Space difficulty increased

Giant damage to everything nearby. Unbelievably useful in minefield/space station missions, highly useful in any mission where there's a mass cluster of enemies at some point.

Well, could see that being useful when the ole 'hailstorm of laser cannon bolts' comes at me late in the asteroid mission. But does it offer shielding too?

What are you spending your commendations on?

Not sure if the grayed-out missions still give commendations... that could prove troublesome if not. The invincible shield thing is not too expensive, if I recall correctly.

Shielding booster is the ECM, available at 35, which gives a 10-second invulnerability buff.

Grayed missions do indeed give commendations.

I have watched a few vid tutotals on successful Flights, but still find the top Missions unplayable.

While flying the suped-up Asteroid Mission, I can get through the whole mini-game, but with only around 40/70 score; simply cannot fire Missles fast enough when trying to regen shields, and they require double hits to take down a single Fighter. I use the EMP when encountering the main opposition, but this still only lowers the first layer of defense.

And for me, that Proton tube is the shiniest paper weight in the game thus far; removed it to regain Missles and hit anything rather than gain some Bonus XP on a few things. I have to get past the main directives before bonuses are worth anything, I believe.

I cannot use much movement in Flight, but am hoping the Purple/ Lvl 6 gear will be enough to see completed Missions reappear.

In the new player help forum.

http://www.swtor.com/community/showthread.php?t=41300

The progression is just stupid.
You don't have to use anything then at one point, you are obliged to use EVERYTHING with some tight strategy to cross t hat point. Like you are doing HEROICS then at some point you need to complete a Nightmare Operation to reach t he next level. There is absolutely no tutorial or guidance.
At level 50 with all the epic and items bought with fleet comms, I could only finished over 50% of the objectives although I could survive the Drexel Sweep. Tried two hours and I never meet 60% so I just gave up. Never bother to do space combat since then. Even if I might be able to cross that point after hours of struggling, there is no fun.

Basically you use your toggle for more power to lasers, you barrel roll as much as you can when enemies are head on with you or you have capital ships blasting you with rear facing guns, you hold right click and mouse over multiple targets on cap ships to get all 5 missiles firing at once. When you hit a lull in enemies, you toggle over to shields and regen quickly, when your faced with those masses of fighters coming at you all at once, bust your emp so they can't target you and mouse hover and fire missiles at them, all the while blasting them with long range laser fire.

Barrel roll, barrel roll and more barrel roll, learn to target while rolling and the missions will start dropping by the wayside.

I never found any of them that hard, although the later missions are just challenging enough to be enjoyable instead of dull.