Okay, I love guides, but I never thought I would write one. Usually I spend a little time finding a good one, and go from there, but I love the idea of battlefields, so a friend of mine (Avathar) and I decided to go figure it out on our own. It took a lot of experimentation, but we've figured at least a bit out, so I decided to share the information.
This guide is limited to JUST the Rebel PvE as I have not yet tried PvP battlefields or the Imperial ones (I don't have an Imperial character yet). Also, I am not going over the most basic details as they are covered in this Friday's feature that has been added to the SWG online manual. Please go there for the basics.
Where to go?
Here's the thing. There is only one Rebel PvE battlefield working correctly - at least as of today August 23, 2003 on the server Chilastra. I can't speak for the other servers, but what we found is that when the battlefield warps you into the battlefield it is set to the coordinates 3785, -4037. That's fine if you are on Corellia, because that's where it is supposed to send you. However, if you are on Rori, you are out of luck.
This means the only battlefield to play Rebel PvE on is the Corellia Rebel PvE.
Temporary Enemy Flag
Many times you cannot get into a battlefield when you have a temporary enemy flag (TEF). Unfortunately the game does not ever give you direct feedback on what gives you a TEF, so it's hard to tell what it was for certain, but it appears that healing yourself or others or fighting anything even mobs without any faction gives you this flag. If anyone can test to narrow this, then it would be great.
How do you fix it? Sit around. Don't heal anyone, don't fight anything. Watch tv for 10 minutes and come back. You should be able to enter the battlefield then.
Battlefield entry
Once you get in, it's time to scramble away before you have a turret spawn right on top of you and a stormtrooper to boot. Run away from the structure you see. If you are entering a battle that is in progress then there is a good chance that these have already spawned and you will die upon spawning. Which makes it important that you follow the next step.
After you've entered you should take out the small turret and Imperial trooper that spawns outside the wall where other Rebels come in. You've already bugged out from their firing range. The trick is to move just inside range to get aggro on the stormtrooper, then run out of range of the turret. Turrets hit hard, so be sure to have a medic with you. After you are out of turret range, take out the stormtrooper. Then you go back and start hitting the small turret. Turrets can be beaten by moving in for a few hits, then moving back out of range to heal before re-engaging.
Winning the Battlefield
Okay, you've secured the route for people who spawn in. Hopefully they will fix the spawn point so that you don't need to do this, but this is a decent stop-gap.
Now it's time to start doing your objective, blowing up the 4 objects that were given waypoints in your datapad. The trick to this is to attack from afar and do not engage the stormtroopers inside. This is a bug, but you can shoot base structures without pulling aggro as long as you are out of range of the stormtroopers. You will notice that walls, and what not are in the way, and that's okay because a cool thing about battlefields is that you can blow up all the walls, etc. by shooting them.
Clear out all the waypointed structures and you win!
Bugs and General Information
1. The biggest bug/exploit is the lack of aggro by the stormtroopers. This makes battlefields incredibly easy, but it probably is known by the devs already because the reward for winning is terrible. We wanted to engage the stormtroopers, but there are like 8 all standing together. They would have killed us within seconds if we had engaged one and we were trying to learn. Dying and waiting for the new BF to spawn would have slowed us down. They do not move around at all, so you can't use pulling tactics or even patience. The troopers outside the walls move, but those inside are completely stationary. I don't think they've worked out how to do mobs and walls yet. Even on faction missions the mobs love to warp outside of walls and don't really know how to follow a wall to exit a building. The warping is probably there because of this. . . to keep them from getting stuck, etc.
2. Low Rewards. You do not receive points for each of these structures, but instead receive a base reward of 25 points. Whenever you take out a certain number of stormtroopers you receive a message stating that you have earned a battlefield ranking of 1.0. My guess is that this number goes up if you kill many NPCs, so that winning the battleifield can be worth more if you have fought harder to attack it than others. If this rating were to go to 2.0, you would receive 50, 3.0 = 75, etc. Even if this is the case, the reward is terrible for the amount of running that is necessary to reach the battlefields and the strength of the NPCs. The stormtroopers give only one faction point, when they would normally give nearly the whole battlefield's worth in faction points by doing missions from faction terminals. The battlefield is interesting and fun, but very risky and very low reward.
3. There is no way to call pets (except for the declared residence exploit). Unfortunately, you cannot set up camps in battlefields. Accordingly, you are not allowed to use pets of any kind in PvE unless you have the declared residence bug/exploit (Not sure which to call it because those with it did not TRY to get it).
4. Artisans are out of luck in PvE. Everyone heard about the ability to make structures that can help in battlefields? Well, in PvE this is not possible unfortunately because there is not a Rebel base. This may be possible in the PvE battlefields that are for defending, but the current bug that warps players to the Correlia PvE coordinates keeps us from finding out. Artisans can still go and have a good time, but their special skills will not be as useful as they are supposed to be in other types of battlefields.
5. Difficulty is either super high or super low. You can use the guide above and win very easily with two players, but trying to win without exploiting (I don't plan to do this again except when testing - I don't have a huge group willing to run forever in order to test and fight legitimately unforutnately) would be INCREDIBLY difficult for a small group, but fairly easy for a large one. 8 stormtroopers are bad, but not at all impossible. One party of 20 with advanced players could wipe the battlefield clean in a few minutes.
6. Warp point is too close to the base. Players should load in somewhere safe! Please follow the guide as the people to initally warp in get a few seconds to load in and get out of range while things spawn, but lets keep sending /bug reports until the devs hear us and move these spawn points somewhere less ridiculously under fire.
General Information
1. Battlefields last for 60 minutes or until you destroy the 4 instillations that have waypoints on them.
2. /battlefieldstatus command displays the Planet, battlefield type (PvE, assault, defend, PvP, etc.), Number of players for your side (may show both sides in PvP - dunno), and time left on the battlefield before a reset.
3. /placebattlefieldstructure can not be done while standing or running. Additionally, players are required to be near a constructor that is of your faction's alignment. There is not a Rebel constructor in the Rebel Assault PvE battlefield, so the command cannot be used.
That is all I can think of for now. I'm going to give the PvP battleifields a shot someday, but I'm a bit tired of running around right now. Having to run to these several times in order to test is quite time consuming. If you want to repost this in part or totally, that's fine, but please plug my PA's site. www.bkbhq.com
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