Any specific reasoning for gearing the characters you’ve mentioned?
Yes. Your Empire squad is largely built, but Vader is a hugely important part of that squad. He should, in general, be the highest-geared toon in your Palp-led Empire/Sith squad. Yours in g8. So to make your Palp squad what it should be, you have to gear up Vader. Since your Palp squad is the squad that's closest to being ready for prime time without being prime time worthy, gearing up that single toon helps achieve one of your stated goals of getting multiple, solid squads by taking your mediocre Palp squad to excellent in a single step. Moreover, you're using an Executrix-based fleet. Vader's TIE does well in that mode under Executrix, so by gearing up Vader you get 2 things: the Palp squad you need and help in Fleet. The massive benefits from gearing a single character justify investing in him first.
Tarkin is very valuable in a Palp squad - not the greatest, but definitely belongs in that squad of the characters you have. And also Tarkin is your Fleet Commander. The huge boost to fleet from Tarkin's gear at a time when you're trying to move up the Fleet Arena ranks + the additional help to a Palp squad you're trying to make great justifies putting Tarkin high up the list.
Your CLS squad is also near the point where it can defeat other meta or at least A-level squads. To do that you need Han's suvivability increased. Remember that Han calls Chewie's assists and Han already does a lot of damage. Chewie adds +20% of the target's max health as bonus damage (and does his own basic damage) on an assist. This bonus % damage is often larger than Chewie's base damage. If you lose Han, you lose all those assists from Chewie on top of all the damage from Han himself (which is a lot). In short, the squad falls apart without Han. The problem is that Han is supremely squishy at g12+0 or anything below that. G12 pieces add enormous durability to Han while increasing his damage at the same time. Meanwhile, Chewie brings along automatic healing every time he attacks - giving Han even more survivability. So taking your CLS squad from useful to amazing is about getting Han's g12 gear and getting Chewie enough gear that he doesn't go down easily. But he doesn't have to be geared quite as high because he's much more sturdy than Han and he also has that bonus %Health damage which doesn't increase with gear.
So your CLS squad gets to A-level territory with 2 characters geared instead of one, and doesn't have the immediate Fleet benefit, but still it's a relatively small investment to make that squad great. Therefore Chewie & Han are next on the priorities.
BUT, of course, Tarkin & Han are already much better geared compared to Vader & Chewie, so in the Vader + Tarkin & Chewie + Han comparisons, bringing Vader & Chewie up to the general level of the rest of their respective squads is more important than improving Tarkin & Han. Also, I looked at the gear & it's pretty easy to do Vader & Chewie at the same time since little enough of their gear overlaps below g11.
Thus 1-Vader, 2-Chewie (giving 2 different squads large boosts in a short time), 3-Tarkin (further boosting top-priority squad + giving a benefit to Fleet), 4-Han (dramatically increasing his durability and thus making the CLS squad very hard to stop.
The 3rd priority squad is JTR because of how crucial she, BB-8, and Finn are to scoring well in raids. This requires more work than the other 2 squads above, but even if it requires boosts to 3 characters to make it come together, it's still more than worth it, and far less work than some other factions like NightSisters where you would need to gear 5 characters.
BB-8 & Finn come first because you need those characters at decent gear levels for the JTR even anyway.
Vader to relics reappears now because taking Vader to g12+3 made him the best toon on the Palp squad (which he should be) but he is an absolute terror at relics. He deserves relics. We would have made him a relic toon at the beginning except that bringing Han to relics makes a bigger difference to Han than it does to Vader. Since it made a bigger difference to Han, we gave him his g12 gear first. Since g12 gear doesn't conflict with sub-g12 gear very much, it's likely you'll be gearing Vader at the same time you're working on BB-8 or Finn (basically starting the moment you get Han to relics), but I put him lower since he's already going to be functioning very well, while JTR's squad isn't up and running at all yet. So where there is a conflict with gear, I want the priority to go to getting JTR's squad functional.
Veers & Starck because Imperial Trooper squads can do quite a lot even with low gear because of their TM jumping. If the other side can't take a turn, then it doesn't matter if the Trooper gear is lower and each hit isn't doing much. They're also important for certain events, so you can't ignore them entirely. If other squads could function on extremely low gear, I might put them ahead of Troopers, but they can't, so I didn't. This isn't so much about Troopers being awesome as it is about getting something useful for such a tiny investment you have to ask yourself, "Why not do it?"
Bossk is taken to relic because he's the principle tank in fleet and goes well with literally any Fleet squadron. At higher gear, he tanks more damage and thus protects the rest of your fleet better. There isn't a gear level too high for Bossk because of how much benefit he brings to fleet. BUT... you have a solid Bossk, so you have a solid Hound's Tooth, and this is about making the character and thus the ship better - not bringing them from non-functional to functional. Thus he's got to be on the list, but his priority on the list is lower than any other toon who is actually enabling a squad that wasn't previously functioning (or not functioning as it should) to get going.
And are you suggesting I take all characters I’m interested in to G6 now?
Yep. There's literally no reason not to if you know you're going to be gearing them any time in the next several months. Only the characters that aren't on your priority list at all and you don't know when they'll ever make it onto your priority list should be left g1/level 1.
Now, that's a lot of characters even so. I'm not saying bring your NS to g6 if you don't want to: they simply aren't on the time horizon. But if your current long-term goal is getting GAS, then then all the toons you'll eventually need for GAS. If you know you want to get SLKR someday, but you don't know when that's ever going to happen, you can go ahead and leave FOTP at g1/level 1.
You do have to manage credits, but unlocking things and promoting them to 7* and then bringing them up to g6 makes them ready to level and gear. If you have them at level 50 you can even put placeholder mods on them. You might change those mods later depending on how important the toon becomes to you, but you can put critical damage mods on attackers that gain advantage or have high crit chance right now. Without slicing them, they won't be the best mods, but they won't count against your mod inventory either and when it does come time to upgrade those characters your placeholder mods provide a roadmap for whatever other mods you might need -- or, if you get lucky with your slicing, can just stay on that character.
Part of this is also about mod management in another sense. You can spend infinite amounts of money getting great mods. ANd working hard on mods is worth it. And you should spend a lot of money on mods. But if your character is 3*/ gear 1/level 1 and you don't have enough credits improve it, then even the best mods in the game don't matter at all.
By making sure you know what toons are needed for your goals and getting them to 7* and g6 now, you guarantee yourself that you won't someday realize you need the toon but have to wait a week to get them ready. Worse, this can happen to entire factions if you're spending all your money on mods, and then you might be held back for 3 weeks or so. Getting toons to 7*/g6 is a way to manage money so you don't accidentally overspend on the biggest credit-suck in the game: mods.
If you're trying to figure out, "do I really have the money to spare to buy or upgrade mods?" making sure that you've got those 2M minimum credits invested in each toon helps you to make quicker and better decisions about whether you really do have the credits for those mod actions you want to take.
So, yeah. Level a bunch of toons g1/L1, but if they're on your roadmap to your goals at all, get them up to 7* and g6 as soon as you can is my opinion. I think it leads to better decision making and more reasonable toon/mod balance in spending.
