Hi, I'm Dallas Dickinson, Director Production
for Bioware Austin. The Crew Skill System
in Star Wars: The Old Republic is designed
to give you the best of both worlds. We want
you to be able to enjoy crafting without having
to take time out of your adventures. As you
travel through the galaxy, you gonna pick
up several companions. But only one at the
time will join you on missions. The rest of
them will be hanging out back on the ship.
So why not put them to work? There are 3 different
kinds of crew skills: gathering skills, crafting
skills and missions skills. Gathering skills
involve you or your companion collecting resources
and information. Things like biometric analysis
and scavenging. If you have trained your crew
in scavenging, you gonna actually assign your
companions to go out on their own to scavenge
materials. It doesn't mean you can't do it
yourself also. If you come across some scavenge-able
material, you can pick it up yourself, or
you can have companion traveling with you,
pick up the material while you keep fighting.
You can then take scavenged materials back
to your ship and give them to another crew
member to start crafting. You can choose from
a few different crafting skills: if you've
chosen to specialize in armormech, the crew
member can create an armor on the work station
on your ship. You actually don't even have
to be on the ship yourself - you can send
orders back and the crew can do the work all
by themselves. Not only that, but as many
as five companions can work at the work station
at the same time. Last, but on the least,
there are missions skills. These involve sending
your crew members out to act on your behalf
doing things like trading or engaging in diplomacy.
You assign these mission simply by opening
the interface and designating which crew member
you want to send. Diplomacy missions take
time, so when you send the crew member, he
actually leave the ship, and then return later,
with credits, valuable items, and sometimes
they'll even earn you dark or lightside points.
Perhaps one of the coolest things about crew
skills in The Old Republic is that even when
you're offline your companions will keep working.
Earning new things you get as soon as you
log back in.