One of my biggest Star Wars pet peeves was that, according to Wookiepedia, in the old EU only 8 TIE fighters participated in the Battle of Yavin. I don't know what the actual source was for this, but I found it absurd to suggest that the Empire would launch 8 TIEs in response to 30 Rebel ships, and even more ridiculous that the Rebels would be reduced to 3 ships as a result. It contradicts the entire dynamic between the two sides, I don't care if they're Vader's personnel squadron or not. It recently occurred to me that, thanks to Disney, this is no longer canon and can be replaced with a more reasonable number. Now obviously "all the fighters the Death Star can carry" isn't really a more reasonable way to reduce 30 ships to 3, so that leaves some set of circumstances where the Death Star is carrying hundreds (thousands? I'm sure there's a specific number out there but I've never been one to pay attention to that type of stuff.) and manages to get somewhere around 40-50 into combat by my guess. The easiest explanation in my mind would be that there are multiple hangers all over the station and only those nearby the fighting were able scramble their squadrons in time to participate in the battle, which fits with the obviously non-canon Battlefront II campaign's statement that 1/3rd or whatever of the 501st was lost while they were still in the process of boarding their ships when the Death Star blew up. I was just curious if any of you had ever thought about these kind of logistics before or had any of your own opinions on the matter. It's not something I've really heard discussed before.
Yes, 8 TIEs would be absolutely absurd. What were those EU writers thinking?? A battle station of that size - the largest in the entire galaxy, no less - and all they could manage is launch 8 ships? Not after Vader makes it clear that the Rebel fighters are too small and fast for turbolasers, that they would have to be destroyed ship to ship; and not after one of the admirals tells Tarkin "there IS danger". After analyzing the attack the Empire can tell what the Rebels were going for, that they had found out about the DS's weakness. We only see a handful of TIEs on the screen together in any given scene, which is not exactly the same as saying that's all the TIEs that were involved in the battle. I have no official numbers either, but common sense and logic would suggest at least 50, maybe 100.
The way I remember the scene, the Empire launched NO TIE fighters at all - Tarkin was convinced that the attack would fail, he dismissed any notion of getting to his own shuttle and never gave any orders for additional fighters to be launched. Vader decided to take out his personal squadron entirely on his own initiative (possibly sensing a force user amongst the rebel pilots) and presumably there were a few that launched as a standard defence procedure - and if that's the case, eight is a valid number. It's also the case that the thirty rebel fighters/bombers represented pretty much that cell's entire capability and the Imperials may not have expected such a gambit, or underestimated just how many ships the Rebels had.
What we didn't see onscreen was that my old WEG RPG group led Blue Squadron and Green Squadron in attacks on the Death Star's main TIE launch bays and managed to keep the rest of them bottled up inside.
That's apparently the way someone creating the old EU interpreted it, but the only things actually depicted in the movie are Tarkin's general arrogance and Vader grabbing a couple of pilots to be his wingmen. Presumably the rest of the fighters we see were also launched on Vader's authority, but there's nothing to suggest they're Vader's personnel squadron which in turn means there's no reason to believe that the 5 or so we see onscreen account for literally every single TIE that participated in the battle. I just can't buy that the offscreen portion of the Battle of Yavin consists of 5-6 TIE fighters against 20ish Rebel ships and shooting down 19 of them. Yeah they've got the Death Star's defenses as well but the movie is pretty clear that they're largely ineffective in this situation.
I always assumed that the Death Star constantly had Tie Fighters circling it as security in the event of an attack. In almost every shot of the Death Star you can see Tie's orbiting it. I'm sure some were for transport or other purposes. But I don't think they would necessarily have to launch Tie's to ward off an attack. Certainly after an attack takes place they would as reinforcement. But I think initially it's those Tie's that were already in orbit that would respond to an attack.
The Death Star defences proved ineffective once the fighters made it into the trench, yes, but before that they were doing pretty well. And TIE pilots might have flimsy eggshells with wings as craft but they are trained, professional fighter pilots and if they are on the freaking Death Star, presumably amongst the best of the Imperial fleet what with it being Tarkin's pet project. Some (not all, but some) rebel pilots are enthusiastic amateurs fighting for the cause. The likes of Wedge and Luke are legitimately great pilots and some are defectors from the Imperial academy so do have some training but at the time of Yavin I think it's a decent chance that the TIE pilots are generally speaking better than most rebel ones.
The only onscreen casualty to the Death Star's turbolasers is Porkins, and his ship has some sort of malfunction first. Other than that both the Empire and the Rebels comment on the fact that the defenses are designed with larger targets in mind and struggle to hit the smaller, faster craft used in the attack. And while theoretically it's possible that the Imperials have superior training that could allow them to take on a far numerically superior Rebel force, nothing like that is ever depicted in any of the movies. In fact generally all the outside sources paint the Rebels fighters as being more quality while the Empire tends to go with quantity. (This probably doesn't apply so much with the outdated Y-Wings, but most of the attack force is made up of X-Wings anyways.)
I feel like all the rebel pilots have to be good at what they do. The rebels have very limited resources, and their 30 fighters would have been some of their most valuable assets. They're not just going to let anybody fly them.
They gave Luke one just because Biggs said he was good. Yes they were under a time limit but as assessment goes it's pretty flimsy. And Porkins doesn't really look much like "ace pilot" material either. The best they have might not really be all that good, Luke and Wedge (and maybe Biggs) aside.
Exactly. I'm sure stormtroopers and TIE pilots did have good training. But how many had actual practical experience? I guess not many, with no real enemy but a handful of Rebels nobody in the Empire took seriously until their main weapon was destroyed. Most TIE pilots probably sat in the DS playing cards, drinking or whatever, most of the time. Why do much training when you are never attacked? For many the attack from Yavin base was probably the first time they actually shot at (and got shot at by) enemy fighters.
Agreed with OP that 8 TIE fighters sent out is absurd. The only aspect that may explain too small a deployment of TIE fighters - not 8 maybe 100 for a starfighter assault on a large battle station would be that the standing position (though proven to be flawed) the Empire took was that the DS 1 was not vulnerable to attack period. Capital ships were ruled out and of course nothing else of equal power existed to match DS1 so the Empire was overconfident. One of it's recurring errors in the OT.
The question of their competence depends on whether they are experienced aces or greenies straight out of the academy. If you fly an unshielded eggshell on wings and manage to survive long enough to become experienced you have to be REALLY good. But if they are noobs then this isn't the case. Eight seems low but it does fit with the overconfidence of the Imperials.
I just chalked it up to arrogance. There wasn’t that many Rebel troops going through the trench and against the Death Star? Tarkin would’ve thought sending in a hundred Tie Fighters would’ve been an act of fear. Out of Universe: Time/money constraints? Remember, this was befor Star Wars was as big as it is now and I’m sure Lucas didn’t want to risk bankrupting himself.
Nor did he have to. Any viewer with half a brain would assume that what the Empire has is not limited to what is shown on the screen. It would not have cost one extra cent to have Vader say "send out 100 TIE fighters", no risk whatsoever, but it was not necessary. We can use common sense to conclude that more than 8 were engaged in the battle. Likewise, we never see more than two star destroyers on the screen at any time, not more than 5 or 6 in ESB. Does that mean we are supposed to believe that's all the Empire has? I think not.
When Vader was first informed that the DS turbo lasers were not effective he ordered the crews to their ships. It seems likely that at least a full squadron of TIEs launched at that time. We see the Rebel piolets being informed that a new set of signals had been detected and enemy ships were coming in. It was only later that Vader made the choice to personally enter the fray with his two wingmen as the attack progressed and the trench runs began. IMO - much of the dogfighting that we saw was occurring at the same time as opposed to having just a few TIEs take out ship after ship. There is only so much that could be shown on screen at any one time so it appeared that only a few TIES were involved.
Now that filmmaking technology allows them to put in a massive horde of ships from both sides, Disney's near-inevitable reboot of the OT (or, at least, a new SE version) might very well fix the perceived problem. Heaven only knows what else they'll add in.
Honestly, I don't see them touching the originals, either as a reboot or special edition or anything. Their focus is on drawing in and expanding a new, younger fanbase with die-hard old school fans as more of an added bonus than anything. The generation that is growing up with the ST as their introduction to Star Wars on the big screen are not going to be interested much (in enough numbers to get Disney's interest) in a film made twenty odd years before they were even born. There'll be some, for sure. But even with all the reboots and remakes today, that ship has long since sailed for the OT. There's little to no commercial interest in altering and re-releasing those films on a mass scale.
Given that Disney is about to release a Tim Burton remake of "Dumbo", an animated movie from 1941, I'd say anything is possible.
Ehh… maybe. But Dumbo is part of the whole live action remake thing they are in the middle of, again it's about creating/drawing in a NEW fanbase not really so much for the older fans of the originals. The live action gimmick doesn't sell translated to SW as it's completely live action already (well okay, so live action and some CGI.) If they remade the OT it would literally be the same but different actors and given they've reused the same actors to play older Han, Luke, Leia etc. they'd be shooting themselves in the foot.
The Empire has enemies such as those they're attempting to conquer(like we in SOLO on Mimban) to remnant Separatists forces, rogue CIS Droid forces turned pirates, assorted pirates, crime organizations, Saw's partisans and variant Republic loyalists to whatever else. The Imperial forces and Rebels forces on Yavin during ANH are largely fresh from the events of Rogue One, some on both sides fought in the battle of Scarif. Plus the kinda catastrophic loses they sustained on the campy Rebels cartoon for three years prior to ANH, the Empire just comes off as lame from Storygroup which is bad storytelling. With the original movie back in 1977, they had only what the studio gave for a budget and the limits of tech of the time. And of course the good guys always have to win.
Pretty much this. We hear about 30 rebel ships, we see about ten destroyed and three fly away from the DS before it blows up. So the other X-Wings were destroyed off-screen, most likely by TIE's. So that the empire sent out more than the 7-8 we see makes a lot of sense. There were more than Red group and Gold group with the rebels as those were about 10 fighters and we are told that there were 30 in total. What the other groups were doing is not shown but the idea that they target fighter bays makes sense. Or they cause distractions in order to keep the Empire in the dark about what the plan is. They did not succeed in this as the Empire is able to figure out what the rebels are doing and that there is a danger. Bye for now. Balckboard Monitor
