Star Wars Squadrons - PC/PS4/XB1/VR!

[Benny]

50 minutes ago, Hexx said:

TIE Defender feels like an amped up interceptor with paper thin hull to compensate.

 

BWing though...IF you have fighter defense is bonkers. 

 

Agreed. The B-Wing is a BEAST.

 

I'm trying to work out if the cannons have automatic ion bolts as standard, because that would explain why I shredded Tie Defenders with it.

 

They seem very much like counters to each other: Defender has high shields low hull, so ions shred it. B-Wing has high hull low shields, so regular lasers and rockets are the order of the day.

 

Defender does seem a little weak though, because it's not as fast or maneuverable as an interceptor, and the clever pilots who use ion cannons or missiles completely shred it. The systems boost auxiliary for an instant shield and lasers boost seems like a must.

[Benny]

Having played with them a bit: the B-Wing is the definition of an assault ship. Very slow, but bristling with guns. Packs more of a punch than any other ship as straight damage I think, even the Tie Bomber. RIP Y-Wings.

 

The Tie Defender is more of a pure hit and run type, slightly less powerful than an Interceptor for pure damage, but its key advantage from what I could tell is the subsystems charge incredibly fast, so you get two boosts pretty much the instant you switch power to engines. So it seems designed for high level subsystem play with attacking and boosting out super quick.

[Hexx]

Yeah the BWing always has Ion/Lazer combo from what I could see.

 

 

[Darwock]

Never mind the new fighters:

 

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Added the option to toggle game controllers between dynamic (default) and static throttle. This option can be used to correct the behavior of the throttle on certain input devices, such as the Hori HOTAS for PS4.

 

HALLE-FUCKING-LUJAH!!

 

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Fixed an issue where a starfighter's movement could become jerky while firing the Rotary Cannon

 

This is also great and will hopefully allow me to get back in the bomber cockpits.

 

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Players now take +50% damage if they are hit while charging the Plasburst Cannon to enforce its role as a “chase” weapon rather than a “jousting” weapon

This, on the other hand... hmmm. I don’t use that weapon but if you equip it you don’t have any other lasers, so you have no option but to use it if someone is coming at you head-on. And now you’re going to have +50% damage penalty in fairly common situations? I think they’ve just killed that one the same as they killed the rotary cannon, certainly for the X-wing (A-wing is more likely to get behind someone).

 

I’d love to try out the B-wing but it seems likely that everyone will be doing that, and from the description a whole team of B-wings is going to be at a disadvantage. Actually I tried to play last night and couldn’t connect to servers anyway, I hope that was patch related.

[Jamie John]

After spending half an hour getting this working on my Quest 2 (I didn't realise you couldn't play it with the Oculus controllers and was convinced that they weren't linking up with Steam VR properly), I played through the first two prologue missions of this and thought it was good fun, although in the heat of battle I find it very difficult to keep track of what's going on or to see who's who in front of me. I suppose it's just a case of getting used to it, especially as I've never really played a first-person flying game before. I remember playing Rogue Leader and Third Strike on the Gamecube back in the day, but those were both third-person, so it was easier to orientate yourself. Playing this in full VR, I didn't really know what was happening. Still cool, though, even if I can't play it for too long a time.

 

Is the multiplayer pretty lively, then? I might be up for some co-op once I've finished the campaign and have found my feet with it a bit.

[Darwock]

Multiplayer is lively, but not so much the co-op (players vs AI) mode. I wanted to try out the new starfighters in that mode but gave up when matchmaking didn’t come up with anything. Maybe it was just bad timing.

 

B-wing was a bit of a bullet magnet, and I haven’t yet been able to work out the rotational thing - I think by default you are perched at the top of the ship, which also makes it a little hard to account for how much clearance you have when flying into narrow passages. I think I clipped scenery a couple of times. How do you know which direction your bombs will fire? There are a few read-outs that might display this but I can’t tell very easily. I found the B-wing good for quickly taking out raiders/corvettes on home turf but won’t last long if you try to go after the enemy capital ship.

 

The TIE defender was no go for me, I got shredded more or less instantly both times I tried it. I guess understanding the practical uses of the double overdrive thing is key, and I didn’t really know what to do with it.

[iknowgungfu]

Playing this on PC.  Out of interest have most of you kept to default pad settings?  I can't seem to get to grips with the controls.

[stephen129]

Anyone else getting a bit of motion sickness playing this (not in VR), or is it just me? 

[Darwock]

I did at first, but that was in VR and it passed, so not much help. I get really queasy with most FPS type things so I imagine this would be similar.

 

I’ve started recovering my KDR in ranked fleet matches, by conditioning myself to try and use the right ship for the job. I always tried to make my chosen craft work for whatever situation. Hence always dying in a matter of seconds whenever I tried to use interceptors in the attack phase. Once I sussed out that they are far more effective when the enemy is focused on the capital ships and not hunting for me I started getting good results with them. Now I switch ships whenever the phase changes. Last night I went 21 kills with only 1 death (and that was to the Star Destroyer, not another player).

 

I also tried going back to the Hori now that there is a dynamic/static throttle setting. Unfortunately they would need to offer a bit more on the control customization to make it viable, because without receiving the benefit of the modified input curves for flight sticks (as it is still registered as a DS4) it is still a nightmare to handle. Too much to hope for customizable response settings on a console. The throttle worked great though!

 

So I’m still struggling with the Thrustmaster’s dodgy sensors - it has been gradually getting worse so the roll drift is more or less constant these days - but I made an interesting discovery tonight. Usual routine is to pop out the potentiometers and spray them down. I noted a while ago that once they are removed from the housing the drift stops. Tonight when I stopped getting good pitch response, out of frustration I sprayed a ton of electrical cleaner directly into the housing while the POTs were out - should be nothing in there but mechanical bits and grease. I guess I wiped out some of the grease because the stick started making creaky noises on pitch, but all of the drift disappeared. I mean, completely. Now I wonder if the grease they use is causing some electrical interference (which would explain why the drift stops once the POTs are popped out).

 

[FiveFootNinja]

@Darwock My T-Flight is packaged up with a return sticker on today as the drift has continued to get worse to the point of me not enjoying the last few sessions I've played. Going to see how I get on with pad for a bit and maybe look at the Hori in the future.

[Twinbee]

I’ve only put an hour or two into this (pad only), but loving it. I knew I’d be rubbish at it, and I am - keep bumping into the star destroyers and things I’m meant to be shooting, finding it tricky to target TIEs etc, but the carnage and spectacle of it is very much wowing 8-year-old me sat in the Star Wars arcade cabinet in Aberystwyth in 1984. 

[Darwock]

6 hours ago, FiveFootNinja said:

@Darwock My T-Flight is packaged up with a return sticker on today as the drift has continued to get worse to the point of me not enjoying the last few sessions I've played. Going to see how I get on with pad for a bit and maybe look at the Hori in the future.

My hope is that Thrustmaster come out with a new PS5 branded stick with none of the quality control issues. Considering the problems exist across the entire range of T-flight sticks (not just the PS4 one) that’s probably a vain hope.

[Darwock]

It seems to have become impossible to connect to the servers. Three nights in a row I’ve gone to play once my kids go to bed, and I just get error code 327. Googling it tells me this is a busy server problem, and to try playing at a less busy time of day. Not a lot of help to me. I’ve been trying to connect over and over for 45 minutes now.

[JoeK]

22 hours ago, Darwock said:

It seems to have become impossible to connect to the servers. Three nights in a row I’ve gone to play once my kids go to bed, and I just get error code 327. Googling it tells me this is a busy server problem, and to try playing at a less busy time of day. Not a lot of help to me. I’ve been trying to connect over and over for 45 minutes now.

 

Error code 66, surely.

 

Sorry. Please don't ban me...

 

 

[Darwock]

Why, because it’s a prequel joke? I think you’re legally allowed to make those now after clone wars season 7 made it cool.

 

I have been having a rough couple of days, after all my log on woes I finally started to get connections; only to lose every single round, in every session I played. I tried not to keep count but it must have been in the region of 7-10 straight losses (all ranked fleet battles).

 

Today things started to pick up, my teams were winning although I was always bottom of the ranking - lost my mojo basically. I’ll take the wins though.

 

Then I had one great round. I finally got the B-wing to work for me, just this one time. 99% of my B-wing sorties end up with me getting blown up the moment I get within range to do any damage, or at best blown up right after I drop a couple of bombs. This particular sortie just felt so damn epic I had to capture it for posterity (just 1 minute long, and it doesn’t look quite so epic on review, but trust me, I was in my element with all the angle adjustments)

 

 

I also dealt the killing blow to the Star Destroyer to win the round in a similar fashion - flew in underneath with the flagship above me, but with my chassis inverted, and just pelted the power system with bombs - finished off the subsystem and the destroyer in one pass.

 

Tomorrow I will go back to being an impotent bullet magnet.

[Darwock]

By all means, but we went through a lot of this at launch and nobody ever showed up in my friend list, so I think it’s borked. Also I’m on Japan time

 

At the very least it’s someone to compare stats with though, right?

[Darwock]

Darwock (same everywhere)

[Benny]

Add me too. I've been meaning to get back to it!

 

hoopyfordprefect on Origin

[Darwock]

Huuuuhhh, that would explain it - but in that case how am I playing the game? What’s your ID, I’ll try the reverse. Is there an EA website I can go to? I set up the origins ID the first time I played and don’t know how to get back to the set-up screens. I’ll have a look online.

 

edit - Ok I logged in on the website and the first thing it asked me to do was set who can search for my profile, so maybe I was hidden until now. Give it another go (and thanks for the heads up!)

 

edit 2 - the website also says I don’t have any games, so maybe it’s still borked.

[Darwock]

I hit level 100 last night, so I’m still playing this regularly - but playing as an individual without a squadron is really not turning out to be a very rewarding experience. Peak hours seem to be 10pm-12am here in Japan, based on how often the game fails to connect to servers between those hours. It also seems like more and more players at those times have organized themselves into fixed groups, so individuals playing with 100% random teams are *always* going to lose. I’ve gone about four days in a row now losing every single round - even the ones we seem to be going strong in will fall apart unexpectedly in the final stages.

 

I just love flying the ships, so win/lose, whatever... but it’s wearing me down I have to say. I could switch to dogfights where team co-ordination is less important (still important) but then I can’t use the B-wing to any great effect 

 

When I play in the afternoon my team can win much more reliably, but life doesn’t really allow that. I probably need to play no more than one round per day to avoid the cumulative feeling of hopelessness, lol

[moosegrinder]

It's free this weekend on Xbox.

[Darwock]

4 hours ago, Welrain said:

What uk time are you on?

The usual window opens about three hours from the time of this post, so if my iPad doesn’t lie that would be early-mid afternoon in the UK? I get the odd opportunity to play in the morning hours too.

 

I played four rounds today - lost two in the usual circumstances (versus an established squad) and then won the next one as the only TIE pilot in black gear, whereas my teammates all had matching white get-up (so I was piggy backed on someone else’s squad, hence the victory). The final round was a good one though, my first ever ranked fleet battle with zero deaths, and another victory. I didn’t set the world on fire with either kills (7) or capital ship damage (16,000) but I played my part for sure, taking out shields and one subsystem as well as helping shift the phase back to attack so it’s not like I was hiding in the back to stay alive.

 

I’m starting to lean towards using the passive stealth hull on all my attack load-outs, not only the interceptor role, so I can sneak around the sides and do a rush on the flagship to fire whatever I’ve got without getting killed first.

 

So it still ebbs and flows - just there is a lot more ebb than flow.

 

edit - kids are now in bed, and I’ve been trying to log in for 30 minutes - usual story, error 327. Maybe I’ll have more luck if I push it back to midnight.

[Darwock]

@Welrain I noticed in the gameplay video I just recorded (doh!) that you sent me an invite after I logged on - I didn’t see it pop up at the time and when I checked the social screen you were offline - I’m back in atm, will hang around for a bit if you want to come back online.

 

I won a single round and decided to quit while I was ahead, logged off to watch the video - saw your invite in the first few frames. Oops. I’m surprised I was able to log back in so easily though.

[Darwock]

Blame that damn error 327 - I had just been hitting retry over and over for 30 minutes whenever I saw the message on screen, so I didn’t immediately notice it had actually logged on. I guess your invite had expired before I picked up the controller.

 

Did you have any difficulty connecting?

[Darwock]

The matchmaking gods have been kind to me in recent games, so I’ve had four winning teams in a row - I’ve now made it up to Hero V rank, and I’m just about 100 skill points from making it into the Valiant category. That’s my goal for operation 2, but there are only 12 days left and if I get another losing streak the chance is going to disappear before my eyes.

 

Hopefully I can get a higher initial placement in operation 3. 

[Darwock]

@Benny I see you’re online atm, I dropped you an invite...

 

I actually had my first ever game with someone using voice chat - it was awesome just in terms of what strategy was possible. I wish it could be like that more often
 

edit - after that last post I went into another losing streak and have only just clawed my way back into hero V - I don’t think valiant will be possible this time round.

[Benny]

I was well rusty this session

 

The new tractor beam stuff that protects the caps ships definitely threw me a bit.

[Darwock]

Hey at least the dogfight was exciting, and we both killed more than we got killed...

 

And we had the excuse of being outnumbered for the first of those two ranked fleet battles. I played like shit in both of them though, I think I was too hyped up with the novelty of having someone to talk to.

 

[Darwock]

8 hours ago, Benny said:

The new tractor beam stuff that protects the caps ships definitely threw me a bit.

The tractor beam can only get you if you fly in under the flagship, and you can avoid it by coming in from the sides too - basically it just protects the power system (although I think it can get you if you go for the shields on an MC75 as well). You can destroy it though, either before or after you get grabbed - you can see the bluish cone being emitted that lets you know what to shoot at.

 

Like I said in chat there are ship mods that will help too, and boosting with a fast ship will break you free. 
 

Power system is the most tempting subsystem to go for because of all the weak points it opens up, but I think targeting/shields are a better place to start* because removing any of those allows more opportunity for everyone to get damage on the flagship. Getting killed on an attack run ends the attack phase much faster, so it’s better to play it safe (and also buy back the morale loss from inevitable death by killing AI fighters on the way).

 

For quick turn around on defence of a flagship the multi-lock missiles are a godsend - one round can lock onto 4 AI fighters in a formation, and it’s guaranteed kills - that’s +12 morale from one ammo (you only get +10 for hunting down a real player). Usually you can pick off the extra fighters in a formation manually and get +15. Do that a few times and kill the corvette/raider, the enemy attack phase is too short for them to do anything.

 

It’s probably also worth pointing out that you can strip your own flagship shields with friendly fire, and I think that also includes shooting from the inside-out - I spawned as B-wing once with a Raider right in front of me, so I opened fire from under the hangar bay - three seconds later “our shields are down!!”. I think it was me that did that.

 

*caveat to that - the new piercing torpedoes are great for taking out the power system early, as long as you are prepared to get the hell out of there after you fire. Especially versus the Rebels at the Zavian abyss - you can shelter under a broken ship hull to get the lock. Boost in as close to minimum range as you can to fire, drift turn and escape. I usually combine it with an ion torpedo so anyone guarding has to pick a target, and if just one connects it will help in some way.

[Darwock]

I had quite the experience this evening. For background, my previous posts complaining about being matched up against organized groups were often triggered by one particular group of Australians that I always seem to get drawn up against (and most of the time it’s not worth leaving the hangar bay in those rounds). I actually got put on their team once as a +1 and they are incredibly organized and efficient.

 

I played a random match tonight with only one other guy on comms, we seemed to have a good complementary play style and won that match - he sent me a friend request afterwards. I accepted, and invited him to queue up together for the next round. I also sent an invite to another low level guy that I played with once, he played a good support game so I had friended him but he wasn’t on chat. Both of them accepted and we kicked off a round.

 

Quelle surprise, got matched against the unbeatable Australian squad of 4 (plus one random). We’d already written off our chances in the pre-match lobby - but against all the odds we actually won the damn thing. I can’t believe it.