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Anonymous
5 years ago

I wonder if the wing cannons are as powerful as the Scimitar assault bomber’s cannons or stronger as the Alpha starwing’s cannons?

gorkmalork
gorkmalork
5 years ago
Reply to  Anonymous

They’re probably closer to the latter craft’s yield, though Starwings might edge ’em out on energy-weapon juice & thus sustained fire rate.

cScott
cScott
5 years ago

If the rear of the craft was damaged would the wing based engine nozzles be enough to safely get it back to base or are they just purely for extra maneuverability?

gorkmalork
gorkmalork
5 years ago
Reply to  cScott

Seems heavily dependent on just what did the damage-fighter laser or missile-fragment grazes might leave the ship intact enough to limp home or get tractored in safely, but a solid burst or single turbolaser hit? Ejection time, assuming you aren’t insta-vaped simultaneously.

General_EVA
General_EVA
5 years ago

Will it include a way to fire its missiles or torpedoes forward or will it be restricted to doing fly-over bombing runs?

Chris Bradshaw
Chris Bradshaw
5 years ago
Reply to  Fractalsponge

In the ICS for the buzz droid missile, the guidance systems take up a substantial fraction of the missile’s already limited volume. Perhaps there are torpedo variants that sacrifice guidance for yield out there? A dedicated siege platform that barrages planetary shields seems to be a good launch candidate for a dumb rocket.

Chris Bradshaw
Chris Bradshaw
5 years ago
Reply to  Fractalsponge

It would definitely be interesting to see an Imperial interstellar strategic missile. Perhaps those would be the predecessor of the Galaxy Gun projectiles in hull form, if not warhead physics package.

Massed turbolaser also seems more plausible than missiles for a siege platform, but the only example for that kind of hardware in the EU is the Torpedo Sphere, even if it looks kind of dumb.

Given Star Wars capabilities in power generation, AI, and sensors, logically we should see stand-off tactics between missile swarms and unmanned launch platforms at relativistic speed, but that just isn’t reflected on screen.

In every movie except for TESB, we see a starfighter launch a missile/torpedo, and in every single scene the launch platform was within visual range of the target, which was usually something absurdly slow and large, like a Lucrehulk/Star Destroyer/Death Star reactor/Starkiller Base Power Oscillator/MC85. In situations like those, sacrificing guidance for more yield might make sense.

Chris Bradshaw
Chris Bradshaw
5 years ago
Reply to  Fractalsponge

I’m in agreement regarding the inability of starfighters to just waltz under shields, but Disney has made that increasingly difficult. Bannon proposed some novel ideas with IFF transponders or tractor beams, but it’ll definitely seem like fighters can just do whatever they want to new Star Wars fans.

With the availability of computing power in Star Wars and lightspeed weapons, point defense against torps should be pretty common, but we never see in the films and almost never see it in the EU.

In the prequel timeframe, every Separatist fighter is a missile platform with a fairly substantial ordnance payload. In the anti-shipping role, perhaps you just need to get really close to a target like a Venator with the launch platform to have any chance of penetrating jamming. There could be some sort of exponential law in effect where jamming is near invincible even to capital grade counter-ECM hardware from thousands of kilometers out, but can be penetrated by cheap fighter kits if you get within a few dozen meters, which forces tight engagement ranges.

gorkmalork
gorkmalork
5 years ago
Reply to  Chris Bradshaw

I can’t help noting that a substantial number of film engagements involving fighter component strikes either featured Jedi pilots or Jedi-ballpark bystanders (though Poe remains wanktastic even if we factor in theoretical battle-meditation buffing from Leia-at least TFA’s Starkiller raid involved sabotage). R1 was an exception, but also one with moderate capital support & limits on what several alphabet-fighter squads could accomplish.

As for PD, while it may be under-publicized, Finn was doing a fair crash-course job of it (picks off at least one anti-fighter missile) right up to the point where he & Poe started bickering about “back to JAKKU??” I suppose you could also argue that ANH’s trench run was partially planned to minimize PD exposure (otherwise why not line up on the exhaust port from ‘above’?).

Tractor beams…for the life of me I can’t recall a single piece of media indicating those interact with ship shields. I could halfway see some flavor of particle-deflector scrambling/erosion, but the jury seems to be out.

Finally, gotta seriously wonder about the efficacy of buzz-droids as a munition (and CIS fighter projectiles in general). Granted, we only ever see them threaten a Jedi, but Obi-Wan spends a good half-minute contending with the things before Anakin scrapes ’em off with his own snub. Seems like your basic frag warhead (or ion burst?) would edge that out handily.

Katyusha
Katyusha
5 years ago
Reply to  gorkmalork

The only way buzz droids make *any* sense is if they’re used to sabotage very large ships that would otherwise require a missile much larger than a droid fighter can carry. Using them in an anti-fighter role is just…why?

PhantomFury
PhantomFury
5 years ago
Reply to  Katyusha

One thing to note of buzz droids is that they not only tear apart ships, but can access its victim’s computers and seize control of the craft. This allows them to kill the pilots and add the hijacked ship into the roster of CIS starfighter forces in that battle.

gorkmalork
gorkmalork
5 years ago
Reply to  PhantomFury

Suppose that’s one way to pick up light Republic ships for reverse-engineering or Top Gun/Red Flag-style adversary work, but it sure doesn’t seem efficient enough to decide a capital-scale engagement.

…crazy thought: six Lucrehulks’ worth of buzz-droid tonnage vs. Executor’s entire mouse-droid complement (all mounting training remote-scale blasters).

Valoren
5 years ago
Reply to  Fractalsponge

I must remind you that according to the theory of relativity, the energy requirement to accelerate an object isn’t linear, it’s exponential. Accelerating said object at c will necessitate an infinite amount of energy, and thus produce an infinite amount of KE. Even reaching near c will demand an monstrous amount of thrust on the part of the missile.

Valoren
5 years ago
Reply to  Fractalsponge

Yeah, Mass/energy conversion is much more efficient and easily achieved in a reactor than it is in a warhead, as little time as possible before it hit a target, particularly if you want all of the energy to be directed at said target.

Cdr. Rajh
Cdr. Rajh
5 years ago

Those little red lights are all the Ion engines right? If so I count six… One per wing and four on the hull of the ship, or are they something else? I’m curious.

Cdr. Rajh
Cdr. Rajh
5 years ago
Reply to  Fractalsponge

Interesting, so then I am to assume it can haul ass in a straight line better than any bomber out there?

Taghmata Omnissiah
Taghmata Omnissiah
5 years ago

Humble question, do you think that one day you could make TIE/AG Aggressor?

gorkmalork
gorkmalork
5 years ago
Reply to  Fractalsponge

If one insisted on a tail turret-equipped TIE derivative, I could vouch for a solid handful of wiser design choices than just stripping half the wing panels off an X1. ‘Specially in light of models like R1’s somewhat-misnamed Reaper transport.