OUTFITTING YOUR SQUADRON

Welcome back, pilots! This briefing is all about how you’ll customize your starfighters and pilots, both aesthetically with cosmetic items as well as functionally with ship components. Let’s start with the latter since that’ll be what impacts gameplay.

As you play Star Wars™: Squadrons, you’ll be able to unlock components (via Requisition points you earn) for your starfighters. These can be equipped to change how your ships function in subtle or radical ways. Some impact your starfighters passively, such as by reinforcing their defensive capabilities with different hulls or shields, while others have more active changes, such as what abilities you can use. Creating loadouts that suit both your playstyle and the situations you face will help pilots excel in combat.

In total, there are up to seven component slots, though ships without shield generators only have six.

•       Primary Weapons
•       Auxiliary (x2)
•       Countermeasures
•       Hull
•       Shields
•       Engines

Fine-tuning a starfighter is something that can be very personal to each pilot. It’s perfectly fine to “jump in an X-wing and blow something up” to familiarize yourself with how a starfighter feels in its default setting, especially in the customizable practice range, but from there you’ll want to tailor your loadout to best support your squadron. Pilots can adjust performance and functionality of their starfighters.

Starfighters can be equipped with up to three passive components and four active components.

The first group of components are the ones that provide active changes. These ones are more situational and can sometimes have a very significant impact on gameplay. The three types of active components are primary weapons, auxiliary components (of which there are two slots), and countermeasures.

Primary weapons are your starfighter’s cannons. These components change the functionality and performance of your weapons.

One primary weapon might offer a higher rate of fire in exchange for lower damage output, while another provides powerful long-range damage in the form of burst fire. There are even primary weapons that more radically change the way your weapons work, such as ion cannons that shred through shields and can outright disable starfighters but don’t do much hull damage. Each option will provide you with a unique experience and can excel in different situations, but finding the ones which are better suited to how you want to engage the enemy is most important.

Auxiliary components make up the next two slots and these components make up your starfighters secondary abilities. The options here range from adding a repair astromech or tractor beams to a variety of torpedoes, bombs, and mines. For these two slots, you can only pick one of each component, meaning you can’t have two repair units or two of the same missiles and balancing out your starfighter’s kit should always be taken into account.

The final component is your ship’s countermeasures. These components impact how you disengage from fights so that you can survive longer. Some examples are seeker warheads that your ship fires behind you to take out incoming missiles or a sensor jammer to prevent missile lock-ons. These are often your last-ditch efforts to survive a fight, so use them wisely or you might not have them when you need them most.

Passive ship components on the other hand provide changes to the general performance of your engines, hull, and shields, typically via percentage increases and decreases to their stats. With your default loadout, your starfighters will be well balanced and won’t have any major strengths or weakness, but through customizing them you can decide what you do and don’t want to trade-off. There are also some that add additional bonuses, such as engines that create a large explosion, damaging enemies upon your starfighter’s destruction.

For example, one type of shield will be more resilient to blaster fire but more vulnerable to missiles while another will have entirely different pros and cons, like taking longer to lock onto your ship when it has full shields but increasing the shield regeneration delay. There are often trade-offs in what is gained and what is sacrificed, and these decisions can make all the difference in battle. The same goes for the engine and hull components. Making your starfighter more nimble might reduce its max speed, or increasing your hull strength might reduce its maneuverability. Changes to your passive ship components will have a constant effect on your starfighter’s performance during a fight, so experiment until you find the balance that best fits your playstyle.

Here’s what our Lead Gameplay Designer had to say about the depth of the component system.

James Clement: Between power management, overcharging, shield balancing or emergency power conversion, boosting, drifting, throttle management, primary weapons, auxiliary abilities, and countermeasures, the combat piloting experience has significant depth. You can learn the ropes quickly, yet you can look forward to discovering new techniques and tactics for months to come. On top of that, there’s a wealth of customizable components to choose from. There’s a healthy selection to start with and more to unlock through gameplay as you progress.

Components are an important part of how you’ll pilot your starfighters and experimentation is highly encouraged. There are unique components between the two factions and even across different ships, too, such as the Y-wing ion auto-cannon, so you’ll always be able to have a unique experience. Of course, we know style can be just as important to some hotshot pilots, so let’s get into customization next.

In Squadrons, both of your pilots (Imperial and New Republic) and all eight of your starfighters can be customized. When you start up, you’ll have the traditional appearances of your pilots equipped: an orange flight suit for the New Republic and a black one for the Empire. Your pilot appearances will be used in both the single-player story mode and the multiplayer modes.

In general, most cosmetics are unlocked via Glory points that you earn while playing. Both pilots will have multiple heads to choose from between the factions (with the New Republic having non-human unlockable options as well), plus different voice styles, too. All options can be mixed and matched freely.

You’ll be able to get pretty creative with how your pilot looks with options for different heads, full-body flight suits, torso apparel, legwear, helmets, and gloves. The team has sourced a ton of references from across the Star Wars™ canon to ensure they’re as authentic as possible while also introducing some new things. Whether you want a traditional look or something that makes you stand out in the briefing room, there are lots of options for you.

And that goes for your starfighter, too!

Whether you want to represent one of the classic iconic X-wing squadrons like Red Squadron, stay true to the noble values of Vanguard Squadron, or rep an entirely different paint job, you’ll be able to do so. The same goes for the Imperial fleet. While many pilots may prefer the uniform look, we also have some special customization options for Titan Squadron’s starfighters that remain true to the Empire’s aesthetic.

That includes your cockpit as well. You’ll be able to add small knick-knacks on your dashboard, like a hologram of the galaxy, or hang a small Stormtrooper helmet from above. There are lots of little options that you can decorate with and, despite being inside, your enemies will get to see them when they watch a kill-cam of their defeat. While our singleplayer story seats you in traditional cockpits for each mission, we’re allowing players to have more creative liberties in their multiplayer experience. (The hanging red crystal from the mines of Crait is a personal favorite.)

Starfighters can customize their hull/paint job, decals (including familiar insignias like the Phoenix Squadron’s starbird), cockpit hologram, dashboard miniatures, and hanging flair. That said, we know some of our players won’t want any of it and prefer to see starfighters that match what they’ve seen in the films, so we’ve implemented an option for you to make it so all other starfighters appear in their default states if that’s your preference.

James Clement: The holo-display, normally used to provide critical phase and objective information throughout the Fleet Battles doubles as a customizable image projector. There are also hanging flairs like a miniature Millennium Falcon and dashboard-mounted objects like a severed protocol droid head or an Ewok bobblehead. Then of course there are the ship exterior paint jobs and pilot avatar customizations, all made through the culmination of months of concept art, modeling, and collaboration with the team at Lucasfilm.

In the end, how you customize the functionality and appearance of your pilots and starfighters is entirely up to you. Do what feels best and allow yourself to experiment. Get creative! If you find that you love a whole bunch of different combinations on your favorite ship, then that’s great, too! As you play, you’ll unlock loadouts, too, allowing every ship in the game to have up to five different component and cosmetic configurations, so don’t worry if you feel like you need to change part way through a match, though you can’t make new loadouts during one.

In the end, there’s no wrong way to play so long as you’re having fun. And hey, if a regular old X-wing worked for Luke Skywalker, it can work for all of us, too!

We’re already about halfway between when we revealed this game and when it gets into your hands, and we can’t wait for that day to come! Until then, we hope that you can hold out just a little longer as we prime our hyperdrives and tune our engines. Until next time!

See you in the stars, pilots.

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