I appreciate the thorough answer. It was my goal to build my toons good weapons until I looted something better, and to sell items on GTN. Up until this point I've just been teaching myself how the game works and this gives me a much better idea of what I'm looking at now. Thanks again.

Ok. Sorry for not being quite clear enough in what I meant. An example of what I mean would be the camouflaged sniper rifle. It requires my armstech be 450, required level to use 54, an item rating of 8, and damage is 39-48. I'm guessing that the way to make good gear is to start with the basics provided by the crew skill trainer and reverse engineer items until I get better schematics. I'm still new at this game so I know I'm missing something.

I was wondering why the high level stuff that can be build is such a low level? Must be a level 54 to use a level 8 item?