level restrict the augment kits is to have them include the augment in them. As players level and want a better augment they can buy another kit instead of an augment. Also it would make it impossible to cheese the system by buying an augment for a level 11 item and put a level 49 augment in it. Further, it will not burden crafters by requiring them to list both the augment and the kit. Since we're still limited by 50 listings at a time, which is a major roadblock in the crafting world, it will have less of an impact if it's an integrated system.

Well, if you changed the boe/bop situation you would already have balance, and not need the rest. Which would be better, IMO. Do you know how badly plasteel armor chafes? There would be RAGEQUITS all over if everyone knew Synthweavers had comfy underwear and no one else did.

36,006,201.

Thanks again for the response (though no one else seems to have noticed it.) This has gone a long way to make the change much more palatable to me and likely others, though I still have the nagging issue that I won't be making much armor to sell, just more to pull apart for parts to make other gear slightly better. It seems sort of like making three piece suits and then cutting them up to sew a pocket for someone to hold a handkerchief in. So far as the making cheap items and breaking them down, the gist I get from the type of player who crafts, in general, would not be against weighting the returns from RE. A level 50 item reverse engineered producing twice what a level 25 RE, and a level 10 less still, or even the chance at nothing at all, since the time/materials invested is often trivial at low levels. Edit: I realized after a walk that the tiered augment slots idea has a slight problem. It would be easy to put a modifier on an item that said, "Augment Slot 1. Requires level 1." or "Augment Slot 6. Requires level 49." What would keep a level 50 from using a level 1 item and get the same benefit? I can only think that you've figured this out already, and it's not something you've released- the final crafted item would have to include not only the augment pieces, but the augment itself as well.

From a quick look at the numbers, crit rate is better for materials missions. If I use Gault, my Bounty Hunter's companion, who has +10 underworld trading efficiency, and run the rank 6 UT metal mission that costs 1700 credits he will complete it in 47 minutes. Say it's a 20% chance to crit. On average it will take me 5 tries to get the crit, spending 8500 credits. Now if I used Andronikos Revel, my Assassin's companion, who has 5% crit bonus on UT missions at a 25% chance to crit, it would take me 4 missions on average, taking 1h 2m each time, averaging 6800 credits per crit on average. Now let's look at the time this takes. Five 47 min missions is around 4h, 10 min. Six 1h 2m missions is...4h, 10 min. The same time, but the higher crit saves money. Either my lack of sleep has caused me to miss something, but it looks like crit wins out.

The Republic Fleet's upkeep is based on the advertisements like the one with the woman's face pursing her lips. Since none of us can read what she's selling we don't buy the product, hence there's little money coming in from the ad. That's why the Republic Fleet is lit by 30 watt incandescent bulbs. The Imperial Fleet is paid by taxes and dues from the Dromund Kaas Pipefitters' Union- who are always employed since every wall is loaded with pipes and conduits, and every boundary that isn't a cliff is a wall loaded with pipes and conduits. Imp Fleet uses daylight lamps.

To answer your first problem, armormechs can only make aim/cunning gear, orange shells for medium and heavy armor (which can be used by str classes as well) and augments with aim, cunning, shield, or absorbtion. When you RE an item you make, it has the chance of giving you a schematic with that name and level that will have a prefix name attached to it, Critical, Overkill or Redoubt, which add stats to your critical rating, power rating or defense rating. These items will be a color "higher" in rank, so if you started with a green an "overkill underwear of roominess" will have a blue name. If you started with a blue "Digi-quartz wristwatch" it would be reverse engineered into something like "Redoubt Digi-quartz wristwatch" that would have a purple name. Then you can RE these a step further. Your "Overkill Underwear of Roominess" can be RE'd to another tier which will give you a purple schematic. So if you learned an accuracy tag it would become "Hawkeye Underwear of Roominess" and have a purple name. The last tier of stats tacked on will be accuracy, surge, presence, shield rating or alacrity (except Redoubt, which does not get alacrity.) If your "Redoubt Digi-quartz wristwatch" is RE'd it will remain a purple name, but will also get one of the third stats if you learn a new schematic. If it gained shield rating, it would be renamed "Veracity Digi-quartz Wristwatch." With each RE stage the rating on the item changes, but the primary stats (aim, endurance) do not change, though occasionally the secondary stat will change when it's RE'd to a third stage, albeit slightly. I left something out- to get the Overkill, Critical and Redoubt schematics you'll have to make and RE the original schematics. Eventually you'll get whichever one you're looking for. To get a purple schematic you have to make and RE the Overkill, Critical, or Redoubt ones. You won't learn purples from base schematics, only these (provided you started with green named schems.)

It should be from a rank 6 underworld trading mission.

This narrows it down a bit, thanks. Though I do have some other questions on this before I can feel easy about it. 1. Are players the only way to obtain these kits? Because if they're put on a vendor like everything else for a token amount of commendations then there's really no reason to bother crafting them. 2. What items will be RE'able to get the materials to make the kits? Right now we can still only RE greens, blues, purples and the 1.2 oranges and orange drops, not oranges we create, which has driven the price of crafted non-crits to just above vendor price. (I realize this is a dangerous question to answer, since players will try to stock up on the items ahead of time.) 3. Where will the schematic for the augment kit be obtained? As it is, any level 10 with a companion can craft 99% of the items a level 50 can, though at a slower rate. As poor as this system is for a dedicated crafter, it's better than the way the orange gloves/boots schematics are distributed- by random chance and gated by being in an operation. The no-win question is, will the schematic be available to everyone and their wookie or will it require the elitism of an operations group?

First, I haven't seen an advanced augment 22 sell for over 100k since 1.2. There's too large a supply now. Before 1.2 when it was solely slicers finding augments, they were in the 150k-200k range. Now they're struggling to top 80k. And even at 80k about half of the cost is from materials. If you want cheaper augments, don't take up synthweaving to make them yourself. Take up slicing. Of course, then you'll find out there's a cost to getting the parts as well. One thing that's being ignored in this thread is the "an augment slot will be able to be placed on an EXISTING item." Any item. The armor from Hammer Station. The level 20 and 40 pvp stuff. All of it. Now who's going to buy the medical beige crafted things when they can augment items with...color...and design?

I may be forgetting something, but if I recall correctly, all or nearly all of my orange patterns for armormech and synthweaving were from UT, and a number of blue item patterns were from it and investigation.

I've started keeping track in the past few days, since Saturday I'm at 93 schematics out of 535 tries, and out of those, today's have been 20 out of 129 tries. This is on my armormech at 20% chance, so at least that's fairly consistent with the listed rate.