The space missions in SWTOR are a blast. They are just plain fun from start to finish. Yes, they are on rails. Yes, they are pretty easy at first. But man, I woke up wanting to play that minigame inside TOR rather than questing. That says a lot.

I got my ship around level 18 and immediately tried out the space missions. By the time I was done, I was almost level 20. These things are short five-minute bursts of action that give a lot of XP your first run through them. I got out of one mission having received over 15k XP, and that doesn’t count the XP from the kills in-minigame.

There are various objectives to these games. The three I have played were very different. One was an escort mission where you had to keep fighters off of a shuttle. The next was a dogfight in an asteroid field. Then the third was an assault on a space station. All were cool. The part where I went “Holy ***” and was hooked was during the escort mission. We’re flying along, killing stuff and *zoom two corvettes come out of hyperspace in front of us, blasting away and forcing us to change course. It was awesome. Going up against capital ships is sweet.

The rails stuff may get old, but I expect that Bioware has more up their sleeve with this. In the meantime, it’s cool. And BTW: flying through the asteroid field, even on rails, is not a walk in the park when all hell is breaking loose around you.

Jac’s tips for the day:

• Play the first mission without any ship upgrades. It will make you appreciate the upgrades you get later (like missile capacity). Then immediately go upgrade.

• The game teaches you to select four targets for missiles and then fire. This forces a slow missile re-load process. Alternatively, I figured out a couple missions in that you can quickly fire four missiles at one target by just clicking four times real quick. Makes it easier to take out high-value targets.

Cheers!

Jac