SWTOR Republic Fleet Stronghold Buying Guide

Everything you need to know if you’re considering buying the Republic Fleet Penthouse Stronghold on Carrick Station in SWTOR!

Republic Fleet Stronghold at a Glance

Fully unlocking most strongholds costs tens of millions of credits. We don’t list specific prices for each stronghold because the amount you’ll spend unlocking all the rooms is nothing compared to the money you’ll have to spend on decorations. Unfortunately, this is a case where if you have to ask, you can’t afford it.

Floorplan and Appearance

The Republic Fleet stronghold is comprised of 4 rooms connected together on a single level at the top of Carrick Station. It is the smallest stronghold in the game.

The overall size of the Republic Fleet stronghold is most similar to that of Dromund Kaas and Coruscant, and while you can’t place as many decorations planetside as you can in the Fleet Penthouse, the strongholds on the capital worlds are quite a bit larger.

It’s worth noting that the value one places on size is such a subjective thing, so I don’t criticize or praise it in any of my Stronghold buying guides. Many players seem to prefer smaller locations, but there are those who want to decorate a large estate.

Matching Decorations

Normally, we don’t like to do this section so early because you lack context and it feels a bit like free advertising for the Cartel Market, but one of the bundles is integral to understanding of the Fleet Penthouse stronghold.

Regarding the Fleet Wallset Bundle

These decos don’t go all the way to the ceiling unless you use poorly executed ceiling covers also included in those bundles.

These Large and Small Ceiling Sections only fit on Large or Centerpiece hooks, which are typically only found in the middle of the room, and drive an ugly pillar into the heart of your stronghold so they connect to the floor.

I don’t understand why the lowered ceiling decos have to exist at all. Yeah, they can let you make new rooms outside in other strongholds, but it would still make far more sense to just make the wall decos taller so they reach the actual ceiling in the stronghold they’re intended for.

Regardless, past strongholds have offered these sorts of things in game on the cheap, sold by Meridat Stato on the Fleet for practically no credits, or the Martial Fabricator Droid added alongside the Rishi stronghold.

It’s pretty sleazy for these to be so essential to decorating the Fleet stronghold, far more than walls were for past locales, and for the devs to then charge money for them, especially considering the shoddy workmanship.

That poor quality extends beyond the bad wall height, poor hook selection, and connective pillar. In both the Carrick Station and Vaiken Spacedock bundles, the pillar on the Large Ceiling Section is not centered on the ceiling.

I’ve placed a perfectly vertical line so you can see what I’m talking about. Note how the lights are mostly centered with the pillar and not the central dais, which is wider on the right. It’s more noticeable when you try to work with it and get the walls aligned.

Since these take up a Large or Centerpiece Hook and occlude lighting from the ceiling hooks without emitting much light themselves, your options are extremely limited in such spaces.

The best I could do to conceal this issue is by placing Meditation Pillars around the central column and just accepting the dimmer lighting conditions. Vinn Atrius is not my first choice for Personnel, but he was the only NPC I could put there because he is misconfigured to fit on Floor Covering hooks.

Making matters worse, the axis of rotation is centered on the pillar, not the center of the ceiling, making it much harder to line up walls and forcing you to rotate it a specific way to conceal the centering issue.

The Small Ceiling Section (Carrick Station) has a centered column but has its own, arguably more egregious issue.

The Ceiling Sections aren’t the only buggy decos either, the Penthouse Doorway (Carrick Station) doesn’t have collision detection on the door, so you can walk through it while it’s closed.

In effect, they’re charging money for the stronghold while trying to make it look like they aren’t, and given how expensive decorating is, decorating fiends are more likely to spend CC for these decos than other player demographics.

Your run-of-the-mill decorating fiend can’t afford them on the GTN because decorating fiends have more Prestige than credits.

Standard Matching Decorations and Styles

The visual style of the Carrick Station Penthouse is more rugged and industrial than the luxurious and decadent Coruscant apartment. Its visuals are a better match for the Republic Flagship.

You’ll find that decos with organic, earthy tones, like blue, brown, and green, create a great contrast from the rusty orange processed materials the station is made of.

If you’re looking for decorations that match particularly well, the following search terms will get you 95% of the relevant decos in the game:

• Republic
• Jedi
• Light
• Pirate
• Iziz
• Alderaan
• Copero
• Onderon

Stay away from anything that looks too sleek and synthetic. That is the opposite of the Republic vibe. Unlike with the Vaiken Spacedock stronghold, I don’t think the Coruscant Utility Decoration Bundle matches at all.

Still, the Fleet is already a hodgepodge of varying styles, so you can put down just about any deco and it will match just as badly as it does with the Fleet’s Republic style. Below, you’ll find the list of deco bundles from the CM that match well:

• Republic Fleet Penthouse Wallset
• Republic Essentials Bundle
• Underworld Essentials Bundle
• Republic Personnel Bundle
• Force-user Personnel Bundle
• Criminal Underworld Personnel Bundle
• Remote Trading Outpost Decoration Bundle
• Security Office Decoration Bundle
• Restored Jedi Enclave Decoration Bundle
• Sith Lord’s Artifacts Decoration Bundle (for a Jedi vault)
• Copero Stronghold Utility Bundle
• Armory Decoration Bundle

Hooks and Room Alignment

The alignment of hooks and rooms on the Republic Fleet Stronghold are frustrating, though not quite as bad as the Imperial Fleet.

The most distracting issue is the floor. The layer with the hooks is floating too high above the floor, and it’s particularly bad with the Floor Covering (rug hooks), which look like they’re floating and clip into the furniture.

The main hall has an issue where the ramp segment is not centered within the room and isn’t aligned with the front or back doors. The decos are centered with stairs, not the front and rear door.

It’s worth noting that this sort of thing is far less important for actual level design where you’re shooting for a specific feeling and have other gameplay and budgetary priorities.

It doesn’t matter as much in the open world because players are concerned with finding objectives and loot. They aren’t inspecting room alignment so they just don’t notice these sorts of blemishes, like the inconsistent size of the short connecting hallways.

On top of that, because we have to place the walls themselves, it’s even more important to have solid hook alignment!

Given that these sorts of uncentered spaces are relatively common outside of strongholds, it’s probable that the devs don’t distinguish the importance alignment within strongholds and regular level design.

That being said, it seems unthinkable that any level design software would lack measuring tools, or that the devs wouldn’t make use of copying and pasting, but I’m not an environment or level designer.

Ease of Decorating

Any stronghold can be decorated easily by just plopping down a thousand Basic Beds, but that’s not what I mean. When I say “ease of decorating”, I am referring to how easy or hard it is to make the stronghold look good.

Some strongholds have well thought-out Hook layouts, reasonably sized-rooms, and a variety of Hook sizes. These sorts of things make it easier to decorate because you don’t have to think as much about where to put things and it’s more about what you want to put in each room.

Other strongholds, particularly the more recent ones, are more difficult to decorate. It’s harder to decorate a stronghold when you aren’t given a lot of space to put decorations, or the room size doesn’t match the hooks, or you can’t line anything up because the devs slapped the thing together in half a day.

Since you need to hit 100% decorated for the Conquest Bonus and get all of your Prestige for Public Listings, the maximum number of decos you can place in a given stronghold also affects how easy it is to decorate.

If the deco count is too high, you’ll be forced to hide a bunch of small decos inside walls and larger decos or end up with a super cluttered stronghold. If the max deco count is too low, your stronghold will likely feel barren or you’ll be forced to leave some rooms undecorated.

If you want to throw something basic together with the Centerpiece hooks in each room and the utility decos as many people do, there is nothing easier than the Fleet Stronghold.

If you want the Republic Fleet Penthouse to look good, that will take a lot more work. The rooms are big, empty rectangles linked together by tiny, empty rectangles.

Those connecting hallways are too narrow for anything substantial, forcing them into being liminal spaces. Anything beyond non-existent selection of suitable wall lights, small benches, guards, or some potpourri will make them feel cramped.

The large rooms will feel empty unless you use some sort of divider or get super creative with large decos.

Thankfully, dedicated wall deco bundles exist specifically for these strongholds, but as I explained earlier, they’re basically the answer to the question “How can we get away with selling a stronghold on the Cartel Market?”, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that was asked verbatim in a meeting a BioWare.

It would be far more reasonable if we got a smaller amount of these wall decos for free upon purchasing the Carrick Station Penthouse as a starter pack, or could puchase them with GS tokens.

Still, the fact that the walls are separate does make the Republic Fleet stronghold more of a blank canvas. The added flexibility is nice if you have a clear vision of what you want your penthouse to look like, but it is a lot easier to paint by numbers.

The limitations of SWTOR’s hook-based decorating system are more readily apparent with empty spaces as well. It’s super frustrating when the hook layouts can’t accomodate that vision.

The fact that Centerpiece hooks exist in the middle of each room make this problem worse because your alternate hook layout options are severely limited.

There are additional hooks on the regular and Cantina Centerpiece layouts, but they’re meant for small accents and additions to the larger centerpiece decos. They aren’t an entirely different layout.

Those alternatives include an empty large hook surrounded by 8 medium hooks, a standard large hook, or the small/narrow cross layout. This means that the middle of each room has to be filled with something huge or something tiny.

Republic Fleet Stronghold Secrets

The window in the west room looks into the VIP area of the Fleet, and while the layout doesn’t make geometric sense, the implication is that each of those windows you see from the Fleet itself is looking into a stronghold. Sadly, the blinds are shut, so it doesn’t look like that from the outside.

The VIP area also gets decorated during holiday events like Life Day and Nightlife, just like it does on the actual Fleet.

Republic Fleet Stronghold Ideas and Inspiration

Carrick Station is the heart of the Republic Fleet, so you can come up with a reasonable justification for just about anything you can imagine, though it makes far more sense for it to be Republic-oriented.

• Ultimate Utilities Center
• Your Main’s Private Chambers
• Republic SIS Office
• VIP Box (like at a stadium)
• Jedi Academy
• Smuggler’s Hideout
• Armory
• Alliance Embassy

Don’t forget to check out the Public Listings for more ideas!

Review and Recommendation

The Republic Fleet stronghold isn’t some fantastical vacation destination like some of the other strongholds, which would be fine if not for the horrendous hook and room alignment adding to the already challenging space you’ll need to decorate.

Category

Score

Ease of Decorating

Hook and Room Alignment

Visual Appeal

There’s something magical about seeing your Stronghold from a public area, and the sheer convenience of being attached to Fleet chat and the accompanying opportunity to see a larger volume of LFG and trade posts make Carrick Station a must-have for any endgame player or seasons enjoyer.

You know what they say about real estate, “It’s all about location, location, location!”, and that somehow manages to ring true even when land scarcity does not exist.