Opinion as SBD user, I do not know the exact mechanics but might help you.
Battery is the most important thing! Without battery it does not matter your firepower 3 or 2, it does not matter your cortosis, everything goes to hell if you lose more than 3/4 of your precious battery.
There are tricks with battery:
- Try to keep your battery above 3/4.
- Battery 1 is useless, just straight to 2 or 3
- If using Battery 2: Do not run when engaging enemies, running and shooting eats battery like hungry hippos, yes, most of the time you got to eat enemy shoots, but that’s part of life.
- If using Battery 3: You can run everywhere, your battery will recharge very slowly, you can also run and shoot, it will drain battery but not that much.
- Low on battery and you need to recharge? Switch to low power mode and trade ammo for battery.
Against gunners
Everyone poops their pants when seeing an SBD (well, most), still, get as many cover as you can, facing one by one leads to victory and this is not a SBD only suggestion, works for everything. You could get the fancy Magnetic Plating which deflects some shots from light guns. A280 and pistol 3 however, rapes SBD so watch for those.
When facing a Jedi
1. Get Cortosis, it will protect you against saber swings, I believe 3 yellow swings with full battery. However, do not get too much confidence because of that, a swing also drain battery and what we just said? Battery is the most important thing!
2. You can face Jedi without Cortosis, but you need to be more aggressive keeping fire on the jedi and timely dodge swings (dodge by predicting a swing or a parry) and use the Jedi openings on your favor. Force power drains on jedi sucks for SBD (I believe they are going to fix it?) So, you need too much fire to really drain a Jedi’s force power
Against wooks
You are fucked, well, you could get a lot of Hull Strength but that makes you worthless for every other class.
Against pulses
If you get shocked by pulse with the enemy awfully close to you the worst thing you can do is reload. Wait a few seconds and you will get your battery back and some ammo that might save you get out of hairy situations.
Hope this helps.
Also... I found a very balanced build, it might help you to get started
- Hull: 1
- Firepower: 2
- Recharge boost: 3
- Cortosis: 1
- Magnetic Plating: 1
- Ammo: 0 (who needs ammo anyways?)