Why? Well ... there is a certain amount of pride is selling level 49 Mastercraft Earpieces. Especially when I can sell them for 100-150k. I've tried selling lower level pieces. They sell faster than the level 49 stuff, but it takes a truckload to equal the same amount of profit. That means a lot more time and effort managing inventory and buy materials.

Slicing is excellent for building profit. I generally have three or four companions out on Slicing missions at all times. It makes me a lot of credits, especially when it returns an unlocked mission item that I can use myself. Cybertech schematics, however, I generally feed to a vendor. People usually have them up on the GTN in herds, and at BELOW what a vendor pays.

Slicing works well with any gathering/mission skill. The unlocked mission items you get off critical returns allow you to boost profits if you can use them, and they sell for a pretty penny if you can't. If I were going straight gathering/mission skills, then I would definitely include Slicing. I would also take Underworld Trading. You can pull in major credits by selling grade 5 and grade 6 metals.

You should probably change the title now that you have the Republic segment included.

No, there is a Moderate Underworld Trading mission that is falsely labeled as Rich. The duration, cost, and payout are all moderate. There is one Abundant mission for metals and one for cloth, but that's as high as they go. Underworld Trading has no real Rich grade 6 missions. I get purple augments from level 340 Slicing mission unlocks, which I get from lockbox missions. They always return at least one purple.

This is something people have been complaining about since before the game even launched. The GTN needs a ton of improvements, and crafting windows need hotkeys. Supposedly patch 1.2 will bring some positive changes to the GTN.

Either you have the worst luck in the world, or you're running Slicing missions with companions you have zero or negative affection with. I've never lost money in a day with Slicing. The grade 6 missions usually even out to a slight profit for me, when comparing lockboxes to mission cost, of around 300-400 credits. Grade 5 rich missions can have a larger loss per mission, but more than make up for it with crits that average around 5.5k. Taken together, the two grade 5 rich and the two grade 6 lockbox missions turn an average profit of around 500 credits for me, last I checked. That number goes up slightly when profits from selling schematics are factored in, either to a vendor or on the GTN (usually to a vendor). It goes WAY up when mission unlocks are factored in. That has to be done with a high sample, however, as it's entirely random. Some days are going to be bad and other days are going to be fantastic. Also, companion affection is extremely important. I have three at max level, and they get the most valuable missions. A fourth is at 8000 or so affection, and he gets the least valuable. Criticals are everything. I don't even pay attention to a lockbox unless it's blue. If you're only going to run eight missions or so a day, then don't bother. Pick something with a steady return. However, if you play for several hours a day, and you have several companions running missions at all times, then you're going to see a nice profit; that is, unless mission unlocks don't sell very well on your server, but then everything is relative.

Slicing makes me more money than Scavenging, but less than Underworld Trading, but not significantly so on either front. It does just fine when compared to any other gathering/mission skill. It's a totally crit based profit, however, which means you have to run a good number of missions for it to even out. I did well with Slicing yesterday. How? I came away with several mission unlocks which I sold on the GTN, that was about 70k. I got an Underground Trading mission unlock which I'll use myself, and those always yield at least 50k worth of materials. I also got a level 340 Slicing mission unlock; from that I got a +28 Cunning augment, which I will probably be able to sell for 100k. Slicing is good on its own, fantastic when you can use the unlocked mission items yourself. It has excellent synergy as a crew skill that compliments other crew skills, while still being able to turn a profit. Anyone who underestimates Slicing doesn't understand how it works.

I've said it many times, but if SWTOR were to restart, I wouldn't go with a crafting skill while leveling. I would go gathering/mission skills, gear up with a combination of commendation items, quest rewards, loot drops, and fill in the blanks with purchases from the GTN, and hit level 50 with a few million credits in my pocket. There is absolutely no need to keep your gear topped off in this game. You could level up all in green gear, if you wanted. I had Cybertech maxed out before I was level 30, but by that point I was already ignoring the ability to make armoring and mods. It just wasn't worth the investment to me, not when I had plenty of commendations to spend. I agree with you, Crafting isn't something that anyone really needs until they hit 50. I'm not saying a person shouldn't get into crafting, because that's a personal choice, but it's not needed one bit, and can actually leave you scrambling to pay for skills and speeder training.

Your baseline cost should be the total of what the materials sell for on the open market, regardless of how you obtained them. Even if someone gave them to you and you didn't have to lift a finger, the value is still what they would sell for on the open market. From there it's up to you. In a real business, you would create an equation that includes all other forms of overhead, such as utility bills and employee pay, to arrive at a percentage you need to make off each sale, but that doesn't apply here. If the market is crowded, then it's easy. If it's clear, then you'll need to play around a bit, find out what kind of demand you're dealing with. A good way to do this is to list items at different price points, see how far up the ladder people are willing to go. Don't put items up for more than a day, so you can reprice if no one buys, and don't list a ton of stuff at the same price point, so you can easily raise prices if needed. For cheaper items, I like to see at least a 100% profit above material costs, or it's seldom worth crafting. That kind of margin isn't always there for higher price stuff, but the amount of profit often makes up for it.

There isn't much you can do about a gap that big, to be honest, except to wait until more people learned the schematic and the market naturally falls by itself. I had an idiot message me a few weeks ago, telling me to raise my prices on ship upgrade parts. I explained that I didn't want to bankrupt people who were leveling up, and that 100% profit was fine with me, but he informed me that HE set the prices on our server, and that he had SEVEN MILLION CREDITS (haha) and that he would totally ruin the market if people didn't do what he said. I laughed at him and told him what he could do with himself. The funny thing is, I was one of the first people on the server to sell purple ship upgrade parts, and I had my price set way before he came along. A week later he messaged me again, laughing, saying he bought my ship upgrade parts and was going to selling them for 3k credits more! When I stopped laughing, I asked him to please keep doing that, because having my stuff sold instantly was worth a 3k difference. After that, it looked like he got mad at the world, because he was selling for 10k under the next lowest price. It was hilarious. Everyone ignored him, for the most part, and now prices are back to normal. Er, back to the OP, there isn't much you can do in an open market. No rules and regulations exist like in real life. The best thing you can do is to set your prices close, so that they aren't making that much of a profit by buying up your stuff. Then you flood the market and see what happens!

Slicing is pretty good at generating a profit. Lockboxes you find in the wild are nice, and can add up. At level 50, they can also return level 340 mission unlock items, which generally sell for a nice pile of credits on the GTN (except Investigation items). You can easily get 20k+ for a UT mission, for example. If I'm playing, and my companions aren't crafting, then I have them on Slicing missions. First priority are the "rich" grade 5 missions. These will return level 340 mission unlocks on criticals, just like the grade 6 missions, but the "rich" grade 5 missions can also hit big with the lockboxes, with returns of 4-8k. Slicing is very streaky, and a lot of your missions will result in small losses, but that's no big deal. The rare criticals more than make up for it.

First, before I get into the crafting system, I'd like to talk about Slicing. The OP makes it sound like a bad skill, but that's far from the truth. At level 50, Slicing is pretty good at making credits on its own. Not the best, but still very good. It's streaky, however, with many of your missions resulting in a loss, which fools a lot of people into thinking that it's a waste of time. It only takes a few nice crits however, to turn things around. I've sold at least four unlocked mission items today, for instance, with two of them going for 19.5k each. Where Slicing really shines, however, is in the way it compliments other skills. Most of my Scavenging and Underground Trading materials come from those unlocked mission items. A level 340 will return at least 30k worth of mats for Scavenging, and at least 50k worth of mats for UT. The more gathering and mission skills you have across all your characters, the more valuable Slicing is. It's good at a direct source of wealth, but fantastic as an indirect source. I consider it a very important crafting support skill. Now, as far as crafting goes, it does need a lot of work, and they made a lot of mistakes in a lot of places, but I don't think it's an inherently broken system. The main problems for high level crafting, as I see it, are: The randomized stats you can get on a high level purple are horrible. If you're not going to allow people to select which schematic they're going to get, then at least put some time into the itemization process. Wasting a critical roll with a +presence is unacceptable. "You already have that schematic." Incredibly frustrating. Take it out. The invalidation of select segments of level 49+ crafting with incredibly easy to obtain BoE items. Currently, the GTN is being flooded with Armoring and Mods people have obtained from turning in commendations or as quest rewards, which are listed FOR LESS THAN HALF of what it costs a crafter to create them. That's messed up, and a big mistake. Even just turning these into BoP would help, even if it wouldn't solve the entire problem. The idea of getting an augment slot on a critical is pretty bad. It requires people to make pieces they do not want in order to get something that they do want. It would be better if slotted pieces were separate options that required like 5x the mats of a normal piece, OR you got a much higher return on materials when you RE'd a purple that you didn't need. Give us hotkeys to open our craft windows so we can see what schematics we have and what materials they need. Having to exit the GTN just to check stuff like that is annoying. I don't personally have a problem with the actual RE rate for getting a purple. It should take a considerable investment of both time and money. My average for level 49 Earpieces is around 60 attempts, last I checked, and I'm fine with that. A purple isn't something you should get easily. However, it shouldn't take 200+ attempts just to get something worth crafting because you got unlucky on your criticals and hit a garbage schematic you'll never make. Fix the issues I've listed and it would go a long, long way toward making me content with this system.

There are no genuine "rich" mission for grade 6. Only a mislabeled "moderate". You can't be running "rich" grade 6 missions like you said in the OP because there aren't any. That aside, purple metals are pretty rare, especially considering the length of the missions. That's why 80%, if not more, of my metals come from unlocked mission items. I get them from Slicing and I also snap them up from the GTN if run across any at 20k or less. Relying on normal UT mission alone yields very little purple metals.

Dunno about the grade 5 mission, but the grade 6 is actually a "moderate" mission, not a "rich". It's mislabeled. If it were actually "rich", it would be yellow and more expensive.

They're supposedly going to address this, hopefully in the next major patch. Personally, I've stopped REing until that comes. Right now I'm just gathering materials in preparation.

Slicing does return a few blue and purple schematics that you can't get from a vendor, mostly for ship upgrade parts and BoP speeders. You don't need Slicing, however, as these schematics are usually on the GTN for cheap. There are also drops in Operations for high level stuff. Other than that, though, yeah, Reverse Engineering, which is completely random. You might get a purple schematic after a dozen tries, or after a hundred tries. You get a message when a companion hits a critical while crafting. I think it's something like "with great success." It only applies to Earpieces for Cybertech, however, as it has no impact on Armor or Mods. There are bugs and things that need to be fix. You should be able to browse your crafting menu while at the GTN, for example, and you will sometimes get a "you already know that schematic" message when you hit a critical while Reverse Engineering. Very frustrating, and hopefully a lot of this will be addressed in the next content patch.

I don't believe it makes any difference if you RE a critical blue. I've heard no one mention it, anyway, and I haven't noticed any difference when REing a green with an augment slot. Personally, I sell any blues I get with an augment slot. They actually sell better for me than unslotted purples, and I sell both pretty cheap, relatively speaking. My guess is that people fresh to 50 buy them as temp pieces, or they buy them for their crew members.

For a base green, there are only three blue possibilities. +crit, +power, or +defense. What you have there is +power, which is good. Everyone likes power. Because of the +alacrity, that's probably a Sorcerer piece (I think). Unless I'm mistaken, the other +willpower non-tanking green has +accuracy, which would likely make it an Assassin piece (I think). You have to decide from the stats on the green pieces you have available which would be best for a particular class, then build up from that. Which what you have there, I would try to get a purple with +surge or MAYBE +alacrity, but you'd have to ask a Sorcerer about how much they value alacrity--most classes don't value it much. I don't think Sorcerers care much about the other options, which would be +accuracy, +shield, or +presence. Edit: After rereading what you said, I think you might be misunderstanding something a bit. You're NOT going to get a purple that adds +crit or +power. That's not how it works. Those stats are ONLY added when you go from a green to a blue. When you go from a blue to a purple, the ONLY stats that can be added are surge, presence, accuracy, shield or alacrity. Those are the only choices.

Yeah, I have three schematics with +presence. I'll never make them, though, unless presence is somehow improved. Here is a chart that's linked in the RE Sticky above. http://imgboot.com/thumbs-large/Slaign/prefix.jpg The pieces I sell the best are Veracity for tanks, and Endowment and Expert for everyone else. And that's pretty much it, actually. I have Fervor and Hawkeye pieces (+accuracy), but they don't sell very well.

How could you leave out the most important one? Blue to purple can give you Accuracy, Alacrity, Presence, Surge, or Shield. No Absorb, though. Shame on you for forgetting Presence.

What do you mean by Endurance? As far as I know, Endurance, along with the primary stat, are completely static. The Endurance value of a purple is going to be exactly the same as on the original green. You can only add crit, power, or defense (blue), and then one of the five purple values, but that's it.

Woo, very nicely laid out. Thanks for the effort.

Definitely, especially with high companion affection. If you have high companion affection, and you run the grade 5 rich missions, then you're going to see crits that can return blue lockboxes in the 4-8k range. Even though you're going to see a lot of net losses, with returns below what the mission cost, the crits make up for it. Lockboxes are secondary, however. I don't even look when I open them anymore, unless they're blue. The real reason to run Slicing constantly is the unlocked mission items you can get with a critical. Depends on your server, but the level 340 ones all sell for a nice profit (except Investigation). A couple of them list in the 25k+ range. It's even better if you can use them. From a level 340 Underground Trading mission unlock, I usually get about 50k worth of materials. The more mission skills you have on your alts, the more Slicing pays off. That's not to mention how nice of a gathering skill it is. The lockboxes you find in the wild aren't usually all that much, but on some planets they can add up fast. I often end up with a full inventory before I know it. Just doing daily quests at level 50, I can usually pick up an extra 10-20k from grabbing all the lockboxes I come across. Of course, I open my map constantly, and keep "resources" checked, so that's probably more than some other people end up with.

Go to Ilum or Belsavis and see if they offer what you want with the Armoring. If so, then don't bother with RE'ing. I got the purple schematic for the Armoring I would need when I hit 49 while I was around level 40, and I haven't even used it once. You can get everything you need within 2 weeks, and the Mods you can get from one of the quests is actually superior. It's a group quest, but you can solo it easily (at least on Imperial side). Worse yet, you likely will never be able to make any profit from those schematics. The Armoring and Mods are BoE, which means that people run the quests and then sell the rewards on the GTN for much less than it takes to craft them, on my server anyway. I see the Armoring for 20k quite often.