New Star Wars Squadrons Details Revealed: Classes, Mechanics, And More

With Star Wars: Squadrons slated to arrive on October 2 for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, EA and Motive Studios have outlined some new details about the first-person aerial dogfighter.

Publisher EA shared a lengthy post that goes into extensive detail about what you can expect in Squadrons, from the classes available at your disposal to how power management works and more.

Classes And Available Starfighters

There are eight starfighters available to choose from in Squadrons, all of which fit into four classes--Fighter, Bomber, Interceptor, and Support--with two ships in each. Though each one has its own idiosyncrasies, from functionality (equipment available to use) to handling, there are some basic features they all share. This means if you become an expert pilot with one ship, you'll have knowledge of how the other ships will control. The eight available starfighters are outlined below:

• T-65B X-Wing starfighter
• BTL-A4 Y-Wing assault starfighter/bomber
• RZ-1 A-Wing interceptor
• UT-60D U-Wing starfighter/support craft
• TIE/ln Starfighter (“TIE Fighter”)
• TIE/sa Bomber ("TIE Bomber")
• TIE/in Interceptor ("TIE Interceptor")
• TIE/rp Reaper attack lander ("TIE Reaper")

Some ships--such as the A-, X-, U-, Y-Wings, and TIE Reaper--have shields while others (like the TIE Bomber, Fighter, and Interceptor) do not. The three TIE ships without shields have slightly higher speed, agility, and offensive capabilities. Still, every ship has access to primary weapons, countermeasures, hull outfittings (ship health), engines, and two auxiliary abilities (such as missiles or repair droids).

As you'd expect, the ship classes operate just as their name suggests. Fighters (the X-Wing and TIE Fighter) are balanced ships with excellent agility, good offenses, and capable defenses that allow them to adapt to any situation. Interceptors (the A-Wing and TIE Interceptor) are designed specifically for dogfighting, making them glass-cannons that dish out more damage than they can take. Bombers (the Y-Wing and TIE Bomber) are slow-moving ships that take and deal a massive amount of damage perfect for doing assaults on enemy capital ships and their accompanying cruisers. Finally, Supports (the U-Wing and TIE Reaper) are dedicated to keeping their respective teammates in the fight by resupplying and repairing them mid-battle.

Manage Your Power Consumption

If there are no Support ships on your side--or if they've been destroyed during hectic space combat--you can do a number of things to manage your power and keep yourself reinforced to fight longer. With Squadrons being exclusively first-person, you'll have access to power management through your cockpit. It's here where you can divert power to your engines, lasers, or shields to give them a boost in effectiveness.

Powering your engines allows you to increase your top speed, and diverting all your power to them gives you access to a powerful speed boost that lets you zip around the aerial battlefield. You can do the same thing to your lasers, which lets you either recharge them faster or, if you decide to direct all power to them, overcharge your lasers to make them deadlier. Similarly, shields can be powered to recharge faster or overcharged to grant up to 200% extra shielding. It's worth noting shields protect both the front and back of your ship, so you can do things like overcharge just the back of your ship to shield you from oncoming fire.

The three TIEs that don't have shields have another option for power diversion: they can use a converter that lets them reroute all power from one part of the ship to another. For example, they can take all the power from their lasers and redirect it to their engines (and vice versa). Power management is crucial in dogfights; diverting all your power to one part of your ship (the lasers, for example) will decrease your top speed, so you'll have to access the situation and make the appropriate decision on where your place your power.

A lot of details were revealed about Squadrons when it was announced during EA Play 2020. We learned the game will have a single-player campaign and multiplayer with no microtransactions, supports flight sim controllers on PC, has ship customization, and more. You can check out our Star Wars: Squadrons pre-order guide to learn more.