Octopus Overlords

Your team needs to keep the fighters off you. Also, I try to come in from the back so I boost past and spin around to hit from the back. Usually target shield generators first.

You can also attack using the cover of the corvette as the SD concentrates on that and you can slip by.

If you ping a target maybe you teammates will cover you?

I think the main thing is waiting until your Corvette starts drawing the Star Destroyer’s Fire. Weaving back and forth as you approach helps as well, or approaching from a blind spot like from behind or directly above the bridge. I think you can also blow up turrets so that future attack runs don’t have as much incoming fire.

Just beat it yesterday. I thought it was going to be short, and it was actually perfect for single player. Now to move on to multiplayer. Two matches yesterday, we lost by 2 each time with myself in the top 3.

Just paid double retail price for a joystick to play this.
I'm actually good with that, as the availability and prices for joysticks are nuts for some reason.

Were you doing dogfighting?

I have only been playing Empire in multiplayer and I'm loving the emergency power converter system. In case you haven't used it, it's an ability that the Imperial ships have that allows them to instantly move power from their engines to their weapons. On my Logitech 3D Extreme joystick I have to hit the 7 button and also tap my hat to the right. This pulls a bit of overcharge from my engines to the guns. What this means is that I always fly with full power to my engines and just syphon off a bit of overcharge to fill my guns. My ships are always fast and always have guns ready.

Sorry if this is old news to you, but I found it to be a really cool trade off for not having shields.

Does anyone know if you can change loadouts in the middle of the battle? For example, my favorite ship is the TIE Bomber. In the dogfighting phase I like to fly the bomber with a seeker mine and multi lock missiles. I do very well dogfighting with this loadout. However, when it's time to take down the capital ships I would prefer to switch the loadout to bomb ordinance.

I can't seem to find a way to do this in the middle of the game. I can set my loadout for each ship at the beginning, but it seems like I can't adjust any ship type once the action starts. Right now when we need to take out the capital ships I switch to the TIE Fighter because of the awesome torpedoes they have. I'd rather stick with the bomber though.

I think when you go to change your ship class, you hit up and down on the left analog stick to choose whether you want loadout 1 or 2. It's subtle, though, I think it's just one loadout has a medium length line over the ship icon, and the other has a slightly longer line.

Thank you! I was able to make two loadouts per ship. This changes everything.

Now that I know how to use multiple loadouts per mission (I just got a third loadout slot at level 15), Fleet Battles have been much better. Do any of you guys have any tips for using bombers against capital ships? I had tried a build with ion and proton bombs, but I didn't feel like I was doing a ton of damage. Even when I was flying with my capital support, it felt like getting close enough to drop those payloads was suicide.

Last night I tried a build with my TIE Bomber where I used:

Rotary canon (I always have this one equipped)
Beam Laser
Goliath Missile

I was able to do 60k damage to capital ships and it felt like we took the Rebel flagship down pretty easily.

I know some people like to run the mosquito tactic where the bomber flies under the shield and parks right next to the subsystem and fires the rotary canon. This seems really cheesy and I will not do that. Any other tactic though is welcome.

McNutt wrote: ↑Thu Oct 15, 2020 2:43 pm To those of you playing VR, it seems that the Rebel ships have a noticeable advantage based on their open cockpit visibility. Do you mainly stick to Rebel ships?

Is it not possible to play with the cockpit view off (like so many racing games allow you to do)? I am playing on PS4 and was not able to find something like that. The view from inside a TIE Fighter is abysmal - I feel like I'm looking out of a WWI bunker.

I don't think so. I know I used to play that way in lots of flight sim games, but in this I think it helps with the illusion that you're in the cockpit. I haven't seen any videos of a view without the cockpit.

Plus, how are you going to see your bobblehead?

McNutt wrote: ↑Tue Oct 27, 2020 12:59 pm Plus, how are you going to see your bobblehead?

I will use the Force, obviously.

Last night I decided to fly a support ship in fleet battles in order to get my 20 supply challenge completed. Somehow I was leading the game in points with a ton of teammates supplied and more kills than anyone else. I'm still not sure how that happens because you can't dogfight in a Raider and I had no offensive auxiliary components, but somehow I was leading with 17 kills. Then I was booted from the game. Not sure if the connection was lost or what, but we had 10 people in the game and I was suddenly booted to the main screen. Boo! None of those points counted.

I have been playing with a Thrustmaster HOTAS X joystick and throttle and been trying to find an optimal set of button mappings for the game. While looking for that I discovered that folks have been complaining about the large deadzone on the stick, causing them to oversteer when trying to get a target in their sights. I actually noticed that myself but thought it was me being rusty at Star Wars sims.

So I did some more digging and found this tutorial on the joystick curves app which can be downloaded here. After downloading the driver and configuring the setup I've found that I'm much better at keeping enemy starfighters in my sights and my kills have been racking up in the single player campaign.

So if you have a Thrustmaster HOTAS X give joystick curves a try.

New patch released today. Two of the big balance/play issues were addressed:

TIE Bomber hull decreased from 2500 to 2000. I play the TIE Bomber a lot and I'm okay with this. The ship was overpowered and equally good at dogfighting and capital ship runs.

Anti-mosquito fix - There is a really cheesy tactic where a ship (usually a TIE Bomber or Y-Wing) flies under the flagship shields and lays into the ship with the rotary canon. Flagships have been pretty bad about being able to kill these and mosquitos can do quite a bit of damage in a very short time. Want to destroy the MC75 shield generators? Do this and they're gone in seconds. The patch makes the capital ships much more deadly against ships that are slow and/or close to the ship. The idea is that pilots should attack the ships in more realistic manners by being fast and not being right up against the ship.

But you're supposed to engage those Star Destroyers at point-blank range.

Isgrimnur wrote:But you're supposed to engage those Star Destroyers at point-blank range.

At that range we won’t last that long against those Star Destroyers.

I had my best game in Dogfight mode scoring 24 kills. I was playing a TIE Bomber the whole time. I have a loadout that does pretty well in dogfights, but I was seriously aided by having two TIE Reapers on the team. I honestly didn't know what to think about having two supports as I always thought an extra fighter would be better in dogfight mode. However, we won 30-24, so I guess it worked.

I decided to dive in and pick up Squadrons on sale, and I'm glad I did. It's pretty stunning.

Questions/issues:

What do people consider the best settings for using a HOTAS? (I've got a Thrustmaster T-Flight Hotas X.)

Am I missing something, or is there no padlock view of your locked target? The old X-Wing/TieFighter had this IIRC, as do most serious flight sims. (Am I misremembering this?)

Likewise, I miss the "match target speed" command from the old game. It made dogfight pursuit feel like dogfight pursuit.

Holman wrote: ↑Sun Nov 29, 2020 6:14 pm I decided to dive in and pick up Squadrons on sale, and I'm glad I did. It's pretty stunning.

Questions/issues:

What do people consider the best settings for using a HOTAS? (I've got a Thrustmaster T-Flight Hotas X.)

Am I missing something, or is there no padlock view of your locked target? The old X-Wing/TieFighter had this IIRC, as do most serious flight sims. (Am I misremembering this?)

Likewise, I miss the "match target speed" command from the old game. It made dogfight pursuit feel like dogfight pursuit.

This is what I used to set my hotas up:

Been working great. I agree about missing the match target speed option, but I'm not sure how useful it would be in this game considering the amount of throttle adjustments I need to make.

Holman wrote: ↑Sun Nov 29, 2020 6:14 pm I decided to dive in and pick up Squadrons on sale, and I'm glad I did. It's pretty stunning.

Questions/issues:

What do people consider the best settings for using a HOTAS? (I've got a Thrustmaster T-Flight Hotas X.)

Am I missing something, or is there no padlock view of your locked target? The old X-Wing/TieFighter had this IIRC, as do most serious flight sims. (Am I misremembering this?)

Likewise, I miss the "match target speed" command from the old game. It made dogfight pursuit feel like dogfight pursuit.

I have the same HOTAS. See my post above for installing and configuring the 'joystick curves' app. This lets you configure the response of the flightstick so it allows for fine control with small movements but fast slews with large movements. Otherwise, you'll find yourself overcorrecting a lot as you try to get the enemy ships in your crosshairs.

This game is 24.99 for the PC version and 16.99 for the Xbox version on Amazon right now for anyone on the fence.

Must have Windows 10

Thanks for the HOTAS advice, stimpy and raydude!

The November patch nerfed the TIE and made it more of a proper bomber instead of something that could dominate dogfights.
The December patch is going to have the B-Wing and TIE Defender, so that will be pretty awesome.

We had two leavers in our Fleet Battles match. My two teammates that stayed did a good job of knocking out subsystems and we were able to finish them off. That might be the first time I've been on a successful 3vs5 team.

I'm not sure if it was the players that left, but there were a couple of players that spent all of their time shooting at the Raider around our Frigates. It seems like it's a good idea, but it helps so much more if you ignore that Raider and focus on the enemy players and even the AI. That's the quickest way to turn the morale and go back on offense.

This game is still an absolute blast to play.

I got this on Xbox and just finished the prologue on Pilot level. Do I really suck, or is this game really hard? I can completely believe I suck, but I'm trying to figure out what to expect going forward.

Scoop20906 wrote: ↑Thu Nov 05, 2020 9:27 pm

Isgrimnur wrote:But you're supposed to engage those Star Destroyers at point-blank range.

At that range we won’t last that long against those Star Destroyers.

We'll last longer than we would against that Death Star!

Bought this back in October but the first few times I tried it out was completely ganked with my flight sticks. I have dual Gladiators from KB Sim, they work amazingly for games like Star Citizen, but I had issues in this game. Basically the harder I turned/rolled/yawed the slower I would do those things.

Didn't do enough research into whether or was a Squadrons issue or the sticks and I had so many other games to play I still haven't checked. But y'all have me excited to try again.

Apparently this is showing up on gamepass ultimate (PC) along with EA play today. Me and my VR headset will be checking it out.

Is this any good if I play SP only?

Is this any good if I play SP only?

Yes. But some kind of flight stick required. This is not a keyboard game.

I've also heard that while it's better with a stick, it works fine with a regular controller, too.

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 9:18 am I've also heard that while it's better with a stick, it works fine with a regular controller, too.

Sorry, should have clarified - some kind of controller. I play on PS4 and it's fine. But keyboard only is a no-no.

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 9:18 am I've also heard that while it's better with a stick, it works fine with a regular controller, too.

I played the intro stuff in VR with an xbox controller and ummmm... I want a stick. For the record I don't play any kind of shooter with a controller so I don't have those skills. On the other hand it was pretty cool being in an x-wing in VR (Quest with cable).

Carpet_pissr wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 9:22 am

Blackhawk wrote: ↑Fri Mar 19, 2021 9:18 am I've also heard that while it's better with a stick, it works fine with a regular controller, too.

Sorry, should have clarified - some kind of controller. I play on PS4 and it's fine. But keyboard only is a no-no.

Some us played X-Wing with a mouse.

Dusted off my Saitek and learned the button/hat order, did one maze and the fleet battle tutorial.

It’s going to take some time to get comfortable with the HOTAS, but hopefully this will lead to beaver use of it in service of my huge static display of flight simulators.

Using a HOTAS with a beaver is ill advised.

On the other hand, a hot ass with a beaver...