Instead of starfighters, the Ssi-ruuk use battle droids. These are piloted by the life forces of prisoners the Ssi-ruuk have enteched, thus there is no need for life support or a cockpit, making the battle droids very small.
At around two metres across, the droids are small targets, but are very well protected in relation to their size. They are pyramid-shaped, and their size makes them one of the smallest fighters in space. Ssi-ruuk cruisers can carry hundreds of the fighters, making them a formidable foe in combat. The lead ship of the Ssi-ruuvi fleet, the Shriwirr, could carry five hundred, while a single Wurrif-class cruiser carries two hundred. The shields on the battle droids are almost as strong as those on many starfighters, and they can take a massive amount of punishment for such a small ship.
Each droid has two life forces in them, housed by battery coils. One takes care of the shields, and the other one handles the weaponry, flight control, and sensors. Also inside the small ships are power generators for the shields and weapons, the drive unit, and the sensor system. As the Ssi-ruuk are a fairly primitive species when it comes to technology, the droids are powered by heavy fusionables, which are far less superior than what power Imperial and Rebel ships.
The sensor arrays are located around the thrusters, which are placed on each side of the fighters. A sensor antenna on each corner of the ship supplements the arrays. The Ssi-ruuk receive sensor and target information from the droids constantly, and so can make informed decisions when needed. Subspace communications systems allow orders to be changed no matter what the distance, so the droids’ strategies can be changed at any point during the battle.
The thrusters on each side of the ships give the droids their great manoeuvrability, and each one of these thrusters can be angled independent of the others. This gives the battle droids a significant advantage over Imperial and Rebel starfighters, in that they can make complicated twists and turns in a split second.
Four lasers cannons, one located on each corner of the ship, make the droids extremely dangerous. The cannons can be turned through 360 degrees, giving the ships a very wide field of fire, meaning that even if the droid is being chased, it can fire backwards. The flexibility of the cannons is important, since the life forces inside the droids cannot target more than one enemy at a time without difficulty.
If all this was not enough, the battle droids have something like etchings on their surface. They are not. Instead, they turn out to be microfilament grids, which can filter the power of incoming blasts back into the fighter’s main generator.
Ssi-ruuvi command cruisers remotely control the droids, giving them orders that the life forces are unable to disobey. From a distance it appeared that the life essences just blindly obeyed their masters. It was Luke who showed that they were in fact in torment, that they had a will of their own, however beaten down it was. He used his Force powers to soothe them as best he could, and he knew that they would only find peace when their energies were depleted.
Already slaves, the only way the life forces could escape their masters was to die. Two deaths in one life time, and then peace. Palpatine was said to be evil incarnate. At least he killed you outright, well, most of the time.