SWTOR Space Combat Guide

[GerorgeG]

What is Space Combat?


Space Combat is available once you receive your personal ship.
When you first receive your ship, you can go into the cockpit area and there should be a quest waiting for you on one of the terminals. This is where you will receive most of you space combat quest. When you open the Galaxy Map, you should see some destinations that aren’t planets. These are the space missions. You can run these as much as you want, and the quests for them reset daily and can be done for extra Fleet Commendations. You can save up your Fleet Commendations and later use them to purchase higher level weapons and armaments for your ship, as well as a set of social armor that looks like a flight suit.

Getting your starship

Probably the most common question asked regarding starships is, well, when the heck do I get mine? If you're expecting to be able to jump to lightspeed minutes after creating your character, you're in for some disappointment. Gaining access to a starship is a monumental milestone in your adventures, and it's going to be a little while before it happens.

The good news is that it's not going to cost you a boatload of money like a mount will; you will get your own starship for free! This happens during your personal storyline on the second planet you visit, so expect to be somewhere in the 15-to-18 level range before it happens.

When it does, you'll be invited to board and tour your home-away-from-home that will be your personal HQ for the remainder of your character's journey in the game


Bonus companion!

As an exciting bonus to starship ownership, you'll find that your ship comes with its very own droid: C2-N2 (Republic ships) or 2V-R8 (Empire ships). Initially, these droids are just there to show you around and provide some local color, but you can actually enlist them to become a true companion that can join you on your adventures.

Now before you get all a-twitter over an additional companion, C2 and 2V have struck some beta testers as, er, kind of annoying. "Nag" is a word that comes up a lot. And they only function as support healers for combat, with no offensive capabilities whatsoever, so you might want to leave your droid behind on the ship in favor of a better companion (unless you want them to tag along for their own sake!).


Starship basics

There are currently six starships in the game, with the Jedi and Sith classes doubling up to share the same ship. There's the D5-Mantis (Bounty Hunter), Fury (Sith Inquisitor/Warrior), X-70B Phantom (Imperial Agent), BT-7 Thunderclap (Trooper), XS Freighter (Smuggler), and the Defender (Jedi Consular/Knight).

Currently, starships cannot be personalized with colors, names, furniture, or trophies, although BioWare is aware that this is a popular demand. You can sit in the chairs, however -- a feature that's found nowhere else in the game (at the time of this writing).

The starship's purpose is fourfold: to transport you between planets, to give you a place to craft and store materials, to serve as a setting for stories and companion conversations, and to allow you to engage in space combat missions.

Travel is the most basic feature, as you'll need to pay a pittance of credits for fuel to hop between solar systems and your faction's starbase, but this won't come into play too often in the beginning. BioWare has stated that it intends to allow other players to board your starship (and vice-versa) to check things out, socialize, and even travel together.


Crafting and storage

Since your starship functions as your moving base of operations, it makes sense that this is where you'll want to have your personal storage and crafting facilities.

Your cargo hold has quite a few slots per bay that will allow you to clean out your personal inventory and store crafting materials and gear that you're not currently using. Companion characters can be tasked with leaving the ship to go on gathering missions or to take collected mats and work on making you stims, weapons, armor, and other useful items. You can even order them to work on projects remotely while you're out and about on the planet surface!


Space combat

While it's not everyone's cup of tea, space combat is nevertheless present for those who want a break from avatar combat to pilot (sort of) their personal starships in quick, exciting missions. As is well-known at this point, SWTOR's space combat is a rail shooter system in which the computer moves you along a path while you control your ship's attacks and some movement. If you're craving classic Star Wars space battles, this is what BioWare has in store for you.

Through space combat you'll be able to earn upgrades for your ship. While these upgrades aren't visible, they will increase your capabilities for combat, including better shields and weapons. Space combat also nets you valuable XP and credits, so it's another way to beef up your numbers if you're looking for alternatives.



Ship Upgrades

• Starting from the top left and moving clock-wise, the upgrade slots for a star ship are as follows:
• EMP Generator – A modification of the ship not obtainable until later in the game.
• Electronic Warfare Pod – Grants ability “Jam” which makes it so enemies cannot fire at you for a few seconds, nor can you fire at them. 2.5min cooldown on use.
• Ship Armor – Basically the ship’s “health.” When this reaches 0, you blow up.
• Energy Shield – You can purchase shields that will absorb damage before the ship’s armor takes damage.
• Shield Regenerator – In order for the shields to regenerate, you will need to purchase one of these. Without a shield regenerator, your shields will be gone for the rest of the mission once depleted.
• Beam Charger – This upgrade will increase the damage of your ship’s blasters.
• Beam Generator – This upgrade increases your ship’s rate of fire.
• Missile Magazine – New magazines greatly increase the amount of missiles your ship can use in combat.
• Proton Torpedoes – Special missiles for taking out well-armored ships and structural points that would normally be very difficult to destroy with standard weaponry.
• Power Converter Module – Adds the abilities “Power to Blasters” and “Power to Shields” for your ship. The abilities can be used with the normal toggle system for abilities and basically grant the opposite powers. “Power to Blasters” will cause your blasters to deal more damage, but your shield regeneration will be cut in half, whereas “Power to Shields” will double the rate of shield regeneration but cause your blasters to do insignificant damage while active.

Obtaining Upgrades:

• As stated before, obtaining upgrades for your ship will greatly increase your survivability on combat missions as well as make them easier to do. On both faction’s Fleet stations you can find Starship Upgrade vendors that will sell various upgrades. You’re able to purchase Grade 1, 3 and 5 upgrades for Armor, Shields, Shield Regenerators, Beam Chargers, Beam Generators and Missile Magazines for credits. Grades 2, 4 and Artifact quality ship upgrades are crafted by Cybertechs.
• The special upgrades such as the EMP Generator, Electronic Warfare Pod, Proton Torpedoes and the Power Converter Module can be purchased at the other Starship Upgrade vendor but will require Fleet Commendations instead of credits. This vendor also sells a flight suit armor
• set purchasable with Fleets comms as well, but also requires a certain Social level like the other social gear.

Space Combat Controls
The controls for Space Combat are fairly simple and you can pretty much play with just the mouse, aside from a few buttons. Your ship flies on-rails throughout the mission, but within those rails you can maneuver around the screen. Your mouse cursor becomes a targeting reticule and your ship will always fly towards the direction your pointing.

• Left-Click – Fires your blasters and can be held down for constant fire; unlimited ammo.
• Right-Click – Shoots your missiles; limited ammo.
• WASD – The normal keyboard movement keys can also make small adjustments to your flight in combination with the mouse.
• Spacebar – Causes your ship to do a barrel roll.
• 1-4 Keys – When you install the special upgrades, these keys can be pressed to use the new abilities.
• Space Combat Tips
• 1 – Run the daily missions each day for the bonus Fleet Commendations. You can also get some nice xp and credits for doing so.
• 2 – Hold down Left-Click to keep firing your blasters nonstop; doing so will help avoid carpal tunnel as well.
• 3 – If you have shields and a regenerator, you cannot regenerate shields while your blasters are firing. Stop firing when there are no ships on-screen in order to regenerate some of your shielding between waves.
• 4 – If you hold down Right-Click, you can select up to 4 targets at once for missiles. Moving the mouse over targets will “paint” them and when you release the button, all 4 missiles will fire off at once.
• 5 – When you see a wave of ships angling around to make a pass at you head-on, try to fire some missiles at them and begin doing barrel rolls and moving from one corner of the screen to the other. Trying to take on a wave of ships head-on with blasters will usually cause major damage to your ship.

[geschaeftsfrau]

Originally Posted by GerorgeG

What is Space Combat?


Space Combat is available once you receive your personal ship.
When you first receive your ship, you can go into the cockpit area and there should be a quest waiting for you on one of the terminals. This is where you will receive most of you space combat quest. When you open the Galaxy Map, you should see some destinations that aren’t planets. These are the space missions. You can run these as much as you want, and the quests for them reset daily and can be done for extra Fleet Commendations. You can save up your Fleet Commendations and later use them to purchase higher level weapons and armaments for your ship, as well as a set of social armor that looks like a flight suit.

Getting your starship

Probably the most common question asked regarding starships is, well, when the heck do I get mine? If you're expecting to be able to jump to lightspeed minutes after creating your character, you're in for some disappointment. Gaining access to a starship is a monumental milestone in your adventures, and it's going to be a little while before it happens.

The good news is that it's not going to cost you a boatload of money like a mount will; you will get your own starship for free! This happens during your personal storyline on the second planet you visit, so expect to be somewhere in the 15-to-18 level range before it happens.

When it does, you'll be invited to board and tour your home-away-from-home that will be your personal HQ for the remainder of your character's journey in the game


Bonus companion!

As an exciting bonus to starship ownership, you'll find that your ship comes with its very own droid: C2-N2 (Republic ships) or 2V-R8 (Empire ships). Initially, these droids are just there to show you around and provide some local color, but you can actually enlist them to become a true companion that can join you on your adventures.

Now before you get all a-twitter over an additional companion, C2 and 2V have struck some beta testers as, er, kind of annoying. "Nag" is a word that comes up a lot. And they only function as support healers for combat, with no offensive capabilities whatsoever, so you might want to leave your droid behind on the ship in favor of a better companion (unless you want them to tag along for their own sake!).


Starship basics

There are currently six starships in the game, with the Jedi and Sith classes doubling up to share the same ship. There's the D5-Mantis (Bounty Hunter), Fury (Sith Inquisitor/Warrior), X-70B Phantom (Imperial Agent), BT-7 Thunderclap (Trooper), XS Freighter (Smuggler), and the Defender (Jedi Consular/Knight).

Currently, starships cannot be personalized with colors, names, furniture, or trophies, although BioWare is aware that this is a popular demand. You can sit in the chairs, however -- a feature that's found nowhere else in the game (at the time of this writing).

The starship's purpose is fourfold: to transport you between planets, to give you a place to craft and store materials, to serve as a setting for stories and companion conversations, and to allow you to engage in space combat missions.

Travel is the most basic feature, as you'll need to pay a pittance of credits for fuel to hop between solar systems and your faction's starbase, but this won't come into play too often in the beginning. BioWare has stated that it intends to allow other players to board your starship (and vice-versa) to check things out, socialize, and even travel together.


Crafting and storage

Since your starship functions as your moving base of operations, it makes sense that this is where you'll want to have your personal storage and crafting facilities.

Your cargo hold has quite a few slots per bay that will allow you to clean out your personal inventory and store crafting materials and gear that you're not currently using. Companion characters can be tasked with leaving the ship to go on gathering missions or to take collected mats and work on making you stims, weapons, armor, and other useful items. You can even order them to work on projects remotely while you're out and about on the planet surface!


Space combat

While it's not everyone's cup of tea, space combat is nevertheless present for those who want a break from avatar combat to pilot (sort of) their personal starships in quick, exciting missions. As is well-known at this point, SWTOR's space combat is a rail shooter system in which the computer moves you along a path while you control your ship's attacks and some movement. If you're craving classic Star Wars space battles, this is what BioWare has in store for you.

Through space combat you'll be able to earn upgrades for your ship. While these upgrades aren't visible, they will increase your capabilities for combat, including better shields and weapons. Space combat also nets you valuable XP and credits, so it's another way to beef up your numbers if you're looking for alternatives.



Ship Upgrades

• Starting from the top left and moving clock-wise, the upgrade slots for a star ship are as follows:
• EMP Generator – A modification of the ship not obtainable until later in the game.
• Electronic Warfare Pod – Grants ability “Jam” which makes it so enemies cannot fire at you for a few seconds, nor can you fire at them. 2.5min cooldown on use.
• Ship Armor – Basically the ship’s “health.” When this reaches 0, you blow up.
• Energy Shield – You can purchase shields that will absorb damage before the ship’s armor takes damage.
• Shield Regenerator – In order for the shields to regenerate, you will need to purchase one of these. Without a shield regenerator, your shields will be gone for the rest of the mission once depleted.
• Beam Charger – This upgrade will increase the damage of your ship’s blasters.
• Beam Generator – This upgrade increases your ship’s rate of fire.
• Missile Magazine – New magazines greatly increase the amount of missiles your ship can use in combat.
• Proton Torpedoes – Special missiles for taking out well-armored ships and structural points that would normally be very difficult to destroy with standard weaponry.
• Power Converter Module – Adds the abilities “Power to Blasters” and “Power to Shields” for your ship. The abilities can be used with the normal toggle system for abilities and basically grant the opposite powers. “Power to Blasters” will cause your blasters to deal more damage, but your shield regeneration will be cut in half, whereas “Power to Shields” will double the rate of shield regeneration but cause your blasters to do insignificant damage while active.

Obtaining Upgrades:

• As stated before, obtaining upgrades for your ship will greatly increase your survivability on combat missions as well as make them easier to do. On both faction’s Fleet stations you can find Starship Upgrade vendors that will sell various upgrades. You’re able to purchase Grade 1, 3 and 5 upgrades for Armor, Shields, Shield Regenerators, Beam Chargers, Beam Generators and Missile Magazines for credits. Grades 2, 4 and Artifact quality ship upgrades are crafted by Cybertechs.
• The special upgrades such as the EMP Generator, Electronic Warfare Pod, Proton Torpedoes and the Power Converter Module can be purchased at the other Starship Upgrade vendor but will require Fleet Commendations instead of credits. This vendor also sells a flight suit armor
• set purchasable with Fleets comms as well, but also requires a certain Social level like the other social gear.

Space Combat Controls
The controls for Space Combat are fairly simple and you can pretty much play with just the mouse, aside from a few buttons. Your ship flies on-rails throughout the mission, but within those rails you can maneuver around the screen. Your mouse cursor becomes a targeting reticule and your ship will always fly towards the direction your pointing.

• Left-Click – Fires your blasters and can be held down for constant fire; unlimited ammo.
• Right-Click – Shoots your missiles; limited ammo.
• WASD – The normal keyboard movement keys can also make small adjustments to your flight in combination with the mouse.
• Spacebar – Causes your ship to do a barrel roll.
• 1-4 Keys – When you install the special upgrades, these keys can be pressed to use the new abilities.
• Space Combat Tips
• 1 – Run the daily missions each day for the bonus Fleet Commendations. You can also get some nice xp and credits for doing so.
• 2 – Hold down Left-Click to keep firing your blasters nonstop; doing so will help avoid carpal tunnel as well.
• 3 – If you have shields and a regenerator, you cannot regenerate shields while your blasters are firing. Stop firing when there are no ships on-screen in order to regenerate some of your shielding between waves.
• 4 – If you hold down Right-Click, you can select up to 4 targets at once for missiles. Moving the mouse over targets will “paint” them and when you release the button, all 4 missiles will fire off at once.
• 5 – When you see a wave of ships angling around to make a pass at you head-on, try to fire some missiles at them and begin doing barrel rolls and moving from one corner of the screen to the other. Trying to take on a wave of ships head-on with blasters will usually cause major damage to your ship.

Nice Overview helps a lot
-> /push

[EliteAngus]

Originally Posted by GerorgeG

• Energy Shield – You can purchase shields that will absorb damage before the ship’s armor takes damage.
• Shield Regenerator – In order for the shields to regenerate, you will need to purchase one of these. Without a shield regenerator, your shields will be gone for the rest of the mission once depleted.

Shields regenerate only while you are not shooting.
It is a tooltip ingame, but few people still don't know it.

[DarkOrbitPvPHunter]

Can you say, are you trusted?

[Vinesludge]

Very good Guide. Thanks.

[ethelknox]

Good for me this kind of advice..

[meandu12]

good thanks