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Whether you’re a seasoned starship pilot or this is your first time in an X-Wing or Tie-Fighter cockpit, there’s plenty to learn in Star Wars Squadrons. We’ve compiled a list of Tips and Tricks that every player, amateur or advanced, should read so that they start the game with their best foot forward.
If you come across something you get stuck on, chances are we have a tip or trick to help you out so refer back to the Tips and Tricks page of our Star Wars Squadrons Wiki Guide as often as you need. Please click or tap the links below to jump to different sections:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 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 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.
- Use Free Look to look around in your cockpit or quickly see what’s behind you.
- If your focus is on firing a lot of lasers, consider diverting power to your lasers by pressing up on the d-pad. By doing so, your lasers will recharge faster and hit harder.
- Starfighters with regenerating shields, like X-Wings, will need their shields depleted before any real damage can be done to their ship hull.
- Learn to lead your target: When your aiming reticle turns from white to red, your shot will hit your target. Watch how the enemy is moving and lead your target to land a perfect shot.
- Don’t sit by an imperial star destroyer with your throttle at zero. Sure, it makes it easier to target the star destroyer but it’s a swift way to get yourself killed.
- Instead of parking by an enemy ship, focus on firing runs instead. Throttle toward an enemy, firing when you can, and pull out to safety at the end of your firing run. Get some distance, turn around, then do it again. Rinse and repeat.
- When fighting multiple ships, press X/A to target a single enemy. Focus your firing efforts on that ship and when it’s destroyed, press X/A again to target another enemy. Rinse and repeat.
- With standard weapons equipped, you won’t be able to hit a target that’s more than 1000 meters away.
- When a target is more than 1000 meters away, divert power to engines and quickly speed over to be in their proximity — once you’re within 1000 meters, fire away.
- When you fire an Ion Missile at an enemy ship, it will disable the ship’s operations. Your companions will automatically target that disabled ship so feel free to move on to the next target as your team will destroy the one you originally targeted with an Ion Missile.
- Ion Missiles are great at disabling an enemy ship’s shields so use them to make quick work of someone’s shields.
- When your screen gets crowded with enemies, focus on taking out tougher enemies like TIE bombers — they hit hard and can do a lot of damage quickly.
- Don’t bother with missiles against TIE bombers — they have countermeasures to deflect and evade missiles.
- Don’t attack Raiders if they’re close to Cruisers as the Cruisers will do some serious damage to you.
- Double tap X/A to target the enemy ship targeting you. This is helpful when you want to take out the immediate threat to your ship’s life.
- If you’re being particularly hammered by enemies, use your Target My Attacker objective marker to take out the enemies giving you trouble.
- When switching between rockets and missiles in your loadout, pay attention to ammunition count: you might have 40 rockets but only 6 missiles so don’t get too comfortable spamming rockets only to switch to missiles and quickly deplete your load.
- Don’t fire until you have a target in your sights: It can be easy to stay trigger happy but many ships don’t allow you to fire for long so you’ll want to maximize your laser efficiency by firing only when your shots are guaranteed to hit.
- Just because a target is in your sights, doesn’t mean you have to fire: When you have a target in your sights, you don’t have to fire immediately, which could potentially waste laser fire as you’ll likely miss some shots. Instead, wait until you’re lined up well. Then fire away.
- Pay attention to what loadout weaponry locks on and what doesn’t: Missiles might lock on but rockets don’t. You’ll want to have that knowledge at the front of your mind before getting into a space fight as there’s nothing worse than firing off a rocket thinking it’s going to hone in only for it to shoot right by an enemy.