Looking at the companion database it contains the following verbiage for my smuggler:

Corso Riggs: (+5 Underworld Trading Efficiency | +5 Armstech Critical)

Bowdaar: (+10 Cybertech Efficiency | +10 Scavenging Efficiency)

Risha: (+15 Diplomacy | +1 Critical Slicing)

Akaavi Spar : (+10 Armormech | +2 Critical Bioanalysis)

Guss Tuno: (+10 Archaeology | +2 Critical Treasure Hunting)

Some text contains the verbiage "efficiency" while others say "critical" and yet some do not have either verbiage.

I'm assuming "efficiency" means they either get more items back from the mission or it takes them less time to complete the mission/recipe. yes/no?

I'm assuming Critical means they have a better change to "crit" a mission/recipe. yes/no?

What in the galaxy does it mean when something just says +# (skill) without "efficiency" or "crit"??

Thanks,

-jv

Seems to me that if its just a +# then it simply means you perform better overall in that craft, for example if you had diplomacy at 100 and sent someone that has +10 in it, the mission would be treated as though you were at 110 diplomacy. This should technically make it easier for them to complete and possibly yield better results aswell. Again this is just my assumption of how it works I could be wrong...but it seems to make sense to me.

And I believe you are correct when it comes to crit, however the numbers themselves make no sense as there is no way to measure how much +5 in crit effects something, unless it is a % increase.

Since theres no clear ingame info on how exactly NPC bonuses work - theres 2 options.

1. People work towards merging their spreadsheets, and in a month or two we have some statistical evidence on how/why things do work or do not

2. Devs do it for us.

As of now, numbers in tooltips are as informative as if they just wrote "Corso is somewhat good at arms."