Hey everyone, today I will introduce you to the space missions/battle system in SWTOR. It is a bit of arcadeish gameplay but definitely a good diversion if you need a break from the typical gameplays of a MMO. Some of the information here are specific for the Imperial side but the Republic side should be similar.

What is it?

Space battles and missions are available to you after obtaining your spaceship in the story line. You get your own spaceship through completing the main story quest in the 2nd planet (around level 16-18). Each class have their own unique spaceship. Here is a list of the spaceships available in game and which class(es) they are for.

Imperial:Fury Sith Inquisitor/warrior and advanced classes

Imperial:D5-Mantis Bounty Hunter and advanced classes

Imperial:X70B Phantom Agent and advanced classes

Republic: Defender Jedi Knight/Counsular and advanced classes

Republic: BT-7 Thunderclap Trooper and advanced classes

Republic:XS- Freighter Smuggler and advanced classes

How do I access it?

You can access space battles/missions on your spaceship. Go to the pilot seat on your spaceship and open the galaxy map. Look for this symbol on your map, it is the location for a space battle.

Not all space battles will appear initially, as you level up on your character, you will get access to more space battles/missions. Here is a list of space missions available to the Imperial side.

When you first have an access to a space battle, you will receive a quest for it from the nearby terminal next to your pilot seat. Once you have successfully completed that space battle, you unlock daily quests that you can do that involve these space battles. These dailies tend to ask you to complete two or more different space battles together.

How do I play it?

These space missions are on the rail shooters, meaning that the ship is automatically controlled with a fixed path. You can move from side to side to dodge nasty things coming at you but that is the extent of your control. This means that you are free to focus on shooting things!

Left mouse click will fire the blasters while right mouse click will lock on a target in front of you and fire missiles. Pressing the spacebar will perform a barrel roll, which can be useful at times to help dodging incoming fire.

Your ship also have an energy shield. This shield will recharge anytime you are not firing your blasters. Keep this in mind and dont fire blindly when there are no targets in front of you!

Firing of missiles do not affect the shield regen so this is something you can do if you are faced with heavy enemy fire but want to retaliate back. Also, if you hold on the right mouse button, you can lock on multiple targets (up to 4) to fire all 4 missiles simultaneously.

Ship upgrades

Initially, your ship will not come with any upgrades of any sort. However, it you open up your ship information by pressing C and selecting the ship tab. In here you can see a whole bunch of slots and all of them can be outfitted with upgrades.

There are two kinds of upgrades, the standard ones you can buy with just credits and the fancy ones you need fleet commendations for.

The standard ones are listed below with the level you can equip them at. There are spaceship upgrade vendors you can find in Imperial or Republic fleet that sells them. Only 3 grades are sold Grade 1, Grade 3 and Grade 5. Grade 2 and 4 can be crafted by Cybertech

• Ship armor: Increase the amount of damage you can take, it is provides + toughness to ships. Higher grades have more toughness on them.
• Energy Shield: Provides an energy shield around your ship, preventing damage intake until the shield is depleted. Higher grades provides more shield.
• Shield generator: Regens the energy shield, higher grades ones regenerate shields faster.
• Beam charger: Increase the amount of damage your ships blaster do.
• Beam generator: Increase the firing rate of your ships blasters.
• Missile Magazine: increase the amount of missiles your ship can hold. (Grade 1 holds 40 missiles while grade 5 holds 120 missiles).

There are 4 additional slots to hold fancy upgrades on your spaceship. These upgrades use fleet commendations to purchase.

• EMP Generator: Costs 150 fleet commendations and requires level 45 to use. Deals damage to all nearby allies and enemies.
• Power Conversion Module: Costs 30 fleet commendations and use level 25 to use. Allow you to switch between extra blaster damage or extra shield regen (keep in mind shield regeneration still requires you to not fire any blasters). Once you get this, you can switch between the two modes back and forth, using extra shield regen when no targets around and swap into extra blaster damage when there are targets in sight.

• Proto Torpedo Tube: Costs 50 fleet commendations and requires level 50 to use. These will instantly destroy a shielded target (targets that will take quite a few regular missiles to get through). To use this, you need to lock on a target by holding the right mouse button and hover over the target for a few seconds until you get a lock on target (red flashing X). Using the right mouse click again will fire this torpedo. This can be very useful on missions where you need to destroy shielded targets (i.e. Polith Minefield on the Imperial side comes to mind).
• Electronic Warfare Pod: Costs 90 fleet commendations and requires level 35 to use. This item will make you immune to all enemy fire for 10 seconds. It has a rather long cooldown and can used at max twice in a typical mission. This item is extremely helpful in missions such as Sullust Interception on the Imperial side. When this item is activated, your ship will have a yellow glow around it.

Specific Mission tips & guides

Most early space missions are fairly simple and straightforward. However, as you get to higher level space missions, they get fairly complicated and requires the usage of some of the fancy tools you can buy with fleet commendations.

I will give some specific tips on the missions I find pretty difficult here.

Ezran Outpost

This mission is not very difficult but you can fail it if you dont hit the right targets. The mission objectives are to destroy 2 Shield Generators, 4 Hangars and 4 Antennae. You an see all of them on this image.

Taspan Ambrush

This is the first difficult mission you will encounter. It says that ship grade level 1 or above its recommended but even at ship upgrade level 5 it can be fairly difficult. The key here is getting as much missiles as possible and firing them on capital ship turrets whenever you get a chance. Missile magazine level 3 or above is recommended.

About 2 m 58s remaining on the mission, you will see two capital ships pop up. Unleash your missiles on these turrets and destroy as much of them as possible.

These two ships will soon zoom out of view and you get two new capital ships that will float into view at 2m 26s left on the mission. Ignore all the other smaller spaceships that fly around, they wont hurt the shuttle you have to escort. You need to focus your fire on the turrets of these capital ships or you are going to get screwed over later on in the mission! Dont be afraid to use your missiles, you wont run out if you have grade 3 or above.

At about 1m 23s, the ship you escort will take a big chunk of damage (20-30% of total health). Dont panic, this is normal and there is nothing you can do about it. At this point the ship you are escorting will exit the canyon you have being flying through.

At this point, the two capital ships you damaged earlier will return and you wont get much time to kill their turrets (hence why it was imperative you damage them earlier on into the mission). At this point, unload your missiles onto them and hope that the ship you are escorting make it out Ok!

Here is a video of a sucessful run. It took me about 10 attempts before I finally beat this mission with level 3 upgrades!

Sullust Interception

This mission only requires Grade 3+ upgrades but it is extremely challenging even with Grade 5 upgrades. You will need to purchase the Electronic Warfare Pod from the fleet vendor or you might bang your head on the keyboard out of frustration. Pick up a Power Conversion Module as well to make this easier. (takes 120 fleet commendations in total).

There are two ways to fail this mission. 1. You dont kill enough Ace Talon Fighters and 2. Your ship gets destroyed.

Right off the bat when you start the mission, you are given 6 targets. You can might get lucky and get 4 out of 6 or only 2 out of the 6. This is where Power Conversion Module comes in handy as you can increase the blaster damage and take out these 6 targets with a combination of blaster fire and missiles. It takes about 2 missiles per target as these ships are shielded.

About 2m 26s left on the mission, you will encounter the capital ship that you need to destroy the turrets to complete the bonus mission. You get 2 runs at this capital ship and some turrets are shielded and take more than 1 missile to destroy.

With 1 m 57s left on the mission, you are entering a critical phase in which your ship will take a lot of incoming enemy fire and may not survive. I advise not using blasters at this point to help regen shield to full and instead using missiles exclusively temporarily until you make it past this stage.

You will also also encounter an elite enemy ship, this one takes quite a few missiles to destroy (more than 4 missiles) and can fire back at you even though it surpassed you. This ship pops into your view at 1m 47s remaining.

In addition to this ship firing at you, you also get 2 waves of incoming enemy fighters that will do a lot of damage to you if you manage to get in front of them. I would advise using your Electronic Warfare Pod at 1m 39s into the fight. This allow you to use your blasters without fear for 10 seconds and destroy the first wave of enemy fighters for the mission objectives. The 2nd wave of enemy fighters arrive at 1m 28s. You can use missiles at this point to help regen shield or use your Electronic Warfare Pod if you havnt done so for the first wave.

Once you past these two waves, you should focus on killing as many enemy fighters as possible for the mission objective. If you have Power Conversion Module, it would be a good time to turn on the enhanced blaster fire. Even if you do make it alive past these two waves of fighters, you can fail the mission by not killing enough enemy fighters. You also get another shot at the capital ship earlier for the bonus objectives.

Here is a video of one of my many attempts at this mission. I did this with Grade 5 ship upgrades but without the Electronic Warfare Module nor the Power Conversion Module. I did fail this one for not killing enough enemy fighters as I was focused on survival (shield regen) during the two waves of enemy fighters.

Polith Minefield

This is a fairly long mission and critical phase of the mission comes at the last minute of the mission. Having a Power Conversion Module or Proto Torpedo Tube will make this easier.

The first objective is to destroy 150 mines. This one is fairly easy to accomplish and I have never failed this part in the many attempts I did. What I do fail on is destroying the a bay on the minelayer.

You get about 3 runs at this minelayer. The minelayer engines are the target on the bottom and the bay is the targets at the top. Firing all 4 missiles simultaneously will usually take out the engines without a hitch. The bay becomes problematic and this is where torpedoes or enhanced blaster damage comes in handy. I had one lucky run where I completed this mission without anything but Grade 5 upgrades but subsequent runs were not so lucky.

Grade 5 Missions

The three Grade 5 missions (Aeten Defense, Clouds of Vondoru and Ascendancy Barrier on the Imperial side) are fairly difficult with the standard Grade 5 ship upgrades. I did not have the fleet commendations to purchase the fancy upgrades yet but having Power Conversion Module and Electronic Warfare Pod should make them manageable (120 commendations in total). I will post a separate guide for these missions once I have completed them.