This was posted on the SWG beta forums, so some information may be dated.
Experimentation is the process of fiddling with a schematic to (hopefully) produce a better item. Any schematic can be experimented on, and each has a variety of areas that can be increased.
The basic process of expermimentation:
1) Make the item in a specialized crafting tool in the presence of the appropriate crafting station. The station can be public or private, it makes no difference.
2) Make the item as normal, until you reach a window with 3 buttons on it. They'll give you the choice of making a prototype, a manufacturing schematic, or experimenting. Choose the option to experiment.
3) Now you'll be presented with a window with 4 panes. The top pane will show a picture of the item. The lower three have information on the experiment.
The leftmost pane shows how many experiment points you have left. Note that these points are granted on a per-item basis, so don't worry about using them all up. Also note that you don't have to spend them all at once. You can run multiple experiments on the same item, if you wish, which will be important later. You also don't have to spend all of the points. If you've done all the experimentation you want to and have points left, don't worry about it.
The rightmost pane shows the risk of failure, given your current point assignments. There's a pretty red bar that goes up as you assign more points, but doesn't really tell you much, and a percentage number. Pay attention to that number... it can get pretty high.
The middle pane is the heart of the process. There are multiple rows, each one corresponding to an experimental attribute (something you can improve through experimentation). It shows the name of the attrbute, as well as 2 horizontal bars.
The big bar, broken into boxes, shows how many points you can assign to this attribute how many points are currently assigned, and how many points were successfully allocated from previous experiments (if any). Different attributes will have different maximums. Just click on the box corresponding to the number of points you want to assign.
The smaller bar underneath the big one denotes the improvement of the attribute over its base value. You will probably start with a little bit in this bar right away, depending on the success of the initial assembly.
Finally, there are two buttons at the bottom of the window: Run Experiment and Done Experimenting. Take note of which is which.
Got all that? That's OK. I'll walk you through a normal experimentation session.
Suniko is making medpacks. She's standing in front of the Food and Chemical Public Crafting Station and has her Food and Chemical Crafting Tool booted. She selects the schematic, plugs in the resources and clicks Assemble. She gets lucky and has a great success. Now comes the fun part. She clicks Experiment and gets to it.
On the experimentation screen, she sees 4 attrbutes: Charges, Ease of Use, Durability and Effectiveness (note: they're not actually worded this way. They're code strings right now, but this is what they really are). Charges will give the medpack extra charges if it gets high enough. Ease of Use lowers the skill requirements to use the item. Durability slows down decay (a non-issue with a consumable like a medpack), and effectiveness will increase the number of wounds healed.
She assigns 4 points to Charges, hoping to get a fourth use out of the pack, the clicks Experiment. Now, depending on the level of success, anywhere from 0 to 4 of those points will actually stay. Each one that does will increase the attribute by a certain percentage. Let's say she just gets a success, and 2 points stay. She's now down 4 points. If she started with 8, she has 4 left. She probably wouldn't have gotten another charge with that level of success, but that would depend on how high it was to start.
Next, she assigns the other 4 points to Effectiveness. She's not worried about Ease of Use, since her skill is high enough to use the pack as is, and Durability has no discernible effect on a medpack. Again, she clicks Experiment. This time she gets an amazing success. Amazing successes can sometimes actually fill more boxes than you actually assigned, but they won't cost you more experimentation points. Anyway, she gets a few more points of healing out of it. Since she's out of points, she clicks Done Experimenting and creates her prototype.
That's all there really is to it. There is one thing you may have noted, though. I knew I was going to experiment in two areas, yet I did them seperately. Why didn't I do both at the same time? The reason is that at the moment, assigning points to more than one area in the same experiment pretty much guarantees failure. I've never assigned points in multiple attributes in the same experiment and not had it fail, regardless of what the risk meter said.
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