Wtf. I just dont get this game. Freespace 2, Red Baron 3d, Rise of Flight, Evochron, Elite, Over Flanders Fields, First Eagles, F117, Il 2 sturmovick.

None of those sims even come close to the utterly insane difficulty this game has. Im pretty close to uninstalling and letting the rebellion rot.

Fourth mission. Raid the rival families' station while sister drops off incriminating evidence.

I turn on defensive turret and raise the shield recharge rate. Then I engage. However once I start taking hits Im screwed. You cant dodge the little guys, and the main bad guy does frightening amounts of damage. If your shields get low, you are screwed because raising them up means you cant shoot fast enuff to take out the crates and enemy fighters, AND the disabled ship in the time limit.

Most of the time I just die. On my ninth or so attempt.

Any advice? The entirety of the Freespace series never once approached this level of ludicrous.

Is this the mission where you're docked for a while and then all these enemies come in?

If so, the strategy I used was always to prioritize speed. Drop all shields (rebalancing aft) and weapons and just dash for the hyperspace point as fast as you can. They will eventually fire missiles, at which point you drop your chaff and then throw up when the cockpit spins helplessly.

I would say bold part is key, because you probably won't touch laser energy levels when you do that. That means your engine energy levels (and thus your speed) will be *very* low. And in this game, a slow ship is a dead ship, as the slower you go the easier you are to hit, and less agile are your maneuvers.

This is important by itself, but even more when you are using ships that aren't fast, like the Y-wing or the YT-1300. Although the Yt-1300 has a pretty good advantage to balance this a bit, the turret, which basically has unlimited energy. This lets you, for instance, put laser energy to zero and the shields recharging while you *gain* speed, or at maximum recharge without losing momentum.

The turret is also your main advantage in combat, as it let you concentrate on maneuvering and dodging while the autofire (use *always* the focus fire on selected target) destroy everything. You just need to keep the target in your "top arc".

And talking on dodge, the most dangerous threat to you (not including capital ships) is a fighter coming to you from long range while you are either dogfigthing (and thus moving pretty much in circles) or going straight to him. The best way to avoid his fire is do a barrel roll when you receive the first hits (in case of dogfighting) or when you see the first lasers fired (in case of a head on).

Also, look at the key to the right of the P (no idea what's your layout, so...). That key will be your best friend on this and any other X-Wing/TIE Fighter game. It makes you instantly go at 1/3 speed, which is where you turn the faster no matter your ship or your base speed. That, Backspace (100% throttle) and Enter (match target speed). Once you are used to use these three keys in dogfights, you will destroy *everything*.

Since you play IL2... I've always treated the shield charge as energy state/altitude in dogfighting planes. If you've got lots of shield stored, then you can redirect shield recharge to engines to go fast and maneuverable, just like diving a fighter plane. If there isn't too much threat, then set both cannons and shields to max recharge, which is similar to gaining altitude when not in danger.

I don't think any other space game plays like this.

Very intersting analogy.


Don't forget you can also redirect partial energy from laser to shield, and the other way around.

Thanks for this very helpful post! I have two questions:
1. Do you mean that even if your stored cannon energy is at zero, your auto cannon will still fire if it's on defensive mode?
2. Is there a button for the "focus fire on selected target" function? If so, which one is it?

1. Yes, the turret can fire at all times.
2. F key. You should take a look at the game manual, all the hotkeys are listed there.

Ah! Thanks for the help guys! I applied your advice and now Im having less trouble. The balance of speed and shields/weapons seems to be the focus of the game. I managed to make it farther.

Currently stuck on the second rebel qualification. Simply put, one does not simply 'evade' 4 tie fighters. They also tend to hit me. I was trying at level 3 shields and weapons, but Im thinking I might be too slow? What do you folka suggest?

It varies a bit from ship to ship (i.e. an A-Wing gives you much more freedom due his extra speed) and on what situation you are, but as a general rule you don't want to be in combat with more than one system (Laser or Shields) recharging with one extra level (that's it, one at level 3 and one at the regular level 2). It's just not worth due all the speed you lose, unless your ship is specially fast (A-Wing) or you have an extra system to suck out energy from (this happen in a couple XWA missions, many more in TIE Fighter).

Also, 95% of the time you will want Lasers to be that recharging system. Even on the special cases (A-Wing and so) you will want to keep Shields at normal rate and bumping Lasers to maximum and, if there is more energy, just more speed. Reasons:

1) You can't kill with your shields. Well, you actually can by ramming, but it's not something to abuse of :P
2) The laser recharge at a constant speed, no matter if you have one or six weapons. On the other hand, the more shields a ship has, the longer it takes to get them recharged to 200%.
3) You can transfer energy at any given moment from lasers to shields... and the other way around.
4) Reasons #2+#3 means that your X-Wing and Y-wing with their 4 laser, or your B-Wing with 6 lasers, can recharge their shields very quickly by transfering energy from lasers to shields when needed.

Corellian transports are the exceptions to this, due their massive shield and low amount of guns with "ammo", plus those pretty turrets with unlimited energy.

To transfer that energy, use Shift-F9 in case you want to pass energy from the shields to the lasers, or Shift-F10 to pass energy from the lasers to the shields. You can also use ' (apostrophe) for the former.

Sometimes you have a few moments of peace to set everything at maximum recharge, although they are not frequent. After doing a pass with a fighter against a capital ship you probably want to do that when running away tho, so you will be at maximum strenght on the next pass.

On the "one does not simply evade 4 TIE Fighters"... well, you actually do. And 12. You just need to learn how :P, and then again the most basic maneuver, that sort of barrell roll I've talked before, can help you on this. You may need to do it with sharpen moves or some extra turns, but trust me, it can be done. When playing IL2, you probably don't do the same exact move when trying to avoid the incoming fire of a single enemy fighter than when are several of them going against you, isn't it? Same here, but without having to worry with all the energy, altittude and all that jazz of a WW2 sim :P

Actually, it's kinda similar in philosophy. You don't want to go in a straight line. You don't want to be predictable. You don't want to do head-ons. You don't want to have a bad guy sitting in your ass*. And so on.

*E key targets any enemy ship attacking you, is pretty useful. Also, the left light over the gunsight (http://i.imgur.com/jJXm9DJ.png) serves as indicator that you may want to start a dodging maneuver, as it only lights up when you are being aimed and about to/being shooted by a non-capital ship.

Goddamn walls of text D:

I just spent the better part of four hours trying to beat the rebel fighter evaluation mission. I can routinely beat the wave of tie fighters. The tie interceptors are another matter entirely. Beating that group of four is nigh impossible for me. I did it once and jumped to the final battle....


...and my ship exploded for no reason.

The maneuever shown in the video just doesnt help me. Take the first time you face four enemies. Two srts of evenly spaced fighters. You get behind one group and the other is on you. Even at full shields an xwing can withstand roughly two seconds of fire before essential systems give.

I turn to face one fighter and I have a split second before another lays in to me. The evasion only works when Im not trying to kill somebody.

I dunno. Im waiting for this 'game' to become fun, but as it stands this is one of the most frustrating and difficult titles I have ever played. Luke Skywalker certainly didnt have to take on groups of fighters by himself. Why should I?

Anyway, Im not touching this title for a long while. It really just makes me mad. Thanks again for all the help!

The firing opportunities in XWA are sometimes similar to Call of Duty on hard: you aim, shoot and quickly go back to cover/evade. Expecting two seconds is way too luxurious when you're one vs many. It's more like pull trigger once and you go back to being defensive. Be glad you're not flying some unshielded TIE fighter which last exactly two shots, not even two seconds. Basically the reticle's red warning light lights up and you have <0.5 second to jink before the laser reaches you and you explode.

Exactly. If you engage a group starting from full shields, then it's pretty useful to dump everything to engine, go really fast, and transfer shield energy to lasers.

You just have to get lucky with the dodgy AI, sometimes it will be easy for you to engage, other times several enemy AI ships will gang up on you and you'll get screwed. The game has no method of avoiding an enemy fire (other than wildly flailing the ship around, speeding up and slowing to try and shake them off) unlike IL2 and Freespace 2, which had much more realistic AI tracking and proper level setups, Multiple AI will tail you and pummel you to dust.

What really annoys me is that I always get the infuriating ABORT MISSION, MISSION FAILED message when a mission critical craft has exploded, mostly because the AI decided to screw up whilst I was trying to get a bandit off my tail or desperately trying to chase an enemy. Forcing me to sit through another 15 minutes of boredom until the AI caught up with the 'story' and unlocked the hyper buoy for me to progress. (seriously why remove the time speedup button from TIE Fighter? It was invaluable!)

The game is great, one of the best Star Wars games, but wow, the story mission setup sucks...

This game is like a drug. Its so hard that
I find myself drawn to it like a moth to flame.

Strangely, with all the advice I just couldnt best the qualification fighter mission for the rebellion...

...at least not in an X Wing. The A wing came to me as an idea, because I remembered how maneuverable it was in Rogue Squadron 3d back in the day.

Beat it in one try without a scratch! Must be my flying style. Still it wouldnt have been possible without all the great advice! Many thanks!