What’s the Range on EMP Blast in SW:ToR Space Missions?

At level 45 a new piece of equipment becomes available from Space Commendations. EMP Generators allegedly cause a large amount of damage to anything (friend and foe) nearby, in a heroic explosion centred on self.

Just … how large is that explosion?

Well… “quite big, but not as large as I would like it to be” is going to be the answer for now.

For reference, I’ve taken two screenshots:

Toggling the EMP near the back of the cruiser

For practise, I chose the Jabim Escort. There is a cruiser type ship near the end of the mission (one of two, actually). The EMP blast was triggered as soon as my ship moved in parallel with the cruiser. Distance wise this is just before the second set of turrets from the back.

... means all of the cannons in the centre of the ship are gone

As shown here (this is the pass over the bow of the cruiser), the “closer to centre” turrets have all been destroyed, the very front one are still intact. This basically means that one EMP blast destroyed 18 turrets in total (three sets of three each side) when triggered between the last and second group. Another practise run might allow triggering it between the middle sets and getting all of them.

Useable against fighters?

Well yes, it is. They detonate nicely. However, it’s not useful when they are only a blip of light – they need to be actually distinguishable as ships (on my graphics settings), which makes EMP moderately useless in settings with lots of oncoming fighters.

Also… they were not kidding when they said it damages your friends. In the escort mission above, this cost me roughly 20% of my shuttles health. Could be tricky.

How to use Proton Torpedoes in SW:ToR

Yep. I didn’t figure it out right away. Took me a while, even though there was a shiny new icon next to my missiles in the HUD.

It’s comparatively simple, though.

1) Find a suitable target. It’s not possible to lock torpedoes onto fighters or corvette turrets, for instance.

2) Hover your mouse over it.

3) Press and hold your missile fire button (right mouse by default).

4) Stay with your targetting reticule over the intended target until it changes shape to indicate a target lock (3 seconds from my testing – it feels a lot longer).

5) As with missiles: Release your missile fire button to send your little red friend on his way.

Pictures, you say? Of course!

Cut the chatter, Red 2! Hold on Target.

 

Now witness the firepower of this fully armed and operational battle station. Fire at will, Commander!

Maintenance times we don’t like!

Good morning.

As a European gamer, I would like to state my unhappiness about the current maintenance cycles. The timing currently seems to be very strongly optimized for North American customers, and while we (as the rest of the world) understand that this is a core market, we are nonetheless not happy.

So far the patching times with long downtimes are usually on Tuesdays all day (over here, in Europe, that is). Not so bad for those working normal hours, but already quite annoying for shift workers, students (who only get to play during class time, after all … later than that they have to go out for drinks) and stay-at-home parents, who can enjoy child-free time during the day.

Today’s patch, however, was performed on a Saturday morning (over here, in Europe). This is the time many of us like to use to play. We get up early, grab our newspaper and our cup of tea and then log into our current favourite game. Children are watching the Saturday morning cartoons, work can wait until Monday, and our spouses (for those unlucky enough to have a non-gamer SO) might still be in bed, enjoying the duvet while the snow falls outside.

And … we can’t help notice that the patch ends just in time for North America to get up and enjoy just the benefits just listed (although the east coast is mighty close. By 7 our children already wanted attention at least twice and there is a plush shark trying to eat my mouse).

The question, basically, is not so much an “are you aware of what you’re doing” – because the times are obviously picked carefully (and we applaud that). It’s the general, envious, voiced-over-NASAs-Earth-pictures-as-well “do you understand that the rest of the world is unhappy”?

Are there any plans to adjust server maintenance in the future to cater to the rest of the world? Will European servers be patched sooner (which would make sense, as we drag ourselves out of bed earlier) or a day later (which stops moaning about ‘us’ always getting the good stuff first – but encourages the dastardly Evildoers to abuse bugs for one more day)? There are solutions, we hope. We’re currently too busy fending off toy sharks to think of anything that does not upset the (genius) ability to log into North American and European servers from the same login screen – but we sure wish we could be pampered as well.

Signed,

Me (European Gamer)

 

Not as impressive without lots of other signatures, I’m sure. But I’m sure this is what loads of us would write, if we weren’t part of a Jaws scene at the moment.

Republic ships and where to shoot them

After quite a lot of space missions lately, it’s about time to add something useful. In this case a guide on “where to find what” on a republic Thranta Class Corvette.

Not terribly important in the beginning (even though it’s useful not to accidentally shoot a shield generator instead of a turret), but maybe it’ll become more valuable over time. Bonus mission objectives come to mind.

Thranta Class Corvette headed "left"

So … what is there? Seven turrets, two engines, one shield generator and two things I cannot identify yet (if you know them, please share *grin*).

The turrets look like guns. With two barrels as well. The only position where this is actually important is in the centre of the ship, as there is a shield generator on one side and a turret on the other (“up” for the generator in the image shown).

Turrets can be comfortably destroyed with blasters at any level. A single missile will do the job as well.

The shield generator takes more damage to destroy – and doesn’t really help you take less damage in a flyby – but there are bonus objectives to destroy them occasionally (I’d say two missiles).

The engines can be destroyed with blasters and missiles (one missile is enough, again) – but I have yet to see any benefit. The ships don’t slow down (not even in the second shuttle escort) and generally behave like they don’t need their engines. Wish my car behaved like that.

That leaves the two blue blobs in the centre. These cannot be harmed by blaster fire (you get the dark blue / light blue flashing indicator for “you cannot hurt me – neener neener neener”) and might be a proton torpedo job. I’ll see what happens at level 50, when I get a launcher. I have no idea what they are – In the old X-Wing games I would have assumed Generator and Bridge, but I might be wrong.

 

So: Shoot guns with your blasters, especially when you conveniently strafe by one side. Use missiles on the “other side” blasters if you have spares – because capital ships can shoot through their own hull (which is odd) and you can fire through their hull to reach a target on the other side (which is convenient and totally fair). Shield generators can be destroyed with two missiles or blaster fire. This is a bonus objective in one of the early space missions when replayed later.

Did that make sense? Not too much.. let me try again. On the first attempt to play Saleucami Fleet Action, there is a bonus objective to destroy 50 fighters and/or turrets. Much later (when the mission is completely grey for experience) another bonus objective can show up: “Destroy 8 shield generators”.

To quote from TorWiki:

Bonus Objectives

Each space mission also has a set of three bonus quests, which will not show up on the objectives tracker until you make progress on one of them (destroying the first turret, for example). Each bonus quest will reward some XP and credits.

• The first usually involves shooting down a large number of enemy ships, it is generally available immediately.
• The second usually has to do with the capital ships, destroying their turrets, shield generators, engines, etc. This quest usually has a level restriction.
• The third generally involves destroying a large target, such as the bridge of a capital ship. It will be available immediately, but may be difficult if not impossible without higher level ship equipment, such as torpedoes. This quest will only be available once per day per mission. However, the target objective will still give destruction xp every mission, which is usually a significant amount compared to other targets. (e.g. 500xp vs 7xp)

Pushing people over the edge

 

It never gets old. Forcepush for Warriors, Overload for Inquisitors (shown above), Missile Blast for Bounty Hunters … There are always options to move your opponents about the battlefield. Bonus points when they fall into flaming lava or plummet to their deaths, screaming and kicking and flailing.

Bit of a pain to get the loot, though.

You are legend

With a few weeks of the game available, I’ve finally the time to actually talk about it. The first days were going by just enjoying the new. I made mistakes, I didn’t know basic things, I made wrong assumptions about how things work.. it was glorious.

I mean … I’m sure I rambled in the past about how the first weeks of a game – before it turns into floating by green weirdo-letters – are the best.

It’s sadly started… but I’m not complaining yet. Yes, I’ll admit I pay more attention to stats now than I did before … but at least I still laugh out loud over the dialogue. I still complain every time the imperials offer to “pay whatever I demand”. For the record: 965 credits is not “whatever I want”.

 

And of course there are about a ‘zillion quests that give me a target designator and then won’t let me use it the way I intend to. I would use a stick and a lot of logs to burn down their communication tower if I had to .. as long as I could use the orbital bombardment on … say … Thana the extra-annoying. Or my healer.