NDA is gone so here is something I wrote for some RL friends

[Candide]

Ok, there aren't many resourcs available other than what is in game. So
some of this is from the top of my head and some from old notes I did that
are outdated. But here ya go.

STATS******************
Stats, you have 3 groups, health, action and mind. Each of these are
actually 3 stats, so for health it is health, strength and constitution.
Health is your hit points basicaly. Constitution is the regen rate of your
health. Strength is a modifier for anything that would cause you to loose
health from yourself (ie, you use a skill that takes 50 health, well, if you
had high str perhaps it only takes 40). Perhaps some have additional
properties, such as an impact on melee damage, but I'm unsure. Action is
action, quickness and stamina. Mind, focus and willpower. The last one I
might have focus/willpower order backwards. It is always 1 is the bar you
see, 2 is the efficiency of use for that bar, and 3 is the regen rate of
that bar.

Now, the unique part about this to swg. If ANY of those 3 bars hit 0, you
are incapacitated. At that point, someone can come up and do a deathblow.
Most low level stuff won't do that, and the mid level stuff doesn't db until
all players are incapped. What is the difference? When incapped you get a
timer, 60-90 seconds before you get back up. You loose nothing. If you
actually die, you release to your cloning terminal. You can also choose
closest cloning station, but if you choose that and that wasn't where you
cloned, you come back with 2/3 of your stats as wounds...which leads me to
the next subject. (BTW, you can clone for around 1000 credits, or can after
todays patch. It is simply binding. Insurance is a one time shot, it means
that if you die, you clone with all the items you have insured (there is a
lower case i in the inv picture for each item you have insured. Otherwise
your corpse has it. You can allow others to loot your corpse, and corpses
can be dragged I believe.)

Each of the 9 stats can obtain wounds. A wound lowers your max stat. So,
forinstance I have 1000 health, but I may only get it to 950 because I have
some wounds. For stat 1, 1100 is a good high number, for stat 2, 500 is a
high number, for stat 3, 700 is a high number, I believe. It takes a while
for these to build up to the point where they are a concern. Wounds can be
healed by medics/doctors for some, and entertainers (musicians/dancers) for
others. There is also battlefatigue, which is a global lowering in your
effectiveness. This is on a scale of 1000, and I've only ever gotten up to
the 90's and that was via several days of playing. These are cured by
entertainers, very quickly. You can do medic stuff at a hospital,
entertainer stuff at a cantina, or both to a lesser degree of effectiveness
at a camp made by scouts. We will always have someone who can do some medic
wound healing in the camp, so not a big deal there.

Keep in mind the above is not something that truely hurts you, it just means
if you play for 4 or 5 hours, at the end of the day you will want to hit up
a hospital/cantina. It does a great job of getting social interaction.
Yes you could do it yourself by spreading your points to these classes, but
honestly, it takes 5 minutes at a cantina and maybe 5-15 at a hospital
(depending on medic/patient ratio). Frankly, it isn't a big deal and
something I actually enjoy, at least the cantina's. These are also great
places to get players to train you in skills for free, rather than paying
thousands to the npc's.

Lastly, You can take from one stat directly to give to another, in a 1 to 1
trade. It just takes time, it is called stat migration. So you can tweak
it as you see fit, as often as you like.

RACES
Ok, races as I best remember them, and I don't pay attention to them all

Humans, they get +100 to all 9 stats. They get a bonus to experimentation
(something related to crafting) and leadership (for squad leaders).

Wookies, they get huge bonuses to everything, out of balance IMO. They also
get some +'s to scout/creature handler stuff. They CAN NOT SPEAK BASIC.
People have to learn their native tongue, shiirywook or something. Right
now, it costs nothign to learn, and is stupid to even have in. They didn't
have this in until recently, but the RP'ers/SW junkies insisted they try it.
It makes them happy, and isn't really a burden on anyone else, so it will
probaly stay in. They have armor restrictions, but can also use bowcasters.

Zabraks. This is what darth maul was. Keep in mind you will not be all red
faced and what not. You look like a human ska/punk guy with tatoo's. They
have bumpy heads sometimes, but this is up to you. They have high
focus/willpower I belive, and get a lot of bonuses to things like stun,
dizziness, etc.

Trandoshens...If you recall from empire strikes back (ESB), the was the
scene with vadar talking to the bounty hunters. One of them was a lizard
man in a tan outfit. Thats them. Awesome brawlers (melee fighters), huge
bonus to health/con.

Mon calwhatevers. This was the fisheyed looking general/admiral (depends on
the movie) of the first set of movies. I believe they get some mind related
and crafting bonuses. Not sure.

Rodians? Greedo from star wars in the cantina, han shoots him under the
table, green alien. They are good with pistols, and I think they make
weapons well? Get good action/quick/stam stats I think.

Bothans, never in a movie. They are kinda cute, short, almost puppy like
race. Good action/quick/stam race. They are the stealthier types, I think
they get bonuses for like smuggling stuff? I forget.

Twi'liks (excuse my spelling on all of these). This is the guy in return of
the jedi (RotJ) that answers the door to jaba's palace for luke. He has two
tenticle things from his head and luke does the mind trick on him. There
was another one dancing for jaba, she was green I think. These are by far
the prettiest of the females. They have the best faces. They get big
bonuses to dancing/music skills. Jen would probaly like these, julie loves
them. They are a nice all around race too.

Ehh, thats all I can recall, it may be all of them? I think I'm forgetting
one. Now, if you go melee combat, trandoshens is the obvious choice.
Wookie rocks for everything, but I can't imagine this not getting nerfed,
the language barrier and armor restrictions are supposed to offset this tho
so....Humans are good, solid race if you don't know what you want to do (as
it should be). Twi'liks for entertainers are best, humans or mon's for
crafters. etc. BUT, you can pick anyone and do anything, no inherent
penalties, just bonuses.


PROFESSIONS*****************
each professions has a novice entry point which takes a "box", then 4 lines
(called disciplines), above all 4 of the lines is a master point box. Some
advanced professions require you to have just mastered one discipline (such
as chef and tailor both just need domesticated goods from artisan. At that
point you can go into either or both chef and tailor). Others require you
to have mastered another profession, which means you have all 4 disciplines
maxed plus the master box (ranger requires all of scout, doctor all of
medic). Thats 18 total. Each box costs various amounts. The 6 base
professions are the most costly to enter, 15 points. All 4 boxes for a
discipline are normaly 14 points, the master box is anywhere from 1-6.
Advanced novice boxes are 1-6. (if novice is high, master is low, and vice
versa). You have 250 points total. That is enough to fully master 3
professions, plus some left over. for half another. However, one could
just be an artisan, and then get 5 or so other advanced professions, since
they have low requirements.

Very nice, flexible system, that allows them to put in powerful classes such
as bounty hunter, but it does pigeon hole you more. It justifies the power
of that one class.

Alright, on to the 6 base professions, you have to choose one of these to
start, and the other 30 or so branch off of these. Nothing says you can't
be more than one, in fact julie....

PROFESSIONS: BASIC*********************************
Aritsan, Entertainer, Brawler, Medic, Marksman, Scout. Only Marksman and
Brawler have weapon skills at all. You want to fight, you will pick one of
these up. Keep in mind that picking a profession does a final adjustment to
your stats...brawlers get a bonus to health, marksman less so but more
action, artisans bonus to mind, etc. So it is often a good idea to pick
marksman or brawler if you plan on doing any fighting, then instantly
grabbing another, guess it all depends. Keep in mind there is stat
migration, you can adjust your stats around, take from one to give to
another, it just takes time for them to migrate.

Artisan: basic crafter. all crafters start here. It contains a complicated
design line (leads to architect, weapon and armor crafting, droid engineer,
can craft some armor, weapons, and harvesters), domesticated goods line
(leads to chef and tailor, and can craft food/cloths), business practice
(leads to merchant, lets you have vendors, control access to buildings
better), and surveying (no advanced, used to be miner, which may come back
later in the game. Miner stuff is put into artisan line now. Surveying
lets you collect resources). Straightforward yet suprisingly fun class if
you like to interact. They can also build powerups which enhance your
weapon for a period of time, raising to hit, min or max damage, lowering
costs for skills, etc. armor as well, increasing bonuses. I enjoy this way
more than I thought I would.

Entertainer: I don't know this line as well. I know it has a dance path,
music path (leads to dancing and musician profs) and a heal wounds
discipline which increases your effectiveness. I dunno what the 4th is, but
would guess it has something to do with band leadership?? Many of these
pick up a weapon skill, typically something ranged, and they can both fight
as well as be social and heal. This is the route I see Jen going.

Brawler: Melee combat guy. 4 lines, unarmed (leads to tera kasai artist),
1h weapon, 2h weapon, and polearm. Each leads to an advancd profession
specializing in that style. That list is from fast attack to slow attack.
Polearms get lots of stuns/knockdowns/pbaoe type things. I've not done this
much, but julie looks cool with her polearm attacks, the base attack
sometimes hits multiple people, or did. I think the 2 middle ones go to
fencer and swords man, but some of this chnaged a few weeks ago and I didn't
pay attention. THese will be your tanks, they get big bonuses to reduce
damage, especialy melee, but ranged as well. They should have the ability
to maintain agro, as well as perform various status effects, knocking then
down being a big one. They hit prone things hardest, kneeling next, and
standing the least. They love carbine specs as they can knock things down
too.

Medic: healer type. They can craft their stimpacks and wound kits, they get
lines that allow them to be more efficient with each. Man I had all 4 lines
and I can't remember what each does. But all of it revolves around better
or faster healing. Mastering this leads to either doctor (best wound
healers, can do revives on the field even if someone is deathblowed) or
combat medics (get poisons/diseases, as well as ranged healing).

Marksman: Ranged combat. 3 lines, pistol (best at short range, fastest
attack/lowest per hit), carbine (middle of the road all around), and
rifleman (best at long range, hits hard but slow. kind of the nukers of
SWG) and a combat support (gives some things like aim, scatter shot,
required for a lot of semi related combat advanced profs like combat medic).
Well, this is what you think of when you think of a star wars non jedi
fight.

Scout: They move better through terrain, can mask their scent to stealth
past creatures, they get more info when they examine something, they can
create camps to heal in after fights, they can make traps which do a lot of
your status effect stuff (stuns, roots, poison, etc). I think bounty hunter
branches off of here now, as does creature handler and ranger. VERY useful
class to have around. Julie is going this to get to creature handler.

PROFESSIONS, ADVANCED: ******************************
This will be short and sweet, and some of this has changed:

Architect, builds buildings, factories, and furniture, requires 1 line from
artisan

Armorsmith, builds/repairs armor and armor modifiers, 1 line from artisan.

Bio-engineer, samples dna and can clone pets, can enhance the pets, 1 from
scout 1 from medic.

Bounty hunter, good at hunting players/npcs, gets a big variety of damage
dealing types, requirements changed, used to be master marksman and brawler,
I think it is now master marksman and scout.

Carbine spec, ae damage as well as good stuns, knock downs. targets action
pool. 1 line from marksman.

Chef, cooks food, this can make a huge difference in your stats, very good
to have. 1 from artisan.

combat medic, ranged healing, disease, poison. requires 1 from marksman,
master medic.

commando, heavy weapons specialists, particle beams, grenades. They blow
stuff up good. all of marksman, 1 from brawler (recently changed)

Creature handler, tames and raises creatures/pets. very cool prof. 2 lines
from scout.

Dancer, advanced dance movies, more styles and flourishes. 1 from
entertainer

doctor, advanced medic, can revive deathblowed players, best wound healing.
master medic

droid engineer, makes droid pets. can make combat, repair, heal, crafting
droids. 1 from artisan

Image designer, can change your looks. Despite it having the most detailed
character generator ever, these guys can give even MORE detail than
available at launch. This changed, and I'm unsure requirements now.

Merchant, can have better vendors, have npc's that will go to cities and
advertise your shop, discounts to bazaar auctions, etc. 1 from artisan.

Miner: scrapped from launch. may come back later, stuff worked into
artisan. (was a boring prof)

Musician: see dancer, replace dance with music. 1 from entertainer

fencing?: name changed. 1h sword spec. I've honesty not looked at brawler
as much. 1 from brawler.

pistoleer: better with pistols, more skills. 1 from marksman (not looked at
alot by me)can target health pool.

polearm spec: should be obvious by now. They get knockdown/stuns/ae
attacks. 1 from brawler

Ranger: trap specialists, lots of status effects. master scout.

Rifleman: duh. they target mind pool (typically the smallest). they can do
attacks that forces you from a kneeling position. They can deathblow from
range. They can somewhat stealth adn get harder hits. 1 from marksman

Squad leader. has a group terrain management, so everyone moves up
hills/water faster. has some group "buffs", as well as the ability to force
everyone in the group onto one target. must be leading the group for most
abilities, so more than one in a group is a waste of those skills. 2 from
scout, 1 from marksman.

tailor: cloths, and lots of them. More designs than AO nearly, with much
nicer ones, hundreds of color options. entertainers will love you. 1 from
artisan

teras kasi: think bruce lee. unarmed combat, they were god like for most of
beta. Recently brought back to earth. 1 from brawler.

swordsman?: 2h weapons? Again, recent name change. 2 handed weapons that
aren't polearms (big axes and what not)

weaponsmith: makes/repairs weapons, as well as powerups for them. 1 from
artisan.

Ok, thats it for what you can be, and some of what each does. Give me
specific questions, or is there another broad area you would like me to go
over?

[Candide]

Remember, you can go all three if you want. Some of the points have changed but here is the break down that is relatively close to what it is:

Base professions (the 6) cost 15 to joino, each discipline (across the board) costs 14 to get all 4 boxes (novice, intermediate, advanced, somethingelse). The base trees have a 6 point cost for a master. So that is 77 total.

The weapon specialists cost 63 pionts to master each (the ones above marksman/brawler, like rifleman, carbine expert, etc). 1 point to enter, 4 lines of 14, 6 points for last master. You don't have to master, you could just go one track, or something.

Everything else costs 64, 6 to enter, 14x4 lines, 2 for master.

I know they have tweaked costs a lot,but this is the general layout.

So, for my other account we are making a tailor. That costs 29 points in artisan, then we can max tailor out at 64 more. Well, we could then do chef as well, since it takes the same artisan skill, for another 64 points. That is still 93 points left. Could make use 14 more for surveying, another 14 for the vendor line, and then go merchant, and have 1 left. Thats 3 advanced professions maxed, and 3/4 of a base profession. Now maybe you only want a bit of the chef line, you could realisticaly take a bit of weaponsmith, a bit of armorsmith, etc. it is very flexible.

Another example. Let's say julie, she wants to do creature handler, but she wants to fight too. So she joins marksman, then takes scout. She likes Rifles, so 15 for marksman, 14 for rifle line. 15 for scout, 14x2 for the two lines she needs for creature handler. She maxes CH, 64. 129 left. So she thinks, I kinda like healing, and I'm interested in bio engineer. 15 for medic, 14 for the line that makes stimpacks and leads to bioengi. CH and Bio are related but kinda overlap, so she wants half of bio, 14x2 + 6 to enter. 66 points left still. She could become an expert rifleman...she could get some pistol skill, more medic skill, whatever she wants. And she has touched 3 base professions, 2 advanced, with room to go into others.

I'm looking at commando a bit...master marksman, unarmed from brawler, master commando. thats 77, 15+14, 64, that leaves 80 left. Maybe spend it on medic or carbine spec.

And all of this is assuming mastering something, or mastering one line. Nothing says I couldn't just take the first half of carbine spec, so only 2 check boxes into each of the 4 lines. The weapon specs and basic profs go up like this:
Basic
6 to master
5 5 5 5
4 4 4 4
3 3 3 3
2 2 2 2
15 to enter (or just 1 point to enter advanced weapons, ala polearm spec, pistol spec)

The other advanced ones go like this:

2 to master
2 2 2 2
3 3 3 3
4 4 4 4
5 5 5 5
6 to enter.

So if you only had 30 points, you could spend 1 on rifleman novice, decide you like line 1 3 and 4. You could master line 1 for 14, 15 left...get the first 3 of line 3 (2 + 3 + 4=9), 6 left...the first 2 of line four (2 + 3) and have one left.

Keep in mind you START with 250 points. You could even join all six profs and use up 90 of your points right there.

At anytime you can trade them back, but you don't get the xp back.

each box moving up has xp requirements. There are various types of xp, carbine xp, pistol xp, scout xp, general combat xp (goes for support lines), surveying xp, general crafting xp, etc. You "spend" those points to go up. 1000 carbine points to get that first check box in the carbine line. 500 points of general crafting to get one of the first boxes from 3 of the lines in artisan, with surveying xp being one of the lines in artisan.

[Candide]

Ok, if you have played any online game, odds are you will ABSOLUTLY HATE the
default controls. They did the default controls based on people who have
never played a mmorpg. The assumption is that those who have played it
before would know they can change it.

One thing before we go on. When you get your tool bar at the top (during
the tutorial they hide most of the ui, and introduce it one at a time, so
you may not have the tool bar right away). If you put your mouse cursor
over the top of it, you will get variotions of the standard windows
control...the arrows to resize it, either horizontal, vertical, or diagonal.
You can also get one that looks more like a + sign, this lets you move
things around. Find that one, move the hotbar down to the middle of your
screen, just for a moment. Once it is there, get the vertical or diagonal
resize icon by hovering the mouse along one of the cornors of the hot bar.
Now click and drag to resize it. Tada, you now have 24 hotbars visible at
once. use Shift to access to bottom row, and the default (which you will
change to be 1 - = below) to access the top row. You can move it back up to
the top now (for some reason you can't, at least couldn't, drag it down, it
had to resize upwards or something).

So, let me tell you how to change it. The second you log in even during the
tutorial, make the following changes:

Click options (the wrench) button, choose controls along the left hand side
listing various option categories, then click keymap button in the bottom
left of the controls setting.

This will open a new window. The top are some tabs for the various
categories of keybindings, like movement, target and ui. Those are the 3
that matter.

Below the tabs is awindow that takes up half of the overall window, that
lists the various things you can map out. There are two buttons, clear
bindings and rebind, on this half of the window. On the bottom half is more
global settings that are on every tab. There is a line at the bottom half
that says Default Keymapping (i think) and then it will say ....... and it
is a pull down box. Click this box, choose MMORPG style (EQ). Click apply
and ok.

This does a lot of basic changes, it puts you into "modal chat" which means
you have to hit enter or / to start typing. It also makes it so that your
toolbar is selected via 1-= sign, not F1-F12. You can go under target now
and change the Fkey's to select group members like most games, but that
isn't as important.

Now go through character movement and change things around. It will have
the default of wasd movement, plus the arrow keys, if you like. I however
play with the mouse (get used to it guys, more and more games come out with
mouse control, including this one). So I'll tell you what I change, and you
can use it or not.

Under movement, clear out move forward. Click rebind, hit the up arror and
press the KEYBOARD ENTER (Do NOT use the mouse to click ok, and do NOT use
the numpad enter button). Select it again, click rebind, and now click the
right mouse button. You will now have 2 things bound for more forward.

I have a intellimouse, so I have it set so that big side button is q, lil
side button is w. I bind w to autorun. I then go under UI and look for
something using alt as the binding, it is the toggle mouse mode. I make
that q. Apply these changes. Now you can use q or alt to switch mouse
modes. One thing you will notice is switching to the mode that lets you run
around (green target hair) easier will hide all the option windows you had.
Switch again and you will get more into cursor mode. You can move in
either, just this mode is more for selecting things, the other more for
camera/player control.

Ok, other things I change. If you notice, your hotbar up top has 1-4 as
stand, sit, kneel, prone. You can bind these to a key and free up those
slots. right click and hold on each of those, and choose
remove/unbind/somethinglike that. Under movement tab, I've bound stand to
s, sit to shift s, prone to d, kneel to shift d. Again, wasd is kinda
pointless...It is so much easier to move around playing witht he mouse, but
whatever ya want.

I also change a to be my attack button, which is available under the target
tab.

UI doesn't need as much tweaking anymore, other than to add a binding for
mouse mode.

Also, not only can you do any macro you like, you can bind any command or
macro you have made to a key. All the more reason to use modal chat mode.
You use leg shot as a style a lot? Then bind it to T or something, free up
space on your toolbar. Or bind the follow command. whatever ya like. VERY
cool.

[Twystyd]

Very nice write up Candide ~

[War:Cat/Rat/Bird]

no jedi yet??

[Candide]

No one is a jedi yet. Code has been on for a long time to open up the slot but no one has.

They want it to be several months before anyone does, but will just have to wait and see.

Jedi are supposed to be extremely rare, and are permadeath should you become one.