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Has there ever been an analysis on how effective snubfighters are against capitol ships? Could a squadron of X-wings (insert any type of fighter) kill an ISD or a VSD? If not a squadron, would a wing (36) be able to do the job? When answering, please assume that the enemy CAP has already been eliminated.

I've always assumed that snubfighters were very effective against smaller capitol ships and somewhat effective against larger ones, but after reading a lot of these posts, it seems that you would be better off throwing rocks at them.

NoogDeNoog wrote:Has there ever been an analysis on how effective snubfighters are against capitol ships? Could a squadron of X-wings (insert any type of fighter) kill an ISD or a VSD? If not a squadron, would a wing (36) be able to do the job? When answering, please assume that the enemy CAP has already been eliminated.

I've always assumed that snubfighters were very effective against smaller capitol ships and somewhat effective against larger ones, but after reading a lot of these posts, it seems that you would be better off throwing rocks at them.

It depends on the size of the ship, what point-defenses it has, and, of course, its defensive fighter screen.

Rogue Squadron could not take a Victory-class Star Destroyer (well, VSD2, I think) down by itself (The Bacta War). Under optimal circumstances and if you had a clone of each Rogue, then 2 Rogue Squadrons might do significant hull damage to one, but I don't know that it would be enough to actually defeat it.

Of course, since most squadrons are not Rogue Squadron and most combat situations are not optimal, starfighter squadrons alone are not enough to take down VSDs.

Naturally, this means that an Imperator-class Star Destroyer is just too big for starfighters to take on alone.

We saw in ROTJ that starfighters alone are nearly completely inefficiet against capital ships. There is no real difference betweeen Alliance and Empire here - the Alliance fighters tend to be better, but are easily within the same order of magnitude than empire fighters.

However, the main reaons for this seems to be the shields - starfighter weaponery seems to be too weak to penetrate capital shields, so they can do no damage.
However, once the shields are down, they should be able to hit with pretty good precision (turrets, sensors and bridges).
Bring down the shields, and starfighters become a serious threat - which explains why defense against them is important and why they are used in major fleet action - it should be way easier to cripple a ISD (or similar vessel) than to slag trough all that armor to its internal machinery.

Another factor is of course going to be what kind of weaponry the fighter carriers. Something armed only with laser canons is never going to be able to touch a shielded cap ship, but if its a type that packs a bunch of missiles, like a Tie Bomber or B-wing, then it could be dangerous in groups to cap ships. The X-wing falls somewhere in between, carrying a couple torps without being a dedicated bomber.

NoogDeNoog wrote: I've always assumed that snubfighters were very effective against smaller capitol ships and somewhat effective against larger ones, but after reading a lot of these posts, it seems that you would be better off throwing rocks at them.

I wouldn't say that snubfighters are effective against bigger ships so much as it is extremely difficult for the big guns of the larger ships to hit the small snubfighters. That's why the Empire built the Lancer frigates.

But if that were all, then the Imperials would just ignore enemy fighters, being so heavily shielded that they could shrug off any reasonable amount of fighter fire no matter what. There's no reason to build dedicated antifighter platforms, or to build interceptor platforms, unless you actually need to worry about enemy fighter strikes damaging your capital ships.

The main role of the fighters is to act as a recce and fire control platform (like seaplanes in the 20s and 30s) and of course to destroy the other sides recce and fire control planes.

bz249 wrote:The main role of the fighters is to act as a recce and fire control platform (like seaplanes in the 20s and 30s) and of course to destroy the other sides recce and fire control planes.

Any evidence for this? Like, at all? I can not recall any canon that states that this is the primary role of snubfighters.

Serafina wrote:

bz249 wrote:The main role of the fighters is to act as a recce and fire control platform (like seaplanes in the 20s and 30s) and of course to destroy the other sides recce and fire control planes.

Any evidence for this? Like, at all? I can not recall any canon that states that this is the primary role of snubfighters.

Well the ISD fighter component? It has one recce and one fc wing...

The Rogue Squadron Novels; heavily derided for fighter wank. Only show single fighter squadron attacks being dangerous on smaller ships; the first novel has them kill a Lancer Frigate; there are no cap ship kills in Wedge's Gamble; Krytos Trap has them kill a Strike Cruiser; Bacta War shows that although torp volleys take down shields; competently commanded destroyers will simply rotate to present them with another face and restore the down shields in short order. (And obvious way to counter that would be using the fighter superior manoeuvrability but that requires more fighters) Rogue Squadron needs cruiser support to kill the VSD2 and drive off an interdictor. They state they would need at least 12 X-wing Squadrons to kill an SSD and simulate that by arming freighters with torpedo launchers. They also bring an ISD an a 'War Cruiser' (a carrack cruiser sized vessel) to the fighter and the SSD still pretty much wins. Only the arrival of another ISD with a fresh fighter force finished it off.

Also of note; they discuss in Rogue Squadron taking out an ISDII with Defender Wing (36 Y-Wings) They discussed that to be effective they would need to strip the ISD of its fighter screen and they still imply it more that the Captain was unduly scared of fighter attacks after the Death Star kills than the attack would actually be effective.

Allston is arguably slightly worse than that(though writes much better stories than Stackpole); Wraith Squadron; and understrength X-Wing unit take out a Neb-B and A Corvette in one engagement and cripple and ISD in another but both times strike from ambush and even in the second engagement would have been killed by the ISD's fighter complement had they not had a couple of squadrons worth of Back-up) In the next two novels; a several squadron force kills Razor's Kiss an SSD, while their cap ships engaged Iron Fist but: Razor's Kiss was uncrewed and operated entirely by a bridge commando team and had its shield systems sabotaged.

Finally Solo Command it requires the entire 22 squadrons in Solo's Fleet to engage the SSD Iron Fist. Through they do take out an Dreadnought earlier in the book with a YT deployed bomb and proton barrage to finish it. Wraith Squadron also takes a Carrack Cruiser early in the book.

Isard's Command has them become slightly more effective; four X-Wings knock down a Golan Station's shields long enough for a couple of Assualt Frigate to move into cripple it. But that's the only scene with that kinda thing in it. The other's feature main Cap ships fighting each other.

The final X-Wing novel has one scene at the end that touches on it; 6 B-Wings, 12 Y-Wings and 3 squadrons of local fighters are tasked in the cap ship assault role. The scene makes it clear that discipline is needed the role and to fire volleys concentrated on one point of the shield otherwise it doesn't work.

So there you have it; even in the most 'fighter wank' books you need;
1) Larger numbers of fighters (at least a wing for ISD)
2)Discipline and cohesion (concentrated barrages work; otherwise it doesn't)
2) No fighter cover for the ships under attack.

But if that were all, then the Imperials would just ignore enemy fighters, being so heavily shielded that they could shrug off any reasonable amount of fighter fire no matter what. There's no reason to build dedicated antifighter platforms, or to build interceptor platforms, unless you actually need to worry about enemy fighter strikes damaging your capital ships.

You have to remember where the Rebels are attacking to see why they justify space superioroty figthter support. The Rebels are not attaking ISDs and other major combatants head on, they are conducting raids on the logisitcs trains and other soft targets that support the major combatants. You can't have an ISD with every munitions convoy nut you can build a hundred Lancers for every ISD, so having things like Lancers/Escort Carriers and the like to spread around the targets that are vulnerable to fighters makes sense.

Serafina wrote:the Alliance fighters tend to be better, but are easily within the same order of magnitude than empire fighters.

What? I'm willing to give you that Alliance starfighters are more capable of acting independent of the main fleet, however, in the movies we see TIEs on even footing or outright destroying the Alliance when the Rebels had an 8-1 advantage. The only time we see X-Wings beating the far more nimble and faster (thus giving them the ability to dictate the battle) is in the books where they use the X-Wing game mechanics for the real thing. Even shielding doesn't help that much as the TIEs take just as many direct hits as an X-Wing to destroy.

Another question I have is why missle defenses are never used by capital ships. Some are listed as having them but I don't recall them ever used in the books despite fighters using them against other fighters with good effectivness.

I know it is the lowest form of cannon but in X-wing vs. TIE Fighter ISDs did have a singe concussion missile launcher that always made torpedoe runs difficult. Can you immagine a vessel with a VLS type systen that can just missile swarm and attacking fighter formation?

Patroklos wrote:Another question I have is why missle defenses are never used by capital ships. Some are listed as having them but I don't recall them ever used in the books despite fighters using them against other fighters with good effectivness.

I know it is the lowest form of cannon but in X-wing vs. TIE Fighter ISDs did have a singe concussion missile launcher that always made torpedoe runs difficult. Can you immagine a vessel with a VLS type systen that can just missile swarm and attacking fighter formation?

We see missiles being used at various times by say, Victory-class Star Destroyers in Isard's Revenge and by an ISD in Specter of the Past, so they have been used, but like ion cannons and the "explosive solids" of the ROTJ novelization, the majority of writers simply neglect them.

It's worth noting that the majority of the novels make use of RPG statistics for determining the armament of warships, and since West End Games (don't know about Wizards of the Coast) wrote that ISDs lacked missile launchers, then most writers (Timothy Zahn in Hand of Thrawn excepted) simply went with that explanation.

Granted, turbolasers are the only weapons we see in most of the movies, excepting the mass-drivers/proton torpedo launchers aboard the Invisible Hand and the ion cannon on Hoth, so this neglect is understandable, but regrettable.

Another question I have is why missle defenses are never used by capital ships. Some are listed as having them but I don't recall them ever used in the books despite fighters using them against other fighters with good effectivness.

The movies might have answers to that. Star Wars fighters are really fast. They are almost as fast as missiles. In both AOTC and ROTS you see this. When fighters are fired upon by missiles it leads to complex chases that are eventually won by the fighter.

Another reason is the nature of hyper drive. Most fighters can mount one and thus can hyper in very close to a capship. Missiles useful at ranges beyond unguided turbolaser fire. But if a fighter can just pop in at point blank range blanketing them with energy weapon fire might be more useful.

General Schatten wrote: What? I'm willing to give you that Alliance starfighters are more capable of acting independent of the main fleet, however, in the movies we see TIEs on even footing or outright destroying the Alliance when the Rebels had an 8-1 advantage. The only time we see X-Wings beating the far more nimble and faster (thus giving them the ability to dictate the battle) is in the books where they use the X-Wing game mechanics for the real thing. Even shielding doesn't help that much as the TIEs take just as many direct hits as an X-Wing to destroy.

I have just one question: when the hell did the Rebels in the films ever have an 8-1 numerical advantage?

Their are two major fighter engagements in the Original Trilogy: Yavin and Endor. In which of these did the Rebels have an 8-1 advantage over the Empire? Or am I somehow misinterpreting the above?

bz249 wrote:Well the ISD fighter component? It has one recce and one fc wing...

It would be squadrons, as an Imperial wing is made by 72 fighters and is the standard complement of a ISD... However, the typical complement is made by: 12 recon fighters (TIE/rc) to scout ahead of the force or in crowded areas like asteroid fields; 12 bombers (normally TIE/sa); 12 interceptors/air superiority fighters (TIE/In); 36 air superiority fighters (TIE/ln). Low priority ships may may have older TIE/gt in place of the TIE/sa in the bomber squadron and one air superiority squadron be changed with a TIE/fc to relay data for the TIE/gt, while high priority ships have the standard TIE/sa as bombers but trade a TIE/ln squadron for a TIE/In one... You know, it looks to me that the main priority of an Imperial fighter wing is destroy enemy bombers, while their own help into crippling enemy merchant ships (when they want them relatively intact, for destructing them outright they have starship turbolasers) or unshielded warships and the recons help looking around when needed...

bz249 wrote:Well the ISD fighter component? It has one recce and one fc wing...

Source?

Besides, i do not know of a SINGLE FC-fightercraft. There are recon fighters (the A-Wing and the TIE Scout), but i do not know a single fightercraft that serves as a fire controll platform for capships.

General Schatten wrote:What? I'm willing to give you that Alliance starfighters are more capable of acting independent of the main fleet, however, in the movies we see TIEs on even footing or outright destroying the Alliance when the Rebels had an 8-1 advantage. The only time we see X-Wings beating the far more nimble and faster (thus giving them the ability to dictate the battle) is in the books where they use the X-Wing game mechanics for the real thing. Even shielding doesn't help that much as the TIEs take just as many direct hits as an X-Wing to destroy.

Where do they have an 8:1 advantage?
The only possible instance you could speak of is the attack on DS-1, where the imperials had surprise, a shitload of support firepower and most of them were occupied with ground attacks.
Thats hardly an even fight.

And IIRC, the books show that most rebel fighters are somewhat better than imperial fighters. The Imperials have some good fighters, but the rebels employ a higher standard and nearly always have a superior fighter.


Generally, Endor is a pretty good instance to show the effectivty of figthers - a huge amount of imperial figthers attacked the Rebels and did not take out a SINGLE ship - not even a small escort or something.
Also, Ackbar clearly states that they need to bring down the imperial shields so that their fighters "may stand a chance".

bz249 wrote:

Serafina wrote:

bz249 wrote:The main role of the fighters is to act as a recce and fire control platform (like seaplanes in the 20s and 30s) and of course to destroy the other sides recce and fire control planes.

Any evidence for this? Like, at all? I can not recall any canon that states that this is the primary role of snubfighters.

Well the ISD fighter component? It has one recce and one fc wing...

Early WEG sources indicated that there were TIE fighter variants dedicated to fire control and recon duties. There was even a TIE fighter bomber variant that had an enlarged hull that predated the TIE bomber.

I do not recall thought hat those ever carried forward. As I recall they restrucutred the TIE fighter wing on several occasions (particularily with the inclusion of the Interceptor and Bomber designs.)

Like capship design and roles, the usage of fighters seems to vary over time and with your source. WEG had the B-wing being an innovative "heavy" attack craft that packed the firepwoer of a corvette (mainly via torpedoes) into a smaller package, and was strictly designed for taking on escort frigates and convoys (Hence the ion cannons.) It was more akin to the latter-developed blastboats than anything else (this would also be worth noting that pre-WEG B wings were also substantially larger.. a good fraction of the size of hte Falcon.)

B-wings were supposedly highly valuable at Endor against ISDs, but in a role supporting the cruisers and supplementing their firepower. Tie Bombers were supposedly similar, designed largely to supplement ISDs by making pinpoint attacks on a target. And this role is bascially how we see them employed at Endor (and read about it in the novel)

Fast forward to the X-wing video games, which heavily influenced stackpole's novels and the comics. Fighters could threaten capital ships (mostly small ones at the start, but getting up to bigger ones.) Which is interesting considering just a few years before (Shadows of the Empire) suggested that a single squadron of X-wings couldn't threaten an ISD in the least. Nevermind the Tradefed battleship example in TPM. Out of universe we blame the change on the flight sim games, but in universe we're left without any obvious answer. Several possibilitex exist, however:

1.) Torpedoes carry the raw firepower neccesary to batter down shields. technically this is possible, and may even be practical. Some sources, like the DK "pocket" guide to the X-wing and the WEG-inspired "essnetial guides" covering the B-wing indicate that some proton torpedo/concussion missile payloads significantly affect the mass of the ship. The problem with this theory though is tha tit requires either some sort of "magical" energy tap or some insanely dense matter in the torp, since most protorps we see are tiny. (it is possible that "anti ship" torps are differnt than those head shaped cones we see in ANH - the anti-ship torps x-wings carry in the comics and games are definitely different looking.

2.) Technobabble destruction mechanism, akin to the Sun Crusher resonance torpedoes against hte Death Star. Agian, possible, given that early sources depicted an odd damage mechanism for proton torpedoes. This, however has been changed and now protorps are akin to some shaped charge charged particle beam/plasma warhead.

3.) Shield penetration tech. Slightly less technobabble than #2, but it has alot of support. WEG had proton torpedoes optimized for weakening shields in the torpedo sphere, allowing it to "briefly" knock localized holes in planetary shields - this is quite similar to the tactics employed by Rogue Squadron in the Stackpole novels to take out shields. We also know from the later WOTC saga edition starships of the galaxy, Dark Empire (galaxy gun missiles), Black Fleet crisis, Essential Guides, and the prequels that forcefield piercing tech exists (The ANH radio drama implies it also, on X-wings) so extending the capability to munitions is not that far a leap. We dont quite know HOW they work, if there is one or multiple kinds of "shield piercing" tech, or what, but it offers a possible explanaiton. It is worth noting that even with this option, a certain "yield" would still be required to punch through armor and other defenses (particularily if the "tech" just weakens shields rathre than ignoring them completely.)

I generally favor the third option simply because we have precedent and it doesn't require insane torpedo yields. We can further extrapolate to explain the apparent "inconsistencies" between the WEG/OT era to post Endor era as a change in tactics and technology. If we infer that there is some sort of "race" between shield penetration tech and shielding to outdo each other, we may infer that the usefulness of munitions can wax and wane over time. The post Endor era would simply represent another one of those "changes", where the REbels manage to make an effective anti-shield torp, and the resultant chaos Post endor made it difficult for hte empire to develop and implement a suitable counter until some time had passed.

Allston's examples were pretty egregious in some ways too, but were forgivable that many later examples (barring the first Wraith Squadron novel, which was Allston's first and the worst) tended to revert back to the "fighter + fleet" combat approach.

Dark Empire comes around and the Galaxy Gun seems to have coem with its own shield piercing technology, when the REbels are the ones on the run. Advantage goes to the Imperials.

Onwards to latter novels, like the Black Fleet crisis (which is the most obvious case of fighters being relevant) we learn that dedicated anti-shield munitions exist (The plasma torpedoes, although these also seem capable of inflicting damage in conjunction with concussion missiles, which as discussed elsewhere seem to be anti-armor munitions.) Barring some of the minimalism in that novel, the theory at least seems to hold water, and we can establish the continuiation of the cycle (or perhaps a change in things.)

At the very minimum fighters seem to be used in Star Wars at least to inflict precison/pinpoint damage on targets in support of bigger craft - taking out guns, sensors, exploiting gaps in shields and whatnot. They also have roles in patrol/escort/recon and engaging the enemy's fighters. Given some of the policekeeping roles we see with Imperial starships this can make a bit of sense.

As for point defense vs torpedoes alot of that depends on the kinds of torpedoes and the range at which you engage targets. Spectre of the Past specified later that if munitions are fired from too far out they give point defnese too much time to knock them out. In the Stackpole and Allston novels, torpedo ranges tend to be single or double digit km tops, which is a very very close range, much akin to what we see in the movies (point blank range confrontations, basically) Much too short, presumably, for point defense to accurately take them out. Fuel and guidance limitations may also dictate closer ranges for some munitions (a big payload can take up alot of volume, which may explain why fighter munitions tend to be little more than guided bombs really.)

It was in any case Ackbar's idea to use fighters supported the capital ships to attack and destroy enemy capital ships. The fighters were not to go alone unsupported, and once the enemy ship's shields were down, fighters would move in to conduct torpedo bombing runs.

General Schatten wrote:

Serafina wrote:the Alliance fighters tend to be better, but are easily within the same order of magnitude than empire fighters.

What? I'm willing to give you that Alliance starfighters are more capable of acting independent of the main fleet, however, in the movies we see TIEs on even footing or outright destroying the Alliance when the Rebels had an 8-1 advantage. The only time we see X-Wings beating the far more nimble and faster (thus giving them the ability to dictate the battle) is in the books where they use the X-Wing game mechanics for the real thing. Even shielding doesn't help that much as the TIEs take just as many direct hits as an X-Wing to destroy.

Rubbish. TIE Fighters go down to one hit kills, while X-wings can take a few hits before being destroyed. If X-wings were as flimsy as TIE Fighters, neither Wedge or Luke would have survived Yavin, because both took hits which would have destroyed a TIE Fighter. Even Red Leader survived long enough to get to a firing position during his attack run, whilst having Vader in his personal fighter gunning him from behind. Not to belabour the point as well, but Vader's fighter was a prototype that had shields and a hyperdrive, and survived a collision with another vehicle. If shields weren't useful, they wouldn't be built into the design.

And incidentally, if anyone had a numerical disadvantage, it would have been the Rebels, not the Imperials. Beyond already asking how you came up with 8-1, I can't understand how anyone can watch the OT and go "Gee these Rebels are living on Easy Street, what with outnumbering the Imperials"

Shields are useful, but I'm not sure how useful. If an enemy has you properly locked up, they only serve to keep you alive slightly longer.

Hmm... What they are good for is for keeping your fighter from being damaged or destroyed in a high velocity "zoom and boom" engagement, where the enemy has limited time to fire on you before you can escape out of range. Getting drawn into a dogfight is not a good idea, because your shielded fighter probably has an inferior thrust-to-weight ratio compared to a comparable fighter without a shield generator, and whichever combatant manages to angle into a good firing position and get off a solid burst will win regardless of shields.

Assuming the Delta-7 had shields, I would think the usefulness of shielding would be fairly obvious on a fighter. The hits that we can confirm the ship took did very little damage, and these are the same blasts that took out rocks larger than the Delta-7 itself.

Though I don't remember what the consensus turned out to be regarding the "flak burst" effect, whether that was also shield interaction, or some other effect.

Stofsk wrote:And incidentally, if anyone had a numerical disadvantage, it would have been the Rebels, not the Imperials. Beyond already asking how you came up with 8-1, I can't understand how anyone can watch the OT and go "Gee these Rebels are living on Easy Street, what with outnumbering the Imperials"

The Battle of Yavin saw 32 rebel fighters vs. 8 imperial TIE/ln and Vader's x1. It should be noted that the Death Star had already thinned the rebel numbers when the Black Squadron attacked, but they were hardly outnumbered.

At the Battle of Endor the imperial fighters had a ~3.5:1 advantage, but the rebels got capship support, imps didn't.