I recently switched back to Slicing because I was flat broke and figured that even a balanced Slicing was better than no Slicing. The old gains were admittedly broken, 50k an hour was a little ridiculous, but I wanted to see how the changes had really affected things. I figured that with four Companions (now five) and a high enough Affection rating I should be able to turn a profit. And, more or less, I have; but only by doing basically the opposite of everything I did before.

 

Pre-patch, you would only send your folks out on missions that were Abundant or better, as the credits given through Moderate yields simply weren't enough. Now it looks to be the opposite--The higher the rating on the mission, the lower your profits. I noticed it yesterday and decided to track records of it today. I was testing primarily for two things: Profit margins and the effect, if any, Affection has on your results. The tooltips say that Affection increases the effect of your crafting and gathering missions, but what does that really mean when it comes to something like Slicing? The result is always the same--a single lockbox (and then missions and/or schematics on a crit, but still only one lockbox)--so does affection increase the amount of cash in the box? Lastly, I defined profit margins as the difference between the amount of credits spent on the mission and the amount of credits gained, which is a pretty obvious definition but it never hurts to be absolutely clear. There were some ancillary things tested as well, and they're summarized below. The raw data is at the very, very bottom where people who are already bored can skip it at their leisure.

 

Caveat: There's always a possibility of sample size bias. I wanted to run more tests, but honestly I was getting bored out of my mind within the first hour and had a heckuva time keeping at it. As such, I tried to run each mission 10 times per character. I also only ran T1 missions on the assumption that the findings would bear out to a greater or lesser extent in the upper tiers, even if not exactly accurate, it would give a high degree of precision and would save on a lot of time.

 

Last point of clarification, the three Companions I used were Kaliyo (with ~8000 Affection, to see what the effect of high Affection was), 2V-R8 (with 0 Affection, to act as a baseline to compare results), and Ensign Temple (with 110 Affection, to further verify low-Affection data and to see if there was any significant difference beween 0 and non-zero low Affection).

 

Summary of findings (bearing in mind sample size issues):

--Moderate Yield lockboxes are how you make money now. They're cheaper to run and take less time. Though they don't yield as much per box, the cost of a Mission increases at a greater rate than the yield. The average Moderate box contained 131 credits and cost 95 credits (average profit of 36, or 3.6 credits per minute) whereas the average Abundant had 146 credits and cost 120. The data for Rich missions is murky, however. Strictly speaking, the average is 312 credits (cost: 295, so very slim profits) but I had an abnormally high number of critical successes on this mission. It's possible this was just random luck, but it's also possible that Riches are simply more likely to crit. I ran 30 Rich missions and received 8 crits, which give Blue lockboxes (Moderate and Abundant crits still give white boxes, though a single Abundant crit gave a green) that have significantly more credits. How signficant? 300% more. So those eight crits significantly skew the data. Remove them from the equation and the average Rich yield (T1) is only 189 credits, meaning you're losing over 100 credits every time you send a guy out on this mission.

 

--Affection appears to have an indirect effect on the credits in each box. A specific mission can give lockboxes of various levels, with T1 missions giving boxes between level 10 and 16 and each level of box has a progressively higher and higher average credit yield. Temple and 2V gave an average box level of a little over 12, while Kaliyo gave an average box of 13 and a bit. It's important to note that there ARE no level 13 boxes, all the boxes you get are odd-numbers, meaning you'll see a higher amount of level 14 and 16 lockboxes. This translates to an average credit yield (for Moderates only, explained below) of 124.46 credits for low Affection and an average of 144 for high Affection. This might not seem like a lot, but factor in the cost of the mission: Temple/2V gave a profit of only ~30, while Kaliyo's profit was 49, over 50% greater. Bottom line: Build Affection.

 

--Affection also increase the rate of critical successes. I ran 108 missions and received 18 criticals: 11 Kaliyo, 4 2V-R8, 3 Ensign Temple. Because I didn't do an exactly equal number of missions with each Companion, this gives a VERY rough estimate of 25% critical chance for high Affection compared with 12.5% for 2V-R8 and 8% for Temple. Given the small sample sizes, however, I'd estimate things to be closer to 10% for low Affection and 20% for high Affection.

 

Possible bugs:

While I agree that Slicing was ridiculous pre-patch, I think something might have gone wrong in the patching process. I know the rewards were supposed to be scaled back, but it appears they've been scaled back too far for Rich and Abundant, and not at all for Moderate. You're running at a loss without Crits to inflate the success rate on Riches, and Abundant crits don't give anything special. This leads to a system where farming Moderates is the way to go, which simply seems counter-intuitive, compared with other crafting missions.

 

Abundant yield crits don't seem to up the quality of the box. In other words, an Abundant crit is still a white box (most of the time; as I said, I got a single green box in this way) but a Rich crit is a blue box. But that's okay because...

 

...It looks like green boxes are bugged. At the very least, level 10 green boxes are yielding, on average, just as much as level 10 white boxes. Considering that the only way to get a green box is from an Abundant crit or a normal Rich success, the cost is exorbitant compared to the outcome.

 

The degrees of variance between boxes of the same class is extreme. This probably isn't a bug, because boxes of the same level (ie: 10, 12, 14, 16) give comparatively similar results. For example, the lowest level 10 box was 72 credits, while the highest level 10 box was 108, which is a fairly decent range. But given that there are six levels within the first Class of lockbox, the net result is that my yields ranged from 72 to 231, which is a much, much, much less tight window.

 

Suggestions:

1) Tighten up the Classes. The difference between boxes within the same class is far too wide.

2) Verify that green boxes are, in fact, giving more than white boxes. My sample sizes weren't great to begin with, but when looking at green vs white they got even smaller. Though the results still indicate an undue equality.

3) Either raise the contents of Abundant and better lockboxes so that they're worth more than the investment (usually), or lower the price of investment. It seems counter-intuitive that you don't want to do the good missions here.

4) If Affection doesn't affect results, and the sample sizes just weren't large enough to show that, then consider tying the level of the box to the Affection of the Companion. It's only fair to keep up with other crafts.

Raw data for you nerds out there who want to see it:

(Note that this is taken right out of an excel spreadsheet, so odds are it's going to screw up the formatting when I post it. Sucks to be you...)

 

The basic format and key is as follows:

Companion name

Mission name Mission Yield

Gross = Credits in the box.

Profit = Credits - Cost

Profit/Minue = Profit divided by the time the mission took.

Cost = Cost in credits to run the mission.

Time = # of minutes the mission takes.

Level = The level of Lockbox that the mission gave me for that entry.

 

At the bottom of each entry is an average of the data for that entry.

 

Kaliyo

Secrets Moderate

Gross Profit Profit/Minute Cost Time (m) Level

96 1 0.33 95 3 10

222 127 42.33 95 3 16

231 136 45.33 95 3 16

92 -3 -1.00 95 3 10

80 -15 -5.00 95 3 10

165 70 23.33 95 3 16

213 118 39.33 95 3 16

157 62 20.67 95 3 14

108 13 4.33 95 3 10

84 -11 -3.67 95 3 10

144.800 49.800 16.600 95.000 3.000 12.800

 

Hidden Moderate

Gross Profit Profit/Minute Cost Time (m) Level

101 6 2.00 95 3 10

203 108 36.00 95 3 16

143 48 16.00 95 3 14

148 53 17.67 95 3 14

106 11 3.67 95 3 10

72 -23 -7.67 95 3 10

111 16 5.33 95 3 12

224 129 43.00 95 3 16

208 113 37.67 95 3 16

133 38 12.67 95 3 14

144.900 49.900 16.633 95.000 3.000 13.200

 

Open Abundant

Gross Profit Profit/Minute Cost Time (m) Level

110 -10 -3.33 120 3 12

114 -6 -2.00 120 3 12

111 -9 -3.00 120 3 14

114 -6 -2.00 120 3 12

91 -29 -9.67 120 3 10

140 20 6.67 120 3 12

103 -17 -5.67 120 3 12

229 109 36.33 120 3 16

167 47 15.67 120 3 14

221 101 33.67 120 3 16

140.000 20.000 6.667 120.000 3.000 13.000

 

Vanishing Rich

Gross Profit Profit/Minute Cost Time (m) Level

102 -193 -48.25 295 4 10

275 -20 -5.00 295 4 16

256 -39 -9.75 295 4 16

174 -121 -30.25 295 4 14

522 227 56.75 295 4 14

770 475 118.75 295 4 14

353 58 14.50 295 4 16

806 511 127.75 295 4 16

167 -128 -32.00 295 4 12

572 277 69.25 295 4 14

399.700 104.700 26.175 295.000 4.000 14.200

 

2V-R8

Secrets Moderate

Gross Profit Profit/Minute Cost Time (m) Level

130 35 11.67 95 3 12

103 8 2.67 95 3 10

88 -7 -2.33 95 3 12

102 7 2.33 95 3 10

113 18 6.00 95 3 12

82 -13 -4.33 95 3 12

158 63 21.00 95 3 14

75 -20 -6.67 95 3 10

100 5 1.67 95 3 12

101 6 2.00 95 3 14

105.200 10.200 3.400 95.000 3.000 11.800

 

Hidden Moderate

Gross Profit Profit/Minute Cost Time (m) Level

132 37 12.33 95 3 12

125 30 10.00 95 3 12

100 5 1.67 95 3 10

131 36 12.00 95 3 14

172 77 25.67 95 3 16

90 -5 -1.67 95 3 10

127 32 10.67 95 3 16

210 115 38.33 95 3 16

135 40 13.33 95 3 12

164 69 23.00 95 3 16

138.600 43.600 14.533 95.000 3.000 13.400

 

Vanishing Rich

Gross Profit Profit/Minute Cost Time (m) Level

119 -176 -44.00 295 4 10

281 -14 -3.50 295 4 14

779 484 121.00 295 4 14

156 -139 -34.75 295 4 12

290 -5 -1.25 295 4 14

436 141 35.25 295 4 10

606 311 77.75 295 4 14

180 -115 -28.75 295 4 12

 

 

355.875 60.875 15.219 295.000 4.000 12.500

 

(I didn't do enough missions of An Open Contract with 2V-R8 to warrant including the data, so I've left it out.)

 

Temple

Secrets Moderate

Gross Profit Profit/Minute Cost Time (m) Level

103 8 2.67 95 3 12

91 -4 -1.33 95 3 10

107 12 4.00 95 3 10

224 129 43.00 95 3 16

91 -4 -1.33 95 3 10

111 16 5.33 95 3 12

104 9 3.00 95 3 10

125 30 10.00 95 3 12

185 90 30.00 95 3 14

 

126.778 31.778 10.593 95.000 3.000 11.778

 

Hidden Moderate

Gross Profit Profit/Minute Cost Time (m) Level

103 8 2.67 95 3 12

91 -4 -1.33 95 3 10

107 12 4.00 95 3 10

160 65 21.67 95 3 16

122 27 9.00 95 3 12

101 6 2.00 95 3 10

135 40 13.33 95 3 12

157 62 20.67 95 3 14

177 82 27.33 95 3 16

122 27 9.00 95 3 12

127.500 32.500 10.833 95.000 3.000 12.400

 

Temple

Open Abundant

Gross Profit Profit/Minute Cost Time (m) Level

101 -19 -6.33 120 3 12

224 104 34.67 120 3 16

101 -19 -6.33 120 3 10

195 75 25.00 120 3 16

180 60 20.00 120 3 14

116 -4 -1.33 120 3 12

121 1 0.33 120 3 12

230 110 36.67 120 3 12

 

 

158.500 38.500 12.833 120.000 3.000 13.000

 

Vanishing Rich

Gross Profit Profit/Minute Cost Time (m) Level

131 -164 -41.00 295 4 12

211 -84 -21.00 295 4 16

114 -181 -45.25 295 4 10

136 -159 -39.75 295 4 10

482 187 46.75 295 4 12

285 -10 -2.50 295 4 14

192 -103 -25.75 295 4 12

122 -173 -43.25 295 4 10

143 -152 -38.00 295 4 10

97 -198 -49.50 295 4 10

191.300 -103.700 -25.925 295.000 4.000 11.778

I've been wondering about the size of credit rewards as well, higher value missions don't seem to yield more money. I even tried a blue schematic yesterday hoping I would get a nice load of cash. The schematic required skill level 115 and gave me 200 credits + a minor blue augment. Needless to say I was a bit disappointed as the mission description said "prosperous yield". Could it be that Bioware in their effort to balance this skill accidentally nerfed the critical results too? Or maybe I was just unlucky.

I've been wondering about the size of credit rewards as well, higher value missions don't seem to yield more money. I even tried a blue schematic yesterday hoping I would get a nice load of cash. The schematic required skill level 115 and gave me 200 credits + a minor blue augment. Needless to say I was a bit disappointed as the mission description said "prosperous yield". Could it be that Bioware in their effort to balance this skill accidentally nerfed the critical results too? Or maybe I was just unlucky.

 

I think this might have been consistent with what's going on. Was the lockbox white or blue? What I've noticed with crafting missions is that the blue ones give you a "normal" result, while the purple ones give you a critical result. That is to say that if you use a blue one, you're going to wind up with a white lockbox and a green augment most of the time. Maybe a green box, come to think of it.

 

But the problem is that green lockboxes give the same amount as a white one, but they cost more so your'e losing money every time you get one from a mission.

Slicing is not a mission skill per se ,is it? its gathering skill, would affection apply to those ? Edited January 6, 2012 by Sarte