Yes, they are difficult, but they're static. Part of the fun is failing them over and over until you get it right. Are you using all four ship abilities? Do you have them keybound so you can continue firing at a target while you use them? Using them strategically at specific points in the mission is required in grade 7 missions. I finally got around to completing them a few months ago, and it was great fun. I have a few perfect runs (all bonuses) uploaded to YouTube in case you want to see the solution and replicate it, and I'm sure there are plenty more videos of them with alternate solutions too.

There's a fair bit of backstory to this issue, so there's a lot to mention. Yes, this has happened to me on a few occasions when running it. It's the macrobinocular mission series finale, which was meant to be a heroic 4 mission (but it can be 3-manned with phasewalk and the sniper's equivalent). I believe it's called "The Shroud's Last Stand" on impside. On pubside, the equivalent mission is called "The Shroud Revealed." The mission that precedes this one in the chain is my absolute favourite in the game The fight mentioned is the finale mission's first boss encounter, where players fight a few waves of droids and turrets on a floor with an array of mines that periodically activate on a rotating basis, forcing melee players to have to move around while fighting in order to avoid being hit and stunned by the mines (ranged can stand back on a mine-less platform at the back of the room and maintain full uptime). A year or two ago, the game implemented a change to ranged mob pathing because ranged companions wouldn't follow players around in combat, causing them to stay stuck out of range. This has changed many fights in the game, like Thrasher in the Scum and Villainy operation, because ranged enemies had started moving when they're not supposed to. This happens to Draxus in Dread Fortress as well. The reason why it's a problem here is that there's an energy shield around the controller droid in the middle of the mined floor. It serves as a physical barrier that players can't move or get line of sight through because killing the controller ends the encounter. This barrier isn't an obstacle for enemies however, so the ranged enemies often accidentally move inside the shield while pathing to players (especially if the players are ranged and standing on the platform) after the ranged mob pathing change from the last paragraph. Every droid in a wave must die to cause the next wave to spawn, so if one gets trapped in there, players have no way to hit it or force it to move out because the shield blocks line of sight. Even AoE abilities can't reach an enemy stuck in there. The workaround that one of my recent groups found is to make sure to make the droids not path through the shield, or to have each player aggro a separate one and keep it in melee range so that it doesn't move. Given that this content is sadly barely played because it requires a group (part of what makes it fun and unique) and that the problem has a workaround, I wouldn't expect this to get fixed. The ranged companion pathing bug took months to get addressed, and it seems like the implemented fix was a fundamental change to the game's foundations.

Thank you very much. This is the answer I was hoping for back when I posted my own thread about this a few weeks ago. I was just looking for a confirmation that we will eventually be able to access the PTS through Steam. I hope BW plans to add it to Steam's built-in beta feature for games. I like how simple it is.

Yes, I understand that the PTS is down. This was never about it being up or down. What I'm saying is that the option to have the launcher launch the game in PTS mode is missing. Even when the PTS is down, I could still patch for it, launch the game, and see the empty server select screen. Now I can't even do that, which makes me worry that the next time the PTS is available, I will have no way to switch to it using the Steam version of the launcher, and I'd rather not have to swap back to the non-Steam version. The area of the launcher where you used to be able to set the language and switch to the PTS has been removed from the Steam launcher, and that's what I think is wrong.

Even when the PTS is down, the option to patch for it and launch it is available on the old launcher.

The option to swap to the PTS in the launcher is missing on the Steam version. I checked the Steam Beta properties for the game, but the PTS isn't listed there either. I'm not sure if this is a bug or intentional, but I haven't seen this mentioned in the Steam announcements or the dev tracker...

I also would love to see an official downloadable release of the entire soundtrack, including the new stuff! I don't mind the CE soundtrack being released as well, even though I have one physically. The exclusivity period on that has been extremely long, and I'd love for people to enjoy the game's high quality score. Now that we have Steam, you could even use their soundtrack DLC features! I'd buy it

It might be too late, but please don't remove all the story/cutscene content in the bonus series missions. Some of them have ties to planetary story arcs. It would be a shame to lose them like we lost many heroic missions in terms of story back in 4.0 Example off the top of my head: the main part of the pubside Taris bonus series has you talk to Mola Haxtor, some kind of researcher studying rakghouls. The bonus mission chain leads to the official discovery of nekghouls. This same NPC is later found on impside Taris during the main planetary quest line. She's in a cage and has a brief exchange or two with impside player characters. Stuff like that is what makes the story content in the game so unique and worthwhile. Other bonus series have similar ties.

Sure. Whatever the title is, it should include the word "dunderhead"

I'd just like to give my input as a relatively new endgame PvE player. I've played this game casually since launch, but around August I finally worked up the courage to try out group content. Seriously, I had barely even touched a HM flashpoint until then because of social anxiety or something I guess. Now I do HM ops regularly and I'm still improving day by day. I'm still learning to balance my gear, but it's been really fun and worthwhile working it out. SWTOR happens to also be my first and only MMO, so I didn't know how to do these things before. I'd be really sad to see gear optimization go.