On my Sniper, I'm looking to take Cybertech to be able to provide myself with modifications for my companions (and myself where necessary) as I level. However, while leveling I'd much prefer to keep Slicing for the profit it can provide (I'm quite careful with it and generally end up ahead when sending companions out on missions, and very much in the green when I'm able to snag up world nodes), then dump it at 50 for UWT.

Are the green-quality crafted modifications respectable, or would it be more or less a waste of time and a money sink, and Biochem is, again, the better way to go?

I'm quite aware that modifications are available for myself as quest rewards, so the focus is primarily to get moddable gear for my companions and keeping those as up-to-date as possible as well as supplementing modifications in my pieces of gear when necessary. On my server, as with others, the GTN is nearly barren with respect to what you can simply purchase, and I don't want to rely on commendation farming to purchase what I need.

You will be able to get better stuff from commendation vendors unless you can make blues. Also, the custom speeder bikes and the better space upgrades all require uw metals.

But fear not, there is a trick that can give you 4 crew skills instead of just 3: start an alt, spend like 4-6 hours max getting them to lvl 10, and then take uw trading. You can then power level it by funneling credits to that character. If they are in the same faction, you can send stuff back and forth using the mail system. If on different factions, you can use the Nar Shadda market (i.e. cross faction) to trade items and credits between characters.

Green mods are not all that useful, to be honest. On my sniper I actually went exactly the other way - took slicing, cybertech and UWT - and just bought the scavenging components from GTN.

The first companion Imperial Agents get has a nice crit bonus on UWT as well, so you can expect to pull more purple components than other classes.

I'm loving both slicing (for lockboxes) and UWT (for missions) - but to be frank, cybertech itself has been a disappointment so far. Crafting mods is very expensive. Imagine for a moment that both you and your primary companion is fully equipped with orange gear. That's something like 9+9 pieces of equipment to fill with mods every two levels - meaning 36 mods to craft every two levels - which will take quite a bit of mats that you could have sold on the GTN instead - and you are in a worse gear than the quest rewards and commendation mods would give you.

If you crafted blue mods, you'd be in a lot better place gear-wise, but the cost of gear goes up, since you'd need almost a full stack of corresponding UWT metals.

Earpieces, grenades and ship parts are nice, though. And if you want to run around with your droid - droid parts are also nice.

Green mods are not all that useful, to be honest. On my sniper I actually went exactly the other way - took slicing, cybertech and UWT - and just bought the scavenging components from GTN.

 

The first companion Imperial Agents get has a nice crit bonus on UWT as well, so you can expect to pull more purple components than other classes.

 

I'm loving both slicing (for lockboxes) and UWT (for missions) - but to be frank, cybertech itself has been a disappointment so far. Crafting mods is very expensive. Imagine for a moment that both you and your primary companion is fully equipped with orange gear. That's something like 9+9 pieces of equipment to fill with mods every two levels - meaning 36 mods to craft every two levels - which will take quite a bit of mats that you could have sold on the GTN instead - and you are in a worse gear than the quest rewards and commendation mods would give you.

 

If you crafted blue mods, you'd be in a lot better place gear-wise, but the cost of gear goes up, since you'd need almost a full stack of corresponding UWT metals.

 

Earpieces, grenades and ship parts are nice, though. And if you want to run around with your droid - droid parts are also nice.

Taking this post in mind, I suppose it would equally work to go Scavenging, Slicing, and UWT and just stick it out until end-game. To my knowledge, Scorpio is your last companion, so coupled with crafting costs you mentioned, it'd only make sense to not bother with Cybertech until then. In the meantime, I'd be able to:

Hit 50, dump Slicing for Cybertech. I mean, on my Jedi Shadow, I've leveled up the same way without issue, without the need to have a crafting profession while leveling up. Hopefully by the time I hit 50, the crew skills system will be a bit more balanced so I don't feel the need to dump it all and powerlevel Biochem.

Thanks for the input guys - I'm one of those "works and thinks best by bouncing ideas off others," so it's appreciated.

Doable, BUT green mods are not competitive. Level skill up making greens, learn the blues, buy the UWT metals to make the blues for you to use. Don't chase the purples until endgame (if at all b/c of commendation mods).

All in all buying the blue UWT metals balances out against the cost of UWT.

If you take a gathering skill that makes good bucks (like the feeder skill to biochem since everyone is taking that now) you will be ok.

Edit : I am slicing/scav/cyber.

I did it a different way, I leveled my main with Scav, UWT and slicing all of them were profitable. Using info obtaianed elsewhere, i saved what mats were necessary; selling the rest, I came out with enough purples to keep my alt, who being a tank i wanted to have purple armour mods constantly upto level.The alt had cyber. /rant over

Now in regards to cyber without UWT, yes easily done but dont expect anything decent to come out of the crafting unless you're willing to spend a heap load on rare metals for endgame

As said by others before, the green Armoring/Mod from Cybertech will just flatly be non-competitive. If you go full moddable gear and you don't have the ability to make at least blue mods, you end up better off just running a few extra Heroics for Planetary Commendations and buying the blues from your Comms Vendor. Especially with the streamlining of Comms, if you're out-leveling your planet, you can move ahead to the next vendor based on your level rather than your story progression. Really though, an Orange peice of gear full of Green mods is the equivalent of a Green peice of gear at the same level, so you'll be swapping your Moddables out for a while every time you get a blue drop or quest reward.

Slicing overall is kind of a garbage tradeskill. Those boxes that feel like such a profit when you open up 1K credits are much less of a profit when you think that A) you spent 80% of that on the cost of the mission and B) it took 20+ minutes to earn it. Compare the actual profit of one of those box missions to the time invested and it doesn't even keep up with just killing generic standard NPCs for their credit drops.

However, everything you gather while you run across the open world, that's just freebies. That's where the real gain is, because those are gathered in 3 seconds instead of 20 minutes. Not just for Slicing, but all tradeskills. So basically, while leveling, I always prefer to go with 3 gathering skills that allow for open world gathering (Slicing, Scavenging, Bioanalysis, or Archaeology). Maximize the amount of extra "free stuff" you get just walking around the map, then sell what you gather and buy the UWT blue metals that you need and you'll still be far ahead on profit. And you can always make an alt that you get to level 10 and shuffle the mats over to them to be your official Crafter.

That crafter-alt will make 7 armoring + 7 mod for you (9 if you've got moddable belts and bracers), and then double that to take care of your companion. Perhaps even triple that at a given level if you unlock a new companion you plan on switching to. Given that you would normally 28-36 combines per two levels (plus a handful more of the greens until you can reverse engineer the schematic you need for the blues), which is more than enough to keep leveled with your Cybertech.

Then all you have to spend your planetary commendations on is hilts/barrels and enhancements, so every second level you should basically be looking at a full set of cutting edge, high stat blue gear in every slot.