When James Ohlen confirmed space combat last weekend at Comic Con, so many people were excited. One of the main reasons I was so excited about Star Wars: The Old Republic was because I knew, deep down inside, that there was going to be space combat. Whether it was as expansive as other games or if it was more limited, I knew that BioWare would not keep a pivotal part of Star Wars out of the game. Therefore, when it was announced, it was obviously a massive excitement for me and many others.

But, the problem I find is that PC Gamer won’t have their October issue our for another few weeks. This means I have to wait to find out what type of space combat there is going to be. And I just couldn’t have that. So, I began to speculate. I’ve come up with my own speculation on what space combat is going to look like. To begin with, though, we have to consider what space flight might be like. To have combat, one must first have flight.

The space flight, in my opinion, is going to be free to an extent. One of the things people talk about is flying around the galaxy freely. Unfortunately, that’s just not possible. The galaxy is massive, so to fly around freely would take forever. Legitimately, it would take many life times. Therefore, space travel will be free flying around the planet. If you want to fly around the planet and see other people flying around as well, all the better. But, if you are on Coruscant and you want to go to Alderaan, you’ll have to enter hyperspace. This will be similar to how travel was done in KOTOR and in Mass Effect.

So, what happens when there is a space battle going on? Good question.

Sean, the community manager at SWTOR, mentioned in the thread that you “fly” to the combat hot spot. “In space combat, you fly your personal ship to various “hot spots” on your galaxy map,” Sean said. That would suggest control over the ship on your way to combat. So, you leave hyper space and then you fly to the hot spot on the map, enter it and voila, combat begins. But, what will combat look like?

Space combat will be a mouse and keyboard operation. While many people have been hoping and praying for a joystick game, the truth is, this is a MMO, not a flight simulator. We’re going to be getting space combat to begin with, so I think that’s plenty. Maybe in future expansions BioWare will make it with a joystick, but right now, it won’t be.

Combat will probably be similar to what it looked like in Star Wars Galaxies. You’ll fly around in your ship and you’ll do damage to ships bigger than yours and smaller. It might not be as good–I’ve heard great things about it–but the space combat, overall, will probably be like that. They can’t do something more basic because people are hardcore expecting to enjoy the space combat. If they do something simple like an asteroids game, people will be very upset. I know I would be.

Because ship customization is going to be added to the game, this is where you’ll be able to make your ship stronger. While you will be able to make it look cool, you’ll also be able to add stronger shields, better weapons, and other things to make you a more formidable opponent in space. So, if you have the credits, you might be able to buy a stronger shield generator.

This is speculative. While I think the above might be what they do–it just seems like a basic, but still enjoyable experience–BioWare can really surprise us sometimes. I don’t think it’ll be a stupid mini-game, but it might not be as extravagant as I described. We’ll have to wait until PC Gamer releases their next issue so we can be better learned on what space combat is going to be all about.