When I first got AoR I flipped through the specs...

my original thoughts as I remember them

pilot? meh-whatever I've already seen just with a different set of career skills from the career

gunner? why would I want to play a gunner when I could play a pilot?

driver? ok a pilot for ground, but space is cooler

etc.

Soldier: Commando? the ultimate meat shield, ok for melee, wish he had more grit and was a little better at ranged (just a point blank)

Soldier: Medic? ok that makes sense, a doctor option for AoR

Soldier: Sharpshooter? Holy ***** that's awsome, I gotta combine that with assassin, and it's a good complement to commando

Spy: infiltrator? I can't wait to play one except he doesn't have brawl or ranged light or indistinguishable, why can't it be a little more like Jason Bourne?

Spy: scout? meh, another repeat but I like the career skills a lot better

Spy: slicer? ditto

Recruit? Wow, this seems more like Jason Bourne than the spy:infiltrator, and I've posted very threads relating to Jason Bourne and how to build him (big fan of Jason Bourne)

Recently I tried creating Jason Bourne as I imagine his history was before the Bourne identity

Sharpshooter (brawl, and ranged light as starting skills, also 2 copies of deadly accuracy so I could apply them to brawl and ranged light)

Doctor (for pressure point, 3 grit, a toughness, and easy access to a dedication)

Commando to buff up survivability

Infiltrator (to become awesome at hand to hand, now that he can do hand to hand, and for soft spot, clever solution, jump up)

Saboteur (need to get stealth somehow and mechanics, and wow look at all that strain management, two toughnesses, hard headed [definitely fits bourne] and time to go)

build plan was awesome, playable at every stage, but ended up being a little under 1400 xp.

So now I'm going back and revisiting other classes, what synergizes well with the ones I already looked at, which could replace them,

And I've got two new WOWS!

Ace: gunner: 2 true aim (WOW), a grit, 2 durable, 2 enduring (WOW), 2 jury rigged (very nice, one for a gun and one for armor, would have rather had a tinkerer to add a hp to a repli-limb cybernetic arm so I can slap superior on it), 2 brace (not bad), a spare clip (I like not having to worry about ammo), heroic fortitude is nice (and I can save it for later after I get the dedication) and I only gotta go through a 5xp debilitating shot to get the 10 xp true aim (can skip a 15 and 20 and 5 xp talent pertaining to be a vehicle gunner which I'm not that interested in). That combos better with sharpshooter does than commando, seems more like Jason Bourne to me too. And look at those skills, better augmentation (Discipline, Gunnery, Resilience) to soldier sharpshooter than soldier commando (Resilience). And what if I started as a gunner, wow look at those career skills, it's comparable to a bounty hunter good.

The other new wow is

Commander:commodore, stay with me for a moment, just column 3. rapid reaction, grit, rapid reaction, grit, dedication

2 rapid reaction, 2 grit, and a dedication in a straight shot.

and astrogation, computers, knowledge(education), and knowledge(outer rim)

"build plan was awesome, playable at every stage, but ended up being a little under 1400 xp"

I just got Edge of the Empire as a holiday gift and have a group of players wanting to run a campaign that spans all three products. We all have Pathfinder backgrounds, and two of these players are very into character building. Is 1,400xp a lot? How much xp should players expect to get across a campaign (whether it spans the time frames or not)? I haven't read all of the Core book yet, but none of the players seem to know these things either, and they are unsure whether to be hyper specialized to focus their xp expenditures or if they will get enough to pick up 3 or more specializations and grab a broader set of skills and talents. The builds I've been shown almost universally involve spending all starting xp on stats and then followed by immediately buying a second and third specialization and talent purchases from all of those. Seems very spread out, and I am not sure whether to encourage that sort of character or not.

My group played almost every week for a year and we go up to 800 XP including our starting XP

The going rate is about 5xp per hour at the table. I like to start at "knight level play" (from the force and destiny, 150 xp, post character "creation" and about 9k credits worth of gear), and I will also award between 5 and 10 xp, for players writing something narrative on the obsidian portal campaign site. So how much xp they get is a function of the length and frequency of sessions and the duration of the campaign. We game about once every two weeks (say 24 times a year as a round number) for 5 hours (25 xp per session) so my players should get in the neighborhood of 600 xp per real world year.

You are correct that most spend all of their starting xp on characteristics and many spend duty to increase xp at character creation to increase them even more. Character creation is the only easy way to raise a characteristic in this game. Most talent trees have a dedicated talent at the bottom of the tree taking a minimum of 75xp to increase a characteristic. You will get a few bonuses along the way but it is going to take some time.

Most people agree that this game rewards a well rounded character (this depends on your GM). I also come from a Pathfinder background and understand this goes counter to everything you learned in the d20 systems.

"Most people agree that this game rewards a well rounded character"

I don't see how that is possible with ~600xp or so per year. (Our group would fall close to that description above) Well rounded to me implies lots of skills and lots of talents from multiple trees. But with that level of xp gain, it would seem to lead to specialization and focus on a single tree? The three rough character builds I've seen all seem to involve a cluser of key skills as well... everyone takes (and tries to get specializations that put this in-career) Athletics, Cool, Vigilance, Stealth and of course (thank you not Pathfinder) Perception.

None of us have quite wrapped our heads around the dice mechanics, so no one seems to know if certain things only require a single rank or if you want 3 or 4 in these key skills. From my first reading, I gathered you should strive for 3 dice, which means a skill OR stat of 3, but that's just for an... Average... Hard maybe... I don't remember... task difficulty. Every other skill they relugated to a single character for eventual maxxing. So, no one has Medicine except the Doctor who plans to get 5. No one has Survival except the Bounty Hunter, etc. Of course the Doctor is also the Scholar and plans to have 4 of the 5 knowledge skills.

I'm probably only going to be running the published (or freely available) adventures anyway. I guess I need one of those to have a real gauge on the task difficulties that are encountered on a usual basis. Seems like they won't ramp up as linearly as they do in Pathfinder. They wanted to try this game because they thought it would be lighter and faster, and yet I'm already getting planned out builds like d20.

EDIT: Oh, and OP, the reason I responded here is one of the submitted builds mirrors very closely what you have done because the player found the AoR reference sheets even though none of us have that book. And while he's not trying to build Jason Bourne, he did site skill selection for picking a career that he really didn't envision for the character. <shrug>

Honestly, it is pretty easy to be good at a wide range of things at the onset of a game. Most races can start with 4 in two characteristics by spending a little duty, or you can start with 4 in one and 3 in two others with no duty expenditure. Three positive dice gives your character a decent chance of success in most endeavors and four means your really good at it. Add to that just a little skill and it many of your skill rolls end up being YYGG. With that roll it gives you a one in six chance of doing something spectacular even if you fail at your intended task.

EDIT: Oh, and OP, the reason I responded here is one of the submitted builds mirrors very closely what you have done because the player found the AoR reference sheets even though none of us have that book. And while he's not trying to build Jason Bourne, he did site skill selection for picking a career that he really didn't envision for the character. <shrug>

Related to my original post and jason Bourne, if you're going to houserule that the can start as a spy:recruit you might want to consider making a custom spec in the career of their choice. I've made two and it's really not that difficult, you just have to make sure it's not better tHan what's in the book, basically you have to include "wasted talents" alternativelyrics described as introductory or lead in or build up talents. For example if you want an awesome talent like deadly accuracy in the tree, that's OK but it can't be the first talent with that theme so you should have a lead in shooty or stabby talent (quickdraw, point blank, precise aim, feral strength, frenzied attack). If there is an official spec that already fits the concept, don't make a new one, beware of over specialization (it tends to be broken), if a player proposed something that looked like the sharpshooter I would turn it down in a heartbeat because it was imbalanced.

But here's a social shooty spy that I made that your player might like (personallyrics I prefer version 8)

http://community.fantasyflightgames.com/index.php?/topic/130157-custom-spec-spyagent/?p=1390238

and the spec ops version 3 might also interest them