Coruscant from Orbit is Gorgeous
I know one of my big goals from this weekend’s large scale beta test was to get far enough along in my story to get my class ship. My soldier got her ship, after a class story quest chain arc, at level 15. The story arc was fun. There were plenty of side quest options happening in the same place as story quests, but after a while I let them gather so I could beeline through to get the ship.
Then I spent the rest of the night, and stayed up later than I should have, walking through the ship, seeing all the little details, and trying out space combat. After some fun escort and destruction runs, I spent more time looking at ship upgrades and adding what I could to my ship. Your first escort mission has a ship upgrade component as a reward, to introduce you to the concept of enhancing your ship. The first one is free, as they say. I anticipate many fun hours spent in the space combat game, and many large credit outlays, upgrading my ship’s inventory slots.
That lower right slot is my goal to fill
Your ship has its own tab, kind of like a pet, but unlike most pets, you can buy armor and weapon and missile upgrades. I LIKE missiles, so I want to add a larger magazine and… you can see where this is going. I am very glad I got far enough along to try out upgrades and combat missions and really fall in love with my BT-7 Thunderclap.
I was surprised at how much XP was gained from doing the ship combat missions. It may have been beefed up for the beta, but I expect it will remain a sizable chunk to encourage people to try out the missions. The ship missions aren’t very complex, your control of your ship is pretty limited so don’t expect a combat game that requires a pricey joystick to manage. I like them for what they are, a nice diversion from the usual game, with some rewards specific to beefing up the mini game and customization options to make your ship feel more like your own.
I haven’t researched it, but I really hope that I get the option to give my ship a name. Kaalo’s Ship is just too bland. It needs to be something like Avenger or Hunter or Serenity (well, that name has been taken, but you get my drift).
Yeah, space combat does give a lot of XP. At first, I thought it would be a great way to catch up on experience if I ever find myself falling behind for whatever reason, but it didn’t turn out to be a problem in SWTOR.
I admit I didn’t really get into space combat, not because it wasn’t fun, but mostly because the main game was so much more attractive. I just couldn’t wait to continue my class story quest, so I left ship combat on the backburner. It’s cool just to jump into a few of them when I have the time though, the fact they’re only about 5 minutes each makes it a great activity when I don’t have much time to play!
If it hadn’t been a beta test, I don’t think I would have tried space combat that early on either. Questing was extremely fun, but I didn’t want to get too far along in the quests until it counts. 🙂