Jim Goings

After playing SWTOR up to level 37 on alliance and level 18 on empire, here are my thoughts on space battles in Star Wars the Old Republic.

Space battles are repeatative. There are only a few and yes, they are on rails. However, I don’t mind the rails too much. But the repeatition of the missions themselves make the missions very predicatable. Even the character banter is always the same, queued up in the same parts of the mission.

So when you fly the same path, over and over, you can almost put zero effort into the missions because you memorize them to the finest detail. I know when the ships are coming to come from the right, now the bottom, and now from behind that ship over there. You can literally aim in advance.

• Escort a ship. The ship you’re escorting flies a crazy path past all kinds of dangers. Makes zero sense, but it is fun.
• Blow up a space station.  This mission, more than any other makes me want free flight.  The path is just weird.
• Ice Field. Take out enemy fighters and a “boss” ship with it’s escorts.
• Asteroid field. Blow up enemy fighters while dodging rocks. The path is one that you wouldn’t take if you had a choice and your side kick in the mission even says “Can’t we go around?” when you fly through a narrow crack between two tumbling asteroids.
• Take down the super star destroyer while half a dozen star destroyers attempt to stop you. More specifically, take out it guns and shield generators, but nothing you do can actually take it down.
• Take out enemy bombers. Prevent many dozens of enemy bombers from blowing up a friendly space station. I’m not 100% sure, but I don’t think the space station is ever in any real danger. You win the mission by how many bombers you destroy… not whether the space station survives. Drives me nuts.

Each of these missions has a higher difficulty version. They are in totally different locations and have different names, but are otherwise exactly the same as their easier bretheren. I mean exactly… same path, same ships, etc. only there’s more and they are harder.

There are quite a few quirks to space combat as well.

• The gun turrets on large ships are target able THROUGH the ship. If you’re on the port side straffing turrets, you can also target the ones on the starboard side. Kinda weird.  Also, those very same guns can target you… they even fire right through the ship to hit you.
• Large ships that have no guns left (because you destroyed them all) still manage to make pot shots at you. It’s not clear where the beams are coming from, but they do still hit you despite the fact that it doesn’t actually have any gun turrets left.
• I also hate, hate, hate that even though I have destroyed the shield generators and every single gun on a star destroyer, they never actually blow up. I can fire 50 missiles into it and it never gives me the satisfaction of exploding. It just flames, smokes, and lists to the side.
• Friendly ships fire at enemies, but don’t damage them at all as far as I can tell.  Two large destroyer type ships will fire on each other and do nothing.  But you come along in your little ship and pew pew pew every gun and shield generator to oblivion in one pass.
• On the super star destroyer and the space station, there appears to be one target-able spot left that is indestructible. I’ve fired 20 missles at the star destroyer one and it doesn’t leave a dent. Maybe I can destroy it on higher levels or something.
• You can explode defense satellites in the space station mission, but that’s the largest thing you can destroy.

Also, all of the missions have bonus missions that open up on higher levels. For example, you might get a bonus mission to destroy all of the defense satellites in the space station mission. Here’s the thing… even if you destroy all of them in lower levels, you won’t get credit for it until the bonus mission opens up at some point. After destroying the sallites the previous 20 times I did the mission, imagine my surprise when I suddenly was asked to do it for extra experience.  I want my back pay, er, experience!

Here’s the ultimate face palm of the space battles in swtor: the empire missions are exactly the same as the alliance missions. They have different names, locations, and ship types, but are otherwise the same. You fly the same path with the same goals.

Despite all my bitching… the space missions are still quite fun. Here’s my top three suggestions to Bioware.  I have many more, but I think these three are most realistic to achieve and would bring the most value to players.

1. Make the empire and alliance missions completely different.
2. Make ships solid so you can shoot or be shot through them.
3. Create a multiplayer aspect. Multiple players could be on rails, but you can both affect the outcome of the same mission. This could work awesome in PvP too.

As a thank you for driving the Jive Hood to Coast team, they bought me a box of Dungeon’s and Dragon’s themed soda.  I haven’t cracked one open yet (and may never), but I absolutely love them!  They will be on display somewhere in my man-cave soon.  My two favorites are pictured below.

This year’s Penny Arcade Expo was my first.  In a word, it is EPIC.  I knew that it would be great, but it far surpassed my expectations.

What started out as a trip for just me and my friend Kevin turned into a mega-trip of 10 people.  As most of us were on a budget, we decided to share two hotel rooms.  The only ones we could find were about six miles from the convention center, but right on an express bus route. 

Thursday – The Day Before PAX
Kevin, Val, and I drove up on Thursday morning so we could tour around Seattle for a day.  We went to the Seattle Experience Music Project and Science Fiction Museum.

The Science fiction part of the museum was awesome, including some amazing collections of movie memorabilia.  Unfortunately they don’t allow pictures inside the museum, so you’ll have to take my word for it that it’s worth a visit.

The Experience Music Project (the majority of the same complex) was also most excellent.  Aside from the great exhibits, they had lots of places where you could learn, play, and otherwise interact with musical instruments.  We even got to into a sound booth and play real instruments together as a band.  We sucked… but it was fun!

When we were done, we used the Garmin Nuvi GPS that Val had to find a german pub.  Bingo… one just a couple of miles away!

In the evening, Adam, Justin, Mike, and Judy arrived.

Friday – PAX Day One
Day one started fairly early with us arriving in line a little after 8am.  We waited in a huge line of several thousand people.  This being PAX and not some other crappy convention meant that there was geeky entertainment while we waited in line.  Internet videos, text message trivia games, gameboys, magic the gathering, and countless other things were happening.  It was pretty much the best time I’ve ever had waiting in line.

We were finally let into the Expo hall at 10 am.  Upon entering, I was smacked with an explosion of awesome.  One minute there are seven of us, jaws on the floor, and the next we all fell victim to “Oooh!  Shiny!” and departed in many directions.  I think we managed to stay together in the expo hall for about 45 seconds.

Blizzard was there in full force with Warcraft Cataclysm, Starcraft II, and Diablo III playable demos.  I only played Diablo III and it was awesome.  It probably won’t be for sale until 2010, but it was fun even in it’s current state of development.

There were a lot of costumed folks running around and I stopped to take pics of a few of my favorites.

Megan, Kelly, and Kyle arrived Friday evening and we all went back to the hotel fairly late Friday night, too tired to stick around for the MC Frontalot concert.  We wanted to be well rested for our Ultimate Dungeon Delve in the morning.

Saturday - PAX Day Two
Most of us arrived a little after 8am.  We went to the queue room, grabbed our concert bracelets and departed to discuss last minute plans for our Ultimate Dungeon Delve attempt at 10:30am.  We won the delve after about four hours of nervous gameplay!  The full details are on Dragon Avenue.

After our major win, we hung around the expo a bit, played a few games, and eventually basked in the glow of our awesome accomplishment.  We went to dinner at the pub in the Red Lion Hotel.   We ate good food and did some more basking in our own glow.

Afterward, we returned to PAX and went to the concerts.  Wil Wheaton opened the event with an excellent dedication to Jonathan Coulton (JoCo) and an introduction to Paul and Storm, the opening act.  I had never heard to them, but they were awesome!

After Paul and Storm melted our faces off, JoCo took the stage and proceed to do the same.  He even brought up Paul and Storm for most of his set as backup singers.  My favorite highlight of the JoCo set was when he changed the lyrics of “My Monkey” to “Wil Wheaton”!

He did three encores, including Sweet Caroline by Neil Diamond and Birdhouse for my Soul by They Might Be Giants!

Sunday - PAX Day Three
We were wiped at this point as the concerts lasted until 2:30am!  We hit the pillows around 3:20am and woke up at 7:30am for more PAX fun!  Our first stop was the Star Wars: The Old Republic demo which was decent, but not as awesome as I was hoping.  The presenters were too marketing-like and should have been developers (geeks like us).  Nonetheless, the game looks great!

One highlight was meeting Sandeep Parikh (The Guild, Legend of Neil) and Tony Janning (The Legend of Neil).  I got autographed DVDs and pictures to add to my Home Theater decorations.

Adam and I attended the Wil Wheaton Awesome Hour and it was indeed awesome.  Afterward, we headed home completely drained of energy, but filled with awesome.

Yeah, this is dorky, but I must proclaim my excitement at having finally acquiring a horse in Lord of the Rings Online.  My character, Gesariel, is on the left (with the shield).  Mirluin, one of my gaming buddies, is on the right.  We got our horses at the same time.