With the recent Star Wars Battlefront II Open beta, we had our first opportunity to try out the online space battle glory that is Starfighter Assault, so we’ve put together our top tips to win more games ahead of the full release. When you first find yourself in the cold vacuum of space with nothing around you but the hum of your X-Wing or TIE Fighter and the rest of your forces, you’ll probably get yourself blown to bits all too quickly. However, if you follow the tips below and put in a little practice, you’ll find yourself racking up the kills, assists and wins in no time.
In an ideal world, you’ll also be able to pick up enough points in each battle to be able to buy in one of the special ships in the game, but it can be challenging to start with, so we’ll cover that in more detail in a follow-up advances tips piece. That said, you could easily find yourself picking up enough points with the advice below, so you could end up piloting the Millennium Falcon, Poe Dameron’s supped-up X-Wing, Boba Fett’s Slave 1 or Darth Maul’s Scimitar with its cloaking power.
Starfighter Assault tips video:
You can check us out putting our tips into action in the video above from our YouTube Channel, or you can read up on them in the details below.
Top 10 tips for Star Wars Battlefront 2 Starfighter Assault multi-player:
1. Remember to upgrade your ships as you go – with the cards, crates, points and crafting parts system, there’s a lot to work on to upgrade your ships, including specials when you get good enough to get them. Make sure you work on building up all of these to be able to keep your ship of choice in a competitive position.
2. Get to grips with the controls – this is easier said than done because them can feel a bit confusing and counter-intuitive to begin with, because the left analogue stick doesn’t control your direction. Instead, the right analogue stick is used to steer your ship and the right analogue controls the roll function, along with speeding up and down. Take a little time to get used to this and you’ll find it becomes a lot easier pretty quickly. It’s also worth practicing honed targeting with the left LT before firing with RT, as it can help with your accuracy and sighting of the enemy.
3. Understand your objective – winning more games in Star Wars Battlefront 2 Starfighter Assault is all about completing the objectives, so you need to know what it is at any given moment and focus on helping your team achieve it. This could be shooting out the deflector shield generators or taking out enemies attacking a bombing run, but either way, it needs to be high up on your efforts.
4. Learn the layout of your scenario – if you know where you are and where everything else is located in each scenario, you’ll be able to get to objective areas much quicker, which will subsequently help you win more battles. It’ll also mean you need the quickest route to find enemy ships to fight and how best to escape if you’re under fire, so it can really help you out.
5. Attack any enemies that get near you – while you should focus on the objectives, don’t ignore enemy ships that get close, because they’ll pick you off and waste 10 seconds of your time for respawn. Instead, you should switch focus on them any time they appear, especially if they get close enough to fire on you. The aim is to take one or two out and then try to get back to the objective. The only time it’s worth ignoring enemies and focusing everything on the objective is for the final one, which would seal victory for your team.
6. Use the arrows to find enemies to fire on – the arrows and enemy markers that come up on your screen are great guides for where the opposition is and which direction you need to head in to evade them. They can also help you to shake an attacker and even dodge a torpedo or two, so they’re well worth keeping an eye on.
7. Lock torpedoes when you get a chance – the homing torpedoes will help you up your kill and assist counts, so you should make use of them every time you get an opportunity. Either aim at enemies from the side or chase them down before setting up the torpedo lock, which will blast a lot of them into smithereens.
8. Shake attacking enemies – if you’ve got someone on your tail, you need to do everything you can to shake them, preferably before they get a torpedo lock on you. The point is that a moving target is much more difficult to hit, so move, and if you can twist and turn enough, you might be able to turn the tables on them to do your own damage.
9. Keep wracking up the points and damage – if you keep your points tally ticking over then you’ll be putting in some hefty damage on the other team, which will help you to get closer to victory. The tip is to keep your points going up in each round, which will help you to maybe unlock a special ship in the final phases of the battle.
10. Remember to make use of your ship’s custom abilities – each ship has its own custom abilities, so it’s worth learning what they are and using them in every battle. These range from astro-mech droid repairs on the X-Wing and afterburner on TIE Fighters to multiple torpedo fire from the TIE Bomber or targeting cannons on the Y-Wing. They can come in handy when you find yourself with a lot of enemies around you, whether your on a charge or trying to fight your way out of trouble.
Check out our Starfighter Assault guide for more info on the Star Wars: Battlefront 2 space battle mode and you can keep up-to-date with the latest from EA Star Wars on its Twitter page.
