Same Gender Romance is something that was promised as a post release feature back when the game launched... it's still not here sadly. The closest we have are some same gender flirt options on Makeb. I'm very much hoping this will change in the future though.

There's one in the Focus tree. I forget what it's called - but it makes your crowd control break ability heal you 10% of your max health. Granted that's only once every 2 minutes, but it's something.

Thank you DataBeaver, that's a big help! <^_^>

*edit* Okay I've discovered the problem: Armorings don't give skill, mods? Do. Weird. Bonus question: Just out of curiousity, what's the highest level non-operation/flashpoint armoring I can make when I hit 450? Will it be the level 53 purple stuff? Or are there more schematics out there to hunt down for better? Just curious about that is all.

For my Trooper, it's Aric Jorgan - his attitude meshes very well with my character's, and as such they make a great tag team. Honorable mention to M1-4X for PATRIOTISM however. For my Jedi Knight - Kira, no contest. Her personality is awesome, I don't agree with everything she says but she's just way too much fun to have around; and "Eat lightsaber, jerk!" is one of the few companion lines I don't mind hearing repeatedly. Honorable mention: T7. I would so make him an honorary Jedi if I could. (Maybe I should give him a Jawa robe and a retractable lightsaber or something...) I don't have enough companions for other classes yet to come up with a favorite for any of them.

Yes they can - both ACs use Medium Armor.

I've only finished Jedi Knight and Trooper; but of the two I'd have to say I prefer the Jedi Knight. Trooper is fun, no doubt about it; but I enjoyed the Knight more. I grant it wasn't particularly complex or deep - but it was like a great bag of potato chips, I just kept coming back for more until I finally ran out. I think it also helped that I enjoyed the Knight's animations better than the Trooper's* - so I enjoyed every fight and never felt like I was slogging. *I have a long list of grievances with with whoever handled the animation and ability design for the Trooper.

Thanks for that Lesaberisa, kinda what I was afraid of. The way I've been running my character to present has been basically "My loyalty is to myself*, and credits." I've repeatedly insisted to NPCs that I don't care one bit about the Empire, I just work for them because they're paying.... so yeah that's unpleasant news; but better to know it rather than start finding the plot unbearable. Maybe I'll come back to it later, but for now I suppose I'll be playing a different character for awhile. *Including my own sense of morality.

So, let me explain this because I'm sure for a lot of people, Chapter 1 of the BH story was fine and dandy - maybe even great. For me... mostly it was pretty good, right up until the end; where I felt like my character went wayyyyy out of my control...

But... why? That's the thing I don't get - In what possible way is having tech attacks look like they're blaster attacks imbalanced? Mobs don't care what your attacks look like at all - it's not like they try to get out of the way or anything, and even if they did it wouldn't be based on what the attack actually looked like. And in PVP, isn't it kind of enough to know "I don't want to be within 10m of the Vanguard/The Commando is going to sit back and shoot me with the big cannon"? It's not like "Okay they're shooting lightning at me, run awaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!" is something that actually happens, is it? I mean unless I've missed an ability somewhere, does anyone actually have a reason to sit there and think "Okay that ability is weapon/that ability is tech/that ability is force, therefore I need to do x/y/z?" Because the only thing close to that I'm aware of are the various Cleanse type abilities, which I'm pretty sure have no relevance to the abilities I'm particularly noting here. I mean yes, elemental attacks ignore armor... so what? What's knowing that an attack is elemental going to change? You're either in range and getting hit by it or not and not - in either case you wouldn't want to be getting hit by it whether it were weapon damage or elemental; sure you might, depending on class, be more resilient to one or the other, but you don't want to be getting shot, period. Also, I'll bring up the Jedi Guardian's Vigilance tree; that tree drops several elemental DOTs on the enemy all of which come from lightsaber attacks - if visually identifying elemental damage attacks were so important I think that tree would work significantly differently. As for mobile ranged vs turret - Pyro/Assault spec for Merc/Commando does that fairly well actually. You have some channeling/casting to do with that set up, but not a huge amount since it's fairly easy to fire off an Incendiary, fire Rail Shot and then Full Auto/Unload, then pop another Rail Shot almost immediately - then you can do whatever you want to finish them off. Depending on how you wanted to set the AC up there are plenty of ways to avoid overpowering it. ---- I'll also note that I acknowledged that cover is never going to happen; that one I understand completely even if I find it irksome and stupid looking.

I greatly enjoyed the story myself. It's not perfect, but it's fun mil sci-fi all around, there are some great characters (particularly early on) so in that respect I highly recommend it. You've already seen my thread about the things I find irritating about the class, so I won't go into that; but if you can look past that it can be a lot of fun purely for the story and visual aesthetic. Trooper armor is pretty neat with just a few bad designs* sprinkled throughout. Even the helmets are often nice, which is a rarity with other classes (though there are, especially at early levels, some fugly ones as well.) Oh, and one other really nice thing with Trooper: All your companions use Aim/Endurance. That means you can hand off old gear to your companions as you get upgrades, or just mass-manufacture armor for the entire squad or however you want to do it. I mean it depends on your use of crafting skills I suppose, but I found that to be an extremely handy ability since I was an Armormech on my Commando. It just made it ridiculously simple to keep my companions up to date by and large. Obviously YMMV on that point; but it's a thing I liked. *Imo compared to most classes, Trooper has some of the most consistently good armor designs in the game. Now I grant this is partly because most trooper armor is very similar to one another... but that makes sense; and lets you easily uniform your companions too.

Indeed. I've got a level 30 Merc now, and I rarely get that immersion breaking... irritation... I often feel when trying to play either of my Troopers. I mean to put it bluntly, having played BH a bit now, I'm starting to seriously feel like Trooper was cobbled together out of spare animations and ideas as a last second mirror to the Bounty Hunter. That's probably not actually the case since the Trooper has a full story just like everyone else and I don't think there's any reason to believe it was any easier to make than any other class story... but nevertheless it still leaves me scratching my head at some of the design decisions. I mean for example - Explosive Round - is there any reason this had to be a mini rocket like the Bounty Hunter's? Couldn't it have just been an overcharged blaster round instead? (Call the Salvo ability for Commando's "Double Tap" maybe?) Ion Pulse - Snap shot (short range blaster shot), similar to the Smuggler's Quick Shot. Pulse Cannon - Spray and Pray (or something to that effect) - a cone of barely aimed blaster bolts. Also I wouldn't mind if Full Auto fired from the shoulder rather than the hip since it does appear you're actually aiming at a single target when using that ability. (At least for the Rifle version of it anyway. The cannon version is fine.) That's just off the top of my head. I mean it's not like the Smuggler and Agent classes don't show *plenty* of ways to fire a blaster after all; so why is it the Smuggler and Agent can fire their blasters in multiple ways, but Troopers are stuck relying on gimmicks that don't really make sense for a lot of their abilities, just because a Bounty Hunter does it that way? Just a little sour grapes on the class I most wanted to play in this game. Ah well, I should shaddup, it's not going to change at this stage of the game, best I can hope for is a new advanced class 'some day' that does some portion of what I want.

Changed up my Bounty Hunter's armor again - I think I'm finally happy with it; though I wish we had a less beat up looking jetpack-equipped chestplate available. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v213/mistharm/Screenshot_2013-07-20_08_08_52_423623_zpsc054b939.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v213/mistharm/Screenshot_2013-07-20_08_08_59_021607_zps590f98e2.jpg

So what you're saying is, your C2-N2 is the last panel in this comic? "I am ablative armor, life is boring, then briefly exciting, then over..."

This is a quality of life thing basically; but I'd really appreciate it if Heroic 2+ and Heroic 4 missions could be marked differently than standard side missions via the icon over the quest giver's head. Essentially, as it is now, whenever I encounter a new area* - I end up talking to NPCs, going through sometimes a lengthy string of dialogue... only to find out the mission in question is for 2 or 4 people instead of something I can handle solo.** Now ultimately this is a minor issue, but it's annoying to go through that dialogue, start to feel invested in the quest... then find out I have to drop it or group for it; neither I particularly like. Like I said, it's a minor QOL feature, but it'd be nice to be able to tell at a glance whether or not a given NPC is worth talking to in the first place. *Or repeat one I haven't been through in awhile. **I know some people can solo Heroic 4s, and more can solo Heroic 2+... but I can't really handle either beyond Coruscant or Dromund Kaas; and I'm mostly just here for the story anyway.