That's likely due more to the glitchy state of the game's HUD than anything else, but I'm not complaining. Better still, it looks like no one on the Republic side of the fight has seen me. The gambit works, giving me just a little more time to close the gap and charge my laser. Pushing down on the stick, I put the Raider between me and the 75, skitching behind the little warship and using it for cover.

Just a kilometer ahead is a 150-meter-long Imperial Raider, which just dropped in from hyperspace to join the party. With a little more speed, maybe this time I can evade them. In the last few passes, they've chewed me apart. The bigger problem at hand, however, are the multiple turbolaser batteries bristling on the New Republic Star Cruiser's dorsal side. I've only been playing for a little while, and I'm not quite sure how long I have before the charge dissipates. With just a little over half the laser's charge stored up, I tap the directional pad to ease more power over to my engines. Even with a partial charge, the beam laser is a monster that can do serious damage to even the largest capital ships. If I can close with the 75 without getting shot out of the sky, I have a decent chance of ending the match. I'm slowly building up a charge on a ridiculous and powerful beam laser.

Inside my TIE bomber, I've put all power to my weapons systems. Now it's time for the Empire to make its final push. A back-and-forth Fleet Battle has been raging for the better part of 30 minutes inside the Nadiri Dockyards, as a New Republic MC75 Star Cruiser and the Imperial Star Destroyer I rode in on play a high-stakes game of chicken. I'm three and a half hours into a marathon demo of Star Wars: Squadrons, the new combat spaceflight simulator from Electronic Arts.

Capital ship star wars