...except that it's impossible to get the slot machine without someone spending real life money to buy a bunch of packs and hoping to draw one? What scenario are you envisioning here where this makes the mats available for free? Hoping a friend gets a slot machine and shares?

I'm not saying it SHOULD be nerfed. I'm saying it's GOING to be nerfed, and given that, I have suggestions for the particular nerf I'd prefer

Closer to 2 per 99, looking across multiple peoples' data, but yeah.

Personally, I'd rather see a per-day ceiling (or a small random chance of the machine 'breaking' for the remainder of the day each time you use it) than a cooldown. A cooldown would destroy the 'pumping tokens over and over' compulsive feel that makes it actually feel like a slot machine

One possible nerf they could apply would be to limit the number of times the machine can be played per day. That would hit it from several angles...including creating a use for having multiple machines. Currently, if you have one or even have a key to a stronghold that contains one, you're set. No need to try to get another or get one of your own; you're good. Rate-limiting it would maintain some demand for additional slots.

You also have to consider the throughput. It takes 15 minutes max to run through a stack of chips on the slot machine. You'd need to run 15 Rich-500 missions to get roughly the same result, which you might be able to do if you've got several characters with that mission skill capped. But once you start those missions, you have to wait for them to complete. When you finish pumping your chips through the slots, you can turn around and immediately do it again. (Also, my results so far have been 15 purples per stack, not 10) It looks to me like the slots devalue the mission skills. They don't actually hurt the gathering skills much, because the slot machine is NOT a cost or time-efficient way of getting blue or green mats in bulk. Slicing stays pretty good, but drops slightly because the Crew Mission drops will be less valuable.

It's not an exploit. The item is being used precisely as intended - buy the chip, click the machine, collect a reward. It's just overpowered and inevitably destined for a rebalancing. Sort of like some currently-popular combat skills

I'll bite: which one do you have in mind?

Strange. Personally, I was already above the level range listed for each planet when I arrived there, starting with...either Taris or Nar Shaddaa. Never by 6 levels, certainly, but by 2 or so. I didn't do any grinding (bores me silly - and as I was playing a Scoundrel, I actually stealthed past a lot of non-essential combat), but I did a lot of warzones and space missions. I hit Voss mid-way through level 49.

You make some good points and some reasonable requests in your post. But because this is the Internet, I'm going to single out the part I disagree with, instead! This part isn't really a problem. If you're level 25 and adventuring in level 19 zones...you don't NEED level 25 gear. More to the point, toggling off XP gains would have you still producing exactly the same crafted stuff...you'd just be artificially held at 19 so that it was 'the right level' for you. Put on the gear that matches the level for the missions you're on, ignore your actual level as a measure of what you 'should' be wearing, and move on. ETA: Trying to level craft skills beyond the mats you're collecting in the field IS a huge money-sink, and one reason why people go broke. You're totally correct there. But that's a separate issue from outleveling your missions. Anyone who's aggressive about pushing their craft skill can run into this.

Maybe with some interesting terrain? Hey, it'd beat having people dueling around the GTN terminals....

I've noticed in general that there are often no affection bonuses in conversations that take place before the designers expected you to have that companion. If you focus on the class missions to pick up a companion and then go back to complete the earlier missions you skipped, you're not going to see companion reactions for them. That may be what's happening here.

I think this is a pretty easy one to solve, really. Don't worry about punitive penalties - unfair to people who get bugged out or disconnected. God knows it's happened to me. And instead of locking people out of the queue...lock them to the match they exited. So long as that match is running, that's the ONLY match they can get into. If it's full, they're boned. If there's an open slot, they get stuck into it. Net result is: ditching a match won't get you into a DIFFERENT match any faster than sticking it out would (so you might as well stay), and people who get bounced against their will and WANT to get back in, can.

Are there ANY story mission chains that have a space mission component, or are the space missions entirely independent? I haven't run into any yet as of level 41. Personally, I think some integration there would be pretty cool, but the folks who dislike the style of the space missions would certainly be up in arms about it. There are plenty of 'take an assault shuttle to location X' flashpoints. Could extend the space mission code to have each member of the team man a turret on the way to the target. Or space missions where success at a certain number of objectives results in your getting to board an enemy vessel (transition to character mode) and failure results in the enemy boarding YOU.

The RNG weights schematic drops against crew skills you have, in proportion to the number of levels you have in the skill. I thought everyone knew that

Well, and it might not always be so. As people realize this is happening, more folks will shift to UWT and the market will change. On my server right now, the purple ship upgrades are selling for less than the GTN price of their components.

I'm making more profit running tier-2 UWT missions on my alt and selling the results than I am running Slicing missions (with maxed skill) on my main. I think the alt's UWT is around 140. I've gotten...4 or 5 schematics, all of them for Armormech.

What's the mechanism for getting there prior to completing the intro class quest? You don't have warzone access, a ship or emergency fleet pass, and I don't RECALL a fleet shuttle outside of an instance.

What items are on that (newly revealed) list?

Sometimes it feels like it's not 'unrelated' but instead 'backward'. But that's probably just because the really incongruous ones stand out more

This. However, there's definitely a UI nit to pick here. Why is the Crew Mission window organized by 'level' (10-50) instead of by skill level (0-400)? They ought to use one or the other everywhere, or else make the relationship between them more obvious. You shouldn't have to guess at which group it will appear in. (Not that it's HARD to figure it out, but it's awkward design to make people do so)

This probably triggers for consumables, where adding augment slots isn't an option? Are there any sources of +crew crit modifiers OTHER than affection and companion specialities? Does Presence affect this?

Not 100% certain, but pretty sure that it wipes out your progress. Otherwise, the limit on the number of skills would be meaningless - you'd just swap out to whichever one you wanted to use.

The missions are color-coded also; not all missions on the same list are the same color.