I have actually dropped slicing in favor of cybertech, so I will no longer be actively maintaining the spreadsheet. Thank you all for the feedback you've provided.

I concur with this sentiment. Slicing is useless at the current credit acquisition rate compared to the credit generation of other crew skills that actually produce marketable goods. Regardless though, there are other threads that have been set up to discuss the nerfs to slicing.

Very nice work here. What was your end money amount?

The statement was "Only expect long-term profit from green and gray missions. I've seen that yellows can fail and oranges do way too often." It is correct that mission failures lose money, obviously. This is a myopic view of the data that has been presented through our collection. The information presented here is not a leveling guide for slicing. The purpose of this data collection is to find the missions that offer the highest return on time and credit investment at 400 slicing when there are no more "yellow or orange" missions and you are left with only grey and green missions to select from. The color coding on the spreadsheet should not be taken as the color they appear on your mission window as I discussed in a previous post.

This is completely incorrect.

There isn't enough data to be statistically relevant yet and there may have been some nerfs in 1.1a. Just keep running 'The Automated Saboteur' and 'Be careful what you read' for now and in the long run you will generate more credits than you receive.

Now is as good of a time as any to explain the way missions work. There are four classifications of standard mission yields: Moderate, Abundant, Bountiful, and Rich. On my spreadsheet, these missions are color coded based upon their classification. The reward for completing a Rich Mission is greater than a bountiful, which is greater than abundant, which is greater than moderate. The behavior you see on the spreadsheet is that rich missions give slightly smaller credit return per minute, but that is likely due to their potential for other returns such as missions discoveries. Rich missions on the other hand will give you the highest actual profit when time is not a factor. Other gathering professions have rich missions at 49-50, which give extremely good returns. Slicing does have rich missions in that level range, but they are specifically related to augments and not credit boxes. The credit box missions in 49-50 are for finishing leveling slicing to 400 and should not be viewed as a reliable source of credit generation.

A heads up here, there may have been some buffs since the patch today. We have started collecting new data and separated it from the old information. It will be a few days until we have enough information to even be slightly statistically relevant.

New OP ---------------------------- Despite seeing extensive nerfs in a recent patch, slicing is still a profitable crew mission skill. The greatest benefit you gain from slicing is that here is that it is immediately profitable from the first credit box mission to the last. You realize profits as soon as you open up the credit box while other professions have to wait much longer using traditional sales methods to sell their final product (IE GTN or trade channels). While the immediate profitability offers a strong incentive to picking up slicing, you're stuck with an absolute maximum you can make off the credit boxes exclusively. Although, critical mission successes will sometimes grant you cybertech schematics which may offer additional sources of income. That's all well and good, but you write a lot. Get to the point!!!!! What do I need to do to generate credits? Here's your answer: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0ArCSGLnwZLADdGxYdlhEejBFclBjR3l1N29OaW1kYUE&gid=5 My guild members, some people from these forums, and my other friends have spent some time collecting data about how much you can make from slicing. All the data on the 'Average Credit Worksheet' and 'TLDR' represent exclusively post-nerf data. You can compare it to the 'Pre-Nerf glory days' sheet to see what make slicing awesome for the first two weeks of release, but it's meaning will continue to decline. What missions will give me the best return on my time and credit investment? The majority of the data collected is from empire missions. If you do not see that mission available or have never seen it, then you are probably Republic and have a comparable one. The results will be similar between missions of the same yield. For example, The Automated Saboteur will offer the same yield as 'Arranged Accidents'. There is not sufficient information to accurately reflect the credit gain on the Republic side missions These missions will give you the "best" credit return on your time investment: Missing Probes, For Better or Worse, The Automated Saboteur, Take the Money and Run, Be Careful what you read, and Delivery Failure. It is extremely important to understand that these numbers are not perfect. You may not see immediate returns, but over time these missions have shown to be consistently profitable. The level 41-49 Rich missions will generally reward additional rewards that are not necessarily quantifiable in terms of this spreadsheet. Critical mission success on these missions will reward high level patterns and better credit boxes, which improve the profitability. The missions listed in green will generally only give you credit returns and have a very low probability of providing you anything other than giving you the basic credit box. Companions – Companions do receive time discounts on all missions. The break points were determined by measuring various data points as leveling companion affection. The listed time to complete a mission is static on each mission and does not change, but when you send out your companion the time until they return fluctuates based upon their affection level. We measured the time required to send them out on missions compared to what the listed time and Malthrin was able to determine the formula for the break points in time discounts. Mission failure – Including mission failures was something I initially considered, but decided to exclude them in the end. My justification for doing so is because they are avoidable once you level past their failure level. The UI is not very effective at the moment at conveying that you may see a mission failure if you send your companion out on a Orange, but the mission will not fail if it is listed in yellow (not 100% sure here), green, or grey. Most importantly keep in mind that in the end, slicing is a gathering profession. You may actually find that running around Ilum or Voss will give you a better return on your time to get credits by finding boxes. If you found mining or herbing enjoyable in World of Warcraft, then this may be how you want to slicing. Credit to my good friends in <Revenge of the Jerks> on Veela, the very intelligent Malthrin for the work on determining the formula for companion affection, and the Elitist Jerks benefactors and many more for contributing to the data on my spreadsheet. Revision 3:18 PST - 2011/12/23: Changed URL to final google doc final output. Original URL will no longer be maintained. Revision 3:01 PST - 2011/12/24: Added notes regarding thread discussion. Revision 9:36 PST - 2012/01/06: Re-wrote OP to include a post-nerf guide.

Original post. OP is now updated. :force persuade: Disregard all data in this post. So you're probably thinking, "slicing is awesome and makes me so many credits, but I really want to make the most credits possible! " My guild and I have done extensive research to find the most profitable missions based upon time and credits spent to send your crew on missions. Now, a few of these missions don't have statistically large sample sizes, but by and large this seems to be the best option for your time and credit. Here's your answer: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/pub?key=0ArCSGLnwZLADdGxYdlhEejBFclBjR3l1N29OaW1kYUE&output=html So what exactly are you looking at here? I'll summarize a few points: This chart is currently sorted by average credit earned (after operating expenses) per minute spent (including the highest level time discount you can get at 10,000 affection). Higher level missions is not always more profitable! Surprisingly, the most profitable mission for time spend and credits spent is 'The Automated Saboteur', a mission obtained at skill level 175! While the average net profit is not going to garner you the highest amount of credits per mission, if you're online and constantly sending your companion out on missions always choose this one first because it will generally give you the highest profitability. See the list for what are the other profitable missions! The second sheet of my spreadsheet is a document showing some research we performed to determine how the companion affection impacts the time discount. What was found is that companion's affection versus the time discount they offer is not a linear relationship, but rather there are breakpoints every 750 affection that decreases the time it takes for your companion. SO WHY IS THAT IMPORTANT??? What this let's you know is if you are borderline on one of the breakpoints, it might be worth picking up a companion gift or finishing that quest line before you send them off on another mission. Feel free to post any comments here or PM me if you have any questions about our results. Additional Notes that have come up throughout the discussion in the thread: Companions – Companions do receive time discounts on all missions. The break points were determined by measuring various data points as leveling companion affection. The listed time to complete a mission is static on each mission and does not change, but when you send out your companion the time until they return fluctuates based upon their affection level. We measured the time required to send them out on missions compared to what the listed time and Malthrin was able to determine the formula for the break points in time discounts. Mission failure – Including mission failures was something I initially considered, but decided to exclude them in the end. My justification for doing so is because they are avoidable once you level past their failure level. The UI is not very effective at the moment at conveying that you may see a mission failure if you send your companion out on a Orange, but the mission will not fail if it is listed in yellow (not 100% sure here), green, or grey. Nerfs – We are not seeing any demonstrable nerfs to slicing profitability. What you need to keep in mind is that the range on the credits received is pretty big, but in the long run the average profitability is pretty strong for the missions at the bottom of the list and we have strong data set to show that they are consistently profitable. Regardless, we will continue to monitor the profitability of slicing to see if we observe any nerfs. Should it be nerfed? - Ultimately the scope of this spreadsheet was to assume that you were max slicing and how to maximize the profitability on your slicing missions with regard to gaining credit boxes. In the long run though, the augments are going to be the real cash cow of slicing. Once people are at max level and want to improve their gear with augments, slicing will play a big role in allowing people to do that and that is where the profitability will come from. Credit boxes are the easy way to inject credits into a brand new game without devaluing the currency completely. The problem is that the perception that 100,000 credits is a lot of currency, but it isn’t. Think of it like a penny. 100,000 pennies is worth $1,000 and while it may seem like a lot of money, it’s not going to let you retire. I imagine that as we move forward in the game, people are going to realize that the perceived value of credits is overestimated. Credit to my good friends in <Revenge of the Jerks> on Veela, the very intelligent Malthrin for the work on determining the formula for companion affection, and the Elitist Jerks benefactors for contributing to the data on my spreadsheet. Revision 3:18 PST - 2011/12/23: Changed URL to final google doc final output. Original URL will no longer be maintained. Revision 3:01 PST - 2011/12/34: Added notes regarding thread discussion.

This is correct. --------- I will rework the OP at some point this week, but my job is crazy at the beginning of the month plus I just hit 50 so updating the thread is on the back-burner for a bit.

Do you use any criteria for determining which mission to send your companion out or did you just send them out on whatever credit box mission was available? The data in the spreadsheet shows that all credit box missions can be profitable, but that some missions are more profitable than others. I am not going to say that the information in the spreadsheet is the end-all, be-all compendium because it definitely has flaws. Could it be more profitable for you? Maybe, but you may incur other unquantifiable costs in the form of extra time required to micro-manage your companions. You have found a way to make slicing profitable while still being fun for you and that is far more important to you than min/maxing your profitability, which is what I find fun.

Sorry, yeah I misread. I can see your point here and understand your perspective. The spreadsheet data is limited in that it only shows the credit gain and does not have the capacity to show the impact of critical mission results. When this spreadsheet was created, there was no market to sell missions or schematics from critical missions and were not material sources of income. Ultimately, this spreadsheet may be misleading in how to generate the maximum income from slicing post-nerf. It will however show you how to ensure that if someone takes up slicing as a new crew mission skill that they can be profitable while leveling the skill.

You're over-valuing how much a credit is worth.

You spent 15k to make 6k and you don't see why this is the wrong way to increase your fortune?