I am glad I finally found this video.

This is footage from the Nintendo DS version of Star Wars: Episode 3 Revenge of the Sith. This was a competetive multiplayer space combat. It involved several small missions, and around 5 to 7 maps I believe. Lots of different starships to choose from, in field upgrades and lots of stuff to do.

So, why am I posting this, I hear you ask. I'd like to give the example to this specefic thing to show space combat can be done. Easily. I can understand some of the "On-rail space combat" if you have a specefic kind of mission to follow. For some, it might suit them, for others, it wont. It would be a much more of a challenge to defend your Spaceship from the bombers if you had to fly over to certain areas yourself. It would give a burden to choose for which location you should go to, and what to shoot first.

Obviously for the mine field mission, it would make it a lot more boring (in my opinion) to have it off the rails. You would avoid the whole mine field overal, shoot them all of from a distance, and work your way through. Now with the on-rail you don't have a choise, and you MUST get through it. You will get shot from the mines and the enemy space ships. That's fun and challenging. It takes lots of manoevering and having to decide to shoot certain mines, or recharge your shield and avoid blaster shots.

Overall, my opinion would be that they should make the missions more diverse. And the video I linked, shows how easily it can be done. It's done on the Nintendo DS, and even done CORRECTLY.

Dude.... I really love the space missions as they are. I think it would be great to have "off rail" stuff, but they shouldn't consider ditching any of the missions because they are "on-rail" I <3 THANIUM DISRUPTION

Ditching missions wouldn't be an option. Read my other post, and I think you will agree with me.

The problem is that we don't have enough diversity.

Has anything been mentioned recently about possibly offering true space exploration rather than the current rails-only space combat? If there's been other threads / game update stickies about it please let me know and I'll gladly read those.

No, nothing.

There's been 100's of threads about it since Beta, and an offical poll in which 3D space expansion was the overwhelming winner.

The only thing is the SSSP which we have no idea what it is, and it may turn up some time very late in 2013 or 2014.

I do remember a Dev post saying they were going to keep THESE rail missions, but add a pvp off rail shooter in the future and they are definately working on making this a reality. no this is not a rumor, but a dev post from awhile back. it was posted just before F2P came out.

seriously i don't see why there is so much complaining about the "rail" issue. if you like it, you are playing it. if you hate it, then you don't play it. i don't pvp, so you won't see me crying about pvp "being all broken." so why are you posting about hating the rail shooter?

and seriously, taking the space missions off rails will completely destroy the difficulty of the missions....why fly near asteroids at all? just fly way around them? that's a can of worms you don't want to open in my opinion.

I do remember a Dev post saying they were going to keep THESE rail missions, but add a pvp off rail shooter in the future and they are definately working on making this a reality. no this is not a rumor, but a dev post from awhile back. it was posted just before F2P came out.

This simply isn't true.

What they've has said about the SSSP you could infer it was off-the-rails, however equally you could infer it would be some sort of co-op on-the-rails shooter little different to what we have now.

Basically they have been SO vague about it that the SSSP could be anything.

About the only definate thing we know about it, it is won't be coming till very late 2013 at the very, very earliest (more likely 2014 some time).

It's only a dream my friend, get back to sleep ...

They stated it's for a futur far far away.

Dreams are cheap in this industry

Forget Nintendo and all what cumbayaa, Star Wars Galaxies had good space combat. Many ship types available to player, starting from small fighters to heavy fighters to bomber types to larger ships. Ships which were operated by solo player, by two players (rear gunner + pilot/frontal gunner) to ships which could be operated by a whole group (pilot, engineer - managed shields and power, and then gunners). There were even "social ships", like luxury space yachts which could take on a group or even a whole guild if you wanted, had several decks and could be decorated by players, so you could really have a flying luxury space home. And space flight was an actual flight, you could fly whichever way you wanted, between planets as well, just find the appropriate hyperspace buoy and link to it and make a jump.

Space combat could have been done solo, or with a friend in group, or a full group. Heck there were even larger space "raids" where whole guild could get into space and attack some enemy force, taking off waves of fighters, minibosses and ending with an attack on enemy capital ship. We had players in all kinds of ship taking part in such attacks, starting from smaller fighters ending with these big full group ships.

You could customize the ship look and ship look changed also accordingly to the ship components used. Different engines had different looks, different weapons had their own looks, etc. Heck there was so much in SWG space and there's literally nothing in SWToR space. SWToR space system was old already in 90's and yet they added it now. It's a really really sad thing. I love space flight and space combat and space exploration myself but in SWToR I just don't do it, because it's a joke.

I definitely hope that they'll get their act together one day and make a truly good space exploration/combat/travel/fun system but I'm not holding my breath yet.

Has anything been mentioned recently about possibly offering true space exploration rather than the current rails-only space combat? If there's been other threads / game update stickies about it please let me know and I'll gladly read those.

I'm sure it will happen by the holidays, where I imagine they will be releasing a full featured expansion pack, focused on space combat and flying mounts to bring us out of the Star Fox era. They geared the game to bring in WOW players not really SWG players, but that's changing now. SWG players have not stayed silent about it since day one and pretty much never will, and that to me is hope. I want to lay out some furniture, posters, to sit down and play pazaak on my ship via a holodeck with other players in their own ships and see my companions hanging out in the ship doing stuff. I want full 3d space combat. It's allot of work, like a whole new video game, which is why they have said very, very little. It would be suicide to scrap that aspect of the game. I'm betting we will start to hear about it by late spring or early summer and see it come to being by the holidays.

And to the nay-sayers, this game has yet to come out with a full featured expansion pack. The new rise of the hutt cartel is just a mini expansion, so be patient, the big expansion is coming, eventually..

Forget Nintendo and all what cumbayaa, Star Wars Galaxies had good space combat. Many ship types available to player, starting from small fighters to heavy fighters to bomber types to larger ships. Ships which were operated by solo player, by two players (rear gunner + pilot/frontal gunner) to ships which could be operated by a whole group (pilot, engineer - managed shields and power, and then gunners). There were even "social ships", like luxury space yachts which could take on a group or even a whole guild if you wanted, had several decks and could be decorated by players, so you could really have a flying luxury space home. And space flight was an actual flight, you could fly whichever way you wanted, between planets as well, just find the appropriate hyperspace buoy and link to it and make a jump.

 

Space combat could have been done solo, or with a friend in group, or a full group. Heck there were even larger space "raids" where whole guild could get into space and attack some enemy force, taking off waves of fighters, minibosses and ending with an attack on enemy capital ship. We had players in all kinds of ship taking part in such attacks, starting from smaller fighters ending with these big full group ships.

 

You could customize the ship look and ship look changed also accordingly to the ship components used. Different engines had different looks, different weapons had their own looks, etc. Heck there was so much in SWG space and there's literally nothing in SWToR space. SWToR space system was old already in 90's and yet they added it now. It's a really really sad thing. I love space flight and space combat and space exploration myself but in SWToR I just don't do it, because it's a joke.

 

I definitely hope that they'll get their act together one day and make a truly good space exploration/combat/travel/fun system but I'm not holding my breath yet.

damn that sound awesome

The only good space combat in a SW game was in XvT and XWA, especially in regards to multiplayer. SWG was a hopeless attempt of feebly copying it. Never had a good furball in SWG in my entire time there. BW would be nuts to try it, too.

I'd rather see more and vastly different missions, because right now they're all around the same few types. The only thing that changes are the strength of the enemy ships and the skins depending on what faction you are.

I think i'd rather see battlefronts space combat more than anything else.

PvP space combat,both sides hammering away at each others capital ship,dogfighting and infiltrating the capital from the troop carriers and trying to take out its weakpoints from the inside.

Not really interested in full space exploration,just want exciting multiplayer space combat

I'm sure it will happen by the holidays, where I imagine they will be releasing a full featured expansion pack, focused on space combat and flying mounts to bring us out of the Star Fox era. They geared the game to bring in WOW players not really SWG players, but that's changing now. SWG players have not stayed silent about it since day one and pretty much never will, and that to me is hope. I want to lay out some furniture, posters, to sit down and play pazaak on my ship via a holodeck with other players in their own ships and see my companions hanging out in the ship doing stuff. I want full 3d space combat. It's allot of work, like a whole new video game, which is why they have said very, very little. It would be suicide to scrap that aspect of the game. I'm betting we will start to hear about it by late spring or early summer and see it come to being by the holidays.

 

And to the nay-sayers, this game has yet to come out with a full featured expansion pack. The new rise of the hutt cartel is just a mini expansion, so be patient, the big expansion is coming, eventually..

They'd have to rebuild the entire game to allow flying mounts, I can't see that ever happening.

For them to build something like JTLs would take 2-3 years at best, not by Christmas 2013 (even if the SSSP was JTL 2 it still wouldn't be appearing till 2014 at best).

Don't get me wrong I'd love to see a JTL expansion, it is just we have no evidence of such a thing existing, and some evidence of such a thing NOT existing.

They'd have to rebuild the entire game to allow flying mounts, I can't see that ever happening.

 

For them to build something like JTLs would take 2-3 years at best, not by Christmas 2013 (even if the SSSP was JTL 2 it still wouldn't be appearing till 2014 at best).

 

Don't get me wrong I'd love to see a JTL expansion, it is just we have no evidence of such a thing existing, and some evidence of such a thing NOT existing.

This!!!

Be excited, get anxious for it, dream of what if could be...but be realistic about what you expect from Bioware guys. While I too would love to see a JTL 2, it ain't gonna happen in this game. Keep your expectations in check. Hyping dreams leads to massive let downs and frustrations.