OK I figured out the gear upgrade process, kind of a kludge but it works:
Open Chapters and launch the first chapter of KOTFE. Confirm you want to do this. This gives you a ship.
Go to Odessen. Turn around and behind you there is a slot machine.
Right click on the slot machine and you will get 10 million credits and 1000 tech fragments each time. Do this 11 times and you'll have tech fragments.
Now you can buy mod items (hilts, armorings, mods, enhancements, etc.) from the SoW vendor on Fleet. Slot them as you go and your item level will go up, and thus so will the item level of each piece you get. Rinse and repeat until you get to 306. If you need more tech fragments go back to Odessen and hit the slot machine some more.
It's a super kludgey way to do it, but at least you can get gear.
Why we wouldn't just get full 306 gear from the vendors on fleet is beyond me. Seems like it would be trivial to change some numbers around in the vendor data and make the process simple so we can get down to testing without coming up with kludges.
HOWEVER MORE IMPORTANTLY: we're still missing Force Kick and Resolute. I tried deleting/recreating my character, picking both loadouts, etc. No joy and I don't see how anyone is testing tanking without these abilities.
