[Grav round is killing gunnery for me.]

Yeah, Grav Rounds feels pretty weak, especially since it becomes my goto spammable once it's skilled-up. I use it, but it's not nearly as much fun as even the basic shot. What's the point of having a giant machine gun when you are firing these weak little beam attacks? They should take High Impact Beam, double the projectile size, and then make a lough "Whoomp!" sound when it fires, maybe with a serious kick animation, and if they really want to go for broke, an expanding disc of a muzzle flash.

[Are Space Battle Dailies or not?]

The way space missions work is this:

 

1. You need to complete each mission at least once to unlock the "daily" version.

 

2. Once you complete the mission once, or in some cases once you complete two different missions on the same tier each at least once, check the comm on your bridge, which should offer a daily version, like "Operation Twilight Breaking," or whatever.

 

3. These dailies can then be done once and only once per day, resetting around 6AM EST, I think. You can, however, repeat the individual missions as often as you like, they just give pathetic rewards for doing so. Some dialies are just for beating one mission, some require you to beat two different ones, so check the requirements. Note that you have to open the comms unit each day to reactivate the dailies.

 

4. You get the highest reward ever for a given mission the first time you beat it, often a huge chunk of XP for the level, and maybe a fancy prize. I think there might also be a bonus the first time you complete a given daily but I forget. You get the second best rewards for the dailies, but can do them indefinitely. The rewards for just redoing a mission outside the dailies is almost never worth the bother. Note that space missions, just like regular missions, degrade over time. If one is listed as green or gray, the reward won't be worth doing, just stick to the orange ones for the most part.

[BioWare, please do not let the sadistic minority ruin your game]

The only issues I have with any of this is the LFD tool, people are douche bags and this just lets them continue to be like that because they can just get in when ever they want, leave it as it is and these people will become known on the server and will never get invited to any thing and they can sit alone like they should.

 

You know, they could implement a "quality control" mechanism where a team could vote to neg-rep a player, and after a while he would have a very high negative reputation, which would be visible, so whenever the LFD tool popped him up, everyone would know and could act accordingly. It works for ebay.

[Space combat fun!]

I know a lot of people complain about space combat, but I'm finding the higher level stuff to be a lot of fun. I just got my Power Converter device, which adds a whole new layer of strategy to the combat. What it does is give you two new abilities (bound to 1 and 2), one that makes your blasters way more powerful but makes shield regeneration almost non-existent, and another that makes your blasters pitiful but you fully regen your shields in only a few seconds. You can leave either one, or neither, but not both at once. It makes things so much more interesting to switch to offense when blasting away at things, then to defense during slower moments or when enemies are really raining the damage on you. There seem to be other cool abilities incoming too.

[Marauder / Sentinel Are Broken]

The things I want to see out of the Sentinel:

 

1. A "finesse" tree that functions as an off-tank/control tree. You wouldn't do as much damage as the pure DPS tree, but you'd be more survivable than any other DPS, and be able to clean up messes in a group situation. It would be designed around single target CC effects, temporary defensive screens, increased counter-attack capability, etc. This would be the warrior that effortlessly weaves through enemies and casually knocks their weapons aside, the controlled master of his art, but without the raw power and violence of the other set.

 

2. An AoE damage tree, designed around sweeping two-bladed strikes that take full advantage of a dual-wielder's reach. It would include forms in which all attacks hit in a cone pattern, and several attacks hit in a PBAoE, and would be designed to whittle away at everyone around you at once.

 

3. More maneuverability. Sentinels should be able to perma-lunge, lunge whenever and wherever they like. You should never have to jog during combat as a Sentinel, the instant you kill something you should be able to lunge to the next attacker. Actually, that would be a good condition for it, as people in the past have complained that having perma-lunge would prevent people from perma-kiting Sentinels in PvP, and that this would in some way be a bad thing, make it so that the ability can only be used within several seconds of having registered a kill. Alternately just have it so that making a kill ends Force Leap's cooldown.

 

That way, if you were fighting a pack of three spread out enemies, you could Force Leap one, kill him, lunge to the next, kill him, lunge to the next, and kill him, but if you were in PvP and you Force Leaped but were pushed away somehow, you would not be able to use this other lunge to close the distance immediately. If Sentinels are meant to be worthless from a distance, then they need to be able to close to melee as early and often as possible.

[Commanda Mods Favor Endurance]

Yeah, this bummed me out. The real problem was that I've noticed that Reflex mods aren't keeping up. Like I was on the Tatooine commendation vendor, and they had rank 10 and 11 Commando Armoring mods, but they only had rank 9, maybe 10 Reflex mods, they definitely didn't have rank 11 ones like the Commando. So I could either get a slightly higher AIM stat, but lower stats overall, or higher stats overall with a lower AIM. This was true for Barrels and Mods too. I also think this pattern was the same on Nar Shaddaa. The only way to get rank 11 Reflex mods was to get the pre-built custom armor on Tatooine, or the pre-built custom gun.

 

The annoying thing is that the prices are all the same, so it doesn't matter whether you're getting a rank 9 Reflex, a rank 10 Commando, or a rank 11 Commando, you're paying the same 7 Commendations for it.

[Armormech needs to make armor mods]

I'm sure it's been mentioned here already but the obvious thing for armortech and synthweaving is it's the only way in the game to get orange gear with an augment slot on it.

 

I still consider this a rumor. I've heard plenty of people say that they assume this is possible, but I've yet to see a single person claim to have done it themselves, and I've seen plenty of people claim to have made dozens upon dozens of orange pieces without a single Augment slot, so for the time being I think it's safe to say that this is either not a real thing, or, if it is possible, it's far too rare to be considered a function of the set, it's like unicorns.

[Armormech needs to make armor mods]

I don't see a reason why Armortech can't get something different that would be unique to their profession instead of have it's crafts overlap with cybertech.

 

If you can think of something that would work, feel free to suggest it, but what they have now is far from good enough. They need a way to make orange armors that are viable within themselves, not just empty husks that they have nothing to fill them with. Armorings is the best way I can think to do that but if you have a better idea, go for it. I don't see the problem with having overlap between the crew skills, I think that's a very good thing, to have each skill specialize in a few things, but also dabble in some other stuff that the other skills specialize in, like how gunslinger/Snipers are DPS only, while several other classes can DPS while also having some healing or some tanking capabilities. The ones that can do a little bit extra are clearly superior to those that are only capable of DPS.

 

Like I suggested in another thread ... maybe armortech should get the option to pick a skin for the items they craft.

 

If they could do that it could be worth doing, but it sounds tricky to implement. Like if they could make a top tier purple armor, but instead of getting stuck with whatever model the devs attached to that armor they could choose any unlocked style for it, that could be very cool, but it would be a whole new mechanism that the game doesn't currently include in any form, so I doubt they would do that. We're better off hoping for an appearance tab system, would would automatically fix Armormech's problems (along with many other flaws in the game).

[Why Nerfing Slicing was a BAD idea]

What nerf? I've been consistently making a fortune. My level 29 character has well over 200K credits in the bank, after speeder training and buying 25K in inventory upgrades. I tend to average around 10-20K per half hour at this point.

[any other slicers vender 99% of your found recipes and augments?]

I have a ton too. I've tried auctioning them at well bellow the suggested price, but they are very hit or miss. I think the problem is that you have to buy them, then pay to run the mission, so the chance of profiting off the results isn't all that great.

[We want answers]

We're aware of this desire, but we actually believe that finding others on the same planet as you encourages social interaction a bit more than a general 'group finder'. We're not saying it'll never, ever happen but again, not high priority right now.

 

Just a note, a group finder does not have to be as broad as you seem to suggest, it can be restricted to only the planet you're on. For example, say I'm on Tatooine, and I'm looking for a group for Search and Rescue. This is a 4-man that requires a good group balance. Attempt it without a tank or healer or something and it all falls apart. So my option at the moment is to type into the general chat "LFG/LFM Search and Rescue," and have people reply via whisper and then manually add them to my group. If I don't end up with a well-distributed party, then we have to kick someone, and type "LFM, Tank for Search and Rescue," and keep waiting around. There is a better way.

 

A better group finder tool would have a number of solid match-making options. For one thing, I could list what I was prepared to do. If I'm a Commando, I could list whether I felt up to healing, up to DPS, or capable of both. Then I could select which missions I had that I would be interested in doing, for example if I'm up for any of the planet's Heroic content, I could check off all of those. Then I just enter the system.

 

The matchmaker would then sort all incoming group requests on that planet, and put together a group that includes at least one healer and one tank, and once it has all four members picked out, it sends a confirmation message to each of them. If at any time the group drops to less than three members, the group leader could reopen matchmaking and call up a 4th.

 

The matchmaking system for Heroic missions, which take place on a given planet, would not have to search for players outside of that planet. It would just mean that General is less cluttered.

 

Now for Flashpoints there's no reason to not open them up galactically, if anyone wants to join a specific Flashpoint, from anywhere in the galaxy, they should be matched up with anyone else that wants to, without having to hang out on a specific planet to find like-minded people. The less time players have to spend standing around, doing nothing while they wait for a group to form, the better you're doing at your job.

[Armormech needs to make armor mods]

Since mods and enchantments for end game come from raid drops ... armorings are kind of the one mod that has it's use for cybertech. If armortech was making that one, what would be the point of cybertech ... ship upgrades and ear pieces ?

 

/Sigh. I really wish people would read before posting. Yes, Armormechs would be able to make Armorings for +Aim and +Cun stats, and yes Synthweaving would be able to make Armorings for +Str and +Wil, but neither would be able to make the armorings of the other type, and neither would be able to make Barrels, and Cybertech should be able to make them all, jack fo all trades, master of none. If you want to be the one shop "jedi armor guy" then you can go Synthweave and do that. If you want to be the one shop "non-jedi armor guy" then go Armormech and be that. If you want to be the one stop "mods of any kind guy" then Cybertech should do that. Options, people.

[Armormech needs to make armor mods]

I do believe you are missing the point of it being an MMO, and that having Armormech can keep other people in the shells they want. Other people are also capricious, and want to change fairly often.

 

I would rather bet on players wanting to tangibly upgrade the strength of their gear, rather than betting on their "capriciousness" in wanting multiple different orange hulls that each offer no mechanical benefit over the other. Sure, there will be people in the latter group, but exponentially fewer than in the former.

[Armormech needs to make armor mods]

It being less worth because its orange armours depend on Cybertech? Armormech is about the non-Orange armours. Oranges are a different league as far as I know.

 

Yes, but non-oranges are worth less because the game lacks an appearance customization system, so if you go non-orange then you're at the whim of whatever random-### model Bioware chooses to attach to the item, many of which are downright silly looking. Only the orange gear gives you some measure of control of your appearance.

 

From the way I understand it, and what I will focus on is making orange crafted armor. The customer can decide which mods they want but we make "the look" possible as armormech.

 

Yes, which relegates the skill to "hairdresser" status, completely cosmetic and completely unnecessary fluff, rarely needed for anything by anyone.

[Selling craftables directly to vendors?]

You can sell crafted goods on the vendors for a decent profit (nowhere near Slicing though), and will probably get best results from crafting the 2/2/2 type items that are cheaply produced. You can make more profit by selling stacks of raw materials on the GTN though, you just won't raise you skills at the same time. I don't believe it's possible to turn a profit by sending your crew on, say Scavaging missions though, the cost of the mission is typically higher than the cost of the rewards. Only the dedicated mission skills (Investigation, Underworld, Diplomacy, Treeasure, Slicing) offer potentially higher reward for the mission than the cost.

[Armormech needs to make armor mods]

You're actually missing the very point. I'm a 400 Armstech. I have every purple barrel schematic up to 20. But That barrel does me absolutely NOTHING other then keep my damage current. My purple quality [Leadership Rampage-X Assualt Cannon (Superior)] has the same damage as the Orange cannon with purple Advanced Reflex Barrel 16... but no commendation vendor provides the mods to equal the rest of the stats. My Leadership purple I CRAFTED has +Aim, +Endurance, +Crit, and +Alacrity... I just left Balmorra and none of the mods available with commendations had Alacrity on them.

 

Someone should carry those mods, perhaps a Cyber crafter can make them, or if not they should drop somewhere. If you cannot duplicate the mechanics of ANY piece of gear in the game in "orange" form then the whole orange mechanic fails as a substitute for an appearance system.

 

If you want a Custom Weapon/Armor to match the CRAFTED weapons and armor, you have to go to a Cybertech. That is why Cybertech has the mods, and why Armormechs don't need the Armor mod.

 

Having to go to a Cybertech for one mod is not a huge deal, especially when there are only slightly lesser substitutes available. The point is that the Armoring is the CORE mod, the most vital one because it gives the armor stat, just as the barrel gives the damage stat that is central to the function of that piece of gear. So just as Armstech gives the ability to craft barrels, armormech should have the ability to craft Armorings, so that they can craft orange armor AND keep the core aspect of it up to snuff.

 

Armstechs get barrels because we can only fill in two slots of gear, and the barrels help us make up for that lack of slotting.

 

Again, you've got to stop treating armor as "more slots" than weapons. Armor is a function, it's one thing broken up into seven bits, just as damage is a function, one thing sometimes kept whole, sometimes broken into two things. Armormech doesn't give you seven different things, it gives you 7/7ths of one thing, that one thing being a complete set of armor, just as Armstech's one thing is a complete weapon.

 

They could just as easily remove all armor slots save one and just have a single "armor" slot, as they do weapons. They could also choose to make it so that weapons came in modular bits like stocks and sights and barrels and receivers and such that would each need to be purchased/crafted separately and equipped independently, but they didn't, so while there is an illusion that Armormech can craft "many things", in truth they can only craft the one thing, "armor," just broken up into seven pieces.

 

I could. But why waste money in my armor when I can use my money in mods for my Orange assault cannon? Or for the blaster of my droid? Or maybe some droid moddable armor?

 

Up to you, I'm just saying, you can make orange armor that's as strong as crafted if you choose to. If you had Cybertech, you could craft those mods for free, likely for less materials than your crafted armor. The orange+mod path is less important if your appearance doesn't matter to you, or if you happen to like whatever gear the game throws out at you, but it's still a viable option. Alternately you could take a third "harvesting" skill of some kind instead of AM and just make more money with it. I'm not saying that Armormech is completely worthless, just that it's worth less than anything else you could put in that crew skill slot.

[How To Profit off of Slicing!]

I can't help but feel like I'm missing out on large profits from tier 6 since the missions you have don't go away unless you do them to free that "slot" up for a new random mission.

 

I may be wrong on this, but in my experience every time you do two or three missions it rejuggles the entire mission chain, so it should keep changing the missions at the top, even if you only keep doing the ones in the middle.

[Slicing Profitability & You!]

Last night yes, I'm talking about today. I have been losing money all morning by doing mission...

 

This morning in about two hours I made about 20K more, give or take, plus a bunch of sellable crew missions that I haven't had a chance to put on the GTN yet. I'm upt to 170K now.

[Armormech needs to make armor mods]

Rare is the piece of armor gear that I use and that I haven't crafted myself. In fact, the last levels (I'm currently 32), I wear no Oranges. In Tatooine I wore my last Orange armor piece when I bought that pretty chest piece from the shop. And even then, it was the only one. Prototypes can be very very nice. And the rare artifacts even better.

 

You need to get better mods. In any case, even if crafted non-customs do outperform customs, that's not a good thing, that means that there's a flaw in the customization system, because the goal is for oranges to BE the customization system, which means that they need to be mechanically competitive with any other gear you might have available at that level.

 

An orange armor with blue mods should be equivalent to a blue armor of the same type. An orange armor with purple mods should likewise be equal to a purple armor. If you believe this no longer holds true then they need to fix it.

 

Nerfing orange gear is no solution whatsoever, at least not before the appearance tab is implemented as an alternative for appearance management.

 

Augment slot on crit crafted one.

 

Has this actually been confirmed as something that definitely exists, or is it still just a rumor of something that "should" exist?

[Slicing Profitability & You!]

Same here, only small cash...

 

I made about 20K in an hour or so last night on a level 26 character, so if they modified it, they didn't do so by enough.

[How To Profit off of Slicing!]

It hurts when your companions fail the mission completely. As a crafter. not having access to resources because I took slicing is now proving irritating.

 

You need to be more judicious. Note that you don't have to do missions in the tier it offers you, you can drop back to the previous tier. If you keep sending companions on peak-tier orange missions, especially companions with low affection, they will fail you fairly often. Only send your highest affection companion on orange missions, and send them all on yellow or bellow if you can. Only send the butler droid on green ones if you can. Aim for high reward missions, avoid "moderate" ones like the plague. I'm on the 34-40 tier now, and I'm still consistently earning tens of thousands per hour of play. Even if it does eventually level off, my character is currently sitting at about three times the loot that any of my previous characters in beta had made, even those that got five levels higher.

[Trooper crew skills?]

My personal recommendation would be Biochem, Cybertech, or Armstech. Biochem is all around useful, stims to heal and buff yourself. Cybertech can make some useful mods and other assorted items. Armstech can keep you well armed, whether you choose to go with moddables and make barrels, or choose to make new weapons all together.

 

I noticed that you didn't recommend that he choose Armormech on a tank class heavy armor wearer, have you come around to the view that Armormech is a complete waste of time yet?

[Armormech needs to make armor mods]

Look at everything that the Armortechs can already make. Heavy and light armor.

 

Armormechs make heavy and medium, and only in +aim and +cun versions. Synth makes, as I understand it, heavy, medium, and light armors, but only in +str and +will versions. The problem is, you can't count each piece of armor as if it's a whole different thing. Armor is armor, it all just adds to your armor stat and to some other stat. An armoring skill that crafts only some of the armor slots and not others would be a bit broken, like an Armstech that only crafts half of a gun and you need some other class to craft the other half. So in all practical purposes, Armormech being able to craft for seven armor slots is no better than Armstech being able to craft for one (or two) weapon slot, or Cybertech being able to craft for one Ear slot.

 

So Armormech doesn't craft "a bunch of things", Armormech, in practical terms, crafts three things:

1. Heavy Armors (for Troopers/BH) with non-customizable stats (largely worthless once you have customizable armor).

2. Medium Armors (for Smugglers/IA) with non-customizable stats (largely worthless once you have customizable armor).

3. Empty orange hulls for the above (which are functionally worthless until mods are added).

 

If you're going to use the arguement that Armormech can craft 14 different things because they can make a different piece to fill each slot, then the mods in Cybertech alone would account for something like 60+ "things", since those are the number of items that their mods can be fitted into (one armoring or mod for each slot for all heavy, medium, and light armors, one mod for each type of weapon).

 

The point raised in this, and many other threads, is that once players start accumulating orange gear, the value of options 1 and 2 drop dramatically, since someone with a perfectly good orange chest piece has absolutely no use for a crafted one anymore. Option 3 has some value, but only until that slot gets filled. Armormech currently offers nothing that allows a player to in any way improve on his existing orange gear. Once he has the orange gear look he likes, Armormech offers nothing. Being able to offer Armoring mods would allow an Amrormech's skills to continue being useful even once people have the orange gear that they like.

 

And bear in mind, while I didn't consider it in my initial post, Synthweaving should definitely get Armoring too, the same argument applies to them as to Armormech.

 

How many slots can a armstech or artificer cover. 2 at most.

 

Yes, but that actually makes them superior. To make the very best weapon that you'd ever need at a given level range, an Armstech only needs to pick one base weapon, craft/RE until he gets a blue, craft/RE until he gets a purple, and then make that. Done. If he's a two-gun he needs to repeat that last step once. For an Cybertech to do the same to a character with orange gear, he needs to do that same process twice, once for Armoring Mods, once for mod Mods, and then just repeat the last step enough times to cover every available slot. For an Armormech, he would need to repeat the entire process seven times, one for each armor slot, each needing to be researched separately, at a cost in time and materials several times higher than either of the others.

 

See the difference there, you have 5 slot purple sets or a three slot orange set to sell. All anyoen else gets is either mods, or a slot or two. That's why Armormech doesnt' get Armoring mods... it already has the sellign benefit of making actual sets of matching armor.

 

There's a reason why battery companies often gave flashlight shells away for free. Armormechs could be able to make five "epic" armor sets or a dozens and it wouldn't matter, so long as orange gear is the only customization option, it's the only type of armor that really matters, and orange gear is filled not by Armormech, but by Cybertech.

[Has anyone seen mod items that give bonuses to crew skills?]

That raised an interesting question, the Presence stat makes companions more capable in combat, does the Presence stat have any impact on their usefulness in crew skills?

[How To Profit off of Slicing!]

I'm cleaning up on slicing. My level 26 character has around !30K credits, AFTER buying my speeder, and turns in about 20K per hour of gameplay, maybe more. It really helps that Troopers get companions early and often, so I can now run three crew missions at a time with my companion out.

 

I find it most efficient to only send the bulterdroid on green missions because he's a ####-up, and to aim the other two at yellow missions whenever possible, oranges if I have to (remember that you can target tiers lower than the maximum), and to focus more on the reward quantity than on the mission difficulty.