5/10/2020 Tips For Playing Star Wars: Squadrons

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Tips For Playing Star Wars: Squadrons

Zack Zwiezen
Saturday 2:00PM • Filed to: STAR WARS 47 7

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Image: EA / Lucasfilm

Star Wars: Squadrons is here and it’s pretty damn good, especially if you enjoy space
combat and yelling out Star Wars references in the middle of battles. But it can also be
a hard or frustrating game to wrap your head around at first, so here are some tips
I’ve picked up after playing and reviewing the game.

Star Wars: Squadrons: The Kotaku Review

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5/10/2020 Tips For Playing Star Wars: Squadrons

While plenty of games over the last few years have let lightsaber and blaster
fans live out their…

Read more

Complete the single-player campaign

This is easily the most important tip I can share and one which the game will also
recommend. While you can jump right into multiplayer action after you finish the
short prologue mission, I wouldn’t. Instead, play the eight to nine-hour campaign.
This will help teach you the basics of combat and flying and help you practice. Also,
the story is solid Star Wars action and adventure and worth checking out.

Keep moving!

It is very tempting to slow down or even stop to line up your shots and destroy an
enemy ship or station. Don’t do this! Stopping or slowing down will make you an easy
target. Instead keep moving, weaving, and turning to avoid laser fire. If you do want
to slow down to get a precise shot off, don’t stick around for a long and get back to
moving quickly.

Manage your energy properly

All ships in Squadrons have at least weapons and engines that need energy. (Some
ships, mostly on the New Republic side, have shields too.) Managing these two or
three systems is very important during missions. If you are preparing to take a lot of
damage, like say you are about to strafe a large capital ship, pop all your energy into
shields. If you need to escape a situation or find yourself caught in a tractor beam,
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pop all your energy into your engines to boost out there safely. Finally, if you need to
really do some damage, switch all of your ships’ energy to your weapons to deal more
damage and fire more before having to wait for your guns to recharge.

You can see your current energy settings on your ship’s console. Blue lights for
engines, red for weapons, and green for shields.

Screenshot: EA / Lucasfilm / Kotaku

If you don’t know what a situation calls for or you just don’t need all your energy
diverted to one system, just tap down on the d-pad (on PS4 and Xbox One) to balance
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your energy output to all systems equally. But don’t keep it like this for long.
Managing energy is a key way to get an advantage during combat.

Use your squad to heal

You can hold triangle or the Y button to request a resupply from your squadron. While
this does restock your supply of missiles, chaff bombs, and other special weapons, it
does also heal your ship’s hull. Feel free to use this as much as you want, though
there is a short cooldown between uses.

When you are in a TIE fighter, which doesn’t have any shields, this becomes
extremely useful to staying alive after taking damage, especially if you don’t have the
repaid droid ability equipped. But honestly...

Always have the repair droid ability equipped

While this does mean you won’t have as many special weapons, I found it more
useful in most missions. You won’t always be able to equip this during some
singleplayer missions, but if you can, do it.

Also, use your squad to get revenge

One tip that is only mentioned once or twice during the campaign is the ability to
quickly target the last ship that attacked you and did the damage. Normally, if you
tap the X button or the A button you can switch between possible targets around you.
But if you quickly tap this same button twice, it will auto-lock onto the last bastard
that shot you. Then tap triangle or Y and you can command your squad to attack that
ship. This is an easy way to help get ships off your tail.

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And, use them to help defend stuff too!

Your squad is useful, so here’s another way to use them: Have them guard objectives.
If you need to defend a station or a ship, you can tell your squad to focus on
defending it while you fly around blowing up attackers. Simply tap the left trigger
while facing your target and then tap the triangle. If you are locked on to an ally of a
friendly unit, this will tell your squad to defend that ally. (You can tell if you did this
correctly because you will see a big shield icon appear.)

Just remember, if you ask your squad to defend or attack, the will stop the moment
you ask them to heal you or do anything else.

Pay attention during the single-player briefings

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Screenshot: EA / Lucasfilm / Kotaku

These briefings aren’t the most exciting, but will sometimes include valuable
information. For example, during one briefing the game clearly shows where you
should attack a ship to create a breach. But during the mission, when you reach that
point, you are given a few different areas to attack. If you weren’t paying attention,
you might shoot a few spots before finding the right one. But you can skip all that and
hit the correct spot right away, assuming you paid attention to the briefing.

When using ion rounds, don’t go for kills

Certain missions will task you with flying support ships, like the TIE Reaper. These
flying fortresses provide support for your squad and aren’t the best at killing things.
They are often equipped with ion rounds, though other ships can use these rounds
too. This ammunition can quickly stun an enemy ship, making it vulnerable to
damage. But it won’t blow up these ships. So instead, when using these rounds, focus
on stunning ships and moving on to stun more ships, instead of wasting time trying
to kill.

Freelook around your cockpit

Not the most useful tip, but you can double-tap the right stick on PS4 or Xbox One to
unlock your camera while flying. This lets you look around your cockpit. Another way
to do this is to wear a VR headset, like the PSVR headset on PS4. With this on you can
actually look behind you while flying and fighting, which is more useful.

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Screenshot: EA / Lucasfilm / Kotaku

If the enemy ships or your allies freeze, restart

This is a bug I’ve encountered a few times and it’s annoying. But you can easily get
things moving again by restarting the mission or restarting from the last checkpoint.
Just know, the game will count this as a death and you won’t get the medal for
completing the mission without dying.

Tinker with all the settings

There are a LOT of settings and options in Squadrons and it might seem overwhelming
to dig in and start messing with them, but I suggest you at least skim through here

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once or twice. You might find the game too easy or too hard and there are at least a
few settings that could help improve your experience.

You can also make the game more immersive by turning off the HUD elements or
change how the game’s targeting system works. There are tons of control settings
too. So take a moment and get in there and start tweaking.

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Zack Zwiezen Posts

Kotaku Weekend Editor | Zack Zwiezen is a writer living in Kansas. He has
written for GameCritics, USgamer, Kill Screen & Entertainment Fuse.

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DISCUSSION

FellowIdiot
Saturday 4:38PM
For PC players:

If you’re using a HOTAS and/or joystick and don’t have a throttle that snaps back to
the middle automatically, turn on Use Throttle Friction under controls. This makes
your throttle drift back to 50% unless you hold the throttle up or throttle down
key/button. 50% throttle is where your craft is most maneuverable, and where you’ll
nearly always want to be when chasing a target.

Sadly this feels like a port of a console game, and clearly wasn’t properly tested on
PC, many PC settings are broken or non-existent - i.e.: I can’t exit the game when
playing with my joystick - the game assumes I’m using a joystick with at least 12
buttons (mine only has 4) and can map everything they need to navigate the menus
to my joystick. In order to exit, I have to move my mouse around to make it think I’ve

See all replies

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