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I realized something today. X-wing fire against the Death Star makes big explosions and stuff, while TIE fire that misses and hits the Death Star has no effect. Can anyone think of a reason for this besides TIEs having woefully underpowered weapons?

Howedar wrote:I realized something today. X-wing fire against the Death Star makes big explosions and stuff, while TIE fire that misses and hits the Death Star has no effect. Can anyone think of a reason for this besides TIEs having woefully underpowered weapons?

The X-Wings laser didn't realy do much damage? Look when Luke makes his first strafing run in the movie. Play it in slow motion. Lots of sparks fly but we see the surface as it pases by and it doesn't have a scratch until he blew off whatever created that massive explosion he flew through. When he staffed the second time it LOOKS impressive but if you look at the after effects of the shots, there is no real hull damage.

Or look at when Porkins and Bigs strafe the s(#t out of the deflector shield tower. Each shot that hits doesn't visably send clouds of vapour of debris flying away. In fact each shot doesn't appear to do anything but cause the visable cracks in the tower to glow. Until finaly the thing blows up.

My guess is that when he (Luke) made his second straffing run he was punching through a relativily thin part of the hull and the explosions are mostly the result of explosive decompression from the inside bursting out. The explosions each shot straight up in a very narrow cone. Given the direction of the X-Wings bolts, you'd expect if it was causing large scale vaporisation, that the vapour cloud would be more heading forward in the same direction as the X-Wing was rather then errputing straight up.

Thats my two cents anyway. I'll see if I can put together some animated gifs of the frames....

The X-Wing strafing runs where likely firing a few shots at maximum power, while the TIE's where favoring a higher rate of fire over individual bolt firepower.

Sea Skimmer wrote:The X-Wing strafing runs where likely firing a few shots at maximum power, while the TIE's where favoring a higher rate of fire over individual bolt firepower.

Except when I recall doing estimates of ROF the difference wasn't that steep (both fired roughly 4-6 bolts per second, the difference being TIEs have half the guns.. so roughly 150%-200% difference)

Well, would a TIE fighter need full power shots to take out an X-Wing? Also, Chris mentions that the X-Wings (presumably on full or near full power) did little damage beyond sparks and stuff. In fact, aven the proton torpedo impact caused no extensive damage (look at the exhaust port when Luke's shot goes through--no damage seen around it) implying the armor defeated the fighter weapons. The exception would be thin hull-sections around the guns, note that Luke only did real damage when the force guided him to the gun emplacements, and as noted (by Chris again) the vapor clouds did shoot upwards, not towards the fighters. So? Luke punched holes into thin sections of the hull causing explosive decompression and internal explosions (capacitators, anyone) providing nice eye candy for all to see
The TIE's of course would not be gunning for these vulnerable sections and are not likely to hit them. And of course, if they are at lower power they may well not cause even sparks against the heavy armor, thus you have an answer.

Just what I see anyway

Of course, you shouldn't take that to mean that X-wing lasers are weak so much as the Death Star's armor was insanely tough. In RotJ, an X-wing fired into the front face of an ISD's bridge tower and caused a much larger explosion and apparently a pretty large hole.

The Silence and I wrote:Well, would a TIE fighter need full power shots to take out an X-Wing?

Yes, at least once an X-wing was hit by a TIE shot in the battle for Yavin and survived.

Also, Chris mentions that the X-Wings (presumably on full or near full power) did little damage beyond sparks and stuff.

Still more damage than nothing.

Howedar wrote:

The Silence and I wrote:Well, would a TIE fighter need full power shots to take out an X-Wing?

Yes, at least once an X-wing was hit by a TIE shot in the battle for Yavin and survived.

Also, Chris mentions that the X-Wings (presumably on full or near full power) did little damage beyond sparks and stuff.

Still more damage than nothing.

1) Yeah, an X-Wing survived (maybie more than one, not sure) a hit, but Wedge was lucky (a glancing blow to the top two engines I believe) and still damaged significantly--he had to leave the fight.
2) Well duh

Oh, and Mad:
Sure, the armor was likely quite tough, although the Star Destroyer bridge incident is hardly a good example. Bridge towers seem to lack armor, the hole was not that large, nor did it penetrate any area with life-support as no atmosphere bleeding was observed. Also I had thought that was a B-Wing laser, hmm must check that now

Dogfighting requires a greater sustainable rate of fire and lower yields than strafing runs on a large solid target. In a ship where the weapon yield is variable, it is simply a no-brainer that they would be firing much more powerful shots during deliberate strafing runs.

The Silence and I wrote: Oh, and Mad:
Sure, the armor was likely quite tough, although the Star Destroyer bridge incident is hardly a good example. Bridge towers seem to lack armor, the hole was not that large, nor did it penetrate any area with life-support as no atmosphere bleeding was observed. Also I had thought that was a B-Wing laser, hmm must check that now

Here's the pic for reference:



The blast (white explosion, left picture) was quite large, and the gout of fire and hole (blackness and fire on the right pic, (not the huge explosion on the right pic, which is a much closer TIE fighter biting it)) that remained behind was roughly the size of the X-wing starfighter that created the hole.

Connor MacLeod wrote:
Except when I recall doing estimates of ROF the difference wasn't that steep (both fired roughly 4-6 bolts per second, the difference being TIEs have half the guns.. so roughly 150%-200% difference)

Except we only saw a handful of shots fired at the surface, one per gun as I recall, while the TIEs rapidly fired many volleys.