I'm at a loss. I understand the basics I think, but I'm not entirely sure of all the uses that reverse engineering has. All I know is that what you can reverse engineer depends on your crafting skill, and that if you RE it then you get items from it. From reading the forums about the crafting skills, people are talking about RE'ing to get recipes and other things of that nature. I just want to make sure I understand what is going on with this feature so I can utilize it.

 

Thank you all.

When you RE something you always get some mats back, but there is also a chance that you learn how to craft a slightly better version of that recipe. For example from Armormech, if you reverse engineer the Fortified Assault Belt, eventually you will discover the Overkill Fortified Assault Belt. Hope this helps.

From the reverse engineering I've done when you reverse engineer something you have a chance to get a schematic for a better version. for instance when you but a schematic it usually starts off as a green item. you can reverse it to become a better blue version of it. If you then RE the blue item you can unlock the purple 'Advanced' schematic which is a much better version of the item you started with

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=45866

 

The link Ratito provided is the best explanation of RE. After reading it I RE/Crafted my way into several Superior Prefix 2 armours.

 

example: Tempest Critical bla bla armour (superior)

 

The entire process took less than 30 minutes.

Just my 2 credits. At low levels by the time you have ground up an advanced version of a receipe, the trainer may have the basic version of the next tier available.

 

So far I find reversing to a blue works good enough while leveling up.

Your needs may be different of course.

 

Cheers!

That hasn't been my experience at all. What I have crafted is far superior to the Black Talon drops and the vendors have the lowest quality stuff out there. I wasn't able to find better stuff in GTN. I am teh awesome for crafting.