All components and how they work in Star Wars: Squadrons

Components are the life and blood of your starfighter in Star Wars: Squadrons. They make up the loadout of your vessel, making it a unique starfighter, even on your team. Your squad of five can have two pairs of X-wing Fighter classes, but both of them can be doing something differently. One might be better suited to damaging a capital ship, while the other is made for hunting down enemy player starfighters and dogfighting. It all comes down to the components inside your ship. Here are all of those components, and what they do.

All components

Auxiliaries

Auxiliaries are active components on your starfighter. These ones are special use that you can activate to assist you combat, usually in the form of a missile, a helpful droid resupply, or a powerful beam attack.

• Assault Shield: Directs all shields to the front of your ship, protecting your front but leaving your back exposed.
• Automatic Ion Cannon: A secondary weapon that releases ion-based attacks, eliminating shields.
• Beam Cannon: A composite-beam that fires a straight attack, ideal for larger vessels. You cannot maneuver while it is active.
• Cluster Missile: Fire up to four missiles at a locked-on target.
• Concussion Missile: A standard missile that chases a locked-on target, or can be fired straight in front of you without a target.
• Goliath Missile: A larger concussion missile that unleashes a heavy explosion, perfect for multiple targets.
• Ion Bomb: A proton bomb designed to release an ion attack, disrupting electronics and shields. A close-engagements attack.
• Ion Missile: A ion version of a missile, disrupting electronics and shields upon impact.
• Ion Torpedo: A ion version of the torpedo, capable of being fired from heavy ranges to damage a ship’s shields.
• Multi-lock Missile: A barrage of missiles you can aim at multiple targets, hitting several units at the same time, such as different starships and turrets.
• Proton Bomb: A close-range bomb that deals a massive amount of damage to all nearby targets.
• Proton Torpedo: It’s a torpedo designed exclusively to be used against capital ships.

Countermeasures

Countermeasures are active components that you want to use to defend yourself against enemy missiles. You should know when an enemy has you locked-on, and when that happens, you can expect a heavy missile or launcher coming straight after you.

• Chaff Particles: A heavy particle cloud that comes from your starfighter’s engines. You can use it to remove a lock-on from an enemy ship, and disrupt any missiles that come from other starfighters or a capital ship to protect yourself.
• Seeker Warheads: Fire a barrage of defensive missiles that the enemy shot from behind.
• Sensor Inverter: A close-range burst that scrambles the sensors of an enemy vessel. Not something you want to use from a distance.
• Sensor Jammer: Prevent any lock-on attempts and any missiles heading straight for you. It’s useful at any range, but comes with a heavy cooldown timer.

Hulls

The hull is a passive component that is also on your starfighter. It determines the speed, defenses, how quickly an enemy can lock on to you, and how much your armor replenishes.

• Dampener Hull: A hull designed to make it tough for starfighters and capital ships to lock-on to it, but it has less health as a result.
• Deflector Hull: A hull made to add more protections and have more shields as a result, but it has less health as a result. Sheild health will regenerate, but a hull’s armor will not.
• Ferroceramic Hull: A basic hull with no clear bonuses to any one component of your starfighter. Ideal as the balanced choice.
• Laminasteel Hull: A sturdy hull made for withstanding heavy, physical attacks, but is weak to beams and lasers.
• Light / Agile Hull: A lightweight hull made for your starfighter to be incredibly fast, but it’s exposed to taking heavy damage from even minor attacks.
• Reflec Hull: This hull is covered in a reflect polymer, making it invisible to radars, for a certain distance. It’s weaker and easily damaged.
• Reinforced Hull: A heavy hull that, while not making your starfighter faster, is great to take heavy damage.

Engines

How fast is your starfighter? The engine determines the speed and ability for your starfighter to accelerate quickly. It also determines how fast your maneuverability during a battle, making you a harder target.

• Jet / Ion Jet engine: This engine gives more energy to your starfighter’s boosters, giving you great bursts of speed when you need it.
• Microthrust Engine: This engine players more energy into your micro thrusters so you can make fast, agile turns, but your overall speed and acceleration are lower.
• Propulsion Engine: This engine makes it so you can quickly accelerate and stop much faster, ideal for keeping up with enemies and preventing others from getting behind you.
• SLAM Engine: The SLAM engine generates an afterburner fuel at lower energy levels, making sure your afterburners are always available during a fight. But it lowers your overall speed. The more energy you put into the engines, the faster your afterburners generate.
• Sublight / Twin Ion Engine: The standard, basic engine that every starfighter wants to use. It’s a balanced piece of equipment that does not excel in any category.
• Thrust Engine: This engine places a heavier emphasis on overall speed, but your acceleration and deceleration are not as good, along with your maneuverability.
• Unstable Engine: This engine removes all of the safety protocols for you, and gives you incredibly speeds, but you have lower health. However, when you die, the engine explodes, potentially damaging nearby enemy ships.

Primary Weapons

The primary attacking lasers of your starfighter. Your laser cannons have a variety of choices, and they are an active component. It determines the firing pattern of your vessel, and how much damage your ship can do with pure lasers.

• Auto-Aim / Guided Laser Cannon: The lasers automatically fire at the target in front of you, but they do less damage.
• Burst Cannon: A semi-automatic cannon that fires a short burst of lasers every time you pull the trigger. You want to have a good aim for this one.
• Guided Burst / Guided Quad Cannons: A guided burst and quad cannon that automatically locks on to your foes, hitting with long-range lasers, but has a short delay after its burst. They do less damage than the unguided lasers.
• Guided Rotary Cannon: These cannons have a short wind up time before firing, firing a heavy burst of rounds after it charges. It does less damage than the unguided version.
• Ion Cannon: A ion-based shot that does more damage to enemy shields than it does the starfighter’s hull and armor.
• Laser Cannon: The standard weaponry for any starfighter pilot. It’s a balanced choice, and doesn’t exceed in any category.
• Plasburst Laser / Plasburst Cannon: A cannon you freely fire or charge up to deal more damage. The longer you charge up this attack, the more damage it inflicts upon impact, but it has a short-range.
• Rapid Fire Cannon: A fast cannon that has a low capacity, but it has a short-range, making it a quick-firing close-range fighter’s choice.
• Rotary Cannon: A slow-starting cannon that comes with a heavy barrage when it releases, and can continually fire for an extended period of time.

Shields

A shield protects your starfighter from a variety of attacks, such as missiles, laser fire, and torpedoes. It’s a layer overtop of your starfighter’s hull, that when lowered, comes back after a period of time.

• Conversion Shield: A shield that consumes your laser ammo to create a brief invulnerable shield around your vessel when your original shields go down.
• Deflector Shield: A balanced deflector shield capable of protecting you in combat. It’s a standard-issue choice, used by most pilots.
• Fortified Deflector: A heavy shield that can take a huge amount of damage, but it has a slow recharge rate.
• Nimble Deflector: A fast shield that can’t take too much enemy fire, but recharges quickly.
• Overloaded Shield: A high-risk shield that reduces your overall damage. It projects a powerful shield around your vessel, but it will not replenish after it goes down.
• Ray Shield: A specific shield designed to defend you against enemy laser fire, but was not made to withstand heavier objects, such as missiles or torpedoes.
• Resonant Shield: A shield that routes additional energy given to it to your lasers when it is at full capacity, but reduces your maximum shields and has no shield decay.
• Scrambler Shield: A shield that emits a small frequency while at full power that makes it harder for enemy starfighters to lock-on to your vessel. But it takes a longer time to start recharging its shields.