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Anonymous Zebra posted:Don't the Fremen gently caress with the Sardaukar early on using personal shields hidden in sand dunes? The Sardaukar had a habit of sweeping the sand with Lasguns since the Fremen could hide in the sands. So the Fremen starting leaving active shield devices buried and let the Sardaukar nuke themselves a few times so that they would stop doing that. Duncan Idaho leaves a shield behind that some Sardaukar/Harkonnens blow up on when they're fleeing. The Fremen themselves don't particularly try to build/acquire shields since they attract & enrage worms. The explosion is also supposed to be very unpredictable and the same setup might make anything from hand grenade to citykilling nuke. My memory was that shield-lasgun explosions were avoided for political reasons during the first book, widely used during the Fremen's genocidal wars between books, then Leto II bans shields and wipes out knowledge of how to make them
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# ? Apr 10, 2021 00:25 |
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# ? Mar 28, 2024 23:28 |
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CainFortea posted:Can you imagine if they built ISDs the way the nazis built panzers? loving hand crafted individual bits so parts are rarely interchangeable? Aren't massive battleships generally made to order? I'm not sure how interchangeable massive sections of a Star Destroyer could be. Although I would sure love to see a story where there's some massive factory or dry-space-dock where they literally cut ships into big chunks that they swap out.
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# ? Apr 10, 2021 01:57 |
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SlothfulCobra posted:Aren't massive battleships generally made to order? I'm not sure how interchangeable massive sections of a Star Destroyer could be. I mean, they did just lop the front off of a battleship once and weld it to one that was damaged. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Wisconsin_(BB-64)#Post_Korean_War_(1952%E2%80%931981) The BB USS Wisconsin ran into the destoyer Eaton in heavy fog, sailed back to Norfolk. The incomplete BB USS Kentucky had it's front lopped off and they shipped it to Norfolk and put it on that ship. The Eaton by the way... was so damaged (the keel broke) that they used chains and basically ratchet strapped the bow in place to sail it to port. But to your main point, while in WWII parts standardization is something we would laugh at today, US tanks and ships were generations of standardization ahead of the nazis.
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# ? Apr 10, 2021 02:06 |
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As much as I roll my eyes at the pantheon of "star dreadnought" classes derived from what are mostly probably Impstars that were hastily scrawled by a comic book penciler under a deadline, a parade of bullshit one-off ships is extremely in-character for a bunch of space Nazis.
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# ? Apr 10, 2021 02:39 |
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Tulip posted:
Yet another thing TLJ and ROTS Turbo-hosed on the grounds of 'Yeah but it would look cool.'
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# ? Apr 10, 2021 02:57 |
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CainFortea posted:Can you imagine if they built ISDs the way the nazis built panzers? loving hand crafted individual bits so parts are rarely interchangeable? Imperiboos crowing about Kuathypersteel and how the "real" TIE losses were not that bad.
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# ? Apr 10, 2021 03:20 |
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TIE fighters are already basically the Japanese A6M Zero, insanely maneuverable but if they take any damage at all you're probably hosed. Although really that last aspect is more taken from the G4M "Betty" bomber, which had a bad habit of catching fire from minor damage.
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# ? Apr 10, 2021 04:10 |
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SlothfulCobra posted:I liked Star Control 2's take where hyperspace was all jumbled around compared to how things are arranged in truespace, which let them rearrange the galaxy however they liked and make the game reliant on a physical paper item back in the days of copy protection. That is a fun one since it goes with a few caveats; you can fly around in normal space all you want but Hyperspace requires fuel, and time moves differently in Hyperspace both in-game and in-universe iirc. Hyperspace is said to be 'above' normal space, and Quasispace is one more layer above that, hence why you need to go to Hyperspace first. And certain entities that play a surprisingly small part in the plot come from 'below'. wdarkk posted:TIE fighters are already basically the Japanese A6M Zero, insanely maneuverable but if they take any damage at all you're probably hosed. Probably came up before, but there's some hints in the prequels, I think explicit in some of the fact books, that the TIE design is descended from Jedi starfighters, where the lack of defenses was a good enough tradeoff for making full use of the capabilities of a precognitive, superhuman pilot.
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# ? Apr 10, 2021 06:22 |
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Ghost Leviathan posted:That is a fun one since it goes with a few caveats There's a book series I read where FTL is weird. The ship arrives instantly, relative to the universe outside the ship. But time passes for those inside the ship. The length is proportional to how well the route is established and how long the range is.
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# ? Apr 10, 2021 06:25 |
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Ghost Leviathan posted:Probably came up before, but there's some hints in the prequels, I think explicit in some of the fact books, that the TIE design is descended from Jedi starfighters, where the lack of defenses was a good enough tradeoff for making full use of the capabilities of a precognitive, superhuman pilot. This just makes the connection even stronger, since the early war IJN pilot corps was the result of an insanely demanding and strict pilot training program that enabled them to get the most out of their extremely maneuverable deathtraps. Then they ran out of those guys. Then the "Great Marianas Turkey Shoot" happened.
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# ? Apr 10, 2021 06:42 |
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Fantastic Foreskin posted:They do a shield nuke at the end, but it's been so long I don't remember the specifics. Paul breaches the Shield Wall with actual atomic weapons that belonged to House Atreides, not a lazgun reaction.
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# ? Apr 10, 2021 12:49 |
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Farmer Crack-rear end posted:I feel like commenting on an Impstar being "undergunned" is a bit odd in a setting where the weapons are at least partly energy based. Like, if you doubled the gun count, would the reactor even be able to support firing them all? Is it more effective to increase the number or size of your turbolasers? Nebakenezzer posted:Past 80% the speed of light, the amount of energy needed to propel a given object faster climbs exponentially, so that at light speed, the amount of energy needed to drive any mass is infinite. (I think this is why only pure energy can move at the speed of light in normal space; no mass.) Saying things are based on energy is so meaningless. It would be like saying something's based on weight or height; it's just a property of something. Not sure what else to call it, though!
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# ? Apr 10, 2021 13:29 |
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THE BAR posted:Saying things are based on energy is so meaningless. It would be like saying something's based on weight or height; it's just a property of something. Yes but disagree If you had something with a mass of 10 kg sitting on the edge of a 6 m high bookcase, then it will have X potential kinetic energy as it falls. Sisko's baseball is similar, except the potential is infinite. I must id myself as somebody who watches PBS's Space Time on youtube until I get too confused and start shouting at dogs "wait, we *know* extra dimensions can be detected via energy loss?", but the basic point stands. wdarkk posted:This just makes the connection even stronger, since the early war IJN pilot corps was the result of an insanely demanding and strict pilot training program that enabled them to get the most out of their extremely maneuverable deathtraps. One place the symmetry breaks down is that the Japanese were training tiny amounts of pilots. You'd figure with the whole space empire thing they'd have tons upon tons of pilots in training, so the flimsiness of the TIE is compensated by numbers. The Imperial Japanese were different in that they had a very specific idea and doctrine as to how they could achieve victory, which meant they overwhelmingly favored designs with very long range. Of course, if you subtract weight and add fuel that makes airplanes that explode easily. poo poo, now that I'm thinking about it, WW2 American fighters were generally engineered to be tough and durable, IE like American carrier planes, so maybe the whole analogy isn't so wild
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# ? Apr 10, 2021 15:32 |
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Besides the whole TIE fighters = Zeros analogy, the superstructure of ISD's have a superficial resemblance to the pagodas of IJN battleships, and the officer caps are almost identical to the field caps that the IJN and IJA used.
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# ? Apr 10, 2021 17:38 |
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Comes to mind the Gelgoog in one of the Gundam series, a high-performance suit built around the skills of aces but that was introduced late enough in the war that they're mostly being piloted by rookies who are barely able to use them. I think it came up before, but interesting to have a piece of technology that's quite good by objective metrics, but used in the worst possible situation and way. Thematically, it's a very good choice for your antagonist's signature vehicles, since it makes sense why it's easy to inflate your kill count with rookies while enemy aces can be actually threatening because they know how to use them properly, and of course the enemy ship suddenly becomes formidable if a protagonist hijacks it.
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# ? Apr 10, 2021 17:44 |
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Was TIEs being fragile in any of the EU stuff prior to X-Wing (the game)? In A New Hope, the X-wings also blow up immediately when shot. I thought shields vs not came from the game where the player got shields and the enemy didn't mostly for gameplay reasons
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# ? Apr 10, 2021 18:56 |
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X-Wings have shields in ANH, Red Leader has them set their deflectors to double-front when they make the trench run, then when the surface guns stop, he has them even them back out. I think that they just work much better in the games than they do in movies, like maybe they are enough to deflect most fire but a direct locked-on hit like we see Vader taking hits it dead center and blows on through?
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# ? Apr 10, 2021 18:58 |
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Yeah, they have shields that are presumably doing something, but both TIEs and X-wings go down to a well-aimed burst of lasers, so I don't think there's movie support for X-wings being more durable. As far as the movie goes, there's no reason to think TIEs don't also have shields that are only good vs near misses/shrapnel/whatever
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# ? Apr 10, 2021 19:13 |
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The one significant advantage the X-wings have is internal life support - TIE pilots wear their life support while the X-wing pilots just have helmets. I'm pretty confident this is just to provide a contrast where the Rebels have faces and the Imperials are faceless.
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# ? Apr 10, 2021 19:34 |
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Foxfire_ posted:Yeah, they have shields that are presumably doing something, but both TIEs and X-wings go down to a well-aimed burst of lasers, so I don't think there's movie support for X-wings being more durable. As far as the movie goes, there's no reason to think TIEs don't also have shields that are only good vs near misses/shrapnel/whatever Yeah there's a shot in ANH when the TIEs are attacking the Falcon that we see what could be shield hits:
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# ? Apr 10, 2021 20:05 |
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Foxfire_ posted:Yeah, they have shields that are presumably doing something, but both TIEs and X-wings go down to a well-aimed burst of lasers, so I don't think there's movie support for X-wings being more durable. As far as the movie goes, there's no reason to think TIEs don't also have shields that are only good vs near misses/shrapnel/whatever In the trench run, the xwings and ywings are getting buffetted by turbolaser fire all the time. And only sometimes blowing up. But to answer your question, xwings have 4D hull and 1D shields. TIE/In have 2D hull and no shields. Also TIEs have 2D manuverability and xwings have 3D. So the Xwings were better in every regard. Hell, Ywings have 2D manuverability. Tulip posted:The one significant advantage the X-wings have is internal life support - TIE pilots wear their life support while the X-wing pilots just have helmets. I'm pretty confident this is just to provide a contrast where the Rebels have faces and the Imperials are faceless. Also xwings have hyperspace generators and tie fighters don't.
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# ? Apr 10, 2021 20:13 |
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Foxfire_ posted:Yeah, they have shields that are presumably doing something, but both TIEs and X-wings go down to a well-aimed burst of lasers, so I don't think there's movie support for X-wings being more durable. As far as the movie goes, there's no reason to think TIEs don't also have shields that are only good vs near misses/shrapnel/whatever I think the X-Wing having a droid on board to fix it up mid-flight suggests it was designed with the intent that it can take a hit or two and keep going. The TIE doesn't have that, and it also looks more fragile visibly. It fits with the concept that the Empire sees people as disposable and the Rebels don't.
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# ? Apr 10, 2021 20:17 |
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I wouldn't be surprised if one of the novelizations said something about Ties not having shields. Or maybe one of the reference books or roleplaying guides. Otherwise, it doesn't really seem like something I'd expect Zahn to write about, so it's pretty possible the X-Wing videogame could've been the first. It was real early on in the EU and shaped a fair bit of lore. They did establish in the movies that X-Wings were perfectly capable of scooting across the galaxy on their own while Ties couldn't, although the particular phrasing was ambiguous. They said that the Tie from the Death Star must've come from some base or "from a convoy" which could mean a lot of things, but the eventual explanation that X-Wings have hyperdrive but Ties don't and fit pretty well. It was at least evident that Ties were in some way lesser than X-Wings (in addition to being much smaller). Ghost Leviathan posted:Comes to mind the Gelgoog in one of the Gundam series, a high-performance suit built around the skills of aces but that was introduced late enough in the war that they're mostly being piloted by rookies who are barely able to use them. I think it came up before, but interesting to have a piece of technology that's quite good by objective metrics, but used in the worst possible situation and way. They also put a lot of energy into custom-made mobile suits for psychics among other superweapon projects. Zeon started the war with the technical advantage on mobile suits with the Zaku, but none of their elaborate projects could match the simple reliability of the Federation's GM.
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# ? Apr 10, 2021 21:56 |
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SlothfulCobra posted:I wouldn't be surprised if one of the novelizations said something about Ties not having shields. Or maybe one of the reference books or roleplaying guides. Otherwise, it doesn't really seem like something I'd expect Zahn to write about, so it's pretty possible the X-Wing videogame could've been the first. It was real early on in the EU and shaped a fair bit of lore. Xwing video game was released 1993. WEG published the TTRPG books in 1987. Zahn's first novel in the EU was in 1991. The WEG RPG game laid the groundwork on the EU. When Zahn was hired to write the Thrawn Trilogy, they sent him a box of WEG Star Wars books as reference material. Between you ignoring this and the cool rear end battleship post i'm miffed!!!
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# ? Apr 10, 2021 22:02 |
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If video games are precedent, in the 1983 Star Wars arcade game, TIEs were blown up with single shots, while the player's X-Wing had shields that would diminish over multiple hits. If those TIEs had shields, they weren't anything worth mentioning.
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# ? Apr 10, 2021 23:03 |
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CainFortea posted:
I mean that's something that I'm used to hearing from EU stuff, and we have been discussing a bunch of EU stuff, but when people talk about TIE's having the same defenses as X-Wings that's done by moving the conversation back to film-only rules, and in the films I don't recall any references, verbal or visual, to TIEs lacking hyperspace. It's totally possible I just have no recollection. Within EU the TIEs' lack of hyperspace is interesting, because the logic given is often that they explicitly and deliberately do not want pilots to operate independently of their carrier. They want to continue to exert top down control over their whole battle plan even if it gets pilots killed if the battlefleet gets separated or the TIEs survive past their carrier. And earlier we talked about how ISDs can operate independently for longer than the entire lifespan of the Empire, and at first that seems somewhat discordant but there's an explanation I think from the best scifi video game of all time: Colonel Corazon Santiago posted:A ship at sea is its own world. To be the captain of a ship is to be the unquestioned ruler of that world and requires all of the leadership skills of a prince or minister. Reading excessively far into it, the combination of hyper-independent carriers with highly dependent fightercraft suggests a political dynamic where the Empire is not a powerfully centralized and unitary organization, but a patchwork of proto-aristocrats who are generally loyal to the emperor but in a position to both jockey with each other and renegotiate their standing. Personally I like this as a vision of the empire: not one tyrant but dozens. And it plays into one of the most famous traits of the Empire from the films: Vader's tendency to physically assault his subordinates. Political organizations that are secure and confident about their internal power structures don't resort to casual, public force, and it's not just binary but scaling: the more violent and casual, and the less dramatic the insubordination that provokes it, the weaker the organization. Vader casually executed an Admiral in the middle of a battle for a tactical error, which makes Vader look both ruthless and incredibly insecure.
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# ? Apr 11, 2021 00:13 |
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Tulip posted:I mean that's something that I'm used to hearing from EU stuff, and we have been discussing a bunch of EU stuff, but when people talk about TIE's having the same defenses as X-Wings that's done by moving the conversation back to film-only rules, and in the films I don't recall any references, verbal or visual, to TIEs lacking hyperspace. It's totally possible I just have no recollection. Obi wan calls out that tie couldn't be at alderan this far from a base or something. And in the films we see x wings go into and out of hyperspace.
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# ? Apr 11, 2021 00:14 |
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CainFortea posted:Obi wan calls out that tie couldn't be at alderan this far from a base or something. And in the films we see x wings go into and out of hyperspace. "Its a short-range fighter" Tulip posted:Reading excessively far into it, the combination of hyper-independent carriers with highly dependent fightercraft suggests a political dynamic where the Empire is not a powerfully centralized and unitary organization, but a patchwork of proto-aristocrats who are generally loyal to the emperor but in a position to both jockey with each other and renegotiate their standing. Personally I like this as a vision of the empire: not one tyrant but dozens. Iirc, pre-ESB the emperor was conceived as a largely figurehead figure, not an actual ruler. Said 'regional governers' would your proto-aristocrats, ...and the empire is a millitary coup I guess.
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# ? Apr 11, 2021 00:37 |
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I think it's worth noting that Vader's the only one who does that sort of reprisal, and his particular position in the Imperial hierarchy is pretty vague. Some kind of senior, they call him "lord" a couple times, but he's very much not the guy directly calling the shots in A New Hope, that's Tarkin. And Tarkin is the one who tells Darth Vader not to kill Tagge. And of course when the dumbass fucks up the Hoth attack, Tarkin's not there to stop him. It's pretty clear from the subtext of the scene that Darth Vader sees the officers aside from Tarkin as just as expendable as the senate was, especially if they're gonna stand up for the dissolved senate or mock his power. Tulip posted:I mean that's something that I'm used to hearing from EU stuff, and we have been discussing a bunch of EU stuff, but when people talk about TIE's having the same defenses as X-Wings that's done by moving the conversation back to film-only rules, and in the films I don't recall any references, verbal or visual, to TIEs lacking hyperspace. It's totally possible I just have no recollection. This be it. I think there's a couple ways you could interpret the exchange, but definitely Ties can't go long distances on their own. Lacking hyperdrive is a sensible explanation.
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# ? Apr 11, 2021 01:11 |
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SlothfulCobra posted:I think it's worth noting that Vader's the only one who does that sort of reprisal, and his particular position in the Imperial hierarchy is pretty vague. Some kind of senior, they call him "lord" a couple times, but he's very much not the guy directly calling the shots in A New Hope, that's Tarkin. And Tarkin is the one who tells Darth Vader not to kill Tagge. And of course when the dumbass fucks up the Hoth attack, Tarkin's not there to stop him. Thank you! I felt like I was missing a scene. As for Vader being seemingly the only officer that beats his subordinates - he's also like 90% of the officer work we see (and yeah he doesn't kill Tagge but he still starts choking a dude out in the middle of a meeting for insulting his religion - that's still loving crazy). Like trying to think about the Empire beyond it being a macguffin for Luke's relationship to Anakin and Obi Wan means doing a lot of exegesis, cuz really the films are not political science textbooks, they're drama.
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# ? Apr 11, 2021 02:55 |
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I figured Vader was the Emperor's walking death star and just doing the "fear will keep them in line" routine. He answers to no one except Palpatine and is only attached to Tarkin to show all the other officers who might otherwise gently caress about that this is a serious project and you will obey.
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# ? Apr 11, 2021 03:17 |
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I enjoy trying thinking about what the older movies tell us about the Star Wars "canon" before much of the canon we're familiar with was actually developed in the books and games of the expanded universe. In his trench run Luke says "We're going in full throttle, that ought to keep those fighters off our backs!" but the TIEs don't seem to have any problem catching up, implying the TIE is much faster than the X-Wing and Luke as a greenhorn pilot doesn't recognize this.
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# ? Apr 11, 2021 03:33 |
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Lazy Fair posted:I enjoy trying thinking about what the older movies tell us about the Star Wars "canon" before much of the canon we're familiar with was actually developed in the books and games of the expanded universe. It's also possible he doesn't think the TIE pilots have the nerve to do the trench run at full speed, but Vader is of course not impressed by that.
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# ? Apr 11, 2021 03:34 |
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Luke probably wanted to draw the TIE fighters to speeds above 300 mph, where he knew their large ailerons would turn against them and limit their normally sterling maneuverability.
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# ? Apr 11, 2021 04:52 |
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That's of course assuming they were all fighting at sea level.
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# ? Apr 11, 2021 04:54 |
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I needa watch more Clone Wars, apparently Tarkin is basically pegged by Palpatine as the kinda guy who shares his vision for the galaxy. Probably is all 'If only he could use the Force, he'd be a shoo-in for my apprentice'. On the TIE shields issues, might be best to say that they have the cheapest shields money can buy and X-Wing lasers are heavy enough to punch straight through 'em.
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# ? Apr 11, 2021 05:42 |
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Ghost Leviathan posted:I needa watch more Clone Wars, apparently Tarkin is basically pegged by Palpatine as the kinda guy who shares his vision for the galaxy. Probably is all 'If only he could use the Force, he'd be a shoo-in for my apprentice'. Don't make me pull out the book again!!
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# ? Apr 11, 2021 05:48 |
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Ghost Leviathan posted:I needa watch more Clone Wars, apparently Tarkin is basically pegged by Palpatine I thought this was a kids show!!!!!
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# ? Apr 11, 2021 05:59 |
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packetmantis posted:I thought this was a kids show!!!!! sheev canonically fucks
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# ? Apr 11, 2021 10:14 |
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# ? Mar 28, 2024 23:28 |
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Lazy Fair posted:I enjoy trying thinking about what the older movies tell us about the Star Wars "canon" before much of the canon we're familiar with was actually developed in the books and games of the expanded universe. A surprising amount has been written about this, e.g., http://jbr.me.uk/canon.html. One of the most fun things to speculate about in this vein is the Clone Wars. Were they caused by a bunch of clones of an Emperor all claiming to be the real one, like the Time of Troubles in 17th-century Russia? Or did Obi-Wan Kenobi fight in them because he was a clone himself, who came out of Vat OB1? Also, prior to ESB, there was actually no indication that Vader was human or that Jabba was an alien. Silver2195 fucked around with this message at 21:54 on Apr 11, 2021 |
# ? Apr 11, 2021 21:48 |