star wars pictures: an unexpectedly striking collection

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Robot Style: Jul 5, 2009

Megillah Gorilla posted:

Don't ask me what this one's called, I think it's just a kit bash, but it's one of the very few TIEs I've ever seen where the pilot can actually see what's around them.

It looks like the TIE Defender with the Episode 3 Jedi Starfighter's cockpit:

Which itself made the bizarre decision to reduce pilot visibility with the pop-up wings and inward-facing solar panels.

# ? Oct 18, 2021 17:30

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# ? Jun 11, 2024 20:32

doctorfrog: Mar 14, 2007; Great.

solar panels never made sense on ships to me, unless they are unbelievably efficient

# ? Oct 18, 2021 17:35

indigi: Jul 20, 2004; ^{how can we not talk about family

when family's all that we got?}

they probably are

# ? Oct 18, 2021 17:36

SlothfulCobra: Mar 27, 2011

Vinylshadow posted:

Given how a lot of ships come with an array of scanners and sensors to keep track of things, looking out the cockpit might not actually be all that effective when flying

Alternatively the 1930 wasn't designed for that kind of cargo hauling

Arguably the whole reason the Millennium Falcon could work at all is probably because of the availability of sensors that you could pilot with so only rarely would you actually need to fly by dead reckoning with your own sight alone. The nature of space travel means that most of the time you won't be anywhere near any other obstacles, and presumably if you're in a busy area, there's going to be a traffic control to keep ships away from eachother. When landing, you can't physically see directly underneath yourself anyways, so I'd hope there'd be some system to make sure the ground's okay to land on.

Of course, that doesn't really excuse that sort of lack of visual range for dedicated starfighters where people need lots of quick, situational awareness of everything around them. If there are any sensors for keeping track of nearby obstacles, nobody's bothered to design or depict them because they're too busy with targeting computers.

In the old Tie Fighter game, the number pad would let you look around the cockpit through other windows, but it never occurred to me that there's no other widows apparent on the fighter itself, so I don't know what's going on with that.

# ? Oct 18, 2021 17:46

Speleothing: May 6, 2008; Spare batteries are pretty key.

doctorfrog posted:

solar panels never made sense on ships to me, unless they are unbelievably efficient

They're not solar panels, they're heat radiators to cool the engine.

Also it's been implied that most planets are generally self-sufficient. Therefore transports rarely are needed to move anything other than small amounts of high value goods.

Though I would agree that "small amounts" on a planetary scale could still be hundreds of containers.

# ? Oct 18, 2021 18:45

banned from Starbucks: Jul 18, 2004

Speleothing posted:

Also it's been implied that most planets are generally self-sufficient.

*Naboo after 1 day of no trade*

"Help we're literally dieing!"

# ? Oct 18, 2021 18:50

Megillah Gorilla: Sep 22, 2003; If only all of life's problems could be solved by smoking a professor of ancient evil texts.; Bread Liar

If only there were another technologically advanced sapient species on their world they could have traded with.

Or, in meme form:

# ? Oct 18, 2021 18:52

Owlbear Camus: Jan 3, 2013; Maybe this guy that flies is just sort of passing through, you know?

IIRC the backstory was that they were like cats and dogs and not long after encountering anyone they agreed to mutual apartheid and isolation.

Then a thousand generations later Qui Gonn Jinn gave a speech and they fought off their robot oppressors together.

# ? Oct 18, 2021 19:04

Hazo: Dec 30, 2004; SCIENCE

Robot Style posted:

It looks like the TIE Defender with the Episode 3 Jedi Starfighter's cockpit:

Speleothing posted:

They're not solar panels, they're heat radiators to cool the engine.

What a stupid retcon. They're absolutely supposed to reflect the solar panels of their TIE derivative.

Megillah Gorilla posted:

Don't ask me what this one's called, I think it's just a kit bash, but it's one of the very few TIEs I've ever seen where the pilot can actually see what's around them.

It looks a TIE Defender body, but with the cockpit of a Battlemech. It's kind of fuckin awesome.

Honestly one of my favorite ships from a functionality standpoint is the command frigate from Rogue One, where Raddus could just kind of scoot around on his magic chair and see the entire operation with perfect visibility. Ackbar's cruiser in RotJ had a similar thing going on.

Owlbear Camus is absolutely right in that TIEs are very stupid as a space superiority starfighter because you can't look left or right.

# ? Oct 18, 2021 19:04

moist turtleneck: Jul 17, 2003; Represent.; Dinosaur Gum

SlothfulCobra posted:

Arguably the whole reason the Millennium Falcon could work at all is probably because of the availability of sensors that you could pilot with so only rarely would you actually need to fly by dead reckoning with your own sight alone. The nature of space travel means that most of the time you won't be anywhere near any other obstacles, and presumably if you're in a busy area, there's going to be a traffic control to keep ships away from eachother. When landing, you can't physically see directly underneath yourself anyways, so I'd hope there'd be some system to make sure the ground's okay to land on.

Of course, that doesn't really excuse that sort of lack of visual range for dedicated starfighters where people need lots of quick, situational awareness of everything around them. If there are any sensors for keeping track of nearby obstacles, nobody's bothered to design or depict them because they're too busy with targeting computers.

In the old Tie Fighter game, the number pad would let you look around the cockpit through other windows, but it never occurred to me that there's no other widows apparent on the fighter itself, so I don't know what's going on with that.

reminding me of rise of skywalker lightspeed jumps and it is making me very angry

# ? Oct 18, 2021 19:38

SlothfulCobra: Mar 27, 2011

Speleothing posted:

Also it's been implied that most planets are generally self-sufficient. Therefore transports rarely are needed to move anything other than small amounts of high value goods.

Though I would agree that "small amounts" on a planetary scale could still be hundreds of containers.

Shipping cargo isn't about self-sufficiency or lack thereof, it's about whether the people in a spot have the money to provide a good market for imports. So many Star Wars stories end up being on the outer rim on poor or crime-ridden worlds that aren't likely to get many bulk freighters stopping over. The best example of this is Tatooine, the most-revisited planet.

Other places that don't have much in the way of import demand are undeveloped worlds like Endor (especially when the second Death Star was being built secretly near it) or a world that was being blockaded like Naboo. Maybe there should've been more traffic around the mining town/luxury resort of Cloud City.

# ? Oct 18, 2021 20:44

Name Change: Oct 9, 2005

Megillah Gorilla posted:

Don't ask me what this one's called, I think it's just a kit bash, but it's one of the very few TIEs I've ever seen where the pilot can actually see what's around them.

I hate these kinds of designs because you're supposedly in an ace-style fighter, except you have a huge target profile and a glancing blow will send poo poo everywhere, including directly into your viewport, killing you instantly.

# ? Oct 18, 2021 20:49

Cartoon Man: Jan 31, 2004

https://i.imgur.com/JL5lbEV.gifv

# ? Oct 18, 2021 22:45

Animal Friend: Sep 7, 2011

Cartoon Man posted:

https://i.imgur.com/JL5lbEV.gifv

"I can't see a thing in this helmet!"

# ? Oct 18, 2021 23:19

Robot Style: Jul 5, 2009

Hazo posted:

Owlbear Camus is absolutely right in that TIEs are very stupid as a space superiority starfighter because you can't look left or right.

The Empire just loves putting blinders on people, I guess.

# ? Oct 19, 2021 00:40

Animal Friend: Sep 7, 2011

Robot Style posted:

The Empire just loves putting blinders on people, I guess.

"Man I can't believe they expect us to navigate a forrest in these things."
"Well, would you rather this or what the snow guys wear?"
*sighs* "You're right. At least we don't look like klansmen."

# ? Oct 19, 2021 00:58

Zesty: Jan 17, 2012; The Great Twist

Wouldn't want Stormtroopers to be reminiscent of bad people.

# ? Oct 19, 2021 01:48

galagazombie: Oct 31, 2011; A silly little mouse!

SlothfulCobra posted:

Shipping cargo isn't about self-sufficiency or lack thereof, it's about whether the people in a spot have the money to provide a good market for imports. So many Star Wars stories end up being on the outer rim on poor or crime-ridden worlds that aren't likely to get many bulk freighters stopping over. The best example of this is Tatooine, the most-revisited planet.

Other places that don't have much in the way of import demand are undeveloped worlds like Endor (especially when the second Death Star was being built secretly near it) or a world that was being blockaded like Naboo. Maybe there should've been more traffic around the mining town/luxury resort of Cloud City.

Cloud City was actually supposed to be a pseudo secret operation. Lando talks about trying to remain unnoticed by the Empire and big mining consortiums. Vader�s whole leverage over him (besides death) was the Empire moving in.

re: ship chat. With how much the pilots talk about sensors and such I headcanon it as those orange visors they all wear are fancy AR sets that basically give them those 360 cockpits from Gundam.

# ? Oct 19, 2021 02:09

Finger Prince: Jan 5, 2007

galagazombie posted:

Cloud City was actually supposed to be a pseudo secret operation. Lando talks about trying to remain unnoticed by the Empire and big mining consortiums. Vader’s whole leverage over him (besides death) was the Empire moving in.

re: ship chat. With how much the pilots talk about sensors and such I headcanon it as those orange visors they all wear are fancy AR sets that basically give them those 360 cockpits from Gundam.

I like that. You could use that for a lot of old effects. Of course it looks corny, they didn't have the special effects we have today. But all those knobs and buttons are meant to be like a touchscreen interface.
Now we would just use a CGI interface and the actors would mime it on greenscreen.

# ? Oct 19, 2021 03:17

Robot Style: Jul 5, 2009

Not a visual HUD, but at one point the EU mentioned that all the outer-space starfighter sounds are actually generated by the ships' internal speakers to give the pilots an idea of what was around them.

# ? Oct 19, 2021 03:20

banned from Starbucks: Jul 18, 2004

Hazo posted:

Owlbear Camus is absolutely right in that TIEs are very stupid as a space superiority starfighter because you can't look left or right.

It prob doesn't even matter. If you're in a TIE there's usually 10 buddies in formation to your left and right who can see plus a carrier support ship with 5 dudes looking at radar screens to tell you where poo poo is.

# ? Oct 19, 2021 07:56

Animal Friend: Sep 7, 2011

It's dumb to argue this bc it's Star Wars but what would you even see in space? It would all be instrument flying.

Real answer though: they just train the pilots to use their hearing to track everything around them because as the movies show, everything is very loud in space.

# ? Oct 19, 2021 10:05

Sombrerotron: Aug 1, 2004; Release my children! My hat is truly great and mighty.

Animal Friend posted:

It's dumb to argue this bc it's Star Wars but what would you even see in space? It would all be instrument flying.

Many, many hours of playing X-Wing games have taught me that this is in fact how it must be. Also I'd like to take this opportunity to let everyone know that every space combat sim's radar that doesn't neatly split into 2D "forward" and "rear" sections, but squeezes everything together either into a weird blob (WC-style) or heightmap disc (Elite-style) loving sucks and can go to hell forever.

# ? Oct 19, 2021 12:12

Megillah Gorilla: Sep 22, 2003; If only all of life's problems could be solved by smoking a professor of ancient evil texts.; Bread Liar

Sombrerotron posted:

every space combat sim's radar that doesn't neatly split into 2D "forward" and "rear" sections, but squeezes everything together either into a weird blob (WC-style) or heightmap disc (Elite-style) loving sucks and can go to hell forever.

# ? Oct 19, 2021 13:17

Speleothing: May 6, 2008; Spare batteries are pretty key.

Hazo posted:

What a stupid retcon. They're absolutely supposed to reflect the solar panels of their TIE derivative.

I've got bad news for you about what the TIE fighters are using the big black panels for.

# ? Oct 19, 2021 17:51

Robot Style: Jul 5, 2009

Wookieepedia seems to think they're solar panels.

V-wings - another TIE predecessor - apparently do use their wings as heat radiators though.

Looks like the discrepancy comes from Curtis Saxton (who popularized the Endor Holocaust theory back in the day) slipping it into the Incredible Cross Sections books he wrote for the prequels. His Star Wars Technical Commentaries site was allegedly part of his desire to "prove" Star Wars ships were more powerful than Star Trek ships, and assigned arbitrarily gigantic numbers to the firepower and energy requirements of Star Wars vehicles to make them seem more impressive. Since he didn't think that solar panels alone would be able to account for the numbers he gave things, he decided that TIEs must have some other kind of incredibly advanced miniature reactor hidden away inside of it instead, and that the wings would be for heat radiation.

# ? Oct 19, 2021 19:18