Space Mission Help

[Screaming_Ziva]

Ever since release, I have never been able to figure these out and have been absolutely terrible at them. However, from the older Command Crates my reputation is at 19,473 / 30,000 for Legend and I would like to really max it out but, for the life of me, I can't even finish a single mission. I've watched videos and read all the help I can find and I am still terrible at them.

 

Are any of the reputation paying missions easier than the others? Is there a weekly somewhere that gives a purple reputation chip (I only see blues as rewards from the missions)? My ship is at all 144 except proton torpedos which is empty. The vendor only has a 106 for 50 fleet comms. Do I need those? Is the vendor the only place to get them (I don't see any on the GTN)?

 

Any helpful hints would be appreciated.

Edited August 8, 2020 by Screaming_Ziva

[Ardrossan]

I'm pretty terrible at them too. I'm always surprised on this forum to hear people bragging about how easy they are - like you, I've never passed one of the space heroics.

 

You can buy or craft artifact ship gear, which helps a little, but not enough.

[Tsillah]

I tried some of them recently and I found them to be harder than before. It could be that I'm out of practice and the targeting reticule not being visible sometimes also doesn't help. Still, I can't shake this feeling that somewhere along the line these missions got harder somehow.

 

Right now, with this heatwave going on here, I certainly can't be bothered to give it a real go lol.

[Chaosataoist]

I've always liked the space missions, maxed out the reputation and even got all of the achievements. The thing that made a big difference for me was this:

 

While using the mouse to target enemy ships, use the keyboard (W, S, A, D, or whatever keys you have set for character movement) to also keep moving your own ship around at the same time. So say you move the mouse to target a ship to the left, your own ship will also move to the left, but at the same time you can also move it up a little or down using the keyboard movement keys. If you keep moving your ship this way (in circles), the enemy ships won't hit you as often. I used to get obliterated pretty quickly during the heroics until I started doing that.

 

The easiest heroic space missions are Lorta Escort (Empire) and Hypori Escort (Republic), so try to get through these first to get the hang of it. But you will need the Proton Torpedoes to complete the main objectives, so you need to grind the non-heroic missions first to get the 50 fleet comms.

 

Other than that, try to have as many Grade 7 ship mods as you can. If you can't, all Grade 6 mods are available on the GTN. It also helps to have the Improved Power Conversion Module (to make your blasters or shields stronger), the Electronic Warfare Pod (for temporary immunity) and the EMP Generator (to destroy everything in range at least once per mission).

[Ominovin]

If you are trying to grind rep, there is only one 'easy' mission available, which is the final 'vanilla' minefield mission (Impossible Sector for the republic, I forget what the Imperial version is called).

Everything 'easier' doesn't reward reputation.

Everything 'harder' is from the patch of 'post-vanilla' missions that generally require both full Grade 7 gear AND perfect execution to complete (I think I managed to complete one of these before giving up).

 

Unfortunately, the 'one easy mission' only rewards a green reputation token, so it will probably take a long time to cap that reputation.

[mike_carton]

This is Solo PvE Space Missions we're talking about, not GSF.

 

You don't need 144s for Beam Charger, or Shield Regenrator to do most of the missions and don't even need EMP Generator for non-Heroic (Heroic = "Space Combat") missions. If you have 144s for all of them, you must've played a lot and gotten the Fleet Commendations (350 each) or paid a king's ransom on the GTN.

 

You do need Proton Torpedoes; the targets on Capital Ships are avaialble for too short a time and will need too many missiles otherwise. Proton Torpedoes do much more damage. There is only one version of Proton Torpedo Tube (106 rating), it is available on the Fleet vendor as a "bind on pickup" item for 50 FCs. I don't think it is available on GTN.

 

The Heroics are definitely much tougher than the usual "Operations" missions. The achievements are easy and fun to get with Grade 6 or Grade 7 gear (and Proton Torpedoes) without even doing any Heroic missions. Reputaion is whole another matter.

 

To add to Ominovin's comment: The easy mission's Imperial version is called Ascendancy Barrier.

Edited August 8, 2020 by mike_carton

[Screaming_Ziva]

The easiest heroic space missions are Lorta Escort (Empire) and Hypori Escort (Republic), so try to get through these first to get the hang of it. But you will need the Proton Torpedoes to complete the main objectives, so you need to grind the non-heroic missions first to get the 50 fleet comms.

Got my Proton Torpedoes and still not even close to finishing Lorta. By the time I get one Jedi ship destroyed, I'm dead myself.

Unfortunately, the 'one easy mission' only rewards a green reputation token, so it will probably take a long time to cap that reputation.

Doesn't look like any of the missions reward green tokens anymore.

 

A bit annoying too that the "Retry Mission" button just takes you back to your ship.

Edited August 8, 2020 by Screaming_Ziva

[Baletraeger]

Are you fully geared in the level 7 components?

 

I've been thinking about trying again to complete the heroics as I was never able to back when they came out.

[BRKMSN]

Got my Proton Torpedoes and still not even close to finishing Lorta. By the time I get one Jedi ship destroyed, I'm dead myself.

 

Doesn't look like any of the missions reward green tokens anymore.

 

A bit annoying too that the "Retry Mission" button just takes you back to your ship.

 

For each mission you struggle with, try to find a guide and video to show you what needs to be done. There is little margin for error and you may have to retry each one a bunch of times until you remember all the things you need to do along the way. They can actually be pretty fun once you know what to do, but it will definitely require practice and patience to get each one down.

[TrixxieTriss]

The hardest missions are the last 5 added. These are a multitude of 10x harder than all the other original missions up to lvl 50.

I’ve all the achievments for the original missions. Back when they were more relevant, I used to run all the daily space missions every day on about 10 Alts (thousands of hours worth). I’m actually very good at them and can do them easily without concentrating or really trying.

Then they added the last five missions and I honestly cannot finish even one of them, so I stopped trying when they made space missions irrelevant during 4.0.

Now they are more relevant to conquest, I decided to try them again, but those last 5 are still too hard. So to just get the quest done, I do the very first lvl 16 mission on each Alt. It takes less than 4 mins and you get 5 fleet comms (I don’t know what you get reputation wise because mines been maxed out for 7+ years)

My favourite mission is clouds of Vondue

Edited August 9, 2020 by TrixxieTriss

[phalczen]

The heroic versions missions require a lot of swapping between power to blasters and power to shields.

They are also the only time I ever used spacebar to do barrel rolls.

Dulfy is still accessible and has videos of all the missions. Pay attention to the timing of when to pop EMP and when to pop the aggro dump (Warfare Pod I think its called) in Dulfy's videos.

Its definitely a practice makes perfect situation though. You just have to set aside a block of time to do them over and over and over again until you've memorized the encounter just like the original ones.

[Chaosataoist]

Got my Proton Torpedoes and still not even close to finishing Lorta. By the time I get one Jedi ship destroyed, I'm dead myself.

 

Have you tried the "move the ship around with the keyboard" thing? Because if you just fly straight behind them, they'll destroy you quickly.

 

This is also good advice:

The heroic versions missions require a lot of swapping between power to blasters and power to shields.

They are also the only time I ever used spacebar to do barrel rolls.

 

The barrel roll is one, just do that from time to time if they seem to be wailing on you too much. The other is the swapping of power. You need the Improved Power Conversion Module for that one and you'll have two icons in the bottom left corner. The first one directs power to blasters, the second one to shields. If you're relatively safe and want to kill something quickly, activate the first one. If you're getting hammered, switch to the second one and use your missiles (your blasters will be weak).

 

Speaking of missiles, keep in mind you don't have to wait to lock on a single missile on a target you're aiming at, let it go, lock on the next missile, let it go, etc. You can keep pressing the right mouse button and that'll keep firing missiles at the target. It helps bring things down more quickly.

[DawnAskham]

Please bring back random rep tokens in renown boxed - thanks.

 

Other than that, I can't help as I am terrible at those mission - I have one character with all the gear and still gave up, so absent a return of the rep tokens, don't imagine I'll ever max that reputation.

[perotta]

Please bring back random rep tokens in renown boxed - thanks.

 

That used to be a thing? Nifty. If so, I'd second the suggestion.

[DawnAskham]

That used to be a thing? Nifty. If so, I'd second the suggestion.

 

When the renown was called command they were a thing.

 

Same basic system - level up - get box - open for gear.

 

Except instead of just a piece of might be useful (but most likely not) gear, they also included rep tokens, gifts, mats, schematics, and empty shells for appearance.

[Darev]

The bare minimums, for "expert" PVE space mission players, is to have your ship FULLY equiped (every single slot) and Tier 6 for the main 6 spots.

 

It CAN be done that way, but it's VERY difficult.

 

Save up some credits, buy some Tier 7 parts off the GTN

Farm the non heroic missions as much as you can to build up your tokens.

 

Watch the videos.

 

When those missions first came out the Tier 7 were available via the Cartel Market and I bought several sets for my toons.

It STILL took me about a dozen tries to get past the first mission, while watching the video on my other computer practically sync'd to the one I was playing.

 

I haven't tried them recently, and it's been so long, I wouldn't be able to tell if the difficulty was increased or not.

[mcguireptr]

I am raging at this too, I gave up on even attempting heroic space missions; nothing is worth being this flipping hard.  but the stupid galactic season objectives needs 2 heroic space missions so here I am attempting them.  I can say these are absolutely ridiculous.  I watched a few youtube videos to see how others are doing them.  I go tall my upgrades and do exactly as they do in the video.  I mean even down to the exact seconds they are using their emp and extra shield.  I have all the upgrades to level 7.  I am weaving around like I see on the video but I cannot beat it.  

on Lorta Escort I got to the last few seconds with only 1 jedi fighter remaining.  Not only could I not finish him off I ended up dying with a 3 seconds left.  

There is no reason this needs to be this flipping hard.  

[Whykara]

14 minutes ago, mcguireptr said:

There is no reason this needs to be this flipping hard.  

I agree that heroic space missions are probably the most challenging solo PvE content in the game right now (apart from some horribly balanced KotFE/ET chapters). You definitely need nearly fully upgraded ship gear and all the special toys to stand a chance. But I like it that way. If you want easy, play literally anything else. Even the emperor drops like a fly nowadays, so it's nice to have at least some remnants of challenge still in the game. And the feeling of beating a heroic space mission for the first time is great

Edited January 7 by Whykara

[ThanderSnB]

13 minutes ago, mcguireptr said:

I am raging at this too, I gave up on even attempting heroic space missions; nothing is worth being this flipping hard.  but the stupid galactic season objectives needs 2 heroic space missions so here I am attempting them.  I can say these are absolutely ridiculous.  I watched a few youtube videos to see how others are doing them.  I go tall my upgrades and do exactly as they do in the video.  I mean even down to the exact seconds they are using their emp and extra shield.  I have all the upgrades to level 7.  I am weaving around like I see on the video but I cannot beat it.  

on Lorta Escort I got to the last few seconds with only 1 jedi fighter remaining.  Not only could I not finish him off I ended up dying with a 3 seconds left.  

There is no reason this needs to be this flipping hard.  

I haven't done these since 2014 or so. For me after I got full grade 7 parts, there were 2 space missions that I could fairly consistently beat like 60-70% win rate, another 3 space missions I could beat with enough tries like 20-30% win rate, and the last one I could never get down. After over 100 tries, I beat it once, got all the achievements done for those, and decided never to do heroic space missions again. I did get the rep to Legend, but only farmed the normal space missions. At the time, there was only one normal space mission that gave rep, so I spammed it on an army of alts. These days the rep is a lot easier to gain (lower level space missions give rep now). So anyways, I don't even attempt the weekly for heroic space missions. It's just not worth the stress.

[SteveTheCynic]

The key things are:

• The higher-tier railshooter missions suffer from what an old friend called "Nintendo moments" - those moments in e.g. Mario or whatever (whatever it is, it's NIntendo games on Nintendo consoles) where you must play in a pixel-perfect fashion, or you fail miserably.  Fortunately, the railshooter missions are 100% deterministic, so ==> that enemy is always exactly ==> there, and you can therefore learn the patterns.(1)
• The original complaint in this thread is that the reputation is too hard to finish since it requires completion of the Heroic missions to get the rep objects.  This isn't true any more, since it's now possible to play the mostest basickest space mission (Fondor Escort/Jablim Escort on the Operation Wossname mode) and get a rep object as a mission reward.

(1) This made me think of one time in 1982 or so, when I was in high school in the US(2).  The teacher in my French class took us out to an ice-cream parlour one day, and I watched this guy (not one of the class) playing a PacMan arcade machine.  Despite his business suit, and the briefcase by his feet, he had clearly mastered the patterns, since he was playing and playing and playing, and had been since before we arrived, and I saw him put exactly *no* quarters in the machine to keep playing, just up here, across there, down there, etc. and repeat once the level was cleared.  Seriously impressive.

[mcguireptr]

52 minutes ago, Whykara said:

If you want easy, play literally anything else. Even the emperor drops like a fly nowadays, so it's nice to have at least some remnants of challenge still in the game. And the feeling of beating a heroic space mission for the first time is great

I appreciate everything you said except "if you want easy, play literally anything else".  I said in my post I am only doing it because of the galactic season objectives.  I really would not be playing it otherwise as I do not enjoy challenges like this in a side mission.  I would actually prefer if the emperor was this frustrating and the space battles easier.  I am for climatic story challenges (dark souls etc) but not grindy side missions that are not connected to the story.  It makes it an annoying challenge that doesn't really have a story related payoff.  and the feeling of "finally" you get, imo is not worth the aggravation.  

[Whykara]

13 minutes ago, mcguireptr said:

I said in my post I am only doing it because of the galactic season objectives.

There are other objectives that are way easier, especially this week with the three companion objectives. Galactic season objectives are meant to be an incentive to try content you haven't tried before or otherwise wouldn't do. They are not mandatory, and you can choose which to complete and which to ignore ^^