So, what's this handbook about?  It's a guide to building a decent pilot in your game.  Pilots are needed in almost every game, Starship battles are iconic to Star Wars and key to many successes.  Every group probably needs at least one pilot.  This guide does not give specific builds, but rather shows you where to find the feats, where to find good starships, and gives an overall view of how to make your character.  I welcome comments and critiques, but not in this thread.  Since this is for players looking to make a pilot, I don't want it cluttered and hence ask for comments either in the OOC or in private messages.

Table of Contents:
Concepts, Races, and Abilities,     Post #1
Feats, Skills, and Talents          Post #2
Maneuvers                           Post #3
Non-Starship Vehicles               Post #4
Fighters                            Post #5
Capital Ships                       Post #6
Modifying Starships                 Post #7

There are two basic kinds of pilots, the Ace Pilot who puts piloting first and anything else second, and the casual pilot who has primary duties on the ground and has pilot trained in case of need.  The primary difference is investment in the Starship Tactics feat, which eats very important feat slots and thus is bad for the casual pilot, but makes the Ace so great.  While this guide primarily focuses on the first role, I try to cover things that are needed for casual pilots as well.
Here's my listing of options for what I've seen work, and what doesn't work.  I'm color coding the options as follows:

Blue:  This is a good option.  It will serve you well in almost any group.
Black:  This option is weaker.  It may be a good option only in a certain situation, or it may just be overpriced compared to a blue option.  Black options aren't bad, they're just situational or not for everybody.
Orange: It's a trap.  Orange options are things you might be tempted to get, but which are much less useful than they might appear and will screw you over.  If the option is obviously bad it won't be included at all, the Pinook, for instance, is outright described as terrible in the fluff and nobody who buys it won't know what they're getting into.
red: These are options so bad they make the orange options look appealing.  Or they're just things that irritate me personally but I try not to inflict my seething mental issues on my readers more often than I have to.  Speaking of which have I mentioned how much I hate militant vegetarians today?
Aqua:  Superpowered.  Aqua options are to blue what blue options are to black.  These options are either things I feel every build devoted to X should always take (such as the Use the Force skill for Jedi or Starship Tactics for a pilot), or possibly are outright broken (Such as the TIE Scout).  The broken options are so superior the GM may well ban them entirely, so I don't actually recommend the broken ones.  Use at your own risk.

Pilot is not a complete concept by itself.  Odds are fairly good you're going to wind up on the ground for much of the campaign, and a pilot needs something to do down there too.  Here are the concepts I find good for pilots.  With the right race and careful selection you should be able to be at least two, possibly three of these roles.  I have not rated them in colors because character concept is too closely tied to what you want to play for there to be any good or bad about it.  Except for Jedi Pilots, which are categorically bad.
Ambulance Driver This is a specific build that uses the synergy between a pilot's high wis (to gain maneuvers) and treat injury, which is driven by wis.  Every group is going to need a healer sooner or later and you'll have the stats for it, plus being a medic doesn't cost so many resources that you can't spare them while still being an excellent pilot.
Things to get: Trained in Pilot, Treat Injury.  Normal Pilot feats, Surgical Expertise, Skill Focus: Treat Injury.
Best Classes: Noble or Scoundrel.  Exceptional Skill or Knack will help keep you from rolling low.
Best Races: Fosh, Arkanian Offshoot, Lurmen, Kel Dor, Caamasi.
Notes: The Medic class isn't vital unless you're a medic first and pilot second.  Medkits are very heavy, either don't dump strength or miniaturize it, of have a droid carry your stuff.
The Captain The Captain is probably a Noble with Wealth who buys the ship, and takes a lot of social skills to be the face when not flying.  It has less synergy than the Ambulance Driver since charisma does nothing for a pilot, but is useful in even more situations.  The Squadron Leader is a specific variant as certain Ace Pilot talents can benefit from Charisma.
Things to get: Trained in Pilot, Persuasion, Probably Deception.  Get Born Leader as a prereq for Legendary Commander in the Officer class.
Best Classes: Noble, Officer prestige class is better than ace pilot for this role.
Best Races: Fosh, Human, Nagai
Notes: Depending on the ship, you may not want to boost wisdom or take starship maneuvers, as you may not be using them as much as your social skills.
Smuggler A specific subclass of the captain, the smuggler also takes social skills but focuses on deception and stealth over persuasion.  Probably needs scoundrel or scout levels to get the sneakier talents, but noble comes first for skills and money to buy a ship.
Things to get: Trained in Pilot, Deception, Stealth, possibly Persuasion.  Normal Pilot feats, Stealth boosting feats.
Best Classes: Scout, possibly dip in Scoundrel.  Scoundrel doesn't have enough skill slots to cover this by itself.
Best Races: Nagai, Twi'Lek, Human, Bothan, Togruta
Notes: Needs a lot of skills, human bonus skill helps a lot.
Heavy Weapons Master This is the choice build for soldier pilots.  Since starship weapons are treated as heavy weapons, taking heavy weapons proficiency and the weapon mastery tree can give you some good bonuses that apply to every shot you make, maximizing your damage.
Things to get: Trained in Pilot, Heavy Weapons Proficiency, Soldier's Weapon Mastery Tree
Best Classes: Soldier
Best Races: Human, Kodru-Ji (Dual-Wield Heavy Weapons), Droid
Notes: Short on skills but doesn't need very many, Human helps.  Don't dump strength, heavy weapons are hard to carry around.  Droids are the only races that can get both a Str and Dex bonus.  Consider a walker for ground maneuvers if load becomes an issue.
The Radar The Radar is probably a Scout, and specializes in perception.  Pilots benefit from high wisdom, and that powers perception.  While perception doesn't work well in the cockpit, you can be a walking sensor platform on the ground.  Your skills won't be in demand every second but being able to steer the party away from an ambush is worth it's wis modifier in gold, or more likely blood.
Things to get: Trained in Pilot, Perception, probably Stealth and Survival.
Best Classes: Scout
Best Races: Caamasi, Verpine, Human, Noghri, Umbaran, Rodian, Shistavanen
Notes: Many races have perception rerolls, check them out.  Consider investing in stealth and survival to become an explorer type or scout (not the class, the archetype).  Feats can probably stretch enough to be a medic as well.
The Tinker You don't just fly, you build the ship too.  Focus is on mechanics, tech specialist, and possibly starship designer.  You keep your team's gear in order and modify the equipment for better bonuses.  You'll need high intelligence.  This doesn't have much synergy with pilot, but a pilot also needs mechanics to recharge shields so it's worthwhile to have for most pilots anyway, and although it eats enough resources that you won't strictly be as great a pilot as a dedicated build, your equipment will have enough bonuses to close the gap.
Things to get: Trained in Pilot, Mechanics, Use Computer.  Tech Specialist, possibly Starship Designer
Best Classes: Noble, possibly dip in Scoundrel.  Scoundrel doesn't have enough skill slots to cover this by itself.
Best Races: Jawa, Verpine, Human, Givin
Notes: Needs a lot of skills, hard to do with straight scoundrel, consider dipping for outlaw tech talents.
Flying Jedi All over in the movies, terrible if you try to do it mechanically.  Okay, a Jedi's wisdom fuels force powers exactly as it does maneuvers, so this is great, right?  Wrong.  You can only get starship tactics for maneuvers with your level bonus feats, they're never class bonus feats.  And guess which feat slots you need for your jedi powers?  Yep, the two are basically incompatible and trying to do both leaves you with an anemic assortment of powers and maneuvers, you become incompetent at both.  Anakin was clearly cheating, don't try to emulate the little munchkin.
Things to get: Trained in Pilot, Use the Force, possibly force-pilot and ditch pilot training.
Best Classes: Maybe Jedi, other classes potentially better for a third role.
Best Races: Human, maybe Kel Dor
Notes: Not an ideal mix, Human bonus skill and especially feat are huge, almost no other race worth it.

Strength You don't need strength.  Your ship is doing the heavy lifting for you.
Constitution While it's never wise to completely dump constitution, you'll be using your ship or vehicle's HP much more than your own so this is a low priority.
Dexterity Thou shalt max out dexterity.  It fuels your pilot skill, boosts your reflex saves, fuels your acrobatics check to survive when your pilot skill wasn't enough, and is generally the most important attribute for a pilot.
Intelligence Useful for two important shipboard skills, mechanics and use computer.  Don't dump it, but not your biggest priority.
Charisma Unless you're the captain or other build who relies on social skills, charisma doesn't help directly.  However each bonus point of charisma lets you add an additional pilot to your "squadron" for certain Ace Pilot maneuvers, and these are some of the best maneuvers in the game, so you can make weaker casual pilots stronger if you bring enough charisma.  Even so, you probably won't have more than two-three other pilots around so you don't need to go overboard.
Wisdom Almost as essential as dexterity, you use wisdom to get more starship maneuvers.  Otherwise not useful for many skills, but maneuvers are dear and important.  Can be dumped if you're a casual pilot who will not buy maneuvers.

There's too many races to cover every one of them individually, I'm only going to look at the ones of particular interest to pilots.
Duros (Core 25)
 Inarguably the greatest race for pilots.  Reroll pilot checks at will, a bonus to Dex and Int, and your penalty to Con barely affects you since you'll be using a vehicle's HP much of the time.  Hands down the top race for pilots mechanically.
Umbaran  (Intrigue 18)
Ah, wow.  Dex bonus and wis bonus, and the penalty to con will not hurt you.  And the racial abilities help too, a reroll on stealth.  A superb race for pilots.
Arkanian Offshoot (Kotor 11)
Take the +2dex option over strength, obviously.  Not only can you take skill focus: Pilot as your racial bonus feat, you can reroll pilot checks, albeit not as often as the Duros can, but you also use the same ability to reroll skill checks that aren't pilot.  Ideal for the pilot/medic who can make sure never to roll that natural 1 and kill the patient, and use it to reroll a failed pilot check to activate vehiclar combat shortly afterwards, then throw it down for stealth when sneaking through a blockade next scene.  A very versatile race, possibly as much so as humans.
Human (Core 23)
There is virtually no build that human doesn't benefit.  While there's no dex bonus, the extra feat can be used to qualify for early starship tactics for more maneuvers.  Over 20 levels with many starship tactics feats, a wisdom bonus will ultimately win more maneuvers than the extra feat, but at low levels the feat wins handily, and it's the only way to get maneuvers if you're a pilot at level 1.
Jawa (Scum 9)
Dex bonus and a strength penalty that does nothing to hurt you.  Your small size means you need a booster seat just to reach the controls but you're a gifted mechanic (so just build a better seat) and can reroll mechanics checks.  As a bonus, you get more damage with your ion weapons against enemy vehicles.  Very nice.  Pick up a translator unit or protocol droid to handle communications issues due to language.
Chadra-Fan (Unknown 11)
Dex bonus helps, wis penalty hurts.  However the Chadra-Fan also gain a reroll on perception and a bonus to repairing vehicles, making it quite good for tinker or radar builds.  Less competent as a straight pilot.
Droid (Core 186)
If you're playing a droid, a stock 4th degree droid chassis can get you a top-notch dex in exchange for penalties only to stats you don't use.  Any small droid can get a snall dex bonus, but combining it with the 4th degree gets you a +4, highest available in the game.  A 3rd degree chassis can get +2 wis and +2 dex, but then you're a protocol droid and that carries a bit of baggage.
Caamasi (Unleashed 13)
Although they lack a dex bonus, Caamasi get +4wis and have no penalties that hurt a pilot either.  If pacifism works over the computer screen, great.  If not, none of their abilities will help but still, +4 wis.
Noghri (Unleashed 185)
Bonuses to Dex and Wis, your two main stats as a pilot, and a penalty to charisma that will not affect you much, their racial abilities mean nothing to a pilot.  Note that Noghri aren't in the normal species section, they're hidden in he back Force Unleashed.
Fosh (Intrigue 12)
An interesting choice, Fosh have a dex bonus and strength penalty, nice.  They can heal with their tears for an ideal “Ambulance Driver” build, and have social-skill boosting bonuses for the captain types.
Nagai (Legacy 14)
Dex bonus, cha bonus, and lightning reflexes for +2 more to reflex saves.  All their other abilities are relatively useless to a straight up pilot but they make excellent captain types.
Kel Dor (Core 28)
Excellent stats, bonuses to both dex and wis.  Use the Force rerolls won't help unless you're a jedi pilot, a build I consider less than great.
Aleena (Unleashed 13)
Much like the Jawa, Aleena are small and have a dex bonus and a penalty to a stat that doesn't matter to pilots.  Their reroll skill is acrobatics, which comes up far less often than pilot or mechanics, but saves your hide when it does come up.  The quick energy ability for another +2 to pilot is very nice if you time it right.
Squib (Unknwon 15)
Dex bonus, strength penalty doesn't hurt.  Their bonus racial powers don't strictly help a pilot but are useful for a noble, ideal for the captain type.
Sullustan (Core 30)
A Dex bonus and a penalty to a stat you don't need, very nice.  Rerolling perception checks is not that great, and the rest of their abilities are not useful to a pilot.
Bothan (Core 23)
Dex bonus, con penalty, natural abilities insignificant to your role as a pilot.  Decent if you're a captain type with piloting on the side as their bonuses are nice for a social encounters.
Shistavanen (Unknown 13)
A bonus to dex and two penalties to non-important abilities.  Perception bonus feat helps you scout on the ground, initiative reroll helps you hit first.  Overall a good option for ground pounders who fly a bit, but neither skill is very useful in the cockpit since you can replace initiative with .  Plow him into a Radar or heavy weapons specialist.
Cerean (Core 24)
Dex Penalty is bad.  However wis bonus is good and int won't hurt you any.  Cereans don't win on strict pilot checks but they have more maneuvers, top-notch initiative, and an extra skill slot.  Make your first shot count with these guys, buy heavy weaponry so your first initiative past is your target's last.
Givin (Intrigue 13)
An interesting case, Givin do not have a dex bonus and their int bonus is only useful for a mechanic type, not a bell ringer for pilotey greatness.  But they also have natural space-suits built into their bodies which can be really great for mechanic builds, you not only get an into bonus for the mechanic skill, you can walk right out onto the hull and do your repairs there with very little trouble.  On the flipside, a space suit isn't that expensive so it's not a min-maxers dream.
Nosaurian (Unleashed 15)
Dex bonus, no abilities that contribute to a pilot role, looks cool.  Nothing hurts either so, kind of meh.
Verpine (Unknown 16)
Another option mechanics, Verpine have no modifiers to abilities at all but get a perception reroll and a bonus feat to mechanics, perception won't help a pilot but mechanics are good.  Telepathy probably won't come into play unless somebody else is playing one and natural armor is useless.  You can also reasonably argue that you should be able to apply the verpine template to a lot of your gear.  Turn them into radars or tinkers.
Lurmen (War 12)
No Dex bonus but serviceable?  Actually pretty good for specific roles, the wis bonus helps with maneuvers and the bonuses to treat injury are nice since it synergizes with your expected high wisdom score and produces a great “ambulance driver” build.  Primitive really doesn't hurt a pilot much since vehicular combat comes with free proficiency in vehicle weapons and you'll probably take heavy weapons eventually anyway.
Gungan (Core 26)
Not a great option but not entirely terrible.  The Dex bonus helps and though it has two penalized stats, neither is vital for a pilot.  Their swimming abilities and exotic weapons proficiencies do nothing but their species bonus to reflex saves may also apply when flying, ask your GM.  If not this becomes orange at best, particularly since so many people hate Gungans.
Mon Calamari (Core 28)
No Dex bonus, but a wis bonus is helpful and rerolling perception. . . yeah it's not worth much unless you're a Radar.  Swimming does nothing but doesn't actively hurt you either.
Ewok (Core 25)
Huh?  No really.  Small size means nothing, dex bonus helps, other abilities are insignificant, and primitive doesn't hurt pilots.  Make sure to fly by Wedge at some point and give him a Yub-Yub just to confuse him.  Of course then you've got your GM wondering what drugs you were on when you came up with your character concept, make sure you've got a good backstory for this.
Rodian (Core 29)
Like the gungan, you get a bonus to a stat you use but you have two penalties, and one of them is to your precious wisdom.  Most of their abilities are not useful, in particular you use computer instead of perception so it won't be used in space, and even on the ground rerolling perception is less good when you already have a wisdom penalty.  Not a good choice for a straight-up pilot.
Cathar (Kotor 12)
Cathar have a dex bonus but all their other abilities are useless in a starship.  Worse, their focus on melee will keep you away from your speeder or walker on the ground, making you benefit less from your pilot abilities.
Blood Carver (Scum 6)
Dex bonus helps, Wis penalty hurts.  Since deathstrike only works in melee it means nothing and will tempt you into leaving your vehicle to try to stab somebody, a bad idea.  Rerolling acrobatics is good, I guess, but you can get that from other races without the penalties a blood carver will give you.
Togruta (Unleashed 17)
Dex bonus, reroll stealth, very nice if you're a smuggler.  However this is another of those races that try to tempt you into melee combat, and worse they have a con penalty which is very bad in melee (seeing a theme here?  Pilots are the last people who should be trying to fight with a knife).  Echolocation obviously won't work in space.
Balosaur (Scum and Villainy 154)
Note that Balosaurs aren't listed as a normal species, they're one of the hidden races.  Balosaurs have a dex bonus, good, and a wis penalty, bad.  Poison resistance is useless since there's so many items and ways to make yourself poison immune anyway, and you don't get poisoned very often in a fighter.  The perception ability is useless to a pilot and doesn't work as well as other perception abilities even on the ground, and the bonus to will save is okay but otherwise unhelpful.  Not a choice race.
Dashade (War 12)
Dex bonus, wis penalty, many other penalties, abilities insignificant to the pilot role, always chaotic evil.  Even their own special abilities aren't much in other rolls, rerolls to charisma skills but charisma penalty, will and fort bonus but wis penalty reducing saves to make up for it.  Not a good choice.
Near Human (Unknown 17)
You can give yourself a +2 to dex with this race-building template, but you won't be able to get rerolls on any pilot-useful skills and none of the available racial powers will do you much good in space.
This message was last edited by the GM at 15:35, Wed 23 Oct 2013.

Since multiclassing is dead easy in Saga, I don't tend to think in terms of handbooks for one class the way DnD is organized.  Instead I look at individual options and why they're good or bad, and let the player assemble them into a whole.

Pilot Well duh.  If you don't take this you're either a Jedi using Force Pilot or reading the wrong guide.
Stealth Not only does Stealth run on the same dex as your pilot skill, but you can use Stealth in the cockpit to avoid notice, a great synergy for a smuggler or a fighter who's suddenly realized she's murderously outgunned by the blockade.
Use Computer You need to make use computer checks to fly into hyperspace.  With a dedicated astromech or techie this no longer applies and it's not longer vital to the pilot.  However it's also used in place of perception for sensor checks so it's handy there too, although again your astromech can do it for you.
Acrobatics Fueled by the same Dexterity pilot is, acrobatics is fairly useful.  It's excellent on the ground for upping your defenses, but also nigh-vital in space since an Acrobatics check will enable you to reach an escape pod (or, at least, a section of ship with air) and survive when the ship breaks up around you.  Notice that this acrobatics check has no restrictions on size so theoretically you can do this in your huge fighter, in which case I suggest you frame it as ejecting instead.  Wear a flight suit and bring atmosphere canisters so you can survive long enough to be rescued.  Or bring a jet pack and rescue yourself.
Mechanics While you don't strictly get any synergy with mechanics, you need mechanics rolls to reroute power and recover the condition track.  As with use computer, you can have your astromech do this for you.  Unlike use computer, you'll use it very rarely because ships don't go down the condition track much.  The tougher your ship, the less likely this is to ever happen.  Still, there's usually repairs to be done after the fight as well, so mechanics has decent uses for a pilot.
Treat Injury Hmm?  Why is this here?  Because, as a pilot, you probably have invested in wisdom to boost your Starship Tactics feat.  Since that same attribute fuels Treat Injury, you can get some good mileage out of it and wear a second hat for your team, and treat injury requires few feats and doesn't conflict at all with the pilot role.  A surprising number of my pilots turn out to be former ambulance drivers or MASH unit type flyers for this reason.
Initiative There are no situations where getting to shoot first is bad (Just ask Han Solo).  However, in the cockpit you can use your pilot skill instead, and since that also benefits from your ship's dex bonus this skill is only mediocre for pilots.
Survival Never comes up, it's a useless useful skill because stranding the entire party and getting everybody killed for lack of an unexpected skill isn't fun, and unless the entire party has survival they're probably going to die because a single survivalist can't scavenge enough food for everybody.  Take it if you happen to be invested in Scout, otherwise ignore.
Use the Force While the skill is fueled by Charisma, actual force powers feed on wisdom.  With the Force Pilot talent, you can use this skill in place of Pilot and never have to take the pilot skill at all.  In general this means that you trade a talent for two feats, since you'll probably also take Skill Focus: Use the Force.  However I do not advise trying to combine Jedi and Ace Pilot into the same character, at best a Jedi can be a backup pilot but conflicts between maneuvers and force powers will force you to choose one.
Ride You probably don't need this, as mounts are pitifully poorly supported in-game and you can more easily buy a nice large walker or airspeeder if you want to use your pilot skill and feats on the ground.
Perception You don't use perception in space.  Use Computer is substituted instead, making this strictly a ground-only skill.

Vehicular Combat (Core 88)
A top-notch feat, Vehicular combat lets you ignore one hit per round with a pilot check.  Since you should be working to get your pilot skill as high as possible, this means you should be able to reliably erase hits that aren't excellent rolls every time.  Not entirely reliable in erasing natural 20 criticals from high-accuracy enemies, for that reserve your Ackbar Slash Maneuver (see below)
Skill Focus: Pilot (Core 89)
You really shouldn't need me to point out why upping your pilot skill is crucial, especially next to the feat above.
Starship Tactics (Starships 20)
Another gimme feat.  It's not a bonus feat for any class so you'll have to snag it with your every-3rd level feat slots instead, limiting a lot of your options.  Still a good maneuver makes the difference between an “okay” pilot and an ace pilot (also the difference between a dead pilot and one who's still alive.)
Assured Attack (Rebel 28)
Lets you reroll the lowest die on any attack.  You can use it everywhere and it's especially beneficial on starship weapons, turning a roll of 1 into an 8 gives you 8 damage on the ground, but 14-35 more points of damage in space thanks to the weapon multiplier.  Good for every class, best for pilots.
A Few Maneuvers (Threats 160)
Fairly excellent.  +2 to your reflex defense (except on frigates and larger) and best of all, missiles don't get 2 attack rolls against you.  Normally the second attack roll isn't a big threat since it's penalized, but several rolls all in one turn risks a natural 20 after you've already used your Vehicular Combat for the turn.  This makes that much less likely.  Unfortunately it's not a bonus feat for any class, so it competes with your Starship Tactics, making it less valuable.
Burst Fire Core 82)
Works normally on starship weapons.  This is, in fact, the only reason to take an autofire starship weapon, which is very expensive and doesn't have the normal advantages of autofire.  Remember that with the multiplier effect, adding 2 dice to your starship's laser attack adds an average of 22 more damage, and in a turbolaser you're looking at an average of about +55 damage per shot with burst fire.  This takes a feat that, on the ground, is “a nice bonus” and turns it into “absolutely devastating” once you're in space. . . if it hits.  The downside is that you're taking a nasty -5 bonus which actually tends to reduce your to-hit total so much you may be doing less damage per round average even with the bonus.  Handy if you have a high-damage weapon already, and think you might be able to pierce an enemy's damage threshold but otherwise not that great.
Point Blank Shot (Core 87)
Your starship weapons have a point blank range, hence this fine feat can activate.  Note, however, that point blank on starship weapons is really short, only 1 square for lasers and blasters, while starships can move six squares or even more in one turn so long-range shots happen more often than at character scale, where speed's about the same while even the shorter ranged pistols have a “point blank” range out to 20 squares.  Plan accordingly, point blank does not happen as often at starship scales so this isn't the extremely good feat it is on the ground, but on the ground Heavy Weapons have an insane point blank range.
Vehicular Surge (Rebel 30)
Not a bad feat, but not outstanding.  Get +25% to your ship's HP, but only when it's already taken 50% damage.
Heavy Weapons Proficiency (Core 89)
Surprisingly good.  Since all vehicle weapons count as heavy weapons this can let you fire them without penalty, however that's not strictly needed since Vehicular Combat lets you do that anyway.  Why black for a wasted feat then?  Because heavy weapons proficiency opens up a number of talents and other awesome feats which will be useful both on the ground and in space (such as Burst Fire above), and having a blaster cannon on the ground never hurt anybody.  Well, except everybody downrange.
Weapon Focus (Core 89)
By itself, it's fairly Meh.  +1 just isn't much of a bonus.  It opens up Penetrating Attack And Weapon Specialization, however, which catapults it out of Orange Status and into Black, at least.


Noble:
Wealth Yeah, pretty much superpowers in a can, and even better since it's been errata'd so that you keep your wealth bonus growing when you cross-class.  Since this is needed to buy a spaceship in the first place, either you should take it, another player should, or else the GM should have mentioned extra funds for the ship to start with.
Exceptional Skill Apply it to pilot and you're awesome.  With this you can never roll low again, aside from natural 1s that happen fairly rarely.  Massive synergy with vehicular combat.
Skillful Recovery Potential great synergy with reroll abilities, fail a check, get a force point on your instant reroll.  However your GM may rule that the reroll means the roll wasn't a failure in the first place.  A source of force points is never bad but failing a pilot roll isn't easy when you're a well built pilot, better applied to use computer or mechanics as you probably won't have as nightmarishly high a modifier as your pilot check.
Assured Skill You get a reroll, but lose your competence bonus which amounts to a -5 on your skill in exchange for the reroll.  Probably not worth it unless it's for a skill you don't use much (hence don't have skill focus for), but in that case why waste a talent for the skill?  If it could be applied to any skill it'd be okay but the fact that it applies to only one skill makes it weak.

Soldier:
Piercing Attack This soldier talent lets you ignore 5 points of DR on each attack with a given weapon group, which is obviously going to be Heavy Weapons.  Sub-par on the ground where DR is rare, awesome in space where everything has at least DR5 so it's basically free extra damage to everything.
Weapon Specialization Another good soldier talent, like piercing attack it's kind of meh for the ground trooper, +2 damage isn't that much.  But a starship pilot using starship scale weapons gets a nicer bonus, since all bonus damage is increased by the ship weapon's multiplier that +2 becomes +4 on a light laser and +10 on a turbolaser, very nice.  And the +2 on the ground won't hurt you any even if it's not amazing, and with the right exploits you can be using multiplied weapons on the ground too.  An excellent choice if you're going soldier at all and can afford weapon focus.
Devastating Attack Less awesome.  This one is more useful on the ground, since heavy weapons do massive damage you can readily turn into a Condition Track Killer by treating their damage threshold lower.  However most starships have such stupidly high thresholds that even a 5 reduction probably won't let you hit them.  Better for the ground trooper who's a sometimes gunner on a turbolaser, where the high damage might make a difference.

Scout Talents:
Deep Space Gambit I'm normally not a fan of “once per encounter” powers, so for me to award one coveted aqua status you know it has to be something special.  Deep Space Gambit forces an enemy to reroll an attack, once.  What catapults it to awesome status is how it frequently it comes up, it works against any attack on you even if you're not in a vehicle, explicitly.  If you're just a passenger and have nothing to do with the vehicle's operation (although why you'd be that yet also a pilot escapes me. . .) you can apply it so long as you're actually in the vehicle  If you're just walking along in the forest and somebody snipes you, it applies.  If you're asleep and an assassin tries to stab you in bed, it applies.  If you're in a bunk when a Star Destroyer suddenly opens up on your transport, it applies.  You can use it all the time.  It's a great way to stop that nasty natural 20 from a turbolaser erasing your light fighter from existence, or to ruin the day of a sneak using overwhelming attack and counting on a lucky shot to obliterate you.  Can and will save your life and you can pull it out every single combat.  If you're going scout it's a great idea even if you're not a pilot at all.  Save it for that “oh crap” moment when you're about to die, and live.
Evasion Already well-known as being one of the top talents in the game, Evasion is great on the ground for ruining the day of anybody who thinks a pile of grenades and autofire will make up for pitiful aim.  But in space?  Nobody uses autofire there, you say.  It can't attack an area so it's useless, you say.  Actually there's a few area-attack weapons on the stellar scale, such as the Flak Pod (Rebellion 130) and most missiles.  Even so that's situational, but as the top pilot you're likely to be piloting vehicles on the ground as well, and making your walker dodge explosions is not only awesome but reduces repair bills.  Unless you expect never to fight on the ground at all, it's worth taking, although I'd reach for Deep Space Gambit first if you're taking only a few scout levels.
Vehicle Sneak Makes your ship seem smaller on sensors.  Excellent for the discerning smuggler, who can take his colossal transport's -10 and suddenly turn it into a huge fighter's -2 to stealth checks.  Only useful if you're already trained in stealth and sneakiness is expected to happen, but very good then, and this is Star Wars, sneaking past a Blockade is an iconic moment.
Hyperspace Savant You can use your pilot check in place of your use computer check to fly through hyperspace.  Fairly useless, if you have a hyperdrive you probably have either an R2 unit to do the astrogating for you or a techie pal on a big ship.  Further, saving skill slots isn't a big deal to a scout since they have lots of skills.  You could daisy-chain this with Force Pilot to make a jedi who astrogates with the force, but overall I find it underwhelming, only take if you started out Jedi and are choked for skills.

Scoundrel Talents:
Fool's Luck Not bad, the competence bonus (errata'd from a luck bonus) to your skills doesn't stack with skill focus so fool's luck on pilot is useless to the dedicated pilot, and gold to the person who wears pilot as a second hat or the skill monkey without the feats to take skill focus.
Starship Raider Meh, it's only +1 to hit.  But it applies on all ship weapons and your personal weapons during boarding actions, so you'll use it a lot.  Probably not the greatest option but useful.
Hyperdriven Notice the funny wording on hyperdriven.  It applies anytime you're on a starship.  Not just the pilot, not the gunner, any time you're on board, which means it's also useful when you're in a duel against a pirate on the hull or fighting off Darth Vader's stormtrooper boarding party.  Sadly it works only once a day which isn't that outstanding.
Spacehound This looks like a cool option until you remember that every single ship has artificial gravity and even random asteroids will probably have it.  I've gone half a dozen campaigns and never seen Zero-G combat.  The only time you should take this is if you're a dedicated techie, and your general plan is to always shut the gravity off, either on your own ship or your enemy's, in order to get an advantage.  However since this plan will leave the rest of your party screwed since they won't have Spacehound, even then it's marginal.
Stellar Warrior First this needs the already-crummy Spacehound as a prereq, so it needs to be something awesome to compensate.  And it's not awesome, it activates only when you roll a natural 20 which means it will only apply every few combats, and then you have to scurry to use it's bonus before you lose it.  Avoid.

Ace Pilot Talents:
On all the other classes I've only touched on talents that were specifically aimed at pilots or had pilot-specific uses.  Obviously all Ace Pilot talents qualify, so I'm taking them all in stride.  In addition, since I'm doing them all, I'm taking them in order rather than putting what I find best first.
Elusive Dogfighter (Core 207)
Heavily penalize others in a dogfight.  Since a penalty in a dogfight can be a death sentence, this is basically like an awesome grapple attack that paralyzes your enemy's ability to attack or escape.
Full Throttle (Core 207)
Decidedly Meh.  Oh, it's good to not have the risk of damaging your ship when you increase speed.  The problem is the DC is only 20, and by the time you're in position to actually take this talent, your skill modifier will probably be so high you can hit 20s on a natural 1 anyway.
Juke (Core 207)
I do not throw down red status lightly, I reserve it for the very worst (And Militant Vegetarians, but that's a bit redundant).  And this. . . is the very worst.  Juke appears to be really good, after all who doesn't want more defense?  Well first you have to take the inferior Vehicular Evasion to get it, bad.  Then look at it's text, which says you get +5 to your defense when fighting defensively instead of +2.  That's good, right?  Look at the text of fight defensively on page 171: If you are trained in pilot, you get +5 instead of +2, no talent required.  The only way you can ever benefit from Juke is if you aren't trained in pilot. . . oh look, you can't actually take Juke unless you're trained in Pilot, so there's no way to ever benefit from Juke.  Effectively this talent specifically does nothing at all, ever.
Keep It Together (Core 207)
I get the impression they didn't think too hard about this class's talents.  Keep It Together avoids going down the condition track, yay!  Except that starships almost never go down the condition track thanks to hideous bonuses to their Damage Thresholds, so boo.
Relentless Pursuit (Core 207)
Finally a nice one.  Rerolls are excellent for anything and dogfights can keep your allies alive.  A nice catch as long as you plan to be in a fighter, which you probably do.
Vehicular Evasion (Core 207)
Oh where to begin?  First it's evasion, a top-notch talent, but it's evasion that only works in vehicles while normal evasion works in and out of vehicles, so it's deeply inferior to a talent you can snag at level 1 with your scout class.  The real kicker, though, is that there are relatively few area attacks on starship scale, and starship scale is your primary focus if you're a pilot.  The only actual splash attacks come from expensive missiles since autofire can't do area attacks in space.  So this will only activate under rarer circumstances.  It's situational and not to be taken as one of your valuable prestige class talents, especially when a better version is available as a base class.
Dogfight Gunner (Core 207)
At a glance this is nice.  No penalty to attack rolls for your gunners?  Great!  Except. . . you have to be an Ace Pilot to take this, and if you're the party's ace pilot you probably aren't the gunner, so it only comes up in very unusual circumstances.
Expert Gunner (Core 207)
+1 to hit is weak, and it opens up access to the even weaker Dogfight Gunner and System Hit.  However there's some nicer options it opens up in other books.
Quick Trigger (Core 207)
Okay it's not bad, Attacks of Opportunity happen, and if you're not in a dogfighting platform getting to shoot the enemy as your AoO is good.  But if you're an ace in a good fighter you probably want to dogfight in order to protect your mothership, so not outstanding.
System Hit (Core 207)
Oh goody, a talent that only activates when you take a starship down the condition track (See Keep It Together).  You might as well say "This talent can be used once every 1d10 games. . ."
Blind Spot (Starships 17)
 Superb, so long as you keep making those opposed pilot checks you have an advantage all fight.  It's not overwhelming since the bonus won't apply to all the other enemy ships, but particularly good when you have to cope with a nasty capship since a fighter can beat it's pilot check all day long.
Close Scrape  (Starships 17)
You can turn a critical into a normal hit, that still hits you.  Except that Vehicular Combat and Ackbar Slash do this better by cancelling the hit entirely, so why bother?
Improved Attack Run (Starships 17)
 Unless asteroid fields play a major role in your battles, you can probably fly in a straight line every time.  Very situational but useful when it comes up.
Vehicle Focus (Starships 17)
Very nice, +2 to hit and getting to take 10 to gun your engines basically amounts to free speed all the time, plus you can take 10 to activate maneuvers and always get good results.
Wingman (Starships 17)
What's great about Wingman is that it only takes a swift action, so you can spam it continuously.  Two pilots using Wingman can each be in a different dogfight while still assisting each other and cutting the enemy to shreds.  It's a key way to keep your party's colossal transport from being eaten alive by a light fighter.  Even better?  It's bonus is untyped so not only does it stack with anything, multiple Wingmen can theoretically stack with either other for hideous bonuses.  Really one of the best options available.
Crippling Hit (Starships 17)
See: Every other stupid maneuver that only works when the enemy ship goes down the condition track.
Great Shot (Starships 17)
It is great indeed.  Starship weapons have, to put it lightly, pitifully short ranges.  It's possible to go from point blank to outside long range with a single move action in the faster fighters.  Anything that extends your range is excellent.
Synchronized Fire (Starships 17)
I'd be all set to call this Aqua if it worked more than once per encounter.  Even so it's surprisingly useful, note that the wording of the talent simply mentions firing a weapon, not a starship weapon, not even a vehicle weapon, so arguably you can pull it out any time you and an ally are in the same fight.  Excellent for punching through heavy shields, for instance by coordinating with an ally who's shooting a turbolaser while shooting one yourself to stack up over a hundred damage on one shot, or by coordinating your heavy weapons fire to turn a droideka into instant slag right through it's shields.
Begin Attack Run (Starships 17)
+5 to attack instead of +2?  Even if this was only for you, it'd be a decent option.  The fact that you can share it with your entire squadron, and can switch targets at will, makes it superb.  Obviously slightly situational in that you won't always have several allies to share it with, but I find that most of the time there's at least a few other ships on your side and giving them all +3 to hit is fine indeed.
Regroup (Starships 18)
And. . . not so fine.  Ships don't go down the condition track readily, and pulling them back up is cheap and easy with a mechanics check, you don't really need to waste a valuable prestige class talent on it.
Squadron Maneuvers (Starships 18)
Oooh mama.  Everybody in your squadron gets a free talent from your list.  Sadly, you have to choose which talent and can't change it.  The most obvious choice is wingman, as your skill at tactics and instructions let all those crappy pilots under you suddenly cover each other and dogfight the enemy into slag.  There's quite a few other good options for this too, however.
Squadron Tactics  (Starships 18)
Okay, it works for only one turn (per maneuver) so it's no Squadron Maneuvers.  However you can share any maneuver you want, which usually means sharing shield hit, and half a dozen shield hits are the key to ripping through those pesky Star Destroy shields.  Sadly you have to be pretty high level before you can get this due to it's heavy prereqs.  Also note the stupid name scheme, Squadron Tactics is for maneuvers, Squadron Maneuvers is for Talents.  Don't let it confuse you.
Concentrate All Fire (Rebellion 40)
+1 Die of damage to all allies.  Nice for you, nicer for everybody when you spam it using Squadron Maneuvers.
Escort Pilot (Rebellion 40)
Because it wasn't hard enough for ships to go down the condition track. . .
Lose Pursuit (Rebellion 40)
Not too bad, another good way to keep your colossal transport from dying in a dogfight.
Run Interference (Rebellion 40)
This is excellent.  You can use your Vehicular Dodge to keep some other poor schmuck alive.  Even better, the wording shows that you use your own Pilot check, not your ally's, so that lumbering Dynamic with -8 to pilot suddenly dodges like your nimble huge fighter with pilot +15.  Sadly it requires the inferior Escort Pilot.
could be better spent to making a terrifying Squadron Maneuver combo.
Wingman Retribution (Rebellion 40)
By itself, Wingman Retribution is not overwhelming since you attack at a significant penalty, however free attacks are good even with penalties.  However it has absolutely terrifying implications when comboed with Squadron Maneuver.  Since it works every round any ally takes damage, when shared with a dozen fighters your enemy will suddenly draw a massive murdercloud of incoming fire from every ship on your side every time they land a hit, turning a squad vs. squad battle into a curbstomp.  Sadly, this will come into play only at the highest levels due to a combination of many prereqs, keeping it from blue status.
Roll Out (Unknown 29)
A nice way to deal with Dogfights and let your gunners chew the enemy up.  Basically makes taking a colossal freighter a safe option, though you're at least level 10 before that happens, and can afford a frigate by then.
Fast Attack Specialist (Unknown 29)
Not worthwhile.  The double and triple attack abilities are only so-so, and not much else makes a full attack worthwhile, plus it has a huge pile of prereqs that Overcharged Shot (Unknown 29)
Gets you a little extra punch when you need it.  While overcharged shot theoretically costs you by making your later shots weaker, you can easily overcome this by having more than one weapon system on your fighter and simply swapping off alternate rounds, allowing you to basically gain +1 die forever to all attacks.
Clip (Unleashed 24)
Hmm, reduces damage when you ram.  Problem is that you're still taking damage, and Ramming isn't very reliable.  Better to avoid it.
Master Defender (Unleashed 24)
This is what Juke should have been in the first place, it actually makes fighting defensively worthwhile.  Really worthwhile.  If there weren't so many other awesome talents that I might rate this Blue.
Shunt Damage (Unleashed 24)
Why would you give damage to your allies?!?  Not only will shunting your damage to them piss them off, there's no reason to waste a talent on this when you can use Ackbar Slash to shunt the damage to an enemy instead.  There's plenty of ways to dodge already, the one that hurts your friends is the worst possible choice.  I guess if you're playing a Sith this would be in character. . .

Officer Talents:
Assault Tactics (Core 221)
Good for starships, since the multiplier effects transforms your 1d6 damage bonus into a lot more than usual.
Shift Defense I, II, III (Core 221)
There's no rule against using this to boost your starship's defenses but your GM is probably going to call you a cheater if you're reducing a fort defense you never use in space to make your frigate dodge better.
Legendary Commander (Starships 18)
Most Officer Talents are decent but not outstanding.  Legendary Commander, however, is amazing.  It's basically the entire armor talent tree for starships, letting you stack your level bonus and armor bonuses to reflex defense.  Plus it boosts the skill level of all your generic crew by one step.  Excellent.


More to come shortly. . .
This message was last edited by the GM at 18:22, Thu 13 Feb 2014.

Here's my listing of every maneuver, and my rating on how well each works in-game.  Since these are all in one place in the Starships of the Galaxy book, I'm not bothering to note page numbers on them.

Ackbar Slash
The Ackbar slash is an excellent defensive maneuver.  You can redirect any attack in the game with a DC20 Pilot check.  This is particularly useful at high levels against really high rolls where your vehicular combat feat may not work, because you don't need to match your enemy's attack roll, just hit a flat DC20 pilot check, so at high levels this may well exceed the utility of Vehicular Combat even if it is basically one use per combat.  The ability to make the shot hit your enemies instead is just icing on the cake, and takes this from good to great.  Suck it Death Star Superlaser, I just redirected you to hit the Super Star Destroyer.

Afterburn
Honestly this just. . . rarely comes up.  There aren't that many situations where it's vital that you move past your enemies without a dogfight.  If you're in a particularly fast craft you can go around and in a slow one you probably don't have the pilot score to avoid a dogfight even with the small bonus you'll get.  Black or even Blue if you expect to mainly be in a colossal freighter and need to avoid dogfights as much as possible, pointless in a huge fighter.

Angle the Deflector Shields
The wording and mechanics on this maneuver are complex and vague.  Your SR is doubled against one enemy and halved against the rest.  So what happens when your shields go down?  Do you get -5 vs. one enemy and -10 against the rest, or -5 and -2.5?  Can you even drop your shields by 2.5, or round up to 3 and have shields of 7?  It's ambiguous, which I don't like, and unless your shields are at least 25 there's no point in activating this instead of Attack Pattern Zeta Nine.  More realistically, since Zeta Nine works on all enemies you shouldn't be taking this with shields below 30-40.  It is handy in specific situations, for instance if you've got SR50 and you're facing a single enemy, doubling that to 100 is killer.  But it's highly situational and a headache the rest of the time.

Attack Formation Zeta Nine
One of the best formations in the game, particularly in a light fighter without heavy shields.  I don't think it's strictly abusive so it may not deserve a aqua, but it is probably the most flat-out useful formation in the game simply because there are zero situations where it wouldn't be better to have it up than not.  A flat +20 to your shields can more than double your defenses, and is usually far better than Angle the Deflector Shields since it works against all enemies instead of just one, and has no penalty for use.  The only possible situation not to use Zeta Nine (besides, obviously, not having any shields) is if there's another formation that has a particularly useful bonus in an niche situation.

Attack Pattern Delta
+1 to Reflex defense?  That's it?  Pass.  You can get it to +2 with an ally but that's still weak compared to what other maneuvers can give you, and requires that you and your ally are adjacent at all times.  That is not only a pain, it makes you highly vulnerable to other maneuvers like Darklighter Spin and Explosive Hit, or the Flak Cannon.

Correllian Slip
Not a bad maneuver, you get to cross the entire battlefield in a fast ship and some bonus die damage, right?  No, look at the fine print, if you don't destroy your enemy outright you collide with him.  The fact that you get in an unavoidable collision even if you succeed on your pilot roll makes it a bit less desirable, pass on this unless you have some extra-strong weaponry that's very likely to kill the enemy in one hit, or have enough defenses that a collision won't hurt you much.  So basically the ideal situation to pull this out is if you're in a Skipray and your enemy is in a TIE fighter, but then you can just blast him to bits with your weapons normally so even then it's barely useful.

Counter
Extra actions are unbelievably useful, and this can get you even an extra standard action for a bonus attack.  That's worthwhile even though you can only use it after being attacked yourself.  However the pilot check to get a standard action is pricey, it can only be used in a dogfight, and getting a move or swift action is only really going to help in a few situations in a dogfight.  Get it if you have a pilot modifier high enough to reliably get standard actions, or if you're in a freighter and have significant odds of not being able to shoot without the free action, otherwise pass for something less situational.

Darklighter Spin
Situational, but good when it happens.  If you frequently face swarms of crummy ships it's epic.  As I find that most starship battles simply don't have bunches of crummy enemy ships in a small area, it often goes unused.

Devastating Hit
Situationally great.  The ships you'll reliably hit with this maneuver are typically bigger ones with poor reflex defenses, which are also the ones you'll want to slam with extra damage.  You get +1 dice even with no threshold of success so it's basically Correllian slip without the extra movement and no chance of splatting on your enemy's windshield.  If it weren't for the fact that Shield Hit is awesome with fries against the same enemies I'd call this one blue.

Engine Hit
The worst gunnery maneuver in the game.  You can slightly slow an enemy's speed. . . a fairly weak effect to begin with.  But then the enemy ship's engineer can repair it as a full round action, and their skill check is probably far higher than your to-hit modifier.  Remember that you typically only get to use a maneuver once per battle, which means one standard action later your maneuver is gone for the duration.  The only situation where it might come in handy is if you need to immobilize an enemy so that your whole squadron can pound on him at once while the ship's engines are down and it's flatfooted, but unless you're up against a Gozanti Cruiser or Dynamic it's probably not going to lose all it's speed and become immobile.  Pass on this for something better, like Shield Hit.

Evasive Action
Situational.  This maneuver is excellent if you're in a lumbering colossal transport and get caught in a dogfight because you have a combat thruster.  The bonus might get you out alive.  Fighters don't really need it so much, and if your freighter is all that lumbering you shouldn't put a combat thruster on it, and overall Target Lock is strictly better at the same job.

Explosive Shot
More situational.  This maneuver single-handedly downgraded the Attack Pattern Delta maneuver, because being adjacent to an ally constantly becomes a liability.  The problem is your enemies rarely cluster so that you can blow them all up at once, so like Darklighter Spin this isn't going to see use every combat like Devastating Hit or Attack Formation Zeta Nine will.

Howlrunner Formation
+1 to hit, +2 if adjacent to an ally also using it.  The basic inversion of Attack Pattern Delta, with the same drawbacks.  The bonus is small but this is significantly better than attack pattern delta, while reflex defense only makes you harder to hit, +1-2 to hit not only makes you hit harder but makes your gunnery maneuvers suddenly hit with greater effect, so I rate this as the superior formation.  Still probably not as good as Zeta Nine unless you're in a heavy fighter that already has excellent shields, though.

I Have You Now
The possibility of up to +5 on a single attack is decent even if it is only for one shot.  What makes this maneuver stand out, however, is that you can activate it and Devastating Hit or Shield Hit in the same round (it takes your swift action, while they take your standard), giving you a potential +5 on a hit that will get a huge bonus from a better attack roll, which is important when you don't have any shield hits to spare. Sadly since it's a maneuver bonus, it doesn't stack with howlrunner formation, so don't bother if you're going that way.

Intercept
I didn't like Evasive Action but I score it's logical opposite highly.  Why?  Because as a fighter pilot you'll probably be doing escort missions.  If you're a fighter squadron the GM will give you supply freighters to protect at some point.  If you're the ace pilot of a typical PC party the rest of the group is probably tooling around in a light freighter (unless they've read this guide), which you'll have to protect.  If you're a mercenary odds are good at least some of your jobs will be, yes, escort missions.  And snaring an enemy in a dogfight is a good way to keep him from sinking half a dozen concussion missiles into that freighter's indelicate hide.  The reverse probably isn't true, if your enemy is escorting a target you can most likely kill him in a dogfight and then kill the freighter, but letting your team's ship take hits is much more expensive and dangerous, and can cause a total party kill.

Overwhelming Assault
Have you ever noticed that the most powerful melee builds in DnD all rely on power attack as the base of their combat prowess?  Yeah.  This maneuver is power attack, only without the -5 limit power attack brings to the table.  It's downright abusive if you have to fight against annoying gnat-like fighters; give yourself a -40 to hit since you're probably not going to hit anyway, and when you finally do roll a natural 20 inflict +160 damage and turn him into a cloud of vapor (remember that all bonus damage is multiplied by the weapon's x2 to x5 rating, and you're adding twice your penalty.  That amounts to an x4 your penalty in damage, which would make any DnD min-maxer do the happy dance.  If your GM is ever indiscreet enough to let you put turbolasers on a colossal transport (Or insane enough to let you buy the Imperial Assault Shuttle), you can use this along with the turbolasers and get +10 damage for -1 to hit, which will make any min-maxer bow down in awe).  Of course your GM may look at you funny if you're using it too abusively and taking ludicrous penalties while banking on a natural 20.  This is a very good offensive formation that's just a bit under aqua status, because it lacks the “use it 100% of the time” utility of Attack Formation Zeta Nine.  However of formations that give you a penalty, this one by far pays off the best.

Segnor's Loop
Holy froglegs, a maneuver that increases penalties against you for no appreciable benefit.  You have to have a huge pilot score to avoid being penalized more than usual, and if you score the highest success possibly you get. . . a -1 penalty instead of -2.  On an average roll up it ups it to a -10 penalty instead of the -2 you'd get without using the maneuver at all.  You can get a +1 bonus at all times just by using Attack Formation Delta!  The upside is that it's stupidly situational, you can only activate it during a very specific situation where you've been running away from an enemy but changed your mind, so you won't be tempted to give yourself a hideous penalty for no reason very often.  I'm not sure how this one even made it past the cutting floor, if you took a maneuver who's text explicitly said “this maneuver does nothing” you'd still probably be better off than taking Segnor's Loop.  The only people who need this are Militant Vegetarians, who should take nothing but as many copies of Segnor's Loop as they can fit in their maneuver suite.

Shield Hit
Although I've marked this one aqua, like Zeta Nine it's not strictly abusive.  It's simply good, really, really good.  The single best gunnery maneuver in the game, in my estimation.  The key is looking at the fine print, Shield Hit reduces your enemy's SR by up to 15 on a hit.  Not a hit that does damage, not a hit that exceeds the ship's SR, any hit instantly reduces their shields.  This is fantastic but not really an abuse because basically it's the only way you're ever going to punch through the shields on a capital ship.  A Star Destroyer comes with SR 125, you won't be exceeding that and dropping it's shields in your little snub fighter with 4d10x2 damage, ever.  But five or six fighters each nailing it with shield hit could easily take it's shields down by 50-90 points in a single round, and the remaining shields can either be dealt with by a second use next turn or just by brute-forcing it's limited remaining shields using damage-bosting formations like Overwhelming Assault.  Bottom line, if you're a pilot, get shield hit.  If you expect to go up against any capital ship get two or three shield hits in your maneuver library.  This is the most important maneuver you can have if heavily shielded ships are in your future, and even if the ship isn't massively shielded taking that gargantuan fighter's shields down in one shot won't hurt your chances of survival a bit.  You need this if you're a pilot.

Skim the Surface
Allows you to ignore shields entirely.  Not as good as shield hit, because you can only apply it to frigate-sized and larger ships.  Good if you happen to know the Death Star is in your future, otherwise too situational to be outstanding, because you may never face a ship big enough to use it on.  Note that all the gunners on your ship also get a shield-free shot, however, so a freighter who has half a dozen gunnery stations might be able to devastate the enemy,  Again, however, situational, most players won't have that unique ship available.  If you're flying a Gozanti Cruiser or similar this becomes instantly blue, possibly aqua.  Devastating in the Imperial Assault Shuttle that you shouldn't be allowed to have.

Skywalker Loop
You know what happens when your opponent fails his pilot check in a dogfight normally?  You get to shoot him.  Guess what happens instead if you have Skywalker loop?  You get to shoot him.  Yeah, this maneuver actually doesn't do anything.  If you want it, discuss it with your GM and argue that you should get two shots at the enemy for activating the maneuver, and unless she's fairly unreasonable she'll probably agree.  Better yet, ignore the crappy situational talent and it's headaches in favor of another shield hit.

Snap Roll
A fine defensive maneuver, it's basically the Vehicular Combat feat except it lasts for an entire round instead of one attack.  Somewhat situational in that against only a single shot you won't need it since you probably have Vehicular Combat, but the situation of being shot at several times is a pretty common one so I'm upgrading it to blue.  Having this will keep you alive if your GM gets clever and uses the Murdercloud combo I mention above in the talents section.

Strike Formation
Eh, it's not bad.  +1 die is a fair tradeoff for -2 to reflex defense, and synergizes well with burst fire to give yourself disturbing numbers of dice.  Overall your payoff in bonus vs. penalty isn't as good as Overwhelming Assault and you can't pump it up to nightmarish levels like that formation can.  However the opportunity cost of this tradeoff is that you aren't using a better formation, like Zeta Nine.  This downgrades it from good to meh.  If it didn't give you any penalty it'd be blue, but that ups it's cost considerably.

Target Lock
Holy smokes!  Okay, it's a little situational in that it only works in dogfights, but dogfights are a situation you will certainly see if you're a pilot in anything but a frigate.  This is by far the best possible dogfight maneuver.  Make a pilot roll when the dogfight begins, and you get a bonus for the duration.  At the highest level this is a crushing +5 to all attack rolls and pilot rolls for the entire battle, granted that's a high pilot check but in a nimble huge fighter you should be able to reliably get that kind of roll somewhere around level 8 or so, and at lower levels you can still get a decent +2.  And. . . +5 to all attack rolls and pilot checks!  In a dogfight no less, where getting a good pilot roll means your opponent can't touch you and can do nothing but take your hit up the tailpipe.  And it's a persistent dogfight maneuver, not a formation or an action-eating single maneuver, so you can get this and still run Zeta Nine at the same time, and even throw in a shield hit on top if you're up against something with stupidly high shields.  Awesome.

Sense Target
A Jedi only maneuver, so it must be good right?  Wrong, it's fairly crappy.  You replace your ship's int bonus to your attacks with your charisma bonus.  The thing is, most ships have a base 14 or 16 int score so unless you're a charisma monster you're just not looking at much, even an optimized twi'lek with an int of 22 will maybe get +3 out of the deal.  You can get up to a +5 maneuver on top of this which isn't bad at all, but it only lasts for one round.  Now there are situations where's it's good, specifically if your enemy is using a jammer suite against you, your ship's int is degraded and you lose your int bonus to attack.  In that situation you might be getting a +5 cha and a +5 maneuver bonus compared to your poor dummified ship giving you +0.  That's highly worthwhile, but jammer pods aren't exactly on every other starship and few players seem to grab them, so yeah, very situational, and even worse it works for only one round, so the situation had better resolve itself at once.

Thruster Hit
How can this be bad?  Why, with a good hit you can cripple an enemy completely so he can only fly in a straight line!  And it doesn't have that stupid “fixed in 1 round by the engineer” flaw of Engine hit, it must be great right?  No.  This maneuver only activates if you either scored a critical or exceeded your target's damage threshold.  The one rarely happens and ships have such monstrous fort saves that the second almost never happens.  What's more, the only good effect on the list is the highest one, the first and second-level effects are weaksauce.  Lastly, in the case of a critical or threshold hit you probably did enough damage that the enemy ship is in trouble anyway.  This turns what would have been a nifty useful technique for making escort missions easier into a dumb-luck effect that almost never happens and isn't too useful when it does.  Only pick it up if you're a gunner who regularly uses Turbolasers, and can thus put out enough damage that it might theoretically trigger on a good roll.

Wotan Weave
A wimpier version of Attack Pattern Delta.  You take a big hit to your speed in exchange for a +1 to +5 bonus to your reflex defense.  Maybe with some crappy ship that has a speed of 2, like a Dynamic, this might be worthwhile since you aren't losing much, but the Dynamic maneuvers so poorly that you won't have the pilot score to get a good bonus anyway.  Ships that do have the agility to get the bonus also lose a lot of movement they might need to fight with.  Why take a maneuver that penalizes you when you could take a formation that gives you good bennies at no cost?
This message was last edited by the GM at 14:27, Mon 25 Feb 2013.

You'll mainly want to bring a land vehicle to the field if one of the PCs is an Ace Pilot and wants to use her talents on the ground.  It can also have some excellent other benefits, however, most notably that it will carry all the equipment for you (this can be critical if your medic doesn't have the Str score to carry that terribly heavy medkit) and many vehicles come with starship-scale weaponry which can provide an awesome boost to your firepower in a pinch.  Lastly price is a major issue since parties rarely have millions of credits to burn, and I tend to look only at used prices because I can count the number of times I've seen PCs pay for new vehicles on one hand.
Unfortunately vehicles are a nightmare to find.  These vehicles have very poor support in game, almost all of them are either military with the dreaded “not for sale” option attached, or else only carry one pilot and one or no passengers.  That's useless for a party since you're unlikely to have every person a pilot unless you're playing as a swoop gang or something.  You can go through three or four books and not find one that works for what you need.  Or you can go through this list I've compiled out of all the books and pick it right out.  These speeders all have a price I consider a typical party (one wealth noble) to be able to afford and can carry at least four people.  I should note that what I consider affordable in a ground vehicle is much lower than a starship, since you need the starship but can survive without the ground vehicle by walking most parties will select a starship first and a ground vehicle a distant second, and I've planned expenses accordingly.  Since a pilot can specifically use his starship maneuvers in an airspeeder, I've prioritized those craft over speeders or walkers that can't benefit from them, which amounts to almost nothing since there's so few airspeeders available.  Gunnery maneuvers can be used in any craft, so go wild if you find a nice tank or walker.

Walkers:

AT-XT (Clone Wars 163)
HP/SR: 80/5
Dex/Int: 12/12
Crew: 1
Passengers: 0
Cost: 2,200 Used
Cargo: 12 Kg
Wait what?  I just said this list was for party vehicles and my first entry is a walker for 1?  Yeah, the AT-XT gets honorable mention and aqua status despite being for one person, because it's an ideal pilot-on-the-ground vehicle, not a whole-party vehicle.  It's merely large sized and a walker, making it mobile in most places outdoors and indoors in the bigger buildings, like landing pads and ship's cargo bays.  It provides you with full cover, comes with feeble shields that are still 5 more than you'll be getting from your clothes (and are screaming for a tech specialist upgrade), and has superb starfighter-scale weaponry.  It's proton grenade launchers do far less damage than it's laser cannon and the laser cannon can use autofire to hit an area, so never use them unless you can hit many enemies at once in their slightly larger burst area.  Even better, rip them out and ask permission to install better shields.  See if the GM will let you use the droid or armor rules, as better shields are available there.
The ideal use for the AT-XT is simply to give yourself an HP buffer and some better firepower for a party on the go.  You'll be able to use your gunnery maneuvers, vehicle dodge, and vehicular combat to make your damage higher and your defenses better than on foot, and the only place you can't really take it is either areas where weapons aren't allowed or inside the Mos Eisley cantina.  Anywhere else this extremely cheap option takes you from somewhat irrelevant on the battlefield to a combat monster who can't be touched and does more damage per round than the rest of the party combined.  It does have one downside, 4 squares of movement is less than the 6 squares you'd get on foot.  However, since you're an Ace Pilot who probably has a good pilot score, you can likely spam “Increase Speed” and get reliable results that will keep up by mid levels.

AT-RT(War 164)
HP/SR: 60/0
Dex/Int: 16/12
Crew: 1
Passengers: 0
Cost: 24,000 Used
Cargo: 20 kg
The AT-RT is a slightly-inferior yet vastly-more-expensive version of the XT.  It doesn't provide total cover, has no shields, and costs 12 times as much.  Adding insult to injury, it has much weaker weaponry.  It's not all downhill, it has a speed of 8 so it's far faster than the XT, and it's dex is significantly more.  But if you're looking for speed a walker with minimal cover shouldn't be your first choice when a speeder bike is far faster anyway.  The XT is essentially the super-prototype for the RT, choosing an RT instead is like getting a choice between the Strike Gundam and a stock Zaku and picking the Zaku, except you get the Zaku instead of twelve Strike Gundams.

Airspeeders let you use all your starship maneuvers, so you can grab a nice bonus from your choice formation, which would probably always be Zeta Nine if your airspeeder had shields, or Overwhelming Assault if not.  Sadly few airspeeders have shields so this probably won't happen unless you can finesse the GM into letting you mod some shields on.

LAAT/i Gunship(Core 177)
HP/SR: 160/15
Dex/Int: 14/14
Crew: 6 (4 Gunners)
Passengers: 30
Cost: 40,000 Used
Cargo: 2 tons
Oooh mama.  The LAAT/i is a great choice for a straight up game of military violence.  It has excellent HP and shields for an airspeeder which means Zeta Nine is on the table.  It has four gunnery slots which is probably more than you have party-members with heavy weapons proficiency, but even untrained they at least get to do something and that can give them a feeling of satisfaction compared to flying around doing nothing.  What's more, it's patented composite-beam lasers ignore 10 points of DR which is fairly nice.  Sadly it's weapons are all ground-scale with no multiplier, except for it's expensive rockets and missiles.  It's not all uphill either, this thing is colossal and thus can't fit in a colossal transport, you can't bring it with you if you don't have a frigate with enough cargo space for it.  There's also the little fact that you're tooling around in an extremely well armed gunship which might make the local sheriff nervous and/or envious, although if he can actually do anything about it he probably has nothing to be nervous about.  While it's affordable and probably the best airspeeder in the game you'll have to jump through several hoops to get it, but boy is it worth it if you can bring this monster to bear on your enemies.

LAAT/c Carrier (Clone Wars 167)
HP/SR: 150/15
Dex/Int: 12/15
Crew: 1
Passengers: 0
Cost: 42,000 Used
Cargo: 40 tons
Don't look too funnily at the LAAT/c's lack of passengers.  Although it doesn't get to haul any people, it does get to haul lots of vehicles which do carry people.  Specifically it can bring 4 AT-XTs which is a surprisingly likely scenario once the other players realize how badass the AT-XT makes a pilot, or it can carry a few other configurations of vehicles you probably can't get so those don't matter.  You might be able to convince the GM that such a flexible array of carried craft means you should be able to bring speeder bikes or other craft on it too, but there's few things more powerful than four players in AT-XTs backed by this airspeeder giving them much-needed mobility.  It's 40 tons of cargo can also be used for something good, and the pilot gets to use a Starship scale laser cannon which isn't quite as good as the AT-XTs, but still nice to have when the noise starts.  It's colossal size means you can't bring it without a frigate for transport.  It's a good choice in the niche situation that most of your fellow adventurers have decided to pick up a vehicle of their own, outside that situation you should stick to the LAAT/i.


Republic Troop Transport(Clone Wars 168)
HP/SR: 120/0
Dex/Int: 14/16
Crew: 2 (1 Gunner)
Passengers: 12
Cost: 10,200 Used
Cargo: 3 tons
Can't afford the LAAT/i but need an airspeeder to move the team around?  Say hello to your new best friend.  The Republic Troop Transport can carry a very large party in style and has excellent speed.  It's weaponry is character-scale and feels anemic compared to what the LAAT/i or AT-XT can put out.  It also comes with no shields.  It's really not an outstanding choice compared to the aqua option above but it is extremely cheap (you can probably pick one up somewhere around 2nd to 3rd level) and it won't exactly steer you wrong even at mid levels thanks to it's good speed and generally impressive attributes.  It's a colossal airspeeder and a reason to bring a frigate instead of a colossal transport.

Shelter Speeder(War 63)
HP/SR: 60/0
Dex/Int:
Crew: 2 (Really 1 pilot, and 1 medic)
Passengers: 6(2 patients)
Cost: 26,000 Used
Cargo: 10 tons
The Shelter is a slightly tougher, much slower version of the Medlifter below.  It actually has some medical gear built in unlike the Medlifter, and thus grants everybody on board immunity to some hazards and a +5 bonus against those it doesn't make you immune to.  It's also huge but it has a lot of cargo space, 10 tons of supplies and it carries a speeder bike for. . . actually I'm not sure why it has a speeder bike, but there it is.  It's almost as frail as the Medlifter at only 60HP which could be a real problem, however it has those 10 tons of cargo space.  If you can convince your GM to let you apply starship modifications to it, you can swap some of that cargo for several EP and give it some shields and weaponry to defend itself.  If your GM allows it, that would make this an excellent choice.  If not, it's still okay for the price but not top-notch.  The stat block has an apparent error in which it states it's an "Air Vehicle" rather than an Airspeeder, which is significant because you can only use your starship maneuvers in an airspeeder, but given that it has speeder in the name your GM is unlikely to quibble over it.

Medlifter Troop Transport(Clone wars 167)
HP/SR: 50/0
Dex/Int: 14/12
Crew/Passengers: 2 (Really 1, see text)/4
Cost: 5,100 Used
Cargo: 1 Ton
This ship is really cheap and an excellent option for the aspiring airspeeder pilot at very low levels.  It's crew of 2 includes one medic to care for patients, so a pilot can fly it alone just fine and you can use that slot for another passenger.  It has a decent fly speed of 10 squares, it's merely huge in size, and moderately good stats.  It is, however, unarmed out of the box and frail, with only 50HP, no shields, and DR5 it's not going to hold up to sustained combat.  It's a good starter vehicle at low levels but it will need to be replaced with something more robust when you get more money and combat becomes more dangerous.

Modified Incom T-47 Airspeeder(Core 177)
HP/SR: 60/0
Dex/Int: 22/14
Crew/Passengers: 2/0
Cost: 50,000 Used
Cargo: 50 kg
Okay it's dextrous as sin and very fast.  And the T-47 gets the grappling harpoon gun used at Hoth (although since it's grapple is tiny compared to an AT-ATs you're going to cry if you try to duplicate Wedge's feat).  But it only carries two people, has no shields, and it's more expensive than the LAAT/i which has all those things and more.  It just doesn't give you enough bang for your buck.  Plus if you want to send a single-person vehicle into battle, there's no real reason not to bring your fighter.

These are grouped together because there's precious little distinction mechanically between them.  And they generally suck.  You can't use most of your maneuvers in them and they can't cross all manner of terrain the way airspeeders can.  Granted there are a few very nice ground vehicles out there, mainly tanks, but if you can get an Airspeeder instead go for it.

Arrow 23 Landspeeder (Unleashed 110)
HP/SR: 120/0
Dex/Int: 19/12
Crew/Passengers: 2/5
Cost: 3,400 Used
Cargo: 800 kg
Truly a fine choice, it's extremely fast, dextrous, heavily armed (though not with starship scale weaponry), and will carry your entire party and their stuff for a price most parties can easily live with.  It gives everybody except the gunner full cover, which can be a problem in really bad environments.

Armored Ground Car (Unleashed 110)
HP/SR: 140/0
Dex/Int: 14/12
Crew/Passengers: 3/8
Cost: 13,000 Used
Cargo: 300 kg
This is a fine vehicle for all your party needs.  It's decently fast, it's stats are good, it's cheap, and it comes with a starship scale laser cannon for the gunner to use.

Jaffryes Universal Automotive ARK-II Series Landmaster (Unknown 50)
HP/SR: 240/0
Dex/Int: 14/14
Crew/Passengers: 3/10
Cost: 30,000 used
Cargo: 800KG
One of the best options possible for an Adventuring party, and seems to have been made with PCs in mind.  Affordable at lower-mid levels, it has 240HP so it's extremely tough and will last you for your entire game, it really only needs shields to be great.  It's equipped with heavy blaster cannons for doing damage (But not starship scale) so you won't be losing a fight with an ambulance.  Speed 8 is useful but not outstanding. It also can't fly but it has an aquatic mode for crossing lakes or rivers in your way, so basically the only terrain that can stop you is a cliff.  All in all this is a superb vehicle for your land-adventuring needs, and since it's not a military vehicle like the AT-XT or LAAT/i it can be a great option if you are leery of tooling around in an obvious combat machine or need to go where such a vehicle isn't welcome.

TX130-T Fighter Tank (Unleashed 202)
HP/SR: 120/5
Dex/Int: 18/14
Crew/Passeners: 2/5
Cost: 34,000 Used
Cargo: 100kg
If you want an armored tank this might be the choice for you.  It's scaled to suit a typical party size and has shields out-of-the-box, and while they're only SR5 shields their mere existence opens up a lot of options for the tech specialist, although it doesn't open up Zeta Nine.  It comes with 120HP, enough to be survivable even at high levels, and brings massive 5d10x2 weaponry along with a concussion missile launcher you probably won't bother using much.  It also has dex 18 and merely huge size so your pilot checks will get a small but nice boost.  The problem is it's too expensive for what you get, if you can afford a way to transport it, one of the above colossal super-options like the LAAT/i will simply outperform this in every way for about the same price.

Land Crawler (Unknown 49)
HP/SR: 100/0
Dex/Int: 10/12
Crew/Passengers: 1/6
Cost: 3,000 Used
Cargo: 5  Tons
The Land Crawler has a speed of only 6, meaning it moves about as fast as your party can walk.  This is a minor disadvantage.  However it has 100HP which is fairly nice, and it has 30DR which gives it a significant edge in damage resistance despite it's lack of shields.  Overall, I'd rather have the Arrow instead for only 400 credits more.

Command Speeder (Unleashed 202)
HP/SR 120/0
Dex/Int: 18/12
Crew/Passengers: 3/0
Cost: Not for Sale, estimated 40,000
Cargo: 200kg
This has that nasty not for sale marker, but it's also given an estimated value so maybe your GM will let you get it anyway.  It has only room for 3 people but that is enough for a small party, or perhaps half your party with a couple others in AT/XTs.  120HP makes it fairly durable.  It comes with a light laser that does x2 damage, starship scale and far superior to what you might otherwise have.  While there's a lot wrong with this vehicle, if you have the special circumstances it seems made for it could be a decent option, but overall I find it simply too expensive.

A5 Juggernaut (Unleashed 200)
HP/SR: 320/0
Crew/Passengers: 8/50
Cost: 120,000 Used
Cargo: 1 Ton
Another Colossal option and another reason you should be flying a frigate instead of a colossal transport.  It has 320HP and DR20 makes up for it's lack of shields, making it one of the toughest vehicles in the game.  Speed 8 is acceptable, it will only be outrun by airspeeders.  It's bristling with weapons, featuring a starship-scale laser cannon, a starship-scale blaster, and a grenade launcher.  Make no mistake, this is very much a niche tank and not for every party, it's very expensive, takes special effort to transport, requires a big crew to operate, and forget about stealth when you're tooling around in a mobile skyscraper covered in guns.  However if you're specifically in a mercenary company game or similar this is probably the choice tank for an army on the go.  Overall I'd rather have several AT-XTs and a LAAT/c to carry them into battle but it is tougher than any of them, for what it's worth.

Corona Limited Luxury Groundspeeder (Intrigue 71)
Crew: 1
Passengers: 6
Cost: 20,000 Used
Cargo: 150kg
Luxury apparently means “fairly cheap” in the SW universe as this vehicle is reasonably affordable.  It's also very fast, provides full cover to passengers, and has 90HP.  However it doesn't have any shields or weapons.  If it were armed I'd call it usable.  See if the GM will let you put a few guns on it, otherwise there's really no point.

Hyrotii Corporation Mobile Recon/Research Vehicle Unknown 50
HP/SR: 200/0
Dex/Int: 14/16
Crew/Passengers: 6/4
Cost: 90,000 used
Cargo: 2 Tons
The MRRV carries two speeder bikes and is a speeder itself with excellent speed at 12.  It's attributes are fairly good and it has a high intelligence of 16.  It has a heavy blaster cannon for defense and 200 HP so it's not a weakling, but it's cost is high.  Even worse, it's colossal size means that you can't likely bring it with you anywhere unless you're tooling around in a Frigate.  Pass it by for something more affordable and useful, like the Jaffryes.

Ground Car (Unknown 49)
HP/SR 50/0
Dex/Int: 14/12
Crew/Passengers: 1/4
Cost: 1,000 used
Cargo: 300KG
Hmm, just ground car?  Yeah.  Apparently it's a generic model.  The Ground Car's 50HP and nonexistent weaponry make it a less than auspicious choice, though it's incredibly low price makes it desirable to a low-level party who doesn't want to walk across Tatooine, you can get an Arrow for a couple thousand more and blast your way across instead.

WLO-5 Speeder Tank (War 63)
HP/SR: 150/0
Dex/Int: 14/14
Crew/Passengers: 3/4
Cost: 65,000 used
Cargo: 150kg
This tank brings some heavy weapons and 150HP to the table, which makes it much softer than the Jaffryes above.  Even worse, it's hideously expensive for what you get, and also doesn't grant full cover to the gunner.  And, yeah that's about it.  It will win a fight with, say, the Luxury Speeder but you could buy a decent fighter or an excellent transport for that, there's just not that much reason to drop so much cash on something when the Jaffryes is available.
This message was last edited by the GM at 14:37, Mon 25 Feb 2013.

And here it is, the meat of being a pilot, your awesome ship.  Things to look for in a good ship are high HP and SR, especially if you can get rule-breakingly high SR such as the Stinger or Skipray.  Concussion missiles are good, not because concussion missiles are actually good, but because a concussion missile launcher is usually worth a lot of EP when you rip it out, letting you install something better.  And both Dex and Int should be as high as possible, although you can raise these with some systems, fighters in particular usually don't have enough EP to raise them very much (The Stinger and Cloakshape being two exceptions).  Only three fighters have passenger spaces and these are all noted.

Huge fighters are fairly rare beasts.  They're often more expensive than gargantuan fighters and a quite bit frailer.  But they also have much better pilot check penalties and better statistics.  Overall both sizes of fighter have their own ups and downs, but the biggest up for the huge fighter is that they're cheaper to modify.  The downside is that most huge fighters cost more than gargantuan ones so those savings are probably gone before you even start the modification.  Also of note is hangar space, you can fit five huge fighters in the hangar or one gargantuan so on the tighter ships like a Republic Cruiser this can be crucial.  However hangar space is also really cheap to add,  so if you're in a craft with large cargo bays this probably won't matter.  Most huge fighters lack an astromech  so I give them a lot of kudos if it does have one.  Here's my top choices for huge craft:

TIE Defender (Starships 145)
HP/SR: 100/30
Dex: 28/16
Cost: 80,000 Used
I, really Wizards?  Dex 28?  SR30?  It has almost every weapon ever printed mounted on it?  It comes with a hyperdrive?  And it has a speed of 8, two squares faster than anything else?  The TIE Defender may just be the best huge craft in the entire game.  I sometimes rate the Stinger as ever so slightly better, on the grounds that it's easy customization makes it more flexible to a player's needs, and its not a TIE so doesn't have unpleasant Imperial entanglements.  But in straight up ability scores and performance, the TIE Defender outclasses the Stinger in every way.   Your GM should probably not let you have this ship.  Pray your GM also does not let your enemies have this ship.

CEC S-100 Stinger (Kotor 97)
HP/SR: 90/30
Dex: 24/14
Cost: 90,000 Used
Isn't that a bit pricey, you say?  It's attributes aren't outstanding?  It's got a really slow engine at only 4?  How can this thing be good?  Actually the Stinger is really good.  There's several reasons.  First it's a huge fighter with SR30, normally illegal (hilariously, it's fluff description calls it “minimal” when it's got some of the heaviest shielding in it's weight class).  That's awesome, it's a huge fighter with the toughness of a gargantuan, but the TIE Defender has the same.  It has both a medium laser cannon and proton torpedoes, very nice.  But all that pales next to it's true awesomeness, those three letters in front of it's name, CEC.  Remember your Starships of the Galaxy rule on page 39?  Any Correllian Engineering Corporation ship gets 5 emplacement points free instead of 1.  Which makes this by far the most customizable huge fighter available, since fighters almost never have cargo bays big enough to sacrifice for more EP.  There's a bit of oddness in the stat block, it's crew list indicates no droid but it's hyperdrive line says it has a utility droid used as an astromech.  See if your GM will give you the utility droid slot for free on those grounds, if not use one of the EP to put the droid slot in as a passenger seat for greater, er, utility.  The proton torpedo launchers also do less damage than standard ones, consider ripping them out for another EP of customization.  All in all a fabulous craft, and you can turn it into the fighter of your dreams easily.

A-Wing(Starships  63)
HP/SR: 80/15
Dex/Int: 26/16
Cost: 70,000 Used
 Statistically the A-Wing is one of the better (non-abusive) fighters in the game.   Dexterity 26, int 16, 12 concussion missiles, a blazing 6 squares of movement, x1 hyperdrive, and a jammer that lowers the intelligence of enemy ships, giving you better odds of survival.  It won't even break your bank, at 70,000 most groups will be able to afford 1 or 2 by low to mid levels.
There are a couple of downsides to the A-Wing.  It's closely associated with the Rebellion and the GM may call it unavailable if you try to buy one for your smuggler campaign, available price or no.  There's not a whole lot you can rip out besides it's missile launchers and it has only 1EP stock, so you won't be customizing it as much as the Stinger.  It's HP and shields are somewhat feeble, and you can't upgrade them since SR15 is the highest “allowed” on a huge fighter, the Stinger and Defender notwithstanding.  You should probably make sure to have a defensive maneuver up all the time, such as Attack Pattern Zeta Nine, but you probably already knew that.

Davaab (Kotor 204)
HP/SR: 100/25
Dex/Int: 20/15
Cost: 80,000 Used
The Davaab is basically the Stinger's slightly stupider evil twin.  It's shields are a similarly-illegal-on-a-huge SR25 and it has both a laser cannon and a concussion missile launcher.  It's one of the better Mandalorian ships available.  Ripping out it's concussion missile launchers will net you a big 5EP, as good as the Stinger, and you should definitely do this because with only 3 shots it will run out of missiles before most battles are halfway over.  Put those EP to better use, I suggest improving it's light laser cannon to something with more punch.
Make no mistake, overall the Davaab is a decent craft.  It's stats are somewhat average for a huge but it's outstanding shields and decent HP make it very survivable.  If it wasn't being pitted against the awesomeness that is the Stinger in the fluff I'd recommend it wholeheartedly, and it's still head-and-shoulders above most of the huge fighters in the game.  But if you can get a Stinger, pass this by, the Stinger is simply superior in every way for a mere 10,000 credits more.  Seriously, how were the Mandos ever a threat if that thing was their prime enemy?

V-Wing (Starships 150)
HP/SR: 80/15
Dex/Int: 18/16
Cost: 45,000 Used
I once thought the V-wing was an admirable choice for a light fighter.  It's not, it's a trap!  The V-Wing is very inexpensive for a huge, so you can be lured into picking it up at low levels, but it has a weak Dex for a huge at only 18 and it's weaponry is feeble.  It has an amazingly low damage threshold, making it one of the few fighters that you'll have to frequently try to get back up the condition track on, and the force help you if you get hit by an ion cannon and spiral down the track.  It does come with speed 6, for what it's worth, and it's one of the few huge fighters with an astromech slot, but it simply won't win against most other huge craft, it's too sluggish to win a dogfight and it's single gun is too weak to win compared with the A-wing, never mind the Stinger.
Gargantuan fighters are harder to fit into a hangar bay than a huge fighter and they generally have lower dexterity and a higher penalty to pilot checks.  There's also far more of them printed so you have more choices.
A huge fighter will outperform a gargantuan fighter every time on basic pilot maneuvers.  However the Gargantuan fighters often have up to twice as many HP, can use better shields, and usually come with significantly more weaponry than the huge fighters.  Overall it evens out, and it's really all in what kind of pilot you want to be.  Hotshots with a heavy investment in starship tactics should gravitate to a huge fighter, where the improved pilot check will help them activate their maneuvers.  Less focused characters who are a pilot in their off-time should go for the gargantuan fighters where the improved toughness will keep them alive without a need for special maneuvers.  If you're cramped for hangar space, such as in a Republic Cruiser, go for the huge fighter every time.

TIE Scout (Rebellion 138)
HP/SR: 110/0
Crew/Passengers: 1-3/0-3
Dex/Int: 14/26
Cost: 75,000 Used
Cargo: 100 Tons
I'm starting to worry about the fact that the best possible craft two classes running is an Imperial TIE.  Seriously, this ship is insanely good.  It looks like an ordinary ship with decent but average stats right up until you reach it's Int score, which is 26.  A  full 10 points higher than almost any other ship in the game.  As if that weren't abusive enough, look at that cargo bay.  It's a big 150 tons, higher than most light freighters.  But unlike a light freighter you can trade cargo for EP at a rate of just 2 per ton, giving you 75EP to customize this brute.  You could quite literally add enough passenger seating, gunnery stations, and weaponry to use this as your party's base of operations and put together a pocket battleship the size of a normal battleship's escape pod.  Did I mention it's  explicitly a civilian model so you don't even have the stigma of tooling around in an Imperial fighter?  It does come with the slight caveat of not having any shields, but given it's space and cost you'll have no problem adding a heavy shield generator to it.  This thing simply outperforms every other ship in the game on almost every level.  If your GM allows it, you should be very, very worried about what's ahead.

Twintail (Starships 151)
HP/SR 170/30
Dex/Int: 24/16
Cost: 75,000 Used
Meet the X-Wing's replacement.  The Twintail does it all, relatively inexpensive, some of the best HP and Shields available at the gargantuan level, awesome weaponry that eclipses even the E-wing, astromech slot, hyperdrive.  The Twintail's astromech is built-in and can't leave the ship so it's ever so slightly less good than a normal astromech, and there's precious little you can do to upgrade a Twintail so it's not as flexible as some other options, but since it already has the ability to both endure and inflict massive damage it handles most of what a fighter should out of the box.  Overall an outstanding craft and one that will serve you well.

S40K Phoenix Hawk Light Pinnace (Clone Wars 84)
HP/SR: 150/30
Crew/Passengers: 2/4
Dex/Int: 12/12
Cost: 22,500 Used
Cargo: 20 Tons
The Phoenix Hawk appears to have extremely crappy attributes with it's feeble dex and int.  It's weaponry is okay and it has good HP and Shields, but also has a very slow speed for a fighter at 3 squares.  Of course you've probably already figured out why the Phoenix Hawk is blue, it has two more lines than the other fighters listed because it's one of the only fighters with both passenger space and a significant cargo bay.  The Pheonix Hawk is essentially what the TIE scout should be, a less broken fighter capable of carrying a lot and moving the party around, but not capable of destroying the game with it's sheer insanely high attributes.  It makes a splendid alternative to an escape pod for getting away if your main ship is wrecked and a capable landing shuttle or dropship.  Still, those are edge cases and that should rank this relatively slow ship as black instead of Blue, shouldn't it?  Well, no.  The other side of the coin is that if your party doesn't want to tool around in a fighter, you can rip out those 4 passenger compartments and use it's 20 tons of cargo to get an impressive number of EP (but the fluff does state that it's actual passenger space is terrible with a few bunks and no privacy, your GM may not give you the full EP for passenger slots removed, that lowers it's value quite a bit).  Your first priority should be maneuvering thrusters and sensor upgrades to get it's dex and int up to usable levels.  It's weaponry is already great, second only to the E-wing, and it's shields are excellent.  Consequently you can add the odder systems to it that you never have room for on a normal fighter, like a jammer or an atmospheric thruster.
E-Wing (Starships 83)
HP/SR 150/15
Dex/Int: 23/17
Cost: 80,000 Used
The E-Wing is a fantastic choice of a Gargantuan fighter.  It has good HP and and it's Dex is quite high, normally only huge craft get such a great rating, plus it's Int 17 is impressive.  It has outstanding damage with it's special triple laser cannon.  In fact it's cannon is so good you have no reason to expend your cash on proton torpedoes, paying out the nose for only a couple of extra dice is a waste of time; rip that puppy out for another EP.   It has an astromech slot and 6 square movement, another trait normally found only on huge fighters.  While it can only use an R7 astromech, it gives you +2 to pilot with that droid installed which makes it even better, add the droid and you have a gargantuan fighter that can actually maneuver like a huge.  The only sour note is it's shield rating of 15, fairly low for a gargantuan fighter.  Rip that out along with the Proton Torpedo launcher to make room for an SR35 generator and you'll have one of the finest fighters money can buy, for less cash than many deeply inferior ships would cost you.

K-Wing (Starships 105)
HP/SR 160/30
Dex/Int: 20/20
Cost: 120,000 Used
The K-Wing is an odd fish.  For starters it needs a crew of 4 compared to just 1 for most ships.  It's very pricey but since it has so many gunners and fires so many times a round, it's really replacing about four ships by itself.  It's not quite as good as those four ships simply because it's still only one target instead of four for all it's enemies.
It's got outstanding stats in every way from it's high HP to it's massive Int score.  It has no hyperdrive so installing one is likely a priority, but it does have an ungodly number of weapons and all of them do immense damage.  It's very much a niche craft but also quite unique and interesting for it's unusual configuration.

X-Wing (Starships 152)
HP/SR 120/15
Dex/Int: 22/16
Cost: 65,000-220,000 Used
Ah, the X-wing.  The legendary craft all our favorite heroes flew around in, provided our favorite heroes are Wedge and Luke.  Well it's not a Bad craft at all, the X-Wing has aggressively good base stats in the dex and int departments.  It's speed is. . . okay.  It's shields are anemic and need upgrading, and it's HP are only barely adequate.  It's not that the X-wing is bad, it's simply not as good as the craft 1 page up, the exceptional Twintail.  The two variant models have their own uses, the XJ3 has special weapons that make Yuuzang Vong defenses count for half, not available on any other ship.  But it's ludicrous price of 220,000 makes it not worth the effort.  The BR, however, is probably the best scout in the game, with a +10 bonus to sensor checks.  See if your GM will also allow you to add it's intelligence bonus for +12, some will agree and some won't.

Ixiyen Fast Attack Craft (Rebellion 64)
HP/SR 120/10
Dex/Int: 16/18
Cost: 40,000 Used
Mandalmotors clearly has a sense of humor, since they call one of the slowest fighters in the game a "Fast Attack Craft."  The Ixiyen isn't terrible by any means but it's nothing impressive either, low HP and pitiable shields, excellent intelligence but average dex.  For what it's worth it has good weaponry and it's priced quite low so it can be a viable option at lower levels.

Dunelizard (Rebellion 63)
HP/SR 140/25
Dex/Int: 18/14
Cost: 55,000 Used
The Dunelizard gets 3 free EP instead of 1 so that's good.  It's stats are unimpressive and it carries a passenger who can't do anything.  It's weaponry is okay, but not amazing and there's not much to rip out, but overall it's a serviceable low-level craft.

Cloakshape (Starships 71)
HP/SR 140/0
Dex/Int: 15/14
Cost: 15,000 Used
The Cloakshape comes with one invaluable trait that elevates it to near-blue status, it's very cheap.  While it's stats aren't good enough to rank it blue, it's not a bad fighter by any means, especially compared to the POS cheaper fighters below.  It's quite tough and comes with 2 free EP, and you can free up another 5 ripping out it's concussion missiles so you can fit a lot of good stuff in it.  It doesn't come with shields, a hyperdrive, an R2 socket, or just about anything else but you can add all those things without breaking the bank, for under 50,000 credits you can customize it into a poor man's Y-wing, with slightly lower dex but higher HP and far better shields than the stock Y-wing.  Plus as an older obsolete model, you probably won't attract the attention of the authorities as readily as a TIE or A-wing would.

Y-Wing (Starships 158-9)
HP/SR 120/25
Dex/Int: 18/16 or more, up to 20int
Cost: 60,000-90,000 Used
Important note: The Stock Y-Wings are written up with SR10.  Which is an insult to shields, Droidekas bring more shielding than that to fight with.  The errata upgrades all three to SR25 which is a bit more reasonable.  There are 3 models of Y-Wing with differing qualities and all are reasonably good, nice stats, okay shields, and somewhat low HP.  They're a bit overpriced for what you get, in my opinion, but the Courier model can carry an entire small party in terrible discomfort and all Y-wings carry both a pilot and a gunner, great if you have an extra body on hand with heavy weapons proficiency.  There isn't much to rip out of it and not a lot you can do to customize a Y-wing, sadly.  Overall I'd find a Pheonix Hawk a better choice for carrying the party and an E-wing a better choice for combat ship.

Krayt Gunship (Rebellion 65)
HP/SR 160/20
Dex/Int: 16/18
Cost: 210,000 Used
Way too expensive to be worth it.  Also messed up statblock, and some hijinks with the fluff block which states it has room for passengers that don't appear in the stats. It does get both a pilot and gunner, and has a decent array of weapons, so that's fairly worthwhile, but you can have two or three typical fighters for the price of one of these.  Avoid it.

Dagger (Clone Wars 81)
HP/SR 60/0
Dex/Int: 18/11
Cost: 8,000 Used
Wat?  I don't even. . . wat?  The Dagger is insanely cheap at only 8,000 used.  It is in fact the cheapest fighter in the game as far as I know.  This may tempt you to purchase one but the Dagger is a trap.  It has pitiful HP, no shields, and no hyperdrive.  For what it's worth, it's Laser cannons are enhanced to an impressive 6d10x2, but it's computer is as dumb as a sackful of hammers and gives you no bonus to hit.  However the real problem with the Dagger is EP, you get 1 and there's nothing on it to rip out for more.  You simply don't have the space to make this into anything useful, compared to the Cloakshape which has enough EP to rebuild it into a decent ship.  There is no reason to take a Dagger if you can possibly afford the Cloakshape, and if your GM expects you to engage in a starship fighter game yet doesn't let you have enough money to buy even a Cloakshape something is very wrong.

Dianoga (Clone Wars 82)
HP/SR 80/15
Dex/Int: 14/11
Cost: 12,000 Used
Cut and paste everything I said about the Dagger and apply it to the Dianoga, for it has the exact same problems and the exact same inferiority to the Cloakshape.  Okay, the Dianoga is marginally better than the Dagger, it comes with barely-adequate shields and a perfectly adequate hyperdrive.  It also has slightly more HP and you can rip out it's “Heavy Ion Cannon” which does significantly less damage than a normal heavy ion cannon.  If you're lucky your GM will even give you all the EP for a heavy ion cannon.  In that case it's much less inferior than the Dagger which is kind of like being more attractive than an intestinal parasite.  Buy a Cloakshape instead if you need a cheap fighter.
This message was last edited by the GM at 14:43, Mon 25 Feb 2013.

Why is the entire category orange?  These are usually the worst ships in the game.  The problem with them is, a space transport has a penalty to move as large as the Death star, but they usually only have as many HP as a fighter, and all the cool modifications are frigate and above (Most notably, you can't get a hangar bay for the team's fighters or the better weaponry).  Even worse is survivability, a colossal transport doesn't have the -20 to hit a fighter does against turbolasers so it can be 1-hit-killed handily with it's fighter-scale HP and shields.  You can fix that with a combat thruster, but in that case you can be caught in a dogfight, which is much like being grappled except size penalties work against you, so a transport getting in a dogfight with an A-wing is like a human getting grappled by a Rancor, it's a terrible situation to be in and you're only going to get out alive with outside help.  Outside help is some gunnery turrets since they can theoretically fire on the enemy even in a dogfight (albeit at a nasty penalty), or else the team's fighter pilot (probably you if you're reading this) dashing in to save the day.  Thus I suggest you only take a combat thruster on the more agile transports, like the YT-2400 or the Vaya, or on flying stacks of guns like the Gozanti Cruiser which has enough gunners to win even at a penalty.  Avoid on those slow dumptrucks like the Dynamic or the Citadel Cruiser.  Better yet, avoid the Dynamic and Citadel entirely.
What this size mainly has going for it is price, they're about a quarter to a tenth what a Frigate costs (unless it's the 9979) and often much cheaper than even a fighter.  If you can possibly afford it, pass these by every time for one of the nice frigates below.  But if you have to take one, here's my best choices:

Imperial Assault Shuttle: (Starships 95)
HP/SR 360/230
Dex/Int: 18/18
Crew/Passengers 5(3 Gunners)/40
Cost: 340,000 Used
Cargo: 5 Tons
Once again, best in class goes to the Imperial option.  Seriously, WTF?  230 Shields on a colossal transport?  Did somebody accidentally put an extra 0 in there?  Nope, I checked the errata just in case.  Four times, doing a spit take and a monocle pop every single time.  It's legit, they thought it was reasonable to put shields twice as heavy as a star destroyer's on a colossal transport.  And when those shields go down it has as many HP as the weaker frigates, three times what most transports have.  And just in case that wasn't abusive enough, they made it as agile as a gargantuan fighter and smarter than  almost anything else to boot.  While it's cargo bay is too small to give you many EP to work with, it's 40 passenger slots are worth large stack of EP for upgrades, depending on party size.  More than that. . . it has Four Turbolasers.  Four!  Overwhelming Assault just became the greatest maneuver of them all, since it's not like you'll ever need Zeta Nine on this puppy.  Then slap on Skim the Surface and you'll tear a Star Destroyer apart in no time.
Okay, it's not all upsides with the assault shuttle.    It's text block is all kinds of screwed up, mentioning how it disables it's target with ion cannons (No ion cannons in it's stat block) and needs 3 gunners (It has five gunner-operated weapons).  It's really expensive.  It loses 5 points of SR with every hit, even when they don't reach your SR total.  If they do hit your SR total you instantly lose all shields.  This is hardly balancing, however, because your shields are so hideously high that it will take forever for them to go down.  Even in the worse possible situation, against an enhanced heavy turbolaser, you will get at least five or six hits before you take any damage (and that's assuming you don't have a mechanic using actions to get the shields back up each round) which is five or six hits more than you'd get before taking damage in a Skipray or Republic Cruiser.  Against the best fighter-scale weapon you'll need to be hit 30 times or so before you have much of a risk of shield loss.  Add in it's hideous amount of HP, and you have a ship that will not die.  Make sure you've got an engineer constantly charging the shields and see if you can add the regenerating shield system for +10 shields per round and you have a ship that is functionally invincible unless and until it takes a hit from the Death Star Superlaser (Time for Ackbar Slash!).  Your GM would probably have to be insane to let a player party have this thing, especially with the abusive mods I've suggested.

Skipray Blastboat: (Starships 131)
HP/SR 230/100
Dex/Int: 16/16
Cost: 250,000 Used
Cargo: 20 Tons
What's bad is it's price, 250,000 is enough that you could be buying a powerful bone-crushing frigate for the same price.  What's good is everything else.  The Skipray directly breaks several of the rules of ship design by taking stuff that's supposed to be limited to ships of the Frigate size.  The big and obvious one?  SR100 shielding.  It also brings a combat thruster to the table stock so it gets that lovely -20 to heavy weaponry targeting it, which means the only things trying to ding those indestructible shields are puny laser cannons and blasters that are too weak to harm it (and missiles but even heavy concussion missiles will rarely roll high enough to damage it).  In addition to it's impressive dex and int, it's so strong that it's going to just laugh if a Citadel tries to tractor it, it's as dextrous as a middlin' fighter, and it's int 16 gives you a decent bonus to hit.  As if that wasn't enough it also mounts heavy weaponry that's normally Frigate-only and unavailable to ships this size.
Aside from price the Skipray has a few minor flaws, it needs a crew of 4 and it has very little cargo or EP.  This last is less of a problem than you might think, since it comes with almost everything a party might conceivably need pre-installed anyway, but you won't be heavily customizing this beast if you take it (if you do find you need a special modification, rip out the heavy concussion missile launchers.  20EP).  The only thing a frigate brings that the skipray doesn't (aside from another 500HP) is a hangar bay for the group's fighters.  If you're facing one, the force help you if you didn't take Shield Hit about three times.  You did take Shield Hit, right?

YT-2400:
HP/SR 120/30
Dex/Int: 18/14
Crew: 2/12
Cost: 30,000 Used
Cargo: 150 Tons
All the YT class ships get 10 free emplacement points, which is excellent.  However the 2400 is more excellent than any of the other YT classes.  Why?  Pretty much everything.  It's statistically superior compared to the other YT ships with better shields, an outstanding dex, and the biggest cargo bay, netting you up to 40EP without any systems removed.  It has a decent 3 square speed, which isn't obscene but is enough to outrun a lot of other lesser freighters which frequently have a speed of 2.  On top of that it's extremely cheap compared to many lesser ships, making it an excellent party ship at low levels, and will keep going into high levels with some upgrades.  It's one weakness is it's HP, only 120.  There are much tougher ships out there, but they are all much more expensive and frequently have weaker shields in stock.

Vaya Scout Ship  (Unknown 69)
HP/SR 90/35
Dex/Int: 22/16
Crew: 3/4
Cost: 15,000 Used
Cargo: 60 Tons
Wow.  Okay, the Vaya has a lot wrong with it, a puny cargo bay, very low HP, and it doesn't carry many people.  Everything else about it is outstanding, it's one of the most dextrous ships in it's class, it comes with high intelligence, and look at that price!  It's one of the cheapest ships in the game and you can probably get one by level 2, certainly level 3.  It's one of the few transports worth loading a combat thruster onto, since it has such high dexterity it can actually roll with the lower-end fighters and not die instantly in a dogfight.  The concussion missile launcher has few rounds, and should be ripped out for more EP, and it's single remaining laser cannon isn't enough, making putting more guns on it a priority, but with that price tag more guns will be easily affordable.

Gozanti Cruiser (Starships 90)
HP/SR 180/15
Dex/Int: 14/14
Crew: 12/12
Cost: 50,000 Used
Cargo: 75 Tons
The Gozanti Cruiser appears to be a useless tub of a ship at first glance.  It's got tons of weapons but the slowest engine in the game with a movement of 1.  However you can actually rebuild this into something awesome without breaking the bank, since it's very cheap to buy and decent engines aren't expensive you can readily rip out it's speed 1 engine and install a speed 4 engine for about 25,000 credits and 4EP.  It's moderate 75 ton cargo bay will net you 15EP to do this with, and each 5 passenger quarters you remove adds 10 more EP letting you reach somewhere around a 25 for a typical party.  It has excellent HP for it's size and wimpy shields which you'll want rip out and replace with SR55 shields for another 30,000 credits.  At this point you have a ship as fast as most fighters, as well armed as the smaller battleships, and you only spent 105,000 credits on it.  It does take a large crew, chiefly gunners due it using batteries of cannons which use several gunners giving aid another actions every turn.  I advise you to bring along several droids or  minions to help out, or install slave circuits to reduce crew requirements.  Or you can simply rip out the extra guns and turn the batteries into normal cannons for a lot more EP, but that isn't nearly as good as tossing your minions in the turrets and enjoying another +6 to your attack rolls.

Citadel Cruiser (Starships 70)
HP/SR 120/30
Dex/Int: 12/12
Cost: 120,000 Used
Cargo: 50 Tons
The citadel Cruiser is a strictly second rate option.  It's unique among the Colossal Transport ships in having the ability to carry two fighters, which no other ship that size can get.  It also has a tractor beam, rare and normally against the rules in a ship this size.  It's stats are sluggish and weak, but it has an excellent mix of weapons, albeit not as good a mix as the Gozanti Cruiser.
So why isn't it blue?  Cost.  The Citadel is 120,000 credits.  For a mere 5,000 credits more you could have a Medium Transport with far heavier shields, three times more HP, and with a minor and inexpensive refit enough hangar space for dozens of fighters, or outfit an 9979 and have enough space for a quadrillion fighters.  It's tractor beam also isn't all that, it has a relatively low Str score and many ships will outmuscle it if you try to leverage that, a humble Cloakshape fighter, for instance, is stronger and only a couple of points behind on grapple once you take size modifiers into account.  Ripping out the Tractor Beam will get you a nifty 10EP, very nice, but again, the Medium Transport's vast cargo bays will get you even more EP.  The one reason to pick this instead would be if the GM for some reason thinks that a Frigate is a bad idea and pushes for a transport sized craft, or if the only pilot is an Ace who wants to activate his formation maneuvers (those don't work in frigates, although they'll barely work in the Citadel too, due to size penalties and pitiful dex).

Firespray Blastboat: (Starships 84)
HP/SR 150/30
Dex/Int: 14/14
Cost: 120,000 Used
Cargo: 70 Tons
Take everything negative I said about the Citadel and apply it directly to the Firespray.  Then fail to give it credit for fighters since it can't carry any.  It does have mildly greater strength but not enough to be that much more useful on it's tractor beam.  Even if you want to be Boba Fett you don't want his ship when much leaner and meaner options are available.

Maka Ekai L4000 (Unleashed 120)
HP/SR 200/20
Dex/Int: 16/18
Cost: 85,000 Used
Cargo: 140 Tons (Note: The book says 410, it was changed in the Errata)
If it still had 410 tons of cargo space the Maka Ekai would be a fantastic choice for a party ship.  At 140 tons it's second rate and costs about five times what it should, they priced it to match the huge cargo bay but didn't errata the price along with the cargo.  It's attributes are excellent but you can buy a YT-2400 and still have enough to outfit a cheaper fighter for the same price.  Don't fall for the Maka Ekai's errata trap.

Dynamic Freighter:
HP/SR: 110/0
Dex/Int 10/16
Crew:
Cost: 30,000 Used
Cargo: 60 Tons
Why would somebody take this?  Because the Ebon Hawk was cool.  But the Dynamic isn't cool, it's weak.  Really, really weak.  It costs almost as much as the YT-2400 but it has only Dex 10 and int 16.  You get +1 to hit, but take a -4 on your pilot skill compared to the better option, the 2400 is almost like having free Skill Focus: Pilot in comparison.  It only has a speed of 2 squares so don't plan on outrunning all those enemies this tub can't outfight.  It also has only 6 emplacement points compared to 10, and 60 tons of cargo instead of 150.  Yeah, the freaking Firespray brings more cargo space to the table than the actual freight hauler.  Worst of all?  No shields, so there goes any credits you saved along with several of it's handful of EP.  On the plus side it's strength is. . . oh wait my mistake, I was reading the next ship's stat block, it's got a lower str score than some fighters and is one of the few colossal ships weak enough that the Citadel can reliably tractor beam it.  The Dynamic brings nothing to the table except having a map of it's insides, which a player can probably make anyway.

YT-1300: (Starships 154)
HP/SR 120/0
Dex/Int 10/14
Crew:
Cost: 25,000 Used
Cargo: 100 Tons
How can the Millenium Falcon be bad, you ask?  It's not, the Falcon's awesome.  It's also completely impossible to build using the rules as written, the Falcon's writeup gives it tons of bonuses and goodies cost-free.  It doesn't even use up any of it's cargo space for EP.  However the stock 1300 is basically just like the Dynamic, no shields, 2 square speed, no dex bonus, minimal int bonus.  For what it's worth, it gets slightly more cargo than the Dynamic at 100 tons, which is still only 2/3rds of the 2400's 150 tons, and it gets the full 10EP as a YT class.  So it's slightly less red than the Dynamic, but well away from coveted Blue Text status.  I suspect that for whatever reason, they intentionally wrote every ship a cool person has in the movies and games to be garbage just to make sure players can't get their own Ebon Hawk, Slave One, or Millenium Falcon.

Ghtroc 720 Freighter: (Starships 88)
GP/SR 110/15
Dex/Int 14/13
Crew: 2
Cost: 23,000 Used
Cargo: 135Tons
This wouldn't even be a blip on the radar, except that Wizards put the Ghtroc forward in their web releases, posted maps of it, and generally flogged it like it's something special.  It isn't, it's a trap.  Most of that's wrong with the Dynamic is also wrong with the Ghtroc.  Weak shields, feeble movement, feeble weapons.  For what it's worth, it has a decent cargo size, shields equivalent to a weak fighter, and nicer stats than the Dynamic, and it's one of the cheapest freighters so if, if you're trying to run a crew on a ramen-noodle-for-dinner tight budget, then you should still skip the Ghtroc in favor of the cheaper and superior Vaya.  What, you thought I was going to suggest a situation where you should take it?  Haha, no.

Teroch type Fast Attack Gunship (KOTOR 205)
GP/SR 110/25
Dex/Int 19/15
Crew/Passengers: 8/6
Cost: 200,000 Used
Cargo: 8 Tons
Ah, the Mandolorians, so cool, awesome armor, and they get the best ships.  And by “best ships” I meant they fly around in tubs of crap.  Not only is the Teroch hideously expensive, it's a “gunship” who's armaments are inferior to most cargo ships and it's stats are, well not exactly weak but not great either.  There's nothing to customize on it, no cargo bay to get EP from, and no systems you can afford to rip out so you're stuck with it's bare bones statblock.  You can get a huge pile of superior craft, like the Vaya or YT-2400, for the cost of a single Teroch so why would you ever pick this?  Should you be playing a Mando game and wind up in one of these, all you can do is hope a wing of Stingers don't show up and eat you alive.

Lethisk Class Armed Freighter (KOTOR 99)
GP/SR 150/30
Dex/Int 3/8
Crew/Passengers: 8/6
Cost: 225,000 Used
Cargo: 60 Tons
It costs a fortune, isn't as well armed as it's name implies, and has a doesn't have much of a cargo bay for the cost.  You could buy a Thalassian Slave Transport for that and have enough left over for an excellent fighter and a fast stack of upgrades for both.  Do I need to say more?
Whenever possible I jump straight past colossal transports and go straight to the Frigates.  They have no higher a penalty to maneuver and vastly higher HP, as in three or four times higher at the lowest and ten times higher for the better models.  SR scales similarly, you might find 15-30SR on a colossal freighter but they start in the 40s and go up to the low 100s for a Frigate.
The downside is that you can't activate your formation maneuvers in a Frigate, although gunner maneuvers still work.  This is less of a curse than it might seem, because the size and dex penalties on most freighters will keep you from getting the full benefit of those maneuvers anyway, and when you've got SR100 instead of SR30 losing the +20 from Zeta Nine doesn't pinch.
Alas most frigates have an ugly “Not Available For Sale” in the price listing, and those that don't have a tendency for the figure to read several million, which most players won't get their hands on in a regular game.  Here's my choices for the handful that have a price tag I think a typical party could potentially get.

Republic Cruiser  (Starships 126)
HP/SR: 960/100
Dex/Int 18/14
Crew/Passengers: 8/16
Cost: 400,000 Used
Cargo: 1,000 Tons
Whew, we finally found a category where the Empire doesn't dominate from the get-go.  I would rate this the best ship for an aspiring rebel or pirate crew in it's size, and I suspect they wrote it specifically with the adventuring party in mind.  The Republic Cruiser comes unarmed but has massive HP and shields, making it one tough cookie to fight once an enterprising tech specialist installs some guns on it.  It also has 5 free EP, and a salon pod with 20 more free EP.  If that's not enough it brings 1,000 tons of cargo to the table for 20 more EP.  This is, sadly, not as many as you might want, hangar bays for fighters take up an inordinate number of EP (40EP for a single gargantuan fighter) and docking clamps are stupidly expensive.  Consequently, you can't make this into a good carrier, you need the Medium Transport for that.  You can readily fit in one or two huge fighters, however, so again it's decent for a party as long as you're not looking for a straight up carrier build.
It can be turned into a very effective combat ship with room to spare for both the fighters and heavy weapons.  It also has the ability to swap out Salon pods for various special purposes, but as there's no price given for an extra salon pod, and you probably will want whatever systems you started with, I doubt that will ever come into the equation.  Since it's got twice the shields and HP of the Medium Transport, as well as significantly better stats (It's Dex is an incredible 18, better than some fighters), it's overall a greatly superior option if you can afford it.  I repeat that it does not come with any weapons installed by default, so you'll need to add them stat.  However weapons are the cheapest thing to add to a ship this size so that's not usually too overwhelming.  Give yourself a couple of turbolasers and at least one point-defense weapon in case of fighters, and you'll make any colossal transport you meet cry.

Republic Cruiser C70 Refit  (Clone Wars 170)
HP/SR: 960/120
Dex/Int 18/14
Crew/Passengers: 8/30
Cost: 400,000 Used
Cargo: 6,000 Tons
Normally I put the aqua option in front of the blue, but in this case, it being a refit of the above, it seemed reasonable.  Also wat?  Wat is this?  Somehow refitting the ship to add more weaponry and heavier shields caused it to also gain an additional 5,000 tons of cargo space. . . and room for more passengers.  It's basically everything the Consular is and more, unfortunately that includes price, at 700,000 credits I put it at close to the upper limit a party can afford.  It's also not entirely clear if it still has the 25 spare EP, but no other refits seem to reduce EP, check with your GM.  Either way it comes with enough goodies to make up for the price, and since it has a huge 6,000 ton cargo bay worth 120EP it's not like you'll miss the salon pod if you don't get it.


Medium Transport (Starships 111)
HP/SR: 400/45
Dex/Int 10/12
Crew/Passengers: 6 (4 of them are gunners in point defense laser turrets, so really 2)/40
Cost: 125,000 Used
Cargo: 19,000 Tons
Yeah, the name is a bit odd.  Just medium transport, nothing else.  This is specifically the Gallofree Medium Transport, that ungainly turtle looking ship that escaped from Hoth in Empire Strikes Back.  It's stats are unimpressive but it's surprisingly affordable.  More importantly, it carries 19,000 tons of cargo space which translates into 380EP of enhanced goodness.  Let me repeat that, 380EP.  For a fairly reasonable amount of cash the players can make a Medium transport into an excellent strike platform with room for many fighters and several turbolasers, and it comes with four point-defense laser cannons installed for some decent combat power out of the box.  It has the weakest HP and shields of any of the frigates I've listed here, and that's a serious problem.  It's SR45 can be punched  through easily even by light fighters so it's survivability just isn't impressive, although it's 400HP will still leave you in far better shape than a Citadel Cruiser for about the same price.  It's a great alternative to a Citadel Cruiser but it simply won't match up to the Republic Cruiser above, if you can swing the credits for the Republic Cruiser go for it.

C9979 Landing Craft  (Clone Wars 205).
HP/SR: 600/60
Dex/Int 10/16
Crew/Passengers: 88/124
Cost: 75,000 Used
Cargo: 1,800 Tons
Ostensibly this is that big H-shaped droid carrier for the Trade Federation.  It has a huge unwieldy crew but they're all battledroids, specifically the ultra-cheap OOM series, so you might be able to make a reasonable argument that they are security, and not actually flying the ship, letting you bypass that expense.  If not, while 88 of them will put you back almost 80,000 credits, it's dirt-cheap price tag, smaller than some fighters, means it still amounts to an amazingly cheap frigate.
It's not all roses with the C9979, you'll have to work to make it fly.  It's weaponry is weak and it has no hyperdrive standard.  On top of that it has the absolutely ludicrously small operating time of 1 days worth of supplies, but fortunately you can massage the rules to fix that, since increased range adds a minimum of 1 day each application will get you 1 more day, six of them should net you a week's range for the bargain price of 30,000 more credits.  You can also pick up the Fuel Convertor in Scum and Villainy, which turns one hour in realspace into one day worth of fuel.  You'll still spend more time gathering fuel than in other ships but it can be made to work.
On the plus side it carries an ungodly large number of vehicles, 11 Colossal Transports, 24 Colossal Speeders, and 114 huge speeders.  According to Wookiepedia fluff it also got deployed as a fighter carrier so you have some justification for swapping all that out for hangar bays.  You should have no problem at all working it into a monster carrier and slapping a new hyperdrive in it along with several turbolasers.  Like the Medium Transport, it simply won't outperform the Republic Cruiser due to it's pitiful dex score and it doesn't have the EP of the Medium Transport, but it's a fantastic carrier available at far lower levels than anything else in it's class with decent HP and shields.

Thalassian Slave Transport
HP/SR: 600/100
Dex/Int 12/13
Crew/Passengers: 15/12,400
Cost: 122,000 Used
Cargo: 10 Tons
Like the 9979, this is a ship that probably has most scratching their heads.  It's not exactly a bell-ringer for awesome adventure ship, is it?  It's stats are fairly weak (although that SR100 is very nice), it's got so little cargo space you can't possible get a single EP out of it, and come on, it's a slave transport!  Yet I love me some Thalassian Slave Transport, because a PC seems so heroic when saving slaves, oh, and because for every 50 slave quarters you remove, you get 10EP just for the living space, giving you let me see, yes, 6981EP to turn this thing into a poor man's Death Star.  Arguably you should get even more EP due to these being secure prisoner quarters which nets around 4 more, although given that you have nearly 7,000EP you probably won't even notice that little bonus.  That cracking sound you just heard was the game's balance exploding under the weight of how many mods this beast can take.
Oh, did I mention it comes with two quad turbolaser turrets rigged for autofire?  'Cause it totally does.  Slap on a couple of point-defense lasers for antifighter operations and you've got your armaments totally covered.  Given sufficient money, I would expect a fully pimped Slave Transport to be able to easily fight a Star Destroyer head-on and win.

Action IV  (Starships 126).
HP/SR: 600/0
Dex/Int 10/12
Crew/Passengers: 8/0
Cost: 500,000 Used
Cargo: 90,000 Tons
Picture this.  Lord Vader is tooling along in his Star Destroyer hunting down Rebels when he gets a hot tip that there's a rebel freighter in the area.  He hunts it down and aims his 5 turbolasers and 4 ion cannons at it.  The freighter then pulls out it's 180 Turbolasers, and, once Vader's done changing his pants, he contacts the freighter's captain to transmit his surrender.  He's just encountered the Action IV.

Eh, okay that scenario might be a bit of a stretch.  But the Action IV is amazing for one simple reason, not only does it come with 3 free EP, it has 90,000 tons of cargo space.  Even at 50:1 that amounts to a staggering 1,803EP, more than any other ship in the game.  You can almost build an Action IV into something strong enough to fight a Death Star head on (in reality those 180 turbolasers wouldn't fly, you'd need crew to fire them, shields, etc.  It was just to demonstrate how many EP this thing has).

So why isn't it blue?  Money, dear boy.  Making an Action IV into a combat ship is unbelievably pricey.  To start with it costs 500,000 used.  Doable at mid-high levels, yes.  But then it doesn't come with any shields.  Hooking up with some SR100 shields to match the Republic Cruiser will cost you a cool 1,000,000 more, a bit less doable regardless of level.  And it still isn't even armed, and still inferior to the Mobquet in most ways at this point.  Plus you'll need to expend 10 tons of cargo space per passenger since it has no passenger quarters, although I find it rare to run into parties larger than 8 so this probably won't matter, and unless you're planning on bringing along a roman legion this won't dent your cargo bay even if you need a few quarters.  Ultimately, while it can be incredibly powerful, there's simply no reason to bother if the Thalassian Slave Ship is on the table.  Still, it is the second-highest-EP ship in the game, and if your GM refuses the Thallasian Slave Trader for some reason, and you have all the money in the universe, this can be a worthwhile option.

Mobquet Medium Transport:  (Rebel 68)
HP/SR: 900/90
Dex/Int 16/14
Crew/Passengers: 2 (1 is a gunner)/24
Cost: 225,000 Used
Cargo: 700 Tons
(Rebel page 67)  This is an acceptable option if you want a tougher ship than the Medium Transport but can't afford the Republic Cruiser.  The Mobquet's uniquely small crew is easy to manage.  At dex 16 it's a sexy beast for maneuvering. . . okay yeah nobody's going to be mistaking the half-a-mile long cargo hauler for a starfighter.  But I make no exaggeration at all in saying that this monster can not only casually outrun a Dynamic with it's superior speed, but also easily outmaneuver one, which shows how pitiful the Dynamic really is stat-wise.  And if it needs to fight?  It has some moderate weaponry, including a concussion missile launcher you need to rip them out for 5 more precious EP.  Even better?  It gets the same free 10EP as a YT class.
It does have a few downsides, it's cargo is a measly 700 tons which amounts to only 24EP all together (29 if you also remove the concussion missile launcher).  It's simply not as good at getting lots of mods as the other heftier cargo ships, but you can give it a single turbolaser and still have room for a couple of huge fighters.  It doesn't have enough passenger space to get more EP ripping them out, and it's too expensive to use starship designer to improve it much, you're stuck with a relatively hard-to-customize craft.  Even so, it's as tough as most battleships and those 900HP cover a lot of sins.  Pass it by if you can possibly get the Republic Cruiser, but it's a decent also-ran if the cruiser isn't available, you want something tougher than the Medium Transport, and you're not planning to bring many fighters.  However overall the C9979 is simply a better buy, with more cargo space to boot, and the Thalassian Slave Transport simply blows it away.
This message was last edited by the GM at 18:15, Sat 24 Aug 2013.

So, now you've picked out a nice ship and your pilot is good to go.  But if the ship's just stock, it's not really your ship, is it?  Besides there's almost no ships that really do all you want them to right out of the box, so here are my choices for ways to alter your starship to your liking.

A note on cost multiplier:  Any device that says "Base" with it's cost needs to be multiplied by the ship's cost modifier, which is based on size.  Devices that do not say "base" do not need to be multiplied, this means most weapons and the navigational computer have a flat cost.  Most other devices are "base."  The multipliers are:

Huge fighter: 1x base
Gargantuan fighter: 2x base
Colossal Transport: 5x base
Frigate: 50x base
Bigger than Frigates: Costs even more but you'll never afford these ships anyway.

This does make modifying a frigate brutally expensive, though I still find the better stuff they can get, like hangar bays and turbolasers, more useful.  The most important frigate modification, the hangar bay, is dirt cheap even with an x50 modifier; and the best weapon, the turbolaser, isn't "base" and so doesn't cost any more on a frigate.

Weapons are all fixed-price, they don't multiply by your ship's cost modifier.  This means they're affordable even if you're making a space station.  I've included other things with offensive capability here, like the plasma lance.

Docking Gun (Starships 47)
Thou shalt mount at least one docking gun on thy vessel.  This is that cool autoblaster Han had on the Millenium Falcon to deal with stormtroopers on Hoth.  It's useless in space battles but awesome on the ground, and it's cheap and takes up no EP so there's basically no reason not to mount several, as many as you have people to fire them.  It's going to use the Heavy Weapons Proficiency no matter what gun you mount on it, so you might as well pick something big and damaging, especially since the ship supplies power so normal ammo constraints won't apply (this means missile and grenade launchers are less desirable).  I prefer the Rotary Blaster but the Blaster Cannon is a good choice too.  You might consider putting a few of these inside the ship to deal with intruders as well.

Turbolaser (Starships 47)
Well these are tops, not only for their superior damage but because they actually have some range to them, unlike all the lesser weapons that can fire one square before penalties come into play.  Sadly Turbolasers aren't available for anything except big capital ships (Unless your GM hands you one of the extra-broken transports like the Imperial Assault Shuttle).  However Turbolasers have one critical weakness: They can't be made into point-defense weapons, hence they get a nasty -20 penalty when shooting at fighters.  For this reason even if you have scads of turbolasers, you also want to buy some point-defense laser cannons to handle fighters, unless your GM has given you the terrifyingly powerful System Patrol Craft (Starships 140) which gets normally-illegal point-defense turbolasers.

Laser Cannon (Starships 47)
The Laser cannon is pretty much the best weapon due to having longer ranges than anything other than a turbolaser.  Granted at point blank it's equal to a blaster but, especially on capships, the extra few squares of range can be critical since very fast enemy fighters can literally go from outside maximum range of a blaster to point-blank in a single turn.  The price difference is only a couple hundred credits, not worth worrying about.  If I'm buying new weapons I'll typically reach for a laser before I look at a blaster unless there's no other choice.

Blaster Cannons (Starships 47)
Blasters are the “Default” weapon and not a bad buy for fighters.  The shorter range only comes into play at medium and longer rangers, and as a fighter you'll often want to get close anyway and dogfight your enemies.  If your fighter comes with these stock it's probably not worth swapping them out, but if buying new weapons, don't pinch pennies, get the laser cannon for a couple hundred more.

Ion Cannon (Starships 47)
Useless.  Sadly due to the rules being extremely screwed up, Ion Cannons are actually worse at “stunning” enemy ships than normal cannons are, because their damage is reduced by half for damage purposes, and you'll never hit a starship's damage threshold so their slight bonus there is meaningless.  Since it's a nightmare to take heavy shields down anyway, hitting them with only half the damage means you're probably doing squat.  If capturing enemy ships is going to be an issue, talk to your GM and try to get Ion Cannons houseruled back to doing what they're supposed to do, otherwise you're in for a world of frustration.

Hard Point (Scum 58)
Hard Points are a great bargain for fighter pilots.  Missiles are only a so-so option normally due to cost, but there are simply situations where you might have missiles to use, perhaps you looted some from an enemy, or the GM wants you to hit the “ray shielded” death star vent and you can only pierce it with proton torpedoes.  Enter the hard point, you get four slots in which you can put missiles, bombs, or torpedoes.  Any missiles, bombs or torpedoes (though heavy concussion missiles take 2 slots each).  This is vastly superior to any launcher on the credits and EP front.  A shieldbuster torpedo launcher will set you back 10,000 credits and 3EP, and holds 4 shieldbuster torpedoes.  That's hard to fit on a lot of fighters.  Hard Point sets you back 500 credits and 1 EP, and holds 4 shieldbuster torpedoes, and if you run out of shieldbusters you can throw concussion missiles, or proton torpedoes, or anything else you want on them. For the cost of a heavy concussion missile launcher you could mount 40 heavy concussion missiles instead of 30 (and put them on a fighter), it holds 33% more torpedoes than a proton torpedo launcher for the same EP.  Cheap, versatile, and effective, what more could you want?  I have honestly not found a single launcher in the game that can exceed the abilities of the hard point for the same costs.

Proton Torpedoes (Starships 47)
Proton Torpedoes are a good option compared to concussion missiles, while even more expensive a launcher only costs 1 EP so you can fit it on the fighter of your choice.  They're too expensive to fire off every battle unless you have a military paying the tab for your ammo but even in a ragtag mercenary company the extra damage will be welcome when a boss fight starts.  It's important to note that Proton Torpedos are capable of doing splash damage,

Shieldbuster Torpedo (Starships 47)
A massive increase in EP and Cost compared to the regular torpedo, but you get the awesome power of. . . +1d10 damage.  Okay, they also drop shields an additional 5 points if you happen to have exceeded the shield's total, and at 110 average damage they are going to exceed the threshold of a lot of shields out there.  But if you're trying to drop shields that heavy your weapon of choice is shield hit, not the hideously expensive torpedo.  This makes it very situational, I guess if heavily shielded capships are in your future it might be worthwhile but it takes up too much space to fit on most anti-capship fighters.

Concussion Missiles (Starships 47)
Concussion missiles take up an inordinate amount of EP on your ship and their damage isn't really that big an improvement over the basics.  The real problem is that a single concussion missile launcher takes stupidly large amounts of EP compared to your basic blaster.  It doesn't help that the launcher also costs you a ton of credits to fire, a medium concussion missile launcher fired three times will set you back more credits than the infinite-ammo blaster cannon.
Note that while the stat block doesn't mention it, in the text blurb there's an option for armor-piercing concussion missiles which ignore 10 points of SR and DR in exchange for -5 to hit.  This might be a decent choice since just about every ship out there has stacks of SR and DR.  More often, though, I just ignore the missile and spend the money on upgrading the blaster/laser cannons to do more.

Ion bomb (Starships 47)
Hard to use, only effective on planet surfaces, and ion damage doesn't actually work as it's supposed to.  These weapons are generally a bad idea made even worse by their extremely situational uses.

Space Mines (Starships 47)
You know what's awesome?  Weapons that can't actually target the enemy, take up a massive number of EP, do significantly less damage than concussion missiles, and cost about three times more than said missiles.  Oh wait, did I say awesome?  I meant the opposite of that.

Double and Quad (Starships 47)
Quad and Double Weapons weapons get a boost to damage, and multiply the cost of the base weapon.  They cost more than fire-linked weapons, but take up 1EP less space for the same amount of improvement to damage.  They also come with free autofire, which is fairly useless but makes buying autofire even more of a sucker's trap than it normally is.

Fire Linked (Starships 47)
Basically the alternative to Double/Quad.  Fire Linked weapons cost less than Quad weapons for the same level of bonus, but take up more EP.  So it's really a matter of which is more valuable to you, EP or credits.  Frigates have more EP but you have more credits to play with if you only bought a colossal freighter.  Fire Linked, like quad, also lets a weapon fire in full-auto mode, which isn't all that valuable but still an extra option if you happen to be able to take advantage of it (or frequently wind up using your ship to support ground-operations).

Enhanced (Starships 47)
Enhanced weapons come with the price increase of Quad weapons, and the EP-increase of Fire-Linked weapons, in other words they're the worst of both worlds.  They also fail to include free autofire and can't be applied to Turbolasers.  I'm honestly puzzled and can't think of any situation where you'd want them.  Perhaps if your GM let's you stack this bonus with fire linked and you have scads of credits?  I dunno.

Autofire (Starships 47)
Autofire doubles the cost of a weapon for almost no appreciable value.  Autofire can't be used normally in space and is only useful if the gunner has the Burst Fire feat or the pilot is performing the Darklighter Spin maneuver.  If you happen to like and take those options, I guess it might be worthwhile but I've found that most pilots don't and this is just wasted credits.  Worse, Fire Linked and double/quad both come with autofire along with other bennies too, so yeah.

Grappler Mag (Scum 58)
Better than the Tractor Beam, the Grappler Mag uses tractor beam rules but has a range of only 1.  Why is it better in that case?  First because it costs almost nothing and takes up only 1 EP, making it a good grapple option if grabbing enemies isn't going to happen every day.  More importantly, the Grappler Mag comes with 100% of your USRDA of Stealth, it's quite possible for a ragtag band of rebels to sneak up on an enemy Star Destroyer, grapple mag it, sneak inside, and then plant a bomb or rescue hostages before escaping entirely unnoticed.  This is unbearably good when used on a nice boarding craft, for instance it could be put on a Phoenix Hawk, allowing you and five of your best friends to sneak around in a Gargantuan fighter sabotaging the enemy willy-nilly.  I absolutely recommend this.  It apparently doesn't work with the plasma torch, so remember to buy space suits and have somebody talented at slicing to open up the airlocks.  Remember that the "Skim the surface" maneuver lets you fly inside an enemy' ship's shields, if they're being particularly paranoid and you still need to grappler mag them.

Plasma Torch (Scum 58)
The plasma torch cuts through the hull of an enemy ship and lets you make your own airlocks.  It doesn't take many EP and it's fairly cheap, though it does take a number of turns equal to the enemy ship's DR to manage, so it's fairly useless when combined with a Tractor Beam, you need that stealth-grapple mag advantage or you'll simply walk face-first into an ambush.  Oh?  It doesn't work with the grappler mag?  Well that's pretty lame.  Send a droid through the airlock first to trigger the inevitable ambush.
As an additional bonus, it inflicts 1d6 damage per round while cutting and ignores normal DR in the process.  As a result, this can actually be the best option against some ludicrously tough enemies, since the plasma lance can be mounted on even huge fighters you can send out entire squadrons to cut holes in the hull until the enemy ship falls apart.  I'd call this cheating but given how many battleships were sunk this way by scuba divers in history I'd say it's pretty legit.
There's a more expensive version, the Plasma Lance.  It cuts twice as fast but costs 4 times as much and can't be mounted on fighters.  Note that the text of the plasma torch implies that it can only be used as part of a tractor clamp.  It's not clear why Grappler Mags and Tractor Beams are excluded.  The Plasma Lance can be used at any time as long as you're in the same square as the enemy ship and Tractor Beams/Grappler Mags explicitly work with the lance.  This comes down to the book's editors not doing their jobs.

Tractor Clamp (Scum 58)
Does everything a tractor beam does, and more.  The tractor clamp acts as both tractor beam and airlock to board with and grants you a +5 bonus to grapple with as well.  Sweet.

Tractor Beam (Starships 47)
Basically what the Gravity Well Projector should be, the Tractor Beam lets you use grapple rules to grab an enemy ship.  Since it's ineffective against anything bigger than you, you do not want to mount a Tractor Beam unless your ship is at least Frigate sized, and this is the sole situation where a big strength score is valuable.  The problem is, well, the Tractor Clamp does everything the tractor beam does, and more, and the Grappler Mag does everything the Tractor Clamp does but quietly.  So it's really not that great for anything compared to the other options.

Gravity Well Projector (Starships 47)
Say it with me, Situational.  The problems with the Gravity Well Projector are many, chiefly it's very limited range of 10 squares means that fast ships can casually get out of range in a single turn, especially using maneuvers like afterburn, and it can only be mounted on big slow ships.  It also needs an attack roll to establish the well, albeit at an easy DC, but that still leaves a lot of room open for a bad roll screwing the ship over because you only have to fail once and the enemy ship can hyperspace away.  On top of that, it's expensive and takes a lot of EP.  A Tractor beam does a far better job at keeping enemies from escaping, and though it takes twice as many EP it has a fifth the cost.

Stuff what keeps you alive when the baddies come a'calllin.

Environmental Filters (Scum 58)
Muahahahaa!  This wonderful mod lets you set different atmospheres and living conditions in different parts of the ship, a pleasant luxury for any Kel Dor or other aliens on board who don't breath oxygen.  But environmental filters also make the best security system possible, because you can flood any section of the ship with poison, radiation, damaging heat/cold, and no/heavy gravity at will.  This frankly beats most other defenses hollow, got an Armor-Beast on the team?  They probably have environmental seals and maybe radiation shielding, go nuts and irradiate and poison intruders while the armor-beast fights without penalty.  Or if you have spacesuits, fill the place with vacuum.  Aquatic adaptation or a Gungan character?  Fill the room with water.  Or if you have a hot/cold weather species like a Talz handy try hitting the enemy with a sudden temperature change.  The options are nearly limitless and the pain you can inflict is loads of fun.

Sensor Baffling (Scum  58)
Remember all that gushing I did about using a Grapple Mag to sneakily destroy enemy ships?  Doubtless some people are shaking their heads knowing that without cover you can't use stealth, and space is not known for providing an abundance of cover.  That's where Sensor Baffling comes in, this moderately-expensive 0-EP cost modification grants your starship the equivalent of Hide In Plain Sight, you can now make stealth checks without cover.  It's pretty pricey unless you're a dedicated smuggler or sneak, and quite possibly too expensive on a frigate, but it can be put on any ship and makes sneaking around in a light freighter or smaller a very viable option.

Anti-Boarding System (Scum  58)
Well, it's not awful.  Anti-Boarding Systems are very expensive and EP-intensive but they do provide a good value: every room bigger than the broom closet and section of corridor longer than a small room gets a secure locking door, automatic blaster-rifle turret that can attack on it's own, and cameras to keep you posted on what's going on, and these systems all keep working even when main power's off.  It's not a bad deal if boarding is ever going to happen, it's simply that it's too pricey for most ships to pull off with all the other goodies you probably want, and anyway you're more likely to want to fight the battles yourself, in which case Environmental filters used to set unfair conditions in your favor are better.

Sensor Masking (Scum 58)
This is one of those remarkably stupid entries that makes me wonder if the writer had even read any previous books.  Sensor Mask is a stealth upgrade that gives a +10DC to enemy sensor checks to spot you.  Well and good, except that it costs three times more than a freaking cloak does, it's hard to imagine anybody with enough cash to buy this and it's illegal to own to boot.

Baffled Drive (Scum 58)
Everything that is wrong with the Sensor Masking is also wrong with the baffled drive, and more.  Twice as expensive as a cloak, irritating fiddly-bits rules that make it a pain to use, expensive to operate, minimal benefit.  Avoid.

These are modifications that give you bonuses to skills or let you do tricks.

Personalized Controls (Scum 58)
This gives you a bonus to flying your own ship, while also giving everybody else a penalty.  It's dirt cheap and costs no EP.  Unless you're in a military or otherwise group-owned ship that has to rotate pilots there are zero reasons not to have this, typically the only reason somebody else will be flying your personal fighter is because they stole it and in that case you want them getting penalized while you chase them down in your rental/borrowed ship.  Even better, it can be applied multiple times to multiple positions, giving everybody nifty bonuses to their specialty on board.

Hangar Bay (Starships 49)
The whole reason you want a frigate, hangar bays are dirt cheap but eat the EP like candy.  Fortunately frigates, the only ships that can mount hangar bays, tend to come with extra-large servings of EP.  This lets you bring fighters along with your main ship which is critical to having fighter support come your next huge space battle.  Basically any frigate-sized ship needs lots of hangar bays.

Cryogenic Chambers (Starships 49)
A superior option compared to the prison cells, these are inexpensive and don't take up too many EP, and let you store somebody on ice until you need them.  Notably you get to store more people as the cost modifier of your ship goes up.  Pretty worthwhile, as frozen prisoners are less likely to escape than prisoners who are awake and have some free time to work on the locks of their cell.  I personally like to booby-trap these to explode in the event that they are opened by an enemy (or from the inside) for obvious reasons.

Extended Range (Starships 49)
Gives your ship more supplies and flight time.  Normally useless but there are edge cases, such as the 9979 with it's 1 day of flight time, where this is useful.  Otherwise it's to be ignored.

Fuel Converters (Scum 58)
Starships are supposed to cost credits to refuel every time you use them, unless you have fuel converters.  With this handy upgrade, your ship can gather interstellar dust and gas and make it into useable fuel.  This lets you stretch the range of ships with low consumables, such as the 9979, or just avoid the irritating costs (a frigate costs 500 credits per hyperspace jump).  The only reason this isn't aqua is because I've never seen a GM actually using the fuel rules, although now that I've keyed everybody in to their existence I suppose they're going to start enforcing them on you all.  Sorry pilots of the world, my bad.

Amphibious Seals (Scum 58)
Cheap and good utility, lets your starship transform into a submarine, either to evade enemies or just to land on water planets.  I love it just for the cool factor.  The only reason it's not blue or better is because very few games wind up on water planets so it might well be a waste of time and credits unless you know Mon Calamari is an upcoming target.

Workshop (Scum 58)
A little meh, workshops are overpriced for what you get.  Only takes 1 EP but it costs a lot of credits for a measly +2 equipment bonus that won't stack with the bonus you got on your masterwork tools.  However, it does stack with personalized controls, which grants an uptyped bonus, so together you can get a +3 on this, and you could then use tech specialist on it for a total bonus of +4, fairly nice.  And it can be fit on a gargantuan craft so it's a pretty sweet (and cheap) mod to add to your ol' pal the Pheonix Hawk, though it quickly gets outrageous as the ship's size increases.

Medical Suite (Starships 49)
Ya know, I want to recommend this.  A medical bay is a nifty thing to have on your ship and I love the idea.  But this stupidly written piece of junk actually makes you worse at medicine.  You get surgical beds, which act as medpacks, medkits, and surgery kits except that resupplying them costs five times more than the normal tools do, and gives you 0 bonuses to actually healing people, so you're better off just carrying a normal bag of medical stuff around.  On bigger ships it includes a bacta tank (or more on a station), so that's great, right?  Well to get the bacta tank you have to spend 150,000 credits once the cost modifier's tallied up, and a bacta tank's cost is only 100,000 credits.  So you could just buy the tank, save 50,000 credits, and call a corner of the cargo bay your medical suite, where your normal tools will operate just fine for even more credits saved.  If you really want to be operating on a medical frigate ask your GM to make the facility give you a significant bonus in line with the expense, as is it does nothing but cost you money.

Docking Clamp (Starships 49)
This is the Hangar bay's drooling idiot cousin.  Supposedly it lets your ship grab a fighter and carry it along in hyperspace.  the problem is you can only mount it on frigates, which can already get hangar bays, so it's redundant, and it costs fifty times more than a hangar bay, so it's stupid.  As if that weren't bad enough the text implies that all ships already have a docking clamp for the purposes of moving around the ship so you basically have no reason, ever, to take a docking clamp.

Droid Repair Team (Starships 49)
For a mere 25,000 credits or more, you can have a set of droids on your ship which do fewer things and are vastly less capable than the 4,000 credit utility/astromech droids you could buy instead.
This message was last edited by the GM at 18:32, Tue 21 Jan 2014.