u/mediumvillain

theyre a little harder as multiplayer characters but by far the fastest builds ive ever done were firebug & stunt runner

where

Not by crashing, but so far I've won a race by .01 of a second, and once I beat Kestar by milliseconds so it displayed the same time on the results and he even smugly said "I win" before getting 2nd

you gotta keep in mind that for most of the final month before release and whole first month after release there were probably only like 2 people working on this stuff.

missing a 100% shot isnt a gamebreaking bug that they need to stop everything to fix, its a display mistake. you probably had a 1-in-20 chance to miss so its not extremely likely to happen often.

theyre fine as a narrative thing that advances over a handful of runs where you're doing podracing practice for the championship, but when you're replaying act 3 for the 20th they should be skippable somehow.

Some of them are so easy any build can beat them with minimal effort, and in one of them the head-to-head opponent is fast enough (and gets a last lap rubberbanding boost) that if your build isnt online yet or you dont have strong offensive abilities he could steal a league token at the finish.

The podracing challenges arent part of the run progression, and they're even a little bit glitchy (whenever you finish a podracing challenge the post-race text will be whatever it said for the previous event like "finished 2nd", "16/8 takedowns" or whatever). There's one sorta tacked-on Sebulba favor that tries to give you something for completing them but saving some credits on a faulty part repair after you've already completed all of the events on the planet is not worth a favor slot.

I mean this is why the game needed a post-act 3 to do runs in without as much narrative, the campaign just wasnt designed for it.

I got that encounter with Hibi in an act 2 run after restarting the campaign trying to unlock the rest of the parts. There was an option to pay her 4000 credits for the fully upgraded part and it said "Receive Ramming Jet III", but I got that encounter as the 2nd event in the run and didnt have 4000 credits. There were no previous encounters in that run so it didnt require a chain, but I had done the two-part encounter chain for Ramming I & II in act 1 and it did unlock them in the parts list finally.

I already did that same encounter once before very early on when I was first playing the campaign. Hibi offered me a part she made and there was a selectable option to pay her for a better version when it's finished. I paid the 4000 credits and got the part from her later but wasnt really paying attention to what part it was at the time. Ramming Jet III was never unlocked in the parts list.

I also got the Kestar encounter that gives the Fractured Abilities fault in two consecutive runs and it didnt unlock in the list either time.

Of course I've taken every mystery encounter in every run since and havent seen the Hibi encounter for Ramming Jet III again. Instead I keep getting encounters from the Katja, Malis & Biddy encounter chains that unlock their favors, but I've already unlocked their favors, the encounters appear out of order and are often totally broken.

I regularly get the Biddy Blas "taxman" encounters where you bet against him in every race but they keep appearing out of order and the dialogue option to agree to the bet is greyed out and unselectable.

The same Katja encounter keeps appearing that gives huge debuffs for the run but I've already unlocked the favor, there is no option not to agree to accept the debuffs AND she never shows up later in the run to give the upgrade points reward for completing the challenge, so it's just a massive debuff in that run for no reward.

Encounter chains are just kinda buggy and the parts that can only be unlocked from encounters pretty routinely don't unlock when they're supposed to.

I dont feel like I have any right to tell anyone what they can do to overcome challenges within the constraints of a single player game, let alone getting annoyed or angry or stridently calling them cheaters as some people do. No one is competing with them for whether they can complete an ironman run. It's sort of ironic to still lose the run and that's why they posted about it, but otherwise it's just like, well that's too bad.

cornering makes it so that you dont need to drift to make shallower turns and you can come into drifts at sharper angles to make tighter turns. its very useful for the speeder bike especially to just turn on your side, since it loses a lot of speed on drifts and doesnt gain it all back until kinetic burst is pretty upgraded.

you'll notice it when youre trying to get through a narrow cave that curves back and forth and youre scraping the walls with no room to drift. even the skim speeder can benefit from it to make even tighter knife edge turns possible but its probably the vehicle that needs it the least.

The visual previews on the game map will sometimes be slightly inaccurate or glitchy, it might not show 100% accurate overwatch coverage, it might now show the red warning line when you're crossing the edges of an overwatch zone, or sometimes you can safely move across a tile that appears to be on the edges of an overwatch zone. There should also be a separate icon on the HUD when youre planning movement that warns of triggering overwatch.

Its not cheating to load a valid save. It doesnt autosave in combat after every action or combat turn for a reason. Some other games do. The mode was designed this way.

I always give him black hair so the salt & pepper stands out, different eye colors for different vibes, sometimes different facial hair, and change the awkwardly-fitting jacket--mainly because the color options for it are terrible, if you change the main color it changes most of the jacket, the shirt AND the pants to all be the same color, like he's an extremely badass retail worker

I dont understand how you can have a gunslinger class and pretty substantial character customization including cowboy boots and have 0 wide-brimmed hats. Cad Bane is right there.

For me Survivor was more fun to play but Fallen Order's story & progression were incredibly tight & focused. I'm not very big on the High Republic stuff so the focus on that didnt do anything for me, but all the Clone Wars references were enjoyable.

Also in Survivor they start taking the easy way out narratively for Cere, Eno Cordova, their mission, and a rebel cell with Jedi still existing; that is, they just start killing them all off and destroying everything they're working towards because none of it can affect the OT era--and anything that survives beyond that cant affect the re-run sequel trilogy era.

It would be much more interesting to me and the future of Star Wars beyond the abortive sequel trilogy era if there were still ex-Jedi with access to the Jedi archives floating around the galaxy somewhere keeping a low profile. Imagine a traveling librarian surviving the Imperial era with a mobile Jedi archive on a starship and someday they're able to help rebuild a New Jedi Order. That's so much more interesting & hopeful than Darth Vader always showing up in the third act to destroy everything.

Unfortunately because of the sequel trilogy the canon Star Wars universe has to remain chaotic & hopeless for decades into the future because everything that might have survived the Empire will have to be destroyed by the time of Empire II. Writers/creators cant set up anything surviving the "dark times" because canonically none of it prevents the Jedi Order & the Republic from being completely destroyed again; 3 more decades of canon of the New Republic fumbling and the Jedi Order barely even getting off the ground. Nothing from this era of Star Wars can accomplish anything of note across 30-50 years of canon. The sequels really painted Star Wars into a corner.

Every point spent in any ability will upgrade your vehicle's base speed, so just spending points in any stat keeps you somewhat competitive. After that, having points in battery to keep using vent and some resilience so you dont get wrecked from a light breeze can be more of a difference-maker than 1 or 2 points in afterburner or ramjet. A 1-2 second advantage from a marginally faster ramjet will be completely lost to the 3-5 second disadvantage of crashing out.

For speed, build is king. Getting Redline Purge or Hail Mary Reset or an upgraded vent & fast ability recharging will put you ahead of someone who has 3 more points in ramjet than you--as long as your vehicle isnt spontaneously combusting--because they have to let off the boost sometime and you dont. Someone might have loads more points in Afterburner than you but if yours burns 150% faster for 300% longer from parts you win that drag race.

It's honestly hard to win with a pure speed build unless you have a busted build like a Firebug with extremely good parts that synergize well so you have 0 downtime boosts, combined with superior track knowledge.

Even then, AI racers like Kestar or Sen Fira might catch up and use offensive abilities on you--and multiplayer races have catch-up speed boosts--and you'll have no answer for that unless you have some resilience to survive an initial attack and/or defensive abilities like shield & scrubber.

On higher game difficulties having no downtime boosts and running the track flawlessly are requirements for winning most races, and these can only be achieved with builds, parts, track knowledge & skill. It feels real nice to put 3 points into ramjet but that alone isnt gonna win you a race. Bumping a wall without wrecking might though.

it depends on the racer & build youre running, and how many points there are to spend, but resilience can be incredibly beneficial.

on a campaign run every build has to go through many hazards, run the gauntlet, and then race a weaponized build at the end that will use offensive abilities on you whenever you get close. being able to shrug off status effects can keep you off of the wall. for an engineer build it can turn any status effect into almost a pure buff. if your playstyle or build is very aggressive it can give you loads of survivability for ramming other racers or casually running over your own mines.

if you use a racer style that has offensive abilities, upgrading the brutal calm favor (+1 resilience after every race where you get 3 takedowns) and using it can add a lot of free stat points and max out resilience before the end of a tour, making you kind of a tank.

the UI is bugged though: when it gives you the resilience upgrade at the end of a race, if you purposely or accidentally unselect it you wont be able to reselect the +1 resilience. with a controller it literally will not let you reselect the resilience upgrade, you can only pick skip. as long as you dont move the cursor for the first second that screen loads it will be fine.

on multiplayer you wont have as many upgrade points to play around with, but your speeder combusting at the slightest touch is from having no resilience. you can still get taken out hard with resilience, especially during system malfunctions, but at these speeds its a buffer.

honestly engineer should be a very early unlock. if you bump a lot of walls, race on sentinel I, or other racers are highly aggressive, you can clear system malfunction extremely fast and then start surging. the more system malfunctions the faster you go, so even if youre way out in front you can ride over hazards on purpose for speed boosts. add things like impact surge to that and bouncing off of walls becomes a viable strategy.

not sure but its possible

i mean the two other racers didnt pass by the wings on both sides at the same time 'on purpose'. that was a happy accident that makes for a cool clip.

theres no possible way to predict that happening at the speed this game moves even with indicators. those indicators appear way too late. multiplayer is fast & frantic & other players with different pings have jerky unpredictable movements that often defy the logic of the game.

the driver had let off of knife edge & they were starting to level out when it happened, at that point they were just driving straight. if you were still in a knife edge you'd be even more vulnerable to getting knocked out of control if one of them made contact.

staying in knife edge that long on a straight isnt doing much for you. they might have been trying to reduce the surface area because they knew they were going to cut it close on the small acid pool in the middle of that path, let off when they passed it and boom, cool clip. the least charitable read would be that its just someone who didnt know the track and they stayed in knife edge in case another turn was coming up.

a veteran player in a skim speeder might do what happens in the 2nd clip though: instinctively start to turn away from a rapidly approaching player and then when they pass by harmlessly just keep going straight to not lose any speed.

the first part was 100% luck and just getting a good clip. two racers happened to streak by close up on both sides after they'd already let off of knife edge and started to level out, before the indicators even appeared on screen.

the second clip they saw someone was speeding up on their left shoulder and instinctively started to turn out of their path to the right but they were already gone before they really had to do anything and it created a cool effect.

for awhile i tried to make all my bikes look like theyre just a rocket engine with a seat & handles

i thought of doing a lopsided wing skim speeder early on but never made one i liked

i straight up stole this one for an afterburner build

Following up on this for reference, the parts people are most likely missing are Ramming Jet I, II, III, and/or a fault called Fractured Abilities, which can all only be acquired through specific Mystery Encounters, some of them in specific orders.

Ramming Jet I can be given to you by Hibi as part of a Mystery Encounter that you can get very early in Act 1--and then is extremely rare to get in later acts because of a much larger encounter pool weighted for different encounters--where she will install an experimental part she designed.

If you have 4000 credits you can tell her to improve it first and she'll upgrade it to Ramming Jet III. This skips ranks I & II and doesnt add them to the unlocked parts list, but its also the only way to get rank III.

If you take Ramming Jet I, keep it installed, then get another Mystery Encounter later in the same run, Hibi will upgrade it to rank II. This is the only way to get rank II.

Fractured Abilities is unfortunately extremely bugged. A lot of people probably got it already but it wasnt added to the parts master list.

You can get it as part of the Act 3 Mystery Encounter where Kestar asks you to rat someone out for complaining about what happened to Pax. If you choose not to tell him anything his punishment is to give you the Fractured Abilities fault. If you have any empty part slot on your vehicle then it will install the blank part Fractured Abilities that does nothing else besides carry this fault, but the fault wont be added to the list of unlocked parts. This happened to me in two straight runs and it was never added to the list. Others have said that even completing the run doesnt add it to the list.

It was just given as a normal rank 1 part with no faults

Then my fastest ever build at the time was also a stunt runner but based on cooling with an extremely fast ramjet that alternated between them. After a jump I'd run afterburner (not even fully upgraded--didnt matter) and everytime in between I'd use auto-vented supercooled ramjet.

And neither was really fully optimized, just the parts I got or traded in to see how they'd do.

https://preview.redd.it/klv0lbhjapxh1.jpeg?width=3840&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=5d572f1223c408b437514cc4089d4ff932f4d410

My most successful full afterburner build was with a Stunt Runner + Gadgeteer

https://preview.redd.it/buwdp49o9pxh1.jpeg?width=3840&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=d9228f606cf7f4650a5a0cf3d31a9a667e72aac2