All those years playing freelancer finally paid off

[Tenacity]

So, I'm not sure how many of you play star wars: the old republic - I quit back before free to play, and just recently resubscribed. Today, early access to the next game update was released, titled "galactic starfighter".

Basically, they added pvp space combat with free flight (as opposed to the crappy rail shooter that the game had before), along with the ability to choose from a variety of ship classes and customize your ships/weapons/paintjobs/so on and so forth.

I didnt realize there was a tutorial on how to fly your ship, so I just jumped right into a match expecting to noob it up and fail horribly. I ended that first game #1 on the scoreboard.


The flight and combat is almost identical to freelancer, all flight with the mouse, targetting through the reticle where your mouse pointer is, rolling/strafing with a/d and speed control with w/s.


So, if anyone's interested, go check it out =P unfortunately you have to be a subscriber to play right now, but they're releasing starfighter for free to play players in january i think.

---

[Coin]

what are the system req's?

---

A Day in the Life of an NPC | Coin | The Journal of Caius Oakley | Build Your Dream Boat

[Tenacity]

what are the system req's?

uh... heck if i know.

I'm playing with 8gb ram, an i7 processor, and an nvidia geforce gtx 260, my rig is probably 4-5 years old or more by now and i havent upgraded it any, so the requirements arent too intensive.

---

[Scumbag]

Kudos for sharing that. Does it have any other ships or just fighters?

[mwerte]

You know, I thought you meant, "paid off in real life", not just with another video game.

Hi there Ten!

---

[ProwlerPC]

Lol, last I recall I finnished the campaign with my Bunter (primarily an Arsenal build with a bit of bodyguard) and left. I was deeply dissappointed that there wasn't a proper starship PvP port added to the game but I liked it's ground game compared to the previous Star Wars MMORPG. I might return to using my bunter a bit again, I miss Jedi hunting PvP build.

---

[Trogdor]

Kudos for sharing that. Does it have any other ships or just fighters?

Gunships.

Not sure what that means. I apparently qualified for the 'early gunship access' rewards for being a subscriber, but since my subscription ran out between the cutoff for earning the rewards and the launch of the service, I can't actually play the new content. -.-

So I'm still on the fence as to whether I want to dump another 30 bucks for 2 months of subscription, of which I will get little use, just so I can be one of the first to play GS, or just wait until it unlocks for preferred on Jan 14.

It doesn't unlock for f2p (those who haven't spent any money on the game) until Feb 4.

---

[Tenacity]

There's 4 classes of ships, only 3 are currently usable for subscribers who got early access, and one of those is only usable for people who were subscribers back on (and since) november 1st. Unfortunately, I dont fall into that category, so I only have access to scouts and strike fighters.

Scouts are like our light fighters here. Very fast, pretty manuverable, but light on defense and offense. Scouts have extended sensor range though, and advanced communications equipment that lets them basically share enemy positions with allied team members (your extra sensor range means you can see enemies on your minimap/radar at further range, and then anything you can see is communicated to allied minimaps/radars within a certain range of your ship).

Strike Fighters are the standard/heavy fighters. The default strike fighters have 2 primary weapons and 1 secondary weapon (as opposed to 1 primary and 1 secondary for the scouts), while advanced strike fighters that you can unlock after winning a few matches have 1 primary and 2 secondary weapons. Primary weapons are lasers/cannons/guns, secondary weapons are missiles/rockets and such. Strike fighters are less manuverable and slower than scouts, but have more armor/shielding/firepower.

Gunships are big and slow, I'm not sure what their primary/secondary weapon setup is either. However, I know that they get a unique weapon type called a railgun. When you activate the railgun, you go into a first person 'sniper scope' view, then you hold down the fire button to charge up the weapon. When you release, it's an instant hit weapon with a 15k range (as opposed to the 3-5k of other weapon types) that can kill most enemy ships in one or two hits.
Gunships are currently only available to people who were subscribed on and since november 1st. A lot of people fly them, and a lot of people do well with them (probably because it's easy to snipe noobs), but aside from the rare case where I'm caught offguard by a gunship I didnt notice early, I dont typically die to them. Gunships, for me, are one of the easiest enemies to kill, because they cant outrun or outmanuver anything else and are pathetic combatants at close range.

Bombers arent currently available to anyone, but will supposedly be released when the expansion goes live for all players in january or february. From what I gather, they're primarily focused on heavier secondary weapons like torpedoes, and are designed for taking out satellite defense turrets and other stationary targets (they'd probably do well against gunships too).


Personally, I fly a scout all the time now. I tried strike fighters but dont do nearly as well in them. Most games I wind up with 8 or 9 kills and 0 deaths.



Most players are complaining about the controls and how much they suck, but it's almost identical to freelancer flight and aiming, so I've been doing pretty well at it. There's some things that we dont have in FL though, including power management - you can alternate your power levels between weapons, shields, or engines (and I started doing even better in matches when I began to actively change my power levels to suit the situation). I'll run with power focused to engines right at the start of the match so i can speed towards objectives and cap them early, then switch to weapon power whenever I'm trying to gun someone down, and shield power whenever someone's on my tail until i can shake them.

---

[evanz]

so is it free to play or when you say you need to be subscribed do you have to pay to play?

[Tenacity]

so is it free to play or when you say you need to be subscribed do you have to pay to play?

SWTOR is free to play, but almost not worth playing unless you subscribe because so many features are locked (and can only be unlocked by subscribing or doing microtransactions).

The space pvp is currently only available to subscribers, but it will be open to free to play sometime in january or february.

---