Maybe this has been addressed on the boards before; my searches came up empty but I may've just missed it. Nonetheless...

I've been looking into the beast-riding rules, particularly at the two new rider maneuvers, "Climb or Jump" and "Push", from page 82 of Stay On Target.

The big problem with Climb or Jump is that, well, the text says it's available for mounts that have the Climb ability, and none of the creatures listed in the book here have the Climb ability. Not even the veractyl, whose two iconic abilities are gliding and climbing up sheer cliffs, or the narglatch, which is basically a big panther. I also find it hard to believe that the kybuck and lava-flea don't have the ability to vault over virtually anything in their way; the latter has a special ability to add two boosts to athletics checks to jump, but apparently it can't make use of this while you're riding it.

Push works fine for the creatures that have it, but some creatures that reasonably ought to be able to crash through things lack Trampling Hooves -- particularly the classic Bantha, who can apparently ram into enemies with his horns, but can't crash through a wall. I could also see a large sea creature pushing objects around, even if it lacks, y'know, legs.

Aye, there's clear oversights.

Ranting now. Note that even if you were able to jump while riding, you'd fall off an embarrassing number of times, since that happens on Despair. Now imagine if every time you do a barrel roll in an X-wing, you'd launch yourself out of the cockpit, at what is supposed to be your Thing...

I don't understand why they even added all this in, when they apparently hate beast-riding as a concept, because there is nothing that would be attractive about them mechanically, over any vehicle. A starting character can have a vehicle, but even a lowly Bantha costs more than you could have!

Speaking of, not sure whether you can use vehicle talents with beasts or not. Existence of Spur suggests Full Throttling is not an option, but they do say to treat them like vehicles when ridden... Except they're right away worse, as no Strain? what

Note that even if you were able to jump while riding, you'd fall off an embarrassing number of times, since that happens on Despair. Now imagine if every time you do a barrel roll in an X-wing, you'd launch yourself out of the cockpit, at what is supposed to be your Thing...

Not at all. There's no specific factor in the Climb/Jump rule that would give you red dice, so there's no chance of despair unless the GM decides to apply upgrades to the difficulty. So he's either flipping destiny points (and should have some reasonable justification for introducing increased risk) or you're doing this jump/climb in some kind of seriously detrimental situation.

I don't understand why they even added all this in, when they apparently hate beast-riding as a concept, because there is nothing that would be attractive about them mechanically, over any vehicle.

A starting character can have a vehicle, but even a lowly Bantha costs more than you could have!

A bantha is not a starship, so the comparison to your starting YT-1300 or Y-wing squadron makes no sense. Beast mounts are meant to do interesting things in personal scale combat, not duke it out with starfighters and AT-STs (though I could totally see a speeder bike vs kybuck chase, and it would be awesome).

The mounts really aren't absurdly priced compared to equivalent (unarmed and unarmored) vehicles. Compare a bantha to the Speeder Truck in EotE (10,000 credits), compare a horse or thumper to a Flare-S Swoop, and so on. The beasts are generally a bit slower, but tend to have much better maneuver scores (not just the raw scores, which are high to begin with, but then add in Trained Mount for some absurd boosting) and have natural weapons.

But, on that point, why would a dedicated rider be buying a mount when he can train one? It takes some off-screen time, but it's not all that difficult.

Speaking of, not sure whether you can use vehicle talents with beasts or not.

You can't, unless there's something that specifically makes it legal to use with a riding beast. Which means if it's a talent that affects one of the pilot actions & maneuvers that works with a beast (which is all of them except Angle Shields, the barrages, and the additional vehicle actions), it probably works, but other than that, probably not.

Existence of Spur suggests Full Throttling is not an option, but they do say to treat them like vehicles when ridden... Except they're right away worse, as no Strain? what

Right, 'cause they're rivals. But on the other hand you can heal one with a simple stimpack or medicine check, no need for extensive repairs and replacement parts... Actually, because of the difference between character-scale damage and vehicle-scale damage, a riding beast actually has a vastly greater ability to take strain than most small vehicles. Most vehicles have a strain threshold between 3 and 6, while a horse can soak up a dozen strain easy.

One thing I immediately noticed is that "Spur" can essentially turn Banthas into fast attack units.

Just strap a howdah with a repeating blaster onto its back, spur it into the middle of an infantry batallion, open up with the repeating blaster, then jet off to short range.

In fact, compared to a speeder bike, Banthas are far better combat "vehicles". Translated to vehicle scale, Banthas have more "hull trauma" and one point of "armor", compared to speeder bikes.

Sure, I wouldn't pit it against a repulsortank, but it stands up fairly well against vehicles that only mount personal-scale weapons.