How Star Wars: Squadrons Players Will Be Able To Customize Their Ships

If you're excited about the possibility of piloting one of Star Wars' ships and making it your own, you're probably over the moon about the prospect of Star Wars: Squadrons. Even better, Electronic Arts has released a Pilot Briefing to explain how players can customize their ships in the game.

Star Wars: Squadrons features some iconic sights from the franchise, including ships from both sides of the skirmish. They include:

• X-wing starfighter
• BTL-A4 Y-wing assault starfighter/bomber
• RZ-1 A-wing interceptor
• UT-60D U-wing starfighter/support craft
• TIE fighter
• TIE bomber
• TIE interceptor
• TIE reaper

Each ship has different handling and functionality quirks while sharing base features such as weapons, countermeasures, hull outfitting, engines, auxiliary abilities, and similar controls. A power management system allows you to divert power to engines, lasers, or shields as needed. Having certain systems maxed out gives you certain advantages, but the power of your systems must also be balanced with other capabilities. You also have to monitor your ship's health.

In Star Wars: Squadrons, you can earn Requisition points as you play, which will help you unlock components that change how your ship functions. Each ship has seven component slots, except for ships without shield generators, which only have six: primary weapons, countermeasures, two auxiliary abilities slots, hull, shields, and engines. 

Four of the slots — weapons, countermeasures, and auxiliary — are situational and impact gameplay. The other three are passive and alter your ship's general performance. Basically, you'll need to balance the stats of these components to make tradeoffs that will affect how your ship performs in battle.

You could make your ship more maneuverable, which would reduce its hull strength. You could choose shields that protect against blaster fire, but don't have much protection against missiles. Finding the right mix for your needs will take some experimentation and fine-tuning. In the end, you'll hopefully have a starfighter designed to best support your squadron.

In Star Wars: Squadrons, you can customize both your pilots and ships to make them more aesthetically acceptable. As a rebel, you start off with an orange flight suit, and if you're fighting for the Empire, you'll get a black one. You earn Glory points while playing and get to mix and match your character's head (including non-human unlockable options for the New Republic) and voice styles. Eventually, you can get creative thanks to full-body flight suits, legwear, torso apparel, helmets, and gloves. The Pilot Briefing assures fans these choices have been sourced from across the Star Wars universe to be authentic, but the selection also includes new, unique items.

You can outfit your ship's cockpit with knick-knacks, holograms, miniatures and other decorations. Your enemies also get to see your design choices in a kill-cam review of their defeat (although there's an option to only show the default states of other fighters, too). Starfighters can also get customized hull and paint jobs, stickers, and other fun items. As you go, you'll be able to unlock more loadouts: every ship in the game gets up to five different component and cosmetic configurations. After that, it'll be time to enjoy some epic space battles with your fully-personalized ship!