So check back here for updates as I have the time to do more research, but I've been analyzing for my own personal business as an armormech and I wanted to share some of my findings. I think it is most usefull to try and create some 'heuristics' or rules that create a feeling for whether or not something is a 'good buy'. They are 'soft' principles for making a decision, they aren't so much fact.

1) Armor 'Weight' Rule

Chest/ Head/ Legs > Hands/ Feet / waist/ wrist

The armor damage reduction bonus is associated with the armor stat you see on gear. Piece for piece, chest, head, and leg pieces account for about 60% more armor rating than hand, feet, waist, or wrist piece. This basically means, if you have to choose between two pieces of gear that have the same basic stats except for armor go with the head/chest/ or leg piece vs. the lighter hand/feet/waist piece.

2) Price per point gained

After finding a list of armor with the relevant stats, think in terms of credits per rating level, or credits per stat total that you are paying for a piece OR gaining.

IOW, if you have 8k in credits, and in one slot you can get +9 extra strength points for 5k credits and on another slot you can gain +12 points for 8k, the better deal is really the 9 point gain (all other things being equal). 550 credits/strength vs. 660 credits. That's 3k u can use for something else, like a new ability.

Also, since stats roughly directly scale with that simple 'rating' number that you see on all pieces of gear I normally price my armor at a set range of 'credits per rating' point. Sub-level 45 NPC gear vendors sell their gear at about 100 credits per rating level (+/- 5 credits). So level 30 blue gear will probably sell for around 7,500 credits. This leads into...

3) Be familiar with your gear rating level. (See example)

My heuristic for this is have a rating:level ratio of 2.3 or better. In the example we see a ratio of 68 rating/ level 25 or 2.72 (assuming this person was at level 25). You would find your average rating for all of your pieces and that should tell you how 'easily' you can level. The key here is seeing what your class, talent, and legacy bonuses let you optimally use. This is where you can really start to economize.

4) Base/ Tier 1 (+12% stat bonus) / Tier 2 (+25% stat bonus)

This is the combination of principles 1-3. When you know what kind of rating you want to upgrade to, you should start to think about how long you want your gear to last. A rule of thumb is to consider the relative benefit of the stat gain in higher tier crafted gear. That is what you see above. So if currently you are at level 30 and your effective average gear rating has fallen to a ratio of about 2.0 or 60 rating pts, you want it closer to something like 69 (base gear) rating pts with the highest you could get it at level 30 being about 72 rating points (tier 2 gear). If you maxed all your gear out to rating 72 gear then, it would probably last you until about level 34 or 35, especially if it has an augment. If you just buy green (base) you might have a pretty difficult time on some of your harder missions that you already have.

In other words it is reasonable to pay 25% to 50% more for a tier 2 piece of gear vs. a base piece at the same level if it means you can use it for 3 or 4 more levels which is totally worth the value.

So if you ALWAYS would buy purple gear you would really need only about 6 or 7 sets of all 7 pieces (42-49 pieces), where if you always just bought blue or green gear you would need to go through about 10-12 sets of gear.

So when the mean gear rating of all gear 0-50 is about 60, buying 7 sets of gear at about 120 credits per rating pt.(inflated for rarity of purple), it will cost you around 400k. However your mean armor rating wont change if you buy just green or blue gear, but the total expense will go up to more like 500-600k. Obviously this would be discounted by whatever gear you don't need from commendations and drops.

Having this kind of high level of knowledge, I would like to see an economy where it would be common to see:

"[ 3 - Trade/ WTS Trooper 1-50 full (7x7) Tier 2 armor package for 550k, random augment slots at no extra charge.]"

This could prevent a lot of reposting on the GTN, and it would mean that somebody rapidly leveling an alt wouldn't have to spend a ton of time shopping around for their gear and could even more quickly spend time leveling.

Thanks. But I usually follow this rule - get quest rewards > wear it. @50 do bonus series on Ilum/Belsavis = mods, go to HMs/normal OPs.