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The Empire has the resources and the technology to construct marvelous war machines like the Imperial Star Destroyer, AT AT walkers etc, so why do they use weak TIEs that lack shields and hyperdrive as their primary fighter craft ?

Cost.

But they do have weak shields, at least for general navigation purposes.

I believe it's been established that TIEs do come with shields - or at least, certain MODELS of TIEs come with shields. But considering the Empire doesn't need fightercraft with:

1) Shields (shields seem to allow you to survive a glancing hit but seem to be worthless for high powered shots)

2) Hyperdrives (unlike the Rebellion who rely on hit-and-fade guerilla tactics, the Empire has more fleet ships that can carry their fighters into battle, thereby lowering the need for a hyperdrive and the extensive computerisation needed for jumps)

3) High cost - the TIEs have one chief virtue to offset their drawbacks: they're cheap to mass produce.

... it seems that the TIE is rather reasonable for the Empire to deploy amongst their forces.

Unshielded TIEs does seem to be a pretty massive irregularity, especially if you look at how much cost and effort is suppose to go into just personal armour for common sights likes Stormtroopers, and how much resource the Empire can throw around.

Spanky The Dolphin wrote:Cost.

But they do have weak shields, at least for general navigation purposes.

I was under the impression that the regular TIE fighters and interceptors that make up the bulk of the Empire's fighter squadrons lack shields. Only new models like the TIE advanced, Defender have shields.

Since the Empire has the resources to build moon sized battlestations and tens of thousands of mile long warships cost of small starfighters should not be a concern to them

My memory is a little hazy but in one of the Han Solo pre-AHN books, he was smuggling stormtrooper amour that was going for 1,100 on the black market. Now, the Essential Guide to Ships and Vehicle says that a TIE Defender costs 300,000 credits, 5x more than a regular TIE Fighter, which puts it at around 60,000 credits. If we use a low figure of 500 credits for the Stormtrooper armour, that puts it roughly at...about 120 stormtrooper armour=one TIE Fighter. And if we use a high end figure of 1,000...roughly 60 Stormtrooper armour gear=one TIE Fighter.

Summary
High End: Roughly two platoons' worth of amour equates into one TIE Fighter
Low End: Roughly a company's worth of amour equates into one TIE Fighter

If the Empire can train, equip, feed, move, etc. trillions upon trillions of stormtroopers, why can't they give a simple upgrade? My opinon: because they don't have to. They have more than they can ever need, why bother with change?

My memory is a little hazy but in one of the Han Solo pre-AHN, he was smuggling stormtrooper amour that was going for 1,100 on the black market. Now, the Essential Guide to Ships and Vehicle says that a TIE Defender costs 300,000 credits, 5x more than a regular TIE Fighter, which puts it at around 50,000 credits. If we use a low figure of 500 credits for the Stormtrooper armour, that puts it roughly at...about 100 stormtrooper armour=one TIE Fighter. And if we use a high end figure of 1,000...roughly 50 Stormtrooper armour gear=one TIE Fighter.

Compare that to the cost of your avarage US Marine going into battle loaded down with armor and supplies that cost roughly $6,000 a pop(Depending on loadout)

Compare that to the "High end" F-22's cost of a billion a pop with a few more million tacked on for missles and whatnot makes it roughly 16,000 and up per Solider for every F-22

Fire Fly wrote:My memory is a little hazy but in one of the Han Solo pre-AHN books, he was smuggling stormtrooper amour that was going for 1,100 on the black market.
-snip
If the Empire can train, equip, feed, move, etc. trillions upon trillions of stormtroopers, why can't they give a simple upgrade? My opinon: because they don't have to. They have more than they can ever need, why bother with change?

Doesn't it strike you as the least bit odd that the Empire spends countless trillions of credits on the best equiptment for ground forces, and probably countless billions of trillions on capital ships, then suddenly turns around and pretty much supply mere kit jets to it's pilots?

Lord of the Farce wrote:Doesn't it strike you as the least bit odd that the Empire spends countless trillions of credits on the best equiptment for ground forces, and probably countless billions of trillions on capital ships, then suddenly turns around and pretty much supply mere kit jets to it's pilots?

Not at all. The power of the Empire was supposed to lie in it's fleets and armies, not it's fighter wings. Your average TIE pilot merely provides specific mission support, generally in the vicinity of a capital ship or space station. While certain TIE-class fighters had hyperdrives and shields, these were issued to elite units (those with specific missions in which craft with these features was considered necessary).

I guess one would say it is the same for any modern armed force today. An Air Force is capable of extending a combined arms group's strike abilities, or carrying out specific combat support duties (such as providing indirect fire support from the air, or performing recon), but only a naval vessel or an army can hold territory. The Empire's tacticians may have had the same view.

Since the TIEs have better weapons, are more maneuverable, and a more compact design, I think simple tradeoffs were made. Apart from games and EU, the 'shields' on X-Wings don't do shit anyways... its not that much of a loss for a better superiority fighter to have somewhat weaker shields. Next you'll say that the Empire doesn't care about their pilots, even tho they DO have ejectors(and the rebels don't) and the wear spacesuits(and the rebels don't). I just think 'rebel bias' and be done with it. There's so much misinformation about TIEs that I think we can take on board the whole 'X-wings are not the wildly superior fighters depicted in games and the EU'.

For shields on fighters, I'd refer to the D-7 and the holes in its hull even through shields, and the shields the N-1 had that were at least good against small arms. By being so compact (and thus a smaller target), the smallest damage can destroy a TIE, since even through D-7 shields (which you'd expect to have pretty much the bees knees in shields) they can burn through armour, to such a depth that the poor pilot would be toast in a TIE anyway. So really, whats the point? As always, shields never saved an X-wing from a good hit, and the more maneuverable TIE with its superior rapid fire weapons doesn't have a problem getting a good hit.

Lord of the Farce wrote:Doesn't it strike you as the least bit odd that the Empire spends countless trillions of credits on the best equiptment for ground forces, and probably countless billions of trillions on capital ships, then suddenly turns around and pretty much supply mere kit jets to it's pilots?

Maybe it increases survivability with proper flight tactics. Laser shots can splinter and scatter when they hit a shield. With the compact design of a TIE, the shields would increase the target profile, and shots that would otherwise be a miss would then have a chance of scattering right to the hull and doing damage.

So the power that would be used for shields is put into the engines for more maneuverability instead.

Stark wrote:Next you'll say that the Empire doesn't care about their pilots, even tho they DO have ejectors(and the rebels don't) and the wear spacesuits(and the rebels don't).

Biggs told Porkins to eject right before Porkins died in ANH. Exactly what good ejecting right above a battlestation that was supposed to explode rather violently a few minutes later if all went well would do, I dunno, but I don't think Biggs was sadistic enough to taunt Porkins into ejecting if it weren't an available feature of X-wing starfighters.

Mad wrote: Biggs told Porkins to eject right before Porkins died in ANH. Exactly what good ejecting right above a battlestation that was supposed to explode rather violently a few minutes later if all went well would do, I dunno, but I don't think Biggs was sadistic enough to taunt Porkins into ejecting if it weren't an available feature of X-wing starfighters.

Well, the novelisation does say to eject the power converters instead.

But as usual, there really isn't nothing derogatory about the TIE fighter. We do know it was built to replace Clone wars era fighters, so, Z-95 and Y-wings were its immediate successor, as well as the D-7. Against them, the TIE speed and maneveurability told, backed up by her rapid firing guns. It was only against the later gen X-wing, that the TIE fighter became obselete, as it came up against a fighter with similar firepower, speed and maneveurability, with the advantage of shields and hyperdrive. Even then, Interceptors and the like arrived to tilt the balance back towards the Empire, save for the fact that the Empire pilot programme deteoriated to the level where she could not field sufficiently good pilots to exploit the Interceptor abilities.

A better question is why the Empire bothered to stick giant solar panels on the sides of their fighters which can't possibly produce very much power for the ship and do things like restricting the pilots view and addeds to it's mass.

I think it's probably due to two factors:

1) Game balancing. ex: Empire: lots of weak ships. Rebels: a few strong ships.

2) You called this one. The need to make the Empire look "callous" and uncaring towards its pilots. They slap them into cramped little fighters that can't get anywhere on their own, no shields, no hyperdrive, no missile weapons, fragile construction. Mass produced and the guy inside doesn't even get the luxury of a colorful uniform or air conditioned life support system. No he gets stuck behind a poor-man's darth vader mask and black space suit. Heck, there's not even anyone around to see his face and be a little bit scared by it! Bummer...

Of course the Empire doesn't care about how many men they lose, they're EVIL remember? Every Evil team has to have disposable troops they can throw away at the good guy's with their character shields!

As far as cost, that's brought up a lot, like with Vader's armor (if it's so much better than ST armor, why not give it to every trooper, etc), but then when we see how much money they wasted on super weapons they never used ("never" as in during the reign of the actual empire, not waiting for some two bit Jedi to find it after everything was destroyed/overthrown).

It's like Allied troops storming into Hitler's bunker, stepping over his lifeless corpse to find that he had a huge stockpile of ICBM's and stealth fighter bombers that he "forgot" to put into action that might have saved his ass. But I digress... ; )

The cost thing does make sense, but it makes less sense when we think of the sheer scale of Empire's production output. Who knows, maybe Palpy just loved to slash the Starforce's budget?

In the movies we see maybe one non-fatal hit on a starfighter on each side, every other time a guy gets hit, he blows up and dies. Other than delving into the non-movie materials or analyzing the film frame by frame for "flashes" there isn't a whole lot to go on for that kind of data. So we got what we got...

Gil Hamilton wrote:A better question is why the Empire bothered to stick giant solar panels on the sides of their fighters which can't possibly produce very much power for the ship and do things like restricting the pilots view and addeds to it's mass.

They aren't solar panels

TIE pilots wear the spacesuits because there is no life-support inside the cockpits of the TIE fighters.

Standard TIEs are basically just a box with a gun and an engine: reduced down to the bare minimums to maximise cost efficiency for manufacture and deployment.

TIEs are cheap and easy to make. It's not like the Empire would be hurting for pilots.

PainRack wrote:Well, the novelisation does say to eject the power converters instead.

Well the movie is higher canon.

It's documented in seveal books very clearly that there are ejectors. So if there's any possibility that the movie means "eject," then it's backed up hard-core.

Gil Hamilton wrote:A better question is why the Empire bothered to stick giant solar panels on the sides of their fighters which can't possibly produce very much power for the ship and do things like restricting the pilots view and addeds to it's mass.

They're radiator panels with a backup solar cell (maybe for cold-starting the reactor or for emergency life support power?). The size of TIE's main ball is so tiny it probably needed those panels.

The reason there is no shields is because Imperial pilots view sheilds as equipment of a coward, and revel in the glory of facing their opponents with as little machinery as possible to achieve direct combat engagement.

R.O.A wrote:The reason there is no shields is because Imperial pilots view sheilds as equipment of a coward, and revel in the glory of facing their opponents with as little machinery as possible to achieve direct combat engagement.

That sounds a little off to me...

R.O.A wrote:The reason there is no shields is because Imperial pilots view sheilds as equipment of a coward, and revel in the glory of facing their opponents with as little machinery as possible to achieve direct combat engagement.

They're not Klingons.

And logically that makes little sense, if the shields gave that jump of ability.

But Brian Young and a few others have shown that at the very least the DS1 TIEs did have some shielding.

Rogue 9 wrote:That sounds a little off to me...

That's from the original Visual Dictionary. Doesn't neccesarily mean it's true, but that's where he got it from.