Star Wars is Lying to You... Why the Tie Fighter is GREAT!

In a New Hope there wasn't a single situation where a single X-Wing (or Y-Wing for that matter) was able to shake a TIE Fighter off its own tail. The Rebels always needed a wingman to 'clear six' for them.

Surprisingly you left out the Tie's biggest advantage: It can pivot it's guns. During the trench run, there are - several - scenes where the Tie is NOT directly behind the Y/X-wing, but it still hits the ship by pivoting it's guns, thus never having to get directly behind them.

I honestly don't think George Lucas intended for the TIE to be what it's typically viewed as (thanks to the EU). I suspect that he intended the TIE to be equal or even superior to an X-wing, making the point of how "plucky" the Rebellion was. This shows in how the TIE is "clean," as are its pilots, who are in full flight suits not because of necessity, because they can afford it. In contrast the Rebellion has to make due with obsolete fighters and pieced old jumpsuits that aren't going to actually do anything should you end up in vacuum. Basically the EU made the main characters' plot armor part of the X-wing, rather than just accepting it as plot armor.

If I remember right, I think the X-wing series by Stackpole addresses this. The shields on the rebel fighters allow new pilots to survive their "mistakes", while in the tie line mistake = death. This led to more seasoned pilots in the rebel fleet. But in the hands of an expert or ace, the tie was the superior fighter. Other things to consider, the Imperial Fleet was not built around countering the Rebel fleet, and the X-wings, A-wings, and B-wings were all newly developed during or just before the rebellion kicked off in earnest. Most of what the imperial fleet was dealing with would have been far outclassed by the Tie line. The Tie Defender the empire developed as a counter made rebel fights look like a joke.

Regarding converging gun lines: in WW2, most planes had an ability to adjust the converging distance, but it was something that had to be done on the ground, with tools. Some squadrons dictated the converging ranges for all planes. Some planes and squadrons used a different converging range for each pair of guns if the plane had more than one per wing. For example, the outer pair would converge at a greater distance then the inner pair. And there were some pilots who were able to choose their own converging range(s). I wish I could remember the name, but I saw a documentary on a pilot who set his convergence very close because he preferred to dogfight tightly. There was another pilot who set his very far out, because he shot planes like a duck hunter by leading them in high-deflection angles, and sending rounds out to where they would be, not by getting in behind them. The second pilot dealt with command not believing his shootdown numbers because his targets rarely appeared on his gun camera.

I also want to mention something that is noticed in the Rogue Squadron games. When fighting in space, the TIE series's design and paint color allow them to get some camouflage in space. Seeing the target is a bit difficult even when you have the red dot on your radar. Due to the fact that they all have similar designs, it can also be sometimes difficult to tell which TIE is which.

An alternate interpretation on the low cost of the TIEs: it's not that they're "easily replaceable" so much as they are "readily available". That is to say, TIEs being inexpensive (as fighters go, anyway) means the Empire can basically hand them out like candy to any ship or base equipped with a tall enough ladder. That means most Imperial ships and bases will have their own fighter screen on hand. Not only does that give them another weapon, it gives them a HUGE degree of tactical flexibility for both offense and defense. It also means there is a training pipeline probably even bigger than the pilots' cranking out mechanics and technicians to work on the TIEs, who also get farmed out to almost every base or ship. That is huge, especially for an empire as sprawling as the... uh... the Empire. I mean, consider how much of a logistical nightmare it must have been for the Rebels, trying to source parts and qualified mechanics from a dozen different manufacturers, for fighters that run the gamut from "bleeding-edge prototype" to "museum piece" to "scratch-built by an enthusiast in his garage", most of whom have complex moving parts - what a mess. It's a miracle they managed to kitbash any serious force of strike craft into battle. By comparison, keeping TIEs in action would seem like simplicity itself: most of the systems carry over from one model to the next, there's probably huge degrees of parts compatibility, they're almost entirely solid-state with no moving parts, there are huge numbers of pilots and techs being pumped through their respective pipelines every day... SO much less of a logistical headache, even considering how the Empire hands out TIEs like party favors.

Considering how popular Top Gun Maverick is, I wish Star Wars would start integrating modern dogfighting techniques and maneuvers that were pioneered in the Jet Age instead of WWII. I mean imagine if the Rogue Squadron movie comes out and we see its pilots do modern maneuvers and using missiles and torpedoes more out of line of sight.

9:49 The TIE Fighter game from 1994 shows that TIE pilots do in fact have a feed from cameras attached to various parts of the ship that allow them to switch from their default directional view and see around their peripherals.

There is exactly 1 thing that really, really hurts the Tie as a design. It lacks shields. Shields allow a starfighter to take some hits (even if it’s not a flying tank; surviving a hit is better than not). Being able to survive contact with the enemy allows starfighter pilots to gain experience and actually get good. This is the major difference between rebel fighter pilots and imperial fighter pilots. The rebels survived contact with the enemy and developed experience that multiplied the skills they developed in training. Imperial pilots by and large did not. Add to the fact that the rebel alliance was small, and the empire enormous and you’re naturally going to have a greater percentage of fighting aces emerge from the rebel fighter corps. This means that the more skilled and experienced rebel pilots often engaged inexperienced and unprepared imperial pilots. The result was a very high K/D ratio among rebel pilots and an abysmal K/D ratio among imperial pilots. Throwing shields on a tie is not the solution to defeat the rebel alliance. All that really does is improve the tie’s K/D ratio and probably it’s reputation as well. I doubt i have enough room to explain how to defeat the rebellion's fighter tactics. but lets just say it's not easy.

I think the TIE fighter has been flanderized to hell over the years. Star Wars writers went from "these are relatively cheap, streamlined fighters that aren't quite as powerful and versatile as the x-wings" to "these are garbage cannon fodder that get thrown at the enemy with no care and drop like flies".

I love the attention to detail with the fighters, especially the cross section of the guns on X wings. All pilots flying planes with wing-mounted armaments had to deal with this problem, and they had their weapons pre-set before takeoff and can’t change them until they land again. That was a huge advantage to a plane like the P-38 or Me-262 or BF-109: their nose was their firing platform, meaning their fire was centralized and generally had longer range, depending on the arc of fire they used.

This video bothered me because every time I thought of something he hadn't mentioned, he went ahead and mentioned it a few seconds later. If you've ever played the games, the biggest points of the TIE fighters are small size (hard to hit), good turn speed (hard to hit), no shields, and no hyperdrive. Of those, the non-shields are the most important. If you're flying one, the second hit will kill you, every time. You have to fly in a way that you never get hit. So yeah. I noticed that in the game, you can periodically take a hit to the X-Wing shields and regenerate them, so that your hull takes no damage. In the movies, X-Wings go boom after one or two hits. So, that's a big difference. In the end, though, none of these are the most important differences. The true most important things about TIE fighters are the SOUNDS of the twin ion engines and the rattle of the lasers as they cool down after firing. Do you know what an X-Wing sounds like as it flies by? No, you do not. Do you know the sound of a TIE fighter as it screams past? Oh, hell yes you know!

I always thought that how the TIEs were portrayed in A New Hope was that they were fast, with good targeting systems, even as far to say as they were high tech compared to the X and Y Wings, but the X-Wings were more sturdy, and gave more of a feeling of good ol' reliable vehicles.

The A6M Zero relied on its agility for protection, at least for most of its life. Armor may help protect the pilot, but the added weight’ll make it more difficult either to get guns on target or to get an opponent’s guns off target. The relatively low horsepower of the Zero’s engine and the design objective of getting as much range out of the plane as possible didn’t help much either.

I thought one of the EU book indicated that star wars fighters used audio cues to indicate information to the pilot. So if a shot goes whizzing past them or a enemy fighter comes up on their tail the ship makes a sound of a blaster bolt, or ship engine come from the same direction to so the pilot will hear the threat behind them(also hand waving noise in space). Unfortunately I can't recall where I read or heard it from so it might just be a fanon thing, but if it is canon it does explain the pilot turning their heads as a instinctive response to a sound.

Eckhartsladder: so the TIE fighter is more like an interceptor... TIE interceptor: hey, that's me

The Expanded Universe material insisted that TIEs sucked because they were so fragile. Yet the canon movies show “shielded” fighters still succumbing to single hits, with luck occasionally allowing a fighter to survive a glancing blow but with considerable damage. A low cost, highly maneuverable fighter makes sense in this context.

The Alphabet squadron book had a really good description of a tie fighter as being like a Knife, in the hands of an unskilled pilot it is basically useless, but in the hands of a truly skilled pilot they are deadly.

I think it’s cool how Squadrons dealt with most of the Empire not having shields. In exchange for being a tank like the Rebels you could fly around really fast, put all of your power into your lasers, and then light somebody up! Basically doing a drive by is how you play the Empire in Squadrons.