Crew Skills Summary

[Daarksoul]

Still looking for a good guide for crew skills, beyond the very short descriptions on most web sites.
From what I can figure out in piecemail almost every profession makes gear that you need.

Synthweaving: force gear, and at least one type of mod/enchant
Artifice: force weapons, some of your actul gear like bracers, trinkets, and a different type of mod/enchant than Synthweaving
Cybertech: gear for your ship, and different mod/enchants than Synthweaving and Artifice

So even just to gear your self, you need stuff from all three of these as a force user.
Not to mention that biochem makes ear implants or some other gear that you also need.

Armstech and Armortech make non-force gear - that your companions will need.
So while I can rule these out, the first four are a little harder to decide.

It feels like you just grab one and make some of the gear you need and buy the rest from elsewhere.
But what are the advantages and disadvantages, what is the feel of each like, etc.?

[Karteli]

Ahh for leveling, it doesn't seem like there is much worry .. Pick a gathering skill to make some $$ ..It is much needed in low levels anyways.. although at launch the components wont be worth much, except for Slicing.

If you go into the Codex, it should explain all the crewskills and what compliments them (provided you click on each vendor to unlock the info).

[endersblade]

Unless you roll up a horde of alts, there's no way to go 'solo' on the professions. They apparently intentionally made the professions require other professions, and require players to dip into other players' professions to get going. I think it's a cool idea, however, this means that this game will be absolutely CONTROLLED by the AH. You can't make all the gear you need; you need someone else to do it for you. Off to the AH! I have no idea if at end-game, crafting will give us BiS gear at all. The way their item system works, I really can't say. FAR different from WoW.

One of the biggest complaints I had about crafting was 'sharding' gear for mats. As a synthweaver, I can make light, medium, and heavy armor, that I'd assume is meant for force users. (The heavy stuff has STR on it, I don't know myself if JKs need that or something.) However, I can only shard light armors, and hardly ANY of them at all other than what I craft. After running Esseles, I found that about half of the light armor that dropped in there could be broken down, the other half couldn't. Some random BoE greens could be, some couldn't. It was completely random to me. I should be able to break down ALL types of armor and get the mats I need, since I can MAKE all types of armor. I do like the fact that you can break down the stuff you make to learn rare/epic/varied versions of them; At lower levels, I was making boots, belts, bracers, and gloves that had things like +5 Defense, +5 crit, and +5 power on them. That's really neat.

OP, there's a thread somewhere on this forum that has a decent breakdown of the professions, and which are 'optimal' (like we can really know that right now lol) for which classes and ACs. I'd give the forum a quick perusing if I were you.