Another thing that got ruined later on are Stormtroopers. In a New Hope the first scene is one where the Stormtroopers defeat the rebels who are in defensive position. Old Ben then tells us how accurate Imperial troops are and later Leia tells us that the hero’s only got away because they let them. The Empire Strikes Back is basically the Empire is better the movie. It is not until Return of the Jedi that we see Stormtroopers get beaten by the Ewoks, who also managed to beat the rebels as well.
In my head canon I imagine the Ewoks have far, FAR more numbers than we think. Imperial scanners probably saw them as indigenous wildlife and their primitive traps and siege engines had been in place for months, along with spies. The Rebels just got lucky with Leia saving the village idiot, and the Ewoks just allowed the Rebels to tag along on their operation.
Exactly. Stormtrooper aim is a joke for some reason even though stormtroopers were accurate all the time in the original trilogy. Then for some fucking reason Rebels went and canonized the myth, while Rogue One went directly against it.
@@LordVader1094 Stormtroopers tend to always hit what they aim at, unles they're aiming at a main character. No military force in the history of fiction has ever been very good at hitting main characters in a heroic story. And they still hit Leia twise.
@@LordVader1094 They did partly retcon this by blaming their inaccuracy on the E-11, which is both powerful and light, giving it a hell of a kick...which just begs the question of why they never unfold their fucking stocks?
anyone remember the original Battlefront 1 on Bespin platforms where if you even dared to enter a tie fighter you would instantly get destroyed by turrets on the other side of the map? Good times.
The problem with showing the point of view of the Tie Fighter pilots is that they would be seen as brave underdogs who have to fight in flying coffins against the more advanced Rebel fighters and that would be a no-no for Disney, the Empire can't have character exposed in a positive light, Star Wars is not Gundam nor Legend of the Galactic Heroes.
I refuse to believe that Stormtroopers are the "elite" of the Empire. They are the ground troops, the grunts, the boots on the ground. If there is an imperial army, their are less soldiers then stormtroopers.
nate de dude did you see Solo? Oh....maybe you didn’t. There was that boycott. Anyway, yes there’s an imperial army. They are the guys who man the garrisons and hold the line in the mud on trouble planets across the galaxy. The stormtroopers are usually the first ones in, like the Marines. So we see them mostly in the movies invading planets, boarding starships, handling security on star bases. The army is busy doing more boring things like doing vehicle maintenance, peeling space potatoes 🥔 and cleaning toilets. With luck the army guys could become stormtroopers and commit atrocities in the name of the empire.
How TIE Fighters Became Trash = *Plays TIE Fighter CD-Rom...on Hard: becomes Tan/Emperor's Reach...and BE the exception...* Aka: Play TIE Fighter...it will restore ones confidence in the Empire's abilities to make statfighters lol. IF: you're a good pilot of course.
@Eye Above All The entire series, from X-Wing, XvT, and X-Wing Alliance needs overhauls. I'd love for them all to be remade beat by beat in the Frostbite engine. Just give us proper controller support options. I have a HOTAS for a reason!
@@Keihryon XWA has some graphic updates, making it looking pretty good. There is also XWVM (X-wing Virtual Machine) in the making : ruclips.net/video/IiOhc_DPQNY/видео.html
I tended to fair pretty well in TIE Fighter, and even preferred the instant death TIE Interceptor to shielded gunboats. I think what the game illustrates pretty well is how difficult it really is to land shots during a dogfight.
Considering the short range nature of the mainline TIE series, avoiding conflict with a group of TIEs could be explained as where there are a few TIEs, there will be more close by and possibly an ISD or two.
Well that, and even if they are kinda low-powered, if you run into a single patrol or scouting team you could find yourself quickly going from facing 4 ties to facing 40+ because said star destroyer or facility is nearby with units ready to deploy.
@@Todd5747 Well yeah. I implied as much in my comment.😁. The standard imperial swarm maneuver can be quite devastating when utilized properly. I still think they should've used their more standard TIEs in more stable regions and in loyalist systems. Palpatine should also listened to Vader and Thrawn when they STRONGLY recommended the development of superior starfighters. They would only have needed enough to counter the Rebel Starfighter Corps. which was actually quite small relatively speaking. Just Imagine an Imperial A-Wing. The Empire owned KSE which manufactured the RZ-1 A-Wing and it's only major weaknesses stemmed from resource/material limitations.
@@UncleMikeDrop They are essentially the starfighter version of Sherman tanks. Individually they and far far outclassed by everything else around, but to paraphrase a Tiger Commander "A tiger beats the sherman 10 to 1, the problem is there's is always that 11th sherman"
@@UncleMikeDrop thats good, but less accurate because the zero was intended to be and was a state of the art LR fighter when it was produced, it's just that resourced starving resulted in japan still using a 40s vintage fighter in 45. the zero actually outperforms early war american planes. where as the TIE fighter (like the patton) was designed to be cheap and expendable. If 6 TIE fighters go down taking out one X-wing, that's still a net loss for the rebel alliance.
I'm kind of surprised that you didn't mention that during the Battle of Yavin, the Imperial TIEs were OUTNUMBERED by the rebel fighters by more than 2-to-1. Darth Vader was only allowed by Grand Moff Tarkin to field his own personal squadron consisting of a mere 12 fighters (including himself) against the 30 rebel fighters attacking the Death Star.
In the game Star Wars: Galaxies, the Ties you could use in the imperial pilot trees scaled up in capabilities as you progressed further and became s better pilot, I would like to think that is how the Canon Ties worked as well. Less experienced pilots got the cheapest versions because if the ship got destroyed but the pilot managed to eject the ship could be replaced easier whereas the more experienced you get the less your ship would need to be replaced therefore you were able to be trusted with the more expensive, more durable ships. If you can fight well without shields, and Less powerful weapons your will be even better when the better equipment is available to you
Tie fighters are literally identical to each other. Unless you are talking about different models like defenders or interceptors. In that case, then yes. The best pilots were given interceptors, and the best interceptor pilots were eventually given defenders.
In the miniatures game, I prefer taking TIEs, you tend to take fewer casualties if you have more fighters as the enemy has to think about maneuvering to avoid attack runs from more angles.
It genuinely annoys me that I don't hear people talk enough about how at Yavin and Endor, rebel fighters die just as easily as imperial ones and that the whole, no shield, thing started off as a dumb game stat.
The Rebels fighters had little chance without shielding. The numerical advantage tie fighters had also included a an advantage in fire power. Tie fighters being less maneuverable than a Xwing makes no sense. The entire point of a Tie was that they are fast, agile, and hard to hit.
One shot to a critical system seems to be an instant-kill or disable to any fighter, regardless of whether it’s TIE or X-Wing. So they really aren’t very strong on either side of the conflict.
@@lordterra1377 Usually, EU/ Legends did portray Ties as more maneuverable. It ended up being modeled after the Pacific dogfight between Zeros and usually more robust American planes.
The Rogue Squadron games made TIES pretty bad, but they're actually really good in their niche in the X-Wing/TIE fighter flight sims. You just need to focus more on evasion than attack.
DIEGhostfish depends on which ship you’re flying. The standard TIE, you have to fly blood thirsty. The Interceptor, you need to fly bloodthirsty and as a Psychopath.
Frequent X-Wing and TIE Fighter player here, credentials include being able to solo dogfight wave after wave of Gunboat Aces and Top Aces until all are defeated when they're spamming missile fire at me, and routinely deflection-shoot TIEs at angles where I can't actually see them in my canopy view (I can often destroy Interceptors with a single quad-linked shot if I'm in an X-Wing). I've of course finished all the TIE Fighter campaigns as well as flying Imperial TIEs in X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter. I'd say that the basic model TIE Fighter was true cannon fodder as far as the game goes, as you had to be extremely careful to basically never take any kind of a hit; 2 laser bolts will destroy you, so you can really only take one and keep on flying (with instruments fried, of course). You can still be an awesome TIE Fighter pilot obviously and I was, but yeah, you just had to be extremely careful to avoid or get out of anyone's forward firing arc, spending a majority of your time on evasion. If even a single A-Wing showed up, your mission became exponentially more difficult (to me the A-Wing is the ideal dogfighter against TIEs; cannons are level with your centerline and closer together than an X-Wing, you have speed and maneuverability to spare, and enough concussion missiles to dispatch an entire TIE squadron of 12 by yourself). The TIE Bomber is a sight better, even though it's still large and slow and unshielded. Very vulnerable, but not a true death trap. All this to say, I think the TIE Interceptor is where the TIE series starts to shine. You still have no shields, but your speed, agility and armament make you much more of a threat. The Interceptor being a little more heavily armored, requiring 4 bolts to destroy instead of 2 goes a long ways towards allowing you to survive the battle while being able to concentrate more on dogfighting than evasion.
The tie is based on the zero. A cheap design relying on not getting hit. While a good pilot can hold their own, novices may as well be self-propelled skeet.
This is really a gross oversimplification, especially in the Zero's case. The A6M series was designed to be very high agility and lightweight; a lighter fighter increases range with less fuel, and means that much less weight and supplies for their carriers to lug around. It also allows the aircraft to respond quickly and so unlike heavier Grumman aircraft, the A6 needed the ability to not be picked off. This becomes even more apparent when looking at the A5 versus the A6 and the F2A versus the F4F. None of these vehicles are bad but they were made with specific carrier doctrine in mind. It wasn't just a choice of agility for durability.
@@jacobabrisz9272 Your not wrong, but none of that matters during a dogfight. And fighters from the original trilogy used ww2 dogfighters for inspiration. The reason I mentioned the zero was it being used as the inspiration for the tie fighter afaik.
The Zero was actually an extremely high quality fighter at the start of the war, though less well protected than many of its counterparts it could very easily hold its own against them. The main issue was that Japan started suffering extreme material shortages in the war and couldn't upgrade their weapons and vehicles like the Americans could. It became a cannon-fodder swarm fighter, but it wasn't designed that way.
@@michaelwoods2672 It didn't help that japan never rotated their experienced pilots out of combat in order to provide the new pilots with their experience, while america did rotate pilots. This resulted in many of japan's skilled aces being picked off leaving japan with few to no experienced pilots.
as commented elsewhere, i really think it's more comparable to the Patton. A truely cheap and under engineered design intended to be mass produced in overwhelming numbers, levied against the powerful but expensive german tanks like the Tiger.
In the old X-Wing vs Tie-Fighter games the humble Tie-Fighter was actually my favourite ship. While lacking in hull strength, shields and firepower it was extremely agile, i.e. it was a lot of FUN to fly the x-wing felt like a driving a tractor in comparison.
Didn't come over from Eck, but it seems YT has taken the hint and started recommending your videos to his viewers. This was an interesting look at the meta evolution of TIEs as cannon fodder. I subbed. Good work!
Whenever I think of people talking about this, I remember the time in the Wraith Squadron novels where Wedge lead a bunch of rough-edged New Republic pilots to impersenate Imperial agents and then pirates, flying TIES during both instances. Seems to me if you give a solid pilot anything they'll do well. So I guess that says more about the pilots flying TIEs than it does the TIE itself? That said a lot of the old lore mentioned shileded and hyperdrive equipped TIEs showing up in the hands of competent Imperial leaders (Thrawn) and of course the TIE Defender...
I remember those books, In the X-wing series Tie-fighter squadrons were ineffective because of pilot attrition and bad supply lines, plus every warlord was tugging at new pilots. Also the Rogues were supposed to be the best of the best and had the best equipment. Pilots in those books still died regularly and they dreaded going against experienced pilots or better Tie's like Interceptors.
The original movies do show the ties with only 2 lasers. It could be interpreted that they had 2 stronger lasers vs 4 weaker ones on the X-wings, but the laser hardware on the TIEs are significantly smaller than the ones on the X-wings
I hope you guys know what I'm talking about: what sucks about TIE Fighters is one of the TIE squadrons that were chasing after Falcon and several Rebels fighters in Death Star 2 ventilation shaft collided with the pipes while the TIE Interceptors avoids collision because it has improved maneuverability.
The TIE Pilots were highly trained, the fighters were optimized for maximum speed, agility and firepower. Honestly, I'm fine with TIEs dying to a few shots, but only when they're portrayed as faster and more maneuverable than most rebel ships. But star wars rebels started to make them even worse, as in that show they just make very predictable maneuvers and look extremely slow.
I don't buy the "expendable view" . . . Storm Troopers had full suits of body armor, AT-ATs were heavily armored, Star Destroyers were well-protected. Even the Lambda shuttles were heavily armed. The only thing that doesn't seem designed to take a punch is the TIEs.
This a good example of one of two big problems I have with the way Star Wars lore developed. Namely, a game mechanic gets turned into an in-universe explanation of how things work. See also: Jedi "classes"; "Force powers" (and particularly "lift", "push", "choke" etc being treated as fundamentally distinct abilities rather than just different ways of moving things". My other bugbear is how just about every race or planet has their entire culture defined by the first example of them we see. So Rodians are bounty hunters; Trandoshans are also bounty hunters; Hutts are gangsters; Corellians are ace pilots; female Twileks are sexy dancers, and frequently slaves as well (and I'm sure I read somewhere that the males are frequently sleazy slavers, presumably based on Bib Fortuna); etc.
TIEs being inferior to the X wing always made sense to me. They are visibly smaller, and more numerous even in the first movie, and we see the falcon fight off a flight of them by itself. It also fits better with lore, seeing as how they are basically the pinnacle of Clone Wars era interceptor design. By the time of the OT, they are simply getting outdated, and the presence of TIE Interceptors shows that there is an upgrade program for them.
yeah them being weaker is good, but i think its gone abit too far. they should be an older design that needs updating not a vastly inferior design that is little more then cannon fodder. as for numbers, we are talking about a galaxy-spanning militaristic empire vs a small rebel cell.
@@matthiuskoenig3378 That is mostly a meme. Unfortunately a meme that the hack writers of the new stories embraced, but much like stormtroopers being inaccurate is not the case in most depictions of them, I dont think there were many instances where a lone TIE fighter was not considered a credible threat.
@@russellharrell2747 The volume in a tie is a thin photovoltaic panel, that scarcly contributes to either its survivability, or its firepower. That is like saying a sail ship of the line is huge because of its large sails.
I need no channel youtube! If the wings on a TIE were just simple voltaic cells then that’s the largest waste of material since putting a cloth sail on nuclear aircraft carrier. Either ‘solar cell wing panels’ means something else in that galaxy, like the solar ionization reactors that appear to be on nearly every spacecraft, or laser blaster or swords having anything to do with lasers. There’s some tactical purpose to having large amounts of a combat spacecraft spread out from the main hull, otherwise the entire TIE line as well as X-wings, B-wings, ARC-170s etc wouldn’t do it, and all these ships would be compact little balls with weapons and engines protruding from all directions. The advantage gained by adding those wings on TIEs must be significant, otherwise the entire exercise of analyzing Star Wars ship design becomes useless. At that point ships are just designed by ‘rule of cool’ and any attempt to justify their is just nerd fantasy, which is probably closer to the heart of the matter anyway.
I've always had an issue with the supposed disposability of TIEs. To start with the claim that, "TIEs are unshielded and therefore worse," have we ever seen, in the original trilogy, a supposedly shielded fighter survive more than one shot from an enemy? Secondly, everyone makes a big deal about TIEs not having life support. They do, its on their suits, which is the best place for a life-support system to be in a combat scenario. Imagine what would happen if an X-wing's windows got smashed and all the air inside the cockpit got sucked out. Fat lot of good that life support system in your ship does for you then. Or, imagine a second scenario, a fire breaks out in your cockpit. Every Rebel pilot becomes little more than charred meat in such a scenario. A TIE pilot can just open the hatch and let vacuum put out the fire for him. A third scenario, something goes wrong mechanically on the ship, and you have to get out to repair or be lost and drifting in space. Sure, Rebel pilots may have an astromech, but what if the astromech can't reach the system that needs repairs? Its not like they can move from that plug. A TIE pilot can open the hatch, hook himself to the craft with a rope and a carabiner, and then move himself to the affected area and make field expedient repairs himself.
Agree with everything you've said, except "have we ever seen, in the original trilogy, a supposedly shielded fighter survive more than one shot from an enemy"? part. Yes. though this could be plot armour. You see both Luke in a x-wing and the millennium falcon get hit more than once and survive.
@@helikos1 You're right about Luke, I forgot about that (lets assume that the Force/plot armor just makes small chances bigger, so there is a slight chance of possibly surviving a similar hit if you are Rebel #249, since otherwise everyone would be surprised at Luke's survival and calling it miraculous in universe); but the Falcon isn't a fighter, it would have both stronger shields and armor on it because its bigger than a fighter.
The TIE LN has the best K/D ratio out of any starfighter in the OT, and it deserves far more love than it gets, often getting considered worse than the Interceptor, which has the worst starfighter K/D ratio. (The Y wing technically has a 2 Kills/0 Deaths ratio, but that's 1 Y wing in RotJ which could just be the pilot, and we only see Vader's TIE piloted once by him, so we don't actually know if that's just because Vader's that good or if his TIE was). Unfortunately, RotJ and the expanded universe were not kind to the Humbling Hexagon Horde.
they were still pretty deadly in RotJ, especially Interceptors. And lets not forget the Falcon had to dive into he mouth of a space slug to avoid the squadron after them from Hoth
Growing up with the original trilogy, I never thought of tie fighters as disposable or ineffective. To me they seemed to be equal to or better than X wings and Y wings
In the first Star Wars, Tie Fighters are shown to be fragile (one hit and they blow up - X-Wings and Y-Wings are shown taking more) they have no missile tubes, hyperdrives, or deflector screens (unlike X-wings and Y-Wings). So...
@@Idazmi7 yet they do fine in combat with those x-wings and y-wings. X-wings are fighter-bombers and Y-wings are bombers, both used by a guerilla faction for hit and run tactics, so of course they need hyperdrives and missiles. TIE fighters are dedicated interceptors, so theres no reason they would use up power or room on hyperdrives or missiles. They're specialized for anti-fighter usage, and they do great at that in the movies. Both TIE's and X-wings have plenty of firepower to destroy eachother quite quickly, so I would question the value of those shields. A single salvo from a TIE's laser cannons pretty reliably destroys any x-wings they are fighting.
@@lenkagamine4145 Imperial fighters are ONLY good at dogfighting. X-wings and Y-wings are far better multipurpose ships, and can put the hurt on capital ships, too.
I always figured the fall of the TIE was, in part, comparable to the fall of the Imperial Japanese air force. A decrease in skilled pilots to man their craft lead to things like the Great Pacific Turkey Shoot. We go from the near total annihilation of Red and Gold squadrons at the first Death Star to a Y-wing killing two ties at the second Death Star. It's a bit tangential, but we also see a Tie crash into an open portion of a Mon Cala cruiser, possibly mirroring a kamikaze attack? That's also the only kill a Mon Cala cruiser has gotten in any Star Wars movie or TV show, as they seem to just be glorified air craft carriers for the rebels.
It would be great if you could do a similar video on tracking down exactly when the Y-wing went from an sturdy, reliable old-school fighter (like, say, an F-4) to the "moves like a sleepy hutt" "bomber" that everyone writes it off as. In the ILM note diagram for Jedi, it's listed as having performance in the same class as the T-65 and TIE
It's probably due to seeing them drops like flies on the original trench run, without showing them get any kills in return. They just come across as death traps until Rogue One.
Good memories hitting Left trigger to brake over entire groups of stormtroopers in Battlefront 2004 Xbox as a rebel, slaughter them with hilariously overpowered TIE lasers, and miss that window of being able to pull up before your wonky ass wings snag on a rock or ATST and you just explode instantly
Have you considered a video highlighting the some of the fun more ridiculous Legacy era content such as Darth Maul's Brain controlling a semi-corporal halogram? Or the many dead but not actually "dead" characters like the reborn emperor, or Darth Andeddu's brief resurrection?
The canon did compensate the TIE by giving it a cost only 40% of the X/Y-wings, so even in an equal cost face off the Empire would have had 5 fighters for every 2 alliance ones, add the higher resource advantage of the Empire and they would indeed be able to employ them in swarm tactics. Lastly we need to remember the nearly all StarWars space combat was a reflection of WW2 in the Pacific, the TIE was the Mitsubishi Zero and the Y-wing being an analog of the Brewster Buffalo and the X-wing the analog of the Gruman Wildcat. The B-wing follows the trend towards bigger heavier aircraft making it analogous to the Hellcat which was introduced mid-war. The A-wing alone seems to lack a true analog as their was no American plane that took the light/fast strategy to beat the TIE fighter at it's own game. Lastly the TIE Defender was a clear analog to the German Me-109, being effectively a 'super weapon' with incredible cost and performance but never able to be fielded in large enough numbers.
The A-Wing to me comes across as an analogue to the F4U Corsair (or at least the early models of it): stupidly fast, maneuverable at high speed, and armed with a variety of weapons, but tricky to handle. And I assume you meant to compare the Defender to the Me 262 or something like that.
The Zero was *not* an expendable fighter though. Operationally and by the stats it was a flat out *superior* to the Wildcat. MUCH longer range, Better Rate of Climb, Slightly faster than the wildcat even. Meaning that by the time Boom and Zoom was used.. Wildcats cant even use that tactic too often. It was a mediocre decently armed, and armored plane that can hold it's own but is not superior to the Zero. Not until the F4U Corsair would the skies of the pacific see an "Equal" to the Zero. So the X Wing comparison with the Wildcat is wrong in a lot of ways i'd say...
if the TIE fighter was a Zero, then it should vastly outperform every contemporary fighter and only fail when faced with far more technologically advanced fighters designed years after it. The Zero was, bar none, the most effective dogfighter in the world at the time of its design- and also, an exceptionally long-ranged fighter, while the TIE fighter was a short-ranged fighter. The comparison just doesnt hold up. Also, as for the TIE defender comparison... the Me-109 is literally the most produced fighter plane ever built. Perhaps you meant the jet propelled Me-262?
Yes I did mean the 262, sorry for the confusion. As for the Zero's superiority, as far as I was concerned the TIE was superior to the X-wing at the time of ANH, the Rebel attack force is decimated by a small number of TIE's. The Corsair dose seem more like the B-wing again, it's high firepower and armor. I'm not aware of any American designs that really explicitly sacrificed survivability for maneuverability which was the defining quality of the Japanese aircraft. On a side note the TIE Interceptor would be the improved Japanese aircraft that still followed the same design philosophy such as the en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakajima_Ki-84 And on a broader note the fact the Empire sources nearly all it's fighters from Sinar Fleet Systems is a direct analog for the Mitsubishi company being nearly the sole supplier of Japanese fighters. While Rebel starfighters have a much wider sourcing.
The Tie Fighters were sadly meant to be that way. The Emperor sought a fighters that was reliable and cheap, and sadly early in the Empire didn’t care for its pilots. We must remember that much of the credits that Empire spend in the Navy went into building Star Destroyers, Super Star Destroyers, and finally the Death Stars projects, which left the Tie Fighters with little credits to spending for new models and production.
I mean a cheap and reliable fighter is kinda needed for a GALACTIC Empire. You need to constantly patrol to ensure order, so it can't break every five minutes, and you need it to be cheap so you can actually afford enough to keep some presence everywhere.
The Tie Fighter would have been good if used in its intended purpose as a Star Destroyer's Point defense system. Unfortunately overly aggressive (most) Imperial officers used them as an offensive weapon.
You do realize that what you just stated is entirely based off later depictions that Corey talked about in the video? Besides, the TIE Fighter was a perfectly good fighter.
@Eye Above All Yeah their FTL is travel through hell, their large scale shields are opening portals to hell in the path of bullets and blasts to catch them.
My headcanon (as a kid who grew up on the TIE/X-Wing games) was always that TIEs are hi-tech, but sacrifices were made in the name of speedy production and cost. Essentially the Empire militarised to an unprecedented level and needed a stopgap fighter to get ships stationed all over the Galaxy; on bases, and aboard countless motherships. TIEs have a powerful armament and fly faster than comparable craft. The drawbacks are that the ships don't have hyperdrives (not needed for a short range craft that is tied to a base/mothership), nor shields (cost, more power for the armament) nor life support (again, short-ranged craft, so the pilot can wear a space suit). I think that fairly well balances their being "worse" than X-Wings, but still making sense. They're capable and dangerous craft, but corners were cut in certain areas due to their being short-ranged carrier-borne craft and to allow the Empire to mass produce them. I assume that, once every one of the countless squadrons around the galaxy was suitably equipped, TIEs would have been gradually phased out, were there enough time.
The best explanation I can come up with is that TIE wings were meant to be shields, absorbing laser fire with their massive panels. They can overload or fail, of course, but it allows the reactor to put more power to engines and weapons and severely limits the openings for kill shots (and you can check the OT and see that my hypothesis holds up).
For its original purpose (policing Imp territory, pirate interdiction, base security), the original TIE l/n was a good choice. It was like a police helicopter or patrol car. It was when the Rebels began fielding dedicated combat fighters that the TIE l/n began showing its weaknesses. Then, the Empire began developing more combat-oriented fighters like the TIE Interceptor, TIEx1, and TIE Defender. The Empire was planning to replace the l/ns with Interceptors, but Endor ruined that plan. Considering that, in X-WING ALLIANCE, it took a couple of solid hits from fire-linked cannons to destroy a TIE; I wonder if the TIE fighters had some sort of lightweight ablative armor that provided the same protection as light shields without the power drain.
I think about the Tie Fighter in it's power quotient in respect to the foundational reference it stems from, that is WWII dogfighting. The German Bf 109, the most mass produced fighter plan of the entire war, this was a prolific and was at one point a fine plane, competing in performance with all other fighters. However later in the war was simply outmatched by the Allies. I like to think that Tie Fighters are far more a product of logistics than anything else. To change production would not outweigh the costs of altering your entire assembly line of churning masses of pilots and machines for a galaxy wide empire. While the rebels could carefully tool up and refit their small production capacity for more developed and better performing machines in smaller quantities.
It's worth noting that Tie Fighters clearly show 'shield hits' when the Millennium Falcon fires upon them in A New Hope; glancing blows that otherwise might have missed, but show a flash of an impact, the exact same flash that the Falcon and X-Wings show when they take a hit and aren't seriously damaged. And throughout the battle around the Death Star, the X-Wings are actually shown to be more fragile than the Tie Fighters, taking fewer hits and requiring more hits on the Tie Fighters to destroy them. Most X-Wings are even destroyed or disabled in just a single shot.
To be fair, they did upgrade to the Interceptor witch outclasses the X-Wing in nearly all ways, barring the shield and hyperdrive. Fun thing about the X-Wing and TIE Fighter games is that the TIE Fighter itself isn't an analog to the X-Wing, but to the Z-95 Headhunter. TIE~Z-95 INT~X-Wing Bomber~Y-Wing Advanced~A-Wing Gunboat~B-Wing Defender and Missile Boat eat everything for breakfast. When like to like the Empire is far closer to parity and normally has the numbers advantage. Sadly the Emperor was too enamored with his moon sizes superweapons and not enough in the power of the Defender or Advanced.
The tie fighter suffers from the same problem that most antagonist forces suffer from in that we are usually seeing them go up against a protagonist force that has to win for the story to continue so we end up seeing them as trash. The Stormtroopers are the same, we only ever really see them up against plot significant forces so they have to lose or the story cannot continue.
You should do a rundown of Booster Kerrick''s Star Destroyer. I know it wasn't fully crewed, and he had struggled to run it, swapping out certain parts, etc. I think it would be cool to see a detailed breakdown of what goes into maintaining and upgrading a personal Star Destroyer Edit: edited because I am an idiot and got Talon Karrde mixed up with Booster Terrik. For shame to me
And then I remember in the space battles in the original Star Wars Battlefront 2, they had to buff TIE Fighters substantially by adding shields and proton torpedos just to make them be able to compete with the other ships.
Sounds like a lot of sources regarded as “canon” need to be removed from that status... If a “game” (as opposed to a “sim”) needs an easily defeated mass enemy to train n00bs or for game enjoyment, they should either create a new “entry level” resource or downgrade the Tie by stating it was the “export model”, sold to unreliable star systems. This way one still has the visual aspect of the Tie, but “who is flying it?” becomes a legit question and source of concern.
In the first Star Wars, Tie Fighters are shown to be fragile (one hit and they blow up - X-Wings and Y-Wings are shown taking more) they have no missile tubes, hyperdrives, or deflector screens (unlike X-wings and Y-Wings). What made you think they were "comparable" to the X-Wing even then?
Idazmi7 fully shielded rebel ships blow up all the time in ANH, sometimes without getting hit! And TIEs are shown to have shields, as several laser blasts from the Falcon’s cannons are seen exploding on something that is present off the TIE fuselage, and the effect is the same as when the Falcon’s shields take hits. Also only a handful of TIEs were active at the Death Star and they made short work of almost 30 rebel ships. I’d say they can hold their own.
@@russellharrell2747 _"fully shielded rebel ships blow up all the time in ANH, sometimes without getting hit!"_ That was funny to read. Watch it again: Red Leader takes more than one hit, Luke takes more than one hit, Wedge takes a hit and survives to fly off... NONE of the Tie Fighter survives even the slightest tap from a blaster. _"And TIEs are shown to have shields, as several laser blasts from the Falcon’s cannons are seen exploding on something that is present off the TIE fuselage, and the effect is the same as when the Falcon’s shields take hits."_ Nope. He clearly hits one of the Ties, which - predictably - instantly goes up in a fireball, just like they did during the Death Star Escape sequence in the same movie. _"Also only a handful of TIEs were active at the Death Star and they made short work of almost 30 rebel ships. I’d say they can hold their own."_ There were 30 Rebel _fighters_ at the start, fighting an entire moon covered in turbolasers. Several fighters got shot down by the surface guns, then the Ties arrived and mopped up who was left. It wasn't just ties vs X-Wings, either: half of them were Y-Wings, which are bombers: NOT for dogfighting.
Idazmi7 which fighters got shot down by surface guns? The imperials state the ships were evading their turbolasers. Must have been all those conveniently off screen kills. Those Y-wings were just as much ‘snub fighters’ as the X-wings, and according to the ILM speed charts used during production of the OT X-wings Y-wings and TIE Fighters all had exactly the same maneuverability and speed. However Vader and his wingmen were consistently faster than all rebel fighters present, so I don’t know how accurate those charts end up being. Look at the battle, Biggs blows up after one hit, every other rebel fighter in the trench that’s hit blows up or just falls apart, even Porkins’ ship just crashes for seemingly no reason. Red Leader, Luke and Wedge are the rare exceptions, and half of those hits on them are glancing blows. Luke’s ship being hit twice (once just in the Astromech) and being none the worse for it is mighty suspicious and an egregious example of plot armor. All the rebel kills on TIEs appear to be direct hits on the cockpit, with no indications of what glancing blows or wing hits would do (unless you slow down the movie frame by frame and see their shields taking hits during the Falcon escape). It is shown to be very difficult to hit TIEs with direct hits, while glancing blows or hits to the rebels’ Over-Sized engines results in serious damage or vehicle loss, with those types of hits being far more likely than direct hits on the rear of the x-wings or Y-wings (where the fur cells appear to be in some cross sections that have been published through the decades). Face it, the portrayal of TIEs (and the rebel craft) outside the OT is a gross misrepresentation.
@@russellharrell2747 _"which fighters got shot down by surface guns?"_ The ones that blew up before the Tie Fighters show up, Dumbo. That should be obvious. _"Those Y-wings were just as much ‘snub fighters’ as the X-wings, and according to the ILM speed charts used during production of the OT X-wings Y-wings and TIE Fighters all had exactly the same maneuverability and speed. However Vader and his wingmen were consistently faster than all rebel fighters present, so I don’t know how accurate those charts end up being."_ Yes you do: the Tie Fighters outrun both X-Wings and Y-wings in the trenches, so the ties are faster. Biggs even says so. _"Look at the battle, Biggs blows up after one hit, every other rebel fighter in the trench that’s hit blows up or just falls apart, even Porkins’ ship just crashes for seemingly no reason. Red Leader, Luke and Wedge are the rare exceptions, and half of those hits on them are glancing blows."_ 1. Tie Fighters don't ever survive even glancing blows. 2. Darth Vader did the shooting in the trench, and even he didn't blow up Red Leader, Wedge, or Luke in one hit. _"Luke’s ship being hit twice (once just in the Astromech) and being none the worse for it is mighty suspicious and an egregious example of plot armor."_ And Wedge? Straight hit to the fuselage: didn't blow up. _"All the rebel kills on TIEs appear to be direct hits on the cockpit, with no indications of what glancing blows or wing hits would do (unless you slow down the movie frame by frame and see their shields taking hits during the Falcon escape)."_ During the Falcon escape, the first two tie-fighter kills are literally instant death. Poke, *KABOOM.* They don't even have the decency to break up like an X-Wing: they just instantly vaporize into particles and a huge fireball like the ship is made out of nitroglycerin. _"Face it, the portrayal of TIEs (and the rebel craft) outside the OT is a gross misrepresentation"_ Face it: you have _one single shot_ in the whole OT that even _suggests_ that Ties have shields, and it could easily suggest instead that the Falcon's outdated blasters lack power.
@@KillerOrca The Defender did far more. The Defender had a heavier loadout, proton torpedoes instead of concussion missiles, and ion cannons. If the two had been mass produced then the TIE Avenger would have been the mainline unit to screen the ISD and the Defender would have been equally suited in a bomber or fighter role with its ions giving it versitility in disabling craft. In essence the Avenger would have been the Imperial Xwing counterpart, and the Defender between the Ywing and Bwing while still more than capable of out manuvering or outruning pretty much anything out there. Toss a few missile boats onto each ISD and the rebellion would have been fucked. Thankfully, Palpatine wanted grander action that backfired in his face.
@@danielboatright8887 "This small fighter is not making me excited. MAKE SOMETHING BIGGER".-probably how that conversation went. But wasnt the Legends Defender like...weaker? It had basically the same armament. They up-gunned it in new canon I think, gave it more weaponry.
@@KillerOrca Take a look at Empire at War: Forces of Corruption, then think again. No? Ok, nevermind, lemme TL;DR: Heavy Fighter with proton torpedoes to engage enemy warships and make its stand against fighters, while also having shields AND ion torpedoes to fuck up shields or disable systems. Plus Hyperdrive. The best damn Heavy Fighter in that game. Not the most powerful (Skipray Gunboat OP), but the most versatile.
I preferred the idea that ties were decent fighters but they were not as noob friendly as an x wing. Basically the pilots were undertrained as the empire saw no reason to waste resources on my skilled pilots when numbers could to the trick
It is wild to see the Falcon almost camping TIEs with minimal crew, and then having adverse by comparison performance while under full crew, albeit during an assault. Also a factor in the varying perceptions of TIE performance can be somewhat attributed to the varying levels of skill, as well as intensity & frequency of training.
In the MMO Star War's: Galaxies both imperial fighters and Rebellion fighters were mostly "even" in base 'stats', however the player was treated as a unique entity and were open to customize the heck out of their fighter and through the Shipwright class extremely over tuned parts could be produced for ships. As an Imperial pilot there was always the issue of weight, it's been awhile so the memories are fuzzy, but I recall sacrificing a lot of armor to have very good shields and a LOT of speed while a friend that went Rebellion always seemed to have enough room to be 'wasteful' in the size of their components. Also my biggest advantage as an imperial pilot was indeed numbers as your special pilot skill was to summon in waves of regular ties, tie interceptors, and tie bombers to attack targets. So at the very least... one game didn't treat TIE's as fodder.
It is interesting because you would think that due to the fact that ISDs can’t carry many fighters they would ensure the fighters they do carry are at least of a higher quality. Instead they have a handful of unshielded death traps that can barely dogfight effectively.
I'd like to counter that at least in ANH they wen't fighting back in any real capacity as they were more focused on simply getting to the point where they could fire that proton torpedo into the Death star.
@@MetalKing1417 I recently rewatched that scene and I was stunned by the fact that the wingmen who were supposed to be providing cover were just staying in formation behind the one they were supposed to cover while getting shot in the ass.
@@ZRFehr That's elaborated upon in one of the old EU comics, I believe it was X-Wing, which took place on Tatooine. Wedge stated outright that they were all there to act as extra sets of shields for the one who was to deliver the payload. So they were literally acting as human shields for the attack run. Pretty sound, if ruthless, strategy.
I definitely think that Tie Fighters were portrayed as extremely weak in much media, but it seemed like in ANH that they are decent ships, having good firepower (the Falcon was solidly damaged, but it might have already been beat up, who knows) and being hard to hit, and that was what, 4? We've seen the Falcon tank shots from an imperial star destroyer, so those ties were hitting very hard. Also, in Tie Fighter, when you pilot a Tie Fighter you don't seem like you're in a death trap (the Tie Bomber however...), you're nimble and can get behind most enemy ships and just pummel through their massive shields (shields that the movies definitely do not show existing, thus aren't really cannon to that degree, we instead see single shots being enough to cripple an X-wing or Y-wing), but they sure looked like death traps in X-wing, where you can slaughter them like nothing by the dozens on some missions, though you don't usually get behind them the same way as in Tie Fighter, since you just need to hit them with a shot or 2.
The X-Wing triumphs in a head on head encounter, where both sides are flying straight at each other shooting. A TIE's got to juke all over the place just to survive that, or cut away and fly at an angle to get into a furball. At close range, the TIE's maneuvering can let them settle in on the X-Wing's back and beat it down. Support from a squadron and experience mitigate the X-Wing's disadvantage against TIEs, and their shields let help them survive long enough to get both. Still, in a 1v1, a TIE's got a decent edge in a dogfight, interceptors even moreso.
I always viewed TIE fighters as the glass cannons of the Star Wars Universe they have the speed, maneuverability and, firepower but to have all this the Empire sacrifices armor which does make the TIE a deadly opponent but if you have a starfighter that can tank the hits you have a high chance to outmaneuver and destroy the TIE with a couple shots and with an X-Wing's shielding this became a possibility. So what we see here is a refusal to shift design philosophies because of Tarkin and his doctrine because the TIE-Fighter worked and it worked well enough for the time it was active but because of the Tarkin Doctrine, we see a stifling of starship innovations with only small glimmers like the TIE-Defender and, the TIE-Interceptor even if the Defender never really got to see much combat within the EU. Finally, even with the Rebels having the superior fighters there was never truly a push to develop better fighters to meet this new threat because the Imperials kept and maintained the superior capital ship element for a long time well past Endor and the only reason the Empire started to unravel the way it did is because Palpatine was holding the Empire together with his will and with his death above Endor that all ended.
We made an X-wing fan film depicting the TIE Fighter as a more serious threat than the cannon fodder they're known as, because we felt this was true to the original trilogy. Like Stormtroopers, they've become such a joke that it's hard to worry about the main characters when they're facing off against the Empire, which does a huge disservice to storytelling as its becomes nearly impossible to raise the stakes or heighten the intensity of the action. Many people commented that the TIEs were too good in our film, but we disagree for said reasons. Also, we had a Y-wing dogfight in the movie as well, and many people complained that a Y-wing wouldn't be able to do this. We had to point out that the Y-wing is seen dogfighting at the Battle of Endor, including shooting down TIE Interceptors and flying into the Death Star. So, it's not actually the slow, sluggish bomber people think it is. Maybe your next video can dispel this myth about the Y-wing.
What they did to the stats of the Y-Wing in the XvT game was a terrible thing. The power balance adjustment got so shifted that even making one adjustment was a major hit to your speed.
I gotta agree, the way the eu tried to explain the why the empires soldiers and pilots are ineffective is really bad. In the original trilogy tie fighters and storm troopers are shown to be intimidating and elite. But for some reason, our hero's can beat them in droves and for some other reason it can't be because our hero's are just that good, no it has to be that the bad guys are just that horrible. Luke, Han, Leia, and Chewbacca are supposed to be the hero's and the hero's are typically supposed to be better than the bad guy infantry. Captain America can take on endless droves of nazis, Batman can beat groups of armed and dangerous thugs, the teenage mutant ninja turtles can fight off clans of ninjas, is this because these guys they face are ineffective and expendable mooks, no it's because our hero's are just THAT good. The same applies to Luke and the gang.
My experience from back in the day from X-Wing (Collectors CD Rom edition, that's how far 'back in the day' is for me) tended to be that if you left a TIE fighter alone for too long, it was on your tail eating your shields in short order. This didn't tend to be a problem for YOU if it was two-to-one, since the squirrelly maneuvers of the TIE you were trying to shoot (and poor dogfight AI of all the craft involved) kept you dodging as well. And the TIE fighters couldn't handle more than two supercharged laser bolts, so they never went in a straight line long enough to let you REALLY get nailed yourself, unless you were a poor shot. However, things rapidly got ugly if you were outnumbered 3 to one, four to one, or dare I cringe, six to one. TIEs were faster, turned harder, and the 'lead pursuit' nature of dogfights meant you always tended to end up in overshooting passes and spiraling in circles. In real dogfights, with trained pilots, there are ways to utilize 2 to 1 or better numeric odds that would result in a pair of TIE fighters devastating a rookie X-Wing pilot. Essentially STARTING with the TIE the X-Wing is chasing not CONSTANTLY trying to come around to kill them. Instead, lead the X-Wing, and let your Wing Man get the kill. Dogfight Tactics 101. (But 90s AI couldn't do that.)There was also a mechanic in X-Wing that people tend to forget, that rapid successive hits punched through your shields and damaged you before the shields were drained. (And your Xwing also tends to take nearly a dozen hits to destroy). And I think it goes down to a video game buff that actually makes people mistake how deflector shields WORK. First note, it's called a DEFLECTOR shield. To move something off course, aside, or otherwise DEFLECT. Not to absorb, stop, or disperse. And I think the Lucasarts and later companies completely missed out on a chance to take that mechanic and express it. In 'A New Hope', one should notice that in all the dogfighting and shooting over the death star and the trench run, we didn't really have cases of fighters eating through any kind of shield, either visibly or from comm chatter. It's always 'missed shots', 'missed shots', 'missed shots', 'DIRECT HIT-BOOM!' I don't think the original intent of a deflector shield was to block shots, I think it was intended to make imperfectly aimed shots MISS, by shoving them to the sides... Much the same way a magnetic field might be used to push a like-charge away or around. This is why you see pilots trying to get locks a lot of the time, rather than just spraying and praying. A couple rounds of precisely aimed shots can't really be shoved off the shot axis by the shield before they hit the fighter. And that's why the fighters put their deflectors on 'double front' for the trench run. Not that the shields would absorb the turbolaser bolts (it would STILL whittle away at the shields), but to increase the force of the deflection so the batteries they were racing headlong into wouldn't score a hit at all. Which, incidently, left everyone racing down the trench open to Vader and his wingmen just eating them alive from behind. Thus, why after putting deflectors on 'double front' changed to 'stabilize your rear deflectors' once the batteries ceased fire. But for video games of the time, and game players, creating that 'shoving' mechanic in the deflectors might have been too much, so they turned the X-Wing's deflector shields into absorption shields. If you change the shield mechanics in the games to behave more like utilizing tank armor deflection angles to incoming rounds, you suddenly have a massive equalization of the TIE and the X-Wing's combat capability. The X-Wing is less maneuverable and slower than a TIE, but it makes up for that by a spherical field of 'your aim was off angle and bounced off into space'. In the hands of a skilled Pilot, that deflector is very effective, but it ends up hardly being any real shield to a rookie who doesn't realize that the deflector is a DEFLECTOR, not a wall. The skilled pilot can realize they're in the crosshairs and turn, ruining the precision aim of a TIE pilot. Larger ships, with larger deflector generators, may have behavior in the shields that acts more like a wall, but even then, at many points, it seems like damage still leaks through over the course of fights. The nature of the deflection behavior may be a simple case of feeding enough power to the field to simply 'deflect' bolts to a stand still... Bleeding energy to the shield's effects before plinking against armor.
I basically only watched the movies, I never even considered the idea that a TIE could fly in-atmosphere until the Episode 7, as before that I believe they were only used on-screen in space combat.
This is kind of how in the original trilogy lightsabers aren't superweapons and are really only used by a specific order of knights who can get away with using a sword because of force training. Vader has one because he's a fallen Jedi, the emperor on the other hand remarks about how it's a Jedi weapon and doesn't think it poses a threat to him. Then after a few rounds of extended universe Jedi wankery lightsabers are the most powerful weapon anyone can possibly wield, every serious force user in the universe has been using them for over a thousand years, with entire factions identifying by their color.
Well..in the Battle of Yavin, all but 3 Rebel craft were destroyed by these "ineffective craft." The 4 TIEs that attacked the Falcon while it escaped the Death Star allowed them to escape IOT allow the rebels to reveal the location of their base to the Empire.
Im pretty sure I remember the game Xwing having TIE lasers do the same damage as an Xwing laser, furthermore the Xwing books emphasize the shielding advantage, which allowed rebel/NR pilots greater odds of survival, allowing a rookie a better chance of surviving and gaining experience. Honestly I think that was the real advantage, the rebellion/NR ended up with a broad pool of experienced pilots who could train more pilots, where imperial pilots mostly died or were promoted out of starfighter duty, obviously due to its scale the empire still had the ability to train new pilots quite well, but past Endor as the Empire lost territory and engaged in infighting it began to have a similar effect to the IRL historical issues the imperial jappanese navy ran into as the majority of its experienced pilots died in action resulting in training becoming less effective whereas US Navy pilots were regurally rotated back for training duty between combat tours. The Xwing novels were not the best refrence here either, as they depict an elite squadron composed of some of their most experienced pilots (some of whom were away on training duty at the start of the series) and their new recruits were plucked from volunteers who had experience.
TIE fighters, to me, resembles alot like the Japanese A6M Zero fighter in WWII. Fast, manuverable and effektive when flown by skilled pilots. But no protection from enemy fire. One hit, and you're gone. And replacing skilled pilots with combat experience is no easy task. The Empire treat their skilled, well-trained pilots like "use and throw away" items you can buy in the store around corner at cheap price.
One thing a lot of people forget is the zero was extremely heavily armed for the time period against enemies using pea shooters, until the us got its game face on.
@@Kalev225 The Zero did have plenty of firepower, two machine-guns and two 20 mm cannons, but its main drawback was the lack of armor-protection, along with self-sealing fuel tanks. All it took was a couple of burst's with standard 50-caliber rounds and the Zero would burst into flames. The problem for the allies at beginning of the war was that the Japanese planes had both superior speed and manuverability, although the F4F Wildcat did a good job, until planes like the F6F Hellcat came into be. And the Hellcat shoot down over 75% of all japanese planes downed by US naval aviators in WWII.
@@wolfu597 true enough, and i imagine that with the tie fighter in lore it was envisioned the same way, and was probably a dominating fighter until the xwing came along. (until clone wars was a thing and it turns out shielded fighters used to be a standard previously as well)
@@wolfu597 the TIE fighter-zero comparison only makes sense if its specifically outperformed by much later planes when its outdated. The Zero was outperformed towards the end of the war simply because the japanese didnt have the resources to pump out their newest plane designs. Thats like comparing an abrams to a tiger tank, or comparing a marine to a spartan. Obviously the more recent model is going to have the advantage. at the time of its construction the Zero was, bar none, the highest performance fighter plane in the world. Unlike the TIE fighter, which was outperformed by contemporary fighters the moment it was built.
I hate that the who ever writes the lore for star wars takes what is obviously plot armor for our heros (storm troopers cant aim, etc.) and translate that into "well storm troopers are just the worst trained army in the galaxy and their weapons are garbage, their armor is garbage, their vehicles are garbage, and the entire empire is essentially a joke." Every time i watch the movies i wonder why the rebels even bother fighting since the galactic empire seems so incompitent that it might as well collapse on its own.
Apologies if this is discussed somewhere but in the author's opinion what would the proper balance be between X-Wing's and TIE models? This applies to "pencil & paper" RPG's ad Empire at War mods.
I always saw the TIE Fighters as way more maneuverable and faster than the Wing series of ships that exceeds when flown by very skilled pilots but is incredibly unforgiving when it comes to the pilot making mistakes or taking hits where as the wing series especially the X-Wing gave more emphasis on defenses to allow for more pilot error in combat with less experienced pilots but still perform incredibly well for more experienced pilots.
The Tie Fighter makes more sense as do the Rebel Fighters, when you compare them to the real world analogs that they were largely inspired by. Remember Lucas grew up with the tales of WW2. All of the dogfighting in Star Wars is largely based on WW2. While the Trench Run is lifted almost wholesale from the 1955 film The Dam Busters, I’ve always felt that the X-Wing Tie Fighter dynamic had more of a Pacific WW2 feel. With the Tie Fighter taking the role of the Mitsubishi Zero and the X-Wing as the Gruman F4F Wildcat. One has better speed and agility, but is fragile with little pilot protection. The other is slower and less maneuverable but is well armored and protected and can absorb a huge amount of damage.
ties work in large numbers, their entire purpose is to act as a giant wall against anyone that dare attack their capital ships/star bases. The primary role of a tie is Boom and Zoom, reliance on wingmen to overwhelm the enemy on all sides. The issue is that in the OT they aren't used like that except in the Trench Run and the Battle of Endor where they are proven to be extremely deadly capable of killing more than they lose. In every other context the empire was throwing away good pilots just to let Luke and Co get away- its well established that they escape too easily in ANH and ESB by Han who suspects the Empire is merely tracking them- this is why in ESB Lando is already on the Empires side by the time they arrive because it was always intended to be a trap (one that Luke avoided and Yoda tried to warn him about because he got damn lucky, but then proceeded to fuck it all up anyway). In the Xwing Vs Tie Fighter games, the Ties are used in their correct context, they swarm the enemy and if you're not going fast enough they will take you down easily. When you're in a Tie yourself, you just swoop around enemies bursting at them then flying over them as to not crash into them. Its effective but it only works if the pilot is distracted. If you're in a dogfight you're at a massive disadvantage especially if the enemy out numbers you.
The Empire had a huge budget for not only ships but training. The Imperial pilots had access to simulators and flight time that Rebel pilots would not. Note that every hour in flight costs fuel and maintenance. Contrast that with modern fighter jets who require up to 4hrs of maintenance for every hour of flight time. Those are precious resources that the Rebellion can't expend while the Empire who no qualms. The Imperial barracks would have racks of simulators for their pilots to increase training while those expensive things would be sparse for Rebel pilots. Even on paper the speed advantage gives the TIE fighters a HUGE bonus over Xwings. Speed is what generates power. Power is lost when turning. During the Vietnam war the Mig-17's would fly rings around the heavier F4's which is why you would not get into a turning dogfight with one. But the F4's had large twin engines which generated more speed and power allowing them to disengage and re-engage to their content. Once the Mig-17's lost enough power they were easy targets. The heavier Xwings should have been at a disadvantage against the more agile and faster TIE's. On top of that the shields only allowed them to survive maybe 2 hits. The fast firing cannons would have removed that disadvantage very quickly. As noted in the trench run even the much heavier Ywing shields melted extremely quickly. Shields or no shields the TIE should be anything but a death trap. Demoralizing your entire flying cadre puts them at a major disadvantage. The idea of being easily expendable does the same. The lore that came up with that is garage written by someone who has no military experience and didn't bother using a military advisor. Christ, no even propaganda can get rid of that kind of feeling.
The Tie Fighter is analogous to the Japanese Zero, which was mostly made of wood, which made it lighter and more maneuverable than early American aircraft and at first they enjoyed great success against American Pilots in almost embarrassing numbers,but as the war progressed, American plane design advanced with faster, better armored and armed planes eventually outlasting and overwhelming the Zeroes. This is exactly how things progress in the games and books. The Tie Defender is analogous to the German Me-262 which, if the Germans had devoted the resources they used for Terror Weapons to mass produce the 262 might have changed the result of the war. We see this play out in Stsr Wars: Rebels where Admiral Thrawn is advocating the Defender Program as an alternative to another Death Star. Had Tie Fighter Pilots had an Air Suleriority fighter instead just a modified Tie Fighter, with more speed, maneuverability and firepower than the Alliance could muster, things would have gone very differently at Endor. The Second Death Star became a trap, not for the Rebels, but for the Emperor. Had it just been a hollow shell and the fleet armed with Defenders and Interdictors would have pinned and destroyed the Rebel Fleet. Tie fighters were trash. Storm Troopers became trash. Because as the war progressed, attrition meant training had to suffer and Stormtrooper Armor was allowed to be produced for show, not protection. This simply degraded further after Endor, so that by the time of the Mandalorian they are a source of ridicule and mockery among the Mandalorians. You notice Cara Dune took them very seriously until she started hanging out with Mando. It is only after she sees their decline for herself that she takes them less seriously.
I dont think it is garbage. Same skill pilots tie fighter vs xwing. The tie fighter would win More speed and more agile. I think it is representation of games and movies. Like the AT-ST we saw them like a joke. Until ep 4 of mandalorion that say that entire batallions were wiped out by one of them.
I know Disney would never do this, but I would love to see a TV show centered around the Imperial Academy and TIE pilot training. The next time you watch TOP GUN with Tom Cruise, just imagine the setting is an Imperial Ace training program as they vie for a Baron title, it really fits quite well lol. But seriously, A show following Soontir Fel in his rise to a decorated combat ace would be very interesting and would bring him back to canon!!
A tie is treated the same way as a Leo from the gundam series, mass produced cannon fodder until a skilled pilot got ahold of one at which point they could nearly go blow for blow against a gundam, I don’t believe the tie a perfectly designed fighter for it’s role and perfectly utilized in its roll would be nearly classified as cannon fodder.
I just dug my 233pentium dos/win98 machine out of the garage a few weeks ago, found a servicable Gravis Phoenix joystick on ebay, put it in my den and told everyone to leave me the hell alone for a few hours a week. Its setup in pretty much maxed out late 90's goodness with max 256mb ram and a WaveBlaster 2 daughterboard on the soundcard to experience the iMuse music in full MIDI glory. Once I finish TIE Fighter gonna do some Dark Forces and X-Wing. Also need to find the system I can run DF2 Jedi Knight and X-Wing Alliance on. I have no idea where my Voodoo 2 card went, so that'll be interesting.
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Another thing that got ruined later on are Stormtroopers.
In a New Hope the first scene is one where the Stormtroopers defeat the rebels who are in defensive position. Old Ben then tells us how accurate Imperial troops are and later Leia tells us that the hero’s only got away because they let them.
The Empire Strikes Back is basically the Empire is better the movie.
It is not until Return of the Jedi that we see Stormtroopers get beaten by the Ewoks, who also managed to beat the rebels as well.
In my head canon I imagine the Ewoks have far, FAR more numbers than we think. Imperial scanners probably saw them as indigenous wildlife and their primitive traps and siege engines had been in place for months, along with spies. The Rebels just got lucky with Leia saving the village idiot, and the Ewoks just allowed the Rebels to tag along on their operation.
Exactly. Stormtrooper aim is a joke for some reason even though stormtroopers were accurate all the time in the original trilogy. Then for some fucking reason Rebels went and canonized the myth, while Rogue One went directly against it.
It was explained that as the Rebellion a arose Stormtroopers were chosen for political loyalty rather than competence.
@@LordVader1094
Stormtroopers tend to always hit what they aim at, unles they're aiming at a main character. No military force in the history of fiction has ever been very good at hitting main characters in a heroic story. And they still hit Leia twise.
@@LordVader1094 They did partly retcon this by blaming their inaccuracy on the E-11, which is both powerful and light, giving it a hell of a kick...which just begs the question of why they never unfold their fucking stocks?
anyone remember the original Battlefront 1 on Bespin platforms where if you even dared to enter a tie fighter you would instantly get destroyed by turrets on the other side of the map? Good times.
That was where we would separate the man from the boys!
I miss that game 💜
Enjoyed it just yesterday)
I would love to see an episode about the imperial army (the actual army soldiers, not the stormtrooper corp)
tangow2 This. Honestly the best part about solo, when they’re involved in an actual battle that shows what it was as a grunt in the empire
Join the imperial army, meet interesting aliens and be eaten by them.
Also mud, sand and poodoo. Lots of poodoo.
The problem with showing the point of view of the Tie Fighter pilots is that they would be seen as brave underdogs who have to fight in flying coffins against the more advanced Rebel fighters and that would be a no-no for Disney, the Empire can't have character exposed in a positive light, Star Wars is not Gundam nor Legend of the Galactic Heroes.
I refuse to believe that Stormtroopers are the "elite" of the Empire. They are the ground troops, the grunts, the boots on the ground. If there is an imperial army, their are less soldiers then stormtroopers.
nate de dude did you see Solo? Oh....maybe you didn’t. There was that boycott.
Anyway, yes there’s an imperial army. They are the guys who man the garrisons and hold the line in the mud on trouble planets across the galaxy. The stormtroopers are usually the first ones in, like the Marines. So we see them mostly in the movies invading planets, boarding starships, handling security on star bases. The army is busy doing more boring things like doing vehicle maintenance, peeling space potatoes 🥔 and cleaning toilets. With luck the army guys could become stormtroopers and commit atrocities in the name of the empire.
How TIE Fighters Became Trash = *Plays TIE Fighter CD-Rom...on Hard: becomes Tan/Emperor's Reach...and BE the exception...*
Aka: Play TIE Fighter...it will restore ones confidence in the Empire's abilities to make statfighters lol.
IF: you're a good pilot of course.
@Eye Above All The entire series, from X-Wing, XvT, and X-Wing Alliance needs overhauls. I'd love for them all to be remade beat by beat in the Frostbite engine. Just give us proper controller support options. I have a HOTAS for a reason!
@@Keihryon XWA has some graphic updates, making it looking pretty good. There is also XWVM (X-wing Virtual Machine) in the making : ruclips.net/video/IiOhc_DPQNY/видео.html
I tended to fair pretty well in TIE Fighter, and even preferred the instant death TIE Interceptor to shielded gunboats. I think what the game illustrates pretty well is how difficult it really is to land shots during a dogfight.
TIE was fucking awesome, but still illustrates what a big advantage shields are.
@@gigastrike2 I hated flying the gunboats because I bought the game to fly TIE fighters. lol
Considering the short range nature of the mainline TIE series, avoiding conflict with a group of TIEs could be explained as where there are a few TIEs, there will be more close by and possibly an ISD or two.
Well that, and even if they are kinda low-powered, if you run into a single patrol or scouting team you could find yourself quickly going from facing 4 ties to facing 40+ because said star destroyer or facility is nearby with units ready to deploy.
@@Todd5747 Well yeah. I implied as much in my comment.😁. The standard imperial swarm maneuver can be quite devastating when utilized properly. I still think they should've used their more standard TIEs in more stable regions and in loyalist systems. Palpatine should also listened to Vader and Thrawn when they STRONGLY recommended the development of superior starfighters. They would only have needed enough to counter the Rebel Starfighter Corps. which was actually quite small relatively speaking.
Just Imagine an Imperial A-Wing. The Empire owned KSE which manufactured the RZ-1 A-Wing and it's only major weaknesses stemmed from resource/material limitations.
@@UncleMikeDrop They are essentially the starfighter version of Sherman tanks. Individually they and far far outclassed by everything else around, but to paraphrase a Tiger Commander "A tiger beats the sherman 10 to 1, the problem is there's is always that 11th sherman"
@@thrawn82 That is a good allegory, but I've always seen the TIE as allegorical to the Japanese Mitsubishi Zero.
@@UncleMikeDrop thats good, but less accurate because the zero was intended to be and was a state of the art LR fighter when it was produced, it's just that resourced starving resulted in japan still using a 40s vintage fighter in 45. the zero actually outperforms early war american planes.
where as the TIE fighter (like the patton) was designed to be cheap and expendable. If 6 TIE fighters go down taking out one X-wing, that's still a net loss for the rebel alliance.
I'm kind of surprised that you didn't mention that during the Battle of Yavin, the Imperial TIEs were OUTNUMBERED by the rebel fighters by more than 2-to-1. Darth Vader was only allowed by Grand Moff Tarkin to field his own personal squadron consisting of a mere 12 fighters (including himself) against the 30 rebel fighters attacking the Death Star.
In the game Star Wars: Galaxies, the Ties you could use in the imperial pilot trees scaled up in capabilities as you progressed further and became s better pilot, I would like to think that is how the Canon Ties worked as well. Less experienced pilots got the cheapest versions because if the ship got destroyed but the pilot managed to eject the ship could be replaced easier whereas the more experienced you get the less your ship would need to be replaced therefore you were able to be trusted with the more expensive, more durable ships. If you can fight well without shields, and Less powerful weapons your will be even better when the better equipment is available to you
Tie fighters are literally identical to each other. Unless you are talking about different models like defenders or interceptors. In that case, then yes. The best pilots were given interceptors, and the best interceptor pilots were eventually given defenders.
TIEs are a Jedi star fighter given to non-Jedi.
Pretty much.
yeah, they are pretty much the succesor of the atkis jedi fighter
Who need competent engineering when you can must spam *FORCE* ?
@@t4rv0r60 Visibility was a LOT better in the Aktss. That is A big deal in a dogfight.
TIE fighters are somewhat similiar to the me163 comet: a good pilot in both is a danger but the figthers are easy to kill if you know where to hit.
In the miniatures game, I prefer taking TIEs, you tend to take fewer casualties if you have more fighters as the enemy has to think about maneuvering to avoid attack runs from more angles.
It genuinely annoys me that I don't hear people talk enough about how at Yavin and Endor, rebel fighters die just as easily as imperial ones and that the whole, no shield, thing started off as a dumb game stat.
TIEs are shielded, look at the OT, especially the Falcon escaping the Death Star and fighting off the sentry TIEs.
The OT does show rebel fighters taking more damage than Ties. Having shields was at least a sensible "retcon".
The Rebels fighters had little chance without shielding. The numerical advantage tie fighters had also included a an advantage in fire power.
Tie fighters being less maneuverable than a Xwing makes no sense. The entire point of a Tie was that they are fast, agile, and hard to hit.
One shot to a critical system seems to be an instant-kill or disable to any fighter, regardless of whether it’s TIE or X-Wing.
So they really aren’t very strong on either side of the conflict.
@@lordterra1377 Usually, EU/ Legends did portray Ties as more maneuverable. It ended up being modeled after the Pacific dogfight between Zeros and usually more robust American planes.
>How the TIE fighter is represented in Media
as opposed to the TIE fighter being represented IRL i guess?
Yeah right
The Rogue Squadron games made TIES pretty bad, but they're actually really good in their niche in the X-Wing/TIE fighter flight sims. You just need to focus more on evasion than attack.
DIEGhostfish depends on which ship you’re flying.
The standard TIE, you have to fly blood thirsty.
The Interceptor, you need to fly bloodthirsty and as a Psychopath.
Frequent X-Wing and TIE Fighter player here, credentials include being able to solo dogfight wave after wave of Gunboat Aces and Top Aces until all are defeated when they're spamming missile fire at me, and routinely deflection-shoot TIEs at angles where I can't actually see them in my canopy view (I can often destroy Interceptors with a single quad-linked shot if I'm in an X-Wing). I've of course finished all the TIE Fighter campaigns as well as flying Imperial TIEs in X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter.
I'd say that the basic model TIE Fighter was true cannon fodder as far as the game goes, as you had to be extremely careful to basically never take any kind of a hit; 2 laser bolts will destroy you, so you can really only take one and keep on flying (with instruments fried, of course). You can still be an awesome TIE Fighter pilot obviously and I was, but yeah, you just had to be extremely careful to avoid or get out of anyone's forward firing arc, spending a majority of your time on evasion. If even a single A-Wing showed up, your mission became exponentially more difficult (to me the A-Wing is the ideal dogfighter against TIEs; cannons are level with your centerline and closer together than an X-Wing, you have speed and maneuverability to spare, and enough concussion missiles to dispatch an entire TIE squadron of 12 by yourself).
The TIE Bomber is a sight better, even though it's still large and slow and unshielded. Very vulnerable, but not a true death trap.
All this to say, I think the TIE Interceptor is where the TIE series starts to shine. You still have no shields, but your speed, agility and armament make you much more of a threat. The Interceptor being a little more heavily armored, requiring 4 bolts to destroy instead of 2 goes a long ways towards allowing you to survive the battle while being able to concentrate more on dogfighting than evasion.
Meanwhile, the X wing's much vaunted shields have stopped about 0 shots when not pilotted by a main character in the movies.
The tie is based on the zero. A cheap design relying on not getting hit. While a good pilot can hold their own, novices may as well be self-propelled skeet.
This is really a gross oversimplification, especially in the Zero's case. The A6M series was designed to be very high agility and lightweight; a lighter fighter increases range with less fuel, and means that much less weight and supplies for their carriers to lug around. It also allows the aircraft to respond quickly and so unlike heavier Grumman aircraft, the A6 needed the ability to not be picked off. This becomes even more apparent when looking at the A5 versus the A6 and the F2A versus the F4F. None of these vehicles are bad but they were made with specific carrier doctrine in mind. It wasn't just a choice of agility for durability.
@@jacobabrisz9272 Your not wrong, but none of that matters during a dogfight. And fighters from the original trilogy used ww2 dogfighters for inspiration. The reason I mentioned the zero was it being used as the inspiration for the tie fighter afaik.
The Zero was actually an extremely high quality fighter at the start of the war, though less well protected than many of its counterparts it could very easily hold its own against them.
The main issue was that Japan started suffering extreme material shortages in the war and couldn't upgrade their weapons and vehicles like the Americans could. It became a cannon-fodder swarm fighter, but it wasn't designed that way.
@@michaelwoods2672 It didn't help that japan never rotated their experienced pilots out of combat in order to provide the new pilots with their experience, while america did rotate pilots. This resulted in many of japan's skilled aces being picked off leaving japan with few to no experienced pilots.
as commented elsewhere, i really think it's more comparable to the Patton. A truely cheap and under engineered design intended to be mass produced in overwhelming numbers, levied against the powerful but expensive german tanks like the Tiger.
In the old X-Wing vs Tie-Fighter games the humble Tie-Fighter was actually my favourite ship. While lacking in hull strength, shields and firepower it was extremely agile, i.e. it was a lot of FUN to fly the x-wing felt like a driving a tractor in comparison.
This is the sort of Star Wars historiography that I watch for.
Same it’s fantastic
Not only is your content interesting, your narration and presentation is sublime.
Glad I found you.
Didn't come over from Eck, but it seems YT has taken the hint and started recommending your videos to his viewers.
This was an interesting look at the meta evolution of TIEs as cannon fodder. I subbed. Good work!
New headcanon for Corey's Datapad: This is all found-footage from an unattended datapad picked up in a tapcaf.
And that same datapad has been accidentally set to "livestream mode" whenever the Tapcaf Transmissions are online...
Just call it a cantina, Zahn.
Whenever I think of people talking about this, I remember the time in the Wraith Squadron novels where Wedge lead a bunch of rough-edged New Republic pilots to impersenate Imperial agents and then pirates, flying TIES during both instances.
Seems to me if you give a solid pilot anything they'll do well. So I guess that says more about the pilots flying TIEs than it does the TIE itself?
That said a lot of the old lore mentioned shileded and hyperdrive equipped TIEs showing up in the hands of competent Imperial leaders (Thrawn) and of course the TIE Defender...
I remember those books, In the X-wing series Tie-fighter squadrons were ineffective because of pilot attrition and bad supply lines, plus every warlord was tugging at new pilots. Also the Rogues were supposed to be the best of the best and had the best equipment. Pilots in those books still died regularly and they dreaded going against experienced pilots or better Tie's like Interceptors.
No matter what I will always love TIEs.
The original movies do show the ties with only 2 lasers. It could be interpreted that they had 2 stronger lasers vs 4 weaker ones on the X-wings, but the laser hardware on the TIEs are significantly smaller than the ones on the X-wings
I hope you guys know what I'm talking about: what sucks about TIE Fighters is one of the TIE squadrons that were chasing after Falcon and several Rebels fighters in Death Star 2 ventilation shaft collided with the pipes while the TIE Interceptors avoids collision because it has improved maneuverability.
Ernest Wang Interceptors have a smaller profile than standard Fighters. TIE fighters are always running into walls in the OT.
The TIE Pilots were highly trained, the fighters were optimized for maximum speed, agility and firepower. Honestly, I'm fine with TIEs dying to a few shots, but only when they're portrayed as faster and more maneuverable than most rebel ships. But star wars rebels started to make them even worse, as in that show they just make very predictable maneuvers and look extremely slow.
I don't buy the "expendable view" . . . Storm Troopers had full suits of body armor, AT-ATs were heavily armored, Star Destroyers were well-protected. Even the Lambda shuttles were heavily armed. The only thing that doesn't seem designed to take a punch is the TIEs.
This a good example of one of two big problems I have with the way Star Wars lore developed. Namely, a game mechanic gets turned into an in-universe explanation of how things work. See also: Jedi "classes"; "Force powers" (and particularly "lift", "push", "choke" etc being treated as fundamentally distinct abilities rather than just different ways of moving things".
My other bugbear is how just about every race or planet has their entire culture defined by the first example of them we see. So Rodians are bounty hunters; Trandoshans are also bounty hunters; Hutts are gangsters; Corellians are ace pilots; female Twileks are sexy dancers, and frequently slaves as well (and I'm sure I read somewhere that the males are frequently sleazy slavers, presumably based on Bib Fortuna); etc.
TIEs being inferior to the X wing always made sense to me.
They are visibly smaller, and more numerous even in the first movie, and we see the falcon fight off a flight of them by itself.
It also fits better with lore, seeing as how they are basically the pinnacle of Clone Wars era interceptor design. By the time of the OT, they are simply getting outdated, and the presence of TIE Interceptors shows that there is an upgrade program for them.
yeah them being weaker is good, but i think its gone abit too far. they should be an older design that needs updating not a vastly inferior design that is little more then cannon fodder.
as for numbers, we are talking about a galaxy-spanning militaristic empire vs a small rebel cell.
@@matthiuskoenig3378 That is mostly a meme.
Unfortunately a meme that the hack writers of the new stories embraced, but much like stormtroopers being inaccurate is not the case in most depictions of them, I dont think there were many instances where a lone TIE fighter was not considered a credible threat.
TIEs are smaller than X-wings? Have you seen them side by side and to scale? TIEs are huge!
@@russellharrell2747 The volume in a tie is a thin photovoltaic panel, that scarcly contributes to either its survivability, or its firepower.
That is like saying a sail ship of the line is huge because of its large sails.
I need no channel youtube! If the wings on a TIE were just simple voltaic cells then that’s the largest waste of material since putting a cloth sail on nuclear aircraft carrier. Either ‘solar cell wing panels’ means something else in that galaxy, like the solar ionization reactors that appear to be on nearly every spacecraft, or laser blaster or swords having anything to do with lasers. There’s some tactical purpose to having large amounts of a combat spacecraft spread out from the main hull, otherwise the entire TIE line as well as X-wings, B-wings, ARC-170s etc wouldn’t do it, and all these ships would be compact little balls with weapons and engines protruding from all directions. The advantage gained by adding those wings on TIEs must be significant, otherwise the entire exercise of analyzing Star Wars ship design becomes useless. At that point ships are just designed by ‘rule of cool’ and any attempt to justify their is just nerd fantasy, which is probably closer to the heart of the matter anyway.
I've always had an issue with the supposed disposability of TIEs. To start with the claim that, "TIEs are unshielded and therefore worse," have we ever seen, in the original trilogy, a supposedly shielded fighter survive more than one shot from an enemy?
Secondly, everyone makes a big deal about TIEs not having life support. They do, its on their suits, which is the best place for a life-support system to be in a combat scenario. Imagine what would happen if an X-wing's windows got smashed and all the air inside the cockpit got sucked out. Fat lot of good that life support system in your ship does for you then.
Or, imagine a second scenario, a fire breaks out in your cockpit. Every Rebel pilot becomes little more than charred meat in such a scenario. A TIE pilot can just open the hatch and let vacuum put out the fire for him.
A third scenario, something goes wrong mechanically on the ship, and you have to get out to repair or be lost and drifting in space. Sure, Rebel pilots may have an astromech, but what if the astromech can't reach the system that needs repairs? Its not like they can move from that plug. A TIE pilot can open the hatch, hook himself to the craft with a rope and a carabiner, and then move himself to the affected area and make field expedient repairs himself.
So very true on both points. I would love to see a TIE pilot safely eject into vacuum and survive in a SW movie or D+ show.
Agree with everything you've said, except "have we ever seen, in the original trilogy, a supposedly shielded fighter survive more than one shot from an enemy"? part. Yes. though this could be plot armour. You see both Luke in a x-wing and the millennium falcon get hit more than once and survive.
@@helikos1 You're right about Luke, I forgot about that (lets assume that the Force/plot armor just makes small chances bigger, so there is a slight chance of possibly surviving a similar hit if you are Rebel #249, since otherwise everyone would be surprised at Luke's survival and calling it miraculous in universe); but the Falcon isn't a fighter, it would have both stronger shields and armor on it because its bigger than a fighter.
So true. It's all rebel propaganda
Let's remember this is make believe.
The TIE LN has the best K/D ratio out of any starfighter in the OT, and it deserves far more love than it gets, often getting considered worse than the Interceptor, which has the worst starfighter K/D ratio. (The Y wing technically has a 2 Kills/0 Deaths ratio, but that's 1 Y wing in RotJ which could just be the pilot, and we only see Vader's TIE piloted once by him, so we don't actually know if that's just because Vader's that good or if his TIE was).
Unfortunately, RotJ and the expanded universe were not kind to the Humbling Hexagon Horde.
they were still pretty deadly in RotJ, especially Interceptors. And lets not forget the Falcon had to dive into he mouth of a space slug to avoid the squadron after them from Hoth
Growing up with the original trilogy, I never thought of tie fighters as disposable or ineffective. To me they seemed to be equal to or better than X wings and Y wings
In the first Star Wars, Tie Fighters are shown to be fragile (one hit and they blow up - X-Wings and Y-Wings are shown taking more) they have no missile tubes, hyperdrives, or deflector screens (unlike X-wings and Y-Wings). So...
@@Idazmi7 I was 6
@@horseface31
I see.
@@Idazmi7 yet they do fine in combat with those x-wings and y-wings. X-wings are fighter-bombers and Y-wings are bombers, both used by a guerilla faction for hit and run tactics, so of course they need hyperdrives and missiles. TIE fighters are dedicated interceptors, so theres no reason they would use up power or room on hyperdrives or missiles. They're specialized for anti-fighter usage, and they do great at that in the movies.
Both TIE's and X-wings have plenty of firepower to destroy eachother quite quickly, so I would question the value of those shields. A single salvo from a TIE's laser cannons pretty reliably destroys any x-wings they are fighting.
@@lenkagamine4145
Imperial fighters are ONLY good at dogfighting. X-wings and Y-wings are far better multipurpose ships, and can put the hurt on capital ships, too.
I always figured the fall of the TIE was, in part, comparable to the fall of the Imperial Japanese air force. A decrease in skilled pilots to man their craft lead to things like the Great Pacific Turkey Shoot. We go from the near total annihilation of Red and Gold squadrons at the first Death Star to a Y-wing killing two ties at the second Death Star. It's a bit tangential, but we also see a Tie crash into an open portion of a Mon Cala cruiser, possibly mirroring a kamikaze attack? That's also the only kill a Mon Cala cruiser has gotten in any Star Wars movie or TV show, as they seem to just be glorified air craft carriers for the rebels.
It would be great if you could do a similar video on tracking down exactly when the Y-wing went from an sturdy, reliable old-school fighter (like, say, an F-4) to the "moves like a sleepy hutt" "bomber" that everyone writes it off as.
In the ILM note diagram for Jedi, it's listed as having performance in the same class as the T-65 and TIE
It's probably due to seeing them drops like flies on the original trench run, without showing them get any kills in return. They just come across as death traps until Rogue One.
Good memories hitting Left trigger to brake over entire groups of stormtroopers in Battlefront 2004 Xbox as a rebel, slaughter them with hilariously overpowered TIE lasers, and miss that window of being able to pull up before your wonky ass wings snag on a rock or ATST and you just explode instantly
6:30 "Thanks for watching and hope to see you nex-"
The sign-off was shot down like a TIE fighter ;)
Battle of Yavin: Rebel and Imperial ships are a match for each other in intense dog fights
Every other Star Wars media: Tie fighter go boom lolololol
Have you considered a video highlighting the some of the fun more ridiculous Legacy era content such as Darth Maul's Brain controlling a semi-corporal halogram? Or the many dead but not actually "dead" characters like the reborn emperor, or Darth Andeddu's brief resurrection?
Tbh the maul one is literally not canon.
It was part of the tales line. Which are what if stories
Love the video, really enjoy the behind the scenes discussions on how the lore has changed or what has affected development 🙂
A couple of days late but I also came over from eck's channel. Enjoying the videos so far and will be check out as much as I can find 👍
The canon did compensate the TIE by giving it a cost only 40% of the X/Y-wings, so even in an equal cost face off the Empire would have had 5 fighters for every 2 alliance ones, add the higher resource advantage of the Empire and they would indeed be able to employ them in swarm tactics. Lastly we need to remember the nearly all StarWars space combat was a reflection of WW2 in the Pacific, the TIE was the Mitsubishi Zero and the Y-wing being an analog of the Brewster Buffalo and the X-wing the analog of the Gruman Wildcat. The B-wing follows the trend towards bigger heavier aircraft making it analogous to the Hellcat which was introduced mid-war. The A-wing alone seems to lack a true analog as their was no American plane that took the light/fast strategy to beat the TIE fighter at it's own game. Lastly the TIE Defender was a clear analog to the German Me-109, being effectively a 'super weapon' with incredible cost and performance but never able to be fielded in large enough numbers.
The A-Wing to me comes across as an analogue to the F4U Corsair (or at least the early models of it): stupidly fast, maneuverable at high speed, and armed with a variety of weapons, but tricky to handle.
And I assume you meant to compare the Defender to the Me 262 or something like that.
The Zero was *not* an expendable fighter though. Operationally and by the stats it was a flat out *superior* to the Wildcat. MUCH longer range, Better Rate of Climb, Slightly faster than the wildcat even.
Meaning that by the time Boom and Zoom was used.. Wildcats cant even use that tactic too often. It was a mediocre decently armed, and armored plane that can hold it's own but is not superior to the Zero.
Not until the F4U Corsair would the skies of the pacific see an "Equal" to the Zero.
So the X Wing comparison with the Wildcat is wrong in a lot of ways i'd say...
if the TIE fighter was a Zero, then it should vastly outperform every contemporary fighter and only fail when faced with far more technologically advanced fighters designed years after it. The Zero was, bar none, the most effective dogfighter in the world at the time of its design- and also, an exceptionally long-ranged fighter, while the TIE fighter was a short-ranged fighter.
The comparison just doesnt hold up.
Also, as for the TIE defender comparison... the Me-109 is literally the most produced fighter plane ever built. Perhaps you meant the jet propelled Me-262?
Yes I did mean the 262, sorry for the confusion.
As for the Zero's superiority, as far as I was concerned the TIE was superior to the X-wing at the time of ANH, the Rebel attack force is decimated by a small number of TIE's.
The Corsair dose seem more like the B-wing again, it's high firepower and armor. I'm not aware of any American designs that really explicitly sacrificed survivability for maneuverability which was the defining quality of the Japanese aircraft.
On a side note the TIE Interceptor would be the improved Japanese aircraft that still followed the same design philosophy such as the en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nakajima_Ki-84
And on a broader note the fact the Empire sources nearly all it's fighters from Sinar Fleet Systems is a direct analog for the Mitsubishi company being nearly the sole supplier of Japanese fighters. While Rebel starfighters have a much wider sourcing.
Huh- what is the source for the 12 Squadrons of X-Wings about 5:10, (with the rainbow ones on the left)?
The Tie Fighters were sadly meant to be that way. The Emperor sought a fighters that was reliable and cheap, and sadly early in the Empire didn’t care for its pilots. We must remember that much of the credits that Empire spend in the Navy went into building Star Destroyers, Super Star Destroyers, and finally the Death Stars projects, which left the Tie Fighters with little credits to spending for new models and production.
I mean a cheap and reliable fighter is kinda needed for a GALACTIC Empire. You need to constantly patrol to ensure order, so it can't break every five minutes, and you need it to be cheap so you can actually afford enough to keep some presence everywhere.
The Tie Fighter would have been good if used in its intended purpose as a Star Destroyer's Point defense system.
Unfortunately overly aggressive (most) Imperial officers used them as an offensive weapon.
You do realize that what you just stated is entirely based off later depictions that Corey talked about in the video? Besides, the TIE Fighter was a perfectly good fighter.
What really bothered me was in mandolorian season 3 where they just destroy several tie interceptors just as easily as tie fighters.
Dovin Basal Black Holes are like point defense or regenerating reactive armor. (or 40k Void Shields, just with gravity instead of portals to hell.)
"40k Void Shields, just with gravity instead of portals to hell." this is why I love 40k
@Eye Above All Yeah their FTL is travel through hell, their large scale shields are opening portals to hell in the path of bullets and blasts to catch them.
My headcanon (as a kid who grew up on the TIE/X-Wing games) was always that TIEs are hi-tech, but sacrifices were made in the name of speedy production and cost. Essentially the Empire militarised to an unprecedented level and needed a stopgap fighter to get ships stationed all over the Galaxy; on bases, and aboard countless motherships.
TIEs have a powerful armament and fly faster than comparable craft. The drawbacks are that the ships don't have hyperdrives (not needed for a short range craft that is tied to a base/mothership), nor shields (cost, more power for the armament) nor life support (again, short-ranged craft, so the pilot can wear a space suit).
I think that fairly well balances their being "worse" than X-Wings, but still making sense. They're capable and dangerous craft, but corners were cut in certain areas due to their being short-ranged carrier-borne craft and to allow the Empire to mass produce them. I assume that, once every one of the countless squadrons around the galaxy was suitably equipped, TIEs would have been gradually phased out, were there enough time.
The best explanation I can come up with is that TIE wings were meant to be shields, absorbing laser fire with their massive panels. They can overload or fail, of course, but it allows the reactor to put more power to engines and weapons and severely limits the openings for kill shots (and you can check the OT and see that my hypothesis holds up).
For its original purpose (policing Imp territory, pirate interdiction, base security), the original TIE l/n was a good choice. It was like a police helicopter or patrol car. It was when the Rebels began fielding dedicated combat fighters that the TIE l/n began showing its weaknesses. Then, the Empire began developing more combat-oriented fighters like the TIE Interceptor, TIEx1, and TIE Defender. The Empire was planning to replace the l/ns with Interceptors, but Endor ruined that plan.
Considering that, in X-WING ALLIANCE, it took a couple of solid hits from fire-linked cannons to destroy a TIE; I wonder if the TIE fighters had some sort of lightweight ablative armor that provided the same protection as light shields without the power drain.
It's based off of the Japanese AM62 zero from WW2. a focus on speed and agility
And canons. The zero had some seriously heavy armament for the early war, and was very deadly. Tie fighter should reflect this as well I think.
I think about the Tie Fighter in it's power quotient in respect to the foundational reference it stems from, that is WWII dogfighting. The German Bf 109, the most mass produced fighter plan of the entire war, this was a prolific and was at one point a fine plane, competing in performance with all other fighters. However later in the war was simply outmatched by the Allies. I like to think that Tie Fighters are far more a product of logistics than anything else. To change production would not outweigh the costs of altering your entire assembly line of churning masses of pilots and machines for a galaxy wide empire. While the rebels could carefully tool up and refit their small production capacity for more developed and better performing machines in smaller quantities.
It's worth noting that Tie Fighters clearly show 'shield hits' when the Millennium Falcon fires upon them in A New Hope; glancing blows that otherwise might have missed, but show a flash of an impact, the exact same flash that the Falcon and X-Wings show when they take a hit and aren't seriously damaged. And throughout the battle around the Death Star, the X-Wings are actually shown to be more fragile than the Tie Fighters, taking fewer hits and requiring more hits on the Tie Fighters to destroy them. Most X-Wings are even destroyed or disabled in just a single shot.
Imperial Navy Pilots: No Shields. All Guts!
To be fair, they did upgrade to the Interceptor witch outclasses the X-Wing in nearly all ways, barring the shield and hyperdrive. Fun thing about the X-Wing and TIE Fighter games is that the TIE Fighter itself isn't an analog to the X-Wing, but to the Z-95 Headhunter.
TIE~Z-95
INT~X-Wing
Bomber~Y-Wing
Advanced~A-Wing
Gunboat~B-Wing
Defender and Missile Boat eat everything for breakfast.
When like to like the Empire is far closer to parity and normally has the numbers advantage. Sadly the Emperor was too enamored with his moon sizes superweapons and not enough in the power of the Defender or Advanced.
The tie fighter suffers from the same problem that most antagonist forces suffer from in that we are usually seeing them go up against a protagonist force that has to win for the story to continue so we end up seeing them as trash. The Stormtroopers are the same, we only ever really see them up against plot significant forces so they have to lose or the story cannot continue.
You should do a rundown of Booster Kerrick''s Star Destroyer.
I know it wasn't fully crewed, and he had struggled to run it, swapping out certain parts, etc.
I think it would be cool to see a detailed breakdown of what goes into maintaining and upgrading a personal Star Destroyer
Edit: edited because I am an idiot and got Talon Karrde mixed up with Booster Terrik.
For shame to me
You mean Booster Terrik's?
@@yankeefederer1994 fuck....yes.
Thanks for the correction. It's been a while since I've read the books, I can't believe I mixed them up.
And then I remember in the space battles in the original Star Wars Battlefront 2, they had to buff TIE Fighters substantially by adding shields and proton torpedos just to make them be able to compete with the other ships.
Sounds like a lot of sources regarded as “canon” need to be removed from that status...
If a “game” (as opposed to a “sim”) needs an easily defeated mass enemy to train n00bs or for game enjoyment, they should either create a new “entry level” resource or downgrade the Tie by stating it was the “export model”, sold to unreliable star systems. This way one still has the visual aspect of the Tie, but “who is flying it?” becomes a legit question and source of concern.
i've always wondered when and where the tie fighters got there horrible reputation from
In the first Star Wars, Tie Fighters are shown to be fragile (one hit and they blow up - X-Wings and Y-Wings are shown taking more) they have no missile tubes, hyperdrives, or deflector screens (unlike X-wings and Y-Wings). What made you think they were "comparable" to the X-Wing even then?
Idazmi7 fully shielded rebel ships blow up all the time in ANH, sometimes without getting hit!
And TIEs are shown to have shields, as several laser blasts from the Falcon’s cannons are seen exploding on something that is present off the TIE fuselage, and the effect is the same as when the Falcon’s shields take hits.
Also only a handful of TIEs were active at the Death Star and they made short work of almost 30 rebel ships. I’d say they can hold their own.
@@russellharrell2747
_"fully shielded rebel ships blow up all the time in ANH, sometimes without getting hit!"_
That was funny to read. Watch it again: Red Leader takes more than one hit, Luke takes more than one hit, Wedge takes a hit and survives to fly off... NONE of the Tie Fighter survives even the slightest tap from a blaster.
_"And TIEs are shown to have shields, as several laser blasts from the Falcon’s cannons are seen exploding on something that is present off the TIE fuselage, and the effect is the same as when the Falcon’s shields take hits."_
Nope. He clearly hits one of the Ties, which - predictably - instantly goes up in a fireball, just like they did during the Death Star Escape sequence in the same movie.
_"Also only a handful of TIEs were active at the Death Star and they made short work of almost 30 rebel ships. I’d say they can hold their own."_
There were 30 Rebel _fighters_ at the start, fighting an entire moon covered in turbolasers. Several fighters got shot down by the surface guns, then the Ties arrived and mopped up who was left. It wasn't just ties vs X-Wings, either: half of them were Y-Wings, which are bombers: NOT for dogfighting.
Idazmi7 which fighters got shot down by surface guns? The imperials state the ships were evading their turbolasers. Must have been all those conveniently off screen kills.
Those Y-wings were just as much ‘snub fighters’ as the X-wings, and according to the ILM speed charts used during production of the OT X-wings Y-wings and TIE Fighters all had exactly the same maneuverability and speed. However Vader and his wingmen were consistently faster than all rebel fighters present, so I don’t know how accurate those charts end up being.
Look at the battle, Biggs blows up after one hit, every other rebel fighter in the trench that’s hit blows up or just falls apart, even Porkins’ ship just crashes for seemingly no reason. Red Leader, Luke and Wedge are the rare exceptions, and half of those hits on them are glancing blows. Luke’s ship being hit twice (once just in the Astromech) and being none the worse for it is mighty suspicious and an egregious example of plot armor. All the rebel kills on TIEs appear to be direct hits on the cockpit, with no indications of what glancing blows or wing hits would do (unless you slow down the movie frame by frame and see their shields taking hits during the Falcon escape). It is shown to be very difficult to hit TIEs with direct hits, while glancing blows or hits to the rebels’ Over-Sized engines results in serious damage or vehicle loss, with those types of hits being far more likely than direct hits on the rear of the x-wings or Y-wings (where the fur cells appear to be in some cross sections that have been published through the decades).
Face it, the portrayal of TIEs (and the rebel craft) outside the OT is a gross misrepresentation.
@@russellharrell2747
_"which fighters got shot down by surface guns?"_
The ones that blew up before the Tie Fighters show up, Dumbo. That should be obvious.
_"Those Y-wings were just as much ‘snub fighters’ as the X-wings, and according to the ILM speed charts used during production of the OT X-wings Y-wings and TIE Fighters all had exactly the same maneuverability and speed. However Vader and his wingmen were consistently faster than all rebel fighters present, so I don’t know how accurate those charts end up being."_
Yes you do: the Tie Fighters outrun both X-Wings and Y-wings in the trenches, so the ties are faster. Biggs even says so.
_"Look at the battle, Biggs blows up after one hit, every other rebel fighter in the trench that’s hit blows up or just falls apart, even Porkins’ ship just crashes for seemingly no reason. Red Leader, Luke and Wedge are the rare exceptions, and half of those hits on them are glancing blows."_
1. Tie Fighters don't ever survive even glancing blows.
2. Darth Vader did the shooting in the trench, and even he didn't blow up Red Leader, Wedge, or Luke in one hit.
_"Luke’s ship being hit twice (once just in the Astromech) and being none the worse for it is mighty suspicious and an egregious example of plot armor."_
And Wedge? Straight hit to the fuselage: didn't blow up.
_"All the rebel kills on TIEs appear to be direct hits on the cockpit, with no indications of what glancing blows or wing hits would do (unless you slow down the movie frame by frame and see their shields taking hits during the Falcon escape)."_
During the Falcon escape, the first two tie-fighter kills are literally instant death. Poke, *KABOOM.* They don't even have the decency to break up like an X-Wing: they just instantly vaporize into particles and a huge fireball like the ship is made out of nitroglycerin.
_"Face it, the portrayal of TIEs (and the rebel craft) outside the OT is a gross misrepresentation"_
Face it: you have _one single shot_ in the whole OT that even _suggests_ that Ties have shields, and it could easily suggest instead that the Falcon's outdated blasters lack power.
It's too bad the TIE Avenger never became Canon. That fighter STOMPED X-Wings into the ground.
It was a far newer craft with a significant speed and manuver advantage, but equivelent weapons loadout.
@@danielboatright8887 TIE Defender did basically the same thing when it was canon before
@@KillerOrca The Defender did far more.
The Defender had a heavier loadout, proton torpedoes instead of concussion missiles, and ion cannons.
If the two had been mass produced then the TIE Avenger would have been the mainline unit to screen the ISD and the Defender would have been equally suited in a bomber or fighter role with its ions giving it versitility in disabling craft.
In essence the Avenger would have been the Imperial Xwing counterpart, and the Defender between the Ywing and Bwing while still more than capable of out manuvering or outruning pretty much anything out there.
Toss a few missile boats onto each ISD and the rebellion would have been fucked.
Thankfully, Palpatine wanted grander action that backfired in his face.
@@danielboatright8887 "This small fighter is not making me excited. MAKE SOMETHING BIGGER".-probably how that conversation went.
But wasnt the Legends Defender like...weaker? It had basically the same armament. They up-gunned it in new canon I think, gave it more weaponry.
@@KillerOrca Take a look at Empire at War: Forces of Corruption, then think again.
No? Ok, nevermind, lemme TL;DR: Heavy Fighter with proton torpedoes to engage enemy warships and make its stand against fighters, while also having shields AND ion torpedoes to fuck up shields or disable systems.
Plus Hyperdrive. The best damn Heavy Fighter in that game. Not the most powerful (Skipray Gunboat OP), but the most versatile.
In the very first movie a squadron of them attacked what is essentially a freighter and was beaten by waist gunners. They’ve always been like this.
I preferred the idea that ties were decent fighters but they were not as noob friendly as an x wing. Basically the pilots were undertrained as the empire saw no reason to waste resources on my skilled pilots when numbers could to the trick
It is wild to see the Falcon almost camping TIEs with minimal crew, and then having adverse by comparison performance while under full crew, albeit during an assault. Also a factor in the varying perceptions of TIE performance can be somewhat attributed to the varying levels of skill, as well as intensity & frequency of training.
In the MMO Star War's: Galaxies both imperial fighters and Rebellion fighters were mostly "even" in base 'stats', however the player was treated as a unique entity and were open to customize the heck out of their fighter and through the Shipwright class extremely over tuned parts could be produced for ships. As an Imperial pilot there was always the issue of weight, it's been awhile so the memories are fuzzy, but I recall sacrificing a lot of armor to have very good shields and a LOT of speed while a friend that went Rebellion always seemed to have enough room to be 'wasteful' in the size of their components. Also my biggest advantage as an imperial pilot was indeed numbers as your special pilot skill was to summon in waves of regular ties, tie interceptors, and tie bombers to attack targets. So at the very least... one game didn't treat TIE's as fodder.
It is interesting because you would think that due to the fact that ISDs can’t carry many fighters they would ensure the fighters they do carry are at least of a higher quality. Instead they have a handful of unshielded death traps that can barely dogfight effectively.
TIEs slaughtered experienced X-Wings in ANH and ROTJ.
I'd like to counter that at least in ANH they wen't fighting back in any real capacity as they were more focused on simply getting to the point where they could fire that proton torpedo into the Death star.
@@MetalKing1417 I recently rewatched that scene and I was stunned by the fact that the wingmen who were supposed to be providing cover were just staying in formation behind the one they were supposed to cover while getting shot in the ass.
@@ZRFehr That's elaborated upon in one of the old EU comics, I believe it was X-Wing, which took place on Tatooine. Wedge stated outright that they were all there to act as extra sets of shields for the one who was to deliver the payload. So they were literally acting as human shields for the attack run. Pretty sound, if ruthless, strategy.
I definitely think that Tie Fighters were portrayed as extremely weak in much media, but it seemed like in ANH that they are decent ships, having good firepower (the Falcon was solidly damaged, but it might have already been beat up, who knows) and being hard to hit, and that was what, 4? We've seen the Falcon tank shots from an imperial star destroyer, so those ties were hitting very hard.
Also, in Tie Fighter, when you pilot a Tie Fighter you don't seem like you're in a death trap (the Tie Bomber however...), you're nimble and can get behind most enemy ships and just pummel through their massive shields (shields that the movies definitely do not show existing, thus aren't really cannon to that degree, we instead see single shots being enough to cripple an X-wing or Y-wing), but they sure looked like death traps in X-wing, where you can slaughter them like nothing by the dozens on some missions, though you don't usually get behind them the same way as in Tie Fighter, since you just need to hit them with a shot or 2.
The X-Wing triumphs in a head on head encounter, where both sides are flying straight at each other shooting. A TIE's got to juke all over the place just to survive that, or cut away and fly at an angle to get into a furball. At close range, the TIE's maneuvering can let them settle in on the X-Wing's back and beat it down.
Support from a squadron and experience mitigate the X-Wing's disadvantage against TIEs, and their shields let help them survive long enough to get both. Still, in a 1v1, a TIE's got a decent edge in a dogfight, interceptors even moreso.
I didn't find you through Eckharts ladder but I subscribed because you said his name lol
I always viewed TIE fighters as the glass cannons of the Star Wars Universe they have the speed, maneuverability and, firepower but to have all this the Empire sacrifices armor which does make the TIE a deadly opponent but if you have a starfighter that can tank the hits you have a high chance to outmaneuver and destroy the TIE with a couple shots and with an X-Wing's shielding this became a possibility. So what we see here is a refusal to shift design philosophies because of Tarkin and his doctrine because the TIE-Fighter worked and it worked well enough for the time it was active but because of the Tarkin Doctrine, we see a stifling of starship innovations with only small glimmers like the TIE-Defender and, the TIE-Interceptor even if the Defender never really got to see much combat within the EU. Finally, even with the Rebels having the superior fighters there was never truly a push to develop better fighters to meet this new threat because the Imperials kept and maintained the superior capital ship element for a long time well past Endor and the only reason the Empire started to unravel the way it did is because Palpatine was holding the Empire together with his will and with his death above Endor that all ended.
We made an X-wing fan film depicting the TIE Fighter as a more serious threat than the cannon fodder they're known as, because we felt this was true to the original trilogy. Like Stormtroopers, they've become such a joke that it's hard to worry about the main characters when they're facing off against the Empire, which does a huge disservice to storytelling as its becomes nearly impossible to raise the stakes or heighten the intensity of the action. Many people commented that the TIEs were too good in our film, but we disagree for said reasons. Also, we had a Y-wing dogfight in the movie as well, and many people complained that a Y-wing wouldn't be able to do this. We had to point out that the Y-wing is seen dogfighting at the Battle of Endor, including shooting down TIE Interceptors and flying into the Death Star. So, it's not actually the slow, sluggish bomber people think it is. Maybe your next video can dispel this myth about the Y-wing.
What they did to the stats of the Y-Wing in the XvT game was a terrible thing. The power balance adjustment got so shifted that even making one adjustment was a major hit to your speed.
What's the fan film called?
@@zzzxxc1 The Lost Patrol
@@jeffharris3718 Thanks
@@jeffharris3718 Just watched it, it was excellent!
I gotta agree, the way the eu tried to explain the why the empires soldiers and pilots are ineffective is really bad.
In the original trilogy tie fighters and storm troopers are shown to be intimidating and elite. But for some reason, our hero's can beat them in droves and for some other reason it can't be because our hero's are just that good, no it has to be that the bad guys are just that horrible.
Luke, Han, Leia, and Chewbacca are supposed to be the hero's and the hero's are typically supposed to be better than the bad guy infantry. Captain America can take on endless droves of nazis, Batman can beat groups of armed and dangerous thugs, the teenage mutant ninja turtles can fight off clans of ninjas, is this because these guys they face are ineffective and expendable mooks, no it's because our hero's are just THAT good. The same applies to Luke and the gang.
Came from EckhartsLadder from the Marvel fan art theft topic. Love the content here! Looking forward to more!
My experience from back in the day from X-Wing (Collectors CD Rom edition, that's how far 'back in the day' is for me) tended to be that if you left a TIE fighter alone for too long, it was on your tail eating your shields in short order. This didn't tend to be a problem for YOU if it was two-to-one, since the squirrelly maneuvers of the TIE you were trying to shoot (and poor dogfight AI of all the craft involved) kept you dodging as well. And the TIE fighters couldn't handle more than two supercharged laser bolts, so they never went in a straight line long enough to let you REALLY get nailed yourself, unless you were a poor shot.
However, things rapidly got ugly if you were outnumbered 3 to one, four to one, or dare I cringe, six to one. TIEs were faster, turned harder, and the 'lead pursuit' nature of dogfights meant you always tended to end up in overshooting passes and spiraling in circles.
In real dogfights, with trained pilots, there are ways to utilize 2 to 1 or better numeric odds that would result in a pair of TIE fighters devastating a rookie X-Wing pilot. Essentially STARTING with the TIE the X-Wing is chasing not CONSTANTLY trying to come around to kill them. Instead, lead the X-Wing, and let your Wing Man get the kill. Dogfight Tactics 101. (But 90s AI couldn't do that.)There was also a mechanic in X-Wing that people tend to forget, that rapid successive hits punched through your shields and damaged you before the shields were drained. (And your Xwing also tends to take nearly a dozen hits to destroy). And I think it goes down to a video game buff that actually makes people mistake how deflector shields WORK.
First note, it's called a DEFLECTOR shield. To move something off course, aside, or otherwise DEFLECT. Not to absorb, stop, or disperse. And I think the Lucasarts and later companies completely missed out on a chance to take that mechanic and express it.
In 'A New Hope', one should notice that in all the dogfighting and shooting over the death star and the trench run, we didn't really have cases of fighters eating through any kind of shield, either visibly or from comm chatter. It's always 'missed shots', 'missed shots', 'missed shots', 'DIRECT HIT-BOOM!'
I don't think the original intent of a deflector shield was to block shots, I think it was intended to make imperfectly aimed shots MISS, by shoving them to the sides... Much the same way a magnetic field might be used to push a like-charge away or around. This is why you see pilots trying to get locks a lot of the time, rather than just spraying and praying. A couple rounds of precisely aimed shots can't really be shoved off the shot axis by the shield before they hit the fighter. And that's why the fighters put their deflectors on 'double front' for the trench run. Not that the shields would absorb the turbolaser bolts (it would STILL whittle away at the shields), but to increase the force of the deflection so the batteries they were racing headlong into wouldn't score a hit at all. Which, incidently, left everyone racing down the trench open to Vader and his wingmen just eating them alive from behind. Thus, why after putting deflectors on 'double front' changed to 'stabilize your rear deflectors' once the batteries ceased fire.
But for video games of the time, and game players, creating that 'shoving' mechanic in the deflectors might have been too much, so they turned the X-Wing's deflector shields into absorption shields. If you change the shield mechanics in the games to behave more like utilizing tank armor deflection angles to incoming rounds, you suddenly have a massive equalization of the TIE and the X-Wing's combat capability. The X-Wing is less maneuverable and slower than a TIE, but it makes up for that by a spherical field of 'your aim was off angle and bounced off into space'. In the hands of a skilled Pilot, that deflector is very effective, but it ends up hardly being any real shield to a rookie who doesn't realize that the deflector is a DEFLECTOR, not a wall. The skilled pilot can realize they're in the crosshairs and turn, ruining the precision aim of a TIE pilot.
Larger ships, with larger deflector generators, may have behavior in the shields that acts more like a wall, but even then, at many points, it seems like damage still leaks through over the course of fights. The nature of the deflection behavior may be a simple case of feeding enough power to the field to simply 'deflect' bolts to a stand still... Bleeding energy to the shield's effects before plinking against armor.
I basically only watched the movies, I never even considered the idea that a TIE could fly in-atmosphere until the Episode 7, as before that I believe they were only used on-screen in space combat.
This is kind of how in the original trilogy lightsabers aren't superweapons and are really only used by a specific order of knights who can get away with using a sword because of force training. Vader has one because he's a fallen Jedi, the emperor on the other hand remarks about how it's a Jedi weapon and doesn't think it poses a threat to him. Then after a few rounds of extended universe Jedi wankery lightsabers are the most powerful weapon anyone can possibly wield, every serious force user in the universe has been using them for over a thousand years, with entire factions identifying by their color.
Well..in the Battle of Yavin, all but 3 Rebel craft were destroyed by these "ineffective craft." The 4 TIEs that attacked the Falcon while it escaped the Death Star allowed them to escape IOT allow the rebels to reveal the location of their base to the Empire.
Im pretty sure I remember the game Xwing having TIE lasers do the same damage as an Xwing laser, furthermore the Xwing books emphasize the shielding advantage, which allowed rebel/NR pilots greater odds of survival, allowing a rookie a better chance of surviving and gaining experience.
Honestly I think that was the real advantage, the rebellion/NR ended up with a broad pool of experienced pilots who could train more pilots, where imperial pilots mostly died or were promoted out of starfighter duty, obviously due to its scale the empire still had the ability to train new pilots quite well, but past Endor as the Empire lost territory and engaged in infighting it began to have a similar effect to the IRL historical issues the imperial jappanese navy ran into as the majority of its experienced pilots died in action resulting in training becoming less effective whereas US Navy pilots were regurally rotated back for training duty between combat tours.
The Xwing novels were not the best refrence here either, as they depict an elite squadron composed of some of their most experienced pilots (some of whom were away on training duty at the start of the series) and their new recruits were plucked from volunteers who had experience.
Love your videos as always man!
How about a video on how the Victory and Imperial-class Star Destroyers got their names?
My favorite ship is the tie interceptor in video games it’s fun to fly because it has insane fire power and it’s very fast
TIE fighters, to me, resembles alot like the Japanese A6M Zero fighter in WWII. Fast, manuverable and effektive when flown by skilled pilots. But no protection from enemy fire. One hit, and you're gone.
And replacing skilled pilots with combat experience is no easy task. The Empire treat their skilled, well-trained pilots like "use and throw away" items you can buy in the store around corner at cheap price.
One thing a lot of people forget is the zero was extremely heavily armed for the time period against enemies using pea shooters, until the us got its game face on.
@@Kalev225 The Zero did have plenty of firepower, two machine-guns and two 20 mm cannons, but its main drawback was the lack of armor-protection, along with self-sealing fuel tanks.
All it took was a couple of burst's with standard 50-caliber rounds and the Zero would burst into flames.
The problem for the allies at beginning of the war was that the Japanese planes had both superior speed and manuverability, although the F4F Wildcat did a good job, until planes like the F6F Hellcat came into be.
And the Hellcat shoot down over 75% of all japanese planes downed by US naval aviators in WWII.
@@wolfu597 true enough, and i imagine that with the tie fighter in lore it was envisioned the same way, and was probably a dominating fighter until the xwing came along. (until clone wars was a thing and it turns out shielded fighters used to be a standard previously as well)
@@wolfu597 the TIE fighter-zero comparison only makes sense if its specifically outperformed by much later planes when its outdated. The Zero was outperformed towards the end of the war simply because the japanese didnt have the resources to pump out their newest plane designs. Thats like comparing an abrams to a tiger tank, or comparing a marine to a spartan. Obviously the more recent model is going to have the advantage.
at the time of its construction the Zero was, bar none, the highest performance fighter plane in the world. Unlike the TIE fighter, which was outperformed by contemporary fighters the moment it was built.
I hate that the who ever writes the lore for star wars takes what is obviously plot armor for our heros (storm troopers cant aim, etc.) and translate that into "well storm troopers are just the worst trained army in the galaxy and their weapons are garbage, their armor is garbage, their vehicles are garbage, and the entire empire is essentially a joke." Every time i watch the movies i wonder why the rebels even bother fighting since the galactic empire seems so incompitent that it might as well collapse on its own.
Apologies if this is discussed somewhere but in the author's opinion what would the proper balance be between X-Wing's and TIE models? This applies to "pencil & paper" RPG's ad Empire at War mods.
I always saw the TIE Fighters as way more maneuverable and faster than the Wing series of ships that exceeds when flown by very skilled pilots but is incredibly unforgiving when it comes to the pilot making mistakes or taking hits where as the wing series especially the X-Wing gave more emphasis on defenses to allow for more pilot error in combat with less experienced pilots but still perform incredibly well for more experienced pilots.
The Tie Fighter makes more sense as do the Rebel Fighters, when you compare them to the real world analogs that they were largely inspired by. Remember Lucas grew up with the tales of WW2. All of the dogfighting in Star Wars is largely based on WW2. While the Trench Run is lifted almost wholesale from the 1955 film The Dam Busters, I’ve always felt that the X-Wing Tie Fighter dynamic had more of a Pacific WW2 feel. With the Tie Fighter taking the role of the Mitsubishi Zero and the X-Wing as the Gruman F4F Wildcat. One has better speed and agility, but is fragile with little pilot protection. The other is slower and less maneuverable but is well armored and protected and can absorb a huge amount of damage.
I never knew vehicles could be Flanderized
I like this channel a lot and have subscribed.
ties work in large numbers, their entire purpose is to act as a giant wall against anyone that dare attack their capital ships/star bases. The primary role of a tie is Boom and Zoom, reliance on wingmen to overwhelm the enemy on all sides. The issue is that in the OT they aren't used like that except in the Trench Run and the Battle of Endor where they are proven to be extremely deadly capable of killing more than they lose. In every other context the empire was throwing away good pilots just to let Luke and Co get away- its well established that they escape too easily in ANH and ESB by Han who suspects the Empire is merely tracking them- this is why in ESB Lando is already on the Empires side by the time they arrive because it was always intended to be a trap (one that Luke avoided and Yoda tried to warn him about because he got damn lucky, but then proceeded to fuck it all up anyway).
In the Xwing Vs Tie Fighter games, the Ties are used in their correct context, they swarm the enemy and if you're not going fast enough they will take you down easily. When you're in a Tie yourself, you just swoop around enemies bursting at them then flying over them as to not crash into them. Its effective but it only works if the pilot is distracted. If you're in a dogfight you're at a massive disadvantage especially if the enemy out numbers you.
I think TIEs being trash makes sense. It does fit the expendable view the empire has really well.
The Empire had a huge budget for not only ships but training. The Imperial pilots had access to simulators and flight time that Rebel pilots would not. Note that every hour in flight costs fuel and maintenance. Contrast that with modern fighter jets who require up to 4hrs of maintenance for every hour of flight time. Those are precious resources that the Rebellion can't expend while the Empire who no qualms. The Imperial barracks would have racks of simulators for their pilots to increase training while those expensive things would be sparse for Rebel pilots.
Even on paper the speed advantage gives the TIE fighters a HUGE bonus over Xwings. Speed is what generates power. Power is lost when turning. During the Vietnam war the Mig-17's would fly rings around the heavier F4's which is why you would not get into a turning dogfight with one. But the F4's had large twin engines which generated more speed and power allowing them to disengage and re-engage to their content. Once the Mig-17's lost enough power they were easy targets. The heavier Xwings should have been at a disadvantage against the more agile and faster TIE's. On top of that the shields only allowed them to survive maybe 2 hits. The fast firing cannons would have removed that disadvantage very quickly. As noted in the trench run even the much heavier Ywing shields melted extremely quickly.
Shields or no shields the TIE should be anything but a death trap. Demoralizing your entire flying cadre puts them at a major disadvantage. The idea of being easily expendable does the same. The lore that came up with that is garage written by someone who has no military experience and didn't bother using a military advisor. Christ, no even propaganda can get rid of that kind of feeling.
The Tie Fighter is analogous to the Japanese Zero, which was mostly made of wood, which made it lighter and more maneuverable than early American aircraft and at first they enjoyed great success against American Pilots in almost embarrassing numbers,but as the war progressed, American plane design advanced with faster, better armored and armed planes eventually outlasting and overwhelming the Zeroes. This is exactly how things progress in the games and books. The Tie Defender is analogous to the German Me-262 which, if the Germans had devoted the resources they used for Terror Weapons to mass produce the 262 might have changed the result of the war. We see this play out in Stsr Wars: Rebels where Admiral Thrawn is advocating the Defender Program as an alternative to another Death Star. Had Tie Fighter Pilots had an Air Suleriority fighter instead just a modified Tie Fighter, with more speed, maneuverability and firepower than the Alliance could muster, things would have gone very differently at Endor. The Second Death Star became a trap, not for the Rebels, but for the Emperor. Had it just been a hollow shell and the fleet armed with Defenders and Interdictors would have pinned and destroyed the Rebel Fleet. Tie fighters were trash. Storm Troopers became trash. Because as the war progressed, attrition meant training had to suffer and Stormtrooper Armor was allowed to be produced for show, not protection. This simply degraded further after Endor, so that by the time of the Mandalorian they are a source of ridicule and mockery among the Mandalorians. You notice Cara Dune took them very seriously until she started hanging out with Mando. It is only after she sees their decline for herself that she takes them less seriously.
The Tie Fighter is equivalent to the Mitsubishi Zero of the WWII Pacific theatre. George borrowed heavily from that era.
I love tie fighters, they are my favorite star wars ship and I am immensely disappointed in people and books/games that say tie fighters are garbage
nice to see Nolan's rant making it into a video
Lol, first of your videos I've ever watched. Showed up in my suggestions because I watch Eck.
I dont think it is garbage.
Same skill pilots tie fighter vs xwing. The tie fighter would win
More speed and more agile.
I think it is representation of games and movies.
Like the AT-ST we saw them like a joke. Until ep 4 of mandalorion that say that entire batallions were wiped out by one of them.
I know Disney would never do this, but I would love to see a TV show centered around the Imperial Academy and TIE pilot training. The next time you watch TOP GUN with Tom Cruise, just imagine the setting is an Imperial Ace training program as they vie for a Baron title, it really fits quite well lol. But seriously, A show following Soontir Fel in his rise to a decorated combat ace would be very interesting and would bring him back to canon!!
I would love to see a discussion of the Brian Daley Han Solo Novels.
A tie is treated the same way as a Leo from the gundam series, mass produced cannon fodder until a skilled pilot got ahold of one at which point they could nearly go blow for blow against a gundam, I don’t believe the tie a perfectly designed fighter for it’s role and perfectly utilized in its roll would be nearly classified as cannon fodder.
TIE Fighter was a better game than X-Wing. I prefered the standard TIE Fighter in that game to any of the "upgrades".
Go play Tie-Fighter (1995) to learn what it's to be a Imperial Navy pilot.
I just dug my 233pentium dos/win98 machine out of the garage a few weeks ago, found a servicable Gravis Phoenix joystick on ebay, put it in my den and told everyone to leave me the hell alone for a few hours a week. Its setup in pretty much maxed out late 90's goodness with max 256mb ram and a WaveBlaster 2 daughterboard on the soundcard to experience the iMuse music in full MIDI glory. Once I finish TIE Fighter gonna do some Dark Forces and X-Wing. Also need to find the system I can run DF2 Jedi Knight and X-Wing Alliance on. I have no idea where my Voodoo 2 card went, so that'll be interesting.