It depends on what item level you're looking for and I can't cite any examples atm , but a nice trick I discovered of the higher level planets is that there are areas with friendly mobs, that are quest areas for your opposing faction. But since they're heavy occupied by mobs they tend to have a lot of respawning nodes. So if you can find one of these 'friendly' zones , you're free to ride around without getting into fights and scoop up nodes

I don't know if Slicing can get the mats to make thie 'kits' , just the blue/purple parts to make actual augments. The parts to make the 'kits' come from reverse-engineering weapons and armor of a certain level. Unless they do come from re-eng augments themselves.

It can be a pain at the higher levels, but its not that bad the first 3 tiers if you have an alt network like I do. I got everyone to lvl 25 , with different crew skills. I pop on a podcast and hop from alt to alt sending them on missions or crafting , and by the time I get back to the first character they're ready for more missions.