Why are they surprised by a destroyed asteroid? I'm pretty sure by that point in Star Wars asteroid mining is the thing to do not planetary mining. Not that planetary mining doesn't happen just that asteroid with those ships is probably easier and more profitable (i assume it would be because of the no gravity.)
No, the astrodroid riding in the backseat was "blasted". They were shocked that the recons were shot in the first place (which really ought to come as no surprise after 4+ years of fighting) and especially that the astrodroid was shot to pieces. It's as if they'd expect the enemy to try to avoid those droids or something. Just obscenely bad writing.
Seriously, if you want to write drama you can still have the pilots act professional military like while also having the whole rebel attitude with all the mischief and friction with the authority and chain of command and all. Also if you wanted to show that the Imperials are evil and to get a proper reaction from the squadron and the player base, how about you introduce a character who gets wounded in the second tutorial mission and then is sent away on a medical frigate and what do you know, the medical frigate and it's escorts lose comms and you're sent to investigate. As you close in you pick up their distress beacon and it appears that they're still alive and you call in a shuttle and approach the struck down frigate, only to discover that it's life support is down and it's empty - and then as you're sweeping for the escape pods one of the pilots finds them all having been blown apart with the wounded and crew in them. You know, actually have a plot and people filling their boots and all and reacting naturally. This is still some really basic crap, we're not even discussing finer points of plot but just the very basics and I can't wrap my head around just how bad writing these modern AAA games tend to have.
Apparently you eventually get switched back to being Imperial pilot and then tossed back and forth between the sides. Not a fan of this decision, really. The Imperial squadron is at least a little more tolerable but even then this is not really a game to play for the characters or the story. They're included but definitely not worth being a selling point. The missions themselves, they allow you to fly Star Wars fighters and bombers in AAA Star Wars setting and graphics. The flight model and actual space combat feel very Star Wars and are thoroughly enjoyable. Thus I find myself just skipping the character interaction and just flying the missions, focusing on the action which really is the most enjoyable. Yet, even there I would argue that No dialogue is better than poor dialogue. If each mission has one contextual phrase - I have to say when the phrase is cringey on the first time you hear it then it doesn't improve on it's 100th reiteration.
that is a weird decision. Any other star wars game I can think of there is no switching factions in the campaign. each faction has their own separate campaign. Is this call of duty (the very first one) where the campaign goes from I think the russians to the brits to the americans so it's kinda 3 campaigns in one.
Yea, not a fan of it. Also unlike in every other Star Wars game you don't get to choose your character, you're jumped into a female supposedly sassy highschool kid's person. I only discovered I was a female after a while when I made the connection that the female commentary "I'm being hit" and so always seemed to coincide with when I was being hit. That's another weird compromise between not actually introducing your character to you (Half-Life) but also making your character constantly make poor dialogue automatically like some NPC. I think the reason for merging the two factions into one plot is simply down to logistics. Normally you'd need 10+ missions for both sides. Now you have 10 missions for the both sides combined.
You get to pick both your pilots models and voices at the start, including gender, did you skip that? The skipping between sides thing, I understand what they were going for, trying to tell the whole story from both sides as one continuous story rather than playing one side then rewinding time for the other side, its a little hit and miss. Too much 'personal drama' involved in the plot IMO.
Ah yes, I skipped it! (<- What a dumbass!) And yea, trying to really drive home the point that the Empire is evil but without any of the 'well Rebels ain't always all peachy'. "No dialogue is better than bad dialogue". Look at DCS - it doesn't bug the hell out of you between every mission.
Realized I'm stuck with the game, having not touched it for two weeks now. Something intangible about the feel of shooting with the laser cannons. Most opponents feel like they turn around on a dime, just as you've chased them down and you'd expect to get to deflection shooting / taking lead at the opponent - oh he's already pointing straight at you and it feels like your lasers are anyway using autoaim even though I could not find any such feature turned on anywhere in the controls and playing on the hardest difficulty. Don't know if it feels better with a mouse but definitely doesn't feel amusing with a HOTAS once you start cranking in some flight hours in it. Also the damage model and combat feel very shallow - on one hand there's no sense of piloting or dogfighting and on one hand you just shoot them and they go kaboom. Not much of a show and not getting that sense of low amounts of damage ever actually having any other impact than "your hull is now at 5% integrity". Shit, you'd almost think that with the hull a mere 5% from catastrophic explosion that it could mean something like some of the systems stopping from working, something like a laser cannon exploding when trying to fire it or even a wing being torn off when you suddenly do one of those very tight turns. But instead the joystick button 3 is mapped to an almost instant Healthkit or Healing Potion that just fixes everything in a second and button 4 is mapped to Support Ship that merely being within 100m radius of you instantly fixes you while also restocking your missiles. Final verdict: I kinda regret even buying this. As a dogfighting game it just isn't a whole lot of fun or great. Steadily content at being Mediocre and not even aiming for more than that. And as a Star Wars game it feels more like a skin mod than actually benefiting from the Star Wars setting.
I know there was some autoaim/gimbal in the rogue squadron games for the nintendo gamecube but those were designed a bit more arcadey. I did see they added or are adding the b-wing and tie defender. That seems soon. I was expecting 6 months after release not 2.
Adding or DLC though? Not that it matters to me, I've happily returned to DCS and Star Wars Empire at War when I have the time to sit around playing and drinking mead. Which reminds me I'm running low on my mead, thank heavens I had the wisdom of tripling my production capability just now. Maybe I'll get back to this day another day sometime when I just need to fly around in an X-Wing or Tie Fighter.
Part of update 4.0 free content. https://www.ea.com/games/starwars/squadrons/news/update-4-0-release-notes from your description it sounds more like a blend of the gamecube Rogue Squadron games and the x-wing/x-wing vs tie fighter PC games which turned squadrons into a ok game. not bad but not good.
Battlefield: Bad Company did a really good job with this. And it's a good example of portraying a "hang loose and act wild" unit that still observes a semblance of military bearing and ability. It would obviously never happen in a real military unit, but it's just believable enough to dispense the disbelief. From your scathing review, it appears Squadrons firmly hit the birm with that shot.
Wraith Squadron from the x-wing books (basically same idea as Rogue when Wedge reformed them but the rogues were pilots with commando skills while the Wraiths were commando's with pilot skills. oh and almost all of them were misfits whose last chance in the New Republic military was Wraith squadron. Wedge started Wraith Squadron as well). Basically an x-wing unit that can operate alone if need be. And they are professional when they need to be but have a loose interpretation of how they achieve their objective.
There are many records of existing very loose rope kinds of units ranging from long ago to modernity. For instance Polish Winged Hussars didn't actually belong to the army organization but were independent units who did their own things as they pleased - which translates to mostly binge drinking at the company master's festive tent with a long table day in and day out with short stick being drawn for who has to skip the drinking and provide some semblance to the rank and file hussars (below NCO if you will) as they would be tasked with 'foraging' which actually meant more like wanton banditry - the single NCO's task was to ensure that the regular hussars wouldn't go beyond certain line such as raping a whole village and hanging all the men or so, at least not while still in Polish-Lithuanian territory! My own grandfather took part in long range patrols (far patrol) - they answered to no one but themselves for the execution of objective such as "cut the Murmansk railroad, use any means necessary". A mixture of complete freedom and also highest degree of professionality - but the professionality does not raise from someone barking orders but from everyone implicitly knowing what to do and being truly welded together as a team with most things occurring without need to say anything at all. Then there's the whole world of various paramilitary, special forces etc. Some don't even belong to military organization and command chain and others are by other means distanced from it.
