Fleet Battles: Bespin 1-A too hard

Hi all,

I did a quick search to see if I was repeating anything and couldn't find it. If it's already there... I'm sorry.

I'm fairly new to the game, and just hit level 60... so the ships stuff just opened up for me. I have only some really basic stuff that they pretty much give you. I leveled up ships as best I could, and found out that gathering things to improve the ships is seemingly not really available. And I tried the first fleet battle based on the little guided tour, and it crushes me every time. I've tried it four times, and I don't come close.

So, what the heck am I supposed to do? This is the FIRST battle you can do with ships, which to me would suggest they'd make it easy since people starting out probably don't have great ships to play with. It's frustrating, and hurts my enjoyment of the game.

Am I just missing something? Or is the game balance way off for this part of the game?

Replies

  • Fleet Battles came around a long time after ships did, so they were made in mind of that. You're supposed to accrue your fleet, get them arena sharp and then be able to make the journey into Fleet Battles. The starter ships you're given when you unlock Ships also aren't the best, so you're going to have to spend time farming those up and learning which work best for what purpose.
    Also, if you think 1-A Normal is hard, just wait until 5-E Normal
    #MakeTuskensGreat
    tenor.gif
  • DarthPorg3724
    97 posts Member
    edited February 2019
    Don't start farming the ships they gave you its a waste of time. Even though it may get you started, in the long run, they suck farm the ships that you have the underlying pilot farmed up or are farming. Ahlnold and mobile gamer both have fantastic videos on the best ships. I have played since ships came out and run chimera in arena all seven-star ships and can't beat all the stage 5 hard nodes, so it will take some time and the underlying pilot has to be very farmed up.
  • So, the yellow popup text bubbles where characters from the cantina tell you to try things are giving me bad advice? Don't try the story mode fleet battles first? That feels... counter-intuitive.

    How do I farm stuff? Ship plans are all in battles I haven't unlocked yet.

    I have Ahsoka Tano at level 60, with the first level of purple gear upgrades, and her special abilities leveld up some. Her crew power is listed at 5688. I got her ship up to level 54, the basic attack up to level 2, and the bonus ability that comes with the pilot up to level 2. The total power is listed at 9022. But when I use her in the fleet battle, she gets crushed immediately. Her ship is the most powerful I have, and she dies first and quickly every time.

    This feels like a flaw in the design of the game. I'm a software engineer, and have been playing video games since they were a thing. This feels like bad game design... at least for this part of the game. There should be a much clearer way to get started on ships. As it stands, I don't even know what to do to farm stuff for ships... as I thought the fleet battles was supposed to be what people do first and where you would go to farm stuff for ships.

    I'm annoyed right now.
  • I know how you feel. Fleet stuff is my least-liked part of the game. I put up with it because I have to.

    My personal thoughts:

    You're daily quests should now include one battle in the fleet arena. There is a daily reward for completing an arena match that will include fleet store tokens and a fleet arena payout daily that will have more. Those tokens can be spend on shards for your fleet or pilots. On the upside, if you need him, Darth Vader and his ship appear in the fleet store, though not frequently so try saving some tokens from day to day so you can get them when they appear.

    Try to focus on which ships you upgrade, as getting ship building materials is not as easy as credits. There is no "Credit Heist" for fleets.

    The Ship Ability material challenge (and the Fleet Store) are the only ways to regularly farm Zeta materials for you characters, so don't do what I did and spend all your fleet tokens on pilots. You will eventually need the ships to be more powerful. The ship ability material challenge starts paying zeta mats at tier 3, which requires a 5-star Executrix. To get the 5-star Executrix you need five 4-star dark side ships.
  • Rath_Tarr
    4944 posts Member
    edited February 2019
    kdtipa wrote: »
    So, the yellow popup text bubbles where characters from the cantina tell you to try things are giving me bad advice? Don't try the story mode fleet battles first? That feels... counter-intuitive.

    How do I farm stuff? Ship plans are all in battles I haven't unlocked yet.

    I have Ahsoka Tano at level 60, with the first level of purple gear upgrades, and her special abilities leveld up some. Her crew power is listed at 5688. I got her ship up to level 54, the basic attack up to level 2, and the bonus ability that comes with the pilot up to level 2. The total power is listed at 9022. But when I use her in the fleet battle, she gets crushed immediately. Her ship is the most powerful I have, and she dies first and quickly every time.

    This feels like a flaw in the design of the game. I'm a software engineer, and have been playing video games since they were a thing. This feels like bad game design... at least for this part of the game. There should be a much clearer way to get started on ships. As it stands, I don't even know what to do to farm stuff for ships... as I thought the fleet battles was supposed to be what people do first and where you would go to farm stuff for ships.

    I'm annoyed right now.
    If you are indeed both of those things then you will know the meaning of PEBKAC.

    If you sign up for swgoh.gg we will be able to see your profile and give you specific advice.

    In general terms:
    * early on, capital ships aren't as important as fighters
    * crew are a big part of a ship's power and gear level is a big part of that - this is the key, particularly in the beginning
    * a weak ship with a strong pilot can beat a stronger ship with a weak pilot
    * put your strongest ships in your starting lineup - just one strong pilot wont cut it
    * you want a taunting tank in your starting lineup - Biggs is probably the most accessible
    * with only 3 ships on then starting line, focused fire, assists and stuns become even more important
  • Rath_Tarr wrote: »
    If you are indeed both of those things then you will know the meaning of PEBKAC.

    Wow... that's kind of harsh. You disagree that the game isn't set up well?

    Rath_Tarr wrote: »
    If you sign up for swgoh.gg we will be able to see your profile and give you specific advice.

    Hopefully this works: https://swgoh.gg/p/851634432/
  • Rath_Tarr
    4944 posts Member
    edited February 2019
    kdtipa wrote: »
    Rath_Tarr wrote: »
    If you are indeed both of those things then you will know the meaning of PEBKAC.

    Wow... that's kind of harsh. You disagree that the game isn't set up well?
    Blunt but on point.
    kdtipa wrote: »
    Rath_Tarr wrote: »
    If you sign up for swgoh.gg we will be able to see your profile and give you specific advice.

    Hopefully this works: https://swgoh.gg/p/851634432/
    It worked.

    General advice:
    * stop wasting resources on characters / ships you are not using and do not have plans for
    * focus what resources you have on your arena teams first
    * stars, levels, gear, abilities and mods are all important to characters and neglecting any one of them can undercut your work on the rest
    * for ships in particular, character gear level is important as it increases ship power and unlocks higjer ship ability levels
    * pay close attention to faction-specific ability bonuses and character leader abilities - typically the strongest squads are all the same faction; this is very important for squads, a bit less so for ships

    Ship advice:
    * Ahsoka and Consular are worth developing further
    * Clone Sargeant and Resistance X-Wing are not worth developing
    * Tie Fighter is well worth developing, especially since you seem to be favoring Executrix
    * If you are going with Executrix - and it is a solid choice - you will need to build up Dark Side fighters for its upgrade challenges
    * stop putting any more reaources into the other two capital ships

    From where you are now, I would:
    * run Executrix with Ahsoka, Consular, Resistance X-Wing starting, Clone Sergeant reinforcing
    * Gear up Tie Pilot ASAP to replace X-Wing
    * Decide whether you want to commit to Geonosians - Soldier, Spy, Sun-Fac - or go with a mix
    * Geos work well together but require heavy cantina energy and fleet store commitment
    * If you choose Geo, Sun-Fac will be your tank
    * if you want to stay mixed, Biggs is easier to build up but you will be tankless for Executrix challenges

    Then rhere's your squad arena team but that's another lengthy post.
  • kdtipa wrote: »
    Hi all,

    I did a quick search to see if I was repeating anything and couldn't find it. If it's already there... I'm sorry.

    I'm fairly new to the game, and just hit level 60... so the ships stuff just opened up for me. I have only some really basic stuff that they pretty much give you. I leveled up ships as best I could, and found out that gathering things to improve the ships is seemingly not really available. And I tried the first fleet battle based on the little guided tour, and it crushes me every time. I've tried it four times, and I don't come close.

    So, what the heck am I supposed to do? This is the FIRST battle you can do with ships, which to me would suggest they'd make it easy since people starting out probably don't have great ships to play with. It's frustrating, and hurts my enjoyment of the game.

    Am I just missing something? Or is the game balance way off for this part of the game?

    I would suggest getting Genosian ships from GW shards first. The Genosian ships will help you fight through all of the ship nodes the easiest with Ackbar as your capital ship
  • Spooderham
    78 posts Member
    edited February 2019
    Do you have a guild?

    Edit— Starter guilds are rubbish and you’re losing a lot of opportunity from guild events and tokens.
  • Btw even being at 5000+ fleet arena rank gives you 800 tokens or 2 buys per day.
  • Use endurance until your tie pilot is geared up. You will have synergies with your two best ships
  • kdtipa wrote: »
    Rath_Tarr wrote: »
    If you are indeed both of those things then you will know the meaning of PEBKAC.

    Wow... that's kind of harsh. You disagree that the game isn't set up well?
    That's ****, you're right, this part is completely poorly designed for new players. It should be way more accessible. The fact that it came later is no excuse, the 1st couple of battle should be more friendly for a player that just unlocked ships and not expect the player to farm for weeks before beeing able to do it... It's as if they made the first LS battles impossible to win with your starting roster toons.
  • Ahsoka is a great start, but she's too squishy for your initial lineup, especially early on. Use her as a reinforcement. Once her reinforce ability is maxed, she's one of the best tank killers. Speaking of tanks: As others have already pointed out, you need a tank as well. Add 2 attackers to your starting lineup who can either take some initial damage – such as Kylo Unmasked and his TIE Silencer, who can both be farmed from the same Cantina node – or ships with stealth or high evasion, such as the Imperial TIE.

    Farm Bossk and his Hound's Tooth as soon as you can clear their DS / LS nodes with the help of a strong ally. There are many seemingly impossible nodes in fleet, and the solution is usually to further develop your Hound's Tooth and try again a few weeks later. Keep in mind that pilot gear and ability levels greatly contribute to ship GP (and to ship speed, health, protection etc.) Mods are important too. Mod type, stats and color are irrelevant for fleet, but make sure they're 5 dots and level 15, or 6 dots later on.
  • Hounds Tooth is a great tank but Bossk is on Dark Side 9-B which is a long way off for someone who just unlocked fleet.
  • As an update, part of the problem was with my knowledge. I still think the early fights are too hard with too little explanation for a beginner... but practice definitely helped some. I started to understand some of the individual abilities a little better, and managed to survive better. I've gotten through the first two fleet battles. Ahsoka was dying really easily, but I didn't understand that the Consular's ability to work with another ship and increase their protective value could go above the starting value. So, buffing her right away changed things a lot. And the challenges are a little easier than the fleet battles, so I've been doing those.

    I appreciate all the information you guys have been giving me. And hopefully... EA decides to make it a little easier to get started with ships.
  • Glad to hear you are doing better. There is a lot more info to be had when you are ready for it.

    The game in general and fleet and mods in particular have fairly steep learning curves but that's not uncommon for strategy games.
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