How Do I Play With My Friends?
Joining up with your friends in a squadron of five is a great way to experience Star Wars™: Squadrons’ strategic, team-based space battles. Here’s how to join and create a group, and how to add friends from other platforms in Star Wars™: Squadrons!
How to Form a Group
One way to play together is to invite your friends to a group from the main menu. Press Tab / Select / Touchpad to open the Social Menu; this will bring up a list of your first-party friends, as well your EA cross-play friends. Scroll to the friends you'd like to invite, select them and choose "Invite". They'll receive an invitation, and once they accept you'll see them added to your party. Once everyone's together, the party leader (you) can open the Multiplayer menu and choose a gamemode, and the party will matchmake into a game together.
How to Join a Game in Progress
If one of your friends is in an unranked game (Dogfight or Fleet Battles vs AI) and has an empty slot on their team, you can join them directly from the Social Menu. From the Social Menu, scroll to the friend you'd like to join, and choose "Join Game". Similarly, if you're in an unranked game with an empty space on your team, you can invite a friend to fill it. From the Loadout screen, scroll to an empty space and select it to open the Social Menu and invite them. You can not join a ranked game in progress – you need to form a Group in advance and matchmake together if you want to play with friends in a ranked match (see: “How to Form a Group”, above).
How to Add Cross-Play Friends
In addition to friends on your current platform, you can add players on other platforms to your EA cross-play friends list. This way, you can invite them and play together even if you are on different platforms! There are two ways to send them a friend request. If you meet a player in-game and would like to add them, select their name in the Scoreboard, select "View Game Profile", and select "Add to EA Friends". They will receive a friend request and can accept it from the Social Menu (under "Invitations" and "Pending Friend Requests").
If you want to add someone who's not in your game, you will need their EA ID (this is the name of the EA Play account associated with their first-party account, which they linked the first time they played an EA game). Open the Social Menu, open the "Invitations" tab, and enter their ID in the "Search for EA ID" box. This will send them a cross-play friend request, and once they accept they will be added to your cross-play friends list.