Darths & Droids IV: Not in Numerical Order

[Rockphed]

Oooh boy, now I feel all the time I played the old DOS game, TIE Fighter, and obsessing about the different spaceship models didn't go to waste

I don't remember the details of all the ships, but the thing is, TIE isn't a ship model, it's a whole line of ships used by the Empire (basically all of their small military craft). The bowtie-looking ones are TIE Fighters, the most basic models, and IIRC it's the only one that doesn't have shields. It's about as bare-bones as it gets. Then you have TIE Interceptor, a somewhat higher-quality fighter, TIE Bomber which has a double cockpit and heavier weaponry, I think Vader's ship was a TIE Superior or something like that... most of those have curved wings, unlike the flat ones on the TIE Fighter, which is an easy way to tell them apart. Not 100% sure which of those were made up for the games though, I'm under the impression TIE Bombers aren't in the movies. I should look those ship models up though, it's been years and I've forgotten most of it...

I remember a double-cockpit ship in Empire Strikes Back that was shooting at the asteroids perpendicular to its direction of travel.

[Kantaki]

That's a second cockpit?
I always thought that's where those things kept the bombs.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Yup. There are also variants on the basic TIE frame for reconnaissance, sending targeting telemetry, etc.

Also, KB, they haven't switched any colors around. Blasters are always red (except for stun shots, which are blue) and TIEs have always shot green (as do SDs and the Death Star).

[Dire_Flumph]

Moreso, this particular TIE is the TIE/sf Special Forces Variant. Detail isn't great in the comic, but you can get a better look in the movie and instead of the fixed forward guns most TIE craft have, it has a swivel turret below the ball cockpit to allow it to fire ahead or behind (wings get in the way for firing broadsides). Because of that it's also a 2 seater (pilot/turret gunner) unlike line issue TIE Fighters.

That's a second cockpit?
I always thought that's where those things kept the bombs.

TIE Bombers have a double hull, main loadout is to have the secondary hull loaded with the expanded ordnance and a targeting array below. However, in The Empire Strikes back, one shot implies a TIE Bomber is what Needa takes to fly over to Vader's Star Destroyer. So it was actually in canon for awhile that what he took is a TIE Shuttle, which is a TIE Bomber frame with the ordnance pod replaced by a personnel pod.

Sigh, sad sometimes that I know more about TIE craft than how to maintain my car.

[Rogar Demonblud]

The manuals on TIEs are more readable than your car's owner's manual.

[Rockphed]

The manuals on TIEs are more readable than your car's owner's manual.

Largely because they don't actually have to be consistent, complete, and correct.

[Rogar Demonblud]

The last time I looked at an owner's manual, it told me the battery was on the opposite side of the engine compartment from where it was and assured me the car had a 96 gallon fuel tank. Which manuals are you dunking on again?

[VoxRationis]

Moreso, this particular TIE is the TIE/sf Special Forces Variant. Detail isn't great in the comic, but you can get a better look in the movie and instead of the fixed forward guns most TIE craft have, it has a swivel turret below the ball cockpit to allow it to fire ahead or behind (wings get in the way for firing broadsides). Because of that it's also a 2 seater (pilot/turret gunner) unlike line issue TIE Fighters.



TIE Bombers have a double hull, main loadout is to have the secondary hull loaded with the expanded ordnance and a targeting array below. However, in The Empire Strikes back, one shot implies a TIE Bomber is what Needa takes to fly over to Vader's Star Destroyer. So it was actually in canon for awhile that what he took is a TIE Shuttle, which is a TIE Bomber frame with the ordnance pod replaced by a personnel pod.

Sigh, sad sometimes that I know more about TIE craft than how to maintain my car.

The original trilogy's cross-section book identifies a ship with a TIE bomber chassis as a boarding craft, so it would appear that that is typical.

What's odd is that the First Order TIEs don't seem to be particularly larger than their Imperial counterparts, but they're apparently large enough for a two-person crew, ejector seats, a life support system, missile racks, and a bunch of other odds and ends.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Benefits of advancing technology and miniaturization. Comparable to the C-130 Hercules; When originally designed, everything used miles of copper wire. Then fiber-optic became a thing, and they suddenly had a balance issue without all that weight in the cockpit. Which is why even the civilian market birds have military grade ballistic armor around the cockpit.

[Rockphed]

The last time I looked at an owner's manual, it told me the battery was on the opposite side of the engine compartment from where it was and assured me the car had a 96 gallon fuel tank. Which manuals are you dunking on again?

Just because technical manuals fail spectacularly at being manuals does not change that the people who write them are trying to be correct, complete, and consistent. The type of person you hire to write a technical manual is completely different from the type of person you hire to write a fictional technical readout for a made up vehicle. The technical manual is supposed to include all the information as it actually is in the vehicle while the person who is doing the made up readout is given wide latitude to invent what the vehicle is. I wouldn't be surprised if the star wars thingers were written by people like Michael Stackpole, but I can almost guarantee you that the manual for your car was written and edited by a team including a pair of junior mechanical engineers and someone who hasn't seen the sun in 3 months because they enjoy being in the grey, soulless depths of the office building.

[theangelJean]

New comic, with commentary from both keybounce and memnarch!

I wasn't sure how the impact managed to hit both the window and the floor either, memnarch ... but I guess there's no way they would fire just one shot, right?

[Aeson]

Spoiler: On the discussion about TIEs

Show

The solar panels on TIE fighters are there to help recharge the weapon system. Getting rid of that makes sense, since there isn't much solar energy in space once you're not close to the star.

Also, even if you're "close" to a star, there's orientation and occlusion issues - a nice big hexagonal panel such as is found on the TIE/ln Fighter might be able to catch a lot of light, but not if it's edge-on to the source or in the shadow of a planet.

Additionally, the power requirements for a practical laser-like weapon system with the rate of fire of a TIE Fighter's cannons would most likely be far enough beyond the potential power generation of a solar panel the size of a TIE Fighter's hexagonal wing panels as to make such a system irrelevant at reasonable distances from stars in human-inhabited star.

Beyond that, the power outputs implied for the setting's reactor technology make the need for a low-output conditionally-operational supplemental power source such as a starfighter-mounted solar panel dubious. Consider the power generation capability implied for the Death Star: Alderaan appears to be an Earth-like planet, and it is suggested by the movie that the Death Star can produce about one Alderaan-destroying 'superlaser' blast per day, at minimum (Yavin IV was attacked within a day of the Millennium Falcon departing the Death Star and Alderaan was blown up in the apparently several hours between the Millennium Falcon leaving Tatooine and arriving in the Alderaan system). Assuming that the 'superlaser' blast delivers only enough energy to overcome gravitational binding energy, it would need to deliver 2e32 J; to generate that energy in a day, the Death Star reactor would need a surplus power output in excess of 2e27 W. If the Death Star is a sphere with a 120km diameter and the TIE Fighter can be modeled as a sphere of 2m diameter (roughly the size of the cockpit; yes, the cockpit is largely empty space, but the pylons supporting the wings presumably are not) then that suggests a power output of around 1e13 W for the TIE Fighter; for comparison, a regular hexagonal solar panel with a 7.24m diagonal in Earth orbit would have a maximum output of around 4.7e4 W (~3.4e4 W on Earth's surface), assuming 100% efficiency. Even if the TIE Fighter's power output were much less than 1e13 W due to economies of scale heavily favoring the Death Star and shaky assumptions about size, it's probably not enough to reduce that nine-order-of-magnitude disparity in power output between a hypothetical reactor and a TIE-wing-panel-sized solar panel to something where the solar panel's output would be relevant.

no life support*

For what it's worth, the TIE pilot uniform would probably be better than the Rebel pilot uniform for pilot survivability in the case of sudden depressurization of the cockpit or ejection from the fighter - it's fully enclosed whereas the Rebel pilot uniform has an open-faced helmet with an oxygen mask that apparently isn't normally worn by the pilots, and if it really is the case that TIE life support system is the pilot's uniform then it probably also has at least the potential to provide life support to the pilot for a longer time than the Rebel pilot uniform would since the system would need to be capable of operating at least as long as the TIE is expected to be operated, which could be several hours or more for standing patrols such as appeared to be in place around the Death Star in A New Hope.

Beyond that, I would point out that if you're just looking at the evidence in the movies then the answer to the question "Do TIE Fighters have life support systems" is inconclusive-leaning-yes:
- The TIE pilots we see do not appear to be carrying any significant air supply, which is problematic for any long-duration flight operations such as would presumably be required for standing patrols such as seem to be in place around the Death Star in A New Hope. Possibly advanced technology offers higher-density air storage or a rebreather-type option which can provide oxygen for sufficient time while being compact enough to fit on the TIE pilot uniforms seen; otherwise, there's at minimum an oxygen bottle somewhere in the TIE itself.
- Darth Vader's TIE probably has a life support system, because while Vader's suit is a life support system it does not appear to contain its own oxygen supply. Granted, this is a unique TIE operated by a pilot with special life support needs.
- The sequel trilogy shows us a scene where people who clearly are not spacesuit-type uniforms or other equipment. Granted, this is not the same type of TIE.

no shields.

As with the life support thing, this is an assumption ill-supported by the movies, as the explicitly-shielded X-Wings and Y-Wings (and the presumably-shielded A-Wings) do not appear to survive TIE-series weaponry significantly better than TIE-series starfighters survive -Wing weaponry - this, despite visual indicators (size, rate of fire) suggesting that the weaponry used on TIE-series starfighters is lighter than the weaponry used on -Wing starfighters. Either the TIEs are also shielded or the starfighter shields are of dubious value.

As to the people commenting that TIEs are meant to swarm, remember that the engagement at the first Death Star did not show any significant numerical advantage for the TIE Fighters - only eight TIE Fighters can be confirmed to participate in the dogfighting over the Death Star (six in the group shown after the Rebel fighter controller announces the arrival of Imperial fighters, two more with Vader) whereas a minimum of 29 Rebel fighters (21 X-Wings and 8 Y-Wings) can be confirmed to have participated in the attack by virtue of all being visible in a single shot - and none of the subsequent dogfighting scenes suggest a significant numerical advantage for the Imperial fighter group.

Past a certain point, it doesnt matter how much stronger you are than your opponent, or better a pilot, if there are 10 of them for every 1 of you. You need somewhere to dodge into.

Actually, 10-to-1 is probably better for the outnumbered side in WWI/WWII-style dogfighting than a more even match; the numerically-superior force simply has too much in the area, making it hard for pilots / gunners / fighter directors to keep track of where everything is and pick the hostiles out from amongst the cloud of friendlies. If you want to rely on numerical superiority to win a fight, you probably want sometihng closer to 1.5-2:1 - enough where your fighters can double-team the enemy, but not so many that your fighters get in one another's way or make it hard to keep track of the enemy. Anything much beyond that should probably stay out of the immediate combat area to catch hostiles that break away from the fighting or to act as reserves which can rotate in as actively-engaged fighters are lost or exhausted.

[Gez]

The last time I looked at an owner's manual, it told me the battery was on the opposite side of the engine compartment from where it was and assured me the car had a 96 gallon fuel tank. Which manuals are you dunking on again?

What happens in these cases is that there's someone who goes "we don't have a manual for the latest model yet?" and someone else goes "well, we have a manual for the previous model, it should still be good, right?" and then the narrator voice goes "it was not".

[137beth]

For some reason I just remembered that this isn't the first (almost?) all-evil party this group has played. Ben ran a game where the PCs were the villains of a batman movie.

[Rogar Demonblud]

What happens in these cases is that there's someone who goes "we don't have a manual for the latest model yet?" and someone else goes "well, we have a manual for the previous model, it should still be good, right?" and then the narrator voice goes "it was not".

What happens in any case where the mechanic goes to the manual is much cursing of engineers in general and the ones who write manuals in particular. I understand from friends who are shadetree mechanics that you are pretty much guaranteed to get better information from YouTube videos.

[Xihirli]

For some reason I just remembered that this isn't the first (almost?) all-evil party this group has played. Ben ran a game where the PCs were the villains of a batman movie.

They were protecting the city from a violent vigilante. The only way to draw out a crime fighter was to commit crimes! Nothing morally gray going on here.

[Rogar Demonblud]

You know, I wonder what Jim is like away from the table. He has to have some reason people put up with him.

[Kantaki]

New comic

Great. This is turning out to be one of those plans.

[Rogar Demonblud]

Reading the latest strip for Irregular Webcomic, I suddenly realized that Serron is definitely Jim's character. And that's an impressive list of things to scan for.

[Kantaki]

New comic

One of Poe's statements might even be true.
Maybe. We haven't seen him do much flying yet.
Devil may care sounds right though.
What else do you call someone flying a attack against the capital ship you just escaped from?
After turning a faked escape into a real one?
Shooting people who are on your side in the progress.
Oh. Right. Jim.

[theangelJean]

Regarding flaws in imagined skills, doesn't lack of realism when using high Strength, Dexterity or Con get handwaved away pretty much all the time? Somehow we expect it to be different for Int, Wis or Cha?

[Keltest]

Regarding flaws in imagined skills, doesn't lack of realism when using high Strength, Dexterity or Con get handwaved away pretty much all the time? Somehow we expect it to be different for Int, Wis or Cha?

When a less intelligent person tries to roleplay somebody with superhuman intelligence, its sometimes pretty noticeable, whereas if somebody who isnt strong IRL says they deadlift something the rules allow them too, we cant exactly call them out on doing it wrong.

To use another example, somebody who is prone to rash action and little forethought as a player will struggle to play somebody of high wisdom because they as a person simply cannot make themselves think like that.

[theangelJean]

When a less intelligent person tries to roleplay somebody with superhuman intelligence, its sometimes pretty noticeable, whereas if somebody who isnt strong IRL says they deadlift something the rules allow them too, we cant exactly call them out on doing it wrong.

To use another example, somebody who is prone to rash action and little forethought as a player will struggle to play somebody of high wisdom because they as a person simply cannot make themselves think like that.

Yeah, I was wondering if the difference was that there were rules around it, so it becomes rollplay rather than roleplay. And now I'm reminded of Elan trying to "Diplomacy" his way out of something ...

[Rogar Demonblud]

To answer the question at the end of keybounce's commentary, Jim is flirting with his wife while trying to be in character. I've seen too many RL couples do this in game to pay it much mind any more.

[137beth]

Yeah, I was wondering if the difference was that there were rules around it, so it becomes rollplay rather than roleplay. And now I'm reminded of Elan trying to "Diplomacy" his way out of something ...

Nobody Rollplays properly anymore! Back in my day, we locked the players inside a barrel and sent them rolling down a hill, and they had to play the game while they were rolling. That's why they called it ROLLplaying!

[Rogar Demonblud]

Of all the weak livered nonsense of the younger generations. Locks!? In my day, we used a ball of hairy string to tie them into place. Binding force of the universe there, junior, never get caught without your ball of hairy string. And you had to make good yeast rolls between your turns in the barrel, and make sure they rose to the occasion. Kids these days.

[Keltest]

Bah! In my day, we had to roll our own barrels up a hill, from the inside! Barefoot! In the Snow! And we liked it that way!

I say, most likely being younger than anybody else making this joke. I just want to escalate it.

[The Glyphstone]

To answer the question at the end of keybounce's commentary, Jim is flirting with his wife while trying to be in character. I've seen too many RL couples do this in game to pay it much mind any more.

Who is Jim's wife? Ben and Annie were the ones who got married.

[Rockphed]

Who is Jim's wife? Ben and Annie were the ones who got married.

No, Jim and Annie got married. Ben is still single (or at least we haven't met his significant other). Ben played Obi-wan and then Chewbacca. Jim played Qui-gon and then Amidala and then Jin Orso and then Han Solo and now Poe. Annie played Anikin skywalker and then Vader/Princess and is now playing Finn.

[The Glyphstone]

No, Jim and Annie got married. Ben is still single (or at least we haven't met his significant other). Ben played Obi-wan and then Chewbacca. Jim played Qui-gon and then Amidala and then Jin Orso and then Han Solo and now Poe. Annie played Anikin skywalker and then Vader/Princess and is now playing Finn.

Oh, huh. I could have sworn it was Ben and Annie. Jim being a physics PhD made me think he was a bit older than most of the others, who were still in college or just entering it.

Archive binge complete. I was wrong, it is Jim+Annie.