....Talking about assorted options for scum, I find myself looking at the HWK-260.

Yes, I miss Dark Forces, and yes, I'd dearly love to see this ship actually work. But is it possible to make an effective squad out of them? Well.... they're going the right way. There are now three named pilots, so you probably don't have to touch the Spice Runner if you don't want to.

So how to use them?

Well, with 4 hull and 1 shield, covered by 2 evade dice, they're about as tough as an X-wing. Which is to say, not fragile, but not great. More importantly, their dials are awful.
Therefore, assume that each ship will be issued with either a shield upgrade or an engine upgrade as is best suited for their role.

Let's start with the three named pilots:
Dace Bonearm 23
Palob Godahli 20
Torkil Mux 19

That's 62 Points. But since I've said each ship wants either an agility or durability modification, then that's 12 more...

Dace Bonearm 27

-Shield or Engine Upgrade
Palob Godahli 24

-Shield or Engine Upgrade
Torkil Mux 23
-Shield or Engine Upgrade

Leaving me with 26 points for weapons, crew and other upgrades. Well, first off, I don't think anyone's in a rush to take HWK-260s without turrets. Dace's is an easy choice given his special ability. Plus, since he's going to be stuck taking stress every time he fires (hopefully!) he's going to be pretty much nailed to the green manouvres on his dial. That, combined with his pilot skill, means Engine Upgrades are probably a winner.

Dace Bonearm 32

-Engine Upgrade

-Ion Cannon Turret
Palob Godahli 24

-Shield or Engine Upgrade
Torkil Mux 23
-Shield or Engine Upgrade

Palob's choices are going to be harder. The obvious one is a Blaster Turret, powered by stolen focus tokens, but I'd like to try something else (plus, it potentially falls apart if there are no focus tokens to steal). I'm not convinced the Autoblaster Turret works on a HWK-260, but I'd like to be proven wrong. If it is going to work, then it needs to be on a manouvrable platform and really, really needs more than 2 attack dice. Fortunately, Palob can do that. His special ability means he can steal an enemy's focus or evade tokens. Which is nice, but pairs especially well with Opportunist - upping the Autoblaster turret to 3 dice (or his primary weapons to two dice). Again, that probably means an engine upgrade, because stress tokens means green manouvres.

Dace Bonearm 32

-Engine Upgrade

-Ion Cannon Turret
Palob Godahli 30

-Engine Upgrade

-Autoblaster Turret

-Opportunist
Torkil Mux 23
-Shield or Engine Upgrade

Finally, Torkil. His special ability doesn't really suit any specific turret design; It just punts one key enemy down the firing sequence. My brain says ion cannon because two ion cannons are much better than one in a game where large ships are annoyingly common. Since he's not necessarily pulling stress every **** turn, he can have a shield upgrade, making him a brawler (ish).

Dace Bonearm 32

-Engine Upgrade

-Ion Cannon Turret
Palob Godahli 30

-Engine Upgrade

-Autoblaster Turret

-Opportunist
Torkil Mux 28
-Shield Upgrade

-Ion Cannon Turret

One other thing that might be worth noting is that Mux' ability means you 'count pilot skill as 0' for the combat phase - that suddenly makes Predator a lot more tempting. Dace could use Predator - since he's needing his actions for boost manouvres, he's otherwise firing a very powerful but not very accurate ion cannon, and his elite talent is still free.

Palob's isn't - but if he's nailed to green manouvres, a K4 security droid does much the same job in the crew slot (albeit for a point more)

Dace Bonearm 35

-Engine Upgrade

-Ion Cannon Turret

-Predator
Palob Godahli 33

-Engine Upgrade

-Autoblaster Turret

-Opportunist

-K4 Security Droid
Torkil Mux 28
-Shield Upgrade

-Ion Cannon Turret

That leaves 4. The two problems I can see are (1) getting a shot with Palob and (2) Torkil doesn't really have any offensive dirty tricks to pull. A Tactician would be nice, because Ion Tokens plus Stress Tokens work very well together, but that only works inside your firing arc. Instead, since he's shooting last (i.e. hopefully hitting the hull), I'll try giving him Greedo - ion cannons causing criticals is a new and unpleasant experience. That leaves 3 point for a hot-shot blaster for Palob, giving him a one-time shot at range 2 rather than range 1.

Dace Bonearm 35

-Engine Upgrade

-Ion Cannon Turret

-Predator
Palob Godahli 36

-Engine Upgrade

-Autoblaster Turret

-Opportunist

-K4 Security Droid

-"Hot Shot" Blaster
Torkil Mux 29
-Shield Upgrade

-Ion Cannon Turret

-Greedo

I don't know if it has any chance at all, but I'd love to see it work. Any thoughts/Improvements?

I think most of your conclusions are bang on, and you've narrowed down the most effective upgrades.

The only change I'd consider would be trying to jam a second K4 droid onto Dace. With the highest PS in the list, he's probably the ship most likely to get blocked, and a K4 would let him acquire a target lock even when that happens. Dropping Torkil's shield upgrade would give you the room for it, while reducing Torkil's cost at the same time and hopefully making him a less tempting target (meaning less of a chance for him to Greedo himself).

I proposed a similar idea in another thread. I can't remember the exact layout though. I just don't know if the Autoblaster Turret is going to be useful at all on a HWK. Even with EU its dial is still woefully bad. I'd be afraid your opponent would just blast Palob before he even got a chance to use it. I think Blaster Turret would give you a lot more stand-off and flexibility to maybe even dodge some arcs.

I proposed a similar idea in another thread. I can't remember the exact layout though. I just don't know if the Autoblaster Turret is going to be useful at all on a HWK. Even with EU its dial is still woefully bad. I'd be afraid your opponent would just blast Palob before he even got a chance to use it. I think Blaster Turret would give you a lot more stand-off and flexibility to maybe even dodge some arcs.

I've flown ABT HWK swarms a few times now, they're surprisingly less terrible than expected simply because you can get LOTS of Range 1 bubbles on the table.

As for BT Palob: how about this:

[36] Palob, Opportunist, Blaster Turret, Intelligence Agent, Moldy Crow, Engine Upgrade

IA works both with his ability's range and with the two EU already in the list. Main concern will be stockpiling a bunch of focus at the beginning since you may not be able to generate it in combat with heavy EU usage.

I sort of agree with Gibarian re: Shield on Torkil, but I think EU is the better swap there, as Dace already has Predator and doesn't quite need TL so much.

EU on Torkil is more valuable than Shield because you want his ability usable EVERY turn (especially with IA), since preventing a ship from firing back until you've ioned and critted it off the board is more valuable than a single mitigated damage.