Pilot Handbook (A step-by-step guide)

Foreword

This guide should help new pilots on there way to become ace. I try to give you as little information as possible, but as much information as needed for you to make your own decisions. A lot of information is taken from the pilot forum, the credit for that goes to NarfBlinko, Farelli, ShaiLyn, and many others. I added my own experience, suggestions and advice.

There are many different ships and many different set ups for these ships. I do not claim to give the best possible advice for ship setups, just something that does work.

Sorry for all the following theory.

Pilot career part 1



If you plan to fly the “ARC-170” or the “JSF”, you need to do the quests to be able to fly them (when you reach tier 4). You can only do the “ARC-170” quests when you are ground Rebel, and you can only do the “JSF” quests when you are ground Imperial. So if there is a need to switch factions, you maybe want to do that before you start your pilot squad, because you lose your non-freelancer pilot skills when switching factions.

If you are ground neutral you can only be freelancer pilot. If you are ground Imp/Reb you can be either freelancer or pilot of your ground faction.

Choose a faction and a squad in that faction. The difference between Freelancer, Imperial and Rebel pilot are the ships that you can fly and the rewards that you get. If you plan to become ace pilot for the first time and are ground Imperial, you maybe want to become Freelancer pilot, because they get as reward a very good level 8 weapon (Rebels get that too).

If you are new to space you probably want to choose an easy pilot squad. The easy ones are:

Freelancer: Corsec: Sergeant Rhea, Coronet, Corellia (-275, -4730)
Imperial: Imperial Inquisition: Lt. Barn Sinkko, Kaadara, Naboo (5204, 672)
Rebel: Arkon’s Havok: Captain Kreezo, Tyrena, Corellia (-5177, -2281)

If you want to fly an other squad or you are not sure where your next trainer is, check:
Complete List of Pilot Trainer Locations

The Guide: Special Landing Rights explains how to land at the Emperors Retreat (for Imperial Inquisition tier 2 – 4), or other locations.

Check All Profession Roadmap Reward Items so you don’t sell a valuable reward item cheap by mistake. Except to me ,) .

Ship Parts

[b]Understanding Ship Components[b]
[b]Component Stats for Dummies[b]


There are 3 types of ship parts:
- Crafted
- Raw loot
- Reverse engineered parts



Crafted parts are in 99% your best choice when starting your pilot career. Crafted parts can be found on the bazaar in “Ship Components” Crafted parts have “Ship Equipment Certification Level”: 1, 3, 5, 7, 9 and 10 (POB parts) and have following names:

Level 1 Blaster: Light Blaster
Level 1 Countermeasure: Chaff
Level 1 other parts: Mark I

Level 3 Blaster: Mid-Grade Blaster
Level 3 other parts: Mark II

Level 5 Blaster: Heavy Blaster
Level 5 other parts: Mark III

Level 7 Blaster: Advanced Blaster
Level 7 Mustafar reactors: Modified Mark V Fusion Reactor (usually better then the standard Mark IV reacors)
Level 7 other parts: Mark IV

So when you want to check crafted level 7 reactors on the bazaar:
Ship Component > Reactor > Mark IV or
Ship Component > Reactor > Modified Mark V Fusion Reactor

Level 9 Blaster: Experimental Blaster,
Level 9 other parts: Mark V

Level 10 Blaster (only for POBs): ‚Null Bolt’ Blaster, Elite Gauss Cannon, Elite Railgun.
Level 10 Capacitor: „Mining Grade Capacitor (Y-8 Only)“, Elite Capacitor. Y-8 Caps can be used in POBs and are often better then the Elite Caps.
Level 10 other parts start with „Elite ...“ e.g.: Elite Armor

Using missiles in pve isn’t worth it, so they are not listed here. Countermeasure only level 1 chaffs are worth using. You do not take an advantage from higher level countermeasures.

Collection capacitors: Deepwell Capacitor Alpha / Beta / Gamma / Delta / Epsilon
Collection reactors: Koensayr Reactor Star Synthesis Archtype A / B / C / D / E
Collection booster: Kuat Drive Yard Experimental Booster BR- 1x / 2x / 3x / 4x / 5x
Collection engine: Mandal Motors High Output Engine Prototype I / II / III / IV / V

Nova Industries Prototype Engine
Nova Industries Prototype Ion Cannon
Orion Industries Prototype Engine
Orion Industries Prototype Disruptor


Raw loot is what you get when you destroy npc ships, or as mission (not duty) reward. Most of the parts aren’t useful, but in rare cases the parts can be very valuable.

Raw loot should be checked and not just sold to the Chassis Dealer. On www.spaceloot.org you can find the link „Janann’s Reverse Engineering Chart“. On that PDF you can see on one page, which levels of loot are good and which are not useful. And you see which value are good and worth keeping.

Unfortunately „Janann’s Reverse Engineering Chart“ - „Space Loot RE Table“ was not updated since years. Here are the updates I would make:
a) The RE bonus is the value without structure trader expertise points set into RE bonus.
b) Crafted Nova / Orion engines are good. For raw level 10 engines I would only keep the exceptionally good and better values.
c) There was a change related to reactors, and I think some of the values are too high and rare. I think these are good values:
Reactor 1: 1k mass / 12k generation
Reactor 2: 1.8k mass / 12k generation
Reactor 3: 2,7k mass / 12.5k generation
Reactor 4: 4,6k mass / 15.2k generation
Reactor 5: 6.7k mass / 17.8k generation
Reactor 6: 12k mass / 23k generation (Level 6 are now very useful)
Reactor 7: 16k mass / 29k generation
Reactor 8: 24k mass / 30k generation
Reactor 9: imo not useful
Reactor 10: 40k mass / 35k generation (maybe for a pob)
d) Level 8 Capacitor with a mass below 26k is a keeper for me.
e) Crafted droid interfaces are faster and have less mass. IMO no need to collect looted DIs.


By using the link “LOOT” on www.spaceloot.org you can check which values raw loot ship parts can have.


Be careful when you plan to use raw shields in your ship. The average value from front and back hitpoints is calculated and replaces the original values, sometimes immediately when you load the shield into your ship, or sometimes after a while. E.g. a raw level 7 shield with fantastic 2200/1400 turns then into a crappy 1800/1800.

Be careful when you plan to use raw weapons. The “v. Armor”, “v. Shield” and “Refire Rate” values will be rounded. This can work to your disadvantage or to your advantage. Example for an advantage: a level 10 weapon with a “Refire Rate” of 0.394 will after reverse engineering have a value of 0.366 and that will round to 0.370. But when you load the raw 0.394 into your ship before reverse engineering and let it be rounded, it will be 0.390, that will reverse engineer to 0.363 and that will round to 0.360.

I suggest sorting out the good parts and keeping them. Sell the other parts to the chassis dealer. From the good parts shipwrights can then make ….



Reverse Engineered parts like armor, weapon, shield and reactor are better then crafted parts and are always used in pvp. Engines and capacitors in pvp can be crafted or revers engineered. The Guide to Reverse Engineering explains the process.

I always make sure to re parts only balanced parts. So re bad parts only with bad parts, average parts only with average parts, and uber parts only with other uber parts. The link loot on www.spaceloot.org lets you check how good a part is. (I would go so far to re 90% parts only with other 90% parts, 95% parts to only re with other 95% parts, and 99% parts to re only with other 99% parts … even if this means, ill probably never finish some of my re jobs.)

Pilot career part 2



At box 1
You get a prototype ship from your pilot trainer. You can use that until you get to box 3. To advance just fly the missions that your pilot trainer gives you (destroy (patrol) duty missions to get xp).

The command “/escapepod yes” (/esc yes) lets your ship explode, and load at the closest space station, fully repaired for free.

Do combat taunts annoy you? /togglecombattaunt turn them on and off.



At box 2
Here you get the certification for your first new ship. But the further you get in your pilot career the more ships you will be able to fly. The ships you get at higher levels are not always better for new pilots. E.g. light fighters have low mass and are difficult to set up, bomber type of ships have high mass but not easy to fly. So no need to change your ship now.


At box 3
You get the “Level 3 Ship Equipment Certification”.

Your prototype ship will not have enough mass for level 3 parts, so you need a new ship and parts. In general the heavy version of the starter ship are the best choice for new pilots up to tier 4 (box 14) (and maybe beyond). They have 95/96k mass and a good handling.

To get a “heavy starter” from the bazaar: use “Vendor Location”, “Entire Galaxy” search. Ship deeds are located in “Misc > Misc”. Blueprints can be found in „Ship Components > Ship Chassis“. NPC “Chassis Dealer” will for a small fee turn your Blueprint into a Ship Deed. For Freelancer that is: Scyk Light Fighter (High Mass Variant). For Imperials: Tie Fighter (Heavy Variant). For Rebels: Z-95 (High Mass Variant).

Freelancers: Dunelizard is a very good ship (but to keep examples easy, this guide will be for one blaster ships).

Recommended parts:
- crafted level 3: reactor, engine, shield, capacitor, weapon
- crafted level 1: booster, droid interface (DI)
- use the prototype armor from your starter ship
- missiles launcher, countermeasure launcher are not necessary.

At different speeds, ships turn faster or slower. Scyk and Z-95 turn fastest when flown between 50% and 75% of your maximum speed. I did set up 2 macros “/throttle 0.50;” and “/throttle 0.75;” and bound them to keys to easy get into that speed. Tie Fighters turn fastest when flown between 50% and 60%, and still turn fast when flown at 80% - so I would set a macro at 50% and one at 80%. The Throttle Sweetspots and YPR Guide explains this in detail and shows the sweetspots for all ships.

To advance fly the missions your pilot trainer gives you. For xp your best choice are probably the tier 3 ships at the blackscale spawn in Kashyyyk, behind the Avatar Platform (if its not over camped) (Kashyyyk 4077 –976 –4955).

When you succeeded your mission, check your profession window, on how much xp is needed to get the next training. Maybe you can stay in space and get the xp and save yourself some time.


At box 5
You get astromech level 2 certification.


This is copy / pasted directly from NarfBlinko’s “Pilot FAQ with Hints and Tips v.5.1”:

__________________________________________________________________________
Q: How do I use Droid Commands?

A: You need both a Droid Interface (DI) and, depending on your ship chassis, a Flight Computer or Astromech, in addition to the actual commands or programmed chips. A detailed list of each command and more information can be found in the Complete Droid Command FAQ.
1. Droid interfaces can be looted or crafted by a shipwright.
2. Flight computers/astromechs are crafted by Engineer Traders only. Astromechs are for X-wings, Y-wings, Z-95s, ARC-170s, and Eta-2 Actis Interceptors only and count against the droid limit in your datapad. Flight computers are for all other ships and do NOT count as a droid in your datapad. They are certified in Box 5, 9, 13, and 17 of the pilot skill wheel and are separate from the DI certification. REBEL NOTE: You will most likely end up running both flight computers and astromechs, but the astromech can have other functionality besides being a flight droid. Ask your favorite Engineer for more info. Astromechs, as they count against the droid limit, are tradable and nameable. Flight computers are NOT able to be named.
3. Each faction has a set of commands they can program or load for free. ANY pilot of ANY level can use ANY program from ANY faction as long as they can squeeze it in the FC/droid they are certified for. You can use programs from the other two factions (or ones you can not program yet) by buying or trading for chips that already have the commands programmed.
__________________________________________________________________________

And I suggest to read the mentioned Complete Droid Command FAQ

So get yourself a level 2 astromech if you use a Z-95, and a level 2 flightcomputer if you use a Scyk or Tie.

To keep things simple (for now) I suggest to use “Weapon Capacitor Overload 3” and “Capacitor To Shield Shunt 3” to increase your capacitor energy and give you the possibility to “heal” your shields. The 2 programs use 20 capacity in your astromech / fc each and reach the capacity limit on your astromech / fc level 2.

Make sure you programmed the astromech / fc, loaded the astromech / fc and the droid interface into your ship before launching to space. Then launch to space, open your commands window, go to the astromech tab, and pull the “Weapon Capacitor Overload” and the “Capacitor to Shield Shunt” icon to your toolbar. Run overload programs before the fight starts. “Capacitor to shield shunt” transfers energy from your capacitor and reinforces your shield; use this during a fight, when your shields take damage.

The most useful commands are:
Capacitor to shield shunt (CTSS)
Weapon capacitor overload (CO)
Reactor overload (RO)
Weapon overload (WO)
Engine overload (EO)

CTSS and CO have no effect on reactor drain or generation rate. RO, WO, EO have effect. This will be explained at Box 9.


At Box 7
You get the “Level 5 Ship Equipment Certification”. I recommend to use a heavy starter and:
- crafted level 5: engine, shield, capacitor, weapon
- crafted level 5: reactor (make sure it’s has 14.5k output – could also be a looted)
- keep your crafted level 1: booster, droid interface
- keep your prototype armor
- missiles, countermeasure are not necessary.

To get xp blackscales are good.


At box 9

This is the last tier 2 box, from now on you only need to do the missions to advance during tier 3.

You get Level 3 Astromech Certification, and using it is now a must.

Your level 3 astromech / fc has 70 capacity. You need to find a balance between increased reactor drain on your weapon and engine when running WO or EO, and the increased reactor generation when running RO. When your total drain is higher then your total generation, then your ship will be underpowered – the result might be going from less performance of your parts and up to certain parts being disabled.

When I check reactor drain and output on current crafted parts, following should be possible:

Part: Reactor Drain/Output Overload Storage
Reactor >14.5k 1 5
Engine < 1900 (overhaul type) 2 10
Weapon < 2800 (only 1 weapon) 2 10
Capacitor no influence 4 25
CTSS no influence 3 20

You for sure want to have „Capacitor to Shield Shunt“ und „Capacitor Overload“ as high as possible. The other overloads possible will depend on your ship parts (and your remaining astromech / fc) capacity.

You just need to make sure, that your ship is not underpowered. If it is, run lower WO / EO or higher RO… but how do you see if your ship has enough power?

Enough power



After running the RO, EO and WO in space, you can check if your ship is underpowered or not, by hitting the V button. Check if there are any triangle symbols next to your components. A triangle next to your reactor can be ignored. Triangles next to other components show that this part is underpowered. A circle next to a component shows that it is disabled. Countermeasure launchers often sill work even when underpowered.

To find the best possible setup you can either use the “try and error” method or calculate the exact figures.

The “try and error” method: start to program your astromech / fc with RO4, CO4, CTSS3 or 4 (adjust the starting level of the programs according to the capacity of your astromech). Program EO1 and WO1. Launch to space, run your overloads, check the v screen, if there is no triangle (except reactor), everything works ok. So land, remove EO1 and WO1, and program EO2 and WO2. Launch, run overloads, check v screen. If there is a triangle, reduce WO2 to maybe WO1 and check again, if there is no triangle, try to replace EO2/WO2 with EO3WO3 and check again in space … and so on.

Depending on your weapon, you maybe don’t want to have highest possible WO level, because that could drain your capacitor too fast.

When you have reactors with high reactor generation rate, or are only certified for lower astromech levels, you can start the above “try and error” method with lower RO levels.

But the easiest way is to calculate your energy:
+ Capacitor Drain
+ Shield Drain
+ Droid Interface Drain
+ Booster Drain
+ Engine Drain x (EO1 1.25/EO2 1.67/EO3 3.33/EO4 10)
+ (Sum of drain of all weapons and missiles) x (WO1 1.43/WO2 2/WO3 2.86/WO4 5)
+ 50% of the drain of your chaff launcher (chaff will be underpowered but still work)
= total drain

Reactor Generation Rate x (RO1 1.1/RO2 1.3/RO3 1.6/RO 41.9)
= total available energy

Total drain has to be lower then the total available energy, otherwise your ship is underpowered. A spreadsheet program is very helpful for calculation. A complex template is linked on www.spaceloot.org and called „Egon’s Loadout Wizard”.

There is a big difference with engine drain when running EO3 (drain x 3.33) and EO4 (drain x 10) but the additional performance is only +10%. So this is usually not worth it in pve (except your reactor anyway has enough generation).

The above data / figure is / are taken from How to tell if you are underpowered[Repost].

Here a calculation example with suggested figures from the level 3 astromech:

Part: Reactor Drain/Output Overload Storage
Reactor >14.5k 1 5
Engine < 1900 (overhaul type) 2 10
Weapon < 2800 (only 1 weapon) 2 10
Capacitor no influence 4 25
CTSS no influence 3 20

+ 1200 (Capacitor Drain)
+ 3600 (Shield Drain)
+ 500 (Droid Interface Drain)
+ 600 (Booster Drain)
+ 3173 (Engine Drain 1900 x EO2 1.67)
+ 5600 (one weapon 2800 x WO2 2)
+ 250 (50% of the drain of your chaff launcher)
= 14923 (total drain)

15950 (14500 x RO1 1.1) = total available energy

Pilot career part 3



At box 10
Rebel pilots get the X-Wing certification. I suggest you keep the heavy Z-95 to save yourself a bit time.


At box 11
Here you get „Level 7 Ship Equipment Certification“. If all the parts would be updated to level 7 parts, the total mass of your (heavy starter) ship would be overloaded. So use for important parts level 7 parts; that would be engine, weapon (look out for low eps), shield (should be 1900 f/b hp), and capacitor.

Keep your level 5 reactor for now – but watch out for level 6 and level 7 reactors with high generation rate of 20k and more and mass as low as possible.

Keep your crafted level 1: booster and droid interface and keep your prototype armor. Missiles and countermeasures are not necessary.

The new crafted parts probably have similar drain as your previous parts, so a change of your astromech programs should not be necessary.


At box 13
This is the last tier 3 box. You get “Level 4 Astromech Certification”. Level 4 Astromech has 110 capacity. I suggest to update your reactor to one with 20k+ generation and to update to a level 4 astromech / fc. RO3; EO3, CO4; CTSS3 and WO4 should work. If your reactor has really high generation you maybe can use only RO2, and CTSS4 … or even EO4, best way is to just do a calculation.

From all tier 4 boxes you need 1 mil xp to get training. To get the needed xp you could use the blackscale spawn. Or go to your tier 4 pilot trainer and get a mission there. Or go to any tier 4 pilot trainer of your faction and take destroy duty mission. Freelancers can talk to Diness Imler, Theed Palace, Naboo (-5450, 4680) to get a Black Sun destroy mission. Rebels can talk to Warvog Arkon, Nym's Stronghold, Lok (407, 5090) to get a Black Sun destroy mission or talk to General Ufwol, Rebel Outpost, Rori (3689 -6464) to get a Imperial destroy mission (GCW) points. Imperial pilots can get a destroy Rebel mission from the Dathomir space station. You could also get the needed xp in Deep Space – but watch your back. Or check Kessel, if spawn is good.

Or ask an other pilot to take you to Ord Mantel, to one of the tier 6 spawns there, e.g.: /way 624 3105 –1669; /way –2357 3168 –2064 . The xp is shared between everyone on the same ship, so with 10 ppl on one pob, you just get 1/10 of the total xp.


At box 14
You are tier 4 now, well done. All factions get a few new ship certifications here.

Imo the heavy starter is good enough to become master pilot, if you want to change to an other ship, here are your good options:

Freelancer Pilot: Dunelizard, Vaksai
Imperial Pilot: Eta-2, Belbullab-22
Rebel Pilot: Advanced X-Wing
Ground Imperial (no matter if freelancer or imp pilot): Eta-2 (aka JSF)
For everyone: Belbullab-22 (Necrosis loot, can usually be bought cheap)

You can only fly a JSF when Vader has given the deed to you (and you have the certification for it).

Imperial Pilots: after succeeding the mission, you get the “Sinear Design Systems Boltdriver”. Update your ship with that. When running WO4, your capacitor will drain fast – so accurate aiming and single shoots, or reduce to WO3.


At box 15
Freelancer pilots: after succeeding the mission, you get the level 8 reward weapon “Borstel Disruptor”. Use it in your ship. Replace your capacitor with a low mass capacitor (mark II). The reward weapon has a very low eps, so even with a small capacitor and WO4, you can shoot very long. If you use a ship with more then one weapon slot, you maybe want to use only the reward weapon and try to get WO4 running.


At box 17
Rebel pilots get the level 8 reward weapon “Income Tri-Cannon”. Use it in your ship. Replace your capacitor with a low mass capacitor (mark II). The reward weapon has a very low eps, so even with a small capacitor and WO4, you can shoot very long. If you use a ship with more then one weapon slot, you maybe want to use only the reward weapon and try to get WO4 running.

You do not have to grind the 7.5 mil xp. Just do the missions from the admirals.

To get to Kessel you need to talk to the deep space station. For Freelancer that station is in Dathomir, for Imperials that station is in Endor and for Rebels that station is in Dantooine.

Solo the Rebel or Imperial Corvette in 5 Easy Steps helps you (and your team) to destroy the corvette. Check also the corvette subsystemsand gunboat blind spots.


Box 18
ACE!! Congratulations!
Pilot, dismissed!

Ah no, not yet, im going to annoy you with more things to read …

Gunboat tactics



2 types of gunboats:
the Rebel GB and the Imperial GB. You see there blind angel on these graphics:
http://img112.imageshack.us/my.php?image=impgunboatblindspot8tt.jpg
http://img50.imageshack.us/my.php?image=rebgunboatblindspot0yq.jpg

3 types of flying behaviour:
straightforward flying GB (Deep Space, Hidden Daggers in Dathomir, master mission)
circling and turning around one spot (Kessel)
GBs that chase the player (pilot missions)

I advice to first aim at the engine and to disable the GB. Then remove the targeting of subcomponents to destroy the GB faster.

To destroy straightforward flying GBs, fly into the blind angel and shot at it from there. Or at a distance of 545 meters, match speed with the GB (m key) and destroy the GB.

GBs that circle and turn around one spot:
a) destroy them from 545 meters distance.
b) joust them.
c) if you have good parts and a lot of experience, you can fly into its blind angel, stay there and destroy it.

Ace and now?


If you haven’t done jet, I suggest reading the Pilot FAQ

The Pilots Academy has a lot of very useful guides:

Accurate Aiming in JtL [Repost]

For accurate aiming you maybe need to adjust your controls. Can you set the middle point of your green reticle on one of the corners of a WP triangle symbol easy? There are 3 settings in the options, controls tab for mouse users: “game mouse sensitivity”, “game mouse dead zone interia” and “game mouse dead zone”. Sorry I never used a joystick, so I cant tell anything about that. You maybe want to write down the current values, before doing changes, so you can go back if things get worse.

I don’t feel and difference when “game mouse dead zone interia” is full left 0.00 or full right 30.00, if you do please let me know. My “game mouse dead zone interia” is set to 0.00.

On ground I prefer 0 setting for “game mouse dead zone”, to get a direct responding behaviour when I have to turn my character. But in space this seem so make my reticle to jolt when doing small mouse movements. For a smooth control I have set “game mouse dead zone” to 220. Maybe you want to test with different values like 0, 100, 200, 300, 400 … chose, which you like best and then, do fine tuning.

For “game mouse sensitivity” I did small adjusts to match my needs.


You can use level 6 astromech / fc. They offer 150 storage capacity. If you use all the default programs (reactor overload / engine overload / weapon overload / capacitor overload / capacitor to shield shunt) at the highest level 4, you still have 25 capacity available.

For pvp you do probably want to use that for “shield front adjust extreme” (fighters are mostly hit into the front).

For pve imo “Shield Front Reinforcement Moderate” and “Shield Rear Reinforcement Moderate” can be very useful. E.g. you fight a Tie Aggressor all the damage will be to your front shield or you use a ship with a tail gunner most of the damage will be to your backside shield. So you end with one shield side empty and the other side full. If you now use “capacitor to shield shunt” half of your capacitor energy will be lost on the (already) full side of your shield. But if you first balance your shield with “shield front/rear reinforcement”, you first get both shield sides to about 50%, and “capacitor to shield shunt” will have better effect, less capacitor energy is “waisted”.


Good PVE ships:
Freelancer: Dunelizard, Ixiyen
Imp: Tie Oppressor
Rebel: Adv. X-Wing
Ground Imps: Eta-2 Actis Interceptor
All factions: Belbullab-22


E.g. Imperial pilots: Tie Oppressor:
Modified Mark V Fusion Reactor (18k masse 18.5k output)
Mark V Engine
Mark IV Shield
... Armor
... Capacitor
Mark I Booster
Mark I DI
2x Experimental Blaster
Level 6 Flight Computer: RO4, CO4; CTSS4; WO3 and EO3

Its easy to get reactors with more then 20k output, so you do have a chance to run higher WO and/or EO from the beginning. You could grind Freelancer twice, to get 2 reward level 8 weapons, replace the Experimental Blasters. You could re the weapons. Replace the Mark IV shield with a re level 8 reward shield. Collection level 5 cap. And always look out for reactors with more generation and less mass to support WO4 and EO4.

For pve an alternative to level 8 reward weapons are “Nova Industries Prototype Ion Cannon” and “Orion Industries Prototype Disruptor”. They offer the same high damage as raw level 8 weapons, and have the same mass as raw lvl 8 weapons: 39k.

If you want to regrind pilot, its worth it to equip a heavy starter ship with high level parts and an astromech / fc level 6 (with proper chips), before dropping pilot. After you dropped pilot and get the certification for that pre equipped ship, you can use the heavy starter. The game checks certification level only when loading ship parts, not when the parts are already in the ship. Heavy Scyk and Z-95 can be used from box 1 on, heavy tie can be used from box 2.

To drop pilot talk to one of the following NPCs:
Freelancer: Recruiter Location: Gil Burtin (-1174, -3647) Bestine, Tatooine
Imperial: Recruiter Location: Commander Landau (-5516,4403) Theed, Naboo
Rebel: Recruiter Location: J'pai Brek (-5072, -2343) Tyrena, Corellia

At http://www.swgct.co.uk/ships.php you can check ships of other players, or register your own ship.

To get good parts for quality re jobs, you have to loot a lot. E.g.:
a) Blackscale Spawn (Kashyyyk 4077 –976 –4955), Evil Riders (Endor 1317 –455 –2876)
b) Destroy duty missions of any of the 3 tier 4 trainers from your faction:
Freelancer:
Tier 4: Nirame Sakute, Dathomir Outpost, Dathomir (600, 3028)
Tier 4: Diness Imler, Theed Palace, Naboo (-5450, 4680) (Black Sun Destroy Duty)
Tier 4: Adwan Turoldine, Mining Outpost, Dantooine (596, -2488)
Imp:
Tier 4: Grand Inquisitor Ja'ce Yiasa, Imperial Retreat, Naboo (2382, -3903)
Tier 4: Admiral Kilnstrider, Research Outpost, Endor (3226, -3435)
Tier 4: Insurgent, Imperial Outpost, Dantooine (-4206, -2435)
Reb:
Tier 4: Warvog Arkon, Nym's Stronghold, Lok (406, 5090) (Black Sun Destroy Duty)
Tier 4: Brother Extok Evin, Dearic, Talus Theater, (waypoint 516 -3076)
Tier 4: General Ufwol, Rebel Outpost, Rori Cantina (Imperial ships, GCW points)
c) Kessel / Deep Space
d) For Imperial pilots only: Dathomir Space Station Tier 4 destroy duty mission (Rebel ships, gcw points, loot without the need to land between the missions!)
e) Tier 5 Duty Missions in Kashyyyk Space. Available after completing the missions for the Kashyyk Space Station. Tier 5 duty missions are difficult, I suggest doing the missions from the Rodian Outpost.
f) Ord Mantel. Tier 5 Imperial, Rebels, Blacksuns. Tier 6 Mercenaries (/way 624 3105 -1669; /way -2357 3168 -2604).