1. Go through this checklist of stuff.

2. At the very least novice medic, preferably Pharmacology 4 with some decent stim Ds

3. A mastered combat profession. If you aren't master, you have no business trying these.

4. GOOD armor. 80% kinetic isn't good armor. With the latest patch changes, the NPCs will use a wide variety of weapons in ranged and melee combat. A wide variety of weapons means a wide variety of damage types. When you have a thug pull a powerhammer on you and you're wearing 80% kinetic 60% base armor, you'll realize very fast that medium AR blast damage practically cuts straight through it. I personally use 27% stun 70% base armor sliced for effectiveness, so all my resists (minus stun and lightsaber) exceed 80%. The stun protection is in case a thug whips out a tangle pistol or a stun baton. In which case, the stun protections buys me enough time to run away, DON'T FIGHT A THUG WITH A STUN BATON. They will kill you, or mess you up bad enough for their friend to finish the job.

5. Proper weapons. Although your 500 damage geo blaster can do a number on people in pvp, after medium AR and 80% resists, you might as well be shooting them with spitwads. Use the weapon with the highest armor piercing you have access to (T21, laser carbine, republic blaster, vibro blade, scythe/powerhammer, LVA, VK), and go for pool directed attacks.

6. Use intimidate. If you don't have intimidate, pick up novice brawler. Intimidate decreases your opponet's damage output by 50% for 30 seconds when it lands. For all intensive purposes, it basically doubles your HAM if you keep the enemy intimidated. This can and will make you last a lot longer in almost any PvE/PvP encounter you come across.

7. Pull the enemies one at a time. If you are a ranged fighter, go prone, and hit a bleed (healthshot1, actionshot1, mindshot1, torso shot, bleedshot) and peace. The enemy will not aggro you until the bleed ticks. In the "grace period" run out of range of the thug. He will aggro you, and run towards you until he is in range. By now you should have been able to get far enough away from the other thugs so that they will not join in on the fun. If you're melee, you have to be much more careful with pulling the thugs. If you walk really slowly towards the thugs, they will all aggro you at once when you get close to one. Instead, try walking towards one, then running away from it. Keep doing this, progressively getting closer, until you are finally aggroed.

8. Use foods. Your best bet would be two varsarian brandies. If you're a rifleman, or a non-human character with low mind stats, use an arisha too. If you get into a sticky situation and need to buy some time, use a synthsteak. Depending on the stats, it will decrease the incoming damage by 35-45% for about 30-40 attacks. NPCs fire once every two seconds, so that synthsteak will last about a minute. The combination of synthsteak and intimidate can make the meanest thugs hit about as hard as a Stormtrooper.

9. Play it smart and be prepared. Don't run in with broken armor (check it first!), have your foods out of the crate, have stims out of the crate, and make sure you know what your plan is.

10. Know how you can fight. A TKM/Doc has no ranged mitigation. You'll be hit 3-4 times harder when they use ranged weapons on you, as opposed to if you had ranged mitigation. Same thing when ranged players fight against melee. Melee vs melee on the other hand, you will not be hit as hard, and your toughness (unarmed toughness, 1-hand toughness, 2-hand toughness, polearm toughness) provides a direct percent decrease on incoming MELEE damage. The best way to get the thugs to go melee, is to hide behind a tree when they have you arrgoed. When they get in range, intimidate them and hit away. They will go melee pretty quickly. Melee toughness only applies when you are holding the applicable melee weapon in your hands.

11. Finally, do take some friends. Not only will the quest be easier, but the time passes a lot quicker when you have someone else helping. Not to mention the obvious safety bonuses of having another person with you.

Hope this helps.