7 minutes ago, Biophysical said:

There's also a debate about the F35s suitability to a protracted high intensity conflict due to the high levels of support required. In war, conditions tend to be suboptimal, which is especially bad for complex systems. The TIE Fighter very much resembles Russian/Soviet design philosophy in that respect. It's capable, but modestly priced and expendable.

The AK-47 of the spaceship world: Definitely a weapon of war, definitely dangerous... just light on extraneous features beyond 'it shoots at what you points it at and does it well enough to count'.

A small sidenote: The Empire probably doesn't mind the idea of the mass produced fighter craft lacking a hyperdrive, either. Harder to desert your post when you need a transport ship to carry you.

1 hour ago, Infinite_Maelstrom said:

More like police vans, maybe.

The police gunships are pretty well armed, actually - you see them in Rebels and they pack a fair quantity of missiles..

8 minutes ago, Reiver said:

A small sidenote: The Empire probably doesn't mind the idea of the mass produced fighter craft lacking a hyperdrive, either. Harder to desert your post when you need a transport ship to carry you.

Indeed. The Empire doesn't mind unsophisticated fighters for several reasons:

• Less complex fighter means less complex maintenance and piloting 'tasks' - which suits the requirements for training up an army relying on numbers
• Being dependent on your base ship for transport and maintenance makes deserting/defecting much harder. TIEs have been shown landed on their 'wings' but at one point in the lore they couldn't even do that and were entirely dependent on a base or ship to set down.
• Not being hyperspace-capable means no requirement for expensive navicomputers which means one saving results in another. Rebels used astromechs instead of navicomputers, but again the empire wasn't keen on their crews being able to do field maintenance....
• Most senior Imperial officers (Tagge, Tarkin, Motti, etc) would have won their spurs in the clone wars - this would have left them with a habitual strategy of using fighters and their pilots as expendable assets (they're only clones, after all) and a deep dislike for anything automated on the front line which had echoes of the phrase "battle droid".

1 minute ago, Reiver said:

A small sidenote: The Empire probably doesn't mind the idea of the mass produced fighter craft lacking a hyperdrive, either. Harder to desert your post when you need a transport ship to carry you.

That is a point, though a hyperdrive would be just a waste of recources when you plan to operate a fighter from a capital ship anyway.

As a siednote: It occurs to me that the Star Destroyer is basically a jack of all trades. Its a mix of a combat ship, a carrier as well as a base for ground invasion which carrys and supports a small army of ground troops.
It makes sense in an enviroment where where nobody else is able to field something in that size category and your primary interest is to keep down insurgency . If there where other powers who could build ships of similar size one would probably which for more specialized warships.

5 minutes ago, Hannes Solo said:

That is a point, though a hyperdrive would be just a waste of recources when you plan to operate a fighter from a capital ship anyway.

As a siednote: It occurs to me that the Star Destroyer is basically a jack of all trades. Its a mix of a combat ship, a carrier as well as a base for ground invasion which carrys and supports a small army of ground troops.
It makes sense in an enviroment where where nobody else is able to field something in that size category and your primary interest is to keep down insurgency . If there where other powers who could build ships of similar size one would probably which for more specialized warships.

Indeed. Whilst you could make a more effective troop tranport, or carrier, or battleship, if you have em and your opponent doesn't, there's something very logical about being able to say "park a destroyer in orbit, job done" and be confident the ship can handle anything from suppressing insurgency to acting as a base for a blockade/patrol to essentially being an Imperial headquarters that's not stuck on a planet's surface.

Re: TIEs and hyperdrives

TCW showed hyperdrives on starfighters as literal add ons, such as with the Delta-7, V-19, ETA-2 and possibly the Clone Z-95 and V-wing. Half of these ships came with astromechs despite the hyperdrive rings presumedly including nav computers.

larger starfighters meant for long range operations like the Y-wing and ARC-170 had hyperdrives built in to the ship. These starships were much larger than the short range fighters and also carried multiple crew.

TIE series craft mostly eschewed internal hyperdrives but also presumedly had add on hyperdrive modules that could be easily incorporated due to the overall modular nature of the production models. It appears only 'Advanced' TIEs and special purpose, prototype, or long range TIE craft included integrated hyperdrives. This situation is obviously a carry over from TCW and shows a high level of continuity with the late Republic forces and the Imperial military.

None of this evidence, however, points to the expendability of either Clone Pilots or Imperial pilots. Modern aircraft carriers house dozens of fighters yet none of them are considered 'expendable'.

27 minutes ago, GrimmyV said:

None of this evidence, however, points to the expendability of either Clone Pilots or Imperial pilots. Modern aircraft carriers house dozens of fighters yet none of them are considered 'expendable'.

Thats why you don't want to give them hyperdrives.

2 minutes ago, Hannes Solo said:

Thats why you don't want to give them hyperdrives.

I see modern aircraft with inflight refueling as our equivelant of hyperdrive rings, increasing the range of otherwise 'short range' craft.

Short range, carrier based fighters by definition don't need hyperdrives.

43 minutes ago, GrimmyV said:

None of this evidence, however, points to the expendability of either Clone Pilots or Imperial pilots. Modern aircraft carriers house dozens of fighters yet none of them are considered 'expendable'.

Expendable probably isn't the right word, but losses were expected and non-crippling. Look at U.S. aircraft in WWII vs the modern day. In WWII, losses were expected, huge numbers of planes were produced. This gave units a lot of operational durability, because losses could be replaced reasonably easily. Current U.S. doctrine seems to rely on the principle of never being hit in the first place. Works great when it works, but breaks down very fast when it doesn't, because losses are hard to replace. The US has a total of something like 174 combat coded F22s, with no more production incoming. If you lose 1 of those to pilot error or poor maintenance or a bad part, it's a huge part of your advanced fighter force.

On ‎9‎/‎3‎/‎2017 at 4:29 AM, TylerTT said:

They are made to project force across a galaxy.

What ever happened to "Serve and Protect?"

On ‎9‎/‎3‎/‎2017 at 4:52 AM, Blail Blerg said:

Also FFG and game design policy is to blame: Most civilian ships shouldn't seem nearly as good as the Falcon. Heck, they should be falcon sized but have 1 attack die and 2 green and like 8 hull. Even a Tie fighter could probably take them down.

And who's gonna fly them, kid? You??

6 hours ago, Hannes Solo said:

In RL there are discussions how much sense it makes to invest a lot in F-35s and similar high tech weapons when all the actual military operations are asymetrical conflicts there an F-15 or an F-18 would do the job just as good.

Given that today's weapon of choice is a car or bomb vest, even those are overkill.

1 minute ago, Darth Meanie said:

Given that today's weapon of choice is a car or bomb vest, even those are overkill.

Indeed. Actually a predator drone may have all the functionality you want when attacking some taliban in the mountains. How many Predators can you have for the price of one F-35 or F-22?

6 minutes ago, Darth Meanie said:

What ever happened to "Serve and Protect?"

Those things are probably the Star Wars version of the metro police MRAP. They want you to try something.

59 minutes ago, GrimmyV said:

Short range, carrier based fighters by definition don't need hyperdrives.

Or life support.

But it goes beyond that - the noticeable one being the deliberate lack of shields to save cost and weight on the TIE/ln.

I'm not suggesting the navy deliberately seeks to loose TIE fighters, but the point is that the fleet has deliberately sought to buy as many fighters as it can for its money, accepting that the fighters are less capable than (say) purchasing more V-wings or later-generation 'Heavy-Z' Headhunters, and hence accepting that it will take casualties in a fight against a serious opponent.

8 minutes ago, Hannes Solo said:

Indeed. Actually a predator drone may have all the functionality you want when attacking some taliban in the mountains. How many Predators can you have for the price of one F-35 or F-22?

Which is why the Empire actually tries to have a high/low mix of TIE fighters and TIE interceptors (so that the pilots who are actually 'any good' get a fighter they can exploit their skills in).

The big change with Tua/Thrawn's plan with The TIE Advanced Prototype/TIE Defender is that this was a seriously dangerous fighter (X-wing quality or better - wait for season 4 for any comparison) that Thrawn was arguing for going into mass production; i.e. becoming general issue for TIE squadrons - which would have been horrifically expensive, of course, but how many hundreds - heck, thousands - of squadrons of TIE defenders could you have built for the price of DS-1?

(Motti makes pretty much this point in the Vader comics, albeit talking about star destroyers, and one of Thrawn's key characteristics has always been less obsession with 'superweapons' than most imperial commanders)

On 9/3/2017 at 2:29 AM, TylerTT said:

If your a civilian in a non militarized space ship tie fighters are terrifying. They may be no more durable than most space ships but they are fast and have weapons.

Nothing says fear and power like a ship based on this design:

"Those rebel pilots can't hit the broadside of a barn. Because if they could, we'd all be dead."

-Imperial Academy Flight Instructor

15 minutes ago, Sekac said:

Nothing says fear and power like a ship based on this design:

"Those rebel pilots can't hit the broadside of a barn. Because if they could, we'd all be dead."

-Imperial Academy Flight Instructor

"Barn Stormer Troopers."

"Leave out 'barn.' It sounds more dangerous."

-Imperial Academy SpecForce Instructor.

1 hour ago, Hannes Solo said:

Indeed. Actually a predator drone may have all the functionality you want when attacking some taliban in the mountains. How many Predators can you have for the price of one F-35 or F-22?

4M bucks vs 100-150M bucks, according to wikipedia.

53 minutes ago, Sekac said:

Nothing says fear and power like a ship based on this design:

"Those rebel pilots can't hit the broadside of a barn. Because if they could, we'd all be dead."

-Imperial Academy Flight Instructor

That's not the broad side.

For all those saying TIEs have no life support.

28 minutes ago, GrimmyV said:

That's not the broad side.

They were inspired by the trim work of the doors, but realizing that facing didn't quite restrict their pilots' vision enough, they opted for the broader, more rectangular side for the actual shape of the wings.

In hindsight, maybe the empire wouldn't have fallen if they didn't buy 10 million TIEs sight unseen. What an absolutely idiotic design.

38 minutes ago, GrimmyV said:

For all those saying TIEs have no life support.

Umm, that scene is in the atmosphere.

4 minutes ago, Sekac said:

They were inspired by the trim work of the doors, but realizing that facing didn't quite restrict their pilots' vision enough, they opted for the broader, more rectangular side for the actual shape of the wings.

In hindsight, maybe the empire wouldn't have fallen if they didn't buy 10 million TIEs sight unseen. What an absolutely idiotic design.

I guess it would be if the pilots could only see out the relatively tiny front window it would be a dumb design, but in helmet AR and HUD make any wing design feasible.

4 minutes ago, BadMotivator said:

Umm, that scene is in the atmosphere.

They also flew the same TIE in space. And whether in atmosphere or not the TIE is sealed air tight

2 minutes ago, GrimmyV said:

They also flew the same TIE in space. And whether in atmosphere or not the TIE is sealed air tight

Just dont breath too quickly.

IIRC, Pablo Hidalgo said on twitter TIEs have life support now, later supplemental works clarified that their systems are very basic, and since a TIE has no shields, pilots wear full suits as safety features. Battle damage or a micrometeorite strike will mean you start bleeding air into space.

Of course, the meta reason for flight suits is the same reason why all the Americans in Top Gun have their visors up and names on their helmets, and the communist bloc pilots all have super tinted visors on their "black w/ red star" set up.

45 minutes ago, GrimmyV said:

I guess it would be if the pilots could only see out the relatively tiny front window it would be a dumb design, but in helmet AR and HUD make any wing design feasible.

Except the only thing they ever show in that regard is a *** targeting computer showing only what's visible out the front window.

Regardless, a design that has the pilot flying blind unless these advanced systems we just made up are working properly is a bad idea. Computer failure? You're dead.

And what's the benefit of this design? Saves on fuel cost? Definitely worth making it an absolutely massive target and restricting your pilot's vision.

On 9/3/2017 at 4:29 AM, TylerTT said:

For a long time the tie fighter never sat right with me.

I did not understand why the empire with all its resources would waste talented pilots in such disposeable ships.

Then I realized while ties do fly in battles they are not made for battle. They are made to project force across a galaxy.

If your a civilian in a non militarized space ship tie fighters are terrifying. They may be no more durable than most space ships but they are fast and have weapons. They don't need durability because killing a tie fighter is a bad idea as tie fighters only operate in range of back up.

They were produced in mass by a republic that transitioned into a totalitarian regime. They were never made to fight a war they were made to oppress common people.