I am playing through all the Gold box games now, and am currently running the third, Silver Blades.

However, when it comes to Buck Rogers I have no clue, really. I remember playing the first one way back, but can't remember much.

Anyone has any tips for party creation? I have found good tips for skills, but need tips for Race/class combos.

Any experience to share?

To be honest, most of my playthroughs of Countdown to Doomsday and Matrix Cubed had 3 Desert Runner Warriors (Needle gun spec'd, needle guns are great on everyone, and even more so if you can get your hands on some Lunarian Needle Guns in Matrix Cubed) A Desert Runner Rocket Jock, a Tinker Medic, and a Tinker Engineer. You can cover the gamut of skills this way, and still create a party that can soak a lot of damage.

I usually run with three fully stocked needle guns on the warriors (1, maybe 2 on the RJ and the Tinkers) and a rocket launcher or plasma launcher on everyone to open up big fights with as I collected them.

I don't recall the details of the game, but when it was fresh in my memory I posted this on another forum:

Rogues are useful in Buck Rogers, both for backstabbing and for their skills. Actually they are more useful than in the fantasy games, since they don't need to be dual classed to be useful. One is enough though.
One Rocket Jock is enough, but two Medics may be useful. An Engineer is also very useful.

I completed the game with the following party:
Terran Rocket Jock
Desert Runner Warrior
Tinker Medic
Martian Medic
Venusian Rogue
Venusian Engineer

In the long run, if you plan on importing the party to Matrix Cubed, replacing one of the Medics with a Warrior will be better.

I found that high STR is more important in Buck Rogers than in the other GB games. There are no spells or items to increase it, and you need pretty high STR to be able to carry heavy armour and weapons and be able to move unencumbered.

Also note that there are no opportunity attack rules, which means all characters and monsters can move freely.