Lit Fleet Junkie Flagship- The technical discussions of the GFFA (Capital Ships thread Mk. II)

Have any of the artists for the Aphra comics stolen anything? I honestly don't recall.

Also it isn't just Star Wars they take from,. in the Han Solo comics where Han is in some sort of race, the Space Station that served as a hub was just a kitbash of a bunch of different sci-fi parts, most noticeably pieces of Atlantis from Stargate Atlantis.

I couldn't find the exact image the artist referenced Atlantis from but yeah
Also I think that ship on the bottom right, might be from Star Citizen?

 

It is.

I wouldn't blame the artists though. They're likely on tough schedules and are merely attempting to finish in time and keep their jobs. Given that Marvel is obviously aware of the situation (Disney too, I'm sure), I'd bet it's something they encourage. It's a cost-cutting measure. I don't mind ships from other franchises like Star Citizen quite as much, since it could easily be an easter egg, but using fan art without paying the original artist is just shady. If Marvel/Disney really wanted to fix it, they'd hire a concept artist for the comics and provide 3D models to trace. Maybe even an additional artist or two to help with minor things. Bad comic book art is usually the fault of the company in charge cutting corners and instilling ridiculous deadlines, not the artists trying to make do.

 

Trailers indicate that the new kids' gameshow Jedi Temple Challenge is going to heavily feature the new photorealistic Pelta model made for TROS as a sort of "home base" for the games. Which is pretty cool -- it generally looks like pretty high production values and a definite IU feel for what it is.

 

I was wary of the kids gameshow but... I love me a Pelta and that ships sells it to me!

 

The series is set during the Clone Wars right? I guess that confirms the "command" variant of the Pelta wasn't modified by the alliance.

 

Was browsing through the Wook recently and noticed on the "Canon" tab they had filled in MGLT values for some of the new/reintroduced fighters like the First Order/Resistance fighters and the TIE Defender. Anyone know what source those came out of?

Seems like the TIE Defender took a hard nerf in speed from its Legends appearances: https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/TIE/D_Defender_Elite

And the TIE Silencer is up where the TIE Fighter version of the Defender was: https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/TIE/vn_space_superiority_fighter

EDIT: https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Megalight_per_hour

 

Click on the little numbers next to the stats it will take you to the footnotes which will tell you what the source is.

In this case it's the 'TIE Fighter Owners' Workshop Manual'

 

Yeah, this is what I get for looking into something that's been bugging me for a bit but only decided to look at between getting home and dinner.

Interesting how the FO apparently hot-rodded the bejebus out of the basic TIE/ln spaceframe with the TIE/fo and TIE/sf (the latter while adding a second crewman, shields, hyperdrive, and a weapons turret with extra guns and warheads). Have to wonder whether they just developed super-efficient power plants or made some major design compromises (like the whole Xyston-class "planet-cracking firepower, but explodes after a few snubfighter-grade laser hits on the main gun" sort of compromises).

 

Speaking of super-efficient power plants, how do we explain the X-wing having shields, torpedoes, and a hyperdrive, and can still beat a TIE fighter in a dogfight? How do we explain the TIE Defender?

 

MGLT values come from old video games, plus Tech Journal, of course. Curtis Saxton intended them to be equal to acceleration values, (with a G being a Coruscant G of 13.92 m/ps, looking at his website) But the TIE Manual makes them distinctive values from each other, that do not 1 to 1 correspond. It gives us a still decent idea of how they are INTENDED to compare to each other, though. Defenders presumably went through many upgrades, over time, and varied loadouts.

 

the term MGTL first appeared on a chart ILM made for ROTJ, to quote Wookieepedia:

The source of the image is:
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Return_of_the_Jedi_Sketchbook

 

Y-Wings as fast as TIEs, that's hilarious.

 

Maybe as fast...but lack maneuverability??

 

The new charts show the Y-wing at 80 MGLT (on par with its LucasArts game stats). The old ROTJ sketch is a nice piece of history, but it seems to have been overwritten for some craft.

As for the Defender, it seems like while it was developed earlier in NuCanon production was more limited. The Rebels Defender and Defender Elite seem to be prototypes, with the Interceptor-esque right-angle solar panel frames and the wing-mounted missiles. We see a couple of examples of what looks like a production version of the standard Defender (Rebels schematics lifted from the old EGVV, game appearances, and some artwork), but not a developed version of the Defender Elite. Maybe if events on Lothal hadn't put an end to the Defender program it would have eventually yielded the TIE Fighter version that would have been as good or better than the TIE Silencer, except thirty years earlier.

As for how an X-wing can beat a TIE/ln despite having more bells and whistles, well if among those bells and whistles is a power plant big enough to run all of them and push the ship as fast as a lighter craft with smaller engines it can be done (case in point, the old F-4 Phantom II's famous adage "The Triumph of Thrust Over Aerodynamics"). A more interesting question would be how Sienar Fleet Systems managed to squeeze a 10% improvement in speed and a 50% (or more) increase in firepower out of essentially the same hull going from the TIE/ln to the TIE Interceptor.

 

Well if we're going to nitpick over the TIE Defender's wings being slightly different in Rebels...what about the regular TIE fighters having those short, stubby wings?

Also, seems like most depictions of the TIE Defender show it with the regular ball cockpit...but then how come we have this?

 

Looks like a longrange variant with added fuel/engine space for longer deep space missions.

The question is, is every artistic variant an actual variant or artistic freedom? I know we love to turn every background color blip into its own ship around here so I wonder, how many "regular" Ties do you have by now if you take every artistic license at face value?

Andw hat marketing genius was Sienar that he sold every scrap idea to the Empire even in smallest of numbers? For a government that scrapped entire fleets no older than 1-3 years at TCW end, the Empire really kept recycling and saving every last penny onwards after that.

Guess the Death Stars were that expensive so they had to and all the TCW scrap metal went into their construction.. scrapping those fleets was just an excuse, not a necessity.

 

That's just the art style, just like the long necks on the Star Destroyers. IIRC they were inspired by some of the old TIE Toys that were the same shape.

There was one source that gave an in-universe reason for the Rebels ties looking like that (Lothal ties were built to land on their wings), but I think that was retconned later.

Also the TIE Defender was in Battlefront 1 as well, before it appeared on Rebels. Though it was the same year it premiered in Rebels (or at least close) so the Rebels episodes would have been written years before it was added to BF1. The Wings on the BF1 version look closer to the one of Legends designs, but the 'Ball' is ripped right from a regular TIE.



What's interesting, is that the 2D diagram of the TIE Defender used on Rebels on computer displays, is inspired by the design as it appeared in 'The Essential Guide to Vehicles and Vessels'. It's not a 1:1 trace, as there are some details missing, but it's clearly inspired by it

 

Yes, sorry, almost forgot the chart. Rather, it was popularized in the games and the Journal.
Also, West Ends games did a one to one conversion, where Speed 8 equaled 100 MGLT for the X-Wing, on the chart, and for the TIE. But they also had improved versions of each with a Speed 10 (namely, the T-65C, for one) and so that confused later Lucasarts products.

 

Well since we're discussing artistic freedom, I thought I'd move this over here.

So is the larger size of the Xyston-class just a mistake, like the "Super Recusant"? I mean just looking at it, it seems like it's obviously intended to be the same ship from ANH, only with a superlaser attached. If they want to fix this with a retcon, they should probably do it sooner rather than later.

 

Well I am no minimalist, nor a maximalist. Not every issue needs to be a new model, but some should be. And I think them making the Xyxston larger was due to power requirements for superlasers. Though the portable one in TLJ on the ground at Crait was lower power than the TROS planet killing one, its size alone spoke of a massive ship beyond the classic OT Stardestroyers. I'd even wonder how much power-reduced a Xyxston has to operate post firing the planetkiller before being back to full operational power. Kinda like the B-Wing prototype in Rebels that used up more energy than the shop basically had with a single fleetbuster shot.

The question is, why use the ANH design, inuniverse reasons, instead of another? Out of universe we know due to nostalgia. Inuniverse probably because it was designed already during the OT but never finished until by Exegol later. So, do we have examples of inuniverse OT styled Stardestroyers that are far larger than the stanard OT models? Not the super class or such but actually visually similiar variants at a distinct size.

Star Wars Rebels even mocked that with the episode where kids in their ship mistook various smaller vessels for a Stardestroyer. So why not larger lookalikes too? Bet Fractalsponge had some, right?

 

Well I guess my question is...was it their original intention that the Xyston should look exactly like the Imperial-I, only bigger? That seems unlikely, but hey, I could be wrong if they say otherwise. And secondly if it was a mistake, do they want to fix it, or just leave it as is?

 

I'd almost rather leave it vague. There are relatively few shots that even show how large it is, relative to other ships, beyond 'over a mile'.

 

I still think the Xyston is an emergency fill in model. The original planned model for the ship not having been good enough yet for close up shots (like Lando's fleet). The size is the same as the original ship was. I like to believe it was the red concept ship with the mini death star sphere. Maybe one day we will see that model and the truth.

 

Why not just spill the beans now, while fans still have their attention on the movie? Otherwise, there's going to be two or three of us discussing it in the Fleet Junkies Thread Mk. VII twenty years from now, kinda like how we were discussing the origins of the Mon Calamari cruiser models a few dozen pages back.