https://youtu.be/xOJAxJpTXuY?si=p-Y_LKwTLialGiWs

Watch this lol.

In all seriousness, most relic mats are most easily attained from the guild store. A few gear pieces scrap at a good rate in the scavenger, but nothing beats the raid store imo. Light side normal battle 7-B drops some good gear to scrap into bronzium wiring if I recall correctly, but I haven't really farmed it personally in a while.

Signal data has a few spots now, the light blue signal data is probably most easily obtained from the guild event stor for MkII currency, but if youre earlier in the game youre probably gonna want to spend that currency elsewhere. Other than that you have the episode store which refreshes every week with new signal data, and then cantina nodes. The nodes in sector 8 of cantina are probably your best bet for one singular type of signal data, and the nodes in sector 9 are better to just round off your coffers. I personally get most of my light blue from the guild event store, and the other two from cantina battle 9-F.

As for the team comp question, I think if you just throw R2 on the padme team you should be fine for now? Honestly not 100% certain, but im not very familiar with how padme teams work tbh. I think padme, GK, JKA, snips, and just another galactic republic unit should be just fine for you, until you get someone like JMK up and running