So, since there is no word on any changes, I’ll join in the hijacking of this thread to how to “fix” slicing. Now before I begin I’ll assert that if any crew skill needs fixing its Artifice, but limiting this to slicing here is what I have to say about psandak’s idea… Slicing is listed as a gathering skill, and you do need skill level to pick up the slicing nodes out in the field. These nodes are straight credits. So the missions for Slicing should be the same as the other gathering skills. *IF* you wanted to keep slicing as a gathering CS then the nodes and missions should yield two or four new green quality resource types. These resource types should be used exclusively for green quality augments regardless of who crafts them. Offensive augments could be cost 2:1 of one type of the gathered resource, while defensive augments reverse the ratio. A new vendor item could be added, and all three resources could make up the mission yields for Slicing. As far as the blue and purple mission mats go for making augments, shift those missions to investigation which is has the lowest demand for resources of the four mission CSs. *IF* you want slicing to be only a gathering CS in the field and only a mission CS when running missions, then obviously blue and purple augment resources would remain the same, but Slicing lockbox missions would be replaced with mission discovery missions. Moderate and Abundant missions would yield a random green quality mission discovery and yield a blue quality on crits. Bountiful and Rich missions would yield a random blue quality mission discovery and a purple quality on crits. Green quality Wealthy missions discoveries would yield something less than bountiful, just with a 0% chance of failure and a fixed amount unlike the other missions types which give random ranges. Taking it another step further, keep slicing as a pure gathering CS, just instead of gathering for craft CSs, you are gathering resources for mission CSs. So slicing nodes would remain a credit box. Credit lockbox missions would remain the shorter/cheaper mission type for slicing. Augment “Tech Parts” missions could be moved to Investigation and save that CS. The longer/expensive mission type for slicing would be a different type of mission discovery system. Currently in the game there are crafting mats that are purchased from a vendor. The appropriate gathering CS has a mission type which yields the same crafting mat, and except for grade 1, is the best “value” per unit when focusing on just cost. My idea for a new mission discovery system is to create a new currency similar to the companion gift currency. This mission discovery currency would be used to purchase specific mission discoveries. The slicing missions would yield this currency with similar randomness as found in the other gathering missions. Crits in these missions would yield the random blue or purple mission discoveries that we see today from slicing lockbox missions. Crits from slicing lockbox missions would no longer yield a random mission, just be a higher quality credit box. Wealthy missions would have to be completely rebalanced as they are now a direct purchased resource instead of just a random crit. Fixed returns and 0% failure would remain, but the overall yields would be reduced as they will be dramatically more common than before. Overall this would create a new method of gathering. You could go with the scavenging, bioanalyst, or archeology that is appropriate with your crafting CS, or you can select the wildcard gathering CS of Slicing and earn credits in the field to offset CS leveling costs or use slicing missions to generate a dependable income of mission and gathering mats. There are tweaks to every CS that I could suggest that go hand in hand with these ideas, but even just limiting the discussion to slicing, these are an interesting idea that would have a dramatic impact to crafting overall. -Joel

Just a little history on me, I started with open beta over the Thanksgiving 2011 holiday. I played prelaunch and quit late Jan 2012 after the Rakghoul event. I returned this month a year ago, and played heavily until early Aug when Rome2 came out. Since then I’ve been a limited player of SW in part because my crafting system is not self-sustainable and due to my dissatisfaction with the apparent shift in focus of the developers to generate money with the cartel market. As anyone can see, I participated in this thread over two months ago and it was the last post I found on topic when I wanted to see if there were any updates that are pertinent to me. I know full well that I am in a very small group of players that just want to craft. Add to that, I don’t craft for profit, I craft for my own use and for my guild, which is very large. When I came back to the game, I kept four toons that were mostly teenagers but had 400 slicing. I ran eight slicing lockbox missions back to back to back. The profits of those went into leveling up the CS of eight new toons. Six of the eight had slicing. Alongside the four, these six would spam lockbox missions themselves. The low end mission discoveries were a large part of how I leveled 13 mission and gathering crew skills. The fixed rate of success and yields gave me an even and steady supply of mats which I used to level six crafting CSs simultaneously. Once I got through a grade in crafting I would level up the supporting mission and gathering CS to the next level and start the process all over. Even with just the starter companion and the ship droid (at that time with 0 affection) my entire game experience was toon hopping and sending companions out on missions. With twelve toons, by the time I got through all of them, even the grade 6 lockbox missions had completed. There was no time to use other avenues to generate credits. And ALL the profits for the hundreds of slicing lockbox missions was going on went right back into improving something related to crafting from Legacy unlocks, companion gifts, or running all the wealthy missions. With all my slicers, I leveled 18 mission and gathering CSs from 340-400 with just mission discoveries. Even after all of that and many donations to guildies, I have three cargo holds of 340 mission discoveries. Only after I leveled everything up to 400 did I start to make a profit with crafting, and that was only a residual effect of projects that I took on. First I ran slicing tech part missions and learned all 308 augment schematics. The profits I saw were from selling duplicates for 20k each. After that, I took it upon myself to learn every orange schematic for armortech and synthweaving for levels 11 to 23. In the first week of RotHC, I spent 2.5 mil on leveling my CS from 410 to 450. Now with any expansion I expect a higher cost to rush to the new cap. But now things are normalized, I would like to be able to return to my play style of just running missions and crafting on now 16 toons. Getting 450 mission discoveries and enough profit to pay for them is all I am looking for. But as the game stands, I would have to spend so many days doing other game activities to earn enough credit for my crafting circle to run. That is not an ideal situation for me, but that is just me. -Joel

Well since there is not a membership date listed that I can find under your profile psandak, I do not know if you have been around for all the versions of Slicing and of Crews Skills as a whole since Summer 2011. Regardless here is a timeline of related events for anyone who has not been around all this time. During beta Slicing credit lockbox missions yielded an insane amount of credits. I haven’t looked up the date, but in one of the updates this was significantly nerfed. The game pre launches on 12/13?/11. On 12/27/11 the first tweaking of the game was made with Patch 1.0.1 which included a further reduction of Slicing credit lockbox mission yields. Still the yields are profitable. Fast forward over a year to 4/09/13 and 2.0.0 Rise of the Hutt Cartel is released. A new tier of crafting is added to the game. As with every game expansion that I have ever been a part of, the yields of all gathering are lower and the cost for all crafting are higher than in lower tiers. 4/12/13 is when Amber posted what I and others have linked. Patch 2.0.1 came on 4/23/13 and “normalized” the yields for missions for everything EXCEPT Slicing credit lockboxs. Now in support of your hypothesis psandak Amber posted http://www.swtor.com/community/showpost.php?p=6158839&postcount=44 on 4/15/13 which includes this quote: “The reason we've not yet updated Slicing Lockboxes is because it's a lot more of a complex fix, and we want to be certain that any changes that we make are mindful to possible impact to the game's economy.” As far as I know, this is the last posting on the subject. I have been patient, and I fully appreciate that my world of crafting makes up a very minuet part of EA’s profit margin and therefore Bioware’s allocation of very limited resources to produce entertaining content and to fix issues as new content is released. If at any point over the past half of a year there was a posting “After reviewing the game economy we the developers of Bioware feel that the current yields for Slicing lockbox missions and nodes are where they should be.” I can make an informed opinion about if the rest of the game is worth my subscription. Still, as far as I know, Slicing lockbox missions are overall profitable for grades 1 through 6, it’s only the grade 9 missions that are not. If protecting the economy really the goal, then why does Slicing remain the only crew skill that does not have a credit cost to level? -Joel

While I would be greatly disappointed by a third nerf of Slicing Lockbox missions that now make them unprofitable, if that is the intent I would like for the developers to state this is a change that they are keeping. However this post stats otherwise and has been the basis of hope that my crafting circle could function independently of other game methods of credit collecting. -Joel

Just getting back into the game, any changes?

Amber has already stated that this is not intended. Gathering crew skill missions that don't crit provide the same materials as those that do, just in lesser quantity. The relative value of these items are subject to the marketplace, which of course vary. There was a saying in WoW that goblin vendors would say. "Time is money friend". So yes going out in the worlds one could farm for free credits, but there is always the cost in time. What method is the best profit over time is always debatable. As far playing the game as it was intended... What a pile. This is a MMO. There is no one way to play or enjoy it. There is PvE, PvP, RP, G&S, and so on. Developers are constantly trying to balance these to make sure that none of them take away from a customers experience. Of course it's like triage, the most effort is applied to where the most are effected. Apparently Slicing Lockbox Missions are low on the list.

When I came back to the game, running nine companions on 400 slicing lockbox missions was how I made money since I did not have a 50. Now that I have my crafting circle set up, I can run twenty bountiful and rich missions at a time. Nowadays I'm not looking to get rich off of SLB's, I'm just trying to be able to afford the wealthy missions that do crit.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=641204 Here is a thread that I gave some general and specific advice which you may find helpful. One thing to note about augment crafting is that it does not require mats from a Mission crew skill as the Slicing Tech part missions fills that need. My first question is what is your Agent, Operative (stealth) or Sniper (no stealth)? Second, how game activity do you enjoy and would like to spend the most time playing? Ideal for a stealther but while the more gathering skills you know the more chasing down *’s on the mini map you will do which may distract you from what you’re having fun playing the game. IMHO Cybertech is the most useful crew skill out there. Because of this, it’s not ideal to be paired with slicing as slicing does not directly supply mats for crafting. To me this combo is best for a tanking raider, still even as a raider DPS or healz there is cost savings if you depend on consumables. Certainly a viable combo, armor will also support your toon and alts, arms much less so with just barrels, but don’t discount synthweaving as Vector will appreciate someone who can craft light armor oranges along with everyone else. -Joel

This is a harsh criticism of the crafting system in SWToR and is in my opinion not a constructive criticism. The debate aspect comes in that the examples you give to what is wrong with the system are in my humble opinion not wrong to the community. My first reply is to your criticism. Games are meant to be fun, if you’re not having fun and truly think that the system is a "terrible design failure" unless there is some evil intent of designers, then it might be time to move on. My suggestion of programming and design is simply another way of saying “walk in another man’s shoes…” My second reply is to asbalana and Mozivicus, because they actually agree with the content of your point of view in how the system is poorly constructed. In a healthy debate, I presented an opposing point of view to every point that you made. Sorry, I do not believe your suspicions are correct, therefore disagree that a solution, especially a non fully fleshed out one, is needed. I hope that Darkdust’s suggestion of boarding/unboarding your ship to reset the available missions relieves some of your frustrations with the game. -Joel

That is surprising. In addition to this post, I would place an in-game ticket to check if that is the intent of the system and to see if there was a way to restore your crew skill back to 430 -Joel

I often run abundant and moderate missions. In fact I run them more than 2 rich/bountiful this & 2 rich/bountiful that. The reason for this is simple. I’m usually gathering mats through missions to balance out my stock due to imbalances created from crafting or gathering in the field. Also for Cybertech, I’m primarily only interested in UWT metals, so when I’m gearing a full set of armor and mods for someone, I’ll send companions out on any that I find, boarding and unboarding the ship to farm for any other UWT metal missions in the grade. With Diplomacy, I’m going on missions primarily for LS or DS points, certainly not both. Gifts are a side benefit, being a cost saver when increasing affection with my companions. No reasonable explanation? #1 One can send, at max, five companions out on missions, so barring farming for particular missions, it stands to reason that only five missions would be available at the same time. I’m grateful that at least there are ways to reset the available missions. #2 Because missions are random, they can not be queued. I’m grateful that crafting allows one to queue up to five on non f2p accounts since most orders are not for a single item. At launch mission yields were say 50% that of 1.7 and costs were for some things 200%. Two months later things are more or less on par to 1.7. So what possible reason could there be other to alienate the entire player base of a game? Well it’s not uncommon with expansions for “slow downs” like these to be put into the game temporarily to prevent hardcore players burning through the new content too quickly. As far as wealthy missions not yielding the same as any combination of three rich and bountiful missions for less time and money, that is statistically wrong for mission CSs. The value of wealthy missions is that they never fail and they always bring back artifact quality mats. Even though I haven’t looked after 2.1, the same can be said for gathering CSs as they never fail and always bring back a fixed quality of everything and not sometimes one thing but not the other as with R&Bs. There are certainly many many quirks to SWTOR crafting, but the “fun” for me in crafting is finding out what is of value to others in the things that I craft. I certainly can understand where people may be disappointed in the crafting in this game and may not be willing or able to explore all the potential of crafting, but the OP is just off base as to the examples that they gave. Kinda my point. Gaming software is a for profit business. For the profits to truly roll in the game must be popular to the masses. I suspect that the OP does not appreciate all the limitations that business puts on the developers. -Joel

My main interest in this game is crafting, so please understand that I am someone who has taken a detailed look at this crafting system. That being said, I disagree with just about every statement and assessment that you give. Instead of trying to counter them point by point, I would simply suggest that if you are not having fun in the game, go spend your time and money in another. If you are unable to find the perfect game for you, then my suggestion would be to learn programming and design your perfect game. Maybe then you can understand the choices that are made to make a game popular yet profitable. -Joel

http://www.torhead.com/search/droid%20sensor

There are no companions with a natural crit for cybertech (other than HK who has +1 to any craft). At Legacy 12 one can purchse a senso part for your ship droid that will grant a +5 crit to cybertech. If you put the supporting gather/mission all on the same toon, then as the previous posteed stated NH is the best bet. -Joel

To my knowledge this has never been the case. Since 2.1 I have started a new toon, worked scavenging for a bit, dropped it, but relized i still wanted it. when i picked it up again it was at skill 1. On that same character I picked up synthweaving and learned a boot schematic from the trainer. i then decided to level synth in a certain way, which didnt require boots, so i droped it. When I picked it up again, I was skill 1 and did not have the boot in my recipes list. -Joel