2 hours ago, Phoenix5454 said:

From the OP off wookiepedia:

Thanks to this track record, the Alliance obtained a number of A-wings and modified them, removing their heavy weapons and shields , in order to make them fast enough to combat the newer generations of Imperial TIE fighters.

makes it sounds like the Rebels removed all the shields...

45 minutes ago, Jetfire said:

If I say, "Fresh Fruits and Vegetables" do I mean the vegetables aren't fresh? I would say it is an ambiguous sentence at best and can easily be construed many ways. One of which is that A-wings have no weapons or shields, one is that they have no heavy weapons and no shields, one is that they removed the heavy stuff and replaced it with lighter stuff. I would argue the latter is the most sensible read.

Afterall, there is nothing saying a missile is a heavy weapon, and realistically missiles don't draw power so removing heavy lasers for light laser and heavy shields for light shields would leave more energy from the power plant to dump into the engines which would explain its high speed. Then later they strip out the missiles too to save maintenance costs.

Fair enough. I just think it would read, "removed some shielding" or "downsized the shield generator" if they really were being specific to the fact that the A-Wing still had shields after the alliance refit. Unless the A-Wing had "heavy blasters" to start removing heavy weapons makes me think the whole ordinance delivery system was removed to save weight rather than swapping out for blasters that use less energy. Either way you're right, the wording can support either interpretation I guess, you and I are just interpreting the wording differently.

From what I've seen in Rebels, they pack neither shields nor armor. In many cases, they don't even pack triggers for their weapons.

The way starfighters have been depicted in pretty much all the movies and shows, it's hard to make a case that any level of shielding does anything. TIE Fighters (2 Red dice, mind) routinely one-shot X-Wings and Y-Wings, which is absolutely impossible in this game.

2 hours ago, mithril2098 said:

aside from the A-wing having a green straight 5, and the Interceptor a white, they have the exact same movement dial. this means that an A-wing cannot actually outrun a TIE Interceptor, nor outfly it.

when you watch Rebels, the stock A-wings they fly are plenty fast and maneuverable, and with the introduction of the Interceptor in "the antilles extraction", shown to be about the same speed and agility as an Interceptor.

The maneuver dials in X-Wing MG can go from speed 0 to speed 5, so don't expect much variation. Besides, the modified A-Wing could go only a bit faster than the TIE Interceptor, not enough to make it speed 6.

The A-Wings in Rebels are crap - they can't outfly the Protectorate Starfighters or even Vader's TIE/x1.

32 minutes ago, Blue Five said:

Without context, yes. This statement must however be taken in the context of the A-wing.

Removing the heavy weapons is easy to get: a factory A-wing has missile launchers and laser cannons. Remove the heavy weapons and you're left with laser cannons.

Removing the heavy shields implies the A-wing had heavy shields to start with. The only starfighter I can recall being called heavily shielded is the B-wing, a craft that has to be able to take hits because it's so slow. I very much doubt those Rebels A-wings were packing B-wing level shielding.

The shocking truth about the B-Wing is that it didn't have that heavy shielding (but better hull instead). They have 100 SBD shields, the same as the TIE Defender, which is good, but not the 5 shield tokens we see in this game. Y-wing, for comparison, has 75 SBD, and X-Wing 50. (FFG made up their own status for *balance* or whatever - even giving shields to a ship that supposedly shouldn't have it, the Inquisitor's TIE)

10 minutes ago, Kharnvor said:

From what I've seen in Rebels, they pack neither shields nor armor. In many cases, they don't even pack triggers for their weapons.

The way starfighters have been depicted in pretty much all the movies and shows, it's hard to make a case that any level of shielding does anything. TIE Fighters (2 Red dice, mind) routinely one-shot X-Wings and Y-Wings, which is absolutely impossible in this game.

That may relate more to power management of the craft itself. This is nitty gritty but the power generator for a ship with a shield generator can have it's energy bumped around to its blasters, engines, shields etc. The pilot can distribute the power as they see fit. So if you're flying along with almost all your energy being sent to the weapons and a TIE gets a good shot on you it could result in what you're talking about. Also, my understanding is that shields in the Star Wars universe need to recharge after repeatedly taking blaster fire. They come back but not instantly and not under sustained fire.

If we go to the original canon source, Episode IV, we have Y-Wings who "stabilize rear deflectors" yet blow up from a single twin-laser hit. But then Red Leader and Luke both take hits to their engines and only temporarily lose the engine, while other X-Wings take hits to center fuselage and blow up. Going by what's on-screen in this movie, it's hard to say what exactly the shields are supposed to do, but it's clear that they don't do much against other starfighter weapons. Rebels seems to be continuing this trend where shields, whether on a fighter or a corvette, do pretty much nothing.

To better represent what we see on screen (rather than how the X-Wing and TIE Fighters games played), it's almost like shields should be a keyword that downgrade critical hits to regular hits, but otherwise don't absorb any damage - so effectively everyone takes damage straight to hull while unshielded ships can take worse types of damage.

1 hour ago, Kharnvor said:

If we go to the original canon source, Episode IV, we have Y-Wings who "stabilize rear deflectors" yet blow up from a single twin-laser hit. But then Red Leader and Luke both take hits to their engines and only temporarily lose the engine, while other X-Wings take hits to center fuselage and blow up. Going by what's on-screen in this movie, it's hard to say what exactly the shields are supposed to do, but it's clear that they don't do much against other starfighter weapons. Rebels seems to be continuing this trend where shields, whether on a fighter or a corvette, do pretty much nothing.

To better represent what we see on screen (rather than how the X-Wing and TIE Fighters games played), it's almost like shields should be a keyword that downgrade critical hits to regular hits, but otherwise don't absorb any damage - so effectively everyone takes damage straight to hull while unshielded ships can take worse types of damage.

Yep. In the OT we see shields working only a few times (like in the AT-AT, the Millennium Falcon and ISDs), but never in the starfighters. Those blow up very quickly.

SW Rebels aren't much different, with ships exploding at the first shots (including light cruisers).

Actually, IIRC (it has been a little bit since I saw ANH) TIEs fire short bursts of like 2-3 shots of twin lasers a lot, X-Wings tend to figure just single links of their lasers, which is something FFG hasn't really modeled in ANY of their games. But the precision of dice went off the rails of having a static meaning at least since Scum were a thing (The Kihraxz has two light blaster cannons stock - which is a light weapon for ground vehicles, let alone starfighters but has 3 ATK stat because mechanically it models something in the X-Wing role). So we need to just accept stat variations of the underlying ship have stopped necessarily being based entirely on lore and now are forced to move into more mechanical realms - and maybe if FFG had planned for a little more granularity it would be better but I don't know if they thought this show would go 10+ waves at the start.

That said, LFL has to approve everything FFG prints. I don't know how fine a detail they get into in the review process, and of course the nature of canonicity and reference materials has shifted over the course of FFG producing the game, but I'm still pretty sure if FFG printed anything which could be construed in a way LFL didn't like they'd have to alter it.

I also call this canon...

3 hours ago, Odanan said:

The shocking truth about the B-Wing is that it didn't have that heavy shielding (but better hull instead). They have 100 SBD shields, the same as the TIE Defender, which is good, but not the 5 shield tokens we see in this game. Y-wing, for comparison, has 75 SBD, and X-Wing 50. (FFG made up their own status for *balance* or whatever - even giving shields to a ship that supposedly shouldn't have it, the Inquisitor's TIE)

Is this the old flight sim being treated as canonical stats again? Because that's just as much mechanics as X-Wing is.

3 hours ago, Kharnvor said:

From what I've seen in Rebels, they pack neither shields nor armor. In many cases, they don't even pack triggers for their weapons.

The way starfighters have been depicted in pretty much all the movies and shows, it's hard to make a case that any level of shielding does anything. TIE Fighters (2 Red dice, mind) routinely one-shot X-Wings and Y-Wings, which is absolutely impossible in this game.

I am going with they just never show the shots that hit the shields since it's boring.

That is one possibility, though I'd have to disagree that it'd be boring. It would be a great way to show a difference between X-Wings and TIEs, as well as building tension and showing a lot more pew pew. I have no doubt a lot of it is due to the technology available: rotoscoping a screen full of laser blasts all the time would take forever and cost a ton, but with better computers these days, it should be easy. The Force Awakens had far more expansive and dynamic battles with lasers flying everywhere and ships getting shot down (I like how they didn't just all blow up into gas clouds but actually broke apart and crashed - same as in Rogue One), but no apparent protection from shields though they had the time and means to show it. I've heard there are some instances in Rogue one of lasers being stopped by shields briefly before subsequent shots destroy the fighter, but I don't recall seeing that. I'll have to watch the blu ray several times once it comes out. For research purposes only, of course.

I think the only time we really saw shields in action and doing anything useful was when Ani crash landed on the Trade Federation battleship in Episode I. He put up the shields, we saw them flicker to life, and a few blaster shots bounced off them before he torpedoed the battleship and ran over the droids. Seems to me that starfighter shields aren't really meant to defend against direct hits by starfighter-grade weapons or just plain can't withstand them (weapon vs armor race that has existed throughout history).

My canon for A-Wings is based on the PC X-Wing games of yesteryear. They had shields in that. Not very good ones, but they were there.