I’m always looking for ways to up way game and make it more challenging, I’ve recently picked up a few vehicles (the blackbird and Deadpool’s merc Jet) but I’m a little confused on how they work, like with the autopilot, from my understanding you can’t make any actions unless it has a pilot?

And another question for the pros, what’s the best way to use a vehicle and what are some pointer for a new vehicle user?

Autopilot allows you to give actions to a vehicle at the cost of taking one unavoidable damage each time.

However, if you have one of the older vehicles with an autopilot dial, they only take unavoidable damage when they make an action that includes an attack.

None of this is relevant to the Merc Jet or Blackbird as neither have an autopilot option. They must have a pilot or else they're just pretty paperweights.

As for the rest of your questions, the guys in the Strategy forum could answer way better than I.

awesome thank you!

Very old vehicles had a separate Autopilot dial where they behaved more like normal characters. Some vehicles, around the NFaoS era, had an autopilot where they could act normally but took 1 unavoidable when they made an attack. The only modern vehicle I can see with Autopilot is Sentinel Squad One, who has the new version in the rulebook when it takes 1 unavoidable from ANY action (Costed, FREE or at No Cost).

The best way to use most vehicles is to find a relatively cheap Pilot who will fulfill any Pilot Ability pre-requisites for that vehicles but also has, on its first click, good Attack/Damage/Range to give the vehicle and/or a good Attack or Damage power to give the vehicles.

A popular build right now it to put

into a vehicle (usually Sentinel Squad One for a Robot theme, but the Shield or Tony's car from AI would work too). This way the vehicle always has 12 attack, 4 damage, 8 range and can take Magneto's Pen/Psy or RCE but unlike Magneto himself, not be limited to dealing Max 1 Damage.

Some vehicles have a very high Passenger number but not much in the way of stats and get used more for Taxiing (The Blackbird or Overdrive from SFOS made a Vehicle bystander that was pretty much just good as a taxi).

Some vehicles are simply a cheap way to make a good character more mobile or "add clicks of life" to them (since the character can't be hurt until the vehicle is KOd).