X-Wing and Tie Fighter

Have to be careful of the "engine wake" too from XvT on.

 

I thought the nasty "engine wash" first debutted in XWA. It's been so long since I've played any XvsT that I could be wrong, though.

 

Yeah, no more Corvette blind-spot where you could sit .2 clicks behind the engines and take them down with a sustained laser burst.


Edit: apologies to HawkNC who just wrote this on the last page.

 

Curse of being the 49th post, I guess.

 

What I loved best about the series was the mods that you could use. Escort the Cartagar for XvT had a great story, and Path Not Taken as well. Unfortunately PNT isn't available on the Internet, but I have an archive of it I could put up for those of you who want to download it. It's an AU thing that theorizes what would've happened had Luke not gotten off of the second death star.

Anybody feel like starting up an informal squadron/clan? You know, like the JCN.GL clan for Jedi Outcast?

Chris

 

I'm already in one, but...what the hell.

 

Ahh yes, I'm still an X-Wing and TIE junkie. I just reloaded XWA on my system after a hard drive crash took it out (and X-Wing, and TIE Fighter).

So I'm getting back into the groove. TIE Fighter I also think was definately the best for its time. And that Missile Boat indeed is one lil motha of destruction to fly. I believe with the SLAM drive you can crank it up to over 500 MGLT if you throw EVERYTHING back into the engines (including the beam weapon) and keep the laser charged with residual shield energy. Granted you don't have the beam weapon in the training maze, but throwing everything into the engines and engaging the SLAM drive makes for a fun experience.

I did notice one rather nasty cheat in the original PC TIE Fighter that can be exploited effectively. If you were to dock a missile boat to a utility tug for reloads and then fly away from it as it starts filling your magazines and you start punching off missiles, you'll still keep getting reloaded. Of course the trick is to keep launching missiles so that you don't get completely reloaded, otherwise the tug will disengage. I used this tactic in the one mission where a Star Destroyer gets overwhealmed by ATRs and managed to save it once (when its supposed to get destroyed). The other problem is that if too many missles are flying in the sky, the ship won't let you launch any more until a couple blow up. The missile accuracy average goes down a lot, but oh well. I did try this in XvT once, and trying to fly away from the tug just causes a collision that blows up the tug in the process (oh well).

X-Wing is my sentimental favorite still though. And yes the trench run is crazy with the Arcade style catwalks, but it does make it fun to fly I think. And I also liked killing Star Destroyers any chance I got (even if I wasn't meant to). If I recall correctly, I remember racking up at least 12 and possibly as many as 18 Star Destroyers in all the original XW TODs. With a Y-Wing, its too easy with the ion cannons (B-Wing has cannons too, but its something of a slug). The X-Wing is somewhat easy to do if you keep your speed up. The A-Wing is the most difficult, to do it in but the trick is to keep going fast enough to keep missile and gun locks off you and strafe like crazy when you see a grey triangle fill your screen (once the shield generators are down anyway).

Its also fun getting in close and letting TIEs crash into the ships as they sometimes do, but this did cost me an SD kill once as a TIEs crash managed to kill an SD with serious hull damage. I was a little ticked when they took out the generator weakness for TIE Fighter, yet was glad when they put it back in for Alliance, with the compromise that SDs also have cumulative shields until the generators are destroyed.

Another favorite tactic in convoy attacks is to disable the lead ships and let the following ships crash into them. Lots of carnage results and you save the missiles (works great in one of the B-wing training missions).

Lets see, has it really been ten years since X-Wing? We do need a revamped X-Wing then, because such a program would make a great sim. Alliance was good (and tough in places), but I still think something better can be done now that we have processors that can theoretically render a full 3D Death Star, rather then having to resort to a shortcut (such as just a 2D surface, or a background image (maze interior would still need to be a seperate element though).

The missions I hated in all the programs were ones that involved mine sweeping. I really HATE mines (especially the ones in TF that punch off missiles when they blow up).

 

Type C mines = teh suck. I'm playing TIE Fighter through again, and there are many missions that require you to shoot them down in a cruddy little Gunboat. Fire-linked lasers will sometimes take the missile out at the same time - if you shoot the mine at the right angle - but often you don't have time to waste hunting down missiles that are chasing you. I was a very happy man when chaff and flares were introduced.

 

...I still think something better can be done now that we have processors that can theoretically render a full 3D Death Star

By this you man, what, a (more or less) up-to-scale Death Star .Opt file? I agree with GrandAdmiralJello that even now this is quite impossible. I mean, "look at the size of that thing"! An up to scale .opt would crash even the most modern, fastest computer trying to soak up all the detail of a fully rendered Death Star. The designers of the recent Trilogy arcade game weren't capable of pulling that off, nor those of Rogue Leader, and it's been 10 or so years since the original X-Wing. Maybe in another 10 years (with a Pentium X processor and a mother of a graphics card...or maybe two or three working together) the dream of a fully rendered Death Star could become a reality.

 

High you guys.

I'm no sim-fighter, so I like to ask you a big favor.
Can someone tell me the background story of X-Wing, Tie Fighter and Jedi Knight.
I need the info to build in missions into OT-fic. I want to know what happened inbetween the battle of Yavin and Hoth.
Such as Admiral Griff, the Dark troopers, the rescue of Madine and Thrown and Vader plotting together and so on.

This would really be great. You can post it here or PM me, Thanks.

 

Okay, you're right, probably not a full render. But even in X-Wing, they had the ability to do copy rendering of the laser towers on the 2D surface, and there was even a trench in the first surface mission where you clear the area around a NAV buoy.

A new Death Star could be done the same way, with that feature for most of the surface. Somebody just needs to put it on a spherical surface somehow and do a similar render for the equatorial trench/docking bays and the big dimple for the gun. For distance shots, a low res DS could suffice easily enough, as long as it is 3D and not some background artwork. Some sort of transition point will still be needed though from one mission to the next (or a load up of terrain when you cross a certain threshhold), but I think it can be done. Yes, it might take a few more years to do that properly, but probably less time then we think.

My favorite campaign in Alliance was Secret Weapons of the Empire, with those Turbolaser TIEs and the really sick space booster equipped ramming TIEs. Defending the capitol ship in that one is tough, even on Medium mode. BTW, was it just me, or did the SSD Executor in Alliance seem a little small?

Another thing I hated in TF, advanced concussion missiles. When you were in a TIE Advanced, if your shields were not at 100%, you were still dead meat if you couldn't dodge in time. At least you learned to dodge them very quick.

 

BTW, was it just me, or did the SSD Executor in Alliance seem a little small?

I think all capital ships were smaller than true scale. I'm not sure as for the reasons why, but maybe it was due to the (then) hardware and game engine limitations. Or perhaps to make capital ships like ISD's viable targets capable of being destroyed by fighters? As awesome as it is to blow up an ISD (or even a SSD), there's no way in hell that any snubfighter could survive any such engagement.

 

Yes. The SSDs in game were actually 5 miles shorter than they should have been. 1 SSD = 13 Star Destroyrer lengths. On top of that, they are missing about 4 extra engines in the game.

" Can someone tell me the background story of X-Wing, Tie Fighter and Jedi Knight."

X-Wing: Starts out before A New Hope. The plot deals with learning of something "big" being secretly done by the Empire. You eventually steal an Imperial relay satelite used for sending messages, destroy a current one, and swap it out with the stolen one. This is when you learn of the plans for the Death Star.

The plans are eventually stolen (I think either from downloading it via the satelite or taking it from a ship... I can't remember) and then have to be transferred to the Tantive IV, Princess Leia's classic ship that is eventually captured. You eventually end up flying the trench run though, just like in the movie.

Other plots in the game include, stealing an Imperial corvette with a prototype kind of shielding that is like 100 times stronger than normal shields. The ship was then used as an unmanned bettering ram and ripped multiple holes through multiple star destroyers docked at a repair/manufacturing bay.

X-Wing ended with the rebels finding a new base on Hoth (many missions involved you helping them evacuate to it and getting there secretly).

TIE Fighter: Pretty much starts where X-Wing left off. The Empire just drove the rebels from Hoth (so much for all your hard work in the last game) and your first mission deals with some hoth escapees hidden aboard some ships.

The plot is about two different Admirals in the Imperial Navy who are the leaders in ship building. Admirial Harkov is the first you meet and he is the one who developed the TIE Avenger (Advanced) from Vader's ship. Just when they started going into mass production, Harkov defects to the Rebels, along with his new ships and the rest of his entire fleet that are loyal to him (star destroyers and all). You eventually, with some help of Vice Admirial Thrawn, destroy Harkov's fleet and the resources he was trying to get to the rebels for the new fighter. You capture Harkov and Vader personally "interrogates" him. Thrawn is promoted to Grand Admiral.

Admiral Zaarin is the other person in charge of ship design and comes up with the TIE Defender. He releases 5 prototypes, and you prove to the Emperor how superior they are.

The Emperor is eventually captured by the Rebels and the last mission (of the original game without expansion packs) has you flying as Vader's wingman as you both fly TIE Defenders. You capture the shuttle the Emperor is aboard and he is safely taken back to Coruscant. You are personally awarded a medal by the Emperor himself.

Admiral Zaarin starts to get a little cocky and begins to believe that his new ship, the Defender, along with his entire fleet that is loyal to him, is powerful enough to seperate from the Empire and also strong enough to take it on. Since he has the knowledge of all their tactics and best places to cripple the navy (he's much smarter than Harkov was) he becomes a royal pain. He has much, much more Defenders in his fleet than he released to the Emperor (again, like 5 total) along with many, many other captial ships.

The Emperor appoints Vice Admiral Thrawn to personally hunt Zaarin down, and Thrawn personally requests that you be part of his team (you are quite the reknowned pilot at this point). Zaarin puts up an unbelievable fight. Thrawn discovers Zaarin's weakness in that he relies too much on technology and figures out ways to use that to Zaarin's disadvantage.

Zaarin and his legion of TIE Defenders is a huge pain. But the Emperor has been personally overseeing a secret new ship design since Zaarin's seperation, one that can nullify the TIE Defender advantage Zaarin has. This new ship was: The Missile Boat. This ship can carry an insane amount of warheads. And when loaded to the brim with advanced missiles, it can house 80 of them. Advanced missiles spelled doom for TIE Defende

 

I think TIE finished just before the Battle of Endor. I vaguely remember the debriefing talking about the Death Star II and ending with "long live the Emperor!" or something.

Anyway, Jedi Knight...you play Kyle Katarn, a mercenary who discovered the Death Star plans and destroyed the Dark Trooper project during the Galactic Civil War (in Dark Forces). A few years after the second Death Star is destroyed, Kyle's father is murdered and he goes on a quest to discover who did it. This leads him to a mercenary droid named 8T-88, who tells him that a Dark Jedi named Jerec killed his father, then attempts to kill Kyle himself on orders from Jerec. Kyle escapes and goes to his father's home on Sulon (I think), only to find that Jerec and his band of Dark Jedi have already been there. He discovers that Jerec is looking for the Valley of the Jedi, and the map to it was hidden in the roof of Morgan Katarn's (Kyle's father's) house. Here he is given a lightsaber that once belonged to a great Jedi named Rahn, who was a good friend of Morgan. Kyle takes the lightsaber and begins to use his Force talent to become a Jedi.

Kyle, along with his partner Jan Ors, track down the Dark Jedi and follow them to the Valley of the Jedi. 8T-88 is double-crossed by Jerec and killed at a refueling station. After defeating one of the Dark Jedi, he kills them out of pure anger. Jerec appears with the captured Jan Ors and forces Kyle to make a choice: kill Jan and join them as a Dark Jedi, or stay true to the Light Side and die. From here, the game splits into two paths: you either go to the Light Side and fight your way down to the Valley's core, where you must stop Jerec from taking the power of a thousand Jedi, or join the Dark Side and destroy Jerec so you can take the power for yourself and rule the galaxy. The sequel, Jedi Outcast, assumes you take the light path, but darkies have more fun.

 

Thank you Jomero and HawkNC!

Your information will help me make up some missions for the Rebellion inbetween Yavin an Hoth / Endor. Only in my story Luke isn't with the Rebellion so someone else like Kartan and Render and Leia/ Han would have to do most of it.

So if someone else have more info about that time I would be thankful.

Vadey

 

Well, TIE Fighter is my fav flight game, XWA is the second, I've never even seen X-W. I should buy the updated collector's collection w/three games.
I never liked TIE/A, it was a boring ship. But the TIE Interceptor is the King of the universe! It's so beautiful.

 

I don't think any of the TIE models were made to be aesthetically appealling -- rather, their "eyeball" shape implies threat and intimidation -- but I have to disagree on the "squint" being "king of the universe". The TIE Advanced (Avenger) is a far superior fighter, on par with the Rebels' X-Wing (save perhaps on shield and hull ratings). Granted, the Defender is the Uber-TIE, but I've always found its shape to be too wacky. I'm guessing Reb fighter jocks would dub it the "TIE-Flower".

 

Actually, TIE Fighter ends with Thrawn finally dealing with Zaarin which is going on during the Battle of Endor.

In X-Wing you fly as Keyan Farlander, in TIE Fighter as Maarek Steele (sp?), and XWA as Ace Azzameen.

 

I don't think that you are specifically Steele in TIE Fighter. I understand there was the "Steele Chronicles" and all that (if you were lucky enough to own the original game) and it was a great story between two friends where one went off to be a stormtrooper and the other a pilot (I read it looong ago). I think it was more of a set-up to get people in the right role-playing mood for the game (worked for me). I think you were whomever you wanted to be. Same went for X-Wing.

That was the only thing that bugged me about XWA, was that you were forced to play someone else. You couldn't pretend it was YOU in the cockpit. You were forced to be Ace Azzameen. But, it was needed for all the backstory and side plots.

-Jomero

 

I just started to play Tie Fighter again. But it seems I've been too long without playing it since my skills are really rusty. I tried first Tie Fighter mission in the combat simulator and I managed to destroy 31 Headhunters before I was shot down. That was just so lousy. I guess I'll have to practice whole night so I can refresh my skills.

 

i've just got x-wing, tie fighter, and x-wing vs tie fighter, all for £14.99.

i haven't played em yet cos i saw em elsewhere for £9.99 and i want my money back, well £5 of it anyways.

 

Whether you're paying 3.33 or 5.00 per game it's a bargain.

 

Fun thing about Alliance is you can fly different fighters in the combat simulator. I tried some 8 two man team dogfights to see the strengths and weaknesses of the different ships. I must say, the nastiest fighter of them all is the Toscan fighter, which is a cross between and X-Wing and Y-Wing for its armament (4 lasers, 2 ion cannons). The IRD is also a fun lightweight to fly. Too bad the system won't let you fly the experimental TIEs, such as the one with the turbo laser on it. I always wanted to see just what kind of damage I could do with that ship.

BTW, one thing that stinks about engine wash is that although your shields take damage, the opposing ships don't seem to. I tried getting some TIEs to chase me behind the SSD and I started taking wash damage, but the TIEs were still undamaged. That bites. But, you can do something similar if you can trick a TIE into firing out you while your sitting close to an enemy capitol ship. If they hit it with a stray shot, the ship will start firing at them!