So I haven't seen the episodes yet, did they pick a new mandalor'?

Maybe it's time they dug skriata or sergeant Vau out of the Eu vault. It's obvious Fenn Rau is the canon version of Fenn shysa ( although Rau is obviously less obsessed with finding boba) from the old comics.

I don't think that's a title their society uses anymore.

On 10/17/2017 at 3:21 PM, JJFDVORAK said:

This whole argument about why did the Empire not give it's Ace Pilots access to the best available fighters is a waste of time. The only reason we ever even had the Tie Defender was as a baddie in a video game from the EU. It was cool and well loved. Then Disney wiped that. And in order to get us fans to buy into their new cannon, they started picking out choice bits and putting them back in. So now we get Thrawn, the Defender, Jacen Solo(aka Kylo Ren), etc. It's a blatant cash grab. Disney knows that all us fans of the saga like these classic EU ideas and will pay to see them again in new material. So they shoehorn them in. So now we have Awings and Bwings and Tie Interceptors and Tie Defenders before Yavin. There is no reason for in universe discussion. It's all about getting fans to swallow the rehashed stuff for the new cannon. It's a nostalgia grab plain and simple. It's much less risky than being original and trying new things. See Episode 7 for the ultimate example of getting the masses to love "new" things by "mirroring"(copying exactly) beloved ideas from the OT.

Well that's incredibly cynical.

Yeah I'm sure many of the people working on the team that makes Rebels are totally not Star Wars fans who actually like a lot of this stuff and are totally unaware of their origins and never make homages to those things, nuh-uh. No sir.

28 minutes ago, Captain Lackwit said:

Well that's incredibly cynical.

Yeah I'm sure many of the people working on the team that makes Rebels are totally not Star Wars fans who actually like a lot of this stuff and are totally unaware of their origins and never make homages to those things, nuh-uh. No sir.

Also, they seem to be wanting to fix some incongruencies between the old canon and the old EU.
In the X-wing games, you had A-wings and TIE Interceptors before Yavin. In the Droid cartoons, there were A-wings and B-wings parked everywhere, and that series supposedly happens between Episode III and Rebels.
Thrawn had to exist in the Empire at some point before his trilogy in New Republic. I mean, get a name, become Grand Admiral. However the OT didn't even mention him. The TIE Fighter game showed him as vice admiral, then admiral and grand admiral.
Even when in that game it was someone else who designed the TIE Defender (Thrawn designed the Missile Boat to counter it), it is a ship that represents a way of thinking out of the box compared with the rest of the imperial doctrine, that is precisely what Thrawn represents. That is why in Rebels he is doing exactly the opposite as what he did in TIE Fighter, but it doesn't feel even wrong. It still works for the character.

I see the mandalorians, the porgs, Sabine and many other things more evident cash grabs.
The things @JJFDVORAK mentioned, though, not really.

13 hours ago, flyboymb said:

The F-35 is pretty much the M-16 of the armed forces at this point. It is supposed to be Harrier, Falcon, Eagle, Warthog, and Raptor all at once because it's just that easy to make a plane that fulfills all those rolls as it is to make a rifle that covers all battle scenarios.

I mean one of the major reasons why the F-22 was discontinued was that it would free up more money to but more F-35s because they would be soooo much cheaper than the Raptor.

The need for a top of the line air superiority fighter has been increasing as Russia pumps more money into modernizing their military and generally being butts towards the West. China is taking all the money we throw at them to do the same. Already their latest generation prototypes are being thrown up against the F-35 to see whether we're behind the times or not (not against the F-22 for whatever reasons). If there's something new on the horizon, then we've done a lot better at keeping things secret than usual.

It will be somewhat aggravating if we sunk that much cash into the F-35 only for something to push the envelope back further in a decade.

The F-35 is not a superiority fighter, though you could fly just about anything and call it so. But this is not the case. The F22 is still in the air and the best thing we have, we just don't need more right now for a variety of reasons. Including it's technology being dated, just like the F-35. We are not going back a decade or more. It is far more likely that what we are seeing is a pause before the next generation of fighters are released. The F-35 if a good/great plane. It just isn't in the same class as an F-22; nor was it ever meant to me.

Not, enough drailing. Back to Rebels and the lame plot twists.

21 hours ago, Azrapse said:

Also, they seem to be wanting to fix some incongruencies between the old canon and the old EU.
In the X-wing games, you had A-wings and TIE Interceptors before Yavin. In the Droid cartoons, there were A-wings and B-wings parked everywhere, and that series supposedly happens between Episode III and Rebels.
Thrawn had to exist in the Empire at some point before his trilogy in New Republic. I mean, get a name, become Grand Admiral. However the OT didn't even mention him. The TIE Fighter game showed him as vice admiral, then admiral and grand admiral.
Even when in that game it was someone else who designed the TIE Defender (Thrawn designed the Missile Boat to counter it), it is a ship that represents a way of thinking out of the box compared with the rest of the imperial doctrine, that is precisely what Thrawn represents. That is why in Rebels he is doing exactly the opposite as what he did in TIE Fighter, but it doesn't feel even wrong. It still works for the character.

I see the mandalorians, the porgs, Sabine and many other things more evident cash grabs.
The things @JJFDVORAK mentioned, though, not really.

Absolutely 100% on point.

Somebody give this guy a good breakfast, since that's what we do around here.

?????☕️???

Back about last week's episode, don't you think the writers have painted themselves into a corner with this "Duchess" weapon?

It's a weapon designed by one of the series' main characters, that she transformed, in matter of 9 seconds, into a weapon that was capable of disabling the entire contingent of imperial troopers on a star destroyer, without actually killing them.

That is, like a humane weapon that would be very fitting for equipping on boarding craft or as a defense mechanism on rebel bases and capital ships.
It defeats the imperials without killing them! It's totally the way of the Rebel Alliance, right?

So the question is... if the rebels have such a weapon (because they do: they have Sabine, that designed the weapon when she was a kid!) why aren't they using it?
For which reasons wouldn't Sabine want to build one for the Alliance? She could even make sure the weapon is limited to only stunning, as it does at the end of the episode.

It would save thousands of lives, even imperial ones, since battles could be ended before they even start.
How much different the end of Battle of Scariff would be if the Profundity had had one of these installed by the time Vader boards the ship?
If the Tantive IV had had one of these?
If Echo Base had had one of these?

The core looked small enough to even mount it on a fighter.

By the way: The protagonists destroy the prototype and delete the plans on the computers in the star destroyer.
However, they don't mention how those plans reached there first. Sabine designed the weapon for the Empire while she was in the academy, and supposedly she didn't design it on that particular star destroyer, right?
So the plans have been sent there from somewhere else and there must be copies of those plans.
So the Empire still has the technology of the weapon. It's not like Sabine can argument that she doesn't want to build the weapon for the Alliance to keep it from falling on the Empire's hands. Am I right?

The duchess would always be a danger to mandalore, because it always could be adjusted to hit Beskar again. And the empire could always switched materials for their armors. And the range was not the whole ISD either.

For the copies part: Unlikely that there are any copies in reach for the empire, Mr. Evil Governour was not the sharing type. He might have made some for himself and hide them somewhere, Thrawn might have send someone to steal them before and add them to his collection, but I doubt that empire itself has the plans. Furthermore the plans seem incomplete in the first place, else the damaged prototype would not have been an issue before either.

31 minutes ago, Azrapse said:

She could even make sure the weapon is limited to only stunning, as it does at the end of the episode.

How? Making it lethal again is a simple matter of increasing the power.

I'm guessing that's why she'll never build one again. Because they CAN be used to vaporize entire armies, she won't make more because it only takes one person misusing one or one falling into the wrong hands to result in a tragedy.

46 minutes ago, DarthEnderX said:

How? Making it lethal again is a simple matter of increasing the power.

I'm guessing that's why she'll never build one again. Because they CAN be used to vaporize entire armies, she won't make more because it only takes one person misusing one or one falling into the wrong hands to result in a tragedy.

I find it highly amusing that you need to point out something as simple as that.

10 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

I find it highly amusing that you need to point out something as simple as that.

It makes sense only if the Empire doesn't keep a copy of the documents. And it did, for years.

But I guess it's again the lame trope of "Villain's doom device prototype is destroyed, along with all the plans, technology and scientific team that knows about it".

Allow me to have hopes on them not reusing that lame trope.

PS: The entire point of Rogue One is that the Empire keeps a copy of all documents in fortified library planets like Scariff!

29 minutes ago, Azrapse said:

It makes sense only if the Empire doesn't keep a copy of the documents. And it did, for years.

But I guess it's again the lame trope of "Villain's doom device prototype is destroyed, along with all the plans, technology and scientific team that knows about it".

Allow me to have hopes on them not reusing that lame trope.

PS: The entire point of Rogue One is that the Empire keeps a copy of all documents in fortified library planets like Scariff!

I was not talking about that.

21 minutes ago, SEApocalypse said:

I was not talking about that.

Weren't you talking about if it falls in the wrong hands they would be making it lethal by increasing the power?
I just said that it is already in the wrong hands. It's already a lethal weapon in the hands of the Empire. Or it should be unless the lame Single Prototype trope is enforced.

EDIT:

Of course, it is possible that the writers are wanting to have it as a kind of Chekhov's Gun , to be able to go later on for a Nuclear Option that will save the heroes' lives later this season, or a Forgotten Superweapon .

55 minutes ago, Azrapse said:

It makes sense only if the Empire doesn't keep a copy of the documents. And it did, for years.

But I guess it's again the lame trope of "Villain's doom device prototype is destroyed, along with all the plans, technology and scientific team that knows about it".

Allow me to have hopes on them not reusing that lame trope.

PS: The entire point of Rogue One is that the Empire keeps a copy of all documents in fortified library planets like Scariff!

Well, it makes a difference if you change ‘a’ copy to ‘the only’ copy.

The more places you have it, the more places it can be stolen from.

On 10/19/2017 at 4:41 AM, DarthEnderX said:

I don't think that's a title their society uses anymore.

Pre vizula claimed the title in clone wars. Then maul took the saber and claimed the title for himself. Sabine finding the saber puts the title back into their society.

20 hours ago, Ken at Sunrise said:

The F-35 is not a superiority fighter, though you could fly just about anything and call it so. But this is not the case. The F22 is still in the air and the best thing we have, we just don't need more right now for a variety of reasons. Including it's technology being dated, just like the F-35. We are not going back a decade or more. It is far more likely that what we are seeing is a pause before the next generation of fighters are released. The F-35 if a good/great plane. It just isn't in the same class as an F-22; nor was it ever meant to me.

But neither of them are anywhere close to an Su-57 or 47

14 hours ago, Celestial Lizards said:

But neither of them are anywhere close to an Su-57 or 47

Well that's the single most incorrect statement I've ever read on this forum.

Do you actually think a 4.5th generation Russian fighter with improper planforming can genuinely outdo an F-22? Honest to god?

3 hours ago, Captain Lackwit said:

Well that's the single most incorrect statement I've ever read on this forum.

Do you actually think a 4.5th generation Russian fighter with improper planforming can genuinely outdo an F-22? Honest to god?

This is true. The F-22 is kind of stupidly over-designed. It's a marvel of the sky, and easily the best manned air-to-air combat platform that will ever exist.

The F-35...is not the same thing. It's the generic 'bomb caddy' for once the F-22 has achieved air superiority, but there are still pockets of resistance, random single aircraft launches, and MANPADs all over that prohibit the Cold War-era tech from doing the job. Obviously once THAT phase is done, it's all 'turn the target into a sheet of glass via B-52 carpeting', but whatever - that's the boring part.

The F-22, though, is...just... silly levels of technology, powerplant, design, and computing.

So to bring this back to Star wars comparisons, the F22 is the Tie defender, and the F16 is the Tie Fighter, still going strong after all these years.

8 minutes ago, Rakaydos said:

So to bring this back to Star wars comparisons, the F22 is the Tie defender, and the F16 is the Tie Fighter, still going strong after all these years.

so f35 is tie bomber/advanced then?

Just now, taulover55 said:

so f35 is tie bomber/advanced then?

XG-1 Assault Gunboat?

Pretty solid in its own right, but... definitely not a TIE Defender. Maybe better than a TIE Fighter in a dogfight... maybe (depending on parameters)...but that's really not what it's there for.

8 hours ago, Captain Lackwit said:

Well that's the single most incorrect statement I've ever read on this forum.

Do you actually think a 4.5th generation Russian fighter with improper planforming can genuinely outdo an F-22? Honest to god?

No, but you have to admit, the Russian fighters win from sheer style points alone.

5 hours ago, Celestial Lizards said:

No, but you have to admit, the Russian fighters win from sheer style points alone.

Compared to the F-22?

Nah....

On 10/20/2017 at 5:01 AM, Drasnighta said:

Well, it makes a difference if you change ‘a’ copy to ‘the only’ copy.

The more places you have it, the more places it can be stolen from.

Yeah, thinking on that point...

I mean, a truer description of the 'Rogue One' mission is that the Empire is paranoid and keeps only one copy of plans. Scarif was a fortress, and you'll recall everyone died to get the plans out of it. If the plans had been ANYWHERE else - IE., the Empire had a habit of keeping multiple copies of its superweapon designs - then the Rebels would have hit that location, instead.

So...it rather sets the opposite precedent; that 'destroying the prototype and computer used by the team that build it' does, indeed, take care of the problem within the Empire.