Tips and Tricks – Star Wars: Squadrons Guide

Basics

• Flying at full speed is great when you’re trying to escape or get somewhere fast but if you need maneuverability and flexibility in your flight path, full speed won’t help you much. Let off the throttle some to give your ship a better chance at dodging obstacles and taking sharp turns.
• Half throttle is the most optimized speed for your ship’s maneuverability.
• An X-Wing’s half throttle is about 36.
• A Tie-Fighter’s half throttle is about 63.
• An A-Wing’s half throttle is about 70.
• You have a way to restore your ship’s health: your repair system. Use it.
• You can change the difficulty of the mission at any time: you can do so in the options menus or, after dying or failing a checkpoint, by selecting the “change difficulty” option that appears on screen.
• When missiles have locked on to your starfighter, you need to avoid them as they can quickly take you down — don’t stop and make as many sharp turns as possible to dodge them.
• When swarmed with enemy starfighters, look at your cockpit’s radar as it will give you a good direction of where said enemies are around you in your 3D space.
• Utilize Countermeasures: these can be used by pressing Circle/B just before missile impact to shake a missile off your tail. These are limited, however, so don’t get too comfortable with them.
• Before an enemy can fire a locked-on missile at you, the enemy must actually lock on to you: when you see an enemy trying to lock on to you, move erratically, weaving back and forth while making very sharp turns, to prevent the lock on from happening.
• Medals are awarded to you after a mission for completing meta-objectives such as “completed Mission 1 without dying” while playing through a mission. You can replay missions as many times as you’d like to try and earn all medals.
• Use Squad Commands to request help from your wingmates by having them target the objective. If you take too much damage in doing this, request a resupply to cancel the squad command and call them back to you.
• Attack Squad Command: Target an enemy and tap Triangle/Y to order an attack. Your wingmates will focus on that target until it is destroyed or you give them a new command.
• Defend Squad Command: Target a friendly ship or structure and tap Triangle/Y to issue a defend order. Your wingmates will attempt to protect the target from attackers until you give them another order.
• If you’re having trouble on a mission, try giving your loadout a change: sometimes, your loadout just needs some of its weaponry, its hull, or even its engine changed to maximize ship efficiency.
• If surviving a mission is tough, consider customizing your loadout to include self-repair or a reinforced hull that gives your ship stronger shields and more health.
• Use Free Look to look around in your cockpit or quickly see what’s behind you.

Advanced Maneuvering

• When flying through tunnels, be wary of obstacles coming your way. When you see an explosion, dodge away from it and when you see doors closing in, get in the middle to avoid getting crushed or stopped by the doors.
• When you need some extra speed, press left on the d-pad. This will divert power to your engines which allows you to gain additional speed and agility.
• If you’re taking heavy damage and need some time to repair your hull, press right on the d-pad. This will divert engine power to shields which allows you to recover faster.
• Press down on the d-pad at any time to rebalance your starfighter’s power.
• When needed, you can request a Supply Droid from your support starfighter — support droids attach to your ship and not only repair your hull, but restock your armaments as well.
• The best time to deploy a countermeasure is when the “missile incoming” meter has three of its four red arrows (pointing inward from both sides) lit up.
• Focus your shields: You can focus your shields toward the front or back of your ship to maximize protection on one side while leaving the other side more exposed.
• Balance your shields: You can rebalance your shields after focusing them in one direction to protect the front and back of your ship equally once more.
• Drifting: Divert power to your engineer to fill up your boost charge. Then, get into position and boost forward before attempting the drift.
• Use drifting to turn yourself around quick and by reaching max speed with power diverted to engines. At max speed, boost and then take a sharp turn while killing your engines simultaneously to drift.
• Don’t fly in straight lines in the vicinity of turrets — doing so can be deadly. Instead, weave in and out to stop them from properly targeting you.
• Don’t stop moving: moving targets are the hardest to hit and you’ll survive much longer if against both fighters and capital ships if you continue to move, especially if you can master weaving side to side while flying.
• If you’re flying near a friendly capital ship (these are the very large ships like cruisers and star destroyers), you can fly into their shields and remain within the cover of the shields for a chance to breathe and repair your ship’s hull.