Star Wars:Squadrons is lookin awesome! Thought hype around it is as good a moment as any to remind people of Galactic Starfighter being a thing! Thought I'd collect couple of essentials with those in mind who'd like to give GSF a proper try but don't know where to begin.

 

Galactic Starfighter is all about space pvp. 8 vs 8 or 12 vs 12 matches. Tough to figure out, easy to step in. lvl 1 character can jump in queue and start flying. It totally has a learning curve involved. It isn't rocket science or anything, issue is with game throwing new pilots straight to the deep end. In- game tutorial is quite bad and teaches you nothing much. If left up to TOR client, one has to learn GSF on the fly. Luckily, community has stepped in and created loads of excellent guides, videos and even full manuals for GSF.

 

Ship symbol near minimap opens your Hangar. This is your main menu for GSF. You can buy ships, equip ships, open tutorial, view your stats and so on in here. Cartel ships are not unique or special in any way besides looks. T1 Strikefighter, Rycer(Imp) / Starguard(Rep) is an excellent ship for learning the GSF in.

 

So without further fuzz..Six step prohram taking you from a brand new pilot to a brand new pilot who is getting stuff done!

 

 

 

1. Great Video tutorial

If you want to check one GSF guide for beginners, it has to be this video:

 

Video is by Despon, one of the best piltos in the world. Made with brand new players in mind. His entire channel is dedicated to teaching the basics of GSF. There are tons of other guides you can check later on. Even a full manual made for GSF. You can dig this stuff up from the GSF section of forums.

 

2. Bad In-game tutorial

Do the in-game tutorial. it isn't very good. Do what it tells you and fly around a bit. Note how you "climb" and "dive" faster than you steer. Get used to turning by climbing or diving. A and D rotate your ship. Rotate til your roof or belly point to where you wish to urn and then climb or dive there. Actual steering is only for supplementing this and making adjustments in dogfights etc.

 

 

3. Tweak the UI

In-game tutorial is great for one thing: Tweaking your UI. Once in tutorial, press Esc and go ->Interface Editor->Galactic Starfighter.Most of this stuff is fine. However, you prolly want to make Map as large as you can. Game says "Map" but you wanna think of it mostly as a radar. It shows you where the bad guys are.

 

4. Keybinds

Go to Preferences-> Starfighter Keybinds and see they are to your liking. Defaults are mostly fine.

Make mental notes out of these:

 

WASD plus the X - key (movement)

Number keys 1-4 (weapon,engine,system and co-pilot abilities)

Spacebar(boost)

LMB&RMB! (Weapons)

 

Stuff you might wanna rebind:

"Select Target Under Cursor" is an important function. I think it very useful and intuitive to have it in mouse wheel button.

 

5. /cjoin GSF.

GSF is a custom chat channel for..GSF. Present on every server. Generally speaking, community around GSF is quite inclusive. Ask for advice and people to fly with. You'll prolly find both! Unless you asking around 5 a.m or something.

 

6. All set!

Plenty of stuff yet to figure out but you are ready enough for your 1st match! Head to pvp terminal at fleet and pick Intro to GSF-mission. Is important to have this! Your 1st match gives you tons of Fleet and Ship Req. These are the " currencies" of GSF. You use ship req for buying gear for your ship. Fleet req for buying crew members and ships, Intro mission gives you so much fleet req you can afford to buy all the ships right away.

 

Up next: Energy managment, what crew to buy and which components to use!

 

 

- - -- -

 

Some proper Imperial Starfighter propaganda to get you all fired up! Awesome machima made by Lord Diar:

Edited June 20, 2020 by Stradlin

*to be continued!*

No thanks. 🙂

I’ll wait for squadrons

Venus. Flytrap.

 

I don't recommend anyone jump into that grinder but if you do, Valkorion be with you.

Well, I only ever tried Starfighter just once and not sure you could even count that as spent less than 15 mins doing so. So this new game is not for me. However, any player that is interested in this new squadron game but not tried Starfighter probably should give Starfighter ago. I see little reason paying for two games. If you don't care for Starfighter you can still try the new game. Still for the players here that are going to try out Squadron, hope its what you expect it to be.

Squadrons looks really amazing and I'm most excited about the single player story aspect.

 

Regarding GSF....no.

 

I've posted lengthy reasons why in the past...the short version is this..

 

I played for hours during Beta. I WANTED to like it.

But...

 

1. No native flightstick support. Piloting with the keyboard / mouse just isn't for me.

2. Very early on it became apparent that that newbies were going to suffer as they leveled up due to how the gearing system works. Not fond of any system that has such drastic variances.

3. Wasted opportunity. They could have made a much better system, implemented crafted ship components...so many things...

 

it just isn't for me.

 

1. No native flightstick support. Piloting with the keyboard / mouse just isn't for me.

 

 

 

 

If you truly must have joystick for games like these, then that ofc is something nobody is about to change for you! Is understandable enough. Good thing Squadrons lets you (and meee) hold the stick at least!

 

More generally speakin, I say this much: Elite: Dangerous is as complex a scfi flight sim we likely to get in a long while. Very well crafted newtonian flight engine and all that.Six degrees of freedom is available and relevant. It offers a very well fleshed out support for every imagineable controller solution. m+kb, HOTAS, Joystick, gaming pad..

..And guess what? Even there, loads of people prefer mouse and keyboard for pvp. Level of precision you get via mouse is just too big a deal for many folks to bypass in a competitive setting there.

 

If one needs to hold a joystick to fly or a flashlight to swing a lightsaber, that ofc is a personal matter! Just saying; there certainly isn't some fundamental shortcoming in m+kb. No door to some great performance is locked that only a joystick could open. In truth, its quite the opposite.

 

Personally, I start wanting a joystick to hold if in a 1st person view. Actual cockpit around me and all. I'd find a 3rd person view (=GSF) bit unnatural to handle with a joystick.

 

 

2. Very early on it became apparent that that newbies were going to suffer as they leveled up due to how the gearing system works. Not fond of any system that has such drastic variances.

 

Gearing system was quite cruel way back when for sure. Was such a long road. Luckily iy has been buffed a number of times. Today, one single match (=Introduction to GSF - Mission) gives you enough currency to buy every signle ship and all the most essential crew members. In addition, all components are much cheaper to buy now. It is in a decent balance imo.

 

 

3. Wasted opportunity. They could have made a much better system, implemented crafted ship components...so many things...

Flight engine itself is pure gold. They could and should have added so much more around it for sure. My list of demands goes from unreasonable castle in clouds-tier(Pilot as class+class story!" ) To such simple little things that'd help integrate GSF as part of the game bit better( Turn some flight deck on fleet a hangout for pilots. Mission terminals, ability to take a match by walking to a starfighter with your character)

 

PvE missions would have been so cool to have too, ofc.

Edited June 20, 2020 by Stradlin