Only problem with that solution is companions. Be nice if I could just choose what level I buy it at.

The real problem slicing has is that it really only works early-mid-game. There are no controls to prevent a level 10 alt from powering through to 400 slicing & running the top-level missions, so to keep the curve even a little balanced they had to chop off the end-game usability. Really, the solution is to have player level & max mission level linked, then scale the missions so the ROI for a given mission level matches the expected income of the same player level. I'm using slicing on all of my characters as they're leveling, then around level 40 or so I drop it for a real gathering skill & power-grind through it. There's no point in keeping slicing late game.

Slicing can be summed up pretty simply, really. At launch, the ROI was FAR too high, so it got slashed. They overcompensated. If we're lucky, the extended silence is because they've got a group of experienced actuaries and economists locked in a closet somewhere hammering out a new economy that'll be announced soon. After Tho Fan, I'm ready to believe Bioware would do damn near anything.

For a quick comparison, if harvesting nodes is supposed to make slicing worthwhile and missions are just for leveling, why don't other crafting missions cost materials instead of credits? If you ran an L1 Scagenging mission & had to pay in desh to run it, would you be satisfied with a miniscule return after investing perfectly good capital and waiting for it?

Honestly, it would make sense if a player's level had to at least equal the Mission Level of a given task, then rebalance it so the top-level missions provide the best return-on-investment. Pulling numbers out of the air, call it 30-40 credits/hour. Still nowhere near the 100+ from pre-nerf, but enough to be respectable. With the level requirement, if a player wants to farm multiple characters they still can but the time investment would be substantial. As it should be.

"Honesty and integrity" is not at issue here, merely sample sizes and assumptions. I will admit, the blanket statement of "solid data" on my part was premature, however all we have to go on are empirical statistics. The only ones with the hard numbers are the devs, and they are the only ones who really need it. All I want to do is draw their attention to things that need fixing and give a general idea of how I'd like it to be done. The specifics are beyond my purview.

This is solid data, and proves to highlight something. The most profitable missions are the "Moderate Yield" ones, not the Abundant or Rich. Also "wrong" is the most efficient mission requires Slicing 175. The top level slicing missions, as well as the ones you have to acquire mission items to get, are practically useless. 2000 credits/hour isn't completely unreasonable, but that should be the return on the top-level missions, not the mid-level ones.

I have been trying to find information on how, exactly, crafting works. There are big things like "Mission Levels" that seem to have no clear association with crafting ability. My best guess is that they correspond to the player level at which they are deemed "most useful". Other things, like if I have an item of a given difficulty to craft, or a mission of a given difficulty, what factors affect success and critical rates? How, precisely, does affection fit in? I'm seeing people posting that 10K affection is equivalent to a 15% efficiency bonus. Is that accurate? Does it scale linearly? The big question I have is, to give a specific example, Slicing has the crew missions "Missing Probes" and "Spy Droid". "Spy Droid" has a required skill of 195, mission level 34 and costs 665 credits while "Missing Probes" requires 190, mission level 33 and costs 645 credits. Both list as producing "Moderate Yield: Class 4 Lockboxes". Is there any advantage to paying the extra 20 credits? What precisely is the difference in drop rates between the different yields? Are "Moderate" yields incapable of producing the same results or just less likely? By how much? Is there anything I can do as a player to improve my success/critical rates for missions? Crafting? It would be very nice if the mechanics of the crafting system were made more transparent. I'd feel much less like I'm walking through a dark forest with a pocket Maglite, trying to find patterns in the leaves.

Treerootz, what crafting profession are you using?

The bottom line is the other professions need to be made viable. Sure, if you're an Armortech you can't build the epic stims and buying them costs a lot of credits... but if Armortech were viable you could put in as much effort as the guy selling the stims and make the cash to buy them. Zero sum. The money needs to start flowing and nerfing classes will not fix that.

I have been thinking hard on what about TOR's economy is dragging things down. I have to say, the slicing nerf is not it. All slicing did was print money, a temporary solution at best. In the real world, we call that "inflation" and it is generally considered bad. No, the problem is that nothing encourages us to spend money. Any gear I can buy is a stopgap until I've ground through & collected that rare drop off that one champion somewhere, or completed a certain set of quests. I'm not going to empty my pockets for it. So, how do you encourage people to pay money to other players instead of NPCs? Give them the ability to do something worth paying for. Make it so some craftable gear is in the high-end of what is available at a given item level, then control rarity and cost by controlling access to materials. The single easiest way to get the credits flowing is give crafting the ability to make aesthetic changes to gear. Make it so an Armortech can, for example, paint a set of armor or add decorative bits, etc. Set up the screen so both players can view the results & charge COD for it. Boom, instant market. Players are giving other players money without changing the gear balance at all. Another example, I recently got a schematic for building a speeder from a Slicing mission. Intitial reaction was "Awesome, finally something I can make people would pay for!". Then I looked closer and saw that not only were the materials cost higher than just /buying/ the thing from a vendor, but it was BOP. So, not only could I not sell it, but even if I somehow could it would be at a loss. What then is the point of including it? No sane person will ever use that schematic. Market? Denied. So. What needs to happen is the market needs revamping to encourage players to give money to other players. The problem is not a lack of funds, it's that what funds exist are going right back into the NPCs instead of sharing around. ---- Thoughts? Reaction? Threats? Letter bombs?

No it doesn't. I've got a level 10 mercenary I'm using for slicing stuff. As I type this, Mako's on a Mission Level 25 mission. I really wish Bioware would expose more of how crew skills actually work, numbers wise. What is the default crit level? What exactly does affection do for time/crit chance, etc? What is the probability distribution for item quality by output level? IE, what's the difference between Moderate, Abundant, etc? How does skill rating compare to "Mission Level"? The drop down menu is the only indicator for "Mission Level" I can see. Does it serve any purpose? It would make more sense to call it Mission Grades & just number it 1-6.