Another thing that got ruined later on are Stormtroopers. In a New Hope the first scene is one where the Stormtroopers defeat the rebels who are in defensive position. Old Ben then tells us how accurate Imperial troops are and later Leia tells us that the hero’s only got away because they let them. The Empire Strikes Back is basically the Empire is better the movie. It is not until Return of the Jedi that we see Stormtroopers get beaten by the Ewoks, who also managed to beat the rebels as well.

anyone remember the original Battlefront 1 on Bespin platforms where if you even dared to enter a tie fighter you would instantly get destroyed by turrets on the other side of the map? Good times.

I would love to see an episode about the imperial army (the actual army soldiers, not the stormtrooper corp)

How TIE Fighters Became Trash = *Plays TIE Fighter CD-Rom...on Hard: becomes Tan/Emperor's Reach...and BE the exception...* Aka: Play TIE Fighter...it will restore ones confidence in the Empire's abilities to make statfighters lol. IF: you're a good pilot of course.

Considering the short range nature of the mainline TIE series, avoiding conflict with a group of TIEs could be explained as where there are a few TIEs, there will be more close by and possibly an ISD or two.

I'm kind of surprised that you didn't mention that during the Battle of Yavin, the Imperial TIEs were OUTNUMBERED by the rebel fighters by more than 2-to-1. Darth Vader was only allowed by Grand Moff Tarkin to field his own personal squadron consisting of a mere 12 fighters (including himself) against the 30 rebel fighters attacking the Death Star.

In the game Star Wars: Galaxies, the Ties you could use in the imperial pilot trees scaled up in capabilities as you progressed further and became s better pilot, I would like to think that is how the Canon Ties worked as well. Less experienced pilots got the cheapest versions because if the ship got destroyed but the pilot managed to eject the ship could be replaced easier whereas the more experienced you get the less your ship would need to be replaced therefore you were able to be trusted with the more expensive, more durable ships. If you can fight well without shields, and Less powerful weapons your will be even better when the better equipment is available to you

In the miniatures game, I prefer taking TIEs, you tend to take fewer casualties if you have more fighters as the enemy has to think about maneuvering to avoid attack runs from more angles.

Meanwhile, the X wing's much vaunted shields have stopped about 0 shots when not pilotted by a main character in the movies.

TIEs are a Jedi star fighter given to non-Jedi.

>How the TIE fighter is represented in Media as opposed to the TIE fighter being represented IRL i guess?

The Rogue Squadron games made TIES pretty bad, but they're actually really good in their niche in the X-Wing/TIE fighter flight sims. You just need to focus more on evasion than attack.

It genuinely annoys me that I don't hear people talk enough about how at Yavin and Endor, rebel fighters die just as easily as imperial ones and that the whole, no shield, thing started off as a dumb game stat.

In the old X-Wing vs Tie-Fighter games the humble Tie-Fighter was actually my favourite ship. While lacking in hull strength, shields and firepower it was extremely agile, i.e. it was a lot of FUN to fly the x-wing felt like a driving a tractor in comparison.

This is the sort of Star Wars historiography that I watch for.

New headcanon for Corey's Datapad: This is all found-footage from an unattended datapad picked up in a tapcaf.

The tie is based on the zero. A cheap design relying on not getting hit. While a good pilot can hold their own, novices may as well be self-propelled skeet.

Not only is your content interesting, your narration and presentation is sublime. Glad I found you.

This a good example of one of two big problems I have with the way Star Wars lore developed. Namely, a game mechanic gets turned into an in-universe explanation of how things work. See also: Jedi "classes"; "Force powers" (and particularly "lift", "push", "choke" etc being treated as fundamentally distinct abilities rather than just different ways of moving things". My other bugbear is how just about every race or planet has their entire culture defined by the first example of them we see. So Rodians are bounty hunters; Trandoshans are also bounty hunters; Hutts are gangsters; Corellians are ace pilots; female Twileks are sexy dancers, and frequently slaves as well (and I'm sure I read somewhere that the males are frequently sleazy slavers, presumably based on Bib Fortuna); etc.

Didn't come over from Eck, but it seems YT has taken the hint and started recommending your videos to his viewers. This was an interesting look at the meta evolution of TIEs as cannon fodder. I subbed. Good work!

Whenever I think of people talking about this, I remember the time in the Wraith Squadron novels where Wedge lead a bunch of rough-edged New Republic pilots to impersenate Imperial agents and then pirates, flying TIES during both instances. Seems to me if you give a solid pilot anything they'll do well. So I guess that says more about the pilots flying TIEs than it does the TIE itself? That said a lot of the old lore mentioned shileded and hyperdrive equipped TIEs showing up in the hands of competent Imperial leaders (Thrawn) and of course the TIE Defender...

The TIE Pilots were highly trained, the fighters were optimized for maximum speed, agility and firepower. Honestly, I'm fine with TIEs dying to a few shots, but only when they're portrayed as faster and more maneuverable than most rebel ships. But star wars rebels started to make them even worse, as in that show they just make very predictable maneuvers and look extremely slow.

TIEs being inferior to the X wing always made sense to me. They are visibly smaller, and more numerous even in the first movie, and we see the falcon fight off a flight of them by itself. It also fits better with lore, seeing as how they are basically the pinnacle of Clone Wars era interceptor design. By the time of the OT, they are simply getting outdated, and the presence of TIE Interceptors shows that there is an upgrade program for them.

No matter what I will always love TIEs.

I've always had an issue with the supposed disposability of TIEs. To start with the claim that, "TIEs are unshielded and therefore worse," have we ever seen, in the original trilogy, a supposedly shielded fighter survive more than one shot from an enemy? Secondly, everyone makes a big deal about TIEs not having life support. They do, its on their suits, which is the best place for a life-support system to be in a combat scenario. Imagine what would happen if an X-wing's windows got smashed and all the air inside the cockpit got sucked out. Fat lot of good that life support system in your ship does for you then. Or, imagine a second scenario, a fire breaks out in your cockpit. Every Rebel pilot becomes little more than charred meat in such a scenario. A TIE pilot can just open the hatch and let vacuum put out the fire for him. A third scenario, something goes wrong mechanically on the ship, and you have to get out to repair or be lost and drifting in space. Sure, Rebel pilots may have an astromech, but what if the astromech can't reach the system that needs repairs? Its not like they can move from that plug. A TIE pilot can open the hatch, hook himself to the craft with a rope and a carabiner, and then move himself to the affected area and make field expedient repairs himself.

The original movies do show the ties with only 2 lasers. It could be interpreted that they had 2 stronger lasers vs 4 weaker ones on the X-wings, but the laser hardware on the TIEs are significantly smaller than the ones on the X-wings

You'd think that The Empire, having infinitely more resources(really, having near infinite resources), would be the sole power in the Galaxy capable of outfitting itself with vast numbers of extremely competent pilots in very well made machines.

I hope you guys know what I'm talking about: what sucks about TIE Fighters is one of the TIE squadrons that were chasing after Falcon and several Rebels fighters in Death Star 2 ventilation shaft collided with the pipes while the TIE Interceptors avoids collision because it has improved maneuverability.

The TIE LN has the best K/D ratio out of any starfighter in the OT, and it deserves far more love than it gets, often getting considered worse than the Interceptor, which has the worst starfighter K/D ratio. (The Y wing technically has a 2 Kills/0 Deaths ratio, but that's 1 Y wing in RotJ which could just be the pilot, and we only see Vader's TIE piloted once by him, so we don't actually know if that's just because Vader's that good or if his TIE was). Unfortunately, RotJ and the expanded universe were not kind to the Humbling Hexagon Horde.

Growing up with the original trilogy, I never thought of tie fighters as disposable or ineffective. To me they seemed to be equal to or better than X wings and Y wings

The Tie Fighters were sadly meant to be that way. The Emperor sought a fighters that was reliable and cheap, and sadly early in the Empire didn’t care for its pilots. We must remember that much of the credits that Empire spend in the Navy went into building Star Destroyers, Super Star Destroyers, and finally the Death Stars projects, which left the Tie Fighters with little credits to spending for new models and production.

Good memories hitting Left trigger to brake over entire groups of stormtroopers in Battlefront 2004 Xbox as a rebel, slaughter them with hilariously overpowered TIE lasers, and miss that window of being able to pull up before your wonky ass wings snag on a rock or ATST and you just explode instantly

6:30 "Thanks for watching and hope to see you nex-"

Have you considered a video highlighting the some of the fun more ridiculous Legacy era content such as Darth Maul's Brain controlling a semi-corporal halogram? Or the many dead but not actually "dead" characters like the reborn emperor, or Darth Andeddu's brief resurrection?

It would be great if you could do a similar video on tracking down exactly when the Y-wing went from an sturdy, reliable old-school fighter (like, say, an F-4) to the "moves like a sleepy hutt" "bomber" that everyone writes it off as. In the ILM note diagram for Jedi, it's listed as having performance in the same class as the T-65 and TIE

I always figured the fall of the TIE was, in part, comparable to the fall of the Imperial Japanese air force. A decrease in skilled pilots to man their craft lead to things like the Great Pacific Turkey Shoot. We go from the near total annihilation of Red and Gold squadrons at the first Death Star to a Y-wing killing two ties at the second Death Star. It's a bit tangential, but we also see a Tie crash into an open portion of a Mon Cala cruiser, possibly mirroring a kamikaze attack? That's also the only kill a Mon Cala cruiser has gotten in any Star Wars movie or TV show, as they seem to just be glorified air craft carriers for the rebels.

they were still pretty deadly in RotJ, especially Interceptors. And lets not forget the Falcon had to dive into he mouth of a space slug to avoid the squadron after them from Hoth

It's worth noting that Tie Fighters clearly show 'shield hits' when the Millennium Falcon fires upon them in A New Hope; glancing blows that otherwise might have missed, but show a flash of an impact, the exact same flash that the Falcon and X-Wings show when they take a hit and aren't seriously damaged. And throughout the battle around the Death Star, the X-Wings are actually shown to be more fragile than the Tie Fighters, taking fewer hits and requiring more hits on the Tie Fighters to destroy them. Most X-Wings are even destroyed or disabled in just a single shot.

Love the video, really enjoy the behind the scenes discussions on how the lore has changed or what has affected development 🙂

Battle of Yavin: Rebel and Imperial ships are a match for each other in intense dog fights Every other Star Wars media: Tie fighter go boom lolololol

The best explanation I can come up with is that TIE wings were meant to be shields, absorbing laser fire with their massive panels. They can overload or fail, of course, but it allows the reactor to put more power to engines and weapons and severely limits the openings for kill shots (and you can check the OT and see that my hypothesis holds up).

It's too bad the TIE Avenger never became Canon. That fighter STOMPED X-Wings into the ground.

I don't buy the "expendable view" . . . Storm Troopers had full suits of body armor, AT-ATs were heavily armored, Star Destroyers were well-protected. Even the Lambda shuttles were heavily armed. The only thing that doesn't seem designed to take a punch is the TIEs.

The canon did compensate the TIE by giving it a cost only 40% of the X/Y-wings, so even in an equal cost face off the Empire would have had 5 fighters for every 2 alliance ones, add the higher resource advantage of the Empire and they would indeed be able to employ them in swarm tactics. Lastly we need to remember the nearly all StarWars space combat was a reflection of WW2 in the Pacific, the TIE was the Mitsubishi Zero and the Y-wing being an analog of the Brewster Buffalo and the X-wing the analog of the Gruman Wildcat. The B-wing follows the trend towards bigger heavier aircraft making it analogous to the Hellcat which was introduced mid-war. The A-wing alone seems to lack a true analog as their was no American plane that took the light/fast strategy to beat the TIE fighter at it's own game. Lastly the TIE Defender was a clear analog to the German Me-109, being effectively a 'super weapon' with incredible cost and performance but never able to be fielded in large enough numbers.

A couple of days late but I also came over from eck's channel. Enjoying the videos so far and will be check out as much as I can find 👍

i've always wondered when and where the tie fighters got there horrible reputation from

TIEs slaughtered experienced X-Wings in ANH and ROTJ.

It's based off of the Japanese AM62 zero from WW2. a focus on speed and agility

I would be interested to see a video about unique weapons & equipment used by notable military groups, be it actual organized military or not.

To be fair, they did upgrade to the Interceptor witch outclasses the X-Wing in nearly all ways, barring the shield and hyperdrive. Fun thing about the X-Wing and TIE Fighter games is that the TIE Fighter itself isn't an analog to the X-Wing, but to the Z-95 Headhunter. TIE~Z-95 INT~X-Wing Bomber~Y-Wing Advanced~A-Wing Gunboat~B-Wing Defender and Missile Boat eat everything for breakfast. When like to like the Empire is far closer to parity and normally has the numbers advantage. Sadly the Emperor was too enamored with his moon sizes superweapons and not enough in the power of the Defender or Advanced.

The tie fighter suffers from the same problem that most antagonist forces suffer from in that we are usually seeing them go up against a protagonist force that has to win for the story to continue so we end up seeing them as trash. The Stormtroopers are the same, we only ever really see them up against plot significant forces so they have to lose or the story cannot continue.

Dovin Basal Black Holes are like point defense or regenerating reactive armor. (or 40k Void Shields, just with gravity instead of portals to hell.)

For its original purpose (policing Imp territory, pirate interdiction, base security), the original TIE l/n was a good choice. It was like a police helicopter or patrol car. It was when the Rebels began fielding dedicated combat fighters that the TIE l/n began showing its weaknesses. Then, the Empire began developing more combat-oriented fighters like the TIE Interceptor, TIEx1, and TIE Defender. The Empire was planning to replace the l/ns with Interceptors, but Endor ruined that plan. Considering that, in X-WING ALLIANCE, it took a couple of solid hits from fire-linked cannons to destroy a TIE; I wonder if the TIE fighters had some sort of lightweight ablative armor that provided the same protection as light shields without the power drain.

We made an X-wing fan film depicting the TIE Fighter as a more serious threat than the cannon fodder they're known as, because we felt this was true to the original trilogy. Like Stormtroopers, they've become such a joke that it's hard to worry about the main characters when they're facing off against the Empire, which does a huge disservice to storytelling as its becomes nearly impossible to raise the stakes or heighten the intensity of the action. Many people commented that the TIEs were too good in our film, but we disagree for said reasons. Also, we had a Y-wing dogfight in the movie as well, and many people complained that a Y-wing wouldn't be able to do this. We had to point out that the Y-wing is seen dogfighting at the Battle of Endor, including shooting down TIE Interceptors and flying into the Death Star. So, it's not actually the slow, sluggish bomber people think it is. Maybe your next video can dispel this myth about the Y-wing.

Sounds like a lot of sources regarded as “canon” need to be removed from that status... If a “game” (as opposed to a “sim”) needs an easily defeated mass enemy to train n00bs or for game enjoyment, they should either create a new “entry level” resource or downgrade the Tie by stating it was the “export model”, sold to unreliable star systems. This way one still has the visual aspect of the Tie, but “who is flying it?” becomes a legit question and source of concern.

Imperial Navy Pilots: No Shields. All Guts!

You should do a rundown of Booster Kerrick''s Star Destroyer. I know it wasn't fully crewed, and he had struggled to run it, swapping out certain parts, etc. I think it would be cool to see a detailed breakdown of what goes into maintaining and upgrading a personal Star Destroyer Edit: edited because I am an idiot and got Talon Karrde mixed up with Booster Terrik. For shame to me

I think TIEs being trash makes sense. It does fit the expendable view the empire has really well.

I think about the Tie Fighter in it's power quotient in respect to the foundational reference it stems from, that is WWII dogfighting. The German Bf 109, the most mass produced fighter plan of the entire war, this was a prolific and was at one point a fine plane, competing in performance with all other fighters. However later in the war was simply outmatched by the Allies. I like to think that Tie Fighters are far more a product of logistics than anything else. To change production would not outweigh the costs of altering your entire assembly line of churning masses of pilots and machines for a galaxy wide empire. While the rebels could carefully tool up and refit their small production capacity for more developed and better performing machines in smaller quantities.

It is interesting because you would think that due to the fact that ISDs can’t carry many fighters they would ensure the fighters they do carry are at least of a higher quality. Instead they have a handful of unshielded death traps that can barely dogfight effectively.

I definitely think that Tie Fighters were portrayed as extremely weak in much media, but it seemed like in ANH that they are decent ships, having good firepower (the Falcon was solidly damaged, but it might have already been beat up, who knows) and being hard to hit, and that was what, 4? We've seen the Falcon tank shots from an imperial star destroyer, so those ties were hitting very hard. Also, in Tie Fighter, when you pilot a Tie Fighter you don't seem like you're in a death trap (the Tie Bomber however...), you're nimble and can get behind most enemy ships and just pummel through their massive shields (shields that the movies definitely do not show existing, thus aren't really cannon to that degree, we instead see single shots being enough to cripple an X-wing or Y-wing), but they sure looked like death traps in X-wing, where you can slaughter them like nothing by the dozens on some missions, though you don't usually get behind them the same way as in Tie Fighter, since you just need to hit them with a shot or 2.

I preferred the idea that ties were decent fighters but they were not as noob friendly as an x wing. Basically the pilots were undertrained as the empire saw no reason to waste resources on my skilled pilots when numbers could to the trick

Well..in the Battle of Yavin, all but 3 Rebel craft were destroyed by these "ineffective craft." The 4 TIEs that attacked the Falcon while it escaped the Death Star allowed them to escape IOT allow the rebels to reveal the location of their base to the Empire.

I always viewed TIE fighters as the glass cannons of the Star Wars Universe they have the speed, maneuverability and, firepower but to have all this the Empire sacrifices armor which does make the TIE a deadly opponent but if you have a starfighter that can tank the hits you have a high chance to outmaneuver and destroy the TIE with a couple shots and with an X-Wing's shielding this became a possibility. So what we see here is a refusal to shift design philosophies because of Tarkin and his doctrine because the TIE-Fighter worked and it worked well enough for the time it was active but because of the Tarkin Doctrine, we see a stifling of starship innovations with only small glimmers like the TIE-Defender and, the TIE-Interceptor even if the Defender never really got to see much combat within the EU. Finally, even with the Rebels having the superior fighters there was never truly a push to develop better fighters to meet this new threat because the Imperials kept and maintained the superior capital ship element for a long time well past Endor and the only reason the Empire started to unravel the way it did is because Palpatine was holding the Empire together with his will and with his death above Endor that all ended.

My favorite ship is the tie interceptor in video games it’s fun to fly because it has insane fire power and it’s very fast

TIE Fighter was a better game than X-Wing. I prefered the standard TIE Fighter in that game to any of the "upgrades".

I gotta agree, the way the eu tried to explain the why the empires soldiers and pilots are ineffective is really bad. In the original trilogy tie fighters and storm troopers are shown to be intimidating and elite. But for some reason, our hero's can beat them in droves and for some other reason it can't be because our hero's are just that good, no it has to be that the bad guys are just that horrible. Luke, Han, Leia, and Chewbacca are supposed to be the hero's and the hero's are typically supposed to be better than the bad guy infantry. Captain America can take on endless droves of nazis, Batman can beat groups of armed and dangerous thugs, the teenage mutant ninja turtles can fight off clans of ninjas, is this because these guys they face are ineffective and expendable mooks, no it's because our hero's are just THAT good. The same applies to Luke and the gang.

Im pretty sure I remember the game Xwing having TIE lasers do the same damage as an Xwing laser, furthermore the Xwing books emphasize the shielding advantage, which allowed rebel/NR pilots greater odds of survival, allowing a rookie a better chance of surviving and gaining experience. Honestly I think that was the real advantage, the rebellion/NR ended up with a broad pool of experienced pilots who could train more pilots, where imperial pilots mostly died or were promoted out of starfighter duty, obviously due to its scale the empire still had the ability to train new pilots quite well, but past Endor as the Empire lost territory and engaged in infighting it began to have a similar effect to the IRL historical issues the imperial jappanese navy ran into as the majority of its experienced pilots died in action resulting in training becoming less effective whereas US Navy pilots were regurally rotated back for training duty between combat tours. The Xwing novels were not the best refrence here either, as they depict an elite squadron composed of some of their most experienced pilots (some of whom were away on training duty at the start of the series) and their new recruits were plucked from volunteers who had experience.

It is wild to see the Falcon almost camping TIEs with minimal crew, and then having adverse by comparison performance while under full crew, albeit during an assault. Also a factor in the varying perceptions of TIE performance can be somewhat attributed to the varying levels of skill, as well as intensity & frequency of training.

Go play Tie-Fighter (1995) to learn what it's to be a Imperial Navy pilot.

I always saw the TIE Fighters as way more maneuverable and faster than the Wing series of ships that exceeds when flown by very skilled pilots but is incredibly unforgiving when it comes to the pilot making mistakes or taking hits where as the wing series especially the X-Wing gave more emphasis on defenses to allow for more pilot error in combat with less experienced pilots but still perform incredibly well for more experienced pilots.

In the MMO Star War's: Galaxies both imperial fighters and Rebellion fighters were mostly "even" in base 'stats', however the player was treated as a unique entity and were open to customize the heck out of their fighter and through the Shipwright class extremely over tuned parts could be produced for ships. As an Imperial pilot there was always the issue of weight, it's been awhile so the memories are fuzzy, but I recall sacrificing a lot of armor to have very good shields and a LOT of speed while a friend that went Rebellion always seemed to have enough room to be 'wasteful' in the size of their components. Also my biggest advantage as an imperial pilot was indeed numbers as your special pilot skill was to summon in waves of regular ties, tie interceptors, and tie bombers to attack targets. So at the very least... one game didn't treat TIE's as fodder.

TIE fighters, to me, resembles alot like the Japanese A6M Zero fighter in WWII. Fast, manuverable and effektive when flown by skilled pilots. But no protection from enemy fire. One hit, and you're gone. And replacing skilled pilots with combat experience is no easy task. The Empire treat their skilled, well-trained pilots like "use and throw away" items you can buy in the store around corner at cheap price.

I hate that the who ever writes the lore for star wars takes what is obviously plot armor for our heros (storm troopers cant aim, etc.) and translate that into "well storm troopers are just the worst trained army in the galaxy and their weapons are garbage, their armor is garbage, their vehicles are garbage, and the entire empire is essentially a joke." Every time i watch the movies i wonder why the rebels even bother fighting since the galactic empire seems so incompitent that it might as well collapse on its own.

This is kind of how in the original trilogy lightsabers aren't superweapons and are really only used by a specific order of knights who can get away with using a sword because of force training. Vader has one because he's a fallen Jedi, the emperor on the other hand remarks about how it's a Jedi weapon and doesn't think it poses a threat to him. Then after a few rounds of extended universe Jedi wankery lightsabers are the most powerful weapon anyone can possibly wield, every serious force user in the universe has been using them for over a thousand years, with entire factions identifying by their color.

The X-Wing triumphs in a head on head encounter, where both sides are flying straight at each other shooting. A TIE's got to juke all over the place just to survive that, or cut away and fly at an angle to get into a furball. At close range, the TIE's maneuvering can let them settle in on the X-Wing's back and beat it down. Support from a squadron and experience mitigate the X-Wing's disadvantage against TIEs, and their shields let help them survive long enough to get both. Still, in a 1v1, a TIE's got a decent edge in a dogfight, interceptors even moreso.

I dont think it is garbage. Same skill pilots tie fighter vs xwing. The tie fighter would win More speed and more agile. I think it is representation of games and movies. Like the AT-ST we saw them like a joke. Until ep 4 of mandalorion that say that entire batallions were wiped out by one of them.

Star Wars Episode X: TIE SSD

I love tie fighters, they are my favorite star wars ship and I am immensely disappointed in people and books/games that say tie fighters are garbage

How about a video on how the Victory and Imperial-class Star Destroyers got their names?

I didn't find you through Eckharts ladder but I subscribed because you said his name lol

My experience from back in the day from X-Wing (Collectors CD Rom edition, that's how far 'back in the day' is for me) tended to be that if you left a TIE fighter alone for too long, it was on your tail eating your shields in short order. This didn't tend to be a problem for YOU if it was two-to-one, since the squirrelly maneuvers of the TIE you were trying to shoot (and poor dogfight AI of all the craft involved) kept you dodging as well. And the TIE fighters couldn't handle more than two supercharged laser bolts, so they never went in a straight line long enough to let you REALLY get nailed yourself, unless you were a poor shot. However, things rapidly got ugly if you were outnumbered 3 to one, four to one, or dare I cringe, six to one. TIEs were faster, turned harder, and the 'lead pursuit' nature of dogfights meant you always tended to end up in overshooting passes and spiraling in circles. In real dogfights, with trained pilots, there are ways to utilize 2 to 1 or better numeric odds that would result in a pair of TIE fighters devastating a rookie X-Wing pilot. Essentially STARTING with the TIE the X-Wing is chasing not CONSTANTLY trying to come around to kill them. Instead, lead the X-Wing, and let your Wing Man get the kill. Dogfight Tactics 101. (But 90s AI couldn't do that.)There was also a mechanic in X-Wing that people tend to forget, that rapid successive hits punched through your shields and damaged you before the shields were drained. (And your Xwing also tends to take nearly a dozen hits to destroy). And I think it goes down to a video game buff that actually makes people mistake how deflector shields WORK. First note, it's called a DEFLECTOR shield. To move something off course, aside, or otherwise DEFLECT. Not to absorb, stop, or disperse. And I think the Lucasarts and later companies completely missed out on a chance to take that mechanic and express it. In 'A New Hope', one should notice that in all the dogfighting and shooting over the death star and the trench run, we didn't really have cases of fighters eating through any kind of shield, either visibly or from comm chatter. It's always 'missed shots', 'missed shots', 'missed shots', 'DIRECT HIT-BOOM!' I don't think the original intent of a deflector shield was to block shots, I think it was intended to make imperfectly aimed shots MISS, by shoving them to the sides... Much the same way a magnetic field might be used to push a like-charge away or around. This is why you see pilots trying to get locks a lot of the time, rather than just spraying and praying. A couple rounds of precisely aimed shots can't really be shoved off the shot axis by the shield before they hit the fighter. And that's why the fighters put their deflectors on 'double front' for the trench run. Not that the shields would absorb the turbolaser bolts (it would STILL whittle away at the shields), but to increase the force of the deflection so the batteries they were racing headlong into wouldn't score a hit at all. Which, incidently, left everyone racing down the trench open to Vader and his wingmen just eating them alive from behind. Thus, why after putting deflectors on 'double front' changed to 'stabilize your rear deflectors' once the batteries ceased fire. But for video games of the time, and game players, creating that 'shoving' mechanic in the deflectors might have been too much, so they turned the X-Wing's deflector shields into absorption shields. If you change the shield mechanics in the games to behave more like utilizing tank armor deflection angles to incoming rounds, you suddenly have a massive equalization of the TIE and the X-Wing's combat capability. The X-Wing is less maneuverable and slower than a TIE, but it makes up for that by a spherical field of 'your aim was off angle and bounced off into space'. In the hands of a skilled Pilot, that deflector is very effective, but it ends up hardly being any real shield to a rookie who doesn't realize that the deflector is a DEFLECTOR, not a wall. The skilled pilot can realize they're in the crosshairs and turn, ruining the precision aim of a TIE pilot. Larger ships, with larger deflector generators, may have behavior in the shields that acts more like a wall, but even then, at many points, it seems like damage still leaks through over the course of fights. The nature of the deflection behavior may be a simple case of feeding enough power to the field to simply 'deflect' bolts to a stand still... Bleeding energy to the shield's effects before plinking against armor.

In the very first movie a squadron of them attacked what is essentially a freighter and was beaten by waist gunners. They’ve always been like this.

Apologies if this is discussed somewhere but in the author's opinion what would the proper balance be between X-Wing's and TIE models? This applies to "pencil & paper" RPG's ad Empire at War mods.

TIE Fighter = Nakajima Ki-43-II Oscar. X-Wing = Curtiss P-40E Warhawk. The Ki-43-II can easily out-turn the P-40E (except at very high speeds) but is considerably inferior in firepower, and completely lacks the P-40E's rugged ability to take battle damage and keep flying (as long as the engine isn't hit).

I can't be the only one who would like to see the X-Wing/TIE fighter PC games recreated in the Frostbite engine, can I? No garbage added, they could use the same VO work from the originals, just update the music files, graphics, and controller support configurations to allow for HOTAS use and Bob's yer uncle.

The Tie Fighter is analogous to the Japanese Zero, which was mostly made of wood, which made it lighter and more maneuverable than early American aircraft and at first they enjoyed great success against American Pilots in almost embarrassing numbers,but as the war progressed, American plane design advanced with faster, better armored and armed planes eventually outlasting and overwhelming the Zeroes. This is exactly how things progress in the games and books. The Tie Defender is analogous to the German Me-262 which, if the Germans had devoted the resources they used for Terror Weapons to mass produce the 262 might have changed the result of the war. We see this play out in Stsr Wars: Rebels where Admiral Thrawn is advocating the Defender Program as an alternative to another Death Star. Had Tie Fighter Pilots had an Air Suleriority fighter instead just a modified Tie Fighter, with more speed, maneuverability and firepower than the Alliance could muster, things would have gone very differently at Endor. The Second Death Star became a trap, not for the Rebels, but for the Emperor. Had it just been a hollow shell and the fleet armed with Defenders and Interdictors would have pinned and destroyed the Rebel Fleet. Tie fighters were trash. Storm Troopers became trash. Because as the war progressed, attrition meant training had to suffer and Stormtrooper Armor was allowed to be produced for show, not protection. This simply degraded further after Endor, so that by the time of the Mandalorian they are a source of ridicule and mockery among the Mandalorians. You notice Cara Dune took them very seriously until she started hanging out with Mando. It is only after she sees their decline for herself that she takes them less seriously.

I basically only watched the movies, I never even considered the idea that a TIE could fly in-atmosphere until the Episode 7, as before that I believe they were only used on-screen in space combat.

Tie-Fighters should really be much more manoeuvrable than an X-Wing though. But the idea is they were meant to be cheap to mass produce and provide massive numerical superiority with overwhelming numbers.

Missile Boat for life!

The Tie Fighter makes more sense as do the Rebel Fighters, when you compare them to the real world analogs that they were largely inspired by. Remember Lucas grew up with the tales of WW2. All of the dogfighting in Star Wars is largely based on WW2. While the Trench Run is lifted almost wholesale from the 1955 film The Dam Busters, I’ve always felt that the X-Wing Tie Fighter dynamic had more of a Pacific WW2 feel. With the Tie Fighter taking the role of the Mitsubishi Zero and the X-Wing as the Gruman F4F Wildcat. One has better speed and agility, but is fragile with little pilot protection. The other is slower and less maneuverable but is well armored and protected and can absorb a huge amount of damage.

I know Disney would never do this, but I would love to see a TV show centered around the Imperial Academy and TIE pilot training. The next time you watch TOP GUN with Tom Cruise, just imagine the setting is an Imperial Ace training program as they vie for a Baron title, it really fits quite well lol. But seriously, A show following Soontir Fel in his rise to a decorated combat ace would be very interesting and would bring him back to canon!!

TIE Fighters got the Zero treatment and just like the Zero, it's a bit unfortunate. The Zero was an Imperial Japanese escort fighter that was used extensively in the conquest of the Pacific during WW2. It was light, fast, very maneuverable, carried good weaponry and had a phenomenal range for such a small aircraft. Early American and British pilots talked about the "technologically superior" Japanese Zero fighter relative to the clunky 1930s fighters they flew. The Zero had all of these excellent features at the cost of heavier armor that protected Allied pilots and aircraft. As the USA began sending its more advanced aircraft to the theater, the Zero still had the edge in all those areas but even a glancing blow could cripple it. The TIE series needs writers and developers to recognize its strengths at the tactical and strategic and logistical levels. The X-Wing being twice the starfighter of the TIE is meaningless when the minimum TIE formation is a squadron of 12, making for a 3 to 1 advantage against the X-wing.

How fun would the Star Wars movies be if TIE fighters just hit every shot. Imagine if the Luke's X-wing was shot down during A New Hope. What if the Millenium Falcon was shot down during any of the fights it was in.

A tie is treated the same way as a Leo from the gundam series, mass produced cannon fodder until a skilled pilot got ahold of one at which point they could nearly go blow for blow against a gundam, I don’t believe the tie a perfectly designed fighter for it’s role and perfectly utilized in its roll would be nearly classified as cannon fodder.

Plot armor basically. Sadly a lot of writers just went kinda crazy.

A poor craftsman blames his tools. Wait until Squadrons drops. The Empire would have wished it had the amazing pilots that are gonna come from that game. See you in the skies, wingmen !

nice to see Nolan's rant making it into a video

Came from EckhartsLadder from the Marvel fan art theft topic. Love the content here! Looking forward to more!

I never knew vehicles could be Flanderized