TIEs have shields

[Illuminatus Primus]

Or that they were just sentry ships, and the 'It was to easy' line also supports that Tarkin took Vader's advice and didn't send any additional fighters. Not to mention the Death Star itself is a mobile station littered with turbolaser emplacements.

You can't discount the possibility since the whole thing was a set up.

Why would it be a set-up?

Ok, the stormtroopers had orders to give the appearance of a fight and herd the heroes back the Falcon. After the TIE fight, Leia remarks it was too easy escaping those fighters, IIRC. Vader was just giving the appearance of a fight.

They may have been sentries, but because of Vader's plan, they were still dispatched out there with knowledge they'd have to put up a fight to convince the heroes of the legitimacy of their escape. They were out there knowing what the hoax was, and thus they still had prior knowledge of the Falcon's to-be getaway, even if they were not sent up to intercept it.

[Grand Admiral Thrawn]

They would put up a fight regardless of if they were told. On the other hand, shielded sentries might make Solo and the others suspicious. And the plan didn't work.

[Robert Treder]

But in that old RPG, TIEs were organized into pairs. One leader, one wingman. I wonder if the TIEs carrying NCOs have shields, and the ones carrying non-officers are unshielded...

I like this idea, but here's a minor nitpick: in real life and in SW, only commissioned officers fly fighters in combat missions. But your idea still works.

Oh, and off-topic: notice in the ROJ avi clip that towards the end, some sort of warhead enters the scene from the left, heading towards the bridge. Pretty cool.

[Mad]

I like this idea, but here's a minor nitpick: in real life and in SW, only commissioned officers fly fighters in combat missions. But your idea still works.

I'm liking that idea, too. Probably a small decrease in speed or firepower (available power would have to be redistributed) for a huge increase in survivability.

Oh, and off-topic: notice in the ROJ avi clip that towards the end, some sort of warhead enters the scene from the left, heading towards the bridge. Pretty cool.

Unfortunately, when it hits, the explosion is much less spectacular than what that X-wing did to the front face of the bridge. I think the dome is still shielded, but somehow the front face's shields were taken down since the X-wing did hull damage.

[Cal Wright]

You can't really blame him. Most "Trektards" (I love that name!) try to convince themselves and others that DS9 didn't repeatedly miss Klingon warships over and over again with torpedoes because the same clip was used two or three times in "Way Of The Warrior"

http://h4h.com/louis/trekmiss.rm

Well, you can't call em fucktards, that's an insult to asshats everywhere. So what's a guy supposed to do. The statment reared it's ugly head because it's visage was called for in this situation. Goku goes Super Sayijin 3 only because he has to, ya know. The principle was in the reply that because they did use a sequence more than once, we can only use that sequence once. So in esence, I can blame him. Really in a thread like this, it should not have occured. We have Young, Poe, and Wong ALL making replies. Seriously, I'm expecting Mr. Saxton to pop on and go, 'Due to extensive research in the aformentioned cinema sequences, I have broken down the footage frame by frame. Measuring each infetisimal pixel has resulted in this information. TIEs have sheilds. By the way, bye my book. Thanks!'

So in short, a pitiful response such as the one I commented on, will be targeted and properly delth with.


btw, thanks Poe for hosting my Pic!!!

[Cal Wright]

Ok, the stormtroopers had orders to give the appearance of a fight and herd the heroes back the Falcon.

After the TIE fight, Leia remarks it was too easy escaping those fighters, IIRC. Vader was just giving the appearance of a fight.

Not necessarily. No one had a damn clue they were going to jump down the garbage shute. No one had a damn clue that the garbage disposal was going to get shut down. No one had a damn clue that Han was going to go charging into a docking bay. No one had a damn clue that Luke was not only going to shoot the door controls that also extend the bridge, but that Leia was going to cap a few asses, while Luke prepared his grappling hook so that both could swing to freedom on the other side. They knew that they would try and make it back to the Falcon, however, the troopers on guard ran over to watch the match up of the decade. Granted that Leia says their escape was easy, and Tarkin tells Vader that he had better be right, but with a patrol ship on the way in, sentry ships on the way out and a chase through the armored station more wild than a Benny Hill show, there's more evidence that the plan was more spur of the moment once Vader realized Kenobi was aboard.

They may have been sentries, but because of Vader's plan, they were still dispatched out there with knowledge they'd have to put up a fight to convince the heroes of the legitimacy of their escape. They were out there knowing what the hoax was, and thus they still had prior knowledge of the Falcon's to-be getaway, even if they were not sent up to intercept it.

That's still my point. They were sentry ships. Whether they were informed or not is irrelevant to the original post as well.

[Connor MacLeod]

IIRC the TIE variants Tarkin used (According to the first Galaxy Guide dealing with ANH - I lost my copy so I dont remember it exactly) the Death Star's fighters weren't a "Special" variant or a top of the line model - they were actually outdated models.

Saxton goes into this specific TIE variant more in depth:

http://www.theforce.net/swtc/tie.html#tief1

Although he commissioned the advanced technology of the Death Star, Grand Moff Tarkin's realm was a galactic backwater and his starfighter forces consisted of less-than-new models. Within a few years, the basic TIE had been almost entirely superseded and replaced by the faster TIE/ln. Like most TIE designs, the basic TIE fighter is short-range and is not hyperspace-capable.

I also believe the flight games (TIE fighter and later models) tend ot imply that TIEs are easily adapted for shielding. Its possible that adding the shields is only done sometimes because of the mass penalty they incur (same with missiles and hyperdrive.)

[Illuminatus Primus]

That's still my point. They were sentry ships. Whether they were informed or not is irrelevant to the original post as well.

The point was is that if they were dispatched knowing the Falcon was going to be allowed to escape, they may have purposely sent a greater number of shielded TIEs to make their pilots more disciplined in a "make them think we want to stop them, but don't kill them" mission. Such a mission requires taking fire without reflexively eliminating the enemy, which requires incredible discipline. The stormtroopers have it, but according to Wedge Antilles in The Last Command, TIE pilots and Stormtroopers were of decidably different character and quality until Thrawn began using the Spaarti cylinders to duplicate the best TIE pilots, with the fanatical discipline belonging to the latter, but not the former.

It's still speculation, and just an idea, and not to be taken as a real argument or evidence, but this was my point.

[Connor MacLeod]

Its also possible that the TIE has very strong navigational deflectors that double as modest ray shielding protection (all ships generally need ray shielding and particle shielding, evne at modest levels.)

[Vympel]

Here is a good example of near misses triggering bursts without actually hitting a shield.



Thanks to HDS!

In regards to that, I've theorized before that the simplest explanation is that it is a bolt/shield interaction- except that the shields on gunships aren't hull hugging- to protect the troops in the cabin from the effects of harmful interactions.

Those blasts happen in the chase scene as well, and they stop when the ship lands to unload it's passengers- and get's blown up as it flies away.

[Ubiqtorate]

In general address:

As the honourable Member Brian Young has rightly noted, canonical evidence from the films must take precedence over the canonical evidence from the official Expanded Universe. As such, greater weight must be given to the established, observed fact that the Death Star's sentry ships were equipped with deflector shields capable of withstanding several glancing and direct blows from the Millennium Falcon's quad laser cannon.

One should note that the Death Star did not deploy the same model short-range space superiority starfighter as seen in The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. The latter two films depict fighters embarked aboard Star Destroyers, and they are visually dissimilar to those seen in A New Hope. The fact that they were embarked aboard Star Destroyers is not insignificant; the Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels explicitly states (p. 80) that a standard carrier air wing embarked aboard a Star Destroyer consists of "four squadrons of standard TIE/lns, one squadron of TIE interceptors, and one squadron of TIE bombers".

This is remarkable because the article entitled "TIE Fighter" (p. 180) – which specifically states that the ship in question does not have shields – is in fact a description of the Sienar Fleet Systems TIE/ln space superiority starfighter, and not the older TIE model (the article explicitly states that the "TIE/ln [is] a successor to the earlier T.I.E. and TIE models"), whereas the article entitled "Death Star" explicitly states (p. 34) that "[t]he Death Star also maintained an awesome array of support ships and vehicles, with 7,000 TIE fighters". One may ergo conclude that the Death Star embarked older TIE model starfighters, rather than the newer TIE/ln model starfighter. This is in keeping with remarks made earlier by the most honourable Member Connor MacLeod.

The suggestion that the Death Star's TIE fighters are in fact different from those of the Star Destroyers of the Death Squadron and of the Imperial battle force at the Battle of Endor is supported by visual evidence: Dr Saxton has observed and remarked upon the dissimilarity in hull colours (the Grand Moff Tarkin's TIE fighters' hulls were white, whereas Lord Vader's TIE fighters' hulls were grey). It is possible that the older TIE model was equipped with a deflector shield, or, if one assumes that the newer TIE/ln model also mounts navigational deflectors, that the older TIE model possessed rather more robust shields.

In any case, the Ubiqtorate submits that the evidence provided by the honourable Member Brian Young tends to suggest that it is not uncommon for the Empire to equip its short-range space superiority starfighters with some degree of combat-grade deflector shields. There exist in the Expanded Universe examples of starfighters being modified to include shields and hyperdrives (such as the Admiral Apwar Trigit's personal TIE interceptors in Wraith Squadron), but in those cases it was remarked that the modification had a noticeable effect on the ships' manoeuvrability and accelerative capabilities, which does not seem to be the case with the Death Star's sentry ships, which were able to keep pace and literally fly circles around the fleeing Millennium Falcon, which might be interpreted such that it is in fact the addition of a hyperdrive which has the unfortunate side-effect of significantly altering the starfighters' flight characteristics.

One of course is led to consider why the Empire might order the unshielded TIE/ln model, in place of the moderately shielded TIE model. Dr Saxton describes Lord Vader's grey fighters as being faster than the Grand Moff Tarkin's white ones; it could be that the removal of the shield generators improved the accelerative characteristics of the fighter. Alternatively, the shield-less TIE'lns may be easier to maintain, or markedly cheaper to manufacture. Of course, there remains the unsubstantiated allegation of the counterrevolutionary fighter pilot Mister Celchu, who remarked that Imperial doctrine eschews deflector shields for Imperial fighter craft on the grounds that "without shields, pilots will double their efforts not to get hit" (quoted from "The Phantom Affair").

Qualitatively, the Ubiqtorate notes that it would be his or her preference to ignore the tiresome "TIEs have no shields or ejector seats" idea contained in the Expanded Universe; the performance of the counterrevolutionary Alliance's starfighters in the Battle of Yavin was not especially impressive, given that only Black Squadron was mobilised against them, and only three of thirty starfighters survived the assault, despite Mister Tanbris's statement that the starfighters were too fast for the Death Star's turbolasers to accurately track. One must question the validity of the constant assumption that Imperial starfighters are markedly inferior, given the rather dismal performance of the X-wings and Y-wings at Yavin when faced with properly trained enemy pilots and well-maintained, older model TIE fighters.

The Expanded Universe provides some further illustrations of this: If Colonel Soontir, Baron Fel, General Turr Phennir, and Tan Maarek Stele were able to achieve careers as decorated and remarkably successful as those of Generals Keyan Farlander, Luke Skywalker, and Wedge Antilles, and the latter three had the benefits of well-shielded, long-range starfighters, who is in fact the superior pilot?

[Robert Treder]

If you existed, I would like your style. Well met.

[phongn]

In general address:

Of course, there remains the unsubstantiated allegation of the counterrevolutionary fighter pilot Mister Celchu, who remarked that Imperial doctrine eschews deflector shields for Imperial fighter craft on the grounds that "without shields, pilots will double their efforts not to get hit" (quoted from "The Phantom Affair").

"Counterrevolutionary?" Since when did our Emperor become Communist? Has Imperial Intelligence suddenly been replaced by the NKVD, and if so, why hasn't Comrade Sanchez been informed?

"Insurrectionist" or, as some nonexistant organizations prefer, "Terrorist" would be better. (Yes, I'm nitpicking)

Qualitatively, the Ubiqtorate notes that it would be his or her preference to ignore the tiresome "TIEs have no shields or ejector seats" idea contained in the Expanded Universe; the performance of the counterrevolutionary Alliance's starfighters in the Battle of Yavin was not especially impressive, given that only Black Squadron was mobilised against them, and only three of thirty starfighters survived the assault, despite Mister Tanbris's statement that the starfighters were too fast for the Death Star's turbolasers to accurately track. One must question the validity of the constant assumption that Imperial starfighters are markedly inferior, given the rather dismal performance of the X-wings and Y-wings at Yavin when faced with properly trained enemy pilots and well-maintained, older model TIE fighters.

On the other hand, probably half of the Rebel starfighters were older Y-Wing models, and those apparently dedicated to the strike role at Yavin. They would have been easy prey for the attacking TIE Fighters, especially if they were picked off while in the Trench Run, unable to effectively maneuver or strike back.

It would be interesting to find out how many starfighters were destroyed while in the trench versus in combat above the Death Star's superstructure.

The Expanded Universe provides some further illustrations of this: If Colonel Soontir, Baron Fel, General Turr Phennir, and Tan Maarek Stele were able to achieve careers as decorated and remarkably successful as those of Generals Keyan Farlander, Luke Skywalker, and Wedge Antilles, and the latter three had the benefits of well-shielded, long-range starfighters, who is in fact the superior pilot?

A very interesting question. Baron Fel seems to be a superior pilot compared to any in the Rebellion or it's sucessors, the Republic or the Alliance. His son seemed to be quite excellent as well, though he flew the "TIE Claw" advanced starfighter against early-run T-65XJ X-Wings, since replaced by the XJ3 iteration.

As for the rest, this Rebel's intelligence files are sorely lacking on their performance; what I have is not enough to compare to General Farlander, General Antilles and Jedi Master Skywalker.