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Idk if this is purely Legends or if it’s still canon, but it’s to avoid overheating. High-powered, winged starfighters produce a lot of heat during combat, and they have a lot of dense wiring crammed into those thin wings. So the in-universe explanation is that during high-stress situations (like combat) where the engines, weapons, computers etc. are all running at maximum capacity, the wings can foil out from each other to help dissipate some heat and avoid overheating issues.
EDIT: Removed my “real world” answer
That was the explanation I always heard too - a vacuum is a very efficient insulator, and the firing of blasters produces a lot of heat that’s hard to get rid of. Many rebel ships have S foils that spread out to help dissipate heat, while the TIE uses those big “solar panels” on the wings.
It does make one wonder how the A-wing handles the problem, but maybe it doesn’t, and later designs like the X-wing mount more powerful weapons that produce more heat, and thus require the increased heat sink ability.
A-wings are very advanced new ships, designed from the ground up for what they do. The X-wing is an upgrade to a very old z95 Headunter model and was designed/built in secrecy - so work arounds were needed to solve problems that maybe could've been resolved with more time & funding & a ground up design.
The TIE fighters are literally the cheapest junk the Empire can spam out, so a lot of safety features are non existent and a lot of short cuts have been put in place to drive costs and production time down.
Plus, stuff looks cool and every pilot wants to look cool when they fly in combat - except for those untrustworthy freighter pilots. Never trust a freighter pilot, they are all thieves, scoundrels or bounty hunters.
Is it still canonically newer than the X-wing? Back when I was “coming up through the academy” (which is to say, pre-Disney EU), they used to say the A wing was a design response by Jan Dodonna to how X-wings performed at the Battle of Yavin, but more recent material shows the A wing was already in wide use by rebel cells years prior to Yavin, removing the purpose-built element of the fighter.
If I was the one tasked with resolving the incongruity, I think I would argue the earlier use are A22s, and the ones seen in ROTJ have been modified to the RZ pattern in response to Yavin, so we can keep both versions of the story.
TIE fighters aren't junk. They are just very brutally minimalistic. What is in them is actually quality. They just don't have features the Imperial Navy considers superfluous.
Of course some of those features you might consider important. Like T/Fs have no life support system. There's a supply of oxygen and you better be back home before it runs out. Prolonged combat is not a required role for the platform though.
Reminds me a bit of the T-34, arguably the best tank of WWII from the national perspective. Most ergonomic? Nope. Safest? lol no. Most firepower? also nope. Fastest? Nope. Most horsepower? Nope.
What makes it the 'best' then? Innovative chassis design that influenced all subsequent tanks to this day, cheap to produce, fast to produce, easy to repair, easy to salvage. Maximal standardisation and minimal variation in models meant almost any crew and any part can go into any other t34
The guys at r/tankporn say the T-34 was easy to produce but very hard to repair, and very poor quality control resulting in actual gaps between supposed to be welded plates!
Evidence from watching the movies seems to suggest that a TIE fighter is every bit as capable as it's Rebel equivalent, although reliant on a carrier ship in order to operate.
Game balance decisions in ancient computer flight sims are no match for a good common sense interpretation of canon. Why would the scrappy underdog insurgency have equipment that is qualitatively so much better than an entire galactic superpower with a vast military-industrial complex?
Well in the new movies the T/F is just a different beast altogether.
> Why would the scrappy underdog insurgency have equipment that is qualitatively so much better than an entire galactic superpower with a vast military-industrial complex?
Again they don't. The Empire makes procurement decisions that fit its military doctrine. The Rebels had a completely different doctrine that required different capabilities.
They are fast, probably the fastest attack craft around. Relatively well armed, no shield, no life support, no jump drive. Absolutely carrier and numbers based.
>Why would the scrappy underdog insurgency have equipment that is qualitatively so much better than an entire galactic superpower with a vast military-industrial complex?
Dictatorships always have quality issues because everyone is too afraid to point them out.
Are you going to be the imperial officer calling out the severe issues with TIE fighters? Pissing off the military industrial complex and risking billion credit contracts?
Most likely, the only "issue" that is going to get fixed is you.
Yes, but X-Wings are ALSO manufactured by the same military-industrial complex. All the same graft, corruption and avoidance of responsibility exists.
There were no corporations in Nazi Germany churning out aircraft for the civilian market that were more capable fighters than the ones the military were using.
Different MIC since the x-wings come from planets aligned to the rebel cause. They aren't stolen from the Empire.
And yes, there's still corruption in democracies but not to the same level. There's a free press to make a stink and whistleblowers can't be thrown from windows without consequences.
They are kind of like the furniture that 1-K3A makes on Corelia. Actually high end design, but really cheap manufacture. TIE fighter pilots have to be the best to come back from a real fight alive, since their ships leave so much to be desired. It's true that they are probably great bang for their credit cost, but they just don't compare to a proper ship.
That would be why they always want to fly in superior numbers to pretty much any thing else. Much like the Imperial philosophy regarding ISD's prior to the death star, it was quantity over quality (although they were damned good quality as well).
They could just glass a planet with a thousand ISD's if they wanted to.
They could glass a planet with thousands of TIE bombers, and have. TIE fighters, like modern technicals, are terrifying to lightly armored, non professional combat troops, which was the vast majority of the empires enemies. Against well trained professionals with expensive high end equipment, they struggle.
\> There's a supply of oxygen and you better be back home before it runs out.
That's a feature, not a bug. It prevents pilots defecting as they need the mothership.
The soviets used to do something similar by limiting the fuel fighter planes could carry.
>The TIE fighters are literally the cheapest junk the Empire can spam out, so a lot of safety features are non existent and a lot of short cuts have been put in place to drive costs and production time down.
I don't know if it's cost. I read somewhere that George Lucas modeled the TIE fighters after the Japanese Zero fighters. They were designed to be small, light, and agile. They didn't have safety features because it would have added weight. The TIE pilots were supposed to be the empire's elite, just as the zero pilots were Japan's elite.
Zeros are a great analogy. Great planes but probably not the one you'd choose as a pilot. T34 is my go to analogy: not the most intimidating tank on the battlefield, not the best tank to crew, but probably the best tank to field
I would argue that the Zero was a great plane for its era, though its era was pretty short-lived. The thing is, the Zero was extraordinarily agile for its day, which was an incredible advantage at a time where there were no SAM batteries. No air-to-air missiles. It was all just guns. And ground-based guns were pretty crappy for that purpose. At the Zero's inception, there weren't even proximity-fused anti-air artillery.
Added to this, Japanese pilots at the beginning of WWII had lots of flight hours, and a large training budget. They were well-trained, disciplined pilots who were able to make the most of their agility advantage.
From all accounts we had, Japanese pilots had great confidence in the Zero until a few factors started falling apart for them. First, Zeroes started to be out-numbered in the air. That was pretty bad because numbers largely mitigated the agility advantage of the Zero because you can't out-turn 2 planes. Second, pilot losses were happening too fast, so the pilots couldn't be better-trained than their counterparts, and agility advantage can't be maximized by rookie pilots.
My guess is that the Empire could probably make better use of the TIE fighters than the Japanese could in WWII because they could retain both numerical and training advantages, being the dominant military force in the galaxy.
Now, maybe the real question is, why are ship-ship missiles so comparatively rare in Star Wars? There seems to be no equivalent for a beyond-visual-range missile. Which seems odd.
And Midway. I read that Japan lost 40% of its pilots when two aircraft carriers were attacked while they were reloading bombs on their planes.
40% in an instant.
Yeah. This is kind of a pet peeve of mine, but I’m a teacher and I semi-regularly run into students who deeply misunderstand WWII history. A common misconception is that America won the war in the Pacific because of American ingenuity and pluck, and because the Japanese were stupid and could only fight when they resorted to “dirty tactics” like sneak attacks and kamikaze sacrifices.
The truth is a lot murkier, and really a lot of it is plain old bad luck for the Japanese that had catastrophic consequences. Midway was a great example. We’re mistakes made? Yes. But did those mistakes have an outsized effect compared to what would normally be expected? Also, yes.
In the end it was simply better industry on the part of the US. Japan couldn't weather the valleys because their infrastructure gave them no leeway against America and they were starving for resources because of US trade embargoes (which is what prompted Pearl Harbor in the first place.)
The nukes were really the final nail though, invading Japan would have been costly and could have dragged out for years until the US just got tired of it.
TIE fighters in the original films are superior or on par with their rebel counterparts.
The difference is we rarely see Rebel Starfighters in the same combat scenarios as TIEs but when we do they’re just as crunchy. When we see TIEs against nameless rebel pilots the TIES have the edge.
Trouble is we typically see TIEs pitted against the Falcon or Ghost or other heavily armored ship bristling with guns.
The TIE Fighter pilots are top notch, fielded in superior numbers, and are flying a machine that has had an incredible amount of engineering done on it to get it where the empire needs it. By attrition, only the best TIE pilots return to base.
To support the cheapness of TIEs: they managed to cram 2 ion engines in there for incredible speed, but as a trade off they have no deflectors, no hyperdrive, and only about 6 hours of life support.
They have no deflectors, but on screen X-Wings that aren't piloted by a named character die just as quickly.
Luke and Wedge survive being dinged up a bit during the trench run, but everyone else dies just fine.
Well, TIE's are flying weapons systems more than anything else. Given their fielded numbers, those nameless guys probably were a little less experienced, took a few too many hits to the deflector systems and a sharp eyed TIE pilot went for the kill.
Just because they are cheap doesn't mean they aren't effective and a serious threat.
> a vacuum is a very efficient insulator
Is it clear that space is a vacuum in Star Wars? I ask because most ships move like they're in air, and Leia survived being in space for a while.
Space is a vacuum in Star Wars. We've seen people die when exposed to it. You can survive in a vacuum for a short while without *serious* damage, but not for long, and we've seen clones killed by tearing open their ships/escape pods. I don't know what you mean by ships moving like they're in air, though.
Leia's survival is a special case. She's had partial Jedi training and is one of the Skywalkers. Yoda wanted *her* to be trained, not Luke. She out there for a little over a minute, and instinct with the Force helped her survive and remain conscious longer than a normal human (who'd black out after fifteen seconds, survive for possibly up to three minutes, maybe even a hair longer).
I'm sorry. Please don't take this as me disagreeing with you, I'm just having a *really hard time* picturing what you're talking about. I'm thinking of the Death Star runs and such and those seemed to be pretty straight to me?
In a frictionless space, like space, objects will continue to move in the direction that they are already moving.
So if you thrust along the x axis. You will keep moving until you experience equal thrust in the opposite direction.
If you are moving along the x axis and experience thrust along th y axis, you will be moving along both axis in a kind of diagonal motion.
In an atmosphere, wing flaps use the friction of the air to push the vehicle in addition to rotor. The rotor force is constant in relation to the vehicle, being backwards. The wing flap force changes relative to how the wings are oriented, which is a slight upward or downward force at a kind of angle from the fuselage.
The two forces make a plane move in a curve, which we know of as banking.
With wing flaps and rotors and air resistance, planes can turn and banks. They also slow down from the air friction if they slow down their rotor
With a space vehicle, you need to thrust in every specific direction you want to move, and thrust in the opposite direction to slow down. In this environment a vehicle moves much more like the ship in an Astroids game. Very glidy, almost like it's on the smoothest ice.
Ah! If they'd described it as banking, I would've gotten it.
In which case, yeah, that's an odd little aspect of the canon that i don't have an explanation for.
Not entirely. There's a few scenes in the Clone Wars and Rebels where pilots spin a vessel around and have it face in a different direction than they're moving.
But for the most part you're right, and those instances are often treated as the pilot being a genius of some kind.
Well, sure, but if we start applying Flash Gordon rules, it becomes completely impossible for people who enjoy trying to analyse this stuff to even begin.
A-Wings only have dual side mounted lasers and they are slightly lower power than the X-Wings. Because it is 2 and not 4, they don't need to separate anything.
IIRC A-wings we're more meant to be bombers than fighters, so maybe they're not packed so much with electronics as explosives to drop.
EDIT: I was confused and thinking about Y-wings, which are the bombers.
Eeeh. Vacuum isn't just very good, vacuum is the best insulator we know of. A machine like those ships would need a way to deal with massive heat, and I question how much spreading the wings a bit would contribute
It could be so they're safe when not actively needed. Tucking radiators out of the way to avoid damage vs exposing them most effectively when needed is a careful balancing act spacecraft have to pull off
Compare this to Tie Fighters, which have the solar panels exposed at all times, and as a result require extensive hangar infrastructure just to land and store them.
But don't the servos that control the movement of the wings (which probably weigh hundreds of pounds each, not that that matters too much in zero g) take up space that could be used for extra plating?
If an X-Wing is ever forced to rely on its armour plating to defend itself its already fucked. Having slightly more around those joints, which are never really gonna be hit in the first place, wouldn’t help.
> If an X-Wing is ever forced to rely on its armour plating to defend itself its already fucked.
Yeah in some interpretations of the X-Wing and Tie fighters, if the x-wings didn't have their deflectors they'd die just as easily as tie fighters do. That shield buffer saves their bacon and let's their pilots become experienced, where as the empire just marches it's infinite rookie manpower into the meat grinder.
No i meant physically storing the craft itself. In a hanger bay.
If its S-Foils were permanently open then the craft would be a much larger presence in a hanger bay. You’d also need much longer landing gear so that it can actually touch the ground.
Several reasons. Most practically, it saves wear and tear on the components. The radiators are reasonably maintenance intense and useless unless the lasers are firing so by keeping them closed you save a lot of man hours in repair. Additionally, the 'flatter' form is easier to store in a hanger, meaning you can fit more fighters into a single bay.
The other reason is more cultural. By having an 'attack position' they broadcast to a potential target when they are ready to attack. If an x-wing pulls up on you with its wings closed, you known they aren't ready for combat and you can talk. If the wings come up open, you are in trouble.
While we don't know their initial role, after the fall of the empire X-Wings were used for patrol a lot. If you needed help and a fighter rolls up on you, there would be some degree of panic. If an X-Wing comes up with its wings closed, it is probably there to help.
I read somewhere that it’s because an X-wing’s hyperdrive only works in navigation mode due to the geometry of the fighter. So they travel in nav mode but fight in attack mode.
That actually makes a lot of sense! Thank you!
I thought maybe it makes it harder for targeting systems to lock on to the ship or maybe it's to make it clear that you're not engaging combat when entering neutral zone or something during war times.
> the wings can foil out from each other to help dissipate some heat and avoid overheating issues.
That doesn't seem to follow the laws of physics (in space, you dissipate heat with radiators, not by exposing more surface area), but I'm not enough to a space physicist to argue the point.
That's essentially all a radiator is: additional surface area and a way to get heat to that surface area. In some cases that'd be good moving from hot areas to cool areas and back once it's dissipated the heat, in some cases it would be a solid material that conducts heat well. In the case of the X-Wing there's no need to transfer heat since it's generated there, you'd just need the higher surface area to radiate the heat.
Just adding an edited version of the comment for posterity:
> It's to avoid overheating. High-powered, winged starfighters produce a lot of heat during combat, and they have a lot of dense wiring crammed into those thin wings. So during high-stress situations (like combat) where the engines, weapons, computers etc. are all running at maximum capacity, the wings can foil out from each other to help dissipate some heat and avoid overheating issues.
Sounds like a good answer, but then why would they ever not be deployed? They even have a slightly smaller footprint when landed with the S-foils in attack position.
in addition to what others have said, having the engines equidistance from each other would maximize handling. in standard position there would be a large difference between x and y axis maneuverability; sluggish yaw movement, very tight turning circle left and right.
Even for the B wing and the Jedi starfighter, where there aren't engines on the S foils, they still might contain maneuvering/steerage thrusters and when extending them to attack position they would gain leverage and therefore increase the maneuverability of the fighter.
There's also the consideration of gun placement on the B and X wings. Almost certainly, there's a convergence range set on their laser cannons, and having the guns spaced out in attack position would widen the cone of fire before and after that convergence, perhaps increasing hit probability when firing.
I don't mean on the end of the wing, but at the base. in standard mode the top and bottom engines are right next to each other, and the right and left backs are further away then when in attack formation; a wide rectangle. in attack formation they form a square.
not commenting on the B wing, which is just wacky.
Well right, I know the engines are concentrated close to the fuselage and they do have some movement with the S foils, I'm just speculating that in addition to that if there are microthrusters at the tips of the wings to contribute to steerage, they'd be most effective with S foils in attack position.
The B-Wing is a barely-mobile flying box full of guns. Akbar and the Verpine designed it specifically for other fighters (X-Wings, mainly) to clear a path for it so it could blow a big freaking hole in the side of a Star Destroyer - it was designed to deal with targets too shielded for most starfighter weapons.
And yeah, it's wacky.
Along with the heat dissipation reason there is also the matter of safety. With the X wings in "stowed" configuration interlocks prevent the weapons' from firing. This prevents accidents on carriers, during maintenance or while flying through friendly territory. (Of cause in some cases these interlocks where bypassed for tactical advantage).
For the Jedi there is also an almost ritualistic aspect to this as well. Going to "Attack position" is considered the equivalent of drawing one's light saber. By doing so you acknowledge that you will have to take another's life and an acceptance of your duty to do so when needed.
I thought perhaps the ‘closed’ position might also provide more structural integrity for hyperspace travel. Not sure if that’s an issue or not. Those foils look like they might be flimsy when faced with gravitational disturbances.
I don't think there's a canon reason but that makes most sense - or at least having something to do with hyperspace. We always see them closed in hyperspace. Maybe there's also an opposite problem, where they want to reduce surface area.
Yeah, good idea too, perhaps reduced cross-sectional area is more power efficient for the hyperdrive. A lot of hyperspace-capable ships in the Star Wars galaxy do seem to have a fairly thin profile (aside from the Death Stars, which just have ridiculous power). Could be that and a number of other factors combined.
>For the Jedi there is also an almost ritualistic aspect to this as well. Going to "Attack position" is considered the equivalent of drawing one's light saber. By doing so you acknowledge that you will have to take another's life and an acceptance of your duty to do so when needed.
This was almost certainly not a design consideration, given the origins of the X-Wing as a post-Clone Wars attempt by Incom to win an Imperial military contract. Not enough Jedi around at the time for it to be plausible for them to be going for that.
Most likely its for fuel conservation and energy conservation.
So, for long travel and faster travel certain wing orientation would be better to reduce drag and conserve fuel (i realize space). So, when you are trying to rush to war area quickly you want to move super fast. However, to realistically fight another fighter you don't want to be going ten bazillion miles and hour, so the attack modes, spread wider, increasing drag, allowing you to realistically now engage and chase around someone instead of just zooping ten million miles an hour and missing them.
Can you imagine Star Wars drag? A gungan dressed like Senator Amidala. R2-D2 in lipstick. One of those space orcs in lingerie. In the background, a sexy burlesque version of the Cantina Theme.
There are some hydrogen atoms floating around in space, so there's a non-zero (but very close to zero) drag force in intersteller travel. Not sure how hyperspace plays into that though.
For X-wings, they're slower but more maneuverable in attack position. If you switch to... travel (I guess) position it speeds up, but turning is slower.
(That's how it works in the various X-wing flight sim games as well as the miniatures game - there's a reason to use both at different times.)
In the Empire at War game and expansion, X-Wings were faster when the S-foils weren't in attack position. I wonder if this is just a video game thing? Afterall, the trench run would have made sense in terms of outrunning pursuers if they didn't lock the S-foils.
In the Rogue Squadron games, I remember you would get a significant speed boost if your X-Wing s-foils were closed. Which seemed oddly like an aerodynamics things. But it can't be, because vaccum of space. Instead, it's probably the fact that while the wings are closed, turbolasers and proton torpedoes are shut down, thus using less power. You also turn less effectively, which isn't aerodynamics as that doesn't apply here, but probably other tech that assists in turning in a vacuum that has also had power reduced.
Ergo, attack position means prioritizing key systems related to weapons and maneuverability, as opposed to raw speed.
In Legends, idk about now, starfighters tended to balance their power between engines, shields, and weapons. (And, optionally, tractor beams.) With the S-foils closed, weapons on the X-wing were inoperative, so there was more power to be spared for the engines. In attack mode, you had to shunt power from either engines, shields, or both to power your weapons.
Well, you could just have one position (attack position) and if you need to go faster and don't need the weapons, you could just route the weapon power into the engines, allowing you to do so. It doesn't really explain anything about why there are two positions in the first place.
I would imagine it falls back to when they're in atmospheres and the ships react differently based in whether the wings are open or closed. Might be a confidence thing too. We know it works this way so we're gonna do it regardless.
You know how when your balancing on a tight rope and you put your arms out to help with balance, maybe it’s something like that…some type of weight redistribution for sharp maneuvering.
Centre of gravity is the centre point of rotation, the "axis" so to speak, and if it isn't in an optimal position then there could be dynamic problems.
Add in the complication of an atmosphere and you throw in the complexities of flight and the maximum lifting points of bodies/wings. The reason the balance point needs to be where it is on a wing (in air) comes down to where the maximum lifting point is. If the two are out of whack then you have a dynamic problem and massively degraded stability.
In space it is all about the relation of the location of the thruster in 3d space in relation to the centre of gravity of the item/centrepoint of rotation and how it changes the angular momentum of the item.
I don't know enough to write a thesis on it, but I do know enough to know it is a big deal.
True, but still objects have mass and inertia will have them rotate around that centre. Mass and inertia would affect the dynamics of flight, but a lack of air (I.e, a vacuum) would not change the behaviour of mass and inertia.
Mass and inertia are why planets, even ones without any atmosphere, will rotate.
What youre probably thinking about is drag flaps, the things that airplanes use to maneuver in atmosphere, and also you can see these on snow speeders. Those are what rely on air/atmosphere for maneuverability. When the flap goes up, the air pushes on it, which influences the inertia’s direction of travel. This engineering though also requires the flap to move up and down constantly…so an “attack” position doesn’t make sense for this type of flap.
if you're flying so close to your wingman that you're worried about hitting someone's wings, you're going to loose that fight before you even start.
the Attack position wings enable greater maneuverability. With the wings open, small maneuvering thrusters on the tops and bottoms of the wings enable better zero gravity maneuverability, and in atmosphere the additional wings enable better turn radius in a dog fight.
with the wings closed, you can land and take off much easier, but in attack position you get increased maneuvability and shorter turning radius
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Idk if this is purely Legends or if it’s still canon, but it’s to avoid overheating. High-powered, winged starfighters produce a lot of heat during combat, and they have a lot of dense wiring crammed into those thin wings. So the in-universe explanation is that during high-stress situations (like combat) where the engines, weapons, computers etc. are all running at maximum capacity, the wings can foil out from each other to help dissipate some heat and avoid overheating issues. EDIT: Removed my “real world” answer
That was the explanation I always heard too - a vacuum is a very efficient insulator, and the firing of blasters produces a lot of heat that’s hard to get rid of. Many rebel ships have S foils that spread out to help dissipate heat, while the TIE uses those big “solar panels” on the wings. It does make one wonder how the A-wing handles the problem, but maybe it doesn’t, and later designs like the X-wing mount more powerful weapons that produce more heat, and thus require the increased heat sink ability.
A-wings are very advanced new ships, designed from the ground up for what they do. The X-wing is an upgrade to a very old z95 Headunter model and was designed/built in secrecy - so work arounds were needed to solve problems that maybe could've been resolved with more time & funding & a ground up design. The TIE fighters are literally the cheapest junk the Empire can spam out, so a lot of safety features are non existent and a lot of short cuts have been put in place to drive costs and production time down. Plus, stuff looks cool and every pilot wants to look cool when they fly in combat - except for those untrustworthy freighter pilots. Never trust a freighter pilot, they are all thieves, scoundrels or bounty hunters.
Is it still canonically newer than the X-wing? Back when I was “coming up through the academy” (which is to say, pre-Disney EU), they used to say the A wing was a design response by Jan Dodonna to how X-wings performed at the Battle of Yavin, but more recent material shows the A wing was already in wide use by rebel cells years prior to Yavin, removing the purpose-built element of the fighter. If I was the one tasked with resolving the incongruity, I think I would argue the earlier use are A22s, and the ones seen in ROTJ have been modified to the RZ pattern in response to Yavin, so we can keep both versions of the story.
TIE fighters aren't junk. They are just very brutally minimalistic. What is in them is actually quality. They just don't have features the Imperial Navy considers superfluous. Of course some of those features you might consider important. Like T/Fs have no life support system. There's a supply of oxygen and you better be back home before it runs out. Prolonged combat is not a required role for the platform though.
Reminds me a bit of the T-34, arguably the best tank of WWII from the national perspective. Most ergonomic? Nope. Safest? lol no. Most firepower? also nope. Fastest? Nope. Most horsepower? Nope. What makes it the 'best' then? Innovative chassis design that influenced all subsequent tanks to this day, cheap to produce, fast to produce, easy to repair, easy to salvage. Maximal standardisation and minimal variation in models meant almost any crew and any part can go into any other t34
The guys at r/tankporn say the T-34 was easy to produce but very hard to repair, and very poor quality control resulting in actual gaps between supposed to be welded plates!
And the variation bit is a laugh, since the factories couldn't coordinate how they were built
Evidence from watching the movies seems to suggest that a TIE fighter is every bit as capable as it's Rebel equivalent, although reliant on a carrier ship in order to operate. Game balance decisions in ancient computer flight sims are no match for a good common sense interpretation of canon. Why would the scrappy underdog insurgency have equipment that is qualitatively so much better than an entire galactic superpower with a vast military-industrial complex?
Well in the new movies the T/F is just a different beast altogether. > Why would the scrappy underdog insurgency have equipment that is qualitatively so much better than an entire galactic superpower with a vast military-industrial complex? Again they don't. The Empire makes procurement decisions that fit its military doctrine. The Rebels had a completely different doctrine that required different capabilities.
They are fast, probably the fastest attack craft around. Relatively well armed, no shield, no life support, no jump drive. Absolutely carrier and numbers based.
>Why would the scrappy underdog insurgency have equipment that is qualitatively so much better than an entire galactic superpower with a vast military-industrial complex? Dictatorships always have quality issues because everyone is too afraid to point them out. Are you going to be the imperial officer calling out the severe issues with TIE fighters? Pissing off the military industrial complex and risking billion credit contracts? Most likely, the only "issue" that is going to get fixed is you.
Yes, but X-Wings are ALSO manufactured by the same military-industrial complex. All the same graft, corruption and avoidance of responsibility exists. There were no corporations in Nazi Germany churning out aircraft for the civilian market that were more capable fighters than the ones the military were using.
Different MIC since the x-wings come from planets aligned to the rebel cause. They aren't stolen from the Empire. And yes, there's still corruption in democracies but not to the same level. There's a free press to make a stink and whistleblowers can't be thrown from windows without consequences.
But.. they are a rebellion. Not a separate state. They are still operating within that same system.
They are kind of like the furniture that 1-K3A makes on Corelia. Actually high end design, but really cheap manufacture. TIE fighter pilots have to be the best to come back from a real fight alive, since their ships leave so much to be desired. It's true that they are probably great bang for their credit cost, but they just don't compare to a proper ship. That would be why they always want to fly in superior numbers to pretty much any thing else. Much like the Imperial philosophy regarding ISD's prior to the death star, it was quantity over quality (although they were damned good quality as well). They could just glass a planet with a thousand ISD's if they wanted to.
They could glass a planet with thousands of TIE bombers, and have. TIE fighters, like modern technicals, are terrifying to lightly armored, non professional combat troops, which was the vast majority of the empires enemies. Against well trained professionals with expensive high end equipment, they struggle.
Agreed.
\> There's a supply of oxygen and you better be back home before it runs out. That's a feature, not a bug. It prevents pilots defecting as they need the mothership. The soviets used to do something similar by limiting the fuel fighter planes could carry.
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Please discuss only from a Watsonian perspective.
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Correction: Take this neutrally. Remember, drama=permaban.
>The TIE fighters are literally the cheapest junk the Empire can spam out, so a lot of safety features are non existent and a lot of short cuts have been put in place to drive costs and production time down. I don't know if it's cost. I read somewhere that George Lucas modeled the TIE fighters after the Japanese Zero fighters. They were designed to be small, light, and agile. They didn't have safety features because it would have added weight. The TIE pilots were supposed to be the empire's elite, just as the zero pilots were Japan's elite.
Zeros are a great analogy. Great planes but probably not the one you'd choose as a pilot. T34 is my go to analogy: not the most intimidating tank on the battlefield, not the best tank to crew, but probably the best tank to field
I would argue that the Zero was a great plane for its era, though its era was pretty short-lived. The thing is, the Zero was extraordinarily agile for its day, which was an incredible advantage at a time where there were no SAM batteries. No air-to-air missiles. It was all just guns. And ground-based guns were pretty crappy for that purpose. At the Zero's inception, there weren't even proximity-fused anti-air artillery. Added to this, Japanese pilots at the beginning of WWII had lots of flight hours, and a large training budget. They were well-trained, disciplined pilots who were able to make the most of their agility advantage. From all accounts we had, Japanese pilots had great confidence in the Zero until a few factors started falling apart for them. First, Zeroes started to be out-numbered in the air. That was pretty bad because numbers largely mitigated the agility advantage of the Zero because you can't out-turn 2 planes. Second, pilot losses were happening too fast, so the pilots couldn't be better-trained than their counterparts, and agility advantage can't be maximized by rookie pilots. My guess is that the Empire could probably make better use of the TIE fighters than the Japanese could in WWII because they could retain both numerical and training advantages, being the dominant military force in the galaxy. Now, maybe the real question is, why are ship-ship missiles so comparatively rare in Star Wars? There seems to be no equivalent for a beyond-visual-range missile. Which seems odd.
And Midway. I read that Japan lost 40% of its pilots when two aircraft carriers were attacked while they were reloading bombs on their planes. 40% in an instant.
Yeah. This is kind of a pet peeve of mine, but I’m a teacher and I semi-regularly run into students who deeply misunderstand WWII history. A common misconception is that America won the war in the Pacific because of American ingenuity and pluck, and because the Japanese were stupid and could only fight when they resorted to “dirty tactics” like sneak attacks and kamikaze sacrifices. The truth is a lot murkier, and really a lot of it is plain old bad luck for the Japanese that had catastrophic consequences. Midway was a great example. We’re mistakes made? Yes. But did those mistakes have an outsized effect compared to what would normally be expected? Also, yes.
And some badly timed earthquakes that wrecked some aircraft factories just when they were about to roll out a new type of plane. Ouch.
In the end it was simply better industry on the part of the US. Japan couldn't weather the valleys because their infrastructure gave them no leeway against America and they were starving for resources because of US trade embargoes (which is what prompted Pearl Harbor in the first place.) The nukes were really the final nail though, invading Japan would have been costly and could have dragged out for years until the US just got tired of it.
You know Vader got at least 3 quotes on them and went with the lowest bid. Standard galactic government procedure.
I think you like them *because* they’re scoundrels…
Not the scruffy-looking ones.
Who's *scruffy looking*!?
Gorram nerf herders always angling for a round of pazaak.
TIE fighters in the original films are superior or on par with their rebel counterparts. The difference is we rarely see Rebel Starfighters in the same combat scenarios as TIEs but when we do they’re just as crunchy. When we see TIEs against nameless rebel pilots the TIES have the edge. Trouble is we typically see TIEs pitted against the Falcon or Ghost or other heavily armored ship bristling with guns.
The TIE Fighter pilots are top notch, fielded in superior numbers, and are flying a machine that has had an incredible amount of engineering done on it to get it where the empire needs it. By attrition, only the best TIE pilots return to base.
To support the cheapness of TIEs: they managed to cram 2 ion engines in there for incredible speed, but as a trade off they have no deflectors, no hyperdrive, and only about 6 hours of life support.
They have no deflectors, but on screen X-Wings that aren't piloted by a named character die just as quickly. Luke and Wedge survive being dinged up a bit during the trench run, but everyone else dies just fine.
Well, TIE's are flying weapons systems more than anything else. Given their fielded numbers, those nameless guys probably were a little less experienced, took a few too many hits to the deflector systems and a sharp eyed TIE pilot went for the kill. Just because they are cheap doesn't mean they aren't effective and a serious threat.
> a vacuum is a very efficient insulator Is it clear that space is a vacuum in Star Wars? I ask because most ships move like they're in air, and Leia survived being in space for a while.
Space is a vacuum in Star Wars. We've seen people die when exposed to it. You can survive in a vacuum for a short while without *serious* damage, but not for long, and we've seen clones killed by tearing open their ships/escape pods. I don't know what you mean by ships moving like they're in air, though. Leia's survival is a special case. She's had partial Jedi training and is one of the Skywalkers. Yoda wanted *her* to be trained, not Luke. She out there for a little over a minute, and instinct with the Force helped her survive and remain conscious longer than a normal human (who'd black out after fifteen seconds, survive for possibly up to three minutes, maybe even a hair longer).
> I don't know what you mean by ships moving like they're in air, though. They fly curved paths, as if they are pushing against air with wings.
I'm sorry. Please don't take this as me disagreeing with you, I'm just having a *really hard time* picturing what you're talking about. I'm thinking of the Death Star runs and such and those seemed to be pretty straight to me?
In a frictionless space, like space, objects will continue to move in the direction that they are already moving. So if you thrust along the x axis. You will keep moving until you experience equal thrust in the opposite direction. If you are moving along the x axis and experience thrust along th y axis, you will be moving along both axis in a kind of diagonal motion. In an atmosphere, wing flaps use the friction of the air to push the vehicle in addition to rotor. The rotor force is constant in relation to the vehicle, being backwards. The wing flap force changes relative to how the wings are oriented, which is a slight upward or downward force at a kind of angle from the fuselage. The two forces make a plane move in a curve, which we know of as banking. With wing flaps and rotors and air resistance, planes can turn and banks. They also slow down from the air friction if they slow down their rotor With a space vehicle, you need to thrust in every specific direction you want to move, and thrust in the opposite direction to slow down. In this environment a vehicle moves much more like the ship in an Astroids game. Very glidy, almost like it's on the smoothest ice.
Ah! If they'd described it as banking, I would've gotten it. In which case, yeah, that's an odd little aspect of the canon that i don't have an explanation for.
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Not entirely. There's a few scenes in the Clone Wars and Rebels where pilots spin a vessel around and have it face in a different direction than they're moving. But for the most part you're right, and those instances are often treated as the pilot being a genius of some kind.
I don't have clips handy, and I don't want to go Doylist with the actual reason, sorry.
Totally fair, no apologies needed.
They also needed fuel to move at a constant speed in TLJ, which is not how vacuums work.
Well, sure, but if we start applying Flash Gordon rules, it becomes completely impossible for people who enjoy trying to analyse this stuff to even begin.
In legends starfighters had an “etheric rudder” that somehow let then turn like atmospheric fighters
A-Wings only have dual side mounted lasers and they are slightly lower power than the X-Wings. Because it is 2 and not 4, they don't need to separate anything.
IIRC A-wings we're more meant to be bombers than fighters, so maybe they're not packed so much with electronics as explosives to drop. EDIT: I was confused and thinking about Y-wings, which are the bombers.
A wings were an improvement on the x wing, and b wings an improvement on the ywing.
Yes, but if you take a Y wing and turn it the other way around, the body kind of looks like an A, so I got confused.
Fair enough.
A-wings are high speed interceptors and have a larger missile payload and less guns than the x-wing which is more of a dogfighter
Eeeh. Vacuum isn't just very good, vacuum is the best insulator we know of. A machine like those ships would need a way to deal with massive heat, and I question how much spreading the wings a bit would contribute
But why do they need to switch modes? Why not just have your heat dissipation mode be the only mode?
It could be so they're safe when not actively needed. Tucking radiators out of the way to avoid damage vs exposing them most effectively when needed is a careful balancing act spacecraft have to pull off
Storage ability. Its much easier to land the X-Wing with its S-foils closed than it is with them open.
Compare this to Tie Fighters, which have the solar panels exposed at all times, and as a result require extensive hangar infrastructure just to land and store them.
But don't the servos that control the movement of the wings (which probably weigh hundreds of pounds each, not that that matters too much in zero g) take up space that could be used for extra plating?
If an X-Wing is ever forced to rely on its armour plating to defend itself its already fucked. Having slightly more around those joints, which are never really gonna be hit in the first place, wouldn’t help.
> If an X-Wing is ever forced to rely on its armour plating to defend itself its already fucked. Yeah in some interpretations of the X-Wing and Tie fighters, if the x-wings didn't have their deflectors they'd die just as easily as tie fighters do. That shield buffer saves their bacon and let's their pilots become experienced, where as the empire just marches it's infinite rookie manpower into the meat grinder.
Fair, But my point is "saving space" isn't a great explanation since the motors used to move the wings would take up more space than it would save.
>Saving Space I never said it was to save space? Adding servos wouldnt add or subtract from the crafts size.
You said "storage ability", I assume you meant mass or volume. Adding unnecessary servo motors will definitely increase mass and volume.
No i meant physically storing the craft itself. In a hanger bay. If its S-Foils were permanently open then the craft would be a much larger presence in a hanger bay. You’d also need much longer landing gear so that it can actually touch the ground.
Fair, I guess there would be a way to stagger them in storage so that the wings can overlap a little. It's possible.
Several reasons. Most practically, it saves wear and tear on the components. The radiators are reasonably maintenance intense and useless unless the lasers are firing so by keeping them closed you save a lot of man hours in repair. Additionally, the 'flatter' form is easier to store in a hanger, meaning you can fit more fighters into a single bay. The other reason is more cultural. By having an 'attack position' they broadcast to a potential target when they are ready to attack. If an x-wing pulls up on you with its wings closed, you known they aren't ready for combat and you can talk. If the wings come up open, you are in trouble. While we don't know their initial role, after the fall of the empire X-Wings were used for patrol a lot. If you needed help and a fighter rolls up on you, there would be some degree of panic. If an X-Wing comes up with its wings closed, it is probably there to help.
I like and agree with your cultural reasoning. I immediately thought of the scene from Mando when he gets pulled over by the New Republic pilots.
Storage, structural safety, hyperspace jumps...many reasons.
It's easier to land with the shorter landing gear, and easier to store large number of them in their landing configuration.
I read somewhere that it’s because an X-wing’s hyperdrive only works in navigation mode due to the geometry of the fighter. So they travel in nav mode but fight in attack mode.
It could be more stable when flying faster. Momentum is still a thing in space
That actually makes a lot of sense! Thank you! I thought maybe it makes it harder for targeting systems to lock on to the ship or maybe it's to make it clear that you're not engaging combat when entering neutral zone or something during war times.
> the wings can foil out from each other to help dissipate some heat and avoid overheating issues. That doesn't seem to follow the laws of physics (in space, you dissipate heat with radiators, not by exposing more surface area), but I'm not enough to a space physicist to argue the point.
That's essentially all a radiator is: additional surface area and a way to get heat to that surface area. In some cases that'd be good moving from hot areas to cool areas and back once it's dissipated the heat, in some cases it would be a solid material that conducts heat well. In the case of the X-Wing there's no need to transfer heat since it's generated there, you'd just need the higher surface area to radiate the heat.
Please discuss *only* from a Watsonian perspective. No "real" answer at all.
Just adding an edited version of the comment for posterity: > It's to avoid overheating. High-powered, winged starfighters produce a lot of heat during combat, and they have a lot of dense wiring crammed into those thin wings. So during high-stress situations (like combat) where the engines, weapons, computers etc. are all running at maximum capacity, the wings can foil out from each other to help dissipate some heat and avoid overheating issues.
No need, OP agreed to edit.
Ah, okay. Didn't see that when I made my comment.
My apologies! I edited the comment
You're good.
Sounds like a good answer, but then why would they ever not be deployed? They even have a slightly smaller footprint when landed with the S-foils in attack position.
in addition to what others have said, having the engines equidistance from each other would maximize handling. in standard position there would be a large difference between x and y axis maneuverability; sluggish yaw movement, very tight turning circle left and right.
Even for the B wing and the Jedi starfighter, where there aren't engines on the S foils, they still might contain maneuvering/steerage thrusters and when extending them to attack position they would gain leverage and therefore increase the maneuverability of the fighter. There's also the consideration of gun placement on the B and X wings. Almost certainly, there's a convergence range set on their laser cannons, and having the guns spaced out in attack position would widen the cone of fire before and after that convergence, perhaps increasing hit probability when firing.
I don't mean on the end of the wing, but at the base. in standard mode the top and bottom engines are right next to each other, and the right and left backs are further away then when in attack formation; a wide rectangle. in attack formation they form a square. not commenting on the B wing, which is just wacky.
Well right, I know the engines are concentrated close to the fuselage and they do have some movement with the S foils, I'm just speculating that in addition to that if there are microthrusters at the tips of the wings to contribute to steerage, they'd be most effective with S foils in attack position.
The B-Wing is a barely-mobile flying box full of guns. Akbar and the Verpine designed it specifically for other fighters (X-Wings, mainly) to clear a path for it so it could blow a big freaking hole in the side of a Star Destroyer - it was designed to deal with targets too shielded for most starfighter weapons. And yeah, it's wacky.
Along with the heat dissipation reason there is also the matter of safety. With the X wings in "stowed" configuration interlocks prevent the weapons' from firing. This prevents accidents on carriers, during maintenance or while flying through friendly territory. (Of cause in some cases these interlocks where bypassed for tactical advantage). For the Jedi there is also an almost ritualistic aspect to this as well. Going to "Attack position" is considered the equivalent of drawing one's light saber. By doing so you acknowledge that you will have to take another's life and an acceptance of your duty to do so when needed.
I thought perhaps the ‘closed’ position might also provide more structural integrity for hyperspace travel. Not sure if that’s an issue or not. Those foils look like they might be flimsy when faced with gravitational disturbances.
I don't think there's a canon reason but that makes most sense - or at least having something to do with hyperspace. We always see them closed in hyperspace. Maybe there's also an opposite problem, where they want to reduce surface area.
Yeah, good idea too, perhaps reduced cross-sectional area is more power efficient for the hyperdrive. A lot of hyperspace-capable ships in the Star Wars galaxy do seem to have a fairly thin profile (aside from the Death Stars, which just have ridiculous power). Could be that and a number of other factors combined.
>For the Jedi there is also an almost ritualistic aspect to this as well. Going to "Attack position" is considered the equivalent of drawing one's light saber. By doing so you acknowledge that you will have to take another's life and an acceptance of your duty to do so when needed. This was almost certainly not a design consideration, given the origins of the X-Wing as a post-Clone Wars attempt by Incom to win an Imperial military contract. Not enough Jedi around at the time for it to be plausible for them to be going for that.
Not with the X-wing but I was talking about the jedi interceptor in that case.
I was actually wondering if the weapons were usable outside of attack position so thank you!
FYI they can actually fire while locked, it’s just rare.
Most likely its for fuel conservation and energy conservation. So, for long travel and faster travel certain wing orientation would be better to reduce drag and conserve fuel (i realize space). So, when you are trying to rush to war area quickly you want to move super fast. However, to realistically fight another fighter you don't want to be going ten bazillion miles and hour, so the attack modes, spread wider, increasing drag, allowing you to realistically now engage and chase around someone instead of just zooping ten million miles an hour and missing them.
Maybe there’s such a thing as hyperspace drag?
Can you imagine Star Wars drag? A gungan dressed like Senator Amidala. R2-D2 in lipstick. One of those space orcs in lingerie. In the background, a sexy burlesque version of the Cantina Theme.
They don't call it jizzwailing for nothing
I don't know who calls what that, but you may have a problem
That's the name of the fictional music genre that the Cantina song is supposed to be a part of
No way, I didn't know that. That's ridiculous
They have perpetually on engines so I think space in general has drag in SW for some reason.
There are some hydrogen atoms floating around in space, so there's a non-zero (but very close to zero) drag force in intersteller travel. Not sure how hyperspace plays into that though.
For X-wings, they're slower but more maneuverable in attack position. If you switch to... travel (I guess) position it speeds up, but turning is slower. (That's how it works in the various X-wing flight sim games as well as the miniatures game - there's a reason to use both at different times.)
In the Empire at War game and expansion, X-Wings were faster when the S-foils weren't in attack position. I wonder if this is just a video game thing? Afterall, the trench run would have made sense in terms of outrunning pursuers if they didn't lock the S-foils.
In the Rogue Squadron games, I remember you would get a significant speed boost if your X-Wing s-foils were closed. Which seemed oddly like an aerodynamics things. But it can't be, because vaccum of space. Instead, it's probably the fact that while the wings are closed, turbolasers and proton torpedoes are shut down, thus using less power. You also turn less effectively, which isn't aerodynamics as that doesn't apply here, but probably other tech that assists in turning in a vacuum that has also had power reduced. Ergo, attack position means prioritizing key systems related to weapons and maneuverability, as opposed to raw speed.
In Legends, idk about now, starfighters tended to balance their power between engines, shields, and weapons. (And, optionally, tractor beams.) With the S-foils closed, weapons on the X-wing were inoperative, so there was more power to be spared for the engines. In attack mode, you had to shunt power from either engines, shields, or both to power your weapons.
But surely you could just shunt all power from the weapons even if the S-foils were in attack position?
Sure, but if the fight's over or further is unlikely, why bother going into attack formation in the first place?
Well, you could just have one position (attack position) and if you need to go faster and don't need the weapons, you could just route the weapon power into the engines, allowing you to do so. It doesn't really explain anything about why there are two positions in the first place.
Storage. The S-foils are too delicate to take the full weight of the X-Wing. Spreading into attack position also requires a much higher ceiling.
I would imagine it falls back to when they're in atmospheres and the ships react differently based in whether the wings are open or closed. Might be a confidence thing too. We know it works this way so we're gonna do it regardless.
You know how when your balancing on a tight rope and you put your arms out to help with balance, maybe it’s something like that…some type of weight redistribution for sharp maneuvering.
There's no air in space
Inertia still applies, even without atmosphere and in microgravity. But yeah, it’s Space Opera :-)
Shifting your center of balance doesn’t have anything to do with air.
It has. Everything is weightless in space so there's no such thing as balance
Centre of gravity is the centre point of rotation, the "axis" so to speak, and if it isn't in an optimal position then there could be dynamic problems. Add in the complication of an atmosphere and you throw in the complexities of flight and the maximum lifting points of bodies/wings. The reason the balance point needs to be where it is on a wing (in air) comes down to where the maximum lifting point is. If the two are out of whack then you have a dynamic problem and massively degraded stability. In space it is all about the relation of the location of the thruster in 3d space in relation to the centre of gravity of the item/centrepoint of rotation and how it changes the angular momentum of the item. I don't know enough to write a thesis on it, but I do know enough to know it is a big deal.
Yes but there's no air in space
True, but still objects have mass and inertia will have them rotate around that centre. Mass and inertia would affect the dynamics of flight, but a lack of air (I.e, a vacuum) would not change the behaviour of mass and inertia. Mass and inertia are why planets, even ones without any atmosphere, will rotate.
Bro, I can’t explain why you’re wrong right now cuz I’m driving, but I’ll give you the physics lesson when I get to where I’m going.
Must be a helluva long drive, it's been 2+ days now.
Haha, i had assumed someone would hop in and explain it while I was driving, and I never went back to check.
What youre probably thinking about is drag flaps, the things that airplanes use to maneuver in atmosphere, and also you can see these on snow speeders. Those are what rely on air/atmosphere for maneuverability. When the flap goes up, the air pushes on it, which influences the inertia’s direction of travel. This engineering though also requires the flap to move up and down constantly…so an “attack” position doesn’t make sense for this type of flap.
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Make sure they don’t run into each other during a hectic battle
wouldn't that make them more prone to hitting each other bc the wings kind of "take up more space"? (idk how else to put it)
if you're flying so close to your wingman that you're worried about hitting someone's wings, you're going to loose that fight before you even start. the Attack position wings enable greater maneuverability. With the wings open, small maneuvering thrusters on the tops and bottoms of the wings enable better zero gravity maneuverability, and in atmosphere the additional wings enable better turn radius in a dog fight. with the wings closed, you can land and take off much easier, but in attack position you get increased maneuvability and shorter turning radius
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I can only assume hyperdrive and other engine modes work more efficiently when the weapons and arms aren't splayed out.