Actually, the chests are still there, but on an insanely long respawn timer. If you go to Tatooine looking for them expect to spend an hour or so hoping for one to spawn... or you can get lucky and find one right off the bat. Your milage may vary.

From my understanding when we "buff" a healer, we get credit for their "crit heals"... or some such thing like that. This is just another reason why you should always be buffing others... I know it's hard to remember in the heat of PvP, but it helps everyone.

I completely agree, there would need to be something to dissaude afking, which is why I mentioned it in #2 Still, I like the idea of giving bonuses to people who finish warzones consistently.

I've seen people calling for penalties for people who drop out of warzones and I can understand their frustration, but I wonder if a benefit for finishing warzones would be a better way to go. It doesn't have to be a huge benefit, but it should be something that players would want to sustain. There are a lot of ways you could could enact such a thing, but the important things are: 1) It should be a bonus that builds up over the course of several finished warzones. 2) It should be lost (or decay) if you either leave a warzone before the end or afk. 3) It could be a bonus that benefits the player's combat stats or one that effects valor/commendations earned... depending on which would be the most incentive to players of all gear levels. This would provide an incentive for players to play warzones from beginning to end, but also would allow people to leave warzones due to real life without punishing them. Yes, they'll miss out on the bonus, but as soon as they play three, four, or five games till the end they would be back to the full benefit. Any thoughts? Suggestions?

Guss is awesome... his one liners are worth it alone... and he can wear all my old gear, too

Interesting stuff, thanks for posting.

IANAC... but I think it would make sense for each failed RE to grant a small bonus to the next RE roll. Sort of how they do conversations in FPs. You lose a roll, you get a bonus so that eventually you're going to talk. This bonus would essentially disappear after a successful RE (and not one that says you already know this schematic). It seems to me that a mechanic like this would help avoid some of the frustration of crafting... and maybe lure me into the crafting business.

Yeah this bug happens occasionally, but sometimes you can press the greyed out button and it still sends your companion out. Other times you just have to close the Crew Skills window and reopen. Or in your case, it can be completely random and annoying.

The reset seems to happen when you get a "loading screen." Entering your ship has a loading, but exiting your ship doesn't always have a loading screen. So another way to reset missions is to travel to another planet, get the loading screen, and voila! new missions. Also note: if you have enough people on Diplomacy missions at a particular level, your list for that level won't refresh b/c there are no other missions for you to run until companions come back.

I also think the question of profitability is server dependent: On some servers there are UT missions that can be had for 15-35K, while others as you pointed out have them at 40K+. Obviously, those who are on a server where prices are lower can gain more profit from these missions, especially if they put their critical success companions on these missions and get lucky. My personal experience is that the prices only go up when people notice UT missions are sold out even at higher end prices. If people in need of Mando Iron and other high end mats are being outpriced from these missions, then go directly to the mat sellers. Once the demand drops for UT missions, then the prices will naturally come down to more reasonable levels.

I like this idea a lot! I'm constantly switching toons every half-hour or hour just to send people on missions. This would save me from doing that and allow me to play the game even more.

One thing to keep in mind is that when you buy a mission and run it... there is sometimes a graphical bug that "attaches" to a normal mission. This bug makes it seem like the last mission in your crew skills area is "unlocked." However, this mission wasn't unlocked. It's just a normal mission with a open lock icon next to it. This confused me for a while as to whether missions were one time or multiple uses.

I know there is a request for an Android app, but I thought why not start a request for a Crew Skills Web app attached to the official website. I know Bioware's other games can keep track of your characters in various ways, why not expand that idea to SWTOR's crew skills and allow you to send you companions on missions from the web site. This would allow people with all sorts of devices to send their crew out on missions without having to log into the game. You'd still need to log into the forums or your account, but that wouldn't be too difficult to do. My hope is that apps will appear for both phones and the web, though I think a Web-based one makes more sense to focus on to begin with because those with phones that can web browse could use the web-based app until the phone one comes out. Anyone else interested in such an app?

I think you meant gathering missions... and I agreed. It would be nice to be able to queue up mission missions, too. I know it would certainly save me a lot of time and effort if I could send my gatherers and mission runners on multiple missions. Then I could focus on questing. Of course the problem with gathering and mission missions is that these types of missions have rich, bountiful, abundant, and moderate missions and so how would Bioware want that to work, especially when someone has 3 or more companions.

As someone who sells a lot of crafting missions I would love to know what they actually give. Otherwise I'm just blindly pricing them.