Stormtrooper's guide to Galaxies

I just love autumn, or fall for my single north-American reader. It's colorful yet menacing, beautiful yet scary. And even though the Halloween is not celebrated in my part of the planet, I like to read thrillers and horrors during this part of the year, especially during the September. November however, belongs good old STAR WARS books and this year I combined my early and late autumn reading together.

I remember it like yesterday when the daring Death Troopers was the newest entry in the STAR WARS library. Since 2009 I haven’t found time to read it, until last year and upon finishing the last page I saw once again the illness of cheap sci-fi shlocks – the advertisement.

Is it finally time, to try this game which just like the troopers, lives after its death? Why not, I always wanted to roleplay a Stormtrooper - the faceless hero of the Empire. There are many versions of the game, but I went with the OG version - the SWGemu. It has the best documentation and except for the client side, the game is completely free software (AGPLv3). You can check the source for the Launcher, Engine3, Core3 and tools on their own Git instance.

Their installation manual is well written and quite precise, but there are few extra steps for running the game on GNU\Linux. Simply obtain the game and install it via Lutris. Then follow the guide to Step 3, but download the Windows version of the launcher. Open the Lutris and in library, right click on the newly installed STAR WARS Galaxies and pick configure > game options and change the executable path to your launcher location. Save the configuration and run the game. Then follow the rest of the guide.

After much smoother installation than expected, I created the account. Luckily my handle was free, but the registration is hand reviewed, and it seems that nobody is in hurry to validate my non-synthetic heritage. So I spend next few days by reloading my mailbox and hastily reading the game manual[**]. As soon as my account was activated, I fired up my endless Rush playlist and jumped into character creation.

server: Finalizer (SWGemu default)
profession: marksman
race: human

And so I arrived in Bestine, capital of Tatooine around 1 ABY. “Hello, anybody here?” I asked in the planetary chat with no response, even when the server population reached 180 people. I saw a few new messages in my inbox, one being from the Imperial Navy. They asked me to join the ranks of Stormtroopers as the ever present threat of the Rebels, assassins, smugglers and other scum looms over the Empire. I wasted no time and found an Imperial recruiter Protacke Daxevi near town square, who told me right away that my faction score is too low and I should do some quests for the Empire as freelancer first. There is this Imperial garrison next to the town, which looks like good place to start.

A terminal gave me quest to go kill some random rebels in desert and destroy their hologram replication machine. I equipped my rusty CDEF carbine and went north of the Bestine to deal with this Rebel scum. As I approach the location from south, I see few Wookies in distance. So I lay down to take good shot from distance, when suddenly… I am attacked by wild Bantha and in few hits I am dead. So I contact my local clone dealership to see what are my options and my guy tells me that my new body can be ready to go in few seconds back in Bestine with little fee of item condition drop and lowered health. So I try again, this time from hills on the east. But as soon as come to the location and crouch to get better view I am killed by pack of Scyks. Bestine cloning lab it is – stats lowered again.

Let's regroup. I went to local bazaar to get some better weapon. I bought DH17 carbin which cost me my life savings. Then I got a message from seller, that I should come a get the gun in person in Mos Eisley. So I spawned my landspeeder, created waypoint and off I went. After getting the weapon, I stopped in the local cantina to get healing and buffs from performers there. Next step: Kill some space pests to gain skill and confidence with the weapon. This went smooth, but I was unable to level up my skills because that costs money which I don't have. Time to pick some quest in local terminal.

"Exterminate wildlife for the Empire" sounds like something I am up to. The Rebels samizdat will have to wait for now, because the Emperor demands clean roads. I accept the quest and immediately atempt to spawn my landspeeder to get to the location. No landspeeder in my inventory. It seems it was one use only. I tighten my shoe ties and on foot I go. After a long while I entered the insect hive that threatens fellow citizens of the Empire. Obliterated in few shots, easy. But since the quest was taken from a "terminal" and not an "Imperial terminal", I got no imperial faction points. But 2k credits is nice too. It's time to deal with the Wookies.

While in the desert, traversing the terrain without a landspeeder is super boring, so I stop in closest settlement to look for any fast travel option available. I am unable to buy any vehicle, but there is a spaceport. 100 bucks for "instant" teleport is the beast deal ever. Instant is in quotes, because I had to wait 4 minutes for next shuttle to arrive. Upon arriving to the Bestine again, I went directly to the Rebel hideout. Approached slowly, aimed and dealt with Wookies one by one. Base exploded and 3000 credits arrived to my bank account directly from the Emperor, earning 10 Imperial points too. Not much, but it's a good start.

With better items it took me 5 missions to get over the 200 Palpatine points. Some missions are harder than other, but they all boil down to destroying rebel infrastructure somewhere in the desert. During this loop I even found out how to recall my landspeeder! (Ctrl + D) And for last two missions I got help from only living person who was active in the planetary chat. Bounty hunter who agreed to help aspiring Stormtrooper in his spare time. He even showed me his city on Naboo, where he is building a giant R2.

After proving my loyalty, Ms. Daxevi was more than happy to welcome me in the Empire forces. I asked for the sweet armor and she offered me all pieces for okay prices. But I soon realized that the prices were not in credits, but rather in the stupid faction points, with prices varying from 2k for the helmet to over 5k for the chest piece. Full armor costs almost 20k points. If 5 missions can get you ~200 points, it will take me about 100 missions to afford the full set.

So I hit up my bounty hunter friend who is way experienced than me and asked him if he wants to help the Empire to put this place to the order. Luckily, he had nothing better to do. We finished couple of high level Destroy missions, but this wasn't effective. Firstly, all XP and FP from NPC kill goes to player who does the most damage - no last hit policy. Only the mission reward (money and FP) are split between grouped players. (CreatureManagerImplementation.cpp line 668)

Also, the awardFactionStanding function from FactionManager.cpp line 90 stands:

Where the adjustFactor is read from faction_manager.lua and is set to 1 for almost all creatures. Which means the NPC levels (and the amount of FP you get for killing them) is static and only modifier for spawning higher level enemies is your weapon skills (Ctrl + C, middle section on left) which determines the mission difficulty in the terminal. Consider too, that while playing solo destroy missions you can be rewarded as much as 6000 credits and 200 faction points pretty soon while grinding. When in group, I was unable to spawn mission with reward higher than 12000 credits and 250 faction points, which again are split. With group of 10 players, you get even less then alone.

So, the optimal way to play these missions is to solo, buff and refresh the mission until you get around 6K credits reward. Accept the mission and refresh the terminal again until the second mission has the same direction as the first one and your reward is at least 5K. Spawn the swoop, finish missions, repeat. This way, you can do two missions in ~10 minutes giving you 10k credits and 500 faction points (including FPs for NPC kills too). If you are lucky, you can get random rebel base spawn on the way there/back which can give you 100-200 more points.

In order to optimize the mission time it's important to invest in good weapon. There are only two important factors to look at: max dmg and speed everything over 300 max dmg and 1.0 speed is considered good weapon, at least for carbine - the jack of all trades. It is okay to look for such toys over bazaar, but make sure to check the player vendors too in most right bazaar tab. These are more expensive, but you get what you pay for. However, the best way to get good laser stick is to visit the cantina on Tatooine and order one directly from weapon smith player. There is always someone more than happy to help you. I got mine E11 carbine from Jeres.

Many players will say that more efficient way how to farm FPs is to kill Rebel NPCs on places where they spawn in high numbers like Rori Starport or Naboo weapons facility. I had to disagree. When starting as new player, you can easily get swarmed by them and they will drop 100 credits and 20 FP each. Until you manage to get some strong weapon which can cut trough them fast, it's not worth the hassle. Then again, for that weapon you need a lot of money...

Quickly about the recon missions. They can be accessed via the same terminal and the goal is to go to some place in desert, stay there, and return. Sharp readers can spot a loop, however implementing it is impossible. There is no command that would auto-walk player to a target. You can partially overcome this with a droid and /patrol and /follow command, but still, you can't target the mission waypoint nor access the mission terminal with commands. Then there is the speeder condition. The Swoop will last ~7 hours and even 7 hour Recon shift might not always cover the repairs.

I stuck to the destroy missions and by the time I bought half of the armor, I was drowning in credits so I wanted to "buy the influence". Every player can give you his faction points with /delegate command. Smugglers can even directly buy FPs from faction recruiters. You can offer to buy these points from other players, but expect it will be costly. Best place to do so is again... the cantina. So after grinding for everything except for torso, helmet and shoulder pads, I went to the Mos Eisley to buy me the missing parts. When I finally got the armor, went to insure it in closest cloning facility so it will deteriorate slower.

With my new shiny armor I went sight seeing. You can visit the escape module in which R2 and 3PO fell on Tatooine, Jabbas palace with my boi Boba, Ewok tree villages and even (now) abandoned Rebel base on Yavin IV. In Jabbas palace, there was the original Max Rebo band, not the special edition one. On Endor, I wasn't able to find any bunker resembling the location from the Return of the Jedi. Maybe it wasn't built yet? I also went to see the old Mos Espa pod racing track from my favorite episode and even raced one circle on it. Since it was soon after the server rebooted I got track record and placed first in leaderboard. (I bet you can't beat mine 504,56 seconds) But you can visit many more. These points of interests are all marked in you map by default. If you want to meet "the management" you can check these coordinates on Naboo:

Speaking of which, there are some good story oriented missions too. I can recommend visiting Lt. Harburik in Mos Eisley. He has some problem with a Stormtrooper who wants to paint his armor lavender. Sgt. Tokai and her colleagues are dealing with Death Star rubble that fell on on Yavin IV - that was nice. But the best mission set you can get is from Lt. Sabol near Bestine starport on Tatooine. Other than that you can experiment with some non-combat skills. I wanted to start an Imperial metal band Durasteellica. Even though I managed to get some droids to do me background I gave up because the xantha instrument wasn't presnet in SWGemu. It was added after the dreaded Combat Update. Also I wasn't able to convince Darth Vader to join our band coz he wouldn't perform Enter the sandplanet. Our nalargon R2 unit had issues with Master of droids. And to be honest Ride the Force lightning and Fade to Dark side weren't popular either.

Here are some key takeaways from my winter sessions:

• Use "/chatr join genchat" to join only living chat
• Early on, kill vermin around towns for easy XP.
• Go meet people in cantinas.
• Take medic and musician buffs. Pay for them with /tip if you can.
• Rank up so you can hold more faction points.
• Buy Swoop, not Speeder bike. And always have 2 so you won't get stuck.
• Get your self weapon with speed 1.0 or lower and max dam 300 or more. And remember...

...becoming a Stormtrooper is hard. Don't make fun of them for bad aim.

SWGemu is free software project run by community for 20 years now. If you want to help them pay bills for the server, consider throwing some money their way. For time well spent, I sure did.