Phillip'pion

My commando. I was a little reluctant to play him for three reasons, so he lingered as almost the last of my original run of characters: 1) I don't like the concept of a soldier running around following orders and saluting "superior" officers who, most likely, were going to be dumb as a box of rocks and hardly superior at all. No matter how well written it would end up being, it just wasn't a concept that appealed to me nearly as much as... well, any of the other classes, actually. 2) scuttlebutt before I played it was that it was one of the weaker stories as well, and 3) the commando was the iconic version of the class to play, with the big autocannon that he carries around like Jesse Ventura's character in Predator, but it was a healing class, and I thought there was no reason to play a healer in solo play.

Most of my reservations ended up being not too bad; 1) this is still true; I have little use for the concept overall. It's also why I eventually kind of gave up on Galaxy's Edge in spite of how good it was, after finishing the first "season"; I just don't care for military science fiction; I like more Western science fiction about rugged individuals. 2) it's actually written quite well, and in fact, better written than I'd have thought, given that the concept doesn't give the writers nearly as compelling a thing to work with. It has its flaws, but the most egregious ones aren't the class story; they're the faction and exploration stuff anyway. The class story overperformed against my expectations, and 3) you can always pick a direct damage spec, which I did, and the healing isn't a big deal. In fact, I now kind of like having a few healing abilities like the commando, mercenary, scoundrel and operative have, because it means I don't have to put my companion on heal mode all of the time. I actually like the gameplay of a direct damage character with a companion in heal mode, but the reality is that the game, when in heal mode, has kind of obnoxious audio and visual cues of your companion throwing green mist at you all of the time and acting like you're dying just because you fast-traveled or got off of a speeder, or finished a cut-scene or something else equally inane. 

Anyway, as always, not all of these outfits are original (although the first one is literally the one I started with on Ord Mantell) but for whatever reason I either didn't get as in to playing "space Barbie dolls" with Phillip compared to the others, or just couldn't find the look that really popped for him. I have fewer outfits, and I've used them longer, in general, than the characters which we've shown before.

I also keep Phillip around, not only because he's the only character I have with an autocannon, but also because he's my slicing gatherer. This is a weird gathering skill that doesn't correspond to any specific crafting skill, but you need it for all kinds of higher level crafting on all of the other crafting skills, so someone has to be dedicated just to doing it.

While this armor set isn't particularly heavy, it has a kind of outdoorsy "armored fatigues" look that works quite well. I actually played Phillip with a succession of crafted cannons, but I also had this big mamma-jamma which I used later on in his career from the GTN. Later, with cosmetic weapons, I gave him a number of other weapons that I couldn't resist buying on the GTN.

For Phillip, this was a pretty iconic late game "jungle stormtrooper" option that I used a lot, and played a lot of events and other temporary things with. The gun's a little exaggerated. Actually, most of them are, but this one is especially long, if not especially bulky. I think it's funny when I see someone who creates a skinny little girl character, who wears regular clothes and not something that could reasonably look like powered armor, carrying around these super over-sized guns that probably weigh more than they do. But whatever.

My snowtrooper option; I created it before doing Hoth, and I particularly like using it there and on Ilum, where it fits amazingly well. The gun is a specialty vendor pickup on Tatooine, of all places, but it fits this colder-looking outfit better than anything deserty. I actually really like the Tatooine vendor weapons. Most of my characters have an option from there. The little rinky-dink pistols are especially appropriate for my girlfriend companions. And by "rinky-dink" I mean normal sized ish.

Whoops! Forgot to turn off the interface for this one.

I really wanted that chest piece, but it's a trooper and bounty hunter exclusive that was really expensive (by the standards of my in-game finances at the time) and required pretty much max level, so I didn't get it right away. Turns out that it didn't look quite as good as I hoped in practice, or at least I could seem to find the right combination of other gear to pair with it to make it look good. There's a white and black one that you can get from the alliance crates, but because those are random, I haven't managed to get it to drop yet. Arghh! It's almost the only piece I don't have that I want.

My Sith warrior has almost this same look, but what can you do? Power armored space soldiers are power-armored space soldiers, whether they're Sith Warriors, Republic troopers, or even Warhammer 40k Space Marines. I don't really like the white plastic "stormtrooper" look associated with the Republic troopers all that much anyway, and actively avoided it most of the time. My "Hoth" outfit above was the closest I got to it.

A bounty hunting outfit that I trotted out for the bounty event. Plus, it's the only one of these (right now, anyway) that shows his face. Not sure why I gave him a gray beard, but it's a different look than any of my other characters have, at least.