I'm not a Star Wars fanatic. I've seen the movies, watched some of the cartoons, but that's about it. Looking at this game, it's pretty obvious there are lots of TIE ships and they all look pretty similar. Can someone please enlighten me as to why this is?

Thanks.

TIE stands for Twin Ion Engine

All of the imperial ships named TIE use said engine.

Also as the universe was expanded nobody felt like making a change.

And imperials are very symmetrical (ignore the lonely tie bomber)

In-universe explanation is that the Empire favoured mass-production and evolutionary designs. Also the tie-fighter was an energy efficient design which worked well with their Star Destroyers in a carrier/fighter configuration (most Ties do not have hyperdrives although a few do).

This is in contrast to the Rebellion who bought/built a variety of hyperdrive-capable craft from various different manufacturers. They needed fighters with hyperdrives to conduct hit-and-run attacks before the Empire could respond and so could not afford the launch times associated with dedicated carriers. Also they could not afford to risk their few capital ships recovering straggling fighters if a battle started to go badly. All ships needed to be able to escape under their own power.

Yep, basically the Empire has a base model of the TIE Fighter that they then make improvements on and different versions of, but they all stem from that basic Twin Ion Engine starfighter.

stay tune for next thread: what is up with all the -wings?

The artists got lazy so they said they all came from the same place ...so they could intentionally draw them all alike.

Strength through unity, unity through strength or something like that.

stay tune for next thread: what is up with all the -wings?

Those look different....

In-universe explanation is that the Empire favoured mass-production and evolutionary designs. Also the tie-fighter was an energy efficient design which worked well with their Star Destroyers in a carrier/fighter configuration (most Ties do not have hyperdrives although a few do).

This is in contrast to the Rebellion who bought/built a variety of hyperdrive-capable craft from various different manufacturers. They needed fighters with hyperdrives to conduct hit-and-run attacks before the Empire could respond and so could not afford the launch times associated with dedicated carriers. Also they could not afford to risk their few capital ships recovering straggling fighters if a battle started to go badly. All ships needed to be able to escape under their own power.

This also explains why the laser equipped on the B-Wing prototype shown in Rebels was removed; it fried the hyperdrive.

The TIEs are an important part of the universe, it is very intentional

In-universe explanation is that the Empire favoured mass-production and evolutionary designs. Also the tie-fighter was an energy efficient design which worked well with their Star Destroyers in a carrier/fighter configuration (most Ties do not have hyperdrives although a few do).

This is in contrast to the Rebellion who bought/built a variety of hyperdrive-capable craft from various different manufacturers. They needed fighters with hyperdrives to conduct hit-and-run attacks before the Empire could respond and so could not afford the launch times associated with dedicated carriers. Also they could not afford to risk their few capital ships recovering straggling fighters if a battle started to go badly. All ships needed to be able to escape under their own power.

This also explains why the laser equipped on the B-Wing prototype shown in Rebels was removed; it fried the hyperdrive.

That's... Actually a deal-breaker for rebel ships. Nice touch of canon, there!

Because once you've designed the coolest thing ever, anything but slight variations just means you aren't being as cool.

In-universe explanation is that the Empire favoured mass-production and evolutionary designs. Also the tie-fighter was an energy efficient design which worked well with their Star Destroyers in a carrier/fighter configuration (most Ties do not have hyperdrives although a few do).

This is in contrast to the Rebellion who bought/built a variety of hyperdrive-capable craft from various different manufacturers. They needed fighters with hyperdrives to conduct hit-and-run attacks before the Empire could respond and so could not afford the launch times associated with dedicated carriers. Also they could not afford to risk their few capital ships recovering straggling fighters if a battle started to go badly. All ships needed to be able to escape under their own power.

This also explains why the laser equipped on the B-Wing prototype shown in Rebels was removed; it fried the hyperdrive.

That's... Actually a deal-breaker for rebel ships. Nice touch of canon, there!

I dunno. I'd load a few of those up for blowing up _star destroyers____

What **** re-canon.

I dunno. I'd load a few of those up for blowing up _star destroyers____

It was just a light cruiser, but yes.

If you have a weapon that powerful and it blows out the hyperdrive, It would make sense to just load the thing onto a hyperspace capable tug and carry it to and from the battle.

Because once you've designed the coolest thing ever, anything but slight variations just means you aren't being as cool.

And the sounds matches the visuals. Gotta love the TIE sounds effects...

The TIE models shared commonality in their systems meaning there was little or no need to relearn controls from model to model, and it made logistics easier when maintaining the various fighters, bombers, ect.

Also FFG and Disney hate the GUNBOAT. >:-(

At Seinar Fleets Systems, the CTRL, C, and V keys are worn out on every single keyboard.

stay tune for next thread: what is up with all the -wings?

I'm not a Star Wars fanatic. I've seen the movies, watched some of the cartoons, but that's about it. Looking at this game, it's pretty obvious there are lots of TIE ships and they all look pretty similar. Can someone please enlighten me as to why this is?

Thanks.

All Imperial starfighters are manufactured by the same corporation so they all look similar. You can see this in the Rebel ships too: the X-wing, Z-95 and T-70 X-wing are all made by Incom and look similar. The Y-wing and K-wing likewise are Koensayr and have the same sorta hammerhead look.

Mechanically some of the TIEs are quite similar, but not all. We only really started getting bits of overlap in Wave 7: before then all the TIEs had very distinct playstyles.

The Wave 1 TIE fighter is the basic design: two solar wings bolted to a ball cockpit. Cheap, blindingly fast and brittle as a biscuit wafer. The Wave 7.5 TIE/fo is a second generation TIE fighter an is essentially a straight upgrade to the TIE fighter for three points: they play in much the same way and are pretty interchangeable.

The Wave 2 TIE interceptor is an upgunned TIE fighter with boost and more greens on its dial, but its higher cost means it loses the numbers advantage. This makes it play very differently to the TIE fighter: the TIE interceptor has to rely on its stronger offense and maneuverability to survive and fights by boosting and barrel rolling out of firing arcs rather than by strength of numbers.

The Wave 1/Wave 6.5 TIE advancedis much more like a Rebel ship. It has an average dial (worse than the TIE fighter, which has a very good dial) and respectable health stats and a two die attack that's simply not good enough for price you pay for it. What turned it from the worst ship in the game to one of the best is the title it got in the Raider expansion: TIE/x1. This allows you to equip a system to it at a four point discount. While you can put any system you want on there are two main contenders: Accuracy Corrector and Advanced Targeting Computer, a TIE Advanced Only upgrade. Accuracy Corrector gives you a two die attack that always hits on both, giving you a very consistent if low damage dealer. Advanced Targeting Computer gives the TIE/x1 a very powerful attack but one which requires you to maintain a target lock on the target.

The TIE phantom and TIE defender are the Wave 4 Super TIEs: they're very powerful ships that cost a fortune. The TIE phantom has a four die attack and a cloaking device. The TIE defender is a high damage, high agility, high health brick of a ship.

Finally, we have the TIE bomber and TIE punisher. The TIE bomber is a very cheap (16pt) and quite rugged ordnance platform. Six hull, two agility, not great but okay dial and a ton of upgrade slots: it's a frame to install the ordnance you want onto. The TIE punisher is much the same: it's a bigger TIE bomber. Costs more, has more health and more slots. It also has a systems slot which allows it to pull some tricks the TIE bomber can't, but much like the TIE fighter and TIE/fo they're two variants of the same ship in many ways.

TAP?

At Seinar Fleets Systems, the CTRL, C, and V keys are worn out on every single keyboard.

^This, more or less. In the fluff of the EU, most TIE craft were designed by Seinar, and had similar design characteristics. The same reason many Corellian Engineering craft (YT-series) had common designs traits, and why automobiles IRL may have similar design traits.

There's too many of them!!!

At Seinar Fleets Systems, the CTRL, C, and V keys are worn out on every single keyboard.

^This, more or less. In the fluff of the EU, most TIE craft were designed by Seinar, and had similar design characteristics. The same reason many Corellian Engineering craft (YT-series) had common designs traits, and why automobiles IRL may have similar design traits.

"Take a proven design, and modify it to new specifications" is as old a practice as any.

In Seinar's case, they showed talent to the point of weakness there - when they did try to radically redesign the system, they inevitably ended up with a project suffering cost blowouts and overpriced line models who eventually saw only limited numbers.

Which is a pretty tidy way to fluff-justify ones bossfights if I ever saw one, eh?

So you're saying we need the gunboat.

Because how do you improve upon perfection?