At the beginning of the game with only 3 pilots its crucial that everyone of them keeps fighting. One set to missile defense is missing firing power at all.
I try to reach as fast as I can rank 3 ships and used Tigers for quite some time ..otherwise the rank 2 cleaner is good too. I'll try to put in every ship passive missile defense units and always the best available (the one with efficiency of 20 is great for some time, but try to get the 30'). With access to FTU gear this is obsolete as I try to get the newest ones (F5/8 refreshes a stations stock...and some station have 2 sets of FTU gear available *fg*)
Besides the missile defense they get shields too and if possible - at least with the Tiger - speed booster or gun booster.
The biggest problem at the beginning is their bad performance with ship manoveurs at all, at least every pilot should have the 10% perk or better.
Tactic stuff....
Ternie is set to defense with the perk she has, maybe my imagination but i think it helps a bit. She keeps on firing all the time and give her slow firing particle guns or laser, she'll do really great later with some points spent in accuracy
Grey is good with heavy weaponry so he gets a either full plasma or full kinetic or with my pilot being a heavy gunner too so he stick with one plasma and 1 kinetic gun. The best plasma 'd be the ranked 4 with medium accuracy if i remember rightly. the lower ones don't hit anything at all, so he'll do great with only kinetic guns 'til he has his higher perks of accuracy (65% +)
My guess 'd be kinetic guns are very underestimated
the double barreled model paired with the 65% gun booster is insane! (~130 ROF)
And about your team leader stuff...this is needless at the beginning if no one has spent points in the team tactics perk (your main guy should always has access to this perk regardless of his profession or not? otherwise grey 'd be sufficient too)
My team so far is 'hero' (Pilot stuff) always Leader, Ternie set to defense with the perk, Gray attack,*** set to attack
Oh and all of them are happy in Puma ships! very nasty...missile slot and better performance than the Panther but it'd be one's personal preference.
Didn't had a lot of time recently so I'm right after the Alien encounter stuff.
But it's just my style and I'm doing great so far. Still missing some pilot with light guns so I can set him up with either machine guns or gatlings.
Yet, it's nice to see there are only some minor bugs and the game is f***in' awesome
skipped SW2 at some point as I was always in some kind of trigger script error.
Think my next game 'll be a freaking missile gunner at all!