Assaulting XWA Starships

By Krayt, Rogue 7

There have been several changes from X-wing vs. Tie Fighter when it comes to starships. The first being that most of them have a much longer range than they did previously, though their long range turrets are actually much less accurate than they were in XvT -- short range lasers remain about the same. While the debate of difficulty of the longer turbo ranges is still open, it is quite clear the creators of XWA wanted to make attacking a capitol ship a continuous effort. If you escape beyond the laser range to recharge the chances are good that the cap ship shields will have improved their strength. This requires you to constantly dodge the turbo laser fire and stay within range of the cap ship.

Another change is the omission of actual turrets on most starships. They now have a little box that is labelled weapon systems on your targeting computer. Shooting these has the same effect as blowing up the turrets in XvT.

Also, starships now recharge their shields at a much faster rate, not faster than you can deal out the damage, but enough that it can recharge to full strength if you get occupied with something else.

Starships now target and shoot at all incoming warheads that are locked on to them, even from far away distances. This makes normal tactics of locked warheads almost useless. Like XvT, the best approach is to dumbfire all of your warheads at the capitol ship. Dumbfiring requires a bit of practice to perfect, but it is better than seeing your torpedoes explode under a hail of laser fire a few meters away from the hull of your target. Many of the blindspot film clips that are available for download demonstrate the dumbfiring technique that should be used in order to insure that your warheads hit your target.

Yet another noticeable change within the flight engine is that colliding with a capital is no longer fatal, instead your shields will absorb damage. This makes getting into the blindspots a little easier. With the provided blindspot data, you should be able to easily take down just about any of the starships in the game with a little practice.