In short, it going to happen.

So a grind component added to a grind component, ok. I guess at this point its about the best we could hope for as far as an updated aegis set goes. lol

I am being 100% serious when I say this... just add a required component as a random drop into a lockbox. Really add a "Crafting Supplies" bundle as one of the rewards in a lock box... it would be no worse then a mini pack of 4 lowbie doffs. The bundles could include a min of 4 rare particle traces... 10-50 particles... and a chance to include a special goodie that allows the crarfting of a MK XII aegis piece by combining an existing aegis piece with the special goodie.

OR better yet just throw an "Upgraded Set Gear" bundle into the next box.... and then you can include in there the chance to pull MK XII set pieces for Aegis / Breen / Jem Sets.

For the Rep Crafting thing - you can kind of look at something that another game out there did with it over the years...

You have different specialties - different reps - allowing access to crafting certain "special" things that can't be crafted without having gone down that rep path, etc, etc, etc.

Also like other games, I'm surprised they haven't added a "gemming" element to ships/crafting/DOFFing...

the problem with the aegis set is the shield, its unusably weak. its a cap 2 mkx cov, with a tiny amount of power boost. its terrible.

I have leant the game I got my torpedo boat hitting for up to 50k a shot crit, up to 10k none crit and doing around 8k dps in STF's. Anyway I said with the upcoming leadership changes. Have you seen them?

You can have a ship with a massive 60k hitpoint pool. 60%+ hull resistance that is adaptive to incoming damage type, reduce incomeing damage by around 99% for 2 seconds every so often passive, passive boosted defense, heals 1000's of damage per second passively from leadership, passive hull heal from Rom consoles. On top of all that you have Aux2Sif heal DoT via Doffs not that I used them in testing.

My passive regen while quickly testing was something like 1k hull every second without boff heal skills and I was not maxed out and did not have the reputation hull heal.

My 2nd quick test had the passive heal rate and resistance boost so high I could go afk and come back alive against some NPC's without a shield fitted. (well I put my ship in reverse so shields did not regen at sub 25 shield power)

EDIT: I was on something like 300% passive hull heal with crew and 280% without crew. I need to test more but I stand by saying the set looks borderline OP with the new leadership changes.

EDIT2: Just doing more testing. To put it another way, you know how fast your hull heals outside combat? Well with leadership you can heal more than double if not triple as fast as that in combat. Mix that in with Aegis adaptive hull resistance.

Turn Aegis from "Mk X" into "∞". Cov Mk X [cap]x2 is ok for RA. But it's native cap and bonuses should scale up as you level up.

On my guy with Aegis...

Aegis: 9,649, 131.2 regen
Rare Cov Mk X [Cap]x2: 9,603, 130.6 regen

From the 2pc, he's at 90% bonus Defense at Full Impulse (24.61 - 51/25 Eng). 78% w/o.

With the 3pc, a 5 stack will take him from his base 27 (1 Neut) to 39.3 hull resist.

You can also match an Elite Fleet Adaptive shield to the Aegis engine and deflector for effectively the same set bonuses. You just lose the Tron lines on the ship, sadly.

One suggestion is if its ever revamped if there is tech to do it make the type of ship you are in have different set powers based on the kind of ship you are in command of. Odds are to do that you'd have to say make a defiant aegis or raptor aegis as specific sets that only can be equipped on a ship class. For anyone who would like to play both factions it would be a cool way to allow our fed defiants and kdf raptors to have battle cloaks. I'd just say if it were going to happen they would just have longer cd's than bops due to their size.

Aegis gives hull resists. Elite gives shield damage reduction.