Star Wars: Squadrons guide – Mission 8: Fractured Alliance tips and walkthrough

In this Star Wars: Squadrons walkthrough, we’ll help you with tips and tricks for completing Mission 8: Fractured Alliance.

Polygon’s Star Wars: Squadrons guides and walkthroughs help you navigate more than a dozen missions set in a galaxy far, far away. For Mission 8, we’ll help you choose a loadout and understand your priorities in this fast-paced mission.

We didn’t want our guides to become narrative novels, so we skipped useless advice like “follow the squad leader.” Instead, every Squadrons walkthrough begins with general tips for the mission, followed by specific strategies for difficult sections and objectives. We wrap up with advice about earning mission medals.

Mission 8: Fractured Alliance

Back with Titan Squadron, you’ll be defending (and simultaneously raiding) an Imperial supply depot in this mission.

Mission 8 tips

• The TIE Interceptor you get for this mission is new to you. It’s faster than an A-Wing and just as maneuverable. In standard Imperial fashion, though, it has no shields.
• You have full control over the loadout this time. Almost all of your fighting is going to be ship-to-ship dogfighting, so plan accordingly. We’ll list our favorite loadout below.
• Several waves of fighters will jump into the system over the course of this mission. They will always jump in outside of your weapons and targeting range, though. Keep an eye on your HUD, and watch for a flashing red dot when you hear reports of them over the radio. You won’t be able to target them right away, but you’ll get a better idea of where they are.

Loadout

This is the first mission where loadout becomes much more important to how well you do.

Focus your loadout on ship-to-ship combat. Here’s the loadout that worked best for us:

• Primary Weapon: Standard Laser Cannon
• Left Auxiliary: Seeker Mine
• Right Auxiliary: Rockets
• Countermeasures: Seeker Warheads
• Hull: Dampener Hull
• Engine: Twin Ion Engine (the Twin Microthrust Engine works well, too)

Objective: Defend Control Towers and Destroy New Republic Bombers

Through most of this mission, your goal will be to keep the three Control Towers intact. If you complete the mission with all three, you’ll get the Depot Defender Medal.

The way to do this is by completing the other objective(s). Destroy the New Republic Y-Wing Bombers as fast as you can — they’re the ones that will deal the most damage to the towers. Keep cycling through targets and picking off the Y-Wings every time they appear.

Objective: Destroy New Republic Corvette

When the CR90 Corvette arrives, you’ll still be dealing with Y-Wing Bombers and defending the Control Towers. Your job is to take it out as quickly as you can. It’s slow, and it doesn’t have any turrets pointing backward, so get behind it and Maximize Weapon Power. If you have the rockets from our suggested loadout, unload them into the engines.

Objective: Escort Baradium Shuttles and Eliminate A-Wings

Much like the Defend the Control Towers objective above, the best way we’ve found to escort the two Baradium Shuttles is by going on offense against the New Republic A-Wings. Use Squad Commands to help take them out quickly — either by directing your squadmates to concentrate fire or asking them to defend a shuttle.

Optional: Destroy Frigate Turrets

Toward the end of the mission, a Nebulon-B Frigate will show up to ruin your day. You’ll be tasked with taking out it’s turrets, but you won’t get much more direction than that.

Target the entire Frigate — you can’t target the individual turrets — and look for the blue glow/outline that marks them. Slow down (but don’t stop), Maximize Weapon Power, and unload on them. It’ll take a few passes, but each turret only takes a handful of shots to destroy. Just keep moving so the turrets don’t turn all their attention on you.

Mission 8 Medals

• Mission Complete. Completed Mission 8.
• Efficiency Medal. Completed Mission 8 in 17 minutes or less.
• Enduring Service Medal. Completed Mission 8 without dying.
• Toothless. Destroyed all of the Nebulon-B frigate’s turrets first.
  
  When the frigate appears, Shen will be ordered to take down its shields with an ion bomb. Wait for him to complete this before attacking. Once disabled, you’ll be able to target its turrets, which are situated around the bottom and sides of the ship. They’re difficult o see, so use your target cycling to find them all. Also, if you tag one that’s on the opposite side of the ship, use the Ping Target command so your team can fire while you swing around the other side to finish it off.
• Depot Defender. All three Control Towers survived the attack.
  
  When new enemies show up (as announced on your comms), they will also seek out the currently targeted tower. The three towers you must defend will always be highlighted, so make your way to whichever is in danger to keep it safe.