So why doesn't the same hold true for all of the other crafting skills? Is it a problem that armor/weapons/mods made by other crew skills are "permanent"? Will the market be flooded with permanent armor and weapons? Isn't it already? Currently, this is true. And it is also the entire problem with Biochem. Make Rakata implants the Biochem benefit and solve the problem. Its kind of funny that people will willingly except having to continually grind mats/money for consumables, but if you made them grind 4 or 5 new equipment pieces for each raid/warzone, there would be absolute hell to pay. I find that fascinating. I think its because we mentally categorize them as "consumables" and then accept that they aren't permanent. But how arbitrary is that? What makes them fundamentally different than any other piece of equipment? Heck.. the mats required for a single stim are comparable to a piece of equipment.

You're probably best to check out this guide: http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=258426

You mean with regards to the Prefix system? Its the same as the other skills.

There does seem to be a lot of fumbling around from Bioware with regards to Crew Skills. I wish they would just make Rakata implants the bonus for being biochem, and allow the reusable "consumables" to be traded and sold. I'm amazed that game developers still include money/mat grinds for consumables in this day and age of mmo development. I'm even more amazed that players still tolerate it. I suppose the latter explains the former.

SWG crafting had some really cool aspects to it, but in general it wasn't spectacular for one simple reason: the leveling process for crafting was absolutely horrible. When I first started playing, I tried out Droid Engineer. Economically mastering that profession required making several THOUSAND worthless droid parts. The same part.. non stop. Manually clicking through UI windows several THOUSAND times, always selecting the exact same buttons. It was utterly mind numbing and soul destroying. Imagine my reaction, after mastering Droid Engineer, when I discovered that it was an almost completely worthless profession. To this day, I still regard that process as the absolute worst grind I have ever encountered in an mmo. Not the longest grind, but still the worst.

Well, yeah. That would be a problem. Of course, Treasure Hunting and Underworld Trading are MISSION skills, not GATHERING skills. Comparing the missions available to them is rather unproductive since Slicing has an extra aspect to it that TH and UT lack - gathering nodes. Slicing gathers augments and mission schematics still. I have a Biochem/Bioanalysis/Diplo set up, and I can tell you that if I want to get rare medical supplies with diplo in anything resembling an economical fashion, I have to buy purple diplo schematics from the gtn. Guess who sells me those? Also, Slicing still gathers large amounts of credits if you're willing to gather nodes. No. what they did was to reduce a Slicer's ability to print money, and make them invest a little leg work and take a little risk to achieve maximum results. Kind of like everyone else.

Jeez.. I've been doing that all along with Bioanalysis. You mean I've been getting ripped off all along??

Why doesn't anyone seem to understand that Slicing is a GATHERING skill, not a mission skill. If you're evaluating the worth of slicing based purely on the missions, you're ignoring a rather large aspect of the skill. Tip: The contents of high level Slicing nodes are really quite substantial.