Since I went into a tangent in another thread about Starfighter technology, TIE pilots, etc., it got me thinking that this forum probably has a lot of people who'd be interested in these topics, but we should keep such nerdy discussions in their own threads.

So I'm just going to throw out some bold assertions for discussion! First up...

1) If you ignore the (now non-canon) EU, there is no movie evidence to support TIE Fighters being more "fragile" than Rebel fighters.

I honestly don't see any movie evidence for this trope. In every Star Wars movie, you never see any starfighter survive more than two hits. Most ships die in one hit. The only people who take a hit and aren't instantly destroyed are Obi-wan in AotC (vs. Jango), Luke in ANH, Wedge in ANH, Vader in ANH, Red Leader in ANH (he would've survived if not for the Death Star's gravity), and the A-wing pilot who takes out the Executor in ROTJ (he would've been fine--if a bit queasy--if he hadn't collided with that Super Star Destroyer).

Everyone else--Naboo Fighters, Droid Fighters, Jedi Fighters, X-wings, Y-wings, A-wings, B-wings, TIE Fighters, TIE Interceptors, TIE Bombers, etc. All of them blow up in one hit. All starfighters are basically death traps.

Now an interesting thing is the question of "deflector shields"--who has them, how do they work, and how much protection do they afford? We know from ANH pilot chatter that at the very least, the rebel fighters have deflector shields, and that they can be angled forward or backward. We never see physical evidence of them actually protecting anyone though. Verain suggested that these deflector shields literally "deflect" laser fire, causing it to miss (like GSF's Evasion?). Possible!

However, we also know the Millennium Falcon has deflector shields, and we see it take a ton of direct hits. Though we also see a lot of lasers miss it, and it's a big target. Maybe it does have deflector shields that divert some portion of incoming fire. Though that doesn't exactly jive with Threepio's quote:

Sir, we just lost the main rear deflector shield. One more direct hit on the back quarter and we’re done for.

We also know (from Palpatine's quotes) that the Death Star II is protected by a deflector shield being projected from Endor's Moon. But the implication about that shield is that it will literally and physically block ships from getting close to it.

We also see in AotC Obi-wan's fighter being bombarded with rapid laser fire from Slave I. These lasers seem to explode very close to Obi-wan's fighter. Is this some sort of shielding technology at work? Or is it a special flak-type weapon on Slave I? Both? Hard to say.

Either way, what we can say is that there is no movie evidence that TIE Fighters do not have deflector shields comparable to those on X-wings and Y-wings. No, we don't hear TIE Pilots chattering about it, but they are a quiet bunch.

We can say that X-wings and Y-wings do not appear to be any more durable than TIE's. Even if we say that the X-wings and Y-wings are being protected invisibly by Evasion-causing shields, at the end of the day the entire rebel squadron of 29 fighters is destroyed by 9 TIE Fighters (including Darth Vader's). Hardly a swarm.

No rebel ships are destroyed by turbolasers (though we can be sure that made their job harder). Every rebel death is caused by being unable to outmaneuver and outrun TIE pursuers, both in the trench and well outside of it.

From this, it is very hard to assert that rebel ships are technologically superior or more resilient than simple Imperial TIE Fighters.

The EU has long said, "TIE's are inferior because the Empire wants to overwhelm through numbers, and so they want TIE's to be cheap to manufacture." That might make sense if TIE Pilots were clones, but we know from canon sources that classic trilogy stormtroopers are not clones, and thus TIE Pilots likely aren't either. I wouldn't think so, considering Luke--an accomplished pilot--wanted to go to the Imperial academy. And Biggs did go there.

Besides, the idea that the Empire is worried about manufacturing costs makes no sense! The Empire has essentially limitless resources and does not shy away from ridiculous excess when it comes to its military. The Death Star, Super Star Destroyers, Star Destroyers, AT-AT's -- all of these absurd in their scale and cost.

Why would the Empire spend so much to make a giant robot camel, but then throw its academy-trained pilots into technologically inferior deathtraps?

The only area in which I buy that the Empire would try to "save cost" on TIE's is to not give them a hyperdrive. The Imperial Navy has millions of vessels capable of acting as starfighter carriers, so giving each and every TIE a hyperdrive would be redundant. But the Rebels had very few carrier ships, and so in order to conduct their hit-and-fade strikes, their fighters needed to have hyperdrives. And that necessitated an astromech slot. One would assume that the weight of the hyperdrive and the droid would significantly hinder an X-wing's mobility, which is probably why TIE Fighters are more nimble.

So where did this trope of shielded X-wings and fragile TIE's first start? I believe it was originated in video games. The first Star Wars video games always had you playing as the hero rebel against the evil Empire. But being one- or two-shot by enemy fighters (as happens in the movies) is no fun, so rebel ships were given shields. But if every video game TIE Fighter had shields, then the game wouldn't feel like Star Wars.

Hence the fundamental imbalance between TIE Fighters and X-wings was born, and EU writers took it upon themselves to try and explain why. They made up this wacky story of how Incom engineers had come up with this amazing new fighter (the X-wing) for the Empire, but at the last minute defected and gave the design to the rebels instead. And that flies against the themes of ANH. There are plenty of X-wings in the Battle of Yavin. Only two survive. So much for technological superiority. Besides, if the X-wing had truly been this wonder fighter, why wouldn't the Empire steal one and reproduce it?

Unfortunately, once the EU myth of "super X-wings" was created, it just perpetuated itself, despite it being nonsensical and having little supporting movie evidence.

Just take a look at http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/X-wing_starfighter/Canon vs. http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/X-wing_starfighter to see how absurd the difference is.

What will be interesting to see is if Star Wars Rebels and the new movies (especially Rogue One) perpetuate the EU notions or establish a new understanding. I worry that the EU notions are so ingrained in most fans' minds (even TV and movie writers), that they will continue to perpetuate this nonsensical premise of the Empire using crappy ships because they're cheap.

We have confirmation that the deflectors work on X-wings vs TIEs. Luke and Wedge are both hit... but do not explode.

The deflectors have minor protection, because they will fend off a minor hit, but a direct hit from a military grade laser such as TIEs and they just dont have strong enough deflectors. But that means the TIE HAS to have a direct hit. And that the TIE has to keep a good amount of power adjusted to Weapons. Which is why "going in at full throttle" as Luke Suggests helps to keep them of them a little longer. as the TIES have to put more power to engines, but risk not having enough power to finish the job... as we see with Wedge.

We have confirmation that the deflectors work on X-wings vs TIEs. Luke and Wedge are both hit... but do not explode.

 

The deflectors have minor protection, because they will fend off a minor hit, but a direct hit from a military grade laser such as TIEs and they just dont have strong enough deflectors. But that means the TIE HAS to have a direct hit. And that the TIE has to keep a good amount of power adjusted to Weapons. Which is why "going in at full throttle" as Luke Suggests helps to keep them of them a little longer. as the TIES have to put more power to engines, but risk not having enough power to finish the job... as we see with Wedge.

Wedge is hit in the engine, and it disables him such that he has to retreat. This is no different from TIE's that get a solar panel blown off and are thrown off course. They may not instantly explode, but they are removed from tactical usefulness.

Luke never suffers a direct hit. "I'm hit but not bad" does not imply he was hit but his shield absorbed it. It implies he was hit in a non-vital area that did not instantly explode.

Vader's TIE and his wingman's TIE collide. Neither is destroyed--both are merely sent off course. Unfortunately for Vader's wingman, his new course takes him into the trench wall.

We also see several other TIE's take damage in the solar panel and not explode (though they usually suffer some other secondary doom).

All of these indicate that whether you are destroyed or not has nothing to do with shields and everything to do with how and where you are hit.

But every X-wing and Y-wing hit in the fuselage dies the same as every TIE Fighter that is hit in the fuselage. Boom. Even if you could prove X-wings and Y-wings had shields and TIE's didn't, it hardly makes any difference in the movies. Whatever shields any of the ships have are nowhere near as powerful as even the weakest shields in GSF or any other video game.

A nice rundown, Nem.

Unfortunately, as per the Reality is Unrealistic trope, at this point, the "pain" that they'd likely have trying to change people's views of the spaceships isn't likely to be worth the effort.

Edit: In particular, the Old School Dogfight trope would apply to why it won't work with the audience to change things.

Well, I don't buy into the idea that there was some overarching vision at the start. When Star Wars came out, that was it- that was the whole story. When Empire was hatching, Jedi was envisioned, so it's reasonably fair to assume that you could take a "snapshot" that would encompass JUST Star Wars, or all of Holy Trilogy.

But to fast forward to prequels, you see movies made with extensive EU influence, and with a lot of things that had been solidified to some degree. It's fair to talk about all three of them as a unit as well.

So your "snapshots" are:

Just Star Wars (retconned as "A New Hope")

All of Holy Trilogy

All of Holy Trilogy and Prequels

...and many others, but you aren't interested in the EU stuff right now (which does address this, and has answers they cooked up later).

The "Canon" entry you link should have a lot more added to it, from stuff we observe.

1)- X-Wings are manually serviced.

2)- X-Wings have an astromech droid slot

3)- X-Wings are hyperspace capable

4)- X-Wings have S-Foils, the S-Foils can be in attack position or not.

That's a lot of really basic stuff we're missing there.

We know this:

> The rebel starfighters have deflector shields.

> There's a reason to turn them off at some points in time.

> They can be put forward, backwards, or neutral

> The X-Wings are physically larger than the TIE Fighters

> The X-Wings have an astromech droid

> X-Wing pilots wear helmets, but not environmental suites.

> The X-Wings can enter hyperspace

> There's some reason to close the S-Foils, and it isn't to attack.

> There's a reason to open the S-Foils, related to the guns.

> The fact that fighter craft are small makes them hard to hit with turbo lasers.

So, are X-Wings better? We never find out if TIE Fighters have shields at all. The fact that we get no tech chatter from them means you could steer that in any direction. We know they don't have hyperdrives- they are "short range fighters" who "couldn't get this deep into space on its own". We also know that shaking them seems really hard- if you're attacking the death star, a TIE Fighter on you means, your friend shoots it down or you die. Are they fast? Han Solo has no problems catching them in the Falcon in the script (the same draft that still had r2 as a claw armed tripod).

The TIEs that we see are deadly but vulnerable. We never see any evidence of them having shields. I can definitely see how the extrapolation happened, but I concur that we have no reason to assume that TIEs are shieldless. Certainly, laser fire appears reasonable effective against all fighter class ships we see- I don't think anyone gets hit thrice and still flies except large ships like the Falcon, etc.

Also this script line:

EXT. SURFACE OF THE DEATH STAR

Three TIE fighters, Vader flanked by two wingmen, dive in a

tight formation. The sun reflects off their dominate solar

fins as they loop toward the Death Star's surface.

Has nothing to do with anything, but that's pretty aces, right?

WLuke never suffers a direct hit. "I'm hit but not bad" does not imply he was hit but his shield absorbed it. It implies he was hit in a non-vital area that did not instantly explode.

Yea. We have some direction on this:

"

INT. TIE FIGHTER'S COCKPIT

The TIE pilot takes aim at Luke's X-wing.

EXT. SPACE

The Imperial TIE fighter pilot scores a hit on Luke's ship.

Fire breaks out on the right side of the X-wing.

INT. LUKE'S X-WING FIGHTER - COCKPIT

Luke looks out of his cockpit at the flames on his ship.

LUKE

I'm hit, but not bad.

EXT. LUKE'S X-WING FIGHTER

Smoke pours out from behind Artoo-Detoo.

LUKE'S VOICE

Artoo, see what you can do with it.

Hang on back there.

Green laserfire moves past the beeping little robot as his

head turns.

"

The direction makes it plain that he "takes aim at the wing", which is what gets hit.

All of these indicate that whether you are destroyed or not has nothing to do with shields and everything to do with how and where you are hit.

Yes, but it's still feasible that the shields are helping to avoid hits. I mean, it's clear the shields do *something*, or they wouldn't micromanage them onscreen- but certainly they don't absorb hits in a way that is cinematically relevant.

But every X-wing and Y-wing hit in the fuselage dies the same as every TIE Fighter that is hit in the fuselage. Boom. Even if you could prove X-wings and Y-wings had shields and TIE's didn't, it hardly makes any difference in the movies. Whatever shields any of the ships have are nowhere near as powerful as even the weakest shields in GSF or any other video game.

Concur.

As a note- the script calls for a lot more exploding things than I think make it in. Not ships, but like, the equivalent of rockets and flak are called out in great numbers in the script (laserbolts that explode near the ships sound like rockets, and flak is called out by name). It's possible.... that this kind of explosive would be what the shields were meant to shield against. If this theory has any merit, then it would be understood that no deflector shields would ever stop a direct laser, but would offer protection against explosions (possibly caused by blasters that miss, I guess) that would otherwise destroy the ship. Certainly, we don't see any physical projectiles enter a ship at any point, despite them being referred to in huge amounts in the script. If the deflector shields are just for that- and a "ray shield" would be what you would need to stop a laser (like the exhaust port of the death star)- that would be pretty consistent with what we see in the original movie.

Hrm.

As a note- the script calls for a lot more exploding things than I think make it in. Not ships, but like, the equivalent of rockets and flak are called out in great numbers in the script (laserbolts that explode near the ships sound like rockets, and flak is called out by name). It's possible.... that this kind of explosive would be what the shields were meant to shield against. If this theory has any merit, then it would be understood that no deflector shields would ever stop a direct laser, but would offer protection against explosions (possibly caused by blasters that miss, I guess) that would otherwise destroy the ship. Certainly, we don't see any physical projectiles enter a ship at any point, despite them being referred to in huge amounts in the script. If the deflector shields are just for that- and a "ray shield" would be what you would need to stop a laser (like the exhaust port of the death star)- that would be pretty consistent with what we see in the original movie.

 

Hrm.

We definitely see flakish type weapons in the Battle of Hoth. There seems to be splotchy explodey splashes of light all around the airspeeders, buffeting them. "Watch that cross-fire boys".

Specifically trench run is what I was saying.

Also, the "ray shield" reference is in third draft (back with Starkiller), so it's probably just a reason to need to use protorps. It predates any of the shielding tech-chatter, so probably no one was like "ray shield means THIS". But even without the ray shield thing, the "the assumptions that deflectors work on small physical projectiles and concussive blasts" idea could still have merit.

Well first of all the X-wing, Y-wing, and B-wing are not really in the same class as any of the common production TIEs.

They're all strike/multirole/attack platforms, what the DoD would prefix with a F/A or A designation.

TIEs, TIE interceptors, and A-wings are space-superiority designs. They'd get an F prefix.

The TIE Bombers are pure bombers, they'd have a B prefix to the model.

Then you have things like the Mu gunboats or a Skipray that sort of fall between strike and bomber roles, sort of the equivalent of an A/B prefix.

If you're going with an engineering approach, then the primary question at rough technological parity (and there's no indication that either side has a big advantage there, in some cases the ships are coming from the same production facilities), the question is what are you trading off in your ship design in order to achieve your mission goal?

The superiority fighters really only have one job. Shoot down other starfighters. So they have to be fast, they have to be maneuverable, and they have to have weapons potent enough that a starfighter that gets hit with them is likely to be crippled or destroyed with relatively few shots. Everything else is excess baggage when it comes to the mission. That's why they tend to be small enough that a glancing shot is almost as likely to go through the cockpit as a direct hit.

The strike craft isn't really about dogfighting. It's about blowing up big, important, and extremely expensive equipment, but still being good enough at a dogfight that the appearance of one or two fighters doesn't mean your whole squadron has to scrub the mission. So you get more weapons, heavy weapons (usually guided missiles of some sort), more range, and since that all takes up a larger volume you might as well throw in things like shields and a hyperdrive because the proportional increase in mass is smaller and there's not as noticeable performance hit as there would be in a pure fighter. With the extra fuel and bigger powerplants there's also more available power for accessories. This is fundamentally a compromise design. Can't fight as well as a fighter, can't carry as much payload as a bomber, but a squadron of them can fight through a fighter screen and then turn a medium sized capital ship into wreckage. Something that's not really feasible for a fighter squadron or a bomber squadron on their own.

The assault ships are a lot like strikes, but with more payload and less ability to fight. They're not that popular because you're still carrying less payload than a bomber, but you've compromised away almost all of your ability to dogfight effectively. Found mostly among those that don't have space to park a full sized bomber, or can't quite afford the sticker price of a strike or bomber.

The bombers are cargo craft. The cargo they deliver happens to be explosives, but their job is to haul a bunch of heavy stuff around and then deposit it at a designated location. The only reason ore barges or freighters aren't used for this is that you have to make some concessions to being small, fast, and maneuverable if people are trying to shoot you down while you're on your delivery run. All of those traits take away from payload though, so you want as little of them as you think you can get away with.

If you're in the position to choose, what you do is establish control of the battlespace with fighters, and then send bombers in to demolish anything that needs to be demolished. That takes a lot of budget resources to get done though.

If you're under financial pressure, but aren't broke, then the strike is a very appealing compromise. You have to pick your fights and tailor your missions according to the craft limitations, but if you've got strikes in the hangar you don't have to worry about the first element of mission planning being, "How to we get command to release half a squadron of [insert fighters or bombers] to us, and how long is it going to take them to get here if they say yes?" There are also rare cases where having heavy weapons on an agile platform is handy for taking out a target that is too well defended for a bomber to survive the trip. In general though that begs the question, why not suppress the defenses or just use a capital ship?

If you're leaving finger print indentations in every credit stick that leaves the unit's budget, then you wind up with assault boats, and a bunch of pilots that want to be flying different ships and wish they had fighter cover.

In terms of economics and engineering it really makes perfect sense for the Imperial Navy to be fielding joint Fighter and Bomber operations. They have the money to buy the best.

The Rebellion can't afford that, and they don't really have safe havens or a strong logistics chain. So the strike class is a good fit, though in a lot of cases that's still a real strain on the budget. Prior to the collapse of the Empire due to factional infighting, it was probably rare to see Rebel strike craft that were up to factory spec, so in practice a lot of times they would have functioned at some level between the strike and assault classes.

Assault boats tend to show up with the underworld fringe, with local patrols that need to be fast enough and heavily armed enough to intimidate large freighters, and by the Empire in cases where no real resistance is expected but reinforcements aren't at hand if there are surprises.

The only notable tech difference I really see is that the Imperial uses yellow-green laser cannons and blasters on most of their ships which in theory should be a bit more powerful than red ones of the same size. Something like 10-17% or so percent. Presumably the red ones are a bit cheaper and don't erode things like focusing lenses quite as fast, and so I don't imagine the Rebellion/New Republic are bothered by that. In any case, you can always increase output by doing things like increasing caliber.

A note on shielding, we should probably be calling it combat shielding. For extended high speed space flight you need to protect your ships from micro-debris and if a lot of your pilots are human you'll also definitely want to protect them from cosmic radiation while flying. So TIE fighters almost certainly do have shields, but ones designed for grit and solar storms not ones designed for laser cannon fire and missile warheads.

As far as the shields not seeming to do that much good for the Rebellion's fighters, have you ever met a pilot that though power to shields was a good idea instead of just shunting from lasers to counter the slow drain, even in the games that you think overdo strike shielding? I mean sure, if you've decided to run for it and have no power to lasers then shields at 50% or 75% might work, but I think 25% might as well be the default in practice. That pretty much just handles the occasional glancing shot or two.

If you accept drawing on the prequels I think "deflector shields" literally deflect shots. If I recall in TPM when Anakin's N-1 crashes in the droid control ship after he reactivates the ship's shields you see the small arms fire of the battle droids literally ricochet off the shields.

he only people who take a hit and aren't instantly destroyed are Obi-wan in AotC (vs. Jango),

My interpretation of that sequence was that the explosions were initially the blasts being absorbed by the shields until the end of that sequence where, IMO, it appears that Obi-Wan's shields collapse resulting in hull damage.

At any rate if you assume that shields work the same in both trilogies it might be possible to conclude that shields function similar to physical armor. Namely that small arms fire is harmless and bounces off, more powerful fire (say what might be the equivalent of a WWII aircraft .50 machine gun) is absorbed up to a certain point after which the shields collapse and subsequent shots cause hull damage, and finally high powered blasts equivalent to an aircraft cannon or greater in power immediately pierce the shields to cause hull damage/destroy the ship.

Now as for X-Wings vs. TIEs a possible reason why Luke, Wedge, and a few other pilots survive being hit is that TIEs are equipped with blasters comparable to a rifle caliber machine gun or, at most, .50 cal machine guns. In contrast the reason TIEs always explode and die might be due to X-Wings being equipped with more powerful weaponry equivalent to an 20mm or higher caliber aircraft cannon. Considering that Lucas was drawing on WWII dogfights it's plausible to conclude that he envisioned ships having a similar wide range of weaponry since, at least at the start of the war, many planes still used rifle caliber machine guns and only later got upgraded to .50 cals or cannons. So what we might have is that TIEs are using lower powered weaponry (hence why Luke, Wedge, Red One, Porkins, etc. survive being hit) whereas X-Wings are equipped with more powerful weapons resulting in TIEs typically exploding.

EDIT: On the WWII note you might also consider the possibility that Lucas is drawing on early war Pacific Theater. Namely that the Alliance are using Y-Wings (F4Fs/F2As and/or TBDs/SBDs) with a handful of more modern X-Wings (P-38s/F4Us) versus the Empire's top of the line TIEs (roughly equivalent to Zeroes). This would both explain why the Alliance pilots were reliant on their wingman to peel for them, mostly unable to outmaneuver TIEs, and TIEs seemingly not as reliant on team tactics to achieve victory (except for Vader's flight most TIEs seem to be lone wolfs or only very loosely cooperating as a unit).

If you accept drawing on the prequels I think "deflector shields" literally deflect shots.

Well, whatever the stuff does in Jar Jar And Computer Generated Merchandise Go On An Adventure is interesting from that third frame- that's whatever Lucasarts (and presumably Lucas) think happens when shields actually take some shots (at least the blaster rifle shots). So from that perspective it IS important. But I think the question is really, based only on holy trilogy, where did we get to "TIE Fighters have no shields, X-Wings are much more resilient because of that fact".

My interpretation of that sequence was that the explosions were initially the blasts being absorbed by the shields until the end of that sequence where, IMO, it appears that Obi-Wan's shields collapse resulting in hull damage.

I'll have to rewatch that. I think it's just before some people standing around talking in front of a green screen and and right after some playstation graphics happening. Which admittedly doesn't narrow it down much...

That does sound like a reasonable interpretation, but I'm a lot more interested in what was thought in Holy Trilogy for this reason: if Prequels had something happen (say a guy gives a speech about how the shields work and what they do), there's no reason to believe that was what anyone thought the shields were in 1976. That's just stuff they retconned together later. It would be interesting for seeing what shows up in the sequel trilogy, however.

At any rate if you assume that shields work the same in both trilogies

I just don't think it's a useful assumption. Why would there be any overriding philosophy spanning that many years? We could go forward, but not backward, unless we want to assume that there's some canon answer that Lucas or his appointed minion would dutifully produce, with a sigh, if pressed. "Oh good." He'll say. "The fans want to know about deflector shields." Bob the intern is like "ok, I'll go grep wookipedia". And Stan the writer is like "ok, lemme come up with something that doesn't conflict with any canon, and hopefully not any EU canon..."

That's plugging together stuff after the fact, demonstrating verisimilitude where none was intended or cared about. It doesn't represent a vision, just a lowest common denominator selected by some committee.

it might be possible to conclude that shields function similar to physical armor. Namely that small arms fire is harmless and bounces off, more powerful fire (say what might be the equivalent of a WWII aircraft .50 machine gun) is absorbed up to a certain point after which the shields collapse and subsequent shots cause hull damage

I could definitely believe that this general thought process was involved in the folks who wrote about shields. It's got a physical analogy, it isn't too exact, and it seems to fit. It's certainly a reasonable a guess as any.

Now as for X-Wings vs. TIEs a possible reason why Luke, Wedge, and a few other pilots survive being hit is that TIEs are equipped with blasters comparable to a rifle caliber machine gun or, at most, .50 cal machine guns.

I thought about the thing where the TIE fighters had weaker guns, but:

1)- No one ever refers to that fact.

2)- It would be surprising, given the nature of the empire.

In its favor is the simple fact that X-Wings have MORE guns, and they are very pronounced.

But the point of Nem's post is that the TIEs don't suffer worse than the X-Wings. TIEs that get hit don't melt, they have descriptions about their solar sail being damaged or whatever. The blasters seem to have very similar effectiveness, especially when you factor in stuff like "the pilot aims at Luke's wing" from the script.

I thought about the thing where the TIE fighters had weaker guns, but:

1)- No one ever refers to that fact.

2)- It would be surprising, given the nature of the empire.

 

In its favor is the simple fact that X-Wings have MORE guns, and they are very pronounced

Just to address this: my interpretation for weaker guns is based on the assumption that, being smaller (in order to fit under the cockpit) they are inherently weaker. Now granted there's nothing saying that they weren't tuned to be comparable to an X-Wing's cannon but I kinda find it a stretch just from the logistics side that they could draw enough power to do so (on the other hand that might be why TIE pilots wear full space suits, there's not enough power left for life support).

It also seems that the TIE's guns fired linked whereas X-Wings fire individually. Now that could just be a cosmetic choice on the part of the film makers or it could be due to the weapons being weak enough individually to make having linked fire necessary/desirable whereas X-Wings guns pack enough punch on their own to not require being linked. On the other hand I may be misremembering and X-Wings guns also fire in pairs. EDIT: NVM this part

Just gotta say this thread has exceeded my hopes

Movie examples, early script intentions, World War II analogies, prequel hatin' ;D

This thread delivers!

Having re-read the entire X-wing series recently, I'm not entirely sure I would say that the EU ever portrayed TIE fighters as inferior to X-Wings or more fragile. Many of the characters in the novels look at an incoming swarm of TIEs with dread, and only a handful of characters display any cocky egotistical attitude towards the TIEs. Of course that book series was kind of inspired by the X-Wing and TIE fighter games so its hard to judge.

But assuming that we know nothing about TIEs now that the EU is all "legendary" and stuff, I would definitely argue that the Rebels are better trained than the Imps, and there are scenes in each of the OT movies that stand out and show that.

In a new hope, Han and the Falcon blast one of the TIEs. The other TIE subsequently panics; hits Darth Vader and then careens into a wall. Is his ship any more fragile than Porkins who thought he could pull up? Probably not, they both crash into a much larger object. The problem is that rather than break formation and pull up to circle back at Han he instead cuts across Vader, clipping the Dark Lord with his large vertical wings.

Then in The Empire Strikes back, during the asteroid chase we have two TIE fighters collide with each other after they try to pursue the Falcon through a narrow canyon. This is a demonstration of incredibly poor coordination and communication. One of them should have gone high over the canyon to follow it from above with a clear flight path while the other followed. Instead they both try to fly through the canyon, bump each other, and careen into the walls where they explode.

Finally in Return of the Jedi, when the Rebels fly into the Death Star we see some very high precision flying as they zoom through narrow twisted corridors. TIEs attempt to follow them when one of them strikes a wall, then plays pinball with the death star interior where he crumples into a tiny ball before exploding. In comparison to the Rebels, the only rebel we see die within the Death Star, is shot down by the TIEs, none of the rebels crash into the death star walls.

So, in conclusion I would argue shields or no shields, fragile or not fragile, TIE pilots are really scrubs when it comes to facing the Rebels. The fact that so many of them crash in the movies is probably why they were assumed as fragile shieldess fighters, but even if that's not true, they crash into things where the rebels do not. Does not say alot in regards to their skill.

Many of the characters in the novels look at an incoming swarm of TIEs with dread

I think the point is that it doesn't take a swarm of TIEs to threaten an X-Wing, it takes a single TIE. In Star Wars (movie), I'm pretty sure that the only time ANY TIE gets taken out is when they are bearing down on a rebel pilot- and many rebels can't shake the TIEs.

But assuming that we know nothing about TIEs now that the EU is all "legendary" and stuff, I would definitely argue that the Rebels are better trained than the Imps, and there are scenes in each of the OT movies that stand out and show that.

That's actually a reasonable conclusion to draw. Some of the scenes are clearly there as "the cops run into each other", and some could be excused as "chasing is harder than fleeing", but that remains a valid assertion.

The other TIE subsequently panics; hits Darth Vader and then careens into a wall.

Accurate but a bit unfair. I'm pretty sure his fear was supposed to be "avoid being rammed", but there's no way it looks like that at ALL in the movie.

Then in The Empire Strikes back, during the asteroid chase we have two TIE fighters collide with each other

Dem Duke boys are at it again!

Finally in Return of the Jedi, when the Rebels fly into the Death Star we see some very high precision flying as they zoom through narrow twisted corridors.

I'll point something out- it's assumed that every Rebel there knew they were going to be doing that crazy stunt. Whatever practice, study, and preparations they COULD do, they did. If we want to try to scry on their skill level, the fact that they had prepped, studied, etc., and the Interceptor pilot was probably busy hanging out in his fetish mask until being told to scramble and fly through a metal moon...

I'll point something out- it's assumed that every Rebel there knew they were going to be doing that crazy stunt. Whatever practice, study, and preparations they COULD do, they did. If we want to try to scry on their skill level, the fact that they had prepped, studied, etc., and the Interceptor pilot was probably busy hanging out in his fetish mask until being told to scramble and fly through a metal moon...

I actually watched all those scenes again when I was writing that post to make sure I wasn't just blowing smoke and it's a TIE fighter that does the pinballing, not an interceptor.

Sorry, wasn't saying I disagree with your assessment of the scene and that the Imps had not trained at all to fly into their own battlestation, that's a very valid and logical point. I just wanted to point out that it's a TIE fighter that crashes, not an Interceptor.

Interceptor pilots be cool, TIE fighter pilots be scrubs.

I just don't think it's a useful assumption. Why would there be any overriding philosophy spanning that many years? We could go forward, but not backward, unless we want to assume that there's some canon answer that Lucas or his appointed minion would dutifully produce, with a sigh, if pressed. "Oh good." He'll say. "The fans want to know about deflector shields." Bob the intern is like "ok, I'll go grep wookipedia". And Stan the writer is like "ok, lemme come up with something that doesn't conflict with any canon, and hopefully not any EU canon..."

 

That's plugging together stuff after the fact, demonstrating verisimilitude where none was intended or cared about. It doesn't represent a vision, just a lowest common denominator selected by some committee.

Granted we can only go forward. I guess what I meant was that assuming that there wasn't a dramatic change in how shields were conceived of functioning (such as GSF disto shield being the original thought later transformed to one that functions like physical armor). More to the point I was using that example to give a movie example that played into my following analogy to armor. The OT lends support to such comparisons since something called "ray shielding" is mentioned in ANH which is indicated to protect against blaster shots - basically functioning like armor and what we later see in TPM.

Now it's never indicated whether ray shielding and deflector shields are the same so identifying the similarity/difference without drawing on the EU is a problem.

It seems though that while X-Wings are significantly weaker than what we know from video games it seems that they were able to absorb more battle damage than TIEs. Witness that TIEs, when damaged, invariably exploded whereas X-Wings in ANH alone have a number of pilots survive non-critical damage. So while X-Wings are without a doubt fragile we do have movie implications that the TIEs are unable to survive any damage whereas an X-Wing can survive some.

When you factor in ROTJ things get more interesting since the Alliance pilots are able to hold their own against forces with a significant numerical superiority (at least briefly before numbers begin to overwhelm them). Which seems curious when you consider how the Alliance pilots that had numerical superiority in ANH were almost completely wiped out by a numerically smaller TIE force. Now granted from what we know Y-Wings were meant to be more similar to a WWII TBF torpedo bomber and not the fighter-bomber as they ended up as but they likely filmed ANH according to that original intent (in the sense that the Y-Wings are slaughtered). But the point still stands that a numerically superior Alliance forces looses in ANH whereas in ROTJ they're not immediately wiped out by vastly superior numbers. Drawing from WWII again: by the end of the war in the Pacific American pilots were at a distinct advantage to their Japanese counterparts in no small part thanks to their more durable ships giving them better odds at living to fight another day with the result that the core of the fighter groups was being made of seasoned veterans in contrast to the Japanese fighter groups that had steadily dwindling numbers of veteran pilots.

EDIT: To my knowledge in ROTJ as they start the attack and Lando orders all wings to check in 3 Wings radio in. Assuming Lando is leading a wing of his own that brings the Alliance's total starfighter strength to 4 Wings. Going off of Wookieepedia each Wing would have about 36 starfighters. So the total strength would be around 144 starfighters. Based on when the Emperor arrives on the Death Star II I think it's safe to say they could field more than double that number of starfighters.

So the success of ROTJ Alliance pilots against numerically superior forces (at least to the extent of not being wiped out immediately) may be due to their more durable ships paying off by leaving them with a more experienced Starfighter Corps. In contrast by the events of ROTJ the Empire has lost numerous veteran pilots due to the weaker armor/shields of TIEs with the result that while they can still field numerically superior forces most of those forces are green and no longer made up of seasoned veterans. All in all I think there's something to be said to the superior durability of the X-Wing, not due to any specified stats, but rather due to the changes in how the Empire's numerical superiority impacts Alliance forces.

Perhaps also worth considering in the debate is how in the movies whenever you get a cockpit view of an Alliance pilot before they're killed they have enough time to 1) panic 2) scream and/or flinch before exploding. This seems to imply that they weren't taken out by one or two hits but numerous hits (since the movies demonstrate that the final shot causes the ships to explode be it an X-Wing or TIE). Ruling out the cockpit scenes being just for dramatic effect I think a case can be made that the Alliance ships are durable enough to allow the pilot to both become aware that they're about to die and be alarmed by this. In contrast TIEs seem to explode almost immediately after being hit once, never enough time to show a cockpit view (granted from a filming perspective there might not have been a reason to do so since the TIE pilots all have masks).

TIE pilot raises his hand in morning briefing, before the Battle of Endor.

"Sir, given that the rebels have complete technical readouts of this battlestation, and that we know they will attempt to blow up the reactor, shouldn't we drill on superstructure pursuit?"

"That's silly, pilot. This Death Star is protected by an energy shield, projected from the moon, which is protected by an entire legion of the Emperor's finest troops."

"Ohh. Well yeah, those Scoutroopers are actually pretty competent. Though I hope someone gives them some camo armor... I guess we will just practice flying around the Death Star in a giant TIE Congo line..."

My understanding of the TIE is that they were made to attack in swarms. The numbers would overtake your attack party. The X-Wings were designed to deal with the the multiple ship attack and could deal damage and destruction to 4 or 5 TIEs.

Your "understanding" is purely from the EU. There is no movie basis for it. It's from EU writers trying to write fiction that meshed with video games and tabletop, where the heroes needed to win easily.

In ANH, we never see a TIE Fighter "swarm". Our first sighting of a TIE FIghter is one on patrol, in the wastes of exploded Alderaan, alone. If that ship is meant to fight in a swarm, why would it be on patrol alone?

Our second experience with TIE's is a group of four sentry ships that attacks the Falcon--four is a standard squadron size, and those four give the Falcon quite a bit of trouble. Again, hardly a "swarm".

Then, when the rebels attack the Death Star with 29 X-wings and Y-wings, the Empire nearly repels them with 8 TIE Fighters and 1 TIE Advanced. And by the looks of things, every time a rebel fighter is faced against a single TIE, it loses.

If Lucas had ever had in his mind that TIE's attack in "swarms", then he would have had ILM composite together a swarm. And if he wasn't able to do it for technical reasons in '77, then he would've fixed it up in the special edition. They obviously were able to make a large rebel fleet--why is there no huge TIE fleet?

In Empire Strikes Back, we again see only a handful of TIE's pursue the Falcon into the asteroid field. Why not send a "swarm"? Because honestly I don't think Star Destroyers really have swarms of them on board. Because I do not think TIE's are particularly cheap. I think they are state-of-the-art, top-of-the-line, best-in-the-galaxy starfighters. The only cost-saving measure they have is the lack of a hyperdrive, because they work off carriers. Meanwhile the rebels are flying whatever old clunkers they can scavenge together. You can plainly see this in the aesthetics. And because the rebels have few carriers, they have to cram a hyperdrive into their fighters.

"But what about ROTJ?!" you ask. "There's lots of shots of TIE swarms there!"

Yes, there are. There are also swarms of Star Destroyers, and a Super Star Destroyer. Even if each Star Destroyer present only had 8 TIE's on board, the number of TIE's flying around would be huge, like you see in RotJ. Plus the Empire was preparing for a trap where the Emperor himself was the bait--their goal was to utterly annihilate the rebellion in one battle. That is far from "normal operating procedure". The Empire probably called in a huge number of squadrons just for that battle.

Swarms only make sense if your starfighters are piloted by droids or clones. It does you no good to mass-produce cheap fighters if you can't mass-produce cheap pilots. But academy trained, willing recruits (not clones) are not cheap. They require propaganda, food, lodging, and training. Why make that investment if you're going to throw them in a crappy, cheap swarm fighter that is outclassed by the main fighter of your insurgent foe? Especially if you could put them in something much more advanced and you're an Empire that spends limitless resources on absurdly excessive military equipment?

If recruits are so easy to come by and so expendable, then why does the Empire bother giving their stormtroopers armor and blasters? Why not put them in loincloths, give them big sticks, and tell them, "I know you are underarmed and underprotected, but it's okay because you're cheap and expendable and can attack in swarms!" That's the silly non-logic required if you want to contend that TIE's are crappy and meant to be used in swarms.

All of the movie evidence points toward the TIE's being technologically equivalent or superior to every rebel starfighter. The rebels are insurgents using hand-me-down fighters cobbled together with spare parts.

Just look at the Y-wing (following links are all new canon). This is what a Y-wing looks like fresh off the assembly line, ~20 years before ANH.This is what it looks like 20 years later when the rebels are using it.

I contend that the X-wing was similar. It was an evolution of the old ARC-170. They are hand-me-down fighters the rebels are barely keeping working--they are not some secret superfighter design smuggled out by Incom defectors, which--despite being so amazing--was never reproduced by the Empire.

The reason the Empire never reproduced the X-wing was because it was straight-up inferior to the TIE Fighters and TIE Interceptors, ship-to-ship. No swarms involved.

My understanding of the TIE is that they were made to attack in swarms. The numbers would overtake your attack party. The X-Wings were designed to deal with the the multiple ship attack and could deal damage and destruction to 4 or 5 TIEs.

So that's the current lore- in TIE Fighter, X-Wing (games) and EU canon, the X-Wings are made to be more resilient, with shielding, and are individually both more expensive to produce and maintain. Hence, each X-Wing needs to be in "hero mode", trading for a lot of TIEs. Meanwhile, the Empire, who is evil, has these mass produced things that are individually very cheap, running shieldless and without even life support, based presumably on some imperial guy who did the math and decided it was very efficient, and who cares about the morale?

This goes pretty well with the story told, and on the face of it fits the ruthless cruelty of the empire.

But we aren't discussing that. We all know that this, at some point, became accepted in Star Wars stories. What we are discussing is:

Where did this idea of the "swarm fighter" come from initially? Because it sure as HECK isn't in Holy Trilogy anywhere, where the TIE fighters appear in similar numbers to the rebel craft, are lethal and accurate, and seem to be just as easy to damage and destroy as an X-Wing or Y-Wing.

And also:

Will this new mythos be part of the story in sequel trilogy? Or was it just a trope we'll see in video games and novels?

The first part... I mean, someone who read them all in order will probably find the actual path for this development. I *do* think there's some justification for it in the movies, but the direction they took past that seems a bit odd. The look of the X-Wings is clearly very "analog". Their computers are lamer, their need for avionics and ground support much higher, but they have four guns that shoot super lots and they clearly have more capability with the hyperdrive (that the TIEs clearly lack, even in Star Wars). The TIEs have only two guns, but they fire ludicrously fast, and the craftsmanship is sleek and machine-like.

I think that the versions of the ships we see later are a lot more powerful, relative to the TIEs, than the ones we see in the movies. Meanwhile, the TIE Fighters become very numerous, like gnats, instead of small numbers of elite silent pilots as we actually see in holy trilogy.

But I *do* have an answer for the second part. It's not 100%, but I have some confidence.

Verain predicts: In the sequel trilogy, TIE Fighters will exist in large numbers, like in video games, and not like in Holy Trilogy. Some new TIE model will be the "bad guy ace" ship model, as the "TIE Advanced" was for Vader.

Reasoning: Not only has there been a lot of years where TIE fighters were suddenly portrayed as existing in large numbers, a swarm of fighters is trivial to create with computers. Setting up fifty dynamically moving models in real world and filming is hugely hard- the fighter scenes are not very busy in any of Holy Trilogy, with the exception of Jedi- and even that's not much compared to the jamboree of dumb distractions that we see routinely in cinema.

Supporting evidence: the trailer-of-trailer shows a few X-Wings in formation briefly, and also a bunch of TIE Fighters flitting uselessly about the Falcon, making zrowwww noises and missing.

Responding to Nemarus' last post:

The movies however, are heavily warped by considerations of storytelling and cinematic showmanship.

They probably shouldn't be taken to reflect the military realities of the Star Wars universe any more than movies about WWII accurately represent the military realities that happened then.

The Imperial Navy was probably not constrained by pilot availability. If we're going pure movie route, while we know that they did recruit for the Navy, we also know that Palpatine had control of a vast supply of clones, taken from a genetic and combat training template that included a high degree of piloting skill. Move-wise, we have no idea when the last batch of clones was produced, or what the final numbers looked like. For all we know 99.8% of stormtroopers and TIE pilots are clones.

EU sources imply that most of them were dead or insane before the timeline of episode 4, but if you count the numbers of populated planets in the Empire, even a very low recruitment rate will provide plenty of replacement pilots even in the absence of clones. For reference, the US DoD has enough active fighter pilots to fully staff 42 Imperial SD IIs (after type training to transition from their current aircraft of course). One measly country of 300 million people. How many live on the Imperial capitol?

Procuring SSSSWWWWAAARRRMMMSSSS of pilots would not have been a problem for the Empire. It would have only taken roughly 400 Earth-type population planets to fully staff pilots for all 25000 ISD's that the EU contends were in the Imperial Navy. Mind you that's with a military recruitment/conscription rate that's less than 2% of the population, and the Empire seems like it was rather keen on militarization, so rates likely would have been substantially higher.

I do somewhat buy a survivability and firepower advantage for the Rebellion ships, and here's why. The Imperials had on average much more skilled pilots. They had the time, the money, the institutions, and the locations needed to train extensively. Keep in mind that Biggs, the only Rebellion pilot that we know received real combat pilot training, was trained by the Empire in an Imperial Academy. Luke's training? He can shoot a blaster out the window of a sub-orbital Incom shuttle while trying not to splatter himself into a canyon wall during terrain following flight.

The honest truth is that Luke wasn't even qualified to move an X-wing from one parking spot to another for maintenance. Despite this the Rebels were happy to have him because his flying experience was greater than average for their beginning combat pilots.

So we have a Sith lord backed up by 8 professionally trained military pilots, who given the prestige of the posting were likely better than average, all flying space superiority fighters that were probably factory spec down to the last bolt. They fly against 29 strike/attack ships, some of which are from a previous starfighter design generation, all of which have more spot welds, bondo, and duct tape in their structures than any mechanic is going to be happy with, and they are manned for the most part by people with primary flight training that consists of taking a landspeeder to go to the store.

Having two of them survive the Death Star's artillery and the 8 professional pilots + Sith Lord (who was already a fighter ace before any of them were born), sounds like a pretty decent argument for having a large advantage in hardware, especially in survivability.

A factory spec X-wing in the hands of properly trained pilot would have been terrifying. You know, "you take the five TIE fighter wings on the left, I'll take the five on the right," level scary. Well, in the hands of a Jedi Master maybe.

Might as well cave to the EU rationalizations that seem to have merit. It tends to creep into even the posts of those starting the 'movies only' discussions. Given that the best portions of the EU are quite a lot better than the worst portions of the movies, there's no reason not to embrace the better parts.

What makes for good (or sometimes just gaudy) cinema, doesn't always correlate with anything that remotely makes sense.

So in a situation where based on the respective groups of pilots you'd expect the Imperials to take home a 10:1 or better KDR, and more important, to successfully complete the mission (by ramming the X-wings if that's what it takes, keeping a few million of your service members alive is normally considered a fairly high stakes objective), you instead have a 3.23 KDR and mission failure. Even worse, most of those kills are Y-wings, which should pretty much be free kills. So while that's all down to cinematic considerations, the combat record seen in the movies doesn't contradict the idea that X-wings are at least a whole design generation more advanced and more powerful than TIEs, or at the very least the Mercedes strike starfighters compared to the TIEs as the Lada or Yugo space superiority starfighters.

Edit: As a historical note, if taking some combination of Nazi Germany and the U.S.S.R. as your basic templates for an evil empire, having a strategy of mass producing huge numbers of well engineered, but cheap and bare-bones fighters and interceptors was Soviet military aviation doctrine for quite a few decades. You produce enough to take the losses, and then still have plenty in reserve. You get your aces by a process of natural selection, and if you collect them in select units and give them the best craft you have available, you'll find that they're entirely capable of taking on the 'hero' faction in their shiny high tech warbirds on a 1v1 basis. The fancypants fighters are going to cull an awful lot of your less experienced fighters during that process though. Late cold war era and NATO had to plan for fighting against 4:1 or worse odds in some scenarios, and even with the 'nice' planes in some cases average projected survival time for NATO pilots was less than 1 hour after initial contact with the enemy. That's not entirely consistent with the Star Wars universe, but then, the Star Wars universe isn't entirely consistent with itself even in the first three movies.

 

So in a situation where based on the respective groups of pilots you'd expect the Imperials to take home a 10:1 or better KDR, and more important, to successfully complete the mission (by ramming the X-wings if that's what it takes, keeping a few million of your service members alive is normally considered a fairly high stakes objective), you instead have a 3.23 KDR and mission failure. Even worse, most of those kills are Y-wings, which should pretty much be free kills. So while that's all down to cinematic considerations, the combat record seen in the movies doesn't contradict the idea that X-wings are at least a whole design generation more advanced and more powerful than TIEs, or at the very least the Mercedes strike starfighters compared to the TIEs as the Lada or Yugo space superiority starfighters.

 

 

Edit: As a historical note, if taking some combination of Nazi Germany and the U.S.S.R. as your basic templates for an evil empire, having a strategy of mass producing huge numbers of well engineered, but cheap and bare-bones fighters and interceptors was Soviet military aviation doctrine for quite a few decades. You produce enough to take the losses, and then still have plenty in reserve. You get your aces by a process of natural selection, and if you collect them in select units and give them the best craft you have available, you'll find that they're entirely capable of taking on the 'hero' faction in their shiny high tech warbirds on a 1v1 basis. The fancypants fighters are going to cull an awful lot of your less experienced fighters during that process though. Late cold war era and NATO had to plan for fighting against 4:1 or worse odds in some scenarios, and even with the 'nice' planes in some cases average projected survival time for NATO pilots was less than 1 hour after initial contact with the enemy. That's not entirely consistent with the Star Wars universe, but then, the Star Wars universe isn't entirely consistent with itself even in the first three movies.

I agree with this assessment completely. As I said earlier the difference in Alliance pilot ability to deal with TIEs is very distinctly draw between ANH and ROTJ. In ANH the Alliance pilots are decimated by a numerically smaller TIE force, probably due to Ramalina's point that the Alliance pilots largely have no combat experience. But by ROTJ even though they are facing TIEs that have (in all probability) a massive numerical superiority, the Alliance pilots are holding their own. That they were inevitably going to be overwhelmed by sheer numbers is a given but, considering the numerical superiority the Empire has at Endor, you'd expect that a bunch of ships that have no better survivability to a TIE would be decimated with minimal TIE losses within minutes of the engagement starting.

That however doesn't seem to be the case since they're not only able to protect the Alliance capital ships from enemy starfighters (we never see an Alliance capital ship get taken out by any type of TIE, only the Death Star) but also make attack runs on ISDs. That seems like combat flying that would be impossible to achieve for a non-Jedi. So it's either that X-Wings have distinctly superior survivability or by the time of ROTJ the Alliance has surpassed the Imperial Academy in training quality (which seems unlikely; although it is plausible that the training at this point is comparable which would support Ramalina's point). At least I can see no logical reason other than the X-Wing having superior survivability to explain why TIEs would be able to decimate a numerically superior force in ANH but be unable to completely destroy a numerically inferior force in ROTJ.

It should also be pointed out that while we know the Y-Wing is an old design there is no reason to assume the X-Wing to be an older design and not contemporary with TIEs.

EDIT: Actually I think in ANH 3 Alliance starfighters survive, not 2. You have Luke, Wedge, + 1 unnamed Y-Wing pilot if I recall correctly.

Your "understanding" is purely from the EU. There is no movie basis for it.

I would say, very little movie basis. The X-Wings have hyperdrive, the TIE Fighters do not. The X-Wings have four large guns, the TIE Fighters have two smaller ones. X-Wing pilots don't use envirosuits. I think extrapolating a little isn't very wrong, but what we've seen in the EU is a LARGE amount of extrapolation.

In ANH, we never see a TIE Fighter "swarm". Our first sighting of a TIE FIghter is one on patrol, in the wastes of exploded Alderaan, alone. If that ship is meant to fight in a swarm, why would it be on patrol alone?

The Falcon is fully able to catch (and kill) that TIE Fighter, as the screen direction about the TIE Fighter losing ground to the Falcon makes clear. But I suspect that's more to make it seem like the good guys are about to give them the ol' one-two and then do the reveal.

In any event, a ship out on patrol would be beneficial as a solo ship- I don't feel this contributes to the point. If the TIE runs into trouble and gets exploded, that's a guard doing its job- its destruction would alert the rest of the fleet. If TIEs were elite and less common you would have them on patrol individually, and if they were swarm ships piloted by derps you would ALSO have them on patrol individually- they'd just cover more space because there would be more.

Our second experience with TIE's is a group of four sentry ships that attacks the Falcon--four is a standard squadron size, and those four give the Falcon quite a bit of trouble. Again, hardly a "swarm".

True, but someone will say that those four were ordered to die for the Empire to make the escape look good. I think the tracking device was a plan B.

In any event, getting four up and running fast enough to intercept is probably good luck on the Empire's part. Certainly, the Falcon crew don't think any punches are being pulled, and they clearly are conversant with TIE Fighters.

Then, when the rebels attack the Death Star with 29 X-wings and Y-wings, the Empire nearly repels them with 8 TIE Fighters and 1 TIE Advanced. And by the looks of things, every time a rebel fighter is faced against a single TIE, it loses.

Ok, that's QUITE unfair.

1)- The rebels have to deal with dozens of cannons. Most of their time is spent strafing the surface of the death star, to reduce counterfire. The fact that they are successful at this at all is why the empire launches the TIEs.

2)- We don't see and account for every rebel ship. It's VERY likely that there are TIEs off screen- we certainly see more TIE pilots heading out than we see resulting TIE fighters, so it can be surmised that the few TIE fighters we see match up with the few X-Wings and Y-Wings we see at that point in time- the rest of the squad are doing other things. There's more TIEs than show up.

We definitely don't see an X-Wing actually shake a TIE Fighter though. If a TIE swaps to you, your friend snipes him, or you die. I don't think there's an exception to this, and we do see it a few times.

If Lucas had ever had in his mind that TIE's attack in "swarms", then he would have had ILM composite together a swarm.

This more than anything. They gratuitously redid fully working scenes. They added singing tarts, giant dinosaurs, some kind of hover chariot, a head twitch han solo. They refilmed Boba Fett for NO reason, they got rid of Darth Vader's ghost, they removed the emperor's face. Each space scene was redid SEVERAL times, giving the X-Wings a different (and less logical) attack pattern. They photoshopped in a big slug too.

The changes are numerous and frankly spiteful. The "despecialized edition" fixes all this, but not everyone has downloaded that yet (it's legal to download if you own the bluray version, hooray! ). More importantly, if Lucas at ANY point though that the fighters weren't really threatening, they would have quintupled the amount of fighters and made the laser blasts a cacophony.

I think they are state-of-the-art, top-of-the-line, best-in-the-galaxy starfighters. The only cost-saving measure they have is the lack of a hyperdrive, because they work off carriers. Meanwhile the rebels are flying whatever old clunkers they can scavenge together. You can plainly see this in the aesthetics. And because the rebels have few carriers, they have to cram a hyperdrive into their fighters.

I interpret it similar, but differently. I get the impression that the TIE Fighters are the top of the line for dogfighting, but they are specialized. You can't go on an adventure with your TIE fighter- it's just a weapon. The X-Wing is more general purpose, and appears to have more guns. I get the impression that it is an older style of design that the new ships don't meet in some ways, and vastly exceed in others.

All of the movie evidence points toward the TIE's being technologically equivalent or superior to every rebel starfighter. The rebels are insurgents using hand-me-down fighters cobbled together with spare parts.

A little yes and no. In the script directly preceding the final version (and this one was actually filmed), they do refer to the Incom T sixty five, and include this direction:

"As Luke begins to climb up the ladder into his sleek, deadly

spaceship, the crew chief, who is working on the craft, points

to little Artoo..."

The pilots DO consider their X-Wings powerful. They don't at any point seem to be laboring under the knowledge that it is some secret weapon- that's a clear retcon. Nor does anyone talk smack about a TIE Fighter, call them "only dangerous in numbers", or anything like that.