The Old Republic's space combat detailed in PC Gamer

I've been less and less impressed with what I've been seeing as more of this game as been revealed and this pretty much finalizes it. I don't really see this as the 'engaging' space combat Bioware promised. Maybe they can actually make it work, but I'm going to be pay a lot less attention to this game.

Well then you should check out EVE or one of the new space games coming out. SWTOR's focus is on ground combat.

As already pointed out "tunnel shooter" is not exactly a dirty phrase, Starfox being a great example of one done well in several iterations.

A bit like Lylat Wars? Nice addon tbh, playing it because it's a contiunation of KOTOR. Think those who wanted a fully-fledged space combat built in probably didn't think of the extra 2-3 years of development time that would have caused.

I am hoping that BioWare will release a video on the space combat this month or next month. I can't even express an opinion until I see it. I am not jumping on the text band wagon any longer.

I think part of the reason they are doing a tunnel shooter is that they're afraid of the coding and various requirements needed for an open-space shooter.

But they don't really have to spend lots of time or effort with it. For one thing, the ships don't have to be done in huge, glorious detail; in fact, the smaller they are, the more accurate capital ships look in comparison. (X-Wing and TIE Fighter both had this problem slightly. Just by looking at it, Star Destroyers were waaaaay too small, as were several other vessels. It wasn't a deal-breaker; I didn't much notice after a pretty good fight. But other times, you're just scratching your head, wondering what they were thinking.)

So do small starfighters and freighters/transports. For ships with more than one crew, just do it like you do in most raid interfaces: allow the ship's captain to promote people to positions like pilot, gunner, engineer, operator, etc.

Then those people get a special toolbar with the abilities their position has. Pilots handle raw movement and positioning, and perhaps have some cooldown abilities for dodges (to help mitigate damage). Gunners are self-explanatory. Engineers balance working on the shields (damage mitigation), powering up weapons (damage buff), and repairs (healing). Operators handle sensors and communications, so they'd get abilities like various forms of CC and removing the same from the ship.

Everyone would see the same ol' main screen: freighter/transport lumbering around space, fighting stuff. They might have some extra UI things for their station, though: gunners might have rangefinding stuff, operators have radius indicators for sensors and PBAOE debuffs and such, engineers might get a color-coded ship indicator (so they'll know how damaged the ship is), etc.

As for how much "space" there is in an area, just make it a zone; if any ship hits the boarder, the pilot (for starfighters) or captain (for transports) makes the decision to jump to hyperspace, or turn the ship around 180 degrees and keep fighting.

Doing this gives lots of extra options. Guilds could have their own capital ships, and fight each other in space in PVP combat; they can earn special extras for their guild ships like better weapons, shields, and armor, buffs for guildmate's ships, debuffs for enemy ships (like tractor beams to slow down the enemy), etc. All of these could be targetable systems that have to be taken out to survive. (I'd put weapons into groups, aka batteries, to save on the number of targetable objects. Helps cut down on the amount of thinking the servers have to keep up with.)

Hell, you might even initiate a boarding action, maybe make guildmates fight regular PVP against enemy guilds. If the enemy wins, they can auto-destroy something; if they loose, they rez back on their own ship.

Just sayin', it's an idea. Maybe someone at Bioware would be interested...

The thing about SW: TOR is that, because it's Star Wars, there will be a large portion of people who will vocally hate on it no matter /what/ it turns out to be.

Star Wars is too much a part of pop culture, and too much a part of many people's lives. As such, most of the people who care enough to have an opinion on it, typically have a strong opinion. Many people see Star Wars as personal, as /theirs/ somehow.

So, it doesn't matter /what/ Bioware does, there will always be very visible hater faction, no matter how good the game is, or isn't.

Me? I plan to try the game out, make my /own/ decision on it, and ignore all the melodrama as thoroughly as I can.

I just want to point out two things:

First, somebody mentioned that bioware always does 3-4 big missions + endgame. Well, they changed that in Mass Effect 2, switching to slew of misions and a 4 story missions happening when you complete percentage of the your sqadmate misions. I don't know about you, but I found the story in Mass Effect a bit ... lacking, compared to KOTOR, Jade Empire and ME 1 (but not Dragon Age - this game looked to me like an MORPG in terms of story, that is to say - poor)

Second, Bioware is its worst enemy in overhyping this game. As more informations get revealed, more people will find that it doesn't match their expectations.

I honestly am over the hype about story and content thats being pushed out with this game. I want to know if it has more then that to stand on or not. If its not a great story set in a great sandbox style game then I am not interested and will not buy it. I will wait for it to either go free to play or offer a trial and see what I want to see and that will be it for it. I am done with the hype its put up or shut up time for this game and its press if they want my money.

Who cares? This is not a flight sim. It's an rpg. Any space content at all just extra. People who are complaining are morons who don't understand the KOTOR franchise at all and should STFU.

I'll still be playing TOR for the amazing ground game design.
BioWare has already proven to me (through other games) their ability to create compelling content; however, I must assert that space combat is as integral to the Star Wars universe as Jedi vs Sith or Republic vs Empire. It is, after all called STAR wars and not just 'interplanetary' wars.

As a huge fan of the Wing Commander series (WCP was the bomb!), I am/was really hoping for a much more free-flight space flight & combat system than their current 'tunnel flight' version.

My guess is that free-flight systems and exciting content to populate it with probably weren't part of their original project scope. I think it's smart of them to focus on a solid ground game for now.

My hope remains that they might, just maybe, have plans to release a free-flight combat system in a future upgrade.

Time will tell. I'm extremely excited about everything they've revealed so far (including the tunnel space flight) and can't wait to play. In the long term, however, I'd be disappointed and quickly absent if space combat didn't get a major upgrade.

Great job so far BioWare, keep it up!