Would this help make crew skills worthwhile?

[Calagari]

General issues:

• RE is overly random.

• A significant amount of crafted equipment is lower in quality and capability than quest rewards and mod vendor purchases (esp. considering that commendations allow for "free" mod purchases).

 

Specific armourmech and synthweave issues:

• Some of the armour skins are horrible.

 

 

What could help:

 

• Allow for more control during the RE process.

This could be a priority system where the crafter sets his RE-ing priorities (i.e. +defence = priority 1, then +power = priority 2, then...). This would skew the results of RE-ing towards the high priorities such that the crafter would be more likely to get a +defence, than a + alacrity if these were his top and bottom priorities - but would have the same basic chance of getting an RE. This would work especially well if it was implemented such that that if you had already learnt the schematic of a prioritised element, then its priority would automatically be dropped to the end of the list (or off the bottom) - meaning that you wouldn't try to learn that schematic again!

 

• Provide a unique selling point to each profession

Armour crafters: Reinforcement packs

Allow all armour sets made by crafters (even low level sets) to have craftable set bonuses called a "Reinforcement Pack". This bonus would only be applicable with multiple pieces of armour with the same Reinforcement Pack applied (i.e. 4 and 6 piece bonuses). These set bonuses would be level relevant and could potentially be purchased from the relevant vendor (maybe with commendations), unlocked via quest, or be mob / boss, FP / Ops drops. This set bonus could be implemented as a separate pack that could be learnt per specific type of armour (i.e. Heavy Ribbed Reinforcement pack).

This would mean that end-game crafted armour could compete with quest, mod and other armour forms... but at a cost to the crafter.

 

Weapons makers: Amplification packs

These could be added to a main hand weapon only, and do not stack (i.e. only the main hand weapon pack applies its effect). The packs provide a bonus to the weapon that they are applied to - including better energy efficiency, more direct damage, more DoT damage, etc.

 

Modification crafters: Enhancement packs

Crafted modifications could be further enhanced by applying armour enhancement packs. Only 1 such pack could be able to be applied to each piece of armour (with a greatly reduced level of capability compared to the "reinforcement" pack, but when all the same "enhancement" packs are combined it is equivalent - but mixed packs do not stack), and 1 to the main hand weapon.

 

• Modify the armour / weapon making system

Enable crafters of weapons and armour to select a pattern (an orange), then select a stat package (which replaces all the mod slots with the stats), and then to build this. To support this it would be necessary to be able to RE oranges to get orange schematics - the chance of getting a schematic would have to be quite high as getting oranges is not that common. However the main change would be that crafters would learn patterns (i.e. the skin), and production techniques (i.e. the stats) instead of complete weapons and armours.

This would allow for a much greater variety of looks for armour/weapon, as well as letting crafters make moddable and stat based equipment of the same design.

 

• Allow for commendation trading on the GTN.

This would allow commendations to be the equivalent of money, which would mean that crafters could get paid in commendations and non-crafters could have more cash to buy craft made equipment. Also it would remove the current stack of small numbers of old commendations that most players have.