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I was reading Rogue Squadron the other day, and I came across this passage:

The X-wings plunging and wheeling through the middle of the TIEs had an unaticipated advantage in that they had a very high target-to-comrade ratio to shoot at. Moreover, because the X-wings had shields, even a shot taken in haste at another Rogue would not likely prove fatal. The same could not be said of the TIEs-one bust from their lasers could cripple or kill a fellow pilot.

I got to thinking: could the Empire's tendancy to launch large volumes of fighters into a battle actually be detrimental, rather than beneficial? Look at most of the battles where X-wings are outmatched by a large ration, yet most of them fly away. Then look at Yavin, where the TIEs and Rebels were much closer in numbers, and the TIEs exacted a gruesome numbers of kills.

What do you think?

I don't think that friendly fire would be that prevelant, or that hesitancy to fire as a result would be that much of a factor.

Only time I see a problem of large quanty of TIEs is when you have a lone ship flying into the formation.

In short, no. Numerical superiority is always an advantage. Stackpole is BSing based on his alleged "research," which is comprised almost exclusively of playing X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter.

Being outnumbered might be an advantage for a group of elite pilots against a group of fairly incompetent enemy pilots with poor situational awareness. Otherwise, it's a disadvantage if the enemy has ANY ability to coordinate attacks.

In an interview a few years ago he said that he only played X-wing for a very short period several years ago if I remember right. Has he said anything different since then?

Seggybop wrote:In an interview a few years ago he said that he only played X-wing for a very short period several years ago if I remember right. Has he said anything different since then?

Probably not, I'm just mocking his conceptions of combat.

Considering that it's boasted that the X-Wing vs TIE Fighter game inspired the X-Wing novels.

If that's what he actually wrote, it's sheer idiocy. Even if Star Wars fighters only had the speed and weapons range of WWII fighters (they don't, but let's pretend), you don't hear about many incidents in WWII air combat where a hugely outnumbered force was at an advantage because its opponents couldn't get out of each others' way, do you? It's even more ridiculous in space. At the speeds and weapons ranges SW craft are capable of, each TIE could have cubic kilometers to itself. I don't think Endor is a fair demonstration of TIE capabilities because for half the battle, they were fighting in the shadows of the Rebel capital ships, with all the hundreds or thousands of antiaircraft weapons they could bring to bear. Those TIE pilots would have been flying through an energy storm until the two fleets engaged, effectively nullifying their numerical advantage.

Actually, there have been incidents in WW2 where a single plane took on literally a dozen planes, scored several kills, and forced a withdrawal because he was basically going hog-wild while they were getting in their own way.

But that's a special case (not to mention an ace pilot); because he's alone, he can disregard any pretense of checking whether a blob in the sky is a friendly or not. It doesn't mean a force of 10 fighters should trounce a force of 20.

Ah, the so-called super aces...

Not to mention that every TIE's targeting computer can decide wether the target friendly or not.

The look of the rebel/imperial fighters are so different that there can be no visual identification problems. (Like in WWII P-47/FW-190...etc.)