To The Powers-That-Be That Might Read This:

Granted Episode VII might make the 1978-2013 'Expanded Universe' invalid, but I'd like to make a request...but first some background details...

I write SW fan-fiction in the form of teleplay scripts. I have characters and plots that stick to established film canon and EU developments. I have a whole pantheon of SW characters and plots that fit into the nooks and crannies of the EU - spanning from the Clone War era up to the Legacy comic book era.

I make particular use of the Vong War era. One of my self-generated characters is an E-wing starfighter pilot. He was born the year Luke Skywalker destroyed Death Star One. So when the Yuuzhan Vong invade he is 25 years old. The E-wing squadron my character belongs to operates from an Endurance Class Fleet Carrier. Most of the missions this E-wing squadron are sent on are long-range escorts of both civilian and military ships (glorified 'blue-milk runs' - LOL). The ECFC mothership rarely travels beyond the Core Worlds, the Colonies and the Inner Rim. However her long-range fighters (E-wings and X-wings) have been sent as far as Wild Space. So my character and his squadron helped to confirm the growing hints of an extra-galactic invasion in 25 ABY.

Ok what does all this have to do with this X-Wing game? Are there any chances of seeing an E-wing starfighter being added to the game. For that matter how about Vong Coralskippers? Are there any plans to do capital ships for the game? If so and requests are being collected - please do Endurance Class Fleet Carriers and Nebula Class Star Destroyers (see SW: Starships Of The Galaxy: Volume 2 - Page 119 and SW: The Essential Guide To Warfare - Page 207 for accurate depictions of stated ships). If the game will only focus on fightercraft - please consider doing an E-wing starfighter and Vong Coralskipper.

I have high hopes we'll see the E-Wing down the road. I think it's a fairly popular fighter.

I wouldn't hold my breath for a Vong ship, though - less because it's 'EU' than because it's an entirely new faction. I wouldn't rule out them doing a brand new third faction, although I'd think that a Fringe element like the Black Sun might be a more popular choice. I'm not sure how much recognition the Yuzan Vong have among the X-Wing community at large, and haven't heard a lot of voices calling out for their ships so far.

The E-Wing will come in the next FFG game. Its called:

STAR WARS E-Wing Miniatures Game

You laugh. But I would play that game.

I've always loved the E-wing, ever since I saw it in Dark Empire way back in the 90's. DE is the PENULTIMATE followup to the Thrawn trilogy and one of the most epic Star Wars stories ever penned. I mean, everything goes completely to crap, and then the heroes rise to meet their challenge, culminating in a show-down on the Empire's brand new super star destroyer. It's always had a place in my heart, and I was heartbroken to discover that the comics had disappeared when we moved . . .

Anyway, I've always wanted to recreate the Battle of Mon Calamari ever since I first read about this game, and I'd have to have E-wings and TIE Droids in order to do that.

Thanks for responding! Now down to business (big grin). If they opt not to make Vong Coralskippers I think you could create one for the game. Perhaps taking alumium foil and shaping (no pun intended - LOL) into the coralskippers seen in depictions. Another possibilty are small fighter model sized squashes or carrots. Play-Dough or clay can be shaped into corlaskippers. If we were talking about Vong capital ships I'd suggest the humble almond for the heavy cruiser analogues. Better yet some soaps are shaped a bit like the Vong heavy cruiser analogue. Some of the Vong ships look a bit like crabs and so any toy or model crabs painted to fit the depictions seen in various sources might work. Modified Vorlon starships from Babylon 5 RPGs might fit the bill for Vong ships too.

Another thought has popped into my head regarding the E-wing starfighter and how to bring it into the game. Could an X-wing for the game be modified to look like an E-wing? Has anybody done this? It would take skill, but it seems to me that one could approximate an E-wing from an X-wing. Take the upper wings off the X-wing. Find another SW toy or non-SW toy with E-wing-like s-foils (they sorta remind me of Imperial shuttle like wings) and glue them to the lower s-foils of the X-wing model. Then carefully take one of the turbolaser cannon from the upper s-foils you took off. Glue this cannon to a position above the pilot's canopy. Depending on careful skill you could file the underside of the X-wing nose cone till it has more of a hawk beak-like shape. Find two small, but long engine tubes for the E-wing's two thruster pods. Glue them to the underside of the lower s-foils of the former X-wing model. Another possible option: If you have plastic injection equipment - could you take the E-wing toy from the old Action Fleet days and make a much smaller version of it. I know I've heard kit-bashers say they can expand upon any pre-existing shape if they have enough plastic. So could they shrink instead of expanding? It would likely take a bigger effort, but I'd think some of the various Colonial Viper toys from Battlestar Galactica might be modifiable.

I'm sure I'm not the only one here that likes 'in-universe' speculations on SW universe developments, right? As I've stated I write SW fan-fiction that stays true to both the film canon and EU developments. I particularly like how the old SW: RPG's of yesteryear went into detail about tech, social and political 'in-universe' history. As indicated in earlier notes I make use of the E-wing starfighter in my SW fan-fiction. Recently I noticed that a SW related Lego toy is on store shelves. This toy looks very much like the E-wing from 10 ABY. Yet it is described as a Clone War era stealth fighter. Up to this point all indications were that the E-wing design was strictly a post Endor vehicle. So does a 'retcon' exist for this? If not...may I suggest one? Try this - the Clone War era ushered into existence a whole range of testbed vehicles (large and small). Keep that in mind. Now fast-forward to sometime after the Battle of Endor. The military of the New Galactic Republic depended much on both the Y-wing and the X-wing. The restored Republic's military was under strain to protect both itself and the added burden of civilians - now that it was legitimate to the general population. In those early days of the restored Republic both the Y-wing and X-wing were being overtaxed with various kinds of missions. Missions that could be very specific and often evolving beyond the scope of what a Y-wing and X-wing could do for extended amounts of time. Alleviation came with an influx of money and resources from liberated worlds and companies. The restored Republic needed a fightercraft that could be dedicated to protecting the shipping lanes and take some of the pressure off of Y-wing and X-wing squadrons. Former Incom employees (Freitek) already had a design in mind for the job. They resurrected an old Clone War design. They modified the old design to fit the new mission parameters - which was easy. The design already fit with most mass-production infrastructure used to supply the X-wing. Many of the new systems that went into the E-wing prototype were already being tested in X-wing models. So in rather quick succession the E-wing began to allow the X-wing to get back to being a primary dogfighting machine. The E-wing could absorb more damage while defending unarmed and slow traffic. A mission parameter that the A-wing was too fast for. So the A-wing became a primary interceptor. The aging Y-wing and its many variants were to be superceded by the K-wing starfighter-bomber. After the collapse of the New Galactic Republic the K-wing's problems led to the Aleph class starfighter-bomber (a product contributed to the Galactic Alliance by the Imperial Remnant's Sienar Corporation...but that's getting too far off topic). So does this theory work for you? Does it answer why the E-wing design existed during the Clone War era? I should point out that the old stealth fighter likely was a rare sight during the Old Galactic Republic. It would be akin to Vader's TIE Advanced in that regard.

Pretty sure we'll see both the E-wing and the tie droid at some point in xwing minis form. Vong... eh... probably not.

http://lorelei-shipyards.tumblr.com/post/67749021117/e-wing-starfighter-the-3d-model-and-the-printed

For what its worth

Rothana, I can appreciate your love of Star Wars and its EU. As someone who has written some Fan Fic mysielf I can even understand wanting your fanfic to be consistent with what ever they come out for this game. BUT, asking FFG to put a ship in their game so it can fit with your fanfic is a stretch don't you think.

The truth is that if the E-wing shows up in the new Star Wars Episode VII then we are probably going to get it, eventually. If it doesn't then I hope we don't see the E-wing.

Personally I think the E-wing is terrible. I find it ugly and not consistent with the way other star fighters work in Star Wars.

In truth I bet your fan fic is better written than most of the EU Star Wars books I have read. I'm not a lover of the EU.

That all being said I think we all have our own favorite EU ships. Mine has to be the Sith Interceptor, from Star Wars Old Republic, but I am not holding my breath. It wouldn't be too different from the Firespray anyway.

How is it not consistent with other starfighters? It's got the same aesthetic as the X-wing, with the squared off fuselage, the flat wings, the trapezoidal cockpit, pointed nose, and big round engines. It's a far sight more consistent to the X-wing's aesthetic than the B-wing, A-wing, and Y-wing. Heck, TIE Fighters and their brethren are less consistent than the E-wing. You might not like it personally, but saying it's not consistent with other fighters is a big stretch, chiefly because there is little to no consistency between fighter designs in the original trilogy (apart from the cockpits of the TIE series, of course).

I'm sure I'm not the only one here that likes 'in-universe' speculations on SW universe developments, right? As I've stated I write SW fan-fiction that stays true to both the film canon and EU developments. I particularly like how the old SW: RPG's of yesteryear went into detail about tech, social and political 'in-universe' history. As indicated in earlier notes I make use of the E-wing starfighter in my SW fan-fiction. Recently I noticed that a SW related Lego toy is on store shelves. This toy looks very much like the E-wing from 10 ABY. Yet it is described as a Clone War era stealth fighter. Up to this point all indications were that the E-wing design was strictly a post Endor vehicle. So does a 'retcon' exist for this? If not...may I suggest one? Try this - the Clone War era ushered into existence a whole range of testbed vehicles (large and small). Keep that in mind. Now fast-forward to sometime after the Battle of Endor. The military of the New Galactic Republic depended much on both the Y-wing and the X-wing. The restored Republic's military was under strain to protect both itself and the added burden of civilians - now that it was legitimate to the general population. In those early days of the restored Republic both the Y-wing and X-wing were being overtaxed with various kinds of missions. Missions that could be very specific and often evolving beyond the scope of what a Y-wing and X-wing could do for extended amounts of time. Alleviation came with an influx of money and resources from liberated worlds and companies. The restored Republic needed a fightercraft that could be dedicated to protecting the shipping lanes and take some of the pressure off of Y-wing and X-wing squadrons. Former Incom employees (Freitek) already had a design in mind for the job. They resurrected an old Clone War design. They modified the old design to fit the new mission parameters - which was easy. The design already fit with most mass-production infrastructure used to supply the X-wing. Many of the new systems that went into the E-wing prototype were already being tested in X-wing models. So in rather quick succession the E-wing began to allow the X-wing to get back to being a primary dogfighting machine. The E-wing could absorb more damage while defending unarmed and slow traffic. A mission parameter that the A-wing was too fast for. So the A-wing became a primary interceptor. The aging Y-wing and its many variants were to be superceded by the K-wing starfighter-bomber. After the collapse of the New Galactic Republic the K-wing's problems led to the Aleph class starfighter-bomber (a product contributed to the Galactic Alliance by the Imperial Remnant's Sienar Corporation...but that's getting too far off topic). So does this theory work for you? Does it answer why the E-wing design existed during the Clone War era? I should point out that the old stealth fighter likely was a rare sight during the Old Galactic Republic. It would be akin to Vader's TIE Advanced in that regard.

Just about every toy is cannon this lego you are talking about is an exception. The characters that come in this lego set are noncanon to the primary universe and are from a lego sw movie.

On one hand I would tell you that you should not worry tabout EU because of time frame that the movies take place in. Also a guy from disney after SW was offically disney property said they would take care of SW and they wouldnt ruin 10,000 years of SW history. Now unless disney records time in Rat years they are talking about every SW medium.

On the other hand the guy that wrote and directed the new star treks is now also doing the exact same thing with SW Can we say conflict of intrest? He also did a bad job with this last ST movie.

I wouldn't worry about the new Star Wars movie. Into Darkness (Into Lameness? Into Retread-ness?) was written by a guy who explicitly wanted to re-do The Wrath of Khan; Abrams had little to do with that. Episode VII is being written by Michael Arndt, who wrote such movies as Little Miss Sunshine, Brave, Oblivion, and Toy Story 3. Considering how well the latter of those did at continuing an already great storyline and the awesomeness that was Oblivion, I'm confident we'll get an excellent script. In addition, Abrams is committed to returning to the feel of the Original Trilogy, including using as many physical props as he can. They've just completed the interior and exterior sets for the Millennium Falcon, for instance, and he's reviving the old ILM model shop to create new props for the X-wing, TIE Fighter, and other classic vehicles, plus some new ones.

EDIT: just looked at IMDB. Abrams is writing it, so I'm not as sure as I was, but hopefully his ability to write awesome pilots for TV series' will translate into a well-written first chapter in the new trilogy.