I did a quick search here, but I'm about to head out to work and couldn't dig too deeply. I was wondering if someone could give me an overview of Encumbrance Capacity and just exactly what it is, what it pertains to - etc.

The reason I'm asking is because our group has a YT-2400 (not modified yet) and we have a basic landspeeder, it has come into question if the landspeeder could be put into the YT-2400 cargo and pulled out via lift when needed. I thought that, because of the small size of the speeder and large size of the cargo bay, it would be a no-brainer, much like the speeder just sat on the Ebon Hawk in KotOR.

So if someone could explain Encumbrance Capacity, it would be great, thank you.

Encumbrance Capacity is a terrible mechanic if used for anything more than making ratios to compare two vehicles. If you have a freighter with EC 100 it can carry half of what another freighter with EC 200 can carry. As to what that amounts to, ask your GM because using the values for gear means some ships can't even carry the basic equipment of all of their complement and passengers (look at the Citadel for an example).

Enc is a rough stat blocked out to show how much "stuff" something can carry based upon how large, heavy, and unwieldy said stuff is. As such, you have things like loose cargo/items taking up far more Enc then crated items. Also something like a 300 pound block of steel will have the same Enc rating as 50 foot aluminum pole that weighs 50 pounds, because the pole, while lighter, is also much harder to actually move around and fit into things.

Vehicles typically require any carried craft (be it hangered, or just shoved in the hold) to be a smaller Sil.

Beyond that's it's largely up to the GM what to allow.

It's still a terrible mechanic without benchmarks for how much encumbrance different kinds of cargo take up.

No, no one can. So just do what makes you feel happy..........