If I asked my friend to pick up some milk for me from the Kwik-E - Mart, and he brought me chocolate milk instead, we'd have a good laugh about it.

Once

After that, I would be very specific when/if I ever asked him again to pick up any dairy product..

 

So why is it that when I send out my companion on a gathering mission, all I can do is say "Grade 5 biochem sample"?

Why can't I say "Get me some red goo, not the green fungus"?

High end gathering missions can take up to 30+ minutes and cost 2k a pop.. which is fine, as long as I get what I wanted/needed, but I don't.

I understand that every Grade has Tier 1 and Tier 2 mats, and the result of a gathering mission should have some randomness to it.

However, I consistently do not get the mats I need, which means instead of being able to use the crew-mission system, I will have to go to Planet-X and manually gather those mats.

Doing that defeats the whole crew-mission idea, not to mention I get bored quickly of driving around Alderaan at lvl 50.

Any chance of getting new, more specific gathering missions?

Because it's not as simple as going to the store, that's what the GTN is for. You're not telling them "Go get me X" you're telling them "Go to this location, talk to this guy, and bring back what ever you can." Read the little blurb they have for the missions. Look at the Sliced Tech Parts missions in Slicing, some of these sound like you're just getting what ever computer parts your companion didn't destroy to do the job, you can't really expect them to be picky about that can you?

 

If they did put in the kind of thing you're asking for, we'd be more likely to wait an hour or more and possibly pay more.

while it isn't terribly user friendly, if you just plan ahead it isn't that much of a problem. Running low on something? less than 10-20 (or whatever your personal threshold is?) Run some missions that give that item *before* you run out.

 

Too many of the other possible yield(s) for that mission? Either craft stuff that uses that (and not the stuff you're low on) or dump it on the GTN.

The problem is that BioWare, in some cases, made the rare return the most used. What we end up with are two materials, of the same grade, one that you can't give away, and the other selling for 2k a piece on the GTN. It's a really goofy system.