4 hours ago, CaptainJaguarShark said:

The more I think about this game, the more I think any DLC ships would end up using existing classes rather than adding additional classes of ships.

I'd like to have something like a gunship role with b-wing and xg-1 but I actually expect them to just put these into the bomber class in the game. I'd still expect them to have their own loadouts.

And let's be honest, they'll probably just ignore the b-wings special gyro stuff so that they can include it in the game.

Yeah if they do an expansion I’d rather they add more gamemodes than more ships tbh, but if they add more ships they should probably just add more factions

12-0 game with a Y-Wing and another 7-2 game where we went from down 8-15 to a 30-20 win. Can confirm, squadrons more fun with wingmen than without by a wide margin.

My brief review before I get on again ~

I’ve had the game for six days.

I’ve played a total of 49 hrs including some STRAIGHT sessions of 8, 9, 7 hrs respectively. No shame. NO. SHAME.

My diet is shot. Eating too much snacks while gaming. Had more diet Mountain Dew at 49 than I had at 18, my fingers are blistered.

My current game strategy is simple to follow: 3, 2, 1, 6.

3 hrs for sleep, 2 showers a day, 1 real meal with mega vitamins, 6 hrs to game. Missed the gym three times in six days. No Shame. NO. FIIIIIN. Shame.

I’ve have cursed out kids 1/3 my age in languages lost to time. NO. SHAME.

I need to get back into the cockpit.

THE EMPIRE IS VICTORIOUS ON ALL FRONTS!

1 hour ago, Imperial Advisor Arem Heshvaun said:

My brief review before I get on again ~

I’ve had the game for six days.

I’ve played a total of 49 hrs including some STRAIGHT sessions of 8, 9, 7 hrs respectively. No shame. NO. SHAME.

My diet is shot. Eating too much snacks while gaming. Had more diet Mountain Dew at 49 than I had at 18, my fingers are blistered.

My current game strategy is simple to follow: 3, 2, 1, 6.

3 hrs for sleep, 2 showers a day, 1 real meal with mega vitamins, 6 hrs to game. Missed the gym three times in six days. No Shame. NO. FIIIIIN. Shame.

I’ve have cursed out kids 1/3 my age in languages lost to time. NO. SHAME.

I need to get back into the cockpit.

THE EMPIRE IS VICTORIOUS ON ALL FRONTS!

Wow. Now I might actually give this game a chance.

BTW, you guys should make a group of pilots for this forum.

13 hours ago, Kyle Ren said:

Yeah if they do an expansion I’d rather they add more gamemodes than more ships tbh

Yeah, I agree more variety in game modes would be good, but at the same time it's bit of a weird one. At the moment the entire player base has two modes to choose from. Double that and (assuming the new modes are as fun as the current ones) you'd be splitting players between four modes, and could end up making matchmaking more difficult.

More single player modes would definitely be good. Historical Battles, maybe? And how difficult would it be to reintroduce "Classic" missions from X-Wing / TIE Fighter etc? A mission editor would be pretty cool as well.

3 hours ago, Imperial Advisor Arem Heshvaun said:

My brief review before I get on again...

That was less of a review, more of a lifestyle impact assessment 😂

1 hour ago, Odanan said:

V TW, you guys should make a group of pilots for this forum.

Definitely.

2 hours ago, Odanan said:

BTW, you guys should make a group of pilots for this forum.

I'm all for this.

What are the chances that they give this game a modding capability? then fans cna make historical battles or asymetrical ship designs for the purists.

I will say it again, game is awesome. I NEED a HOTAS though....

32 minutes ago, LUZ_TAK said:

What are the chances that they give this game a modding capability?

Minimal, unfortunately. But if they give... wow. That would be such a gift for the community.

A couple of points after a weekend of playing:

The Graphics: OK, I knew beforehand that the devs were taking a very colourful, very stylised approach. We've got stunning nebulae, debris fields, gas clouds, asteroid fields and much more, with a vivid palette.

That's cool. It's certainly a unique direction for the a Star Wars game, and at times the game looks truly beautiful. But the quality does vary; playing through the campaign, I felt like the visual quality declined the further I got through the game - early missions like the prologue and Hosnian Prime looked really good, some of the later ones, not so much. There's maps I really like, and maps I really don't. Some feel a bit too cluttered, one at least one or two I found myself flying "out of bounds" then struggling to find a reference point to get back, especially with enemy fighters continuing to just fly and fight around me.

With regards to the ship models themselves - fantastic, all well rendered. Doing a fly-by of a capital ship has a suitably epic feel to it. It's a bit disappointing that the number of ship models is low. Obviously we knew there would be four fighters per side, fair enough, but I thought we might have seen a little bit more ship variety than we did in campaign.

What's puzzling to me is that there's some assets in the early missions which didn't appear later on. The TIE Advanced v1 appears for the prologue and is never seen again. The MC80 Liberty-type appears in the first Rebel mission but is replaced by the MC75 for the rest of the campaign. The Quasar and Gozanti are used a couple of times for Imperial fighter deployments., which was fun to see. We see the GR-75, Zeta-Class Cargo Shuttle, Lambda Shuttle and BFF-1 (YESSSSSS) at various points early on. Most of these ships just kind of fade away after the first couple of mission though, and none are seen at all in Multiplayer - you can't even spawn them in practice mode.

Basically, the early campaign has a lot of visual quality and variety, but both slowly seem to tail off as the game progresses. The early campaign really has the X-Wing series feel; the latter half of the campaign feels a bit more like Battlefront.

The Sound: It's Star Wars; it's going to be good. It does have a bit of a "Rogue One" quality to it, though, there some of the original composition just pale in comparison to the John Williams score. I was surprised that the music composition didn't work quite as effectively as the old LucasArts situationally responsive iMuse system and the placement of some of the classic Star Wars musical cues felt a bit out of place.

The voice acting for the characters was terrific on the whole, though, the briefings, hangar bay conversations and flight chatter were all good. Again, I find myself comparing them to what we saw and heard in X-Wing Alliance and honestly I think the original still stands the test of time.

The Story: ...is not much to write home about, really. It's clear again the devs were shooting for a story that could stand on it's own, away from and without impacting (or being impacted by) the rest of the franchise. There's a couple of nice cameos and references to the greater canon in there, but it's completely self contained. That would be great if the story was more interesting, but it really was a bit of a paint-by-numbers kind of affair, and I wasn't really a fan of the focal point of the story, or the lacklustre finale.

All that said, the characters are really well done - the vast majority of Vanguard Squadron, Titan Squadron and their commanding officers are well written and realised characters.

But at the end of the day, all the above is window dressing for...

The Gameplay: ...and Squadrons nails it. The flight controls,, combat and pacing are all really well done. It's clear to me that there's a metric crapton of depth to the game. I'm still getting the hang of some of this stuff, but you can immediately see that the players who master all the intricacies will run rings around players who don't and be able to pull off manuevers that will blow your mind. While you can pick up and play (the matchmaking process matches players of similar playing time and level), there's a clear learning curve here and a high skill ceiling.

A couple of examples:

We know about shifting power between engines / weapons & shields. If you max out one of the three you generate, overcharge your weapons or strengthen your shields. But if you then shift energy away from that system, the stored power drops away again, and pretty quickly as well. You're going to need to make sure you have energy where you need it at any given time. Overcharge your weapons to maintain fire rate and cause more damage in combat, strengthen shields if you're making a run on a capital ship etc.

But it doesn't end there. Unshielded Imperial ships can shunt all power from weapons to engines to immediately generate boost, or from engines to weapons to quickly overcharge their blasters. The current starting strategy is for Imperials to keep all power to engines then shunt to weapons as required, but that might quickly change as the player base develops and adapts.

Rebels (and the Reaper) on the other hand can set their deflectors to front, rear or equalise them at any time. So if you're jousting an enemy or attacking a capital ship, shields to front to reinforce them. If you're running away, shields to rear to protect your escape. This stacks with power to the shields subsystem.

And then there's the boosting. A couple of ship mods and the Imperial shunt mechanic aside, your ship will only generate boost when your power is fully directed to engines. You can then use this for a burst of speed to quickly close or create distance - important for keeping ships within firing range (pro tip - don't waste weapon power by shooting at a ship that's out of range!) or for getting out of dodge. But you can quickly cut this burst of speed to "drift" your ship, allowing for Koiogran Turn or Tallon Roll style manuevers to get yourself quickly back into the fray or whip around an obstacle or ship.

There's only two multiplayer modes - the intense Dogfight and the wonderfully chaotic Fleet Battles - but they're sufficiently different from each other to keep players invested for a long time.

This is a really solid, fun multiplayer flight model which establishes a great foundation for future games, and there's a lot here to enjoy and to build on.

On 10/5/2020 at 2:59 PM, Kyle Ren said:

but if they add more ships they should probably just add more factions

Mandal Motors 4? (I,F,B,&S) Scyk or Fang, Dunelizard, Kimo, & Krayt?

22 minutes ago, Hiemfire said:

Mandal Motors 4? (I,F,B,&S) Scyk or Fang, Dunelizard, Kimo, & Krayt?

Don't forget they'd also need to add three different capital ships for Fleet Battles as well, a corvette, a frigate and a flagship.

For that reason alone I don't see more factions happening.

1 minute ago, FTS Gecko said:

Don't forget they'd also need to add three different capital ships for Fleet Battles as well, a corvette, a frigate and a flagship.

For that reason alone I don't see more factions happening.

Crusader, a down gunned version of the Scum Ion cannon frigate from EAW, and Kelbab?

36 minutes ago, Hiemfire said:

Mandal Motors 4? (I,F,B,&S) Scyk or Fang, Dunelizard, Kimo, & Krayt?

What would be the actual faction, though?

I could see them doing Mandalorians as a faction, especially with the show being well-liked so far. If they did that, we'd probably end up with the Fang and Firespray. I know the game recanonized a couple of things (bulk freighters) but I wouldn't expect that as a player ship. I'd be happy to be surprised, though.

Also, wouldn't be surprised if an eventual sequel does Resistance vs FO.

Literally any faction other than scum has enough recognizable ships to be added as a faction. Don’t see scum happening though

CIS donut ship thingies would be fun

3 minutes ago, CaptainJaguarShark said:

What would be the actual faction, though?

I could see them doing Mandalorians as a faction, especially with the show being well-liked so far. If they did that, we'd probably end up with the Fang and Firespray. I know the game recanonized a couple of things (bulk freighters) but I wouldn't expect that as a player ship. I'd be happy to be surprised, though.

Also, wouldn't be surprised if an eventual sequel does Resistance vs FO.

Firespray isn't a Mandalorian ship. It's Republic era Kuat Drive Yards (Technically by a subsidiary much like it's cousin the LAAT). All of the fighters I listed and two of the capital ships are Mandalorian designs, the Ion cannon frigate was a major refit of the CEC Action series freighter though. Biggest issue would be how to do so without "breaking" Canon restrictions on what was going on with the Mandalorians during that era.

1 minute ago, Hiemfire said:

Firespray isn't a Mandalorian ship. It's Republic era Kuat Drive Yards (Technically by a subsidiary much like it's cousin the LAAT). All of the fighters I listed and two of the capital ships are Mandalorian designs, the Ion cannon frigate was a major refit of the CEC Action series freighter though. Biggest issue would be how to do so without "breaking" Canon restrictions on what was going on with the Mandalorians during that era.

Yeah, but Boba/Jango and people recognize it regardless of whether they are really mandos. I think it's possible they'd do that. In Legends they were used by actual Mandos at least once.

We probably won't get exactly what we want. Fang seems like a shoe-in but the rest I'm iffy on (including the Firespray, actually).

But also, MandalMotors isn't a faction, it's a manufacturer. Most of those ships weren't used by mandos, were they? Or at least it wasn't the primary association. Dunelizard, Krayt, and Kimoglia are mostly associated with the Hutt cartels, Scyk with Hutt and Zann Consortium. IIRC, all four of those were commissioned by the Hutts originally. Of course if they brought any of these into canon, they could decide a new history for them. But when I think of those ships, I personally don't think Mandalorian. Hutt Cartel could be a thing, though?

Lancer and Gauntlet are probably both bigger than what they'd want in the game.

Black Sun or Zann could maybe show up. I know we all want to see Black Sun SupaFighters again, right?

As cool as it would be to see a Mandolorian, Hutt, Black Sun, Bounty Hunter, Space Pirate, or various criminal elements faction, that doesn't really seem like something that the devs are likely to include. At least, I wouldn't expect them before seeing prequel and sequel factions. Adding entire factions like that also feels like a, "let's do this in the sequel," sort of move, rather than as a large update. Not gonna lie though, I would love to get to fly a Star Viper in a game like this.

21 minutes ago, CaptainJaguarShark said:

Yeah, but Boba/Jango and people recognize it regardless of whether they are really mandos. I think it's possible they'd do that. In Legends they were used by actual Mandos at least once.

We probably won't get exactly what we want. Fang seems like a shoe-in but the rest I'm iffy on (including the Firespray, actually).

But also, MandalMotors isn't a faction, it's a manufacturer. Most of those ships weren't used by mandos, were they? Or at least it wasn't the primary association. Dunelizard, Krayt, and Kimoglia are mostly associated with the Hutt cartels, Scyk with Hutt and Zann Consortium. IIRC, all four of those were commissioned by the Hutts originally. Of course if they brought any of these into canon, they could decide a new history for them. But when I think of those ships, I personally don't think Mandalorian. Hutt Cartel could be a thing, though?

Lancer and Gauntlet are probably both bigger than what they'd want in the game.

Black Sun or Zann could maybe show up. I know we all want to see Black Sun SupaFighters again, right?

Black Sun got gutted by the Empire majorly during Rebels iirc, so similar issue to Mandalorians as a faction. Hutts... Jabba was the Hutt Cartel by the time of RotJ when Leia killed him so they'd have even less time to get to the level of being featureable as a faction. With the Mandalorians at least there is the possible fall back of one of the Clans finding a stash of older, pre disarament, Mandalorian made ships and using them to try and get revenge on the Imps with the New Republic getting caught in the crossfire. Just have to look at the Mandalorian series to see how that went (Squadrons precceds that iirc).

In a game like this, more than 2 factions is a pain. 3 factions in a game with primarily 2 side multiplayer is difficult.

There is absolutely no reason to add Scum as a third playable faction, but I can see a Squadrons II getting into Sequel Trilogy territory. Heck, the ships are basically the same:

• X-wing T-65 -> T-70
• RZ-1 A-wing -> RZ-2
• BTL-A4 Y-wing -> BTA-NR2
• U-Wing -> Resistance Transport

There is even a Resistance B-wing, if the B-wing actually makes into the game.

• TIE Fighter -> FO TIE Fighter (or even the TIE Whisper Starfighter, with its 4 guns)
• TIE Interceptor -> TIE Dagger
• TIE Bomber -> FO TIE Bomber
• TIE Reaper -> TIE Echelon

"All his life has he looked away, to the future. Never his mind on where he was now... what he was playing!" 😂

It's fun to speculate where the game could go, sure. But we're all but guaranteed no DLC for the foreseeable future and a sequel will be years away.

I'd like to hear more of people's experiences and thoughts on the game as it is right now.

And whether @Imperial Advisor Arem Heshvaun has managed to get any valid REM sleep

Yeah, DLC isn't happening.

https://www.ign.com/articles/star-wars-squadrons-no-dlc-more-content-oculus-quest

I honestly rather have a more robust sequel with way more ships, missions, modes, and better graphics.

So far I really like the game, but its one I don't know if its going to be a long term game for me. It could be but I have barely dipped my toe into multiplayer. The graphics or lack there of are kind of a bummer. BF2 is so much better looking, its not even close. Honestly, this game looks like a game from a few years ago from a visual standpoint. I guess maybe the VR support kept it back. One complaint I have seen and I totally agree with is, why can't you actually walk around the hanger bay, briefing room, etc.? They modeled all of those areas out and not being able to freely explore them is an odd choice.

2 hours ago, Jo Jo said:

Yeah, DLC isn't happening.

https://www.ign.com/articles/star-wars-squadrons-no-dlc-more-content-oculus-quest

I honestly rather have a more robust sequel with way more ships, missions, modes, and better graphics.

While I agree with your sentiment, I'm honestly a little shocked to see that on a modern game with a big property like Star Wars from a "AAA" publisher.

31 minutes ago, CaptainJaguarShark said:

While I agree with your sentiment, I'm honestly a little shocked to see that on a modern game with a big property like Star Wars from a "AAA" publisher.

It's more than just a sentiment, though. The devs have been saying it since day one - the game is what it is, it is being sold complete, with no DLC planned.

The only way that is likely to change at all is if the game blows up online with huge sales and a robust player community.

Even then it's much more likely that the team would focus on a sequel, with the next-gen consoles on the horizon.

5 hours ago, CaptainJaguarShark said:

While I agree with your sentiment, I'm honestly a little shocked to see that on a modern game with a big property like Star Wars from a "AAA" publisher.

It has more to do with the timing, as this game is coming at the end of the current console generation.

28 minutes ago, Sithborg said:

It has more to do with the timing, as this game is coming at the end of the current console generation.

Maybe. But this is a weird console jump too. Xbox at least, seems like Xbox One games will work there basically immediately.