The OP asked (reading between the lines) that his post would get back on track - E7 SPOILERS.

This tangent we slipped into (I'm guilty of contributing) is a great topic. In fact I'm itching to respond again but won't in order to respect the OP's wishes. There's been 14 posts since Whafrog posted about his thread going haywire. Only 1 of those 14 was possibly about the original intention. This is only page 4, not 10 so in my opinion the statute of limitations on thread hijacking is not yet up.

Someone create an "Evolving Tech in Ep 7?" thread and let this one slip back to spoiler discussion?

Evolution of tech is just a theory...

If I was to design a star wars fighter the "pilot" would become a tactical decision maker that assigns targets and authorizes the computer to fire the 4 sets (left/right top/bottom quad laser). Similarly the "pilot" would pick a course/direction and the computer would fly the ship. Preferably using a neural interface but if that wasn't an option then picking targets directions with eyes (clone trooper helmets had that tech) and finger triggers for authorization. It'd look like a cross between an a-wing and loronar e9 Explorer, a lifting body with angled fins for improved aerodynamic handling. Technically it'd be more like a small fast and agile gunship than a fighter. And for maximum field of fire it'd be better not to have the stabilizers and just use thrust vectoring but I am hesitant to make any ship that a pilot can't fly if the computer goes down. And of course there would be a manual lever to power of the targeting/flight computer ai's and revert to manual control in case someone hacks them

This is the SW essence. Forget about coherence... hello coolness

Given that we have seen organic pilots outfly droid fighters on numerous occasions I doubt that ElsaWindrider's idea would really be more effective then a more conventional control system.

In this day and age they are trying to evolve away from the human element in war with drones and such. So in the Star Wars universe they would rely more on droids and such. That's never been done before, right?

If I was to design a star wars fighter the "pilot" would become a tactical decision maker that assigns targets and authorizes the computer to fire the 4 sets (left/right top/bottom quad laser).

So, do you have any thoughts as to what this would look like? Any detailed concepts that you could share with us?

Given that we have seen organic pilots outfly droid fighters on numerous occasions I doubt that ElsaWindrider's idea would really be more effective then a more conventional control system.

Highly trained and/or highly talented pilots can, yes. I think the point here is to raise the bar so that less capable pilots can fly a lot better than they otherwise might have been able to do, and to give a further boost to the more highly capable pilots and let them focus on what makes them the best.

Given that we have seen organic pilots outfly droid fighters on numerous occasions I doubt that ElsaWindrider's idea would really be more effective then a more conventional control system.

Human pilots win because they make good tactical decisions faster then Droid (almost by instinct/intuition). This compensates for a droid's better reflexes/aim (I mean ships have targeting computers for a reason). The proposed system keeps that advantage and actually increases it because the organic pilot no longer has devote any mental resources to carrying out their plan. The pilot only has to devote themselves to tactical decision making.

If I was to design a star wars fighter the "pilot" would become a tactical decision maker that assigns targets and authorizes the computer to fire the 4 sets (left/right top/bottom quad laser).

So, do you have any thoughts as to what this would look like? Any detailed concepts that you could share with us?

Ship stats would be a lot like an X-wing minus all weapons plus 4 quad laser cannons, the pilot uses knowledge warfare or cunning whichever is higher. The ships weapons and pilot computers are treated a little like minions with agility of 2 and you combine that with whatever dice the pilot provides. For example if the pilot has 5 ranks in knowledge warfare there would be 5 dice, three green, two yellow. And it gets 4 attacks per round every round if more than one of the quad lasers focuses on the same target, each one after the first upgrades the check once.

RogueCorona's got a valid point.

There's also the matter that the Clone Wars was a thing, which was largely made possible by a bunch of corporate entities having the resources to fund an army of droids. And while it may have been about 50 years for the folks in the Star Wars setting, consider the still-lingering feelings and sentiments about what occurred during the World Wars, particularly the second one, in our own history, and both wars were concluded over 50 years ago. Droids as major frontline units quite possibly leaves a bad taste in many folks' mouths; the Empire likely avoided using combat droids due to the stigma of the Clone Wars and wanting to be viewed as "the heroes" over the treachery of the Confederacy (who relied exclusively on droids to wage war). The closest the Alliance gets to droid forces is using astromechs as an aid to starfighter pilots, allowing the pilot to focus more on flying and attacking and leaving damage control and keeping an eye on various gauges to the droid, and again doesn't use droid soldiers for much the same reason that the Empire doesn't; the Separatists are generally reviled for being the cause of the Clone Wars, and the Rebellion needs all the positive press it can get to garner public support. And if you're going to have a human be in charge of what a starfighter does, then you might as well have them be the pilot to cut down on any potential delays between issuing an order to fire and the droid gunner executing the order to fire. Plus, it's not like starfighters don't have technology assistance for the pilots; we see targeting screens in both TIEs and Alliance fighters in the films, so it's not quite like they're targeting with their eyes the way fighter pilots from the World Wars had to do.

On a more general note, you've also got the fact that in the Star Wars setting, at least going by the Legends, technology has pretty much stagnated. You rarely see any new technologies, but instead there are refinements of existing tech, such as faster hyperdrives, streamlined fighters, or blasters with better ammo efficiency.

Do you want a sketch or stats or both?

Yes.

Do you want a sketch or stats or both?

Yes.

I edited my post above to outline how to generate the stats. I chose agility 2 rather than 3 so it wouldn't be too broketastic.

I will work on a sketch that I will scan, upload to photo bucket and image link to.

RogueCorona's got a valid point.

There's also the matter that the Clone Wars was a thing, which was largely made possible by a bunch of corporate entities having the resources to fund an army of droids. And while it may have been about 50 years for the folks in the Star Wars setting, consider the still-lingering feelings and sentiments about what occurred during the World Wars, particularly the second one, in our own history, and both wars were concluded over 50 years ago. Droids as major frontline units quite possibly leaves a bad taste in many folks' mouths; the Empire likely avoided using combat droids due to the stigma of the Clone Wars and wanting to be viewed as "the heroes" over the treachery of the Confederacy (who relied exclusively on droids to wage war). The closest the Alliance gets to droid forces is using astromechs as an aid to starfighter pilots, allowing the pilot to focus more on flying and attacking and leaving damage control and keeping an eye on various gauges to the droid, and again doesn't use droid soldiers for much the same reason that the Empire doesn't; the Separatists are generally reviled for being the cause of the Clone Wars, and the Rebellion needs all the positive press it can get to garner public support. And if you're going to have a human be in charge of what a starfighter does, then you might as well have them be the pilot to cut down on any potential delays between issuing an order to fire and the droid gunner executing the order to fire. Plus, it's not like starfighters don't have technology assistance for the pilots; we see targeting screens in both TIEs and Alliance fighters in the films, so it's not quite like they're targeting with their eyes the way fighter pilots from the World Wars had to do.

On a more general note, you've also got the fact that in the Star Wars setting, at least going by the Legends, technology has pretty much stagnated. You rarely see any new technologies, but instead there are refinements of existing tech, such as faster hyperdrives, streamlined fighters, or blasters with better ammo efficiency.

Your two points seem to be arguing against each other, technology has reached its peak and some tech is taboo. Maybe the tech that isn't taboo has reached its peak but that's no reason to conclude that the taboo tech has reached its peak. There are technological safeguards (the aforementioned manual off switch for the Droid brain gunners and pilot) that can prevent diasters. When you aren't in combat those Droid brains get turned off so they can't rain death on civilians as you take off or land. Also the commands to target and attack would be separate, so the quads would be tracking their assigned targets up to the point where the pilot authorizes the attack then all the Droid has to do different is pull the proverbial trigger. In a target rich environment (outnumbered) a limitted fire at will command can be given, where all the organic pilot does is assign targets and a course.

Yes there would be some I'll sentiment against the tech at first, but safeguards would make it tolerable enough that after it had proven itself a tremendous assest in battle, it would be adopted.

On the X-Wing s-foils. I agree with everything you said (shot pattern, more wing area like a biplane), except for one glaring issue. Why collapse the wings at all? There is no drag in space with them deployed.

Because it has to land on planets where there is atmosphere.

So you are saying an X-wing with its wings deployed couldn't fly in an atmosphere? X-wings have repulsorlifts and can float. A brick-shaped craft could be made to fly in the Star Wars universe. Craft shaped like B-wings and TIE fighters can fly and land in atmospheres so I don't understand how the X-wing must close its wings to be able to handle such. More aerodynamic? Sure. Required? No. Using the biplane example it might actually even have more lift in an atmosphere due to larger wing area.

You can't throw realworld physics at the Star Wars universe unless using a hand wave motion. These things are meant to be cool - don't look too long under the hood.

RogueCorona's got a valid point.

There's also the matter that the Clone Wars was a thing, which was largely made possible by a bunch of corporate entities having the resources to fund an army of droids. And while it may have been about 50 years for the folks in the Star Wars setting, consider the still-lingering feelings and sentiments about what occurred during the World Wars, particularly the second one, in our own history, and both wars were concluded over 50 years ago. Droids as major frontline units quite possibly leaves a bad taste in many folks' mouths; the Empire likely avoided using combat droids due to the stigma of the Clone Wars and wanting to be viewed as "the heroes" over the treachery of the Confederacy (who relied exclusively on droids to wage war). The closest the Alliance gets to droid forces is using astromechs as an aid to starfighter pilots, allowing the pilot to focus more on flying and attacking and leaving damage control and keeping an eye on various gauges to the droid, and again doesn't use droid soldiers for much the same reason that the Empire doesn't; the Separatists are generally reviled for being the cause of the Clone Wars, and the Rebellion needs all the positive press it can get to garner public support. And if you're going to have a human be in charge of what a starfighter does, then you might as well have them be the pilot to cut down on any potential delays between issuing an order to fire and the droid gunner executing the order to fire. Plus, it's not like starfighters don't have technology assistance for the pilots; we see targeting screens in both TIEs and Alliance fighters in the films, so it's not quite like they're targeting with their eyes the way fighter pilots from the World Wars had to do.

On a more general note, you've also got the fact that in the Star Wars setting, at least going by the Legends, technology has pretty much stagnated. You rarely see any new technologies, but instead there are refinements of existing tech, such as faster hyperdrives, streamlined fighters, or blasters with better ammo efficiency.

Your two points seem to be arguing against each other, technology has reached its peak and some tech is taboo. Maybe the tech that isn't taboo has reached its peak but that's no reason to conclude that the taboo tech has reached its peak. There are technological safeguards (the aforementioned manual off switch for the Droid brain gunners and pilot) that can prevent diasters. When you aren't in combat those Droid brains get turned off so they can't rain death on civilians as you take off or land. Also the commands to target and attack would be separate, so the quads would be tracking their assigned targets up to the point where the pilot authorizes the attack then all the Droid has to do different is pull the proverbial trigger. In a target rich environment (outnumbered) a limitted fire at will command can be given, where all the organic pilot does is assign targets and a course.

Yes there would be some I'll sentiment against the tech at first, but safeguards would make it tolerable enough that after it had proven itself a tremendous assest in battle, it would be adopted.

You assume that someone is willing to develop the taboo tech and that one of the factions oks deploying the tech to field test it. You are also assuming that the tech will function as advertised, and will prove superior to direct piloting by an organic.

Yeah but I think of the Star Wars conflicts as being more on the World War I or II scale. Yeah the older models would still be in service and widely used but there would be newer models coming out much more rapidly then they do today as well as well.

I would agree this model could work for the Empire. They have a large industrial machine (at least through Ep. 6) and did develop upgrades, lots if including EU. Even with only movie canon you have the pre-Imperial Republic through late Empire coming out with new capital ships every few years along with new models of TIE fighters. The Alliance didn't benefit from a wartime development of technology due to most of what they had being used stuff, not what they built themselves, until Ep. 6.

The world world I/II model may not fit post Ep. 6 since we really don't know the state of the war or its affect on industrialization yet. We may find the model to be more like what happened to North Korea with industry being destroyed on a large scale and thus development of completely new military weapons being a rarity until after reconstruction.

But, I will repeat, I still want to see new stuff. An upgraded X-wing is very cool. I'm glad they included it. I want to see the X-wing and Falcon flying across the screen again and apparently I will. But, I'm hoping for some new stuff too. Perhaps it may not appear until Ep. 8?

RogueCorona's got a valid point.

There's also the matter that the Clone Wars was a thing, which was largely made possible by a bunch of corporate entities having the resources to fund an army of droids. And while it may have been about 50 years for the folks in the Star Wars setting, consider the still-lingering feelings and sentiments about what occurred during the World Wars, particularly the second one, in our own history, and both wars were concluded over 50 years ago. Droids as major frontline units quite possibly leaves a bad taste in many folks' mouths; the Empire likely avoided using combat droids due to the stigma of the Clone Wars and wanting to be viewed as "the heroes" over the treachery of the Confederacy (who relied exclusively on droids to wage war). The closest the Alliance gets to droid forces is using astromechs as an aid to starfighter pilots, allowing the pilot to focus more on flying and attacking and leaving damage control and keeping an eye on various gauges to the droid, and again doesn't use droid soldiers for much the same reason that the Empire doesn't; the Separatists are generally reviled for being the cause of the Clone Wars, and the Rebellion needs all the positive press it can get to garner public support. And if you're going to have a human be in charge of what a starfighter does, then you might as well have them be the pilot to cut down on any potential delays between issuing an order to fire and the droid gunner executing the order to fire. Plus, it's not like starfighters don't have technology assistance for the pilots; we see targeting screens in both TIEs and Alliance fighters in the films, so it's not quite like they're targeting with their eyes the way fighter pilots from the World Wars had to do.

On a more general note, you've also got the fact that in the Star Wars setting, at least going by the Legends, technology has pretty much stagnated. You rarely see any new technologies, but instead there are refinements of existing tech, such as faster hyperdrives, streamlined fighters, or blasters with better ammo efficiency.

Your two points seem to be arguing against each other, technology has reached its peak and some tech is taboo. Maybe the tech that isn't taboo has reached its peak but that's no reason to conclude that the taboo tech has reached its peak. There are technological safeguards (the aforementioned manual off switch for the Droid brain gunners and pilot) that can prevent diasters. When you aren't in combat those Droid brains get turned off so they can't rain death on civilians as you take off or land. Also the commands to target and attack would be separate, so the quads would be tracking their assigned targets up to the point where the pilot authorizes the attack then all the Droid has to do different is pull the proverbial trigger. In a target rich environment (outnumbered) a limitted fire at will command can be given, where all the organic pilot does is assign targets and a course.

Yes there would be some I'll sentiment against the tech at first, but safeguards would make it tolerable enough that after it had proven itself a tremendous assest in battle, it would be adopted.

You assume that someone is willing to develop the taboo tech and that one of the factions oks deploying the tech to field test it. You are also assuming that the tech will function as advertised, and will prove superior to direct piloting by an organic.

Most weapons contractors are willing to make anything that they can sell for a profit. The more desperate side is often willing to use any advantage they can get especially if they have been assured that technical safeguards will prevent a disaster. And really all the corporation has to do is find an overly ambitious/desperate general on the desperate side who is willing to roll the political dice on what looks like a sure bet. Not all members of the rebel alliance are angels. As for it being superior... logically it should be, and it can almost be created with off the shelf star wars technology. A little industrial espionage to get their hands on old clone wars era trade federation piloting droid brain schematics/programing and your halfway there. The hardest part is actually building the airframe, and giving it a power plant that can run the 4 guns nonstop, shields, and still have enough juice to make it fast and agile. The hardest part is the conventional tech not the taboo tech. Heck real life earth has just about figured out the taboo tech (gunning is solved, piloting is almost there).

So you are saying an X-wing with its wings deployed couldn't fly in an atmosphere? X-wings have repulsorlifts and can float. A brick-shaped craft could be made to fly in the Star Wars universe. Craft shaped like B-wings and TIE fighters can fly and land in atmospheres so I don't understand how the X-wing must close its wings to be able to handle such. More aerodynamic? Sure. Required? No. Using the biplane example it might actually even have more lift in an atmosphere due to larger wing area.

It’s not about lift. The wings of an X-wing are flat, not curved. They’re also not angled relative to the body of the craft. There would be little or no lift generated by such wings.

But there would be drag. And closing the wings together would reduce the drag. And as you try to fly faster in atmosphere, drag is your #1 enemy — it increases as the square of your velocity.

In addition, if the wings of an X-wing do have ailerons, their effectiveness would be reduced if the wings were in “attack formation”. There might be other reasons you’d want to be in “attack formation” in an atmosphere, but maneuverability and control would suffer somewhat.

The world world I/II model may not fit post Ep. 6 since we really don't know the state of the war or its affect on industrialization yet. We may find the model to be more like what happened to North Korea with industry being destroyed on a large scale and thus development of completely new military weapons being a rarity until after reconstruction.

The thing is that inflicting the kind of infrastructure damage North Korea took over the Star Wars Galaxy would take an incredible amount of effort. you would have to hit dozens, hundreds, or thousands of planets and once one side begins launching such a campaign the other side would have to be crazy if they didn't put massive defenses around likely targets which would be made easier by the fact the hardware would be manufactured at the area being defended. And the target of such a campaign would likely also set up hidden manufacturing centers, easy to do in an area as massive as the Star Wars galaxy. While these would take time to come online I doubt they would still be offline 30 years post Endor unless the campaign against infrastructure started very late in the gap between Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens.

Heck real life earth has just about figured out the taboo tech (gunning is solved, piloting is almost there).

The gunning part is easy, if you can “see” the target. But you can’t hit what you can’t see.

That rule holds for things in the visual spectrum, infrared, radar, or most anything else. It also holds true for things like spies, or terrorists — if you can’t tell the good guys from the bad guys, or the bad guys from the innocents, then you’re going to have a tough time.

But accounting for gravity, air resistance, wind drift, and all the other things that you might normally need to concern yourself with as a sniper firing at a target a mile away? Yeah, that problem is now largely solved, if you’ve got the money and the equipment. But as I said, that’s the easy part of the problem.

Heck real life earth has just about figured out the taboo tech (gunning is solved, piloting is almost there).

The gunning part is easy, if you can “see” the target. But you can’t hit what you can’t see.That rule holds for things in the visual spectrum, infrared, radar, or most anything else. It also holds true for things like spies, or terrorists — if you can’t tell the good guys from the bad guys, or the bad guys from the innocents, then you’re going to have a tough time.But accounting for gravity, air resistance, wind drift, and all the other things that you might normally need to concern yourself with as a sniper firing at a target a mile away? Yeah, that problem is now largely solved, if you’ve got the money and the equipment. But as I said, that’s the easy part of the problem.

Edit: rereading this, it sounds a little bit abrupt or rude. That is not my intention. I was trying to say, I agree with you, and they easy technical solution is not to solve the hard problem but to sidestep it by having the organic do what the organic does better than a computer

The engineering mantra is

if the math exists use it to solve the problem

if the math doesn't exist solve the problem anyway (do something empirical)

if you can't solve the problem change the problem to a similar one that you can solve

I was using verse 3 of the mantra

So you are saying an X-wing with its wings deployed couldn't fly in an atmosphere? X-wings have repulsorlifts and can float. A brick-shaped craft could be made to fly in the Star Wars universe. Craft shaped like B-wings and TIE fighters can fly and land in atmospheres so I don't understand how the X-wing must close its wings to be able to handle such. More aerodynamic? Sure. Required? No. Using the biplane example it might actually even have more lift in an atmosphere due to larger wing area.

It’s not about lift. The wings of an X-wing are flat, not curved. They’re also not angled relative to the body of the craft. There would be little or no lift generated by such wings.But there would be drag. And closing the wings together would reduce the drag. And as you try to fly faster in atmosphere, drag is your #1 enemy — it increases as the square of your velocity.In addition, if the wings of an X-wing do have ailerons, their effectiveness would be reduced if the wings were in “attack formation”. There might be other reasons you’d want to be in “attack formation” in an atmosphere, but maneuverability and control would suffer somewhat.

So you are saying an X-wing with its wings deployed couldn't fly in an atmosphere? X-wings have repulsorlifts and can float. A brick-shaped craft could be made to fly in the Star Wars universe. Craft shaped like B-wings and TIE fighters can fly and land in atmospheres so I don't understand how the X-wing must close its wings to be able to handle such. More aerodynamic? Sure. Required? No. Using the biplane example it might actually even have more lift in an atmosphere due to larger wing area.

It’s not about lift. The wings of an X-wing are flat, not curved. They’re also not angled relative to the body of the craft. There would be little or no lift generated by such wings.

But there would be drag. And closing the wings together would reduce the drag. And as you try to fly faster in atmosphere, drag is your #1 enemy — it increases as the square of your velocity.

In addition, if the wings of an X-wing do have ailerons, their effectiveness would be reduced if the wings were in “attack formation”. There might be other reasons you’d want to be in “attack formation” in an atmosphere, but maneuverability and control would suffer somewhat.

Again, you are applying modern, real technology to the Star Wars galaxy. Nowhere in your explanation is a mention of repulsorlifts that allow a brick to fly without any wings at all. In fact, why have wings at all if they are only handing out drag without any lift? Why not just stick the lasers out on the end of poles? Because the wings look cooler. It's not about trying to keep in line with realworld or modern physics.

What is your stance on the TIE fighter? Can it fly inside an atmosphere in the Star Wars universe? Those solar panels would be worse or at least as bad as the wings of the X-wing, yet the TIE fighter can fly in atmospheres and is known as being very nimble. Surely there is some technology available in the Star Wars universe that alleviates the problems we face in the real, modern world.

You now seem to agree with me that the X-wing can fly with wings deployed in an atmosphere (just not as well). That doesn't snync with your first statement about having to close the wings in order to be able to "land on planets where there is atmosphere". You moved the goalposts.

Actually in Legends material the TIE LN aka the TIE Fighter loses a lot of its maneuverability in atmosphere due to the solar panels.