Thanks for reading and answering ..

I know jack about crafting I've never crafted in any mmo and I've played since meridian59 heh I'm old

But I'm thinking of giving it a go finally .... Question is this ...

I have 4 empire and 4 republic chars ... Do they need to duplicate crafting skills ? Or can they make things for each other even though in different factions ?

Of do I need to re roll two toons to have 6 of one said to try all 6 professions ?

Or I'm a free to use whatever character to craft and share his/her wares with my characters of other faction

Thanks in advance fir clarifying

You're fine as you are.

You can mail items between characters on the same account/same server even if they are in opposite factions. Furthermore, the actual appearance of any one crafted, equipable item changes depending on the faction of the character equipping it ... so that merc won't look like he's in Havoc Squad just because a Republic character crafted it.

If you want to have all six crafts covered, that leaves two characters who do not need a crafting skill. That frees them up to do something like slicing plus two gathering skills to feed your crafters, as one option. Having two gathering skills, like scavenging and bioanalysis, makes going out to harvest nodes much more time effective. Another approach would be to have them do biochem -bioanalysis - slicing ... if you have your "main" biochem with diplomacy already, you could probably use slicing more on your last 2 toons and being able to gather your own mats for crafting will allow you to level up your biochem skill and use those reusable medpacks and stims (provided you send the blue and purple diplo materials from that main).

Alternately, one of them could pick up diplomacy so that you have one "light side" diplo alt and one "dark side" alt, if you care about those options. Also, since synthweaving, armormech and cybertech all use underworld trading, you probably do not need for all 3 to have it, freeing up another alt to take slicing (that's what I've done -- 2 with UT, 1 with slicing, and those 2 can cover my UT needs ... which can be a real biyatch!).

Hope that helps!

PS: altho I don't have any Imps on my account, here's how I spec out my toons for skills:

Armormech - Scavenging - Underworld Trading (Vanguard)

Cybertech - Scavenging - Underworld Trading (Sentinel)

Armstech - Scavenging - Investigation (I use a LOT of scavenging mats!) (Gunslinger)

Artifice - Archaeolgy - Treasure Hunting (Sage)

Synthweaving - Archaeology - Slicing (Shadow)

Biochem - Bioanalysis - Diplomacy (Commando)

Archaeology - Bioanalysis - Slicing (Guardian)

Scavenging - Bioanalysis - Slicing (Scoundrel)

The mailing of stuff between The Empire and Republic side requires you have completed Chapter 1 on one of your characters gaining access to the Legacy stuff. Basically run one character up through the class quests until they finish Chapter 1 (roughly level 32 to 36) Most chapter 1 quest lines finish shortly after you are done with Alderan as far as I know.

If you are already at legacy level 1+ then you are good for mailing stuff back and forth between Empire and Republic characters and I do it all the time since I have 4 good guys and 3 bad guys at the moment.