I talking about the original trilogy here. The empire made lots of very big and powerful ships, but seemed to forget about making any of them remotely defendable.
Obviously, there is the death star. Able to destroy a planet, but able to be destroyed by a single fighter? I imagine someone in Empire engineering got an ass kicking over that one. Do you reckon after they finished the deathstar, there was one part left over marked “Exhaust port safety grill”. (unfortunately the instructions were in japanese, so they couldn’t work out where it went).
Then, there is the second death star. Now this was unfinished, so it seems fair enough that it was still vunerable. But the emperor practically invited the rebellion to attack. He mush have know that they would target the main reactor that he had left open so temptingly. And yet, he forgot to try to stop the rebels from flying down the access shaft and destroying it. A couple of cables stretched accross one of the narrow bits could have changed the outcome significantly.
Next, the tie fighter. No shielding whatsoever. including vaders modified fighter. And they wondered why they kept losing in dogfights.:smack: And yet they managed to put them on Imperial Probe droids though?
Finally, we have the super stardestroyer Executor. This is the biggest ship in the fleet with the exception of deathstars. It must have a complement of thousands of tie fighters, yet it was destroyed by a couple of rebel fighters. The shield generator was destroyed by a single fighter. It seems to be the only bit of the ship that WASN’T protected by a shield.:smack: I mean, why not just paint a big target on it?
Maybe if they had built ships without a self destruct button on the outside, they would have stood more chance against the rebels. So howcum they were so bad at this? Did the empire have a shortage of shield technology? Were they on a very strict budget? Or were they just very shortsighted?
Death Star 1 - That was a flaw in the design that the Empire’s engineers didn’t begin to suspect till the Rebels were making their attack runs. By then it was a little too late.
Death Star 2 - Well the Emperor’s plan would have gone off greatly had some furry little unmentionables not happened to have had the ability to take out mass of Storm Troopers. Well he would have still died but his station would have been intact.
TIE - The Empire favored quantity over quality. Since their main enemy was a small but gaining rebellion they didn’t feel the need to put too much tech in them. They did change their minds however. Vader’s TIE (according to the games) was a shielded super TIE fighter. But if you were a grunt you got the old models for the remainder of the war. It sucks to be the lowest wrung.
Executor - I think you’re confused here. The A-Wing took out the shields of a regular ISD. The Executor was taken out by all those Calamarian ships. Akbar commanded “Concentrate all firepower on that Super Star Destroyer!” and down she went.
I imagine there was some arrogance. They’re main focus was on projecting fear into the hearts of people. More ships, more fear. We see this happening in our world right now. Petty tin dictators want the numbers to brag to the world how big their army is. Only problem their equipment and training suck and smaller better trained and better equiped armies roll right over them.
Forget about all that. I wanna know why Imperial Stormtroopers even bother with Body Armor.
It’s clumsy and clunky. It makes them highly visible in most environm,ents (except snow). and it apparently doesan’t do a damned thing about protecting you from rebel guns. In fact, judging from the efforts of the Ewoks in Return of the Jedi, it doesn’t do anything to protect you against rocks and sticks, either.
Lucas (among other things) got way too creative in this latest (earlier) trilogy with the capabilities of the ships and speeders and attack machinery. Based on what it should have had at their disposal, for, the Empire looks stupid for using completely immobile AT-AT and chicken walkers in ESB and RotJ. And Luke should have received absolutely nothing for his land speeder at Mos Eisley; it looked like it would have been outmoded 100 years before AotC.
It’s possible to be creative and make things pretty without creating an apparent Dark Ages 20 years down the road.
For the ships, I’ve always looked at it the same way I look at any massive government project that gets shoddy merchandise: They went with the lowest bidder.
For the innaccuracy of Stormtroopers with their rifles, I seem to remember there being a computer game (dark forces?) in which one can weild a stormtrooper rifle, but even standing stock still with it, the blasts go every which way. Inherently innaccurate weapon, which goes back to point #1 above.
Yeah, thats right. I think its the E-11 blaster rifle, and its rubbish. Probably the cheapest available again.
It always makes me laugh in ANH, when Obiwan says “These blasts are too accurate for sandpeople. It must be Imperial Stormtroopers” Or something like that. how bad are sandpeople then?
Actually, the bit that always bothered me is that in the original movie when Ben and Luke find the destroyed Sandcrawler, Ben comments “Only Imperial Stormtoopers are so precise.” Of course, at every other point in the series, Imperial Stormtoopers couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn from the inside.
The fact that Stormtrooper armor seems to be completely useless always bothered me too.
Well, one could argue that replacing the Republic with an oppressive Empire did cause a Dark Age, but it is a valid point. The problem is (of course) that special effects technology has improved so much and audience expectations of them have increased so much over the past 25 years that it would be difficult to pull off. (This problem isn’t restricted to Star Wars either; note how much better the Enterprise from Enterprise looks compared to the Enterprise from TOS. Apparently the Federation suffered a Dark Ages too.)
As has been pointed out, it’s mainly for dramatic impact. I mean, there are movies where the villain has a dead eye on his team who can shoot a bird flying by 200 feet away and hit it dead in the eyeball, yet when it comes to the big drag down shoot out with the hero, he gets a few hits in the shoulder or leg, but that’s it. I never read any of the books, but from what my old roomate told me, Stormtroopers were actually rather effective and accurate shots, and their armor did manage to help out here and there. The problem is, that only seemed to be when fighting secondary characters and the like.
As for the empire’s ships, it’s not that they were bad, it’s just that the rebels’ were better. I mean, your basic TIE next to an X-Wing is nothing but scrap metal. X-Wings are more manuverable, have better weapons, and shields. So, on a one-to-one, there’s not much they can do. But, one X-Wing against, say, 100 TIES, and it’s pretty much no contest. That’s where the Empire has it’s power. Also, X-Wings may be super manuverable and able to deal a Star Destroyer some real damage, but I don’t think there’s a single Rebel capital ship that’s on par with a SD. The rebels are outmanned, just really lucky.
TIEs are unshielded beacuse it would divert power away from the engines. Therefore, they’re much faster than Rebel ships, but as delicate as paper lanterns.
This bothered me until Eppisode 2 came out. Now we know the Death star was designed by those insect dudes. Think about it, if you were to create a planet destroying weapon, and give it into the hands of the Empire, you would make pretty darned sure that there was a weak point so that if the Empire were to use it against one of your plannets you could protect yourself easily. You’d also make sure that the Empire never has a chance to discover the weak point and remove it.
So the rebels got the plan, but also must have got the scoop on the Insect guys ‘insurance policy’.
If you’ve ever played the game Tie Fighter, you learn that even without sheilds, Ties are faster and can totally rape rebel ships, particulary because ties tend to travel in groups and rebel ships(at least in the games) tend to perate in fewer numbers.
Basically, if a Tie fighter gets on an X-wing’s tail, the X-wing is screwed.
Not exactly- at least, according to the X-Wing books. The X-Wing’s shields give it a huge advantage in one-on-one dogfights, enough that (assuming pilots of equal skill), the X-Wing could just soak up damage until it manages to get a snap shot at the TIE. The X-Wing may be slower than the TIE fighter, but the TIE fighter evaporates after a single good hit.
However, the point is that individual X-Wings are far more expensive than individual TIE fighters. The price of one X-Wing is probably enough to net you several TIEs, enough to take out a single X-Wing, assuming you’re willing to take a few extra pilot casualties in the process (and the Empire is certainly willing to do that).
Hmm… that last paragraph was written poorly. Let me rephrase.
The multiple TIE fighters one could purchase for the price of a single X-Wing would (again, assuming equal pilot skill) easily overpower that equivalently-priced single X-Wing. However, it is likely that the TIE group will suffer losses as well, due to the X-Wing’s aforementioned firepower and shields and the TIE fighters’ extreme fragility. For the Empire (which essentially has limitless manpower), this is an acceptable sacrifice.
Right. And it is always a good idea to let the jungle grow right up to your back door. Not even a 100 yard clearing. No mine field either. Cub scouts could have defended that thing better.
What bothers me most about combat in SW, is the fact that they fight like it is the US Civil War. Look at I and II, in both big battle scenes you have massed troops running at each other. Hell, in PM, it is like a roman legion out on the plains. No air support to speak of. It’s just silly. How about some carpet bombing? How about orbital bombardment?
Of course, it’s only a matter of time before we get the standard-issue post by someone telling us how the Star Destroyer could fire 78 jillion gooberwatts of energy through its turbolasers and the Empire had five million of them and the shields had 650 grabasstiks of shielding power, all basd on references to the “canon” pulp novels.
