And that 18 slots is just for you, if your companions are in orange gear it gets much worse. This was why I went cybertech on my BH actually. I figured it was easier to spend the commendations on orange gear for myself/companions and make ~1/2 the mods. The extra mods I can make sell decently on the GTN (several are better than what the vendors have before 50), and I have plenty of cash for any extra gear that's not from a vendor or just looks cool. Really the bottom line is though, if you pick what you enjoy and you're frugal about your credits, keeping yourself and your companions geared won't be much of an issue as credits are pretty easy to come by. All the crafting skills are going to balance out eventually so just pick what you like to do.

Player crafted gear will never be the best, it's been stated entirely too many times (even by Bioware). Biochem has an awesome perk at lvl 50/400, the other's don't have a perk of any kind. The medpac nerf was needed for obvious reasons. Biochem isn't OP people need to quit crying. Just because the rest of the crafting skills suck at 50 doesn't justify ruining biochem, the others need to be fixed. Bioware really did drop the ball on the crafting skills of this game. However considering the rest of this game is so damn good I think we can live with a poor crafting system for a few months can't we?