SW Fighter craft tech questions

[The Dark]

TIE-Is have four wingtip guns, each win hub has another pair, and it's still got the regular two in the ball. God knows why, since a pair can kill ships as large as the Falcon.

Maybe. IIRC, we've never seen the hub cannons fire, and they're marked as targeting sensors (albeit in EGVV). I'm definitely in agreement up to six, but the last four I'm iffy about because of both lack of conclusive evidence and power problems. For it to have 125% the acceleration of a TIE fighter and 5 times the firepower would require a huge step up in the power plant.

[Cykeisme]

TIE-Is have four wingtip guns, each win hub has another pair, and it's still got the regular two in the ball. God knows why, since a pair can kill ships as large as the Falcon.

Maybe. IIRC, we've never seen the hub cannons fire, and they're marked as targeting sensors (albeit in EGVV). I'm definitely in agreement up to six, but the last four I'm iffy about because of both lack of conclusive evidence and power problems. For it to have 125% the acceleration of a TIE fighter and 5 times the firepower would require a huge step up in the power plant.

Hmm, but the Interceptors won't necessarily have to be accelerating at maximum while firing all those weapons simultaneously at the same time.

Perhaps a fighter can fire fewer weapons if its engines are running at maximum thrust, or it can choose to divert all of its powerplant's output to weapons and blast away while coasting.

Is there something I'm missing here, or do analyses of power requirements always make the (erroneous?) assumption that a figher craft is running all its systems at full power simultaneously?

[Alan Bolte]

It's funny, when just looking at a TIE Interceptor you'd assume that all ten tubes are guns, although it looks odd that one of each pair of hub guns is shorter than the other. But I've watched the Battle of Endor over and over, frame by frame, and I can't find any conclusive evidence of a gun firing that isn't on a wingtip. It's a bit hard to tell, though, because of the effects used to simulate motion blur and afterimages.

[Anguirus]

I've gone through the battle frame-by-frame, and it's nearly impossible to tell, but I could swear I saw some fire erupting from the hubs. We certainly don't see all ten guns firing at once, however.

[Stark]

That's not really surprising: there's no POINT firing all ten at fighters. Whatever the role for ten guns is, it ISN'T plinking A-wings in a dogfight. As SWTC suggests, maybe it's to allow more sustained fire (by cycling which guns are used) or simply to allow the pilot to choose the gun geometry he wants. I imagine the four outermost wingtips would be the worst to use, since the spread makes it difficult to get more than one hit.

And call me nuts, but I figure the guns of a SW ship runs off a store of energy charged by the powerplant - not the powerplant itself. Thus, a TIE-I could use five times the guns of a TIE, but would quickly deplete the guns charge. God, I can't believe that sounds like X-Wing style power management.

[Cykeisme]

As SWTC suggests, maybe it's to allow more sustained fire (by cycling which guns are used) or simply to allow the pilot to choose the gun geometry he wants.

Aside from increasing the rate of fire, this is an interesting idea.

I imagine the four outermost wingtips would be the worst to use, since the spread makes it difficult to get more than one hit.

This would be true most of the time, but if you're dealing with a target that only requires one or two hits to disable or destroy, then the large spread would actually be an advantage.. lending more credence to the selectable fire-spread geometry idea.

[Stark]

Absolutely - I figure that's the idea behind X-wing guns - four widely distributed, very powerful guns. Most of the time you only need one hit, and the wide spread helps get that one hit. The TIE chinguns are more useful for both precision and reducing collateral damage - all the Xwing bolts that miss have to hit something, eventually.

[rhoenix]

This became quite interesting reading. Thank you everyone for your replies - I'm finding myself getting other questions I had answered just from reading everyone's posts on this thread.

Alright, let's see if I can stir up the hornet's nest a little more. I'm going to make a new thread about fighter designs, so as to not hijack this one.

[VT-16]

and I can't find any conclusive evidence of a gun firing that isn't on a wingtip

I thought one of the TIE/in firing on the Falcon in the head-on opening battle, did so from one of the two cannons under the ball cockpit.