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OK, OK. I know this has been hashed out already, and I'm late to the party. But I have been out of Starfinder for a while, and players have more experience.
What experience have players had with the solarian class? It seems to me a mass of contradictions. It's a melee class, but is not proficient with heavy armor. A solarian can choose two class skills, but has only four skill ranks. Its key attribute is charisma, but charisma seems to provide little benefit other than the save DC against some abilities. Making the class dependent on charisma seems to serve no purpose beyond weakening the class by making it MAD.
Am I wrong? Please tel me what you have experienced.
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The Charisma dependency has been kind of "patched" by the Soulfire weapon fusion. With that, the already high damage Solarian can become a DPR monster.
It's definitely true that the Solarian has more hoops to jump through than any other class, but if they jump through those hoops, they're a force to be reckoned with.
The base version is a class that deals out exceptionally high damage, and can be super mobile, but suffers a bit in survivability. Taking the heavy armor feat for some survivability, then focusing on STR then CHA + soulfire fusion + plasma sheathe makes a damage output machine.
You can build a 'caster' solarian who focuses on charisma and powers more than melee output, but it plays very differently, and I haven't seen one personally. The soulfire fusion really helps this build, but accuracy is difficult.
The character operations manual introduces the solar shield and solar flare, opening up builds and roles much more.
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Solar Armor solarians get the worst deal, and they still end up being fully capable martial characters after a rough first few levels.
Solar Weapon solarians are absolute masters of the field of deleting enemies from existence (and always have been, even with CRB only).
Solar flare solarians have excellent ranged damage, though a sharpshooter soldier benefitting from a heavy gunner harness does have more, and Agile Wavelengths can be built around to do some really interesting trickery, especially if you have beefy melee friends. They also have the benefit of hardly suffering at all from the MADness, making their low levels not particularly painful. Some people are still upset that they don't benefit from Soulfire, but they're just fine without it.
Solar Shield is so good that I don't even understand how it saw print. With Natural Weapons, it's neck and neck with solar weapin damage until it falls only very slightly behind at the highest levels, has more ability to customize damage type with crystals, and provides an excellently scaling defensive benefit on any round where you stop full attacking to align the shield against an enemy (which becomes REALLY good if you take a level if envoy for Phalanx Fighting).
"Caster" builds are weirder and fairly difficult to use well. You need to coordinate debuff plans with your party for best results.
Great damage output, and you save up a lot of money on weapons. Plenty of abilities if you don't want to full attack every round.
It's one of the more entertaining classes available, and just a bit more complex than a soldier.
I dipped Soldier and had a blast. Don't bother with charisma or zenith revelations, and just have a good time.
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The soldier dip is certainly an effective option, as it has been from the beginning.
Just don't believe any of the early forum noise about it being the only path, instead of one solid one and you'll be good.
As others have been mentioning, Solarians are damage monsters. In addition to just great accuracy and hard hitting attacks, they get access to various tricks to help them close the gap, deliver minor battlefield control and heal/restore themselves. They end up more versatile in the mid levels than a soldier.
Their weaknesses are primarily saves when melee. With Str and Cha being desirable, its not uncommon for a solarian to start with 10/10/10 across Dex/Con/Wis. Thankfully they have good progression for both Fort and Will to keep them from falling incredibly far behind. They also tend to struggle with skills that aren't social skills.
Even so, they're solid and fun to play.
Their weaknesses are primarily saves when melee. With Str and Cha being desirable, its not uncommon for a solarian to start with 10/10/10 across Dex/Con/Wis. Thankfully they have good progression for both Fort and Will to keep them from falling incredibly far behind. They also tend to struggle with skills that aren't social skills.
They can also shore up their saves with Gravitic Reinforcement for a tidy bonus to either their lowest save or all saves depending on attunement.