Star Wars: Squad Beginner’s Guide, Tips and Tricks

Unlike other recent games in the franchise, Star Wars: Squads it focuses exclusively on spacecraft combat. Throughout the game, you will pilot some of the most iconic vehicles in the history of history, and unless you are a skilled pilot, you may need help to earn your space wings.

In this Star Wars: Squads beginner’s guide, we’ve put together our best tips and tricks. Below, we’ll help you understand the game’s flight controls, manage objectives effectively in the middle of combat, and give you some tips on how to move faster in the game.

LEARNING THE CONTROLS

Star Wars: Squads Control like a flight simulator. As such, controlling spaceships can get a bit confusing at first. If you are using a controller, the main flight functions of your vehicle are divided between both analog joysticks. If you are playing with a mouse and keyboard, the commands are split between both devices.

Image: Motive Studios, Lucasfilm / Electronic Arts via Polygon

Throttle

To control the speed of your spaceship, you must manually set its speed with the throttle, rather than accelerating or braking as you would while driving a car. On a controller, push the left analog stick forward to increase speed and pull it out to reduce speed. On a keyboard, the W key increases the throttle and S decreases it.

Roll

Pressing left and right on your left analog joystick (or A and D on a keyboard) does not move your art left and right. Rather, control your roll. As you roll your spaceship, you unsurprisingly roll the ship, turning it to its left or right side as you would if it were rolling on the ground. It won’t use as much roll, but it comes in handy when spinning your spaceship around large ships or if you feel like flying horizontally or upside down.

Tone

To move the nose of your ship up and down, you want to control your tone. To adjust the pitch, you will tilt the right analog stick up or down or move the mouse forwards or backwards. The direction the nose actually moves depends on whether or not you have the reverse gaze option enabled in the options menu.

Yaw

To point the nose to the left and to the right to turn, you must control the yaw. This is done by moving the right analog joystick from side to side, the same with the mouse. Fortunately, there is nothing special to consider here. Moving the controls in any direction moves your ship in the same direction.

Control schemes

If you’re playing with a controller and these settings confuse you, keep in mind that there are two additional control schemes that change your flight controls. the Aviator settings places yaw on the left stick. It also puts the scroll on the right stick. Left handed places pitch and yaw on the left stick, almost mimicking the control scheme found in a first-person shooter, while the right stick adds spin and acceleration.

IN CASE OF DOUBT, CYCLE OBJECTIVES

At any given moment, you will be surrounded by several different potential targets. At the beginning of Star Wars: SquadsYou will learn that you can set goals by highlighting them and using the Select target ahead I send. Doing so will constantly show where your target is in relation to you, and on some spaceships, you will even see which direction they are looking.

When targeting a large ship this is quite easy. However, if you have a squad of enemy ships swarming around you and you need to dispatch them quickly, it can be difficult to manually pick the best target at any given time. To facilitate combat, use the Cycle objectives command (a button on an Xbox controller, an X button on a PlayStation 4 controller, and the F key on a keyboard).

Image: Motive Studios, Lucasfilm / Electronic Arts via Polygon

Doing this will lock the cabinet lens, depending on the lens type (which you can change using the aiming wheel). By default, your targeting systems will pick from all enemies, so if you’re flying close to a group of opponents, pressing the target cycle button will automatically lock you into the closest enemy spaceship. This is a great tactic to use if you’re not sure where to focus attention when your current mission goals might be to take out an entire squad of enemies.

USE LOADS

After the first few missions, you will eventually have the option to customize your ship’s cargo. You can trade in every part of your ship, from your primary weapons to auxiliary systems, which can change the way you approach each mission.

Image: Motive Studios, Lucasfilm / Electronic Arts via Polygon

Some equipment options allow you to strengthen your defenses for the sake of speed. Others allow you to choose different secondary weapon systems that allow for different playstyles. Since you’re likely to repeat missions multiple times, especially if you’re trying to get all the badges, try mixing and matching the loading options to see which settings work best for you and the mission in question.

MASTER ENERGY MANAGEMENT

You need to constantly divert energy to different systems in the middle of combat, choosing between maximizing your power at the speed of your engine, the strength of your weapons, or the effectiveness of your shield. The current power distribution is represented on each spacecraft by three lights: blue for engines, red for weapons, and green for shields. By default, your ship will distribute power evenly among the three systems. However, if you wish, you can turn on either one by depleting the power of the other two.

Image: Motive Studios, Lucasfilm / Electronic Arts via Polygon

To tune systems on a controller, press:

• Left on the D-pad to maximize engine speed (blue)
• Up on the D-pad to maximize weapon strength (red)
• Right on the D-pad to maximize shield power (green)

If you are using a mouse and keyboard, you can either maximize this power or increase it. That’s how:

• Press 1 to increase engine speed (blue)
• Press CTRL + 1 to maximize engine speed (blue)
• Press 2 to increase weapon strength (red)
• Press CTRL + 2 to maximize weapon strength (red)
• Press 3 to increase shield power (green)
• Press CTRL + 3 to maximize shield power (green)

Changing the horsepower to your engines allows you to increase your boost meter. The longer you fly with power diverted to your engines, the more your boost reserves will be filled, allowing you to push for longer.

Pouring power into their weapon systems makes them more deadly. Use this increased force to take out smaller, faster targets, which are often harder to hit.

Adjusting your power to focus on shields makes them more effective, allowing you to take more hits. This is great if you are feeling overwhelmed by a swarm of enemies or are attacking a larger ship.

JUMP, DON’T JUMP

If you are running missions again to get all the medals you missed, keep in mind that you will have to redo all sections of the story before each mission. That means you’ll have to talk to each of your squad mates and re-view the mission reports over and over again.

To move through these as quickly as you can, skip all speech. When you try to move on from the conversation, the game offers you two options: Skip (or “Next Phase” if it is a mission report) and Exit. Choose the Leave option. Skipping will only go to the next part of the dialogue, while Exit will allow you to, well, leave the conversation or briefing. You’ll still have to go through each objective before missions that require you to talk to your teammates, but once the conversation starts, choose the exit option to skip the entire discussion.

MASTERING THE DRIFT

In Mission 3, you will learn to drift. While it is eye-catching, it is not a maneuver you will need in the near future. However, to complete this mission, you will have to perform the move at least once. Despite the in-game instructions on how to complete the trick, you may have a hard time performing it.

Image: Motive Studios, Lucasfilm / Electronic Arts via Polygon

To complete the drift turn easily, here’s how to do it with the default control scheme in mind:

1. Put your ship at full speed as you approach the marker you have to fly through.
2. On the scoreboard, press the boost button. (Note that the A-Wing will constantly stay on boost once you press the appropriate button, so be sure not to tap on boost until it’s time to turn.)
3. After passing the second marker, turn hard (yaw) while continuing to push.
4. So you have to completely cut off the throttle while turning. Rather than pulling the throttle and turning at the same time, we’ve found that the easiest way to do the drift turn is to press the boost button again while turning.

For example, in the default control scheme with an Xbox One controller, you need to enter boost by pressing the left stick down, boost forward, pull the right analog stick to turn, and then while holding the twist on the right analog stick , press the left analog stick to cut off the throttle. You know you have turned correctly if you do it while still seeing the speed lines on the screen.

It takes a bit of getting used to at first, but after a few hours with the game, we never had a need for this move beyond using it on the required mission objective.