About the speeder bikes... They cost 10k, and the speed and mobility they give you is pretty awesome, however their offensive power is extremely low. Making them only useful as scouts, even though they're equipped with blaster cannons (it makes sense for them to be -primarily- scouts, but the 1d6 damage blaster is ridiculously weak and useless). Though this is a very minor issue as so few people use speeder bikes except for quick transportation, my character does (will be, that is) use his speeder bike on a regular basis, and it would be nice having some good offensive power without having to resort to using nothing but grenades and demo paks, or constantly hop on and off.

Is it possible for the strength of the blasters to be improved, or better yet, make the bikes customizable like ships? Making them customizable would probably be a major thing but would be very nice, I think, as people got to change the guns, engine, and maybe armor of the bike. Alternatively might it be possible to make it so you could switch from using your own weapons and the bike's weapons without getting on/off? Perhaps an option in the rest menu where you can choose to instead make having the bike 'equipped' be a boot slot item instead of a blaster? This would probably require making it so that instead of granting haste you instead got a much higher move speed bonus, as haste with some blasters out there that people already have 7 attacks per round with would be incredibly powerful.

Also, as for stealth. There are bikes that exist in Star Wars, particularly the modified 74-Z (those seen on Endor) that are designed to run silently and were invisible to most sensors, though a penalty to hide would be fitting, -4 seems reasonable, as that's the penalty to hide for being a large sized creature. Another note on how strong the cannons should be, 74-Z's have rotating blaster cannons, and blaster cannons are often used as artillery.

Anyway, however it's done, I would really like to see the bikes' offensive power improved. Thoughts?

I don't like the idea of much firepower on the speeder. The strength of a speeder that can run circles around a pc, kite away in a split second and pack an offensive punch is too much. They aren't really there to dominate in a fight.

Whether there exists a canon stealth bike, it won't exist here. People going into hide on their speeders was rather absurd in the pre-wipe days, and the nexus of power to be found in a PC's stealth and a speeder bike's zoom won't fly.

I went off to Korriban earlier, testing out my speeder bike. My character has Weapon Spec with the heavy blaster rifle, and on a critical did a whopping 20 points of damage with the speeder. As it stands, you do a max of 18 damage on a critical with the bike's cannons, and 24 max with weapon spec criticals. The low level starting guns deal more than that, and many of the lower quality blasters deal that much or more on non-criticals. If people are that worried about some new wave of bikers that run away as soon as they get low, then just make it so that after firing your weapons on a speeder bike, you lose your movement speed bonus for a round or two. But as it stands the weakness of these guns is ridiculous. They're repeating blaster cannons, not squirt guns. As such, something more than 1d6 seems warranted.

With 3d6 damage, it's between 3-18 damage per hit, more with sneak attack and specializations. On a critical hit, it can deal up to 54 damage. With weapon spec, 60, with epic weapon spec, 66. That is its -maximum-, it'll probably average around 30-40 damage per critical hit, which is far less than the tiny blaster pistols that deal 50+ these days regularly on criticals.

Arguing canon specifications for vehicles would give the imperial faction ships without hyper drives. Such things are sometimes overruled in a non-strictly canon server for mechanical functionality. Speeders aren't there to serve the function of a combat build, nor does it make any sense to give a viable stealth mode to the Star Wars equivalent of a Kawasaki Ninja, regardless of whether or not it is vaguely justifiable by lore. Speeders already have an incredible movement speed compared to a PC. That alone makes it a potent tool for various tasks, even if its damage is lacking.

After seeing what max pilot ranks can do... I do sort of agree with that. I still think a bit more firepower on these things would be nice, but they are extremely fast, faster than DM Avatars, apparently.

Wait, they're faster than DMs when at max pilot bonus?

I have a +24 pilot, and I got a tell from Urmaspyr going something like this: "JESUS YOU'RE FAST!"

That was after I got from one side of the Eternal Pyre Pathway on Korriban to the other side of it in about 10 seconds.

The maximum penalty is -50, and when we're on a hovering vehicle, we don't leave tracks... lol. But why does everyone hate stealthers? It's Star Wars, and they've had hyperspace travel and stuff like that for thousands of years, is it that big a stretch to think that they could have made a stealth vehicle, something that exists today here on earth? There's far more unbelievable things in Star Wars than a silent speeder bike. Besides, I think when you're on a bike you get a -4 invisible penalty to your hide/ms/spot/listen due to you becoming large sized.

There are vehicles designed to run silently IRL, as in cars. I don't have specific names for them but they do exist... Anyway, there do exist personal stealth generators, these, over 1000 years before Rise of the Rebellion, were capable of being activated and keeping one nearly invisible for many days at a time. In the Star Wars universe, new technology is always being invented as various weapons producers compete with one another to get the best gear on the market, it's not so difficult to think the technology could not have been adapted to work with a single person to -at least- silence a speeder bike, if not design stealth generators for them, something that most militaries would likely find invaluable, as their scouts could safely infiltrate enemy territory, get information on troop movments and enemy positions, and get back to base far quicker, as such there would be a market for it.

The point isn't that anyone hates stealthers. The point is mechanically speaking allowing sneakers to fly about at the speed of light on a hasted, max piloted hoverbike (Even at half movement speed it's darn fast) is just not in the cards. If it doesn't apply a large penalty, it may be made to do so. Sneakers have more than enough going for them without the ability to negate the movement penalty of using stealth mode.