I think this would give all recipes a purpose, so if you really like the looks of an armor or weapon that can be crafted by Armormech/Synthweaving/Armstech, you can upgrade it to purple and craft the item. This will create the item as a slotted purple item, which you can then upgrade with higher level mods.

This will:

- make ALL level recipes useful

- give us an incentive to make purple recipes for low/mid levels (currently it's not worth going past prototype(blue))

- give us many more options for looks, without having to create new designs for these items

I got the idea when I managed to collect the Elite Vanguard armor set for my Trooper but I couldn't find the leggings with slots no matter how much I tried. Then I saw that I had the recipe for the blue version. Unfrotunately, I can't use it when I start using mods. If I could upgrade it to purple and get it with slots, I would invest the time, credit and ingredients to craft it.

This also made me give a closer look to all low/mid level recipes and saw that some of them look amazing. It is a shame that you can't utilize them.