It seems that I'm only losing credits on doing missions.

I'm at around 250 slicing at the moment and For the past 40 missions, of only doing lockboxes, I've lost (and from my understanding you should gain) 5000 credits in total.

Sure you have a small chanse of getting rare missions and so on but it seems to me that the skill really doesn't help much.

Does it get better once you reach an even higher lvl?

It's the only way to get Thermal Regulators (crit success on Bountiful or Rich top-level Sliced Tech missions). 4 Thermal Regulators are needed to make any Augment. You better believe it's viable in the endgame--those TRs are super valuable.

Lockbox missions aren't really for making money, in my experience. They're for skilling up.

Lockbox missions aren't really for making money, in my experience. They're for skilling up.

And for discovered missions for all (gathering and mission) crew skills.

And for discovered missions for all (gathering and mission) crew skills.

Any idea what the success rates are for scoring discovered missions from rich lockbox missions? I recall slicing 450's are less common than all other discoveries, but I'm not sure what the actual rates are. I run the bountiful/rich missions for tech parts constantly, and I'm just trying to decide if it's worth running the lockbox missions too (in hopes of landing some mission discoveries, since otherwise it's just ultimately a loss of credits).

Any idea what the success rates are for scoring discovered missions from rich lockbox missions? I recall slicing 450's are less common than all other discoveries, but I'm not sure what the actual rates are. I run the bountiful/rich missions for tech parts constantly, and I'm just trying to decide if it's worth running the lockbox missions too (in hopes of landing some mission discoveries, since otherwise it's just ultimately a loss of credits).

You're right that running lockbox missions for credits is a slim profit at best. If you run lockbox missions it is for the chance for a discovered mission.

Whatever your chance to crit is your chance to get a discovered mission (in addition to a larger credit amount in the lockbox). However, what mission one gets seems to be weighted with investigation being the most common and slicing being the least. If one has all crew skills, what mission one gets does not matter. If one doesn't, then it could be frustrating to get discovered missions one cannot use. That being said, with the exception of investigation, discovered missions sell well on the GTN. There is even a market for lower level discovered missions.

It's the only way to get Thermal Regulators (crit success on Bountiful or Rich top-level Sliced Tech missions). 4 Thermal Regulators are needed to make any Augment. You better believe it's viable in the endgame--those TRs are super valuable.

 

Lockbox missions aren't really for making money, in my experience. They're for skilling up.

And for getting recipes/mission discovery, that's it. If you want to make money with slicing you have to sell the slicing parts or run around questing areas and gather lockboxes.

You're right that running lockbox missions for credits is a slim profit at best. If you run lockbox missions it is for the chance for a discovered mission.

 

Whatever your chance to crit is your chance to get a discovered mission (in addition to a larger credit amount in the lockbox). However, what mission one gets seems to be weighted with investigation being the most common and slicing being the least. If one has all crew skills, what mission one gets does not matter. If one doesn't, then it could be frustrating to get discovered missions one cannot use. That being said, with the exception of investigation, discovered missions sell well on the GTN. There is even a market for lower level discovered missions.

Ok, thanks. I'll do a little survey of discovered missions on my server's GTN to see what they're going for. I know slicing ones go for around 130k or more, but I haven't looked at the others.

I do actually have all crew skills (a couple not quite at 450, but they'll be there soon), so technically I could use any of them, but I may only keep/use the slicing ones (for the guaranteed TRs, of course). If the other missions sell for enough, then I'll add the rich lockbox missions to my slicing "rotation" (currently just Unsliceable? & Watching the Watchdogs). I guess crit rate would be around 20%-ish (or a little more depending on bonuses/affection level), so would you say the chance of yielding a slicing mission is closer to 10%?

so would you say the chance of yielding a slicing mission is closer to 10%?

Doing the math:

There are 10 total possible discovered missions: 2 of each Investigation and diplomacy and 1 of each of the rest. So right off the bat, one is twice as likely to get Investigation or diplomacy than anything else. Assuming an even distribution (which we know is the not the case) your chance to get any one mission is your chance to crit multiplied by the chance at any one:

Assuming best conditions: 15% base chance to crit + 5% for max affection +2% for companion bonus = 22% chance to crit * 10% chance at any one mission = 2.2% (2.1% with a +1 crit companion, 2.0% with a companion with no +crit to slicing)

Now weight the distribution, heavily in favor of investigation and heavily against slicing. The chance at slicing is more likely half the above; somewhere around 1%.

The point is that seeking slicing missions is going to be upsetting to aggravating, unless you have several to many slicers. Personally I have two. I actually run Credit Drain more than Unsliceable because I want the missions (I have a healthy stock of TRs already that I only use to augment my and my guild's characters; I do not sell purple augments.

Lockbox missions aren't really for making money, in my experience. They're for skilling up.

For my lowest levels (Coruscant), I found them very valuable. They gave me more than enough money, then.

Reported.

Please mangle the link when you make these replies...

reported. DO NOT open this link!!!

Please mangle the link when you make these replies...

and one more reported. suddenly so many such posts everywhere:eek: and link edited in quote to make in non clickable

still looks clickable to me (won't actually test it). Yeah, those posts are getting annoying... way to ruin other player's fun...can't trust any link here anymore without carefully checking it first.

still looks clickable to me (won't actually test it). Yeah, those posts are getting annoying... way to ruin other player's fun...can't trust any link here anymore without carefully checking it first.

Technically still clickable but won't go anywhere (well, "swor.com" instead of swtor.com). So it was indeed appropriately edited. Just hover over the link (or long-press if you're on a touchscreen device) to see where the link goes before you click.

Technically still clickable but won't go anywhere (well, "swor.com" instead of swtor.com). So it was indeed appropriately edited. Just hover over the link (or long-press if you're on a touchscreen device) to see where the link goes before you click.

My bad, I assumed he/she had planned to make the link technically non clickable and didn't notice the minor change to the address. I hovered over it, but the change was so small, I didn't notice it.

Thanks for clearing that up

On topic: There are days I get several crits and there are days I get none. I run slicing on 4 characters. For me, it's not bugged from all I can tell. Maybe you just had bad RGN.

I have gone DAYS without a slicing crit... 4 in fact and I play a lot, so I find that slicing is a huge waste of time and credits... I have gone to several scavenging missions and making mk-9's with the use of 4 toons doing those. With Tanno Vic +5 crit, I get double mk-9's more, MUCH more often than any slicing crit. I even filed a ticket on the lack of slicing crits I was getting, that is how bad slicing was. Slicing... BAH!

oh its been like that for me as well. for maybe around 4 days with tharon, treek, hk. all 3 slicing mission never gave me crit. and i almost ran them like 4 times/day. so basically 16*3 to no result is really disappointing and time consuming and waste of creds as well. they are at 10k affection btw.

I did 1 letter change as it should look like what he posted still, but shouldnt help him

and one more reported. suddenly so many such posts everywhere:eek: and link edited in quote to make in non clickable

They are everywhere, because the devs have stated to include something against this in Patch 2.6, which is coming on next Tuesday.

This is just an "last-minute-frenzy", nothing more.

I have gone DAYS without a slicing crit... 4 in fact and I play a lot, so I find that slicing is a huge waste of time and credits... I have gone to several scavenging missions and making mk-9's with the use of 4 toons doing those. With Tanno Vic +5 crit, I get double mk-9's more, MUCH more often than any slicing crit. I even filed a ticket on the lack of slicing crits I was getting, that is how bad slicing was. Slicing... BAH!

 

oh its been like that for me as well. for maybe around 4 days with tharon, treek, hk. all 3 slicing mission never gave me crit. and i almost ran them like 4 times/day. so basically 16*3 to no result is really disappointing and time consuming and waste of creds as well. they are at 10k affection btw.

 

 

I did 1 letter change as it should look like what he posted still, but shouldnt help him

And I crit five times in six missions (two credit drain, one WtW, and two Unsliceable) on two characters on Friday and Saturday. Streaks happen.

Remember these words well:

• Random does not equate to Even.
  
• No single mission run affects the result of any other mission
  
• A 22% chance to succeed (the best you can get with Slicing: max affection + companion bonus) is also a 78% chance of failure.
  
• And lastly, only very large numbers of trials bear out that the system is working. Back in October I tracked 1500 crew skill events and even that is a small sample.
  

If you're running missions below the topmost tier, then running Moderate, Abundant, and Rich yield missions should be profitable over time. Not wildly profitable, but profitable.

Bountiful, now that's possibly another story.

If you're running missions below the topmost tier, then running Moderate, Abundant, and Rich yield missions should be profitable over time. Not wildly profitable, but profitable.

 

Bountiful, now that's possibly another story.

Data point: I just finished power leveling an alt in slicing from 175 to 450 (he'd been gathering dust for months, figured I'd try to get some use out of him). When I started, he had 45k credits to his name. After a week or so of running a ton of missions whenever I could (several times a day, at least) with three companions, all running the highest tier missions listed (selecting lockbox missions if there were two of the same difficulty level), he finally reached 400 with...47k. No other activity/missions, just slicing. Technically profitable, as you said, but barely.

400 - 450 was indeed a different story. I needed to send him some dough from another alt just to keep him in business.

I am on harbinger and I am beginning to feel slicing is almost a lost cause for max level thermal farming

If all your slicers are max affection with the +crit then it might be possible to make some money but there needs to be some real micromanagement to see the benefits

The augments which use the thermal regulators often sell below cost and one needs to watch the gtn all day to find the hotspots

In comparison, all my leveling gathering alts are making more credits than my crafters/slicers

Slicing was profitable for my toons who were on planets but I'm seeing little gains from my max level mission runners

I am on harbinger and I am beginning to feel slicing is almost a lost cause for max level thermal farming

If all your slicers are max affection with the +crit then it might be possible to make some money but there needs to be some real micromanagement to see the benefits

 

The augments which use the thermal regulators often sell below cost and one needs to watch the gtn all day to find the hotspots

 

In comparison, all my leveling gathering alts are making more credits than my crafters/slicers

 

Slicing was profitable for my toons who were on planets but I'm seeing little gains from my max level mission runners

It sounds to me like you have a diversification problem. Each of your characters should have three skills, and you should make sure that each character has more than one money-making ability so that you aren't hit hard if a specific market gets tight for a while.

"28P Agments" is not a large market, and many people making 28Ps may have (or be leveling) their own slicers to avoid buying TRs at market prices, so if Slicing is your only profit-making skill on that char, you may want to retrain a skill or do what is making your leveling chars money -- play that char out in the world and pick up slicing nodes. Unlike Scavenging, which can still make bank off of gathering missions, slicing missions basically break-even -- good to run for leveling up fast or to get crafting missions, not so good as an income source.

Daxy,

The math indicates otherwise. And it is simple math at that. Assuming a perfect distribution of crits and failures over 100 runs of Unsliceable with a character that has a companion with +2 crit to slicing, one gets 88 TRs. At 3890 per run, that's 389000 credits for 100 runs. divide 389000 by 88 and cost per TR is 4420.455 credits (even without companion +crit it's 4862.5/TR). TRs go for 18k to 20k on the GTN on The Harbinger. That is a ~300% profit margin even at the low end.

Even if we assume a terrible distribution where one only gets half what one is supposed to get, one can still double his/her investment.

The problem is perception...

Even the hardest of the hardcore can only run 12 Unsliceable missions at a time (assuming max characters per server, all with slicing), and they take 80minutes to run. So running 100 of them takes a while: 12+ hours IF you can back-to-back them without having to relog.

Now throw into the mix that more likely someone has two or three slicers not 12 and they cannot sit and watch those missions to make sure they run back-to-back all the time, running 100 Unsliceable missions takes more than a week: 3 slicers, 4 passes a day (in 4 hours of play one can get in 3 passes and then send out a 4th before logging out for the night) = 8.333 days.

Now throw in the fact that most players do not do the relog dance nor diligently switch to their slicers every 80 minutes, and you are down to more likely 3 slicers, 2 passes a day (once when they login, and once when they log out), and it is now taking nearly 17 days to run 100 Unsliceable?s.

Lastly, throw in the fact that virtually no one tracks their missions, and so when they see a dozen non-crits in a row they get frustrated.

THAT is where the "uselessness" comes from. From a purely mathematical standpoint TRs are VERY profitable. The problem is the time it takes to realize what the math indicates.