Cost and Economics of the TIE Fighter and Hyperdrives

[Batman]

ANH. The TIEs don't Zerg Rush the X-Wings, and they don't die in droves.

[Gunhead]

The two need not be mutually exclusive. They can be both decent and expendable.

All military hardware is "expendable". The only question is what's the risk vs. reward. You're always balancing between quality vs. quantity with anything you're going field in any meaningful numbers. Big military like the Empire would by necessity place heavier emphasis on quantity as it needs simply more to cover all the area it aims to keep controlled, that doesn't mean they'd totally abandon quality but it's more a case of stuff being good enough with highly limited number of top of the line equipment given to specialist / elite troops. This reflects also to tactics and strategy and then there is the big question who do you need to fight / are fighting and or trying to deter so you don't have to.
Expendable is also easily mixed up with easily replaceable which is not really the same thing, expendable refers to some piece of equipment that is commonly used and then discarded and it's not a great loss as such, so no real effort is made to recover it if lost. Easily replaceable however is few tiers up from that where you should recover it if lost / damaged and not squander them away pointlessly. A TIE fighter is easily replaced not really expendable, or so I see it. Not really responding to Gandalf as such, I just thought I'd expand on his point a bit.

-Gunhead

[GuppyShark]

Based on what's been raised I see four major 'cost centres' of starfighter design:

Pilot training.
Hyperdrive.
Shields.
Everything else.

Pilot training - Is flying a starfighter highly assisted by AI/droids or is it like flying a 21st century jet?

Hyperdrive - I'm not sold that hyperdrives are extremely expensive. When Watto is asked about the hyperdrive part Qui-Gon needs his response indicates that the problem is that it's specifically Nubian, not that it's a hyperdrive component itself. Nubian ships are clearly intended to be hand-crafted, rare starships used by the wealthy and prestigious, not the masses. Hyperdrive-capable ships are apparently cheap enough that Luke balks at Han's initial asking price (10,000) protesting "almost buy our own ship for that". That price turned out to be... about 5x the cost of his landspeeder.

Shields. Shields seem to vary in strength from old-EU 'it's a hitpoint pool' to what we see in the films, where it's not uncommon to see a 'shielded' craft blapped in seconds.

WWII comparisons are overdone but is it reasonable to compare them as TIEs are Shermans (mass produced, just good enough, crews were easy to come by) vs X-wings were Panzers (as good as they could make them, skilled crews the main constraint)?

[chimericoncogene]

Based on what's been raised I see four major 'cost centres' of starfighter design:

Pilot training.
Hyperdrive.
Shields.
Everything else.

Pilot training - Is flying a starfighter highly assisted by AI/droids or is it like flying a 21st century jet?

Hyperdrive - I'm not sold that hyperdrives are extremely expensive. When Watto is asked about the hyperdrive part Qui-Gon needs his response indicates that the problem is that it's specifically Nubian, not that it's a hyperdrive component itself. Nubian ships are clearly intended to be hand-crafted, rare starships used by the wealthy and prestigious, not the masses. Hyperdrive-capable ships are apparently cheap enough that Luke balks at Han's initial asking price (10,000) protesting "almost buy our own ship for that". That price turned out to be... about 5x the cost of his landspeeder.

Shields. Shields seem to vary in strength from old-EU 'it's a hitpoint pool' to what we see in the films, where it's not uncommon to see a 'shielded' craft blapped in seconds.

WWII comparisons are overdone but is it reasonable to compare them as TIEs are Shermans (mass produced, just good enough, crews were easy to come by) vs X-wings were Panzers (as good as they could make them, skilled crews the main constraint)?

That was my analysis too (back on page 1), and I ended up concluding that a mix of cheap non-clone pilots (vs. Rebels who have recruitment bottlenecks), ideology, plentiful capital ships and desirable combat characteristics of lightweight fighters led to their dominance in Imperial times.

Note that droid starfighters and tri-droids didn't have hyperdrives - so cheaper pilots = less hyperdrive. On the other hand, Jedi starfighters lack hyperdrives too, because they like the exquisite maneuverbility of a lightweight fighter.

Hyperdrive definitely drives up cost, especially for something as mass-constrained as a starfighter (in the real world, fighter aircraft masses help dictate costs - a bigger fighter is often more expensive). A bigger starfighter (because of hyperdrive) needs bigger engines and bigger radiators, etc. Compare the size of a V-wing and a Z-95, and a Jedi Starfighter and its hyperdrive ring. Before the A-wing, hyperdrives tended to be pretty big and heavy things, and adding that would drive up starfighter costs a lot by knock-on effects as much as the cost of the hyperdrive itself.

10,000 - entry level DIY ship kit, not the Falcon. Think Ahsoka's spice-running buddies and their Traveller Mk I ship, or worse. That's several times the cost of a repulsorlift craft (and presumably space-rating is not substantially more expensive than merely repulsorlifting to orbit - so a lot of that is probably in the hyperdrive).

[Lord Revan]

The thing is that you really only need hyperdrive capable fighters if your base or mothership cannot pick you up after a fight. In case of the empire there really wasn't that many (if any) opponents that could realistically threaten an ISD, so hyperdrives on fighters aren't really needed as the Star Destroyer can just pick up the fighters after combat. So I can imagine some official in the imperial HQ asking "why waste credits on hyperdrive capable fighters when we can use that money for something else".

I with rebels they didn't really have that much of a capital ship fleet until later in the civil war so they needed hyperdrive capable fighters as more often then not their bases were not within sublight travel from their targets and few motherships they did have were too much of an asset to risk them in a attack if it could be avoided.

Remember that the Lothal cell capturing the carrier in Rebels was a really big deal.

[chimericoncogene]

Yeah, the Rebel's relative lack of capital ship capability was probably a huge factor in their decision to rely on heavy starfighters. Also, for a Rebellion, weaker than its opponent and with no need to hold territory, offensive capability - space denial - is far more important than space control, which is what capships and frigates can buy you.

Think Soviet Naval Aviation Backfires vs USN CVBG air wings.

The Empire, OTOH, needs space control. TIE fighters seen to be basically optimized for interceptor A2A duties - defending larger warships from enemy fighters, possibly under ground control (well, capship fighter warfare director control), and for that, a hyperdrive equipped multirole strike fighter with proton torpedoes and concussion missiles (like the TIE defender and X wing) is overkill.

Weapons systems are merely parts of a greater warfighting system, and it is helpful to think about the ecosystem the TIE inhabits.

[MKSheppard]

It might have resembled Clone Armor, but was apparently 'junk' in comparison.

According to who? Karen Traviss?

Let's look at this logically.

Historically throughout history, there have been in order of effectiveness:

Militia / Levee En Masse
Garrison / Police Troops
Regulars
Elites

And then kind of sorta "Special Forces" like units throughout history before they began to be formalized in WWII.

On top of this, you have internal pecking orders going all the way back to Imperial Rome, where you had:

Praetorian Guard
Legions (citizen, long term professionals)
Auxilia (Non Citizens)
Numeri (Barbarians/Mercenaries)

In Nazi Germany, you had in no particular order:

Heer (Army)
Luftwaffe (Field Divisions and Panzergrenadier divisions)
SS / Waffen SS
Sturmabteilung (SA) -- their small armed wing went from a regiment in 1940 to Panzerkorps Feldherrnhalle in 1945.
Gestapo / Ordnungspolizei -- rear area security via police battalions.

In Soviet Russia, things were much more streamlined; you had the military branches and the NKVD Internal Troops - by 1945 they had 53 divisions and 28 brigades, mostly doing rear area security, though some units did fight in Stalingrad.

For the Galactic Empire, you had in the old canon:

Imperial Navy
Imperial Army
Stormtroopers (explictly called out in WEG material as being quite unique all the way back to 1986 1E).
Imperial Security Bureau / Ubiqtorate (Gestapo)
COMPNOR / COMPFORCE (paramilitary thing similar to the Hitler Youth combined with the SA/SS)
Royal Guard (the Red guys on the death star II shadowing Palpatine)
Storm Commandos (All black Stormtroopers)

Rogue One made the Storm Commandos into the Death Troopers, and the new Darth Vader Comic renamed COMPNOR/COMPFORCE into the "Coalition for Progress" (CFP); while Solo made the Imperial Army canon in their first "on screen appearance".

Much like the real world, there would be elite units in each branch -- the German Army had Grossdeutschland, which got Tigers and Panthers for Kursk, while the SS had it's "classic" divisions (LSSAH, Das Reich, Totenkopf, Wiking, Hitlerjugend).

The US Army saw a lot of it's best manpower drained off to the Airborne and Army Air Corps, while the USMC actually disbanded it's "elite" units (Marine Airborne and Marine Raiders).

For the Clonetroopers; you had "elite" units, such as the ARC Troopers (Advanced Recon Commandos) who had prototype Mk 2 Clone Trooper Armor while everyone else had Mk 1 Armor.

During the Clone Wars show, they showed the slow degeneration of the Clone Troopers; with the "Bad Batch" and then at some point the Kaminoans said that since they no longer could get fresh samples from Jango Fett (lol wat) they couldn't gaurantee the quality of the clones.

It stands to reason that the first batch of Clonetroopers were the best; since the Kaminoans could take a full unhurried ten years to prepare them, and their armor could be built to pre-war standards.

As soon as the Clone Wars kicked off, there would have been immense pressure on the Kaminoans to produce more "units" of clones, as well as the equipment to equip them; and corners would have been cut in both final training and production of armor.

[Coop D'etat]

Yeah, the Rebel's relative lack of capital ship capability was probably a huge factor in their decision to rely on heavy starfighters. Also, for a Rebellion, weaker than its opponent and with no need to hold territory, offensive capability - space denial - is far more important than space control, which is what capships and frigates can buy you.

Think Soviet Naval Aviation Backfires vs USN CVBG air wings.

The Empire, OTOH, needs space control. TIE fighters seen to be basically optimized for interceptor A2A duties - defending larger warships from enemy fighters, possibly under ground control (well, capship fighter warfare director control), and for that, a hyperdrive equipped multirole strike fighter with proton torpedoes and concussion missiles (like the TIE defender and X wing) is overkill.

Weapons systems are merely parts of a greater warfighting system, and it is helpful to think about the ecosystem the TIE inhabits.

Which is why I think comparison to modern military warplanes for the social role and training of the pilots is misguided. A TIE isn't the apex of a warfighting machine that represents a monumental commitment of resources and is expected to dominate its battlespace as a F-35. The TIE appears to be more of a disposably massed point defense system for more valuable assets. They're a cog in a local superiority war machine, not the point of the spear.

[FaxModem1]

It might have resembled Clone Armor, but was apparently 'junk' in comparison.

According to who? Karen Traviss?

Let's look at this logically.

Historically throughout history, there have been in order of effectiveness:

Militia / Levee En Masse
Garrison / Police Troops
Regulars
Elites

And then kind of sorta "Special Forces" like units throughout history before they began to be formalized in WWII.

On top of this, you have internal pecking orders going all the way back to Imperial Rome, where you had:

Praetorian Guard
Legions (citizen, long term professionals)
Auxilia (Non Citizens)
Numeri (Barbarians/Mercenaries)

In Nazi Germany, you had in no particular order:

Heer (Army)
Luftwaffe (Field Divisions and Panzergrenadier divisions)
SS / Waffen SS
Sturmabteilung (SA) -- their small armed wing went from a regiment in 1940 to Panzerkorps Feldherrnhalle in 1945.
Gestapo / Ordnungspolizei -- rear area security via police battalions.

In Soviet Russia, things were much more streamlined; you had the military branches and the NKVD Internal Troops - by 1945 they had 53 divisions and 28 brigades, mostly doing rear area security, though some units did fight in Stalingrad.

For the Galactic Empire, you had in the old canon:

Imperial Navy
Imperial Army
Stormtroopers (explictly called out in WEG material as being quite unique all the way back to 1986 1E).
Imperial Security Bureau / Ubiqtorate (Gestapo)
COMPNOR / COMPFORCE (paramilitary thing similar to the Hitler Youth combined with the SA/SS)
Royal Guard (the Red guys on the death star II shadowing Palpatine)
Storm Commandos (All black Stormtroopers)

Rogue One made the Storm Commandos into the Death Troopers, and the new Darth Vader Comic renamed COMPNOR/COMPFORCE into the "Coalition for Progress" (CFP); while Solo made the Imperial Army canon in their first "on screen appearance".

Much like the real world, there would be elite units in each branch -- the German Army had Grossdeutschland, which got Tigers and Panthers for Kursk, while the SS had it's "classic" divisions (LSSAH, Das Reich, Totenkopf, Wiking, Hitlerjugend).

The US Army saw a lot of it's best manpower drained off to the Airborne and Army Air Corps, while the USMC actually disbanded it's "elite" units (Marine Airborne and Marine Raiders).

For the Clonetroopers; you had "elite" units, such as the ARC Troopers (Advanced Recon Commandos) who had prototype Mk 2 Clone Trooper Armor while everyone else had Mk 1 Armor.

During the Clone Wars show, they showed the slow degeneration of the Clone Troopers; with the "Bad Batch" and then at some point the Kaminoans said that since they no longer could get fresh samples from Jango Fett (lol wat) they couldn't gaurantee the quality of the clones.

It stands to reason that the first batch of Clonetroopers were the best; since the Kaminoans could take a full unhurried ten years to prepare them, and their armor could be built to pre-war standards.

As soon as the Clone Wars kicked off, there would have been immense pressure on the Kaminoans to produce more "units" of clones, as well as the equipment to equip them; and corners would have been cut in both final training and production of armor.

Rex, actually. In Star Wars Rebels, he complains that Stormtrooper armor is junk armor compared to Clone trooper armor. Could be an old man yelling at a cloud, but he seemed to believe that it was junk.

[Batman]

I don't think that was Rex though unless there was a second incident. That was 'Kanan' when he and Rex had just been downed by Ezra's sabre pistol, and they both were up and about again in under a minute. If you're referring to a different incident please enlighten me.

[MKSheppard]

A TIE isn't the apex of a warfighting machine that represents a monumental commitment of resources and is expected to dominate its battlespace as a F-35. The TIE appears to be more of a disposably massed point defense system for more valuable assets. They're a cog in a local superiority war machine, not the point of the spear.

I think a better comparison would be:

TIE Fighter: Bf-109/Spitfire/P-51 -- Nice; but you need about 1,500 of them.

X-Wings or whatnot would be more comparable to Do-335 Pfeil or Me-262. Nice, but you still need about 800 of them.

Basically, Wars is still in "mass combat era" because weapons systems are still reasonably cheap.

Not so today, where a single F-35 squadron is out of the price range for all but the most exclusive first world nations; whereas in days past, even Romania could field several hundred "OK" fighters in WWII.

[Batman]

The basic tie is the Zero. The X-Wing is the Hellcat.

[chimericoncogene]

The basic tie is the Zero. The X-Wing is the Hellcat.

No, the barebones TIE is a MiG-19. The X-wing is a Phantom.
George Lucas might have been mixing and matching Vietnam and WWII, methinks.

[A-Wing_Slash]

Another rationale would be the economic stimulus effects. I forget which comics I saw this in, but the post-Clone War Imperial military build up wasn't just to enforce military stability, but also had the carrot of jobs for compliant sectors and people who didn't want to join the Imperial military directly. Hyperdrives seem like they would require highly specialized workers and equipment to produce. The solar arrays on a Tie seem like they could be built on a much lower tech base than fusion (or more exotic) generators. On the whole Ties seem designed to make efficient use of large numbers of relatively unskilled organic workers in their production, which in the pre-Yavin period could be valuable. These advantages would be military too; being able to dole out jobs is a reasonablly good counter-insurgency strategy.

This contrasts with the Rebellion, which doesn't have the same need or ability to win the masses over economically. Early A-Wings were built by artisans, X-Wings came from a design bureau defection; the Rebellion had much better access to skilled labor than it did to mass production facilities, and secrecy was more important to them than economic development. This could also be part of an in-universe explanation for why the OT designs continued throughout the EU: once the Rebellion was accountable for the economic situation of bajillions of people, they stopped developing cutting edge fighters for a while to focus on standardizing existing designs.

[FaxModem1]

I don't think that was Rex though unless there was a second incident. That was 'Kanan' when he and Rex had just been downed by Ezra's sabre pistol, and they both were up and about again in under a minute. If you're referring to a different incident please enlighten me.

Nope, Rex calls it junk armor:



It's sort of a running gag throughout the episode that the stuff they're wearing is junk.

So unless Rex is being "Old man who yells at Cloud", there's some difference between Stormtrooper armor and Clone Trooper armor.

[Batman]

No, that's the one, I just didn't remember Rex complaining about the armour earlier in the episode.

[Lord Revan]

Tbh it could be the case of Clone trooper armor being slightly better and Rex just being nostalgic/grumpy. The difference doesn't have to be that massive as it does come from biased source

[chimericoncogene]

Well, it was designed for lower intensity warfare than clone armor, so a bit of a quality hit makes sense.

But if you believe TCW, clone armor is not NBC resistant... but is apparently still vacuum rated.

Also, Jedi should use clone derived equipment more. Obi Wan has style, and they could all use clone space helmets sometime.

[RogueIce]

I remember reading somewhere that the Imperial Navy considered Tie Fighters cheap and expendable, and therefore not worth hyperdrives or shields.

Those views were generally held by Rebel pilots, so a hefty dose of bias1 is involved. TIE pilots weren't any more expendable than any other component of the Imperial military, with the degree of expendability likely depending on which level of command you're talking about. On the level of the Emperor and Vader, everyone was expendable. As you work your way down from there it changes, largely depending on the particular outlook of a given commander. Your average Fleet Admiral probably doesn't see his pilots as especially "expendable" but someone like Ysanne Isard was perfectly willing to sacrifice even elite pilots if it furthered her political aims.

Honestly I think Shep is somewhat on the right track for the cost analysis, but of course we have to look at if the TIE fighters even needed hyperdrives for what they were intended to be. They weren't long-range strike craft, they were local patrol craft always assumed to have a base or ship nearby. The added cost and complexity of adding a hyperdrive wouldn't be worth it for what the Empire wanted out of its TIE fighters, regardless of whether or not the economy of the Galactic Empire could have supported it.

Anyway you've also got to settle on which continuity we're talking about here. It matters a little less for TIE fighters but as far as the Stormtrooper armor tangent goes it matters a lot, because in Legends they were (allegedly2) an elite formation independent of the Imperial Army while in Disney they are the entire Imperial Army; which version you go with would have different expectations regarding the general quality of the gear provided to their troopers.

1Also from an out-of-universe perspective this comes from the X-Wing books which derive much of their depiction of space combat from the video games. Of important note is how absurdly tank-y Rebel fighter shields are in the games compared with what we see out of them in the movies. This is going to skew the comparison further against the TIE fighter, disregarding whether or not they actually have shields, as some analysis (I believe including on this very site, though I haven't looked in awhile) has suggested from the VFX shown in the movies.

2Allegedly because outside of the WEG RPG sourcebooks and a handful of authors (mainly Timothy Zahn) the vast majority of Legends EU just treated them as the generic Imperial infantry, with the actual Imperial Army barely existing. Whether this is due to laziness or a desire to keep the iconic stormtroopers front and center is up to the reader to decide.

[chimericoncogene]

Honestly I think Shep is somewhat on the right track for the cost analysis, but of course we have to look at if the TIE fighters even needed hyperdrives for what they were intended to be. They weren't long-range strike craft, they were local patrol craft always assumed to have a base or ship nearby. The added cost and complexity of adding a hyperdrive wouldn't be worth it for what the Empire wanted out of its TIE fighters, regardless of whether or not the economy of the Galactic Empire could have supported it.

They aren't even local patrol craft. We mostly seeing them do point-defense interceptor work (well, they run down a few fleeing light freighters too). The Imp Navy is capship heavy, so they're basically manned SAMs from back before we had SAMs.

If you need patrol work, get a Blockade Runner or Slave-I sized craft with accommodations for a few weeks of patrolling. Fighters don't give you presence, and presence is what the Imp Navy needs (or at least thinks it needs).

System of systems approach works reasonably well.

That and officer loyalty problems, and a bit of Social Darwinist ideology thrown in to make the whole cheapo concept sound better.

[Captain Seafort]

Honestly I think Shep is somewhat on the right track for the cost analysis, but of course we have to look at if the TIE fighters even needed hyperdrives for what they were intended to be. They weren't long-range strike craft, they were local patrol craft always assumed to have a base or ship nearby. The added cost and complexity of adding a hyperdrive wouldn't be worth it for what the Empire wanted out of its TIE fighters, regardless of whether or not the economy of the Galactic Empire could have supported it.

They aren't even local patrol craft. We mostly seeing them do point-defense interceptor work (well, they run down a few fleeing light freighters too). The Imp Navy is capship heavy, so they're basically manned SAMs from back before we had SAMs.

Fundamentally, the TIE fighter is a Bf109. The X-wing isn't as simple, but I think it's best described as a floatplane P47N.

[Adam Reynolds]

Fundamentally, the TIE fighter is a Bf109. The X-wing isn't as simple, but I think it's best described as a floatplane P47N.

Was there ever actually such a thing? In any case, the performance tradeoff can't have been that big* for a hyperdrive, as it presumably gave more power for its greater weight.

* For the F4F, it took 90 mph off the speed, which made a floatplane version all but useless. There is a reason that only one was converted.

[chimericoncogene]

Fundamentally, the TIE fighter is a Bf109. The X-wing isn't as simple, but I think it's best described as a floatplane P47N.

Was there ever actually such a thing? In any case, the performance tradeoff can't have been that big* for a hyperdrive, as it presumably gave more power for its greater weight.

* For the F4F, it took 90 mph off the speed, which made a floatplane version all but useless. There is a reason that only one was converted.

Have you seen the layout of Jedi interceptors (and their hyperdrive rings)? Hyperdrives are reasonably large affairs, and can easily double the mass of your space fighter - with attendant costs for bigger engines, bigger s-foils, etc, etc.

Compare a V-wing or a Delta with an ARC-170. The ARC-170 has more crew, more sensors, more everything because there's no point building a lightweight fighter that's 70% hyperdrive by mass.

The A-wing is magnificent for stuffing a hyperdrive into a spaceframe that small.

[Captain Seafort]

Was there ever actually such a thing?

There wasn't - it's the closest concept I could come up with combining huge range, the ability to land and take off from pretty much anywhere, decent tactical performance against a dedicated short-range interceptor, and significant ground-attack capability.

[Lord Revan]

Fundamentally, the TIE fighter is a Bf109. The X-wing isn't as simple, but I think it's best described as a floatplane P47N.

Was there ever actually such a thing? In any case, the performance tradeoff can't have been that big* for a hyperdrive, as it presumably gave more power for its greater weight.

* For the F4F, it took 90 mph off the speed, which made a floatplane version all but useless. There is a reason that only one was converted.

Have you seen the layout of Jedi interceptors (and their hyperdrive rings)? Hyperdrives are reasonably large affairs, and can easily double the mass of your space fighter - with attendant costs for bigger engines, bigger s-foils, etc, etc.

Compare a V-wing or a Delta with an ARC-170. The ARC-170 has more crew, more sensors, more everything because there's no point building a lightweight fighter that's 70% hyperdrive by mass.

The A-wing is magnificent for stuffing a hyperdrive into a spaceframe that small.

Well I wouldn't directly compare the hyperdrive rings into the size of a hyperdrive, I mean we saw a hyperdrive unit in Episode one and it wasn't that big compared to the ship it was installed in, Amidala's ship was around 90 m long IIRC and the hyperdrive looked like it was at most 2 meters wide, 2 meters tall and half a meter deep compared to Obi-wan who was working on the unit.