I always had the impression that the advanced tech takes a large amount of resources not readily available everywhere. The rebels are scrounging for resources from any place that defects or will trade with them, while the empire is free to demand, raid, and liberate whatever supplies they needed. Part interchange is going to be more important to rebels strapped for material, so they use all similar, basic, reliable stuff. We see lots of shinier, smoother equipment in the cities where luxury is accessible and full of variation. Meanwhile, the vast shiny imperial hangars are comfortably stocked with lots of clean ships for all different roles.

The shitty robots never feel that far off from the US military. There’s all kinds of should-be-obsolete equipment that sticks around just because it fills a role (usually one role) and it still works. Regarding the low quality of their performance and capabilities, I’d imagine microprocessor manufacturing is still hard without perfect conditions. Clean rooms, electron microscopes, and general precision well beyond human visual capability. In our world now, if China were to try to take Taiwan by force and the chip manufacturers really do blow up the facilities, we’re screwed. Globally. It’ll set us back decades because that’ll reset chip size and density. Even if we magically restart facilities that used to be around, they’ll be on the older, larger architectures we can’t fit in ourr pockets

So, basically, what we’ve seen coming from most of the wartime interactions the US has had with most of the receiving countries. HMMV vs Hilux. 15 different standard guns vs AK-47. Unstoppable convoys vs IEDs. Satellite comms vs horseback messengers. And then the USA still roots for Luke & crew…