Tactical Exploitation: The ISD

[Bakustra]

For that matter, every Rebel fighter we see in the movies (with the barest possible exception of A-Wings if we assume that the shots against the Executor bridge tower are funny-looking laser blasts rather than missiles) appears to be some kind of multirole or strike vehicle, whereas the Empire appears to use more dedicated craft from the movies.

[PainRack]

A better analogy with regards Rebellion fighters would be the Zero vs Hellcat. The TIE series is relatively less armoured, "supposed" to carry less firepower.

It makes up for it in relative superior maneveurability, although I note that the WEG stats give TIE fighters vs X-wings equivalent acceleration and even maneveurability.

We simply don't see the huge durability advantage X-wings are supposed to enjoy in the movies. Given that Jedi pilots do just fine in unshielded craft, the performance trade off must be relatively marginal.

[Purple]

The advantage given by the shields is not that big, true. But they do level the playing fields somewhat. One thing to consider is that your average (non hero character) rebel pilot is going to come from questionable origins and will usually not have the benefit of the kind of training and practice facilities the Empire can provide. Hell, as far as I remember from the movies Luke him self did not exactly clock hundreds of hours in a simulator before going after the death star. The shields on the rebel fighters therefore are somewhat of an equalizer as they allow an inexperienced pilot to live long enough to get better or be saved by his more elite (named character) allies.

[JointStrikeFighter]

More likely the shield ties I to the xwings strike role where there is likely to be large amounts of small calibre flak (ie stuff like ewebs being fired into the air) and so a degree of protection against that is provided.

[Stofsk]

The shields do provide protection and advantage in dogfights. X-wings can survive hits that would otherwise destroy a TIE fighter - we never see TIE fighters survive glancing blows and they are always destroyed in one hit; meanwhile, Luke suffers some damage during the Battle of Yavin (the first was when he did a strafing run and got too close to the DS's surface - 'I got a little cooked back there but I'm fine!'; the second time was when he picked up a TIE fighter on his tail who hit one of his four engines - 'I got hit but not bad; artoo see what you can do back there!' If he had been in a TIE with no shields he'd be dead) but it's not a mission kill level of damage; Wedge gets hit by Vader and doesn't blow up and in fact can even withdraw safely from combat. Also throughout the battle we see the shield flashes around X-wings as they make strafing runs from surface batteries, so shielding seems to aid both for dogfighting as well as strike missions. If you want to use an analogy, X-wings are like F/A-18s. They're multirole fighters.

Also a note on the manoeuverability. X-wings seem to stand up fairly well against TIEs during the Battle for Yavin. Biggs got one on his tail and while he couldn't shake him off, he also survived long enough for Luke to get there. When the same thing happened to Luke, again he survived long enough (even after getting hit) for Wedge to save him. Even in the trench, where the Y-wings were sitting ducks for Vader and his wingmen, you see Luke flying all over the place in comparison avoiding hits for the most part. Also Wedge in Jedi takes out a TIE Interceptor that looked like it was trying to shake off his pursuit, and these craft are designed to be great at dogfighting, better than TIE fighters.

[Crateria]

Wedge gets hit by Vader and doesn't blow up and in fact can even withdraw safely from combat.

Actually that was one of Vader's wingmen that did that.

[Stofsk]

Shit, you're right. Well it doesn't change the point to be honest.

[Kingmaker]

I think the multi-role interpretation makes the most sense: the X-wing has greater range than the TIE, which is probably attributable in part to the fact that the Rebel Alliance can't count on having a staging area near their target, nor do they necessarily have available carriers to cart them around. On top of that, the Rebels can't really afford to have specialized fighters available for every mission that would benefit from them, so they make due with a craft that is a decent dogfighter, a mediocre bomber, and a decent escort (which does not require an escort carrier).

The other Rebel fighters we see are the Y-wing (bomber, old, slow piece of crap), B-wing (bomber, slow, durable), and A-wing (interceptor, fast, flimsy). The B-wing and A-wing are new(ish) at Endor, and probably both expensive and not well distributed among rebel forces. The Y-wing is an old piece of crap that the rebels use because they don't have an alternative.

[The Romulan Republic]

Is the Y-wing really that bad? It seems to be the fighter/bomber of choice in The Clone Wars, and while that does make it rather old by the Original Trilogy, there is the argument that Star Wars tech. is largely stagnant. And hell, lots of other Clone Wars units are in widespread use. Even the Imperator dates from around the end of the Clone Wars, and it was one of the main Imperial capital ships.

[PainRack]

The shields do provide protection and advantage in dogfights. X-wings can survive hits that would otherwise destroy a TIE fighter - we never see TIE fighters survive glancing blows and they are always destroyed in one hit; meanwhile, Luke suffers some damage during the Battle of Yavin (the first was when he did a strafing run and got too close to the DS's surface - 'I got a little cooked back there but I'm fine!'; the second time was when he picked up a TIE fighter on his tail who hit one of his four engines - 'I got hit but not bad; artoo see what you can do back there!' If he had been in a TIE with no shields he'd be dead) but it's not a mission kill level of damage; Wedge gets hit by Vader and doesn't blow up and in fact can even withdraw safely from combat. Also throughout the battle we see the shield flashes around X-wings as they make strafing runs from surface batteries, so shielding seems to aid both for dogfighting as well as strike missions. If you want to use an analogy, X-wings are like F/A-18s. They're multirole fighters.

Also a note on the manoeuverability. X-wings seem to stand up fairly well against TIEs during the Battle for Yavin. Biggs got one on his tail and while he couldn't shake him off, he also survived long enough for Luke to get there. When the same thing happened to Luke, again he survived long enough (even after getting hit) for Wedge to save him. Even in the trench, where the Y-wings were sitting ducks for Vader and his wingmen, you see Luke flying all over the place in comparison avoiding hits for the most part. Also Wedge in Jedi takes out a TIE Interceptor that looked like it was trying to shake off his pursuit, and these craft are designed to be great at dogfighting, better than TIE fighters.

The TIE vs X-wing is one of the more..... strange aspects of SW technology. Despite everything, the TIE fighter is clearly inferior to the X-wing in every single way, other than rate of fire. And even here, its dodgy as the X-wings have 4 laser cannons.

The EU stats does give the TIE interceptor slightly superior maneveurability or acceleration against the X-wing though.

I would argue that the TIE series "probably" offer cheaper and superior reliability, as they simply has less parts to break down. This probably offers the economic aspect of the EU TIE fighters are cheap and mass produced bits.

Its would be too long to reproduce the old arguments of why the Imperials abandoned the starfighter program towards a "snubfighter pose marginal threat to capital ships". Engineering aspect wise, the Imps are right. We even see this in the case of the carrack class cruiser, where it offers equivalent acceleration, superior firepower and shields to the X-wing.
But in terms of the actual products, or even Clone Wars legacy.........

Is the Y-wing really that bad? It seems to be the fighter/bomber of choice in The Clone Wars, and while that does make it rather old by the Original Trilogy, there is the argument that Star Wars tech. is largely stagnant. And hell, lots of other Clone Wars units are in widespread use. Even the Imperator dates from around the end of the Clone Wars, and it was one of the main Imperial capital ships.

Not really. The EU and other stuff does give the Y-wing significant durability and the ability to drop bombs on targets,something the X-wing can't do. Unfortunately, the newer is better crowd at the EU means that the B-wing is significantly superior at every aspect...... Remember that there was an attempt in the EU crowd to crown the B-wing as the king of starfighters, even excelling at starfighter roles. We see this explictly in several novels, and even the X-wing comics series.

[Stofsk]

The Empire does have advanced starfighters, TIE Avengers and Defenders represent the pinnacle. But you also have Gunboats and Missile Boats.

I was reading Iron Fist last night, the second in the Wraith Squadron series, and in it an Imperial character muses over the difference between Imperial and Rebel/NR pilots. The former are often trained to be ferocious and ruthless in battle, and they're also competitive IIRC - many Imperial pilots want to make ace. I figure one theory that might account for this is an ace pilot in the Imperial Starfighter Corps has a better chance at getting into one of the better fighters - first something like an Interceptor which is a lot better than a TIE/ln fighter or a bomber, then the gunboats and eventually the avenger and defender squadrons. That might explain why the Empire fields starfighters that have no shields or rugged durability. We already know they don't give a shit about people or who lives or dies. It would be right up their alley to have a kind of ruthless motivator like that.

[Commander Veers]

I had a little thought about this statement when I first came across it . 174,000 design faults? If we're going by 'suspension of disbelief' then for a start we could just argue that this is mere Rebel propoganda

What really struck me is that there are so many. Surely there can't be this many MAJOR ones. When considering the actual meaning of the term design faults/flaws surely we can surmise that actually a huge number of these might be internal? For example, a toilet's flush handle in an ISD-II might be made such that it clicks out of position if it's pushed too hard? Or the blast-doors for the forward consumables bay are by default on a bad timer such that you have to hold the 'open' button down (rather than just a quick press) in order to let someone through? Maybe there's a little fuse-box that partially obstructs the shuttle bay control tower operator's view if you're sitting at the right-hand terminal? I'd like to see an X-Wing exploit these design flaws. If these sorts of things are included in the 174,000 design problems then I'm not surprised that there are so many considering the sheer size of an ISD.

I had another point to make but my mind doesn't want to recall it .

Perhaps though I'm just being a bit of a fastidious fanboy ?

[RogueIce]

Fair enough, but you must admit it's a semi-serious flaw in their security. Prisoners can blast open the grating and hop down, or (as in the books) outside forces wishing to stage a jailbreak can break into the far less secure trach compactor and climb up into the detention area, evading almost all the guards, cameras, etc.

That's presupposing that your inmates can get their hands on blasters (granted not impossible; Imperial security in detention areas are wearing blasters, so in theory an inmate could overpower a guard and take his) and (most important part) have someone with access to the computer system to unlock the compactor's hatch for you. Remember that Luke, Han, Chewie and Leia were trapped in the compactor until R2 let them out. Arguably, the Imperials are the ones who set the compactor to, well, compact when they realized where the escapees had gone. If they hadn't in that case, it's certainly conceivable that they might in other cases. So it's not like getting to the compactor is going to ensure an escape. If anything, it appears to just entrap you in a place where security just has to cycle the compactor and squish, problem solved.

As far as outside forces, well, that presupposes that the designers would plan on enemy agents infiltrating your battlestations/warships. I'm pretty sure they would assume various other means are in place to prevent that. Because if a commando team has managed to board your ship and achieved relatively free movement aboard, you've got bigger problems than your trash compactors leading to the detention level.

And, as with ANH, in the DFR example Luke and Mara were greatly aided by the fact that Mara had that backdoor into the ship's computer, without which their place would never have succeeded. That backdoor is apparently something the majority of Imperial officers (and probably the people who designed the ships) did not know about. IIRC, not even Grand Admirial Thrawn knew about the backdoor existing, he merely deduced it by how the intruders seemed to be getting about, along with his deduction regarding their identities. Needless to say, this is not something your typical Rebel commando team will be able to duplicate.

Also, it assumes the Death Star and ISD detention centers are meant for long term containment of actual criminals, rather than just being a ship's brig to temporarily house criminals captured by said ship pending their transfer, or (more likely) a place to lock up crew who got a little too rowdy on their last shore leave, or had a fight in the chow hall. So ultramax level security wasn't on the designers minds.

Finally, there could be a reason for it being that large, aside from my "dumping the bodies" joke. It could be there is trash that large that might need disposing of, and taking it to the turbolift or wherever is mighty inconvenient. IIRC, there were some pretty big pieces of debris in that trash compactor Luke and company were in during ANH. So there might be a practical reason for the size of their garbage chutes.

This can all easily go under the "174,000 design flaws may be mostly minor things" interpretation. While yes, the garbage chute thing is, in theory, more "serious" than, say, a misplaced light switch, it requires a whole host of external factors to render it even remotely useful to a sabotage crew. Without those elements falling into place, it's pretty useless to them on the whole.

So yes, in just the right place at just the right time under just the right set of circumstances, you could use these flaws to your advantage. But here's the thing, as I alluded to above: you have to get aboard the ISD in the first place for it to even matter. I'm pretty sure if you had a detailed examination of, say, a US Navy aircraft carrier, you might find little flaws that could let elite commandoes move about and/or cause some mischief. But those elite commandoes have to first get aboard the carrier undetected, and that's no small feat to accomplish.

As far as external things, like that sensor node or whatever Mara was shooting at, that could be more problematic. Then again, we don't know how much of a blind spot (at least, I don't recall if it's mentioned) that would create. It might be useful for fighters or the freighters Karrde had brought along, but against larger capital ships the blind spot is small enough it wouldn't especially matter, as said capital ship is far too large to fit in it anyway. This is not without precedent in the real world; IIRC there are real ship designs that have had poorly placed sensors and/or weapons that, while still generally functional, are nonetheless limited in some degree. It happens, and is hardly some crippling flaw that would make Star Destroyers useless.

The other Rebel fighters we see are the Y-wing (bomber, old, slow piece of crap), *snip* The Y-wing is an old piece of crap that the rebels use because they don't have an alternative.

I don't know about this, either. The Y-wing seems to do pretty well in its intended role as a bomber, after all. It may not be the dogfighter of choice, though reasonably skilled pilots can still take out TIEs in them. But the relative vulnerability of a Y-wing against TIE fighters does not make it a "piece of crap" as you say. Just, perhaps, more overspecialized than the X-wing. Which would make some sense given it's Clone Wars heritage, I suppose. And as mentioned, B-wings and A-wings tend to be fairly specialized as well.

Or to put it another way: if you put an A-10 up against an F-16, the A-10 is almost certainly going to be shot down. This doesn't make the A-10 an "old piece of crap" compared to an F-16, as it is still perfectly capable in its intended role of close air support. But it was never meant to be a dogfighter, so lacking that capability is not some major strike against it.

Does anyone recall any times in the EU where Y-wings are shown (as opposed to mentioned) as being old pieces of crap? There's only two incidents I can think of offhand for "inferior" Y-wings:

- In one of the Rogue Squadron comics (the one where Baron Fel defects) a Y-wing unit gets slaughtered. Of course, those are bombers on a strike mission, and they were ambushed by the absolute best of the best of the Imperial starfighter corps flying TIE interceptors. So heavy losses are hardly surprising, given even the Rogues had fighters shot down against a "less skilled" squadron of the 181st elsewhere. And even then, there were survivors amongst the Y-wings.

- And in the first Rogue Squadron book, we had General Salm's Defender Wing. They took some losses, but then like the Rogues they were also a new unit being trained, and both Salm and Antilles felt their respective units were being put into action too quickly, but that's just the way the Alliance operated at the time: they didn't have the luxury of extended training. Despite this, and despite lacking the raw skill which greatly helped the Rogues out (though even they still took losses when the odds were too much against them) Defender Wing nonetheless managed to put in respectable performances when we saw them in action.

The rest of the "Y-wings suck" stuff I can remember is little more than X-wing and A-wing pilots putting down their bomber pilot peers. This is hardly definitive evidence of the Y-wings capability, or lack thereof. After all, if you ask an F-15 pilot what they think about A-10s, you might well hear similiar opinions from the fighter pilot. Just as we saw in the rivalry between X-wing pilots and the A-wing jocks, except the poor Y-wings probably get it from everybody, as they are the oldest craft of the New Republic's starfighter forces.

I figure one theory that might account for this is an ace pilot in the Imperial Starfighter Corps has a better chance at getting into one of the better fighters - first something like an Interceptor which is a lot better than a TIE/ln fighter or a bomber, then the gunboats and eventually the avenger and defender squadrons.

IIRC, Wookieepedia has some quote (probably from a WEG sourcebook) saying that in order to be considered for TIE interceptors, an Imperial pilot first had to survive ten missions in a TIE fighter. So there is likely quite a bit of truth to that.

[aussiemuscle308]

Why do they even have man-sized garbage chutes in the detention area?

to dispose of the bodies, duh.

[Abacus]

In regards to the Interceptor that Wedge killed in ROTJ, I think the reason for that can be the fact that most of the Imperial fighters in that battle were made to simply interdict the rebels from leaving and help protect the larger cruisers and battleships. If anyone remembers, the Interceptor is in the same vein as the A-wing, a superiority fighter that isn't meant for close-in protection of a large vessel. Thrawn states this quite clearly in DFR when Captain Pellaeon grows concerned about the A-wings that appear out of a bulk transport converted for use as a carrier.

So, tactically speaking, the Interceptors you see in ROTJ were not being used in the combat role that would have made them most effective.

Side note: I'd highly encourage everyone to read the new Zahn book "Choice of One" since it alludes to an interesting insight to Endor and what Thrawn would have done had he been there.

[Andras]

Is that just a misquote of Booster Terrick complaining about how big a pain in the ass it is to keep his personal star destroyer running?

The original quote came from a WEG sourcebook, and it was an off-hand joke in a list of slang used by Rebel Special Forces.

Galaxy Guide 9: Fragments From the Rim, one of the better WEG sourcebooks IMO.

other good ones were

Three ISDs have inadvertently been reclassified as commlinks and are on sale from Naval Surplus for 12 credits ea
(Used that as my usenet sig for a long time)

ATAT stud farm found, pictures data page 33123

Rebel Security Forces foil attempt to clone Gen Madine; "I'm beside myself" said the General


GG9 also introduced Imperial Storm Commandos, and the pirate ship Harmzuay, which later showed up in a novel and got cored.

[Ugolino]

Three ISDs have inadvertently been reclassified as commlinks and are on sale from Naval Surplus for 12 credits ea

[the atom]

The biggest flaw? The total lack of heavy defences on the underside of the ISD. Any sufficiently agile opponent would be able to run loops underneath it's exposed hull pounding it at will whilst remaining totally safe from the heavy guns.

[Batman]

The biggest flaw? The total lack of heavy defences on the underside of the ISD. Any sufficiently agile opponent would be able to run loops underneath it's exposed hull pounding it at will whilst remaining totally safe from the heavy guns.

'Sufficiently agile' in this case meaning 'agile enough to stay below the Star Destroyer while it simply does a barrel roll or dips its nose.
Of course, any ship that much more agile than an ISD is bound to mass a lot less and thus is unlikely to have the firepower to bother the ISD overly much. The ISDs underside may not be heavily armed, but it is shielded just as heavily as the top of the ship.

[The Romulan Republic]

Besides, doesn't the ISD have a large number of fighters, bombers, gunships, etc. to attack anything that tries to do that?

[Eternal_Freedom]

It also has a couple of heavy guns next tot he main hanger as seen in ANH.

Plus, as Batman noted, anything agile enough to evade the heavy guns will be vulnerable to the light guns along the lateral trench thingies.

[Batman]

It also has a couple of heavy guns next tot he main hanger as seen in ANH.
Plus, as Batman noted, anything agile enough to evade the heavy guns will be vulnerable to the light guns along the lateral trench thingies.

Actually I said nothing about that, and I'm not sure the actual trench guns have the field of fire to engage an enemy attacking from directly below, but the point that anything agile enough to avoid the heavy guns can probably be dealt with via the lighter guns is nevertheless perfectly valid.

[Crazedwraith]

The biggest flaw? The total lack of heavy defences on the underside of the ISD. Any sufficiently agile opponent would be able to run loops underneath it's exposed hull pounding it at will whilst remaining totally safe from the heavy guns.

'Sufficiently agile' in this case meaning 'agile enough to stay below the Star Destroyer while it simply does a barrel roll or dips its nose.
Of course, any ship that much more agile than an ISD is bound to mass a lot less and thus is unlikely to have the firepower to bother the ISD overly much. The ISDs underside may not be heavily armed, but it is shielded just as heavily as the top of the ship.

Additionally if an ISD is only being attack from one direction. It will be able to concentrate defenses there. X-Wing Novels described having to attack Star Destroyers from multiple vectors. Attacking one side in earnest while strafing others more lightly 'to keep them honest'

[Eternal_Freedom]

It also has a couple of heavy guns next tot he main hanger as seen in ANH.
Plus, as Batman noted, anything agile enough to evade the heavy guns will be vulnerable to the light guns along the lateral trench thingies.

Actually I said nothing about that, and I'm not sure the actual trench guns have the field of fire to engage an enemy attacking from directly below, but the point that anything agile enough to avoid the heavy guns can probably be dealt with via the lighter guns is nevertheless perfectly valid.

I worded that poorly, I meant that I was basing my point on your observation of agile ships not having enough firepwoer to damage the shields. It follows that if they don't have enough power to damage the ISD's shields, their own shielding will be correspondingly weaker and hence more vulnerable to the ISD'd lighter weapons.

[Batman]

Which is why I said I nevertheless considered your point perfectly valid Based on a line of reasoning, I might add, I blithely assumed to be obvious while you actually explained it in the above post, so thank you.