Well, this sure is… off the rails compared to the original. It looks bulkier and less simple (when the Howlrunner was supposed to be compact – which was actually even a plot point – and streamlined/easy-to-draw). It also seems to have traded having lasers for having protruding forward intakes. I wouldn’t have even realized it was allegedly a Howlrunner if it hadn’t shown up in the Google search.
Taking away the pair of guns poking out right in front of the cockpit was incredibly stupid. You do realize that the Howlrunner is supposed to be based on the Buck Rogers Thunderfighter, right? Taking those guns – a key detail of the resemblance – away is like taking away the SoroSuub Preybird’s wingtip guns.
This is fractal’s version. It is supposed to be different because he puts his own twist on all of his ships. He has changed shape, armaments, and role because he can.
The I-7 Howlrunner was named after the howlrunner creature because they attacked in similar ways. The canonical designer said:
“I was on Kamar several years ago and witnessed a pack of howlrunners chasing down their prey. They ripped it apart, not necessarily because they outpowered their prey, but because they were quicker and more agile than their opponent. They took small nips out of the creature until it finally fell.”
Fractal’s design makes way more sense in this aspect than the original. The original had 2 giant goofy-ahh guns; instead, having 2 tiny blasters that take small nips at a fighter, ripping it apart not because of overpowering strength, but because of being quicker and more agile than the opponent just makes more sense. It just fits the canonical design reasoning better to compare the howlrunner creature’s weapons with Fractal’s 2 small blasters than the canonical 2 big ones.
Starfighters have guns. This does not – or if it does, they’re reduced so badly they look like engine piping instead.
This isn’t a Howlrunner, not really. The only resemblance to the Howlrunner is the canopy and the vague silhouette. It’s missing the compactness, some of the simplicity, and – egregiously – the prominent paired nose guns the Howlrunner is supposed to have because it’s an homage to/expy of the Buck Rogers Thunderfighter.
The Howlrunner is supposed to be as capable in atmosphere as in space. Unlike a TIE or X-wing, whose flight envelopes are defined by the brute force of their engines, repulsorlifts, and whatever else they have, the Howlrunner has actual wings that create actual lift. Personally, I have the Navy is wedded to the TIE for all roles, leaving the Howlrunner to Army Aviation units in the planetary defense role.
You said it bro! 😛 And that’s because Fractal designed it… 😉
Nicholas Brown
3 years ago
This looks far superior to the original and its aesthetically pleasing.
Critical Fumbler
3 years ago
I’ve always been kinda curious how the original, and this re imagining of the howlrunner actually landed. Similar issues for the Cloakshape Fighter as well.
The downward curve on the wing tips would require some loooong stork like gear to reach the ground without resting in the dirt. Or perhaps something like the tie launch racks, and simply never resting on the surface.
Alternatively have the wings rotate around the engine pylons to a more upright stance and more normal sized landing gear.
Luke’s landspeeder is always hovering, even when not in use. Perhaps this thing can also just always have repulsors activated as well, even during maintenance downtime.
Yeah, I have both the original and the New Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels. Great books!
Name
4 years ago
Feels like an imperial version of the snow speeder.
CFletch
4 years ago
The more I think about this ship, the more I like it. It is extremely compact, agile, and presents a small profile from almost all angles. Even it’s largest aspect isn’t as big a target as a basic TIE’s panel. If I was a Imperial captain I’d be pretty happy taking these over basic TIE’s as my standard defensive fighter.
Suppose it would make for a handy mass-production stopgap ’till the Interceptor/Avenger orders reached one’s sector. And hey, the Rebels/NR get another ‘appropriated’ Incom product to hassle convoys with.
I don’t suppose its too late to resurrect the argument that the old Clone Wars era V-Wing Starfighter should have never been retired in favor of the TIE/ln? Having shields, superior firepower, and greater agility than the default TIE is a heck of a force equalizer against A-Wings and T-65s, almost like a shielded proto-interceptor. Besides, the machine tooling for mass V-wing assembly already existed rather than requiring setting up a whole new production line.
I could buy a combination of political rebranding, modular versatility, easy upgrades, drawing-board TIE models’ growth potential, and ‘simple’ mil-industrial grift killing off mass production/support for sundry Clone Wars birds, though you’ve just about sold me on the V edging out /ln 1v1.
Jack
4 years ago
Kind of looks like a Buck Rogers fighter on steroids
Ah, KDY’s attempt to (retroactively) reenter the ultralight fighter market. That one might not need much tweaking besides a non-2D range of motion for the chin guns.
Sorican
4 years ago
This feels very Elite:Dangerous to me. Which, is even more awesome. (the viper IV, in particular).
PhantomFury
4 years ago
Now this is getting somewhere to earn the ship its name! The origin story of how the name came to be is always disappointing when you learn what the fighter turned out to be: low maneuverability damage sponge. If I could say I’d add more to this design, it’d be some large air “intakes” for the engines, maybe the cannon can be the turbine cone or something; all contributing to the vision that the machine will produce a chilling howl when it flies – moreso than the TIEs, that is.
As I recall from the Essential Guide’s fluff text, this thing was actually fairly nimble-just not heavily armed or boasting bleeding-edge thrust. Basically the EU’s equivalent of an avionics-updated MiG-21.
But it can’t be as nimble as a TIE can it? I think I’ve read somewhere that it’s kinda the Empire’s attempt at make a hyperspace capable/shield equipped snubfighter? The size of its blaster cannons seem to indicate it’s some amount stronger than TIE’s on cannons.
Funny thing is, as discussed further down this comment section Sienar might’ve gotten a real jump on everyone else in the fighter-scale market WRT miniaturization whilst retaining competitive firepower. Plus, A-wings & a number of Clone Wars birds seem to match *most* TIEs’ acceleration (though with no small number of tradeoffs).
countvertex
4 years ago
New designs coming in so fast these days, I can’t even keep up commenting.
The Howlrunner is a good one and the Lancer was magnificent!
Btw. dropped you an email about that fbx the other day. Not sure you received it.
Ragnrok
4 years ago
The original howlrunner looked terrible, this however, is quite the improvement!
I-7s as parasite-drone bomber escorts? Neat thought, though I wonder if the saved life-support space would enable a bare-bones hyperdrive installation. Might as well give one’s little buddies some chance to escape losing battles.
Twitcheh
4 years ago
Love this redesign!
gorkmalork
4 years ago
Dunno if I’d have cranked the wingtips that far down, but sweet Sithspit is that nose/fuselage blending an upgrade from the old Essential Guide’s ‘spaceborne taser with cockpit’ look. I take it those are targeting sensors in the wingroots?
“targeting lasers”? sure, or just light autoblasters. Whatever flavor of fluff you want – I doubt they’d require much power. Strafing guns for ground support maybe. Or, yeah, “targeting lasers”
As someone who always eyerolled at that ‘targeting’ explanation for all the Interceptor’s apparent extra gunports, I’ll go with the extra autoblasters-certainly enough nose space on this thing for all the sensors it’d need.
She’s an interceptor, she’s faster than the TIE and has shields but is still quite fragile, think a slower A-wing or a TIE fighter with shields and you won’t be too far wrong
Actually, the I-7 is sufficiently obscure in-game that I had to double-check. But WEG did “get there first” in pretty much everything prior to the prequels.
This was always an issue I had with a lot of starfighters. They were never really a match for the tier 1 fighters like the X-Wing. They always seemed to be just not good enough.
Speed / Acceleration: Midway between an X-Wing and TIE fighter
Atmosphere: No performance degradation, equal to an A-Wing in straight-line speed
Maneuverability: Slightly less than a TIE Interceptor
Durability: Equal to an X-Wing, but with slightly tougher shields
Sensors: Slightly inferior to TIE Fighter (mostly in maximum range)
Weaponry: Equal to a TIE
Endurance: Equal to a TIE
Hyperdrive: None / Optional
Based on that, and when it was introduced (Dark Empire), I’d guess it was an attempt to create a more durable “anti-X-Wing” fighter that would give Imperial pilots very nearly the speed and performance they were used to with a TIE, combined with the toughness needed to go toe-to-toe with an X-Wing.
The heavy fighter niche is much better filled by the TIE Avenger, but in the wholesale destruction that ensued during the true Imperial Civil War, it would be plausible that the various squabbling factions lost access to the Avenger and had to settle by buying whatever they could from the private sector to replenish their fighter wings.
Various & sundry neutral/space-mafia/Hutt-affiliated parties (yeah, I know the last two overlap a lot) might also be in the market for a passably-performing compact bird.
I suppose something has to replace the venerable Z-95 in the role of generic 3rd party fighter.
CRMcNeill
4 years ago
Amazing work. Makes me wish the game stats weren’t for a short-range starfighter only. Of course, after the X-Wing fiasco, Incom would most definitely have wanted to play it safe so as to avoid Imperial displeasure.
Chris Bradshaw
4 years ago
Well this new cockpit and fuselage certainly is a big leap forwards over the previous art, and probably a substantive enough change that this would be an I-7B variant, or even an I-8.
With all that room for power plant compared to a TIE, I’m surprised that you didn’t also add a couple of more guns.
Those lasers might be substantially punchier than /ln guns, unless Sienar’s TIE weapon-powerplant tech is so ludicrously miniaturized (and patented) other companies need several times the equipment space for comparable yield.
Most interpretations of the TIE/ln don’t portray it as much less well armed than an X-Wing, which has twice the guns, each of which take up much more volume. Sienar must be doing something right, although Kuat’s V-Wing got it right first.
Compared to TIE, A-, Y- & even B-wing lasers, I’ve been wondering if the X was deliberately over-gunned for shuttle/light freighter/corvette-scale targets. Sienar lasers do strike me as more proportionally efficient, though now I’m pondering what extra juice the wingtip-laser designs (squint/Avenger/Defender) might pack.
V-wing might have been much less well armed – trade full combat shielding for massively souped up main armament?
But yeah, TIE fighters die to 1-2 solid hits from an X-Wing, and X-wings that have full combat shielding die to a single TIE rapid burst. So while we know nothing serious about OT fighter gun yield, I think in results there’s not much to choose from there.
To squeeze out another WWII analogy, might be like the variation ‘tween 20mm & 30mm cannons, though of course the latter’s fire-rate/ammo-reserve problems wouldn’t apply to anything laser-based.
How about the difference between 20mm and .50 cal? F4 and F6 Hellcats were equipped with six .50 cals, while Zeroes were equipped with a pair of .303 cal. machineguns and a pair of 20mm cannon. It’s not outside the realm of possibility for a fighter to mount both heavy guns to deal with large, tough targets and light, rapid-fire guns to deal with small, maneuverable targets. It works here, too, as the I-7 is clearly intended as a heavier fighter than the regular TIE, perhaps as a combination of the TIE/ln and the heavy gun TIE/br from Solo.
I can live with the V-Wing not being as hard hitting as an X-Wing, given that it was only really designed to be able to kill paper thin Vultures and Tri-Droids. That being said, I still think it’s a damn good fighter that got killed because of politics, not performance.
WW2 fighters with very limited weight allowances for guns were forced to choose between harder-hitting autocannons and fast firing MGs, but with Star Wars hardware, why not both? Dial the output up and store power in your capacitors for maximum output bolts if you want to strafe corvettes, or sacrifice yield for volume if you want to pop a missile zeroing in on your wingman. Both should be very possible on the same gun.
Cost? Perhaps the tech is there to design and build a multi-purpose weapon like that, but it’s too expensive to mass-produce on the scale needed to field a pan-galactic military force equipped with it. Or, more accurately, more than the Empire is willing to spend to equip a mass-produced well-nigh-disposable starfighter corps with.
I would argue that there’s strong cinematic evidence that your default TIE guns already have that capability. At the beginning of Yavin, a single bolt from a TIE turns an X-Wing into an expanding pile of vapor, but as the battle draws on, both sides exhaust their stored capacitors. Near the ending, there are a couple of cases where fighters take hits and damage is far more limited to things like starboard engines, R2-D2, and whatever damage Wedge took that caused him to disengage.
An alternate theory: there are either two sub-variants of the standard TIE fighter – one with lighter, rapid-fire lasers, the other with heavier, slower firing cannon – that are visually indistinguishable from each other, or the cannon section on the bottom of the TIE can be swapped out and equipped with a variety of different mission-specific cannon (ion cannon for capture missions, maybe).
Between the Striker’s extra pair of heavy chin guns & those ESB /lns demonstrating an oddly conservative fire rate during the asteroid chase, you might (again) have something here. Hell, at one point (right before the sideways canyon bit) some of those shots even seem to use turbolaser SFX (for what that’s worth).
The ESB chase is pretty easily justified as strict orders to maintain contact and support elements of the fleet in an attempt to catch the Falcon intact, rather than blasting it into vapor. I’m sure the pilots didn’t like the rules of engagement, but they can take it up with Vader.
Plausible, though in that case the light gunners on Avenger were playing a rather hairy game-an attempt to knock out engines without compromising Our Heroes’ life support?
It’s possible the ESB TIEs were an updated version of the TIE/br from Solo, with the harder hitting laser cannon being sufficiently miniaturized that they could be mounted in the “chin” instead of a side-pod.
I get the impression some of those later hits (‘specially anything involving the trench runs) were mitigated by doubled-up aft shields (both literal & main-character variety), but you might be on to something.
I took a similar approach to explain the overgunning on the Interceptor. Short version, the lasers on the wings are the main armament, but the cannon mount at the base of the cockpit is modular, and can be fitted with concussion missile tubes, an ion cannon, an auto-blaster (for missile intercept), a shield generator, a ferry tank or a grapple line launcher (ala the Interceptors in Zahn’s Vision of the Future).
Not a bad range of options-the grapple launcher strikes me as an economic alternative to fighter-scale tractor beams (which don’t strike me as the handiest tool outside ejected-pilot retrieval or crippled-friendly assistance)
The X-Wing games allowed the TIE Avenger and Defender (which could be fitted with a low-power tractor beam) to degrade a target’s performance in order to make them an easier target. Probably wouldn’t work on the Interceptor, though…
Besides the power-budget issues, I can see certain issues WRT flight-path predictability & evasive maneuvers for fighters tractoring similar-mass prey. You’d want to be damned sure of local superiority and/or wingmate coverage.
I think of it more in terms of relative maneuverability, not absolute, kinda like waterskiing behind a boat. You don’t have the power to stop the boat, but you are attached to it, and the rope is pointed line-straight from you to it. With fighters, the tractoring fighter would effectively be getting towed by his target, with his bow pointed dead-on at it, like a rope, making it a lot easier to target with lasers / ion cannon.
Might be worth it against extra-slippery/shielded targets, though now I’m wondering if towed/detachable decoys could make for a handy countermeasure (ala Luke spoofing the Chimera’s tractor lock with proton torps in Dark Force Rising). Still strikes me as a system safer left to one’s RIO/WSO equivalent (if present), though it might make bomber & gunboat drivers’ lives easier.
I don’t know about heavier fighter. I thought it was supposed to be a semi-lateral upgrade for the early model/ln in garrison type units, at least so went the early fluff. I built this deliberately very small by Incom standards, and it’s a very no frills design – just two (or 2+2 light) guns, no missiles, light shields, no hyperdrive or possibility for one. Probably intermediate between /ln and base /I performance, trending towards /I, but wouldn’t be truly competitive with a shielded /I of the kind you see in the video games or a Hunter. The gun mounts look large, but it’s aesthetic from the original sketches – I mounted a standard TIE laser inside. I figure they are the cooling shrouds. I was originally going to use the mounts as single missile launchers and the wingroot mounts as the twin cannon, but then I scaled the whole chassis far enough down that it didn’t seem plausible for my standard launch tube. Though I can imagine a variant with just light lasers in the roots and a small concussion launcher in the main mount areas.
Something along the lines of the concussion missile launchers on the A-Wing from the ICS books, maybe? Missiles that small should easily fit into the housing.
I was thinking maybe somewhere along the lines of of the Jedi interceptor that ETA-2
OmegaS
4 years ago
I’ve always had this vague sense of disappointment with the Howlrunner, as if it should somehow be more than it is. There’s simply no sense of excitement to it. Its not a BAD sufighter, it just feels meh. That is extremely appropriate considering its history, and was likely stumbled upon by the original artists.
This and the E-wing are probably my least favorite Legends EU ships, but you managed to make it look pretty good. Not going to say I love it, just love that you were able to salvage the design.
The biggest thing I disliked about the E-Wing was the engine placement. Putting the engines that far below the center-line of the ship creates off-axis thrust problems in zero-g. If the engines were moved up to the wing roots, ala the ARC-170, it’d make a lot more sense. Maybe moving the laser cannon up to the angle in the wing, too.
I can hand wave that away. Its the third cannon placement over the cockpit that annoyed me on the E-wing. That was just stupid and instead of maybe sticking with just two cannons or maybe 4 and placing 2 closer to the wing root, the artist said, “I’ll just stick a third on the roof.” It just looked like a lazy design.
Its one of the reasons I like Fractal’s originals better because they don’t have that designed on a deadline look to them. There’s craftsmanship to them. Like with this iteration of the Howlrunner, he took a very marginally artistic design that’s heavy on straight lines and angles, is easy to draw quickly for comics, and honed it into something that isn’t terrible (yes the pointy wingtip ends still drive me nuts though).
True enough. There are only two positives I’ve seen from starship design in Dark Empire: providing endless opportunities for Fractal to prove that you actually CAN polish a turd, and the Taskforce Modular Cruiser concept (support and logistics never gets taken seriously).
Considering how much longevity the X-Wing ended up having, I could almost see the E-Wing ending up as a Y-Wing replacement: engines to the wing roots, dual lasers at the angles in the gull wings, replace the center laser with a nose-mounted ion cannon in front of the cockpit, and maybe stretch the cockpit to make it a tandem two-seater to accommodate a WSO. It already has decent speed and ordnance capacity (two 8-round torp launchers).
Yeah, the fact that Fractal would eventually be able to cook up the Secutor from an anonymous blob in the background makes the rest of the dodgy art worth it to me.
The Bellator is the greater prize from those comics. Even now, I routinely see it appear (almost always uncredited) in random parts of the internet. Just today it was on /r/starcitizen, out of all places.
I’ll confess to liking the World Devastators’ general *concept* as mobile light-craft factories & raw-material processors, though their superweapon status is hilariously overhyped by Comic!Ackbar (‘far more lethal than the Death Star’ my ass). Plus, while I could see those things being shielded & armed well enough to make one or two Impstars break a serious sweat, they still have no business forming the core of a naval battle that isn’t essentially mid-rout (which I suppose the Battle of Calamari basically was-they just skipped the bit where Mon Cala’s home fleet & shield grid were reduced enough to allow WD deployment).
The World Devastators seem more like terror-inducing Wunderwaffen than something that actually represents a step forwards in planetary assault, or otherwise the CIS would have probably put something like it into production.
These World Devastators are (heavy?) cruiser sized, but are forced to devote an enormous proportion of internal volume to factories and warehouses instead of reactors and capacitor banks, which mean they probably have the survivability of light destroyers at best, without the small profile, speed, and maneuverability that light destroyers actually use to stay alive in fleet brawls.
I’m sure every major galactic power has some sort of mobile battlefield scavenging unit for scrounging up valuable metals and components, but the idea of uparmoring one and taking it into a fight doesn’t strike me as a particularly good one.
There’s lots of things in Star Wars that don’t make much sense once you have time to think about them. It’s the serious fans, though, who tie themselves into knots trying to impose a sense of verisimilitude into them.
IMO, a more practical use for World Devastators would be for shortening the supply lines of military operations within a system. Say you have dozens of corps deployed in combat operations on a planet; there’s going to be a lot of logistical demand for spare parts and the like. Something like a World Devastator could park somewhere outsystem, like an asteroid belt or the moons of a gas giant, strip-mining them for raw-mats, then using their on-board factories to churn out needed spare parts for the Army with a much quicker turn-around than conventional interstellar resupply.
If that was their original design, it would make more sense for them to be pressed into a planetary assault role post-Endor when the Empire was starved for resources.
I think the really right way to use them is to send them to some remote galactic arm and eat a few thousand empty systems for maximum von Neumann swarm progression. Get them really large, not like the runt Silencers which are probably the equivalent of World Devastator newborns. Then use them to mass produce infrastructure stuff that normally would take a lot of time elsewhere via more traditional methods – stuff like machine tools, fuel extraction facilities, heavy turbolaser and armor foundries. With deepdock support they could even churn out their own supply chains – bulk transports and tankers and such. I assume the Separatists were basically doing this or starting to do it at the end of the Clone Wars, but the cutoff signal literally killed their efforts before they could snowball.
But I guess Shadow Hand wasn’t an war-in-depth sort of approach – it presumed an alpha strike victory. Seems like the NR was weak enough that had it been sustained it probably would have actually worked.
They’d make great hyperspace lane sweepers/plows. Clearing out stray asteroids, hydrospanners, R2 units, debris, etc. Especially in the deep core where you’ve got extremely restricted space lanes. Makes sense to have the equipment in place to maintain them!
Is the Empire’s industrial base not already doing this? In order to build things like Death Stars, Ecumenopoli, and the various worldcraft in a reasonable timeframe, I suspect that they probably did have some sort of mobile, self-replicating factory ship fleet somewhere out in the rim, although likely with more manpower attached as supervisors than the Separatists did. Heck, they probably inherited some of the CIS kit, and reactivated it after painting the six-spoked wheel on the sides.
I suppose the World Devastators might have been able to produce finished droid fighters at a faster pace if they were eating pre-refined milspec components from wrecked MC80s instead of random asteroids, but the risk of losing them in battle is one that only reborn (insane) Palps would be willing to take.
That’d work, too. On a smaller scale, this method would certainly work for the second Death Star; if Endor is a moon orbiting a gas giant, then there will likely be multiple other moons or asteroids nearby for easy resource extraction and manufacturing. It makes a lot more sense than shipping all of the materials out to a remote, top secret worksite.
For no defensible reason I’ve got a soft spot WRT the ‘simpler fixed-wing T-65 cousin’ concept, but agreed on the cockpit cannon being pointless & its general aesthetics needing serious work. I keep visualizing a barely-Avenger/Defender-competitive rehash with the dorsal gun & astromech compartment deleted to fit a third thruster, the wing-engines compacted into smaller conformal pods & moved up to flank the centerline, and slightly forward-swept wings with triple lasers mounted around that bend at the tip. Missile magazine would be roughly chopped in half, but with modular capacity (i.e. 16 CMs for interceptor duty).
And quite well, too. I should’ve clarified that support and logistics never get taken seriously /officially/. Only in TLJ did the possibility of ships running low on fuel finally get used, and even then they flubbed it. Considering that hitting supply convoys and other support functions is one of the few viable tactics a guerilla force can use, I’m surprised it hasn’t gotten more treatment.
Way easier to stop or delay a multi-corps assault on a planet if you can hit the tankers before they fuel up the Consolidators and their escorts.
That top cannon always rubbed me the wrong way as well…just my $0.02 but would have looked better with just he 2 cannons…eithat at the wingtips like they are or closer to the main body ala the BSG Viper.
Agreed. The E-Wing is definitely a broken design,but it has a lot of potential. If Fractal can do this for the I-7, I’d love to see what he can come up with for the E-.
Steve
4 years ago
A small, agile, fast and shielded interceptor that looks amaze, what’s not to like. As always, amazing work!
Astro1derboy
4 years ago
This is wicked!! Kinda reminds me of a T-47 Snowspeeder. Love it!!
Spaceman 28
4 years ago
Looks like an Imperial A-Wing, although i doubt that’s what it is.
Well, this sure is… off the rails compared to the original. It looks bulkier and less simple (when the Howlrunner was supposed to be compact – which was actually even a plot point – and streamlined/easy-to-draw). It also seems to have traded having lasers for having protruding forward intakes. I wouldn’t have even realized it was allegedly a Howlrunner if it hadn’t shown up in the Google search.
Taking away the pair of guns poking out right in front of the cockpit was incredibly stupid. You do realize that the Howlrunner is supposed to be based on the Buck Rogers Thunderfighter, right? Taking those guns – a key detail of the resemblance – away is like taking away the SoroSuub Preybird’s wingtip guns.
This is fractal’s version. It is supposed to be different because he puts his own twist on all of his ships. He has changed shape, armaments, and role because he can.
The I-7 Howlrunner was named after the howlrunner creature because they attacked in similar ways. The canonical designer said:
“I was on Kamar several years ago and witnessed a pack of howlrunners chasing down their prey. They ripped it apart, not necessarily because they outpowered their prey, but because they were quicker and more agile than their opponent. They took small nips out of the creature until it finally fell.”
Fractal’s design makes way more sense in this aspect than the original. The original had 2 giant goofy-ahh guns; instead, having 2 tiny blasters that take small nips at a fighter, ripping it apart not because of overpowering strength, but because of being quicker and more agile than the opponent just makes more sense. It just fits the canonical design reasoning better to compare the howlrunner creature’s weapons with Fractal’s 2 small blasters than the canonical 2 big ones.
What combat role does this serve?
It’s a starfighter? 😮
Starfighters have guns. This does not – or if it does, they’re reduced so badly they look like engine piping instead.
This isn’t a Howlrunner, not really. The only resemblance to the Howlrunner is the canopy and the vague silhouette. It’s missing the compactness, some of the simplicity, and – egregiously – the prominent paired nose guns the Howlrunner is supposed to have because it’s an homage to/expy of the Buck Rogers Thunderfighter.
The Howlrunner is supposed to be as capable in atmosphere as in space. Unlike a TIE or X-wing, whose flight envelopes are defined by the brute force of their engines, repulsorlifts, and whatever else they have, the Howlrunner has actual wings that create actual lift. Personally, I have the Navy is wedded to the TIE for all roles, leaving the Howlrunner to Army Aviation units in the planetary defense role.
Looks so much better than the original design.
You said it bro! 😛 And that’s because Fractal designed it… 😉
This looks far superior to the original and its aesthetically pleasing.
I’ve always been kinda curious how the original, and this re imagining of the howlrunner actually landed. Similar issues for the Cloakshape Fighter as well.
The downward curve on the wing tips would require some loooong stork like gear to reach the ground without resting in the dirt. Or perhaps something like the tie launch racks, and simply never resting on the surface.
Alternatively have the wings rotate around the engine pylons to a more upright stance and more normal sized landing gear.
Luke’s landspeeder is always hovering, even when not in use. Perhaps this thing can also just always have repulsors activated as well, even during maintenance downtime.
wont it be cheaper just to make landing gear rather then adding uneed reoserlifts
The wings rotate on this version.
I don’t know the specifications of the fighter but on design alone this should have been the main fighter for the empire
This looks fantastic! And it’s nice to see one of the lesser known Imperial starfighters get some love!
Reminds me of the Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels. I have a copy that originally belonged to my uncle.
Yeah, I have both the original and the New Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels. Great books!
Feels like an imperial version of the snow speeder.
The more I think about this ship, the more I like it. It is extremely compact, agile, and presents a small profile from almost all angles. Even it’s largest aspect isn’t as big a target as a basic TIE’s panel. If I was a Imperial captain I’d be pretty happy taking these over basic TIE’s as my standard defensive fighter.
Suppose it would make for a handy mass-production stopgap ’till the Interceptor/Avenger orders reached one’s sector. And hey, the Rebels/NR get another ‘appropriated’ Incom product to hassle convoys with.
I don’t suppose its too late to resurrect the argument that the old Clone Wars era V-Wing Starfighter should have never been retired in favor of the TIE/ln? Having shields, superior firepower, and greater agility than the default TIE is a heck of a force equalizer against A-Wings and T-65s, almost like a shielded proto-interceptor. Besides, the machine tooling for mass V-wing assembly already existed rather than requiring setting up a whole new production line.
I could buy a combination of political rebranding, modular versatility, easy upgrades, drawing-board TIE models’ growth potential, and ‘simple’ mil-industrial grift killing off mass production/support for sundry Clone Wars birds, though you’ve just about sold me on the V edging out /ln 1v1.
Kind of looks like a Buck Rogers fighter on steroids
Haha! That’s exactly what I thought before I even saw your post, Earth Defense Directorate starfighter beefed up! Especially the ventral view.
Nice!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I would love to see you render an A9 Vigilance.
Ah, KDY’s attempt to (retroactively) reenter the ultralight fighter market. That one might not need much tweaking besides a non-2D range of motion for the chin guns.
This feels very Elite:Dangerous to me. Which, is even more awesome. (the viper IV, in particular).
Now this is getting somewhere to earn the ship its name! The origin story of how the name came to be is always disappointing when you learn what the fighter turned out to be: low maneuverability damage sponge. If I could say I’d add more to this design, it’d be some large air “intakes” for the engines, maybe the cannon can be the turbine cone or something; all contributing to the vision that the machine will produce a chilling howl when it flies – moreso than the TIEs, that is.
As I recall from the Essential Guide’s fluff text, this thing was actually fairly nimble-just not heavily armed or boasting bleeding-edge thrust. Basically the EU’s equivalent of an avionics-updated MiG-21.
But it can’t be as nimble as a TIE can it? I think I’ve read somewhere that it’s kinda the Empire’s attempt at make a hyperspace capable/shield equipped snubfighter? The size of its blaster cannons seem to indicate it’s some amount stronger than TIE’s on cannons.
Funny thing is, as discussed further down this comment section Sienar might’ve gotten a real jump on everyone else in the fighter-scale market WRT miniaturization whilst retaining competitive firepower. Plus, A-wings & a number of Clone Wars birds seem to match *most* TIEs’ acceleration (though with no small number of tradeoffs).
New designs coming in so fast these days, I can’t even keep up commenting.
The Howlrunner is a good one and the Lancer was magnificent!
Btw. dropped you an email about that fbx the other day. Not sure you received it.
The original howlrunner looked terrible, this however, is quite the improvement!
Call me crazy, but this design always reminded me of the Terran Starfighter in Buck Rogers in the 25th Century.
Weren’t they from/inspired from or related to the same Macquarrie concept sketch?
I think they were. I remember seeing that mentioned somewhere.
Yup. He designed it for BSG.
http://www.sciencefictionarchives.com/en/collections/407/thunder-fighter-model-replica-from-buck-rogers-in-the-25th-century
Here’s some background from the guys who built the physical models.
http://www.universalhartland.com/code/buck_episodes0.shtml
McQuarrie Viper concept that became the Thunderfighter.
http://cinetropolis.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/04/battlestar-galactica-ralph-mcquarrie-original-viper.jpg
Lovely art in general & background solar wind(?), though sweet Sithspit does that cockpit look cramped.
Funny-I was just thinking the exact same thing!
Can see these as detachable mounts on a Tie Demolisher’s main pylons https://fractalsponge.net/?p=3700
I-7s as parasite-drone bomber escorts? Neat thought, though I wonder if the saved life-support space would enable a bare-bones hyperdrive installation. Might as well give one’s little buddies some chance to escape losing battles.
Love this redesign!
Dunno if I’d have cranked the wingtips that far down, but sweet Sithspit is that nose/fuselage blending an upgrade from the old Essential Guide’s ‘spaceborne taser with cockpit’ look. I take it those are targeting sensors in the wingroots?
Looking at the mounting hardware for the wings, it looks like they hinge up for landing, maybe even variable geometry in-flight
Ooh, good eye. Certainly wouldn’t hurt for planetside work.
Yes, they can swing up, but mostly for compact storage in a hangar.
“targeting lasers”? sure, or just light autoblasters. Whatever flavor of fluff you want – I doubt they’d require much power. Strafing guns for ground support maybe. Or, yeah, “targeting lasers”
As someone who always eyerolled at that ‘targeting’ explanation for all the Interceptor’s apparent extra gunports, I’ll go with the extra autoblasters-certainly enough nose space on this thing for all the sensors it’d need.
Great work! I can just imagine this puppy making strafing runs on rebel bases (in conjunction with TIE bombers or Scimitars).
another beautiful work of art, truly amazing
So what the Howlrunner’s role is?
She’s an interceptor, she’s faster than the TIE and has shields but is still quite fragile, think a slower A-wing or a TIE fighter with shields and you won’t be too far wrong
Source?
Not WEG apparently, or Neill here would have committed it to memory.
Actually, the I-7 is sufficiently obscure in-game that I had to double-check. But WEG did “get there first” in pretty much everything prior to the prequels.
This was always an issue I had with a lot of starfighters. They were never really a match for the tier 1 fighters like the X-Wing. They always seemed to be just not good enough.
Going by a comparison of game stats…
Speed / Acceleration: Midway between an X-Wing and TIE fighter
Atmosphere: No performance degradation, equal to an A-Wing in straight-line speed
Maneuverability: Slightly less than a TIE Interceptor
Durability: Equal to an X-Wing, but with slightly tougher shields
Sensors: Slightly inferior to TIE Fighter (mostly in maximum range)
Weaponry: Equal to a TIE
Endurance: Equal to a TIE
Hyperdrive: None / Optional
Based on that, and when it was introduced (Dark Empire), I’d guess it was an attempt to create a more durable “anti-X-Wing” fighter that would give Imperial pilots very nearly the speed and performance they were used to with a TIE, combined with the toughness needed to go toe-to-toe with an X-Wing.
The heavy fighter niche is much better filled by the TIE Avenger, but in the wholesale destruction that ensued during the true Imperial Civil War, it would be plausible that the various squabbling factions lost access to the Avenger and had to settle by buying whatever they could from the private sector to replenish their fighter wings.
Various & sundry neutral/space-mafia/Hutt-affiliated parties (yeah, I know the last two overlap a lot) might also be in the market for a passably-performing compact bird.
I suppose something has to replace the venerable Z-95 in the role of generic 3rd party fighter.
Amazing work. Makes me wish the game stats weren’t for a short-range starfighter only. Of course, after the X-Wing fiasco, Incom would most definitely have wanted to play it safe so as to avoid Imperial displeasure.
Well this new cockpit and fuselage certainly is a big leap forwards over the previous art, and probably a substantive enough change that this would be an I-7B variant, or even an I-8.
With all that room for power plant compared to a TIE, I’m surprised that you didn’t also add a couple of more guns.
Those lasers might be substantially punchier than /ln guns, unless Sienar’s TIE weapon-powerplant tech is so ludicrously miniaturized (and patented) other companies need several times the equipment space for comparable yield.
Most interpretations of the TIE/ln don’t portray it as much less well armed than an X-Wing, which has twice the guns, each of which take up much more volume. Sienar must be doing something right, although Kuat’s V-Wing got it right first.
Compared to TIE, A-, Y- & even B-wing lasers, I’ve been wondering if the X was deliberately over-gunned for shuttle/light freighter/corvette-scale targets. Sienar lasers do strike me as more proportionally efficient, though now I’m pondering what extra juice the wingtip-laser designs (squint/Avenger/Defender) might pack.
V-wing might have been much less well armed – trade full combat shielding for massively souped up main armament?
But yeah, TIE fighters die to 1-2 solid hits from an X-Wing, and X-wings that have full combat shielding die to a single TIE rapid burst. So while we know nothing serious about OT fighter gun yield, I think in results there’s not much to choose from there.
To squeeze out another WWII analogy, might be like the variation ‘tween 20mm & 30mm cannons, though of course the latter’s fire-rate/ammo-reserve problems wouldn’t apply to anything laser-based.
How about the difference between 20mm and .50 cal? F4 and F6 Hellcats were equipped with six .50 cals, while Zeroes were equipped with a pair of .303 cal. machineguns and a pair of 20mm cannon. It’s not outside the realm of possibility for a fighter to mount both heavy guns to deal with large, tough targets and light, rapid-fire guns to deal with small, maneuverable targets. It works here, too, as the I-7 is clearly intended as a heavier fighter than the regular TIE, perhaps as a combination of the TIE/ln and the heavy gun TIE/br from Solo.
I can live with the V-Wing not being as hard hitting as an X-Wing, given that it was only really designed to be able to kill paper thin Vultures and Tri-Droids. That being said, I still think it’s a damn good fighter that got killed because of politics, not performance.
WW2 fighters with very limited weight allowances for guns were forced to choose between harder-hitting autocannons and fast firing MGs, but with Star Wars hardware, why not both? Dial the output up and store power in your capacitors for maximum output bolts if you want to strafe corvettes, or sacrifice yield for volume if you want to pop a missile zeroing in on your wingman. Both should be very possible on the same gun.
Cost? Perhaps the tech is there to design and build a multi-purpose weapon like that, but it’s too expensive to mass-produce on the scale needed to field a pan-galactic military force equipped with it. Or, more accurately, more than the Empire is willing to spend to equip a mass-produced well-nigh-disposable starfighter corps with.
I would argue that there’s strong cinematic evidence that your default TIE guns already have that capability. At the beginning of Yavin, a single bolt from a TIE turns an X-Wing into an expanding pile of vapor, but as the battle draws on, both sides exhaust their stored capacitors. Near the ending, there are a couple of cases where fighters take hits and damage is far more limited to things like starboard engines, R2-D2, and whatever damage Wedge took that caused him to disengage.
An alternate theory: there are either two sub-variants of the standard TIE fighter – one with lighter, rapid-fire lasers, the other with heavier, slower firing cannon – that are visually indistinguishable from each other, or the cannon section on the bottom of the TIE can be swapped out and equipped with a variety of different mission-specific cannon (ion cannon for capture missions, maybe).
Between the Striker’s extra pair of heavy chin guns & those ESB /lns demonstrating an oddly conservative fire rate during the asteroid chase, you might (again) have something here. Hell, at one point (right before the sideways canyon bit) some of those shots even seem to use turbolaser SFX (for what that’s worth).
The ESB chase is pretty easily justified as strict orders to maintain contact and support elements of the fleet in an attempt to catch the Falcon intact, rather than blasting it into vapor. I’m sure the pilots didn’t like the rules of engagement, but they can take it up with Vader.
Plausible, though in that case the light gunners on Avenger were playing a rather hairy game-an attempt to knock out engines without compromising Our Heroes’ life support?
It’s possible the ESB TIEs were an updated version of the TIE/br from Solo, with the harder hitting laser cannon being sufficiently miniaturized that they could be mounted in the “chin” instead of a side-pod.
I get the impression some of those later hits (‘specially anything involving the trench runs) were mitigated by doubled-up aft shields (both literal & main-character variety), but you might be on to something.
I took a similar approach to explain the overgunning on the Interceptor. Short version, the lasers on the wings are the main armament, but the cannon mount at the base of the cockpit is modular, and can be fitted with concussion missile tubes, an ion cannon, an auto-blaster (for missile intercept), a shield generator, a ferry tank or a grapple line launcher (ala the Interceptors in Zahn’s Vision of the Future).
Not a bad range of options-the grapple launcher strikes me as an economic alternative to fighter-scale tractor beams (which don’t strike me as the handiest tool outside ejected-pilot retrieval or crippled-friendly assistance)
The X-Wing games allowed the TIE Avenger and Defender (which could be fitted with a low-power tractor beam) to degrade a target’s performance in order to make them an easier target. Probably wouldn’t work on the Interceptor, though…
Besides the power-budget issues, I can see certain issues WRT flight-path predictability & evasive maneuvers for fighters tractoring similar-mass prey. You’d want to be damned sure of local superiority and/or wingmate coverage.
I think of it more in terms of relative maneuverability, not absolute, kinda like waterskiing behind a boat. You don’t have the power to stop the boat, but you are attached to it, and the rope is pointed line-straight from you to it. With fighters, the tractoring fighter would effectively be getting towed by his target, with his bow pointed dead-on at it, like a rope, making it a lot easier to target with lasers / ion cannon.
Might be worth it against extra-slippery/shielded targets, though now I’m wondering if towed/detachable decoys could make for a handy countermeasure (ala Luke spoofing the Chimera’s tractor lock with proton torps in Dark Force Rising). Still strikes me as a system safer left to one’s RIO/WSO equivalent (if present), though it might make bomber & gunboat drivers’ lives easier.
I don’t know about heavier fighter. I thought it was supposed to be a semi-lateral upgrade for the early model/ln in garrison type units, at least so went the early fluff. I built this deliberately very small by Incom standards, and it’s a very no frills design – just two (or 2+2 light) guns, no missiles, light shields, no hyperdrive or possibility for one. Probably intermediate between /ln and base /I performance, trending towards /I, but wouldn’t be truly competitive with a shielded /I of the kind you see in the video games or a Hunter. The gun mounts look large, but it’s aesthetic from the original sketches – I mounted a standard TIE laser inside. I figure they are the cooling shrouds. I was originally going to use the mounts as single missile launchers and the wingroot mounts as the twin cannon, but then I scaled the whole chassis far enough down that it didn’t seem plausible for my standard launch tube. Though I can imagine a variant with just light lasers in the roots and a small concussion launcher in the main mount areas.
Something along the lines of the concussion missile launchers on the A-Wing from the ICS books, maybe? Missiles that small should easily fit into the housing.
I was thinking maybe somewhere along the lines of of the Jedi interceptor that ETA-2
I’ve always had this vague sense of disappointment with the Howlrunner, as if it should somehow be more than it is. There’s simply no sense of excitement to it. Its not a BAD sufighter, it just feels meh. That is extremely appropriate considering its history, and was likely stumbled upon by the original artists.
I will admit the name’s lightyears too cool for that bird.
Welcome to defense procurement after the private sector has unleashed the marketing department.
This and the E-wing are probably my least favorite Legends EU ships, but you managed to make it look pretty good. Not going to say I love it, just love that you were able to salvage the design.
The biggest thing I disliked about the E-Wing was the engine placement. Putting the engines that far below the center-line of the ship creates off-axis thrust problems in zero-g. If the engines were moved up to the wing roots, ala the ARC-170, it’d make a lot more sense. Maybe moving the laser cannon up to the angle in the wing, too.
I can hand wave that away. Its the third cannon placement over the cockpit that annoyed me on the E-wing. That was just stupid and instead of maybe sticking with just two cannons or maybe 4 and placing 2 closer to the wing root, the artist said, “I’ll just stick a third on the roof.” It just looked like a lazy design.
Its one of the reasons I like Fractal’s originals better because they don’t have that designed on a deadline look to them. There’s craftsmanship to them. Like with this iteration of the Howlrunner, he took a very marginally artistic design that’s heavy on straight lines and angles, is easy to draw quickly for comics, and honed it into something that isn’t terrible (yes the pointy wingtip ends still drive me nuts though).
True enough. There are only two positives I’ve seen from starship design in Dark Empire: providing endless opportunities for Fractal to prove that you actually CAN polish a turd, and the Taskforce Modular Cruiser concept (support and logistics never gets taken seriously).
Considering how much longevity the X-Wing ended up having, I could almost see the E-Wing ending up as a Y-Wing replacement: engines to the wing roots, dual lasers at the angles in the gull wings, replace the center laser with a nose-mounted ion cannon in front of the cockpit, and maybe stretch the cockpit to make it a tandem two-seater to accommodate a WSO. It already has decent speed and ordnance capacity (two 8-round torp launchers).
Yeah, the fact that Fractal would eventually be able to cook up the Secutor from an anonymous blob in the background makes the rest of the dodgy art worth it to me.
The Bellator is the greater prize from those comics. Even now, I routinely see it appear (almost always uncredited) in random parts of the internet. Just today it was on /r/starcitizen, out of all places.
I’ll confess to liking the World Devastators’ general *concept* as mobile light-craft factories & raw-material processors, though their superweapon status is hilariously overhyped by Comic!Ackbar (‘far more lethal than the Death Star’ my ass). Plus, while I could see those things being shielded & armed well enough to make one or two Impstars break a serious sweat, they still have no business forming the core of a naval battle that isn’t essentially mid-rout (which I suppose the Battle of Calamari basically was-they just skipped the bit where Mon Cala’s home fleet & shield grid were reduced enough to allow WD deployment).
The World Devastators seem more like terror-inducing Wunderwaffen than something that actually represents a step forwards in planetary assault, or otherwise the CIS would have probably put something like it into production.
These World Devastators are (heavy?) cruiser sized, but are forced to devote an enormous proportion of internal volume to factories and warehouses instead of reactors and capacitor banks, which mean they probably have the survivability of light destroyers at best, without the small profile, speed, and maneuverability that light destroyers actually use to stay alive in fleet brawls.
I’m sure every major galactic power has some sort of mobile battlefield scavenging unit for scrounging up valuable metals and components, but the idea of uparmoring one and taking it into a fight doesn’t strike me as a particularly good one.
There’s lots of things in Star Wars that don’t make much sense once you have time to think about them. It’s the serious fans, though, who tie themselves into knots trying to impose a sense of verisimilitude into them.
IMO, a more practical use for World Devastators would be for shortening the supply lines of military operations within a system. Say you have dozens of corps deployed in combat operations on a planet; there’s going to be a lot of logistical demand for spare parts and the like. Something like a World Devastator could park somewhere outsystem, like an asteroid belt or the moons of a gas giant, strip-mining them for raw-mats, then using their on-board factories to churn out needed spare parts for the Army with a much quicker turn-around than conventional interstellar resupply.
If that was their original design, it would make more sense for them to be pressed into a planetary assault role post-Endor when the Empire was starved for resources.
I think the really right way to use them is to send them to some remote galactic arm and eat a few thousand empty systems for maximum von Neumann swarm progression. Get them really large, not like the runt Silencers which are probably the equivalent of World Devastator newborns. Then use them to mass produce infrastructure stuff that normally would take a lot of time elsewhere via more traditional methods – stuff like machine tools, fuel extraction facilities, heavy turbolaser and armor foundries. With deepdock support they could even churn out their own supply chains – bulk transports and tankers and such. I assume the Separatists were basically doing this or starting to do it at the end of the Clone Wars, but the cutoff signal literally killed their efforts before they could snowball.
But I guess Shadow Hand wasn’t an war-in-depth sort of approach – it presumed an alpha strike victory. Seems like the NR was weak enough that had it been sustained it probably would have actually worked.
They’d make great hyperspace lane sweepers/plows. Clearing out stray asteroids, hydrospanners, R2 units, debris, etc. Especially in the deep core where you’ve got extremely restricted space lanes. Makes sense to have the equipment in place to maintain them!
Is the Empire’s industrial base not already doing this? In order to build things like Death Stars, Ecumenopoli, and the various worldcraft in a reasonable timeframe, I suspect that they probably did have some sort of mobile, self-replicating factory ship fleet somewhere out in the rim, although likely with more manpower attached as supervisors than the Separatists did. Heck, they probably inherited some of the CIS kit, and reactivated it after painting the six-spoked wheel on the sides.
I suppose the World Devastators might have been able to produce finished droid fighters at a faster pace if they were eating pre-refined milspec components from wrecked MC80s instead of random asteroids, but the risk of losing them in battle is one that only reborn (insane) Palps would be willing to take.
That’d work, too. On a smaller scale, this method would certainly work for the second Death Star; if Endor is a moon orbiting a gas giant, then there will likely be multiple other moons or asteroids nearby for easy resource extraction and manufacturing. It makes a lot more sense than shipping all of the materials out to a remote, top secret worksite.
For no defensible reason I’ve got a soft spot WRT the ‘simpler fixed-wing T-65 cousin’ concept, but agreed on the cockpit cannon being pointless & its general aesthetics needing serious work. I keep visualizing a barely-Avenger/Defender-competitive rehash with the dorsal gun & astromech compartment deleted to fit a third thruster, the wing-engines compacted into smaller conformal pods & moved up to flank the centerline, and slightly forward-swept wings with triple lasers mounted around that bend at the tip. Missile magazine would be roughly chopped in half, but with modular capacity (i.e. 16 CMs for interceptor duty).
Excuse me, I do a lot of logistics and support ships! 🙂
And quite well, too. I should’ve clarified that support and logistics never get taken seriously /officially/. Only in TLJ did the possibility of ships running low on fuel finally get used, and even then they flubbed it. Considering that hitting supply convoys and other support functions is one of the few viable tactics a guerilla force can use, I’m surprised it hasn’t gotten more treatment.
Way easier to stop or delay a multi-corps assault on a planet if you can hit the tankers before they fuel up the Consolidators and their escorts.
That top cannon always rubbed me the wrong way as well…just my $0.02 but would have looked better with just he 2 cannons…eithat at the wingtips like they are or closer to the main body ala the BSG Viper.
Agreed. The E-Wing is definitely a broken design,but it has a lot of potential. If Fractal can do this for the I-7, I’d love to see what he can come up with for the E-.
A small, agile, fast and shielded interceptor that looks amaze, what’s not to like. As always, amazing work!
This is wicked!! Kinda reminds me of a T-47 Snowspeeder. Love it!!
Looks like an Imperial A-Wing, although i doubt that’s what it is.
In-universe it’s a design Incom made for the Empire, which is why it *sort of* looks like a snowpeeder.
It always reminded me of Buck Rogers’ ship