Has anyone noticed how slow fighters are in Star Wars? Based on wookiepedia they’re slower than early-mid Cold War jets...like a lot slower.

Mig21(late 1950s) was capable of well over 1000mph while the tie interceptor was a bit over 700mph and the x wing less than 700mph and the vaunted A-wing is just over 800mph

Well, some of them do have the whole Hyperspace module and all. 😉

That being said, I guess you really wouldn’t need anything with a faster standard speed, right? You got 800mph for certain instances and the speed of light+ for wherever else.

Well, based on West End Games figures.. A Fighter's listed speed (Atmosphere) is given for a "Cruise move".. They CAN DO 'flank' move, which is 4x that.

Looking in the complete starship's collection i see for their Atmosphere rating (ALL Ratings are in KMH)

Naboo fighter N1 - 1,100

Jedi star-fighter - 1,050

Jedi interceptor - 1,500

V-19 torrent - 1,150

Z-95 - 1,150

Standard Y-wing - 1,000

Star viper - 1,200

Scyk light fighter - 1,200

Kilmogila - 950

Droid starfighter - 1,200

The Genossian fighter- 1,200

Belbllab 22 bomber - 1,000

Tri-fighter - 1,050

V-wing - 1,450

Arc-170 - 1,050

Tie fighters - 1,200 (same for the Tie advance)

Tie aggressors - 1,150

Tie interceptors 1,250

Tie bomber - 850

Tie phantom - 1000

Tie defenders - 1,550

X-wing 1,050

A-wing 1,300

B-wing - 950

Now multiply that by 4, and you see, NONE are slow. At 'flank' the Bombers can get up to 3,200 KMH, which is almost 2000 MPH.

They're not slow. Wook is the worst source. Just watch ANH to understand their speed.

No seriously. I'm not joshing, Wook is just stupid.

On 9/14/2019 at 12:01 AM, JohnPJones said:

Has anyone noticed how slow fighters are in Star Wars? Based on wookiepedia they’re slower than early-mid Cold War jets...like a lot slower.

Mig21(late 1950s) was capable of well over 1000mph while the tie interceptor was a bit over 700mph and the x wing less than 700mph and the vaunted A-wing is just over 800mph

Yeah, well, lets see how well your mig does IN SPACE..

The vehicles in star wars also have propulsion methods that are different than what we use on earth, not to mention most ships in star wars are not designed for operating solely in an atmosphere, but also space. Not to mention that many vehicles in in star wars aren't aerodynamically optimized.

Plus TIEs can hover... can your mig hover?

12 hours ago, LTuser said:

Well, based on West End Games figures.. A Fighter's listed speed (Atmosphere) is given for a "Cruise move".. They CAN DO 'flank' move, which is 4x that.

Looking in the complete starship's collection i see for their Atmosphere rating (ALL Ratings are in KMH)

Naboo fighter N1 - 1,100

Jedi star-fighter - 1,050

Jedi interceptor - 1,500

V-19 torrent - 1,150

Z-95 - 1,150

Standard Y-wing - 1,000

Star viper - 1,200

Scyk light fighter - 1,200

Kilmogila - 950

Droid starfighter - 1,200

The Genossian fighter- 1,200

Belbllab 22 bomber - 1,000

Tri-fighter - 1,050

V-wing - 1,450

Arc-170 - 1,050

Tie fighters - 1,200 (same for the Tie advance)

Tie aggressors - 1,150

Tie interceptors 1,250

Tie bomber - 850

Tie phantom - 1000

Tie defenders - 1,550

X-wing 1,050

A-wing 1,300

B-wing - 950

Now multiply that by 4, and you see, NONE are slow. At 'flank' the Bombers can get up to 3,200 KMH, which is almost 2000 MPH.

idk what west end games is or how true to canon their stuff is, but kmh is .6 mph so, tie defenders are really the only ones that can be considered fast, and flank speed isn't really a concept associated to aircraft like fighters and bombers...that's a concept typically associated with large ships which makes me question the system entirely

3 hours ago, That Blasted Samophlange said:

Yeah, well, lets see how well your mig does IN SPACE..

The vehicles in star wars also have propulsion methods that are different than what we use on earth, not to mention most ships in star wars are not designed for operating solely in an atmosphere, but also space. Not to mention that many vehicles in in star wars aren't aerodynamically optimized.

Plus TIEs can hover... can your mig hover?

X-37 does pretty well in space and can hit speeds of 17,000+ mph

mig doesn't need to hover when there are helicopters, but even though the MiGs couldn't hover, the Yak38 which was limited to .9mach was still faster than several of the star wars fighters and bombers, harrier AV-8B, and F35B can all hover, and the F35B still manages a top speed of over 1200mph or 1976kmh

20 hours ago, K-2SO said:

Well, some of them do have the whole Hyperspace module and all. 😉

That being said, I guess you really wouldn’t need anything with a faster standard speed, right? You got 800mph for certain instances and the speed of light+ for wherever else.

speed is kind of important for atmospheric dog fighting...

4 hours ago, Captain Lackwit said:

They're not slow. Wook is the worst source. Just watch ANH to understand their speed.

No seriously. I'm not joshing, Wook is just stupid.

and what is ANH?

a lot people seem to have taken this personally

lets just face it, 700-800mph is fast in most peoples' minds and the movies were written by civilians with little to no input from anyone with any specific knowledge about fighters and aircraft speeds most likely.

to get a bit more picky star wars craft can't even get into space with out activating their hyperdrives...assuming all these other planets have atmospheres even remotely close to earth's, which means you have to reach a speed of around 17,500mph to get out of the atmosphere.

just pointing out something i noticed and found surprising.

44 minutes ago, JohnPJones said:

and what is ANH?

A New Hope. West End Games was the group that held the rpg license for the Star Wars IP in the 90's and 00's and allot their work was used as the foundation for the old extended universe and still exists as part of the core of the current Canon ( @Imperial Advisor Arem Heshvaun was part of that group. What they did was actually really well thought out.). As for velocity in KPH... The speeds quoted by @LTuser are roughly mid range for WW2 fighters and bombers and were the top in atmosphere speeds for their respective ships. Space "speeds" were in MGLT which was a maximum mass:thrust ratio that the chassis could sustain, iirc. Though in the fluid space that is Star Wars the deceleration due to resistance when not under thrust is more in line with a very thin atmosphere.

2 hours ago, Hiemfire said:

A New Hope. West End Games was the group that held the rpg license for the Star Wars IP in the 90's and 00's and allot their work was used as the foundation for the old extended universe and still exists as part of the core of the current Canon ( @Imperial Advisor Arem Heshvaun was part of that group. What they did was actually really well thought out.). As for velocity in KPH... The speeds quoted by @LTuser are roughly mid range for WW2 fighters and bombers and were the top in atmosphere speeds for their respective ships. Space "speeds" were in MGLT which was a maximum mass:thrust ratio that the chassis could sustain, iirc. Though in the fluid space that is Star Wars the deceleration due to resistance when not under thrust is more in line with a very thin atmosphere.

Been a minute since I’ve seen a new hope but I don’t remember anything would give an accurate idea of their speed. Very little atmospheric flight shown, and in space it’s nearly impossible to judge distances, but the best way to figure speeds is look at the how long it takes a vessel to travel along a star destroyer since those would be the only real point of reference, and do the math from there.

like I said previously about west end games, the whole flank speed for fighters and bombers is not based in any sort of actual aerial combat.

Ahead/back 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, full, flank, have always been related to ships and never to any sort of aircraft (except maybe drigibles?)

so I’m finding anything they say to be quite questionable. The best real world equivalent I can think of is WEP which more or less doubled an airplane power output for a short period (about 5 minutes) but even then doubling is a far cry from quadrupling.

when did Lucas arts or Disney say this game was cannon? A license to use IP doesn’t equate to canon.

4 minutes ago, JohnPJones said:

like I said previously about west end games, the whole flank speed for fighters and bombers is not based in any sort of actual aerial combat.

Except the Fighters and Warships in Star Wars were derived by George Lucas and his staff from WW1, interwar and WW2 equipment. Pulp publication interpretations of them to be certain, but still from that era...

3 hours ago, JohnPJones said:

and what is ANH?

...F'real? A New Hope? First Star Wars film? What, the fact that you get to visually see how fast they accelerate towards The Death Star doesn't give you soooooome idea of how actually fast the fighters are?

Okay, then try The Force Awakens, Rogue One, etc. The atmospheric speeds displayed there are doubtlessly supersonic.

52 minutes ago, JohnPJones said:

Been a minute since I’ve seen a new hope but I don’t remember anything would give an accurate idea of their speed. Very little atmospheric flight shown, and in space it’s nearly impossible to judge distances, but the best way to figure speeds is look at the how long it takes a vessel to travel along a star destroyer since those would be the only real point of reference, and do the math from there.

like I said previously about west end games, the whole flank speed for fighters and bombers is not based in any sort of actual aerial combat.

Ahead/back 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, full, flank, have always been related to ships and never to any sort of aircraft (except maybe drigibles?)

so I’m finding anything they say to be quite questionable. The best real world equivalent I can think of is WEP which more or less doubled an airplane power output for a short period (about 5 minutes) but even then doubling is a far cry from quadrupling.

when did Lucas arts or Disney say this game was cannon? A license to use IP doesn’t equate to canon.

Second point. The fluid space aspect they were talking about was referenced by Pablo Hidalgo. They think of Space in Star Wars as having a kind of drag effect, so take that as you will. It's definitely not the same type of vacuum we're used to.

Which is fine. It's really interesting when you think of it that way.

25 minutes ago, Captain Lackwit said:

...F'real? A New Hope? First Star Wars film? What, the fact that you get to visually see how fast they accelerate towards The Death Star doesn't give you soooooome idea of how actually fast the fighters are?

Okay, then try The Force Awakens, Rogue One, etc. The atmospheric speeds displayed there are doubtlessly supersonic.

Second point. The fluid space aspect they were talking about was referenced by Pablo Hidalgo. They think of Space in Star Wars as having a kind of drag effect, so take that as you will. It's definitely not the same type of vacuum we're used to.

Which is fine. It's really interesting when you think of it that way.

i recieved look out training while in the navy, which taught me that scene isn't capable of judging speed of an object in this case a star fighter, because we don't know the distance to the death star so we can't judge the speed.

we have never actually seen a sonic boom in any of those movies, and supersonic is not that fast since the speed of sound is 767mph so you're right some of those are supersonic, but still slow by modern standards.

1 hour ago, Hiemfire said:

Except the Fighters and Warships in Star Wars were derived by George Lucas and his staff from WW1, interwar and WW2 equipment. Pulp publication interpretations of them to be certain, but still from that era...

um ok, i guess if we're comparing to WWI interwar and early WWII these speeds are indeed quite fast, but that doesn't change the fact that there was never a flank speed for aircraft, and like i said WEP is the closest thing to the west end games definition of flank speed for star fighters.

3 hours ago, Hiemfire said:

A New Hope. West End Games was the group that held the rpg license for the Star Wars IP in the 90's and 00's and allot their work was used as the foundation for the old extended universe and still exists as part of the core of the current Canon ( @Imperial Advisor Arem Heshvaun was part of that group. What they did was actually really well thought out.). As for velocity in KPH... The speeds quoted by @LTuser are roughly mid range for WW2 fighters and bombers and were the top in atmosphere speeds for their respective ships. Space "speeds" were in MGLT which was a maximum mass:thrust ratio that the chassis could sustain, iirc. Though in the fluid space that is Star Wars the deceleration due to resistance when not under thrust is more in line with a very thin atmosphere.

This 1982 ILM chart is what is what WEG based snub fighter speed/maneuverablity on. When Han said the Falcon is the fastest ship in the fleet, he means non fighters (also Han has been known to exaggerate 🤣 ).

Baron Soontir Fel holds the record for top speed of an unmodofied TIE Interceptor, being able to briefly coax his fighter to surpass an A - Wing’s speed by 13% in combat.

8 hours ago, JohnPJones said:

to get a bit more picky star wars craft can't even get into space with out activating their hyperdrives...assuming all these other planets have atmospheres even remotely close to earth's, which means you have to reach a speed of around 17,500mph to get out of the atmosphere.

Speed is irrelevant for SW ships to get into space, they have repulsors. They can simply go up.

2 hours ago, Forgottenlore said:

Speed is irrelevant for SW ships to get into space, they have repulsors. They can simply go up.

The TIE yes was not aware rebel/resistance had repulsors

10 hours ago, JohnPJones said:

like I said previously about west end games, the whole flank speed for fighters and bombers is not based in any sort of actual aerial combat.

Ahead/back 1/4, 1/2, 3/4, full, flank, have always been related to ships and never to any sort of aircraft (except maybe drigibles?)

Because basically the same system and hence language was used for small ships (snubfighters) and large ships (capital ships). In 'real world' situations the carriers and battleships don't fly (aside from, as noted, stuff like Zeppelins).

In the Star Wars universe, the difference between fighters, gunships, and capital ships is more a progression of scale than any change of behaviour or fundamental technology.

Also note that War Emergency Power was basically a "ignore the safety interlocks and I accept the maintenance crew are going to hate me" setting. On a star wars fighter, which normally has systems draining power for shields and energy weapons, saying "no, put everything into the engines!" produces a much more dramatic speed increase.

1 hour ago, JohnPJones said:

The TIE yes was not aware rebel/resistance had repulsors

Watch the rebels scrambling from Yavin base, and how lazily they take off and pivot on to their heading, or the Rogue One U-wings coming in to hover and drop troops. Note that X-wings, TIE fighters, etc, are not aerodynamic at all - they're just about aerodynamic enough not to suffer catastrophic damage flying at high speed (plus deflectors help where they have them), but they don't provide aerodynamic lift - that comes from counter-gravity.

10 hours ago, JohnPJones said:

A license to use IP doesn’t equate to canon.

No, but everything that is produced has to be 'checked off' with Disney's licensing people, and WEG's stuff (which was before the newer films) got reused in a lot of places. FFG's main contribution to the star wars canon reused in other places to date has been the Raider -class corvette, most notably starring as Inferno Squadron's flagship in Star Wars Battlefront.

Ok, well people seem to be pointing out that SW ships are slow compared to today’s standards, however, that would make perfect sense as Star Wars was a long time ago...

On 9/15/2019 at 9:50 AM, Captain Lackwit said:

They're not slow. Wook is the worst source. Just watch ANH to understand their speed.

No seriously. I'm not joshing, Wook is just stupid.

I mean, in all of the Star Wars the fighters all look very slow, regardless of the visual medium (ANH, Rogue One, TFA, Rebels , video games, etc.). Like, easily trackable by the naked eye slow. But this is not surprising, given two considerations:

(1) Star Wars is a visual form of entertainment, and people want to see cool and stunning visuals, not indiscernible blurs (like real-world jet fighters are at their top speeds).
(2) Star Wars fighters are based on WWII dogfighting, which sort of requires fighters that are about as fast as WWII aircraft. Note that "dogfighting" in the WWII sense became pretty much entirely irrelevant once Cold-War Era and beyond fighter jets got so damned fast (despite what Independence Day would have us all nostalgically believe).


I mean, if you really want to appreciate how gosh-darn slow fighters are in Star Wars , never forget that in ANH it is a major point of pride that Han's ship can "outrun the big Corellian ships" but that the two ISDs orbiting Tatooine give chase until Han punches his hyperdrive and that in ESB the Falcon (the "fastest ship in the fleet") literally cannot outrun pursuing Star Destroyers without its hyperdrive, like the ISDs are able to keep chase with the Falcon despite it rountinely "diving" to change its plane/vector.

So, yea, ISDs are faster than the Falcon , at least at sub-light speeds.



QED: Star Wars fighters are way slower than modern day jet fighters.

6 minutes ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

I mean, in all of the Star Wars the fighters all look very slow, regardless of the visual medium (ANH, Rogue One, TFA, Rebels , video games, etc.). Like, easily trackable by the naked eye slow. But this is not surprising, given two considerations:

(1) Star Wars is a visual form of entertainment, and people want to see cool and stunning visuals, not indiscernible blurs (like real-world jet fighters are at their top speeds).
(2) Star Wars fighters are based on WWII dogfighting, which sort of requires fighters that are about as fast as WWII aircraft. Note that "dogfighting" in the WWII sense became pretty much entirely irrelevant once Cold-War Era and beyond fighter jets got so damned fast (despite what Independence Day would have us all nostalgically believe).


I mean, if you really want to appreciate how gosh-darn slow fighters are in Star Wars , never forget that in ANH it is a major point of pride that Han's ship can "outrun the big Corellian ships" but that the two ISDs orbiting Tatooine give chase until Han punches his hyperdrive and that in ESB the Falcon (the "fastest ship in the fleet") literally cannot outrun pursuing Star Destroyers without its hyperdrive, like the ISDs are able to keep chase with the Falcon despite it rountinely "diving" to change its plane/vector.

So, yea, ISDs are faster than the Falcon , at least at sub-light speeds.



QED: Star Wars fighters are way slower than modern day jet fighters.

OF COURSE ISDs ARE FASTER! WHY WOULDN'T THEY BE!?

Dude! Something being small does not make it faster than something big. ISDs are warships able to traverse significant space without FTL speeds. ISDs are not slow. They never ever have been. They kept pace in ESB, too! You know why?

They have engines bigger than most skyscrapers, fueled by nuclear fusion reactors! Those engines are so powerful, they can push an ISD, a 1.6km long vessel, not to mention its significant mass, at a rate of 120+MGLT of acceleration, possibly more.

Dude!

ISDs fast af yo! They have never been slow! Capital ships in Star Wars have always been realistically fast. Fuel is essentially a non concern for ANH era Empire, so what in the world limits them in space? Nothing. Not a **** thing.

I wonder how often you guys watch the movies and consider the broad spectrum of factors at play. Fun fact too.

ISDs were the big corellian ones. They may be a Kuati design, but SOLO confirms ISDs get made at Corellia as well. SO for all intents and purposes, he did mean ISDs. He DID outrun them, once the hyperdrive kicked in, and that's precisely what he meant.

Again.

He did not outrun them at sublight in ESB until he dove into the Asteroid field in desparation.

You cannot outrun a capital ship at sublight speeds.

1 minute ago, Captain Lackwit said:

OF COURSE ISDs ARE FASTER! WHY WOULDN'T THEY BE!?

Dude! Something being small does not make it faster than something big. ISDs are warships able to traverse significant space without FTL speeds. ISDs are not slow. They never ever have been. They kept pace in ESB, too! You know why?

They have engines bigger than most skyscrapers, fueled by nuclear fusion reactors! Those engines are so powerful, they can push an ISD, a 1.6km long vessel, not to mention its significant mass, at a rate of 120+MGLT of acceleration, possibly more.

Dude!

ISDs fast af yo! They have never been slow! Capital ships in Star Wars have always been realistically fast. Fuel is essentially a non concern for ANH era Empire, so what in the world limits them in space? Nothing. Not a **** thing.

I wonder how often you guys watch the movies and consider the broad spectrum of factors at play. Fun fact too.

ISDs were the big corellian ones. They may be a Kuati design, but SOLO confirms ISDs get made at Corellia as well. SO for all intents and purposes, he did mean ISDs. He DID outrun them, once the hyperdrive kicked in, and that's precisely what he meant.

Again.

He did not outrun them at sublight in ESB until he dove into the Asteroid field in desparation.

You cannot outrun a capital ship at sublight speeds.

So... you're agreeing with what I said and repetitively re-stating it (eg ESB, the pre-asteroid-field chase, etc.)?

...ok, nice, high five.

1 minute ago, AllWingsStandyingBy said:

So... you're agreeing with what I said and repetitively re-stating it (eg ESB, the pre-asteroid-field chase, etc.)?

...ok, nice, high five.

>:/

I never can decide if I like you.