[Topgun]

wait a sec. the ewok adventures are canon but the prequels aren't?

[brandx0]

The prequels are canon

[Turambar]

as much as i absolutely loathe admitting it.

i'll be creating a new term:  Tura-Canon

Tura-Canon for Star Wars goes from just before the events of A New Hope (recalling a story about a younger Ysanne Isard, Garm Bel-Iblis and Corran Horn's father) and goes to the end of Zahn's Survivors Quest
in there, the Black Fleet Crisis needs a bit of ret-conning when it comes to ship sizes and fleet strengths, but other than that, everything in that group is nicely internally consistent.

[maje]

Don't worry, some of us don't consider Black Fleet Crisis, Children of the Jedi, Darksaber, Jedi Academy Trilogy, Corellian Trilogy, anything to do with the Vong, Young Jedi Knights, The Crystal Star, Truce at Bakura canon at all.  At best, there are some things in there that are okay, but nothing worth rehashing.

No, canon in regards to the original trilogy/GCW era involves TIE Fighter, Shadows of the Empire, Rogue Squadron books(despite the absolutely ridiculous idea that Wedge Antilles and company could assemble a battle fleet in a month or so to take on Ysanne Isard's starfleet where it took the Rebel Alliance years to even come close to forming a credible force that could engage the Executer's fleet, let alone the 50 some odd Star Destroyers at Endor), Thrawn's trilogy (Hand of Thrawn duology I'm still out on, I would have strongly preferred had Luke and Mara not bumbled around and accidentally kill Thrawn's clone), and some of the Tales series.  Some of the comics are pretty cool. Kevin J. Anderson's Tales of the Jedi comics are far better than his books), The Courtship of Princess Leia (more to the effect of introducing us to Warlord Zsinj), and Dark Empire-to-Empire's End comics.  Some of the X-wing and X-wing Alliance stuff need serious retconning to fit properly with the rest of the lore.

And while I do agree that the prequels are canon, did anyone honestly think that was at all close to what the original speculation of the Clone Wars entailed before Episodes II and III came out?  I don't ever remember hearing anything about a droid army.  I thought that the Republic's clone army just went mad and began a revolt.  Never did I think it had anything to do with Darth Sidious, the Sith in general or the origins of Darth Vader.  I just had assumed that happened a few years after.

[brandx0]

Rogue Squadron books(despite the absolutely ridiculous idea that Wedge Antilles and company could assemble a battle fleet in a month or so to take on Ysanne Isard's starfleet where it took the Rebel Alliance years to even come close to forming a credible force that could engage the Executer's fleet, let alone the 50 some odd Star Destroyers at Endor)

It's not as if they were buying a bunch of capitol ships.  They found a Thranta-class frigate, they bribed the captain of one star destroyer, bluffed another, and bought a bunch of freighters.  Plus they did have the funding of Tycho's set-up money.  10 million credits goes a long way when an individual X-Wing apparently costs 150,000 credits brand new

[Turey]

It's not as if they were buying a bunch of capitol ships.  They found a Thranta-class frigate, they bribed the captain of one star destroyer, bluffed another, and bought a bunch of freighters.  Plus they did have the funding of Tycho's set-up money.  10 million credits goes a long way when an individual X-Wing apparently costs 150,000 credits brand new

Yeah, with the help of $10 mil, it seemed perfectly reasonable to me.

Besides, those freighters probably wouldn't have stood a chance at Yavin or Endor.

[brandx0]

They were only effective because they were hidden in plain sight, once the Lusankya caught on those freighters died very fast.

[TomShak]

Our choice to include more EU stuff than prequel stuff (Note that we have not ruled out prequel ships, just merely aren't focusing on them right now) is based mainly on creating a playable shipset.  Let's perhaps look a freespace 2 as a game where there were just enough ships of each size and type.

Now how about the Republic/Empire from star wars that we've seen on screen? Other than that all we've seen from the movies is the acclamator, which is a troop transport.  Doesn't leave us much of a shipset for creating missions, does it?  So we've added ships from the EU that fill those roles, to give mission variety.

This makes very good sense to me

The movies only really give snapshots of the Star Wars universe, so it seems highly probable that there would have been lots of other ships in use at the time that were not seen in the movies. I think when adding such a ship the important criteria is "does it make sense". I'd take the Assault Gunboat as an example.

Although the Assault Gunboat is entirely non canon to my knowledge, only really appearing in the games. To me it "fits in", it makes sense.

The empire's typical doctrine tended to favour non-hyperspace capable fighters supported by capital craft. However, if this was all they had it could be quite limiting. Particularly for performing reconnaissance, and hit and fade attacks. The fact that no canon starfighter includes ion-cannons would also suggest the existence of a specialist ship for the task. So it's logical that in steps the Assault Gunboat, hyperdrive capable and fitted with ion-canons, fleets would include a small number of them for these specialised tasks.

It also makes sense you'd never see them in the films, they're specialist craft and are available in limited numbers. All the battles seen in the movies are big "pitched" battles. No reconnaissance needed, no point disabling anything, definitely not a hit and fade attack for the empire. For those kind of battles TIEs would be the much better choice, and indeed that's what we see.

In contrast I was never fond of the whole "TIE Defender" or "Missile Boat" stuff. The TIE Avenger made sense, if they empire put in a lot of resources it could make some awesome ships in very limited numbers. However, it seemed remarkably unlikely to me that having built the already, expensive and incredibly effective TIE Avenger that the empire would instantly poor even more money to develop an even more insanely expensive ship, the TIE Defender. The Avenger already outclassed anything any rebels or pirates could throw at the empire, and it was already too expensive to be widely used. Also from a technical point of view, it seemed unlikely that they could build a ship that was simply better than the TIE Avenger in almost every single way, given how the Avenger was itself far more powerful than any rebel ship.

So yes, canon ships where possible. If an important role goes unfilled then bring in some EU ships that make sense

[brandx0]

Actually I find the TIE Advanced (Or TIE Avenger to some) making more sense than the Gunboat.  I always felt like the Assault Gunboat looked and felt too much like a rebel fighter.  We're leaving that one out for now due simply to the aesthetics of it.  We want the Empire to stick with TIEs for now.  So the Avenger will probably go in a lot faster than the gunboat (If it ever does go in)


I'm fighting hard to keep both the Defender and the Missile boat out completely.  They're just too frakkin uber (according to the Wookie, the TIE Defender is better than any other fighter by quite a bit, except the Avenger is slightly more manueverable.  The Defender's shields are supposedly 4 times more powerful than any rebel fighter as well)

[Akalabeth Angel]

I'm fighting hard to keep both the Defender and the Missile boat out completely.  They're just too frakkin uber (according to the Wookie, the TIE Defender is better than any other fighter by quite a bit, except the Avenger is slightly more manueverable.  The Defender's shields are supposedly 4 times more powerful than any rebel fighter as well)

     Yeah both of those fighters are just big pieces of cheese. One of the last missions in the second Tie Fighter expansion had the player in the missile boat single handidly taking out a rebel fleet. It was just dumb, quite honestly. I remember back when X-wing was out, it was like "B-Wing has 12 proton torpedoes! wowsa that's uber!" but the B-Wing is a lame duck compared to the Missile Boat. Whoever made Tie Fighter got a little carried away imo.

[brandx0]

Agreed, it just got too rediculous.

So for now we're sticking the Imperials to their general aesthetic of light, small, fast and maneuverable fighters usually unshielded.

[TomShak]

I always felt like the Assault Gunboat looked and felt too much like a rebel fighter.  We're leaving that one out for now due simply to the aesthetics of it. 

Yeah I can see that aesthetically it's not ideal. Although I guess if it was going to have shields and hyperdrive then it would have to be slower and less maneuverable than a TIE ... I guess you could argue that in terms of appearence it looks quite a lot like the Lambda class shuttle, which was used quite extensively by the empire.

The reason it was introduced in the games, I suspect, is that otherwise the empire has no starfighter armed with ion cannons. That doesn't make a lot of sense given how often the empire would want to capture ships to interrogate the occupants ...

All in all I liked the Gunboat in TIE Fighter. It made for lots of interesting missions. Capture missions, reconnaissance, attacks from hyperspace - none of these would have been as fun without the abilities given by the gunboat Still I can also understand the desire to stick to the core TIEs, they are the "iconic" ships of the empire after all

[TopAce]

...I'm fighting hard to keep both the Defender and the Missile boat out completely.  They're just too frakkin uber (according to the Wookie, the TIE Defender is better than any other fighter by quite a bit, except the Avenger is slightly more manueverable.  The Defender's shields are supposedly 4 times more powerful than any rebel fighter as well)

Well, then what of the TIE Defender we already have? It works just fine; it would be a waste to throw it out. Again, I would like to remind you that we mustn't maniacly stick to what is in canon. As much as you have the artistic liberty to make Greeble #34 on the ISD's bridge 88.5m long instead of 89.5, we can permit ourselves to make some other modifications in our tables.

The reason it was introduced in the games, I suspect, is that otherwise the empire has no starfighter armed with ion cannons. That doesn't make a lot of sense given how often the empire would want to capture ships to interrogate the occupants ...

The TIE Bomber is supposed to have ion cannons, so that part is dealt with.

And for capturing: ISDs can do that. They have ion cannons and tractor beams. The first few minutes you ever saw of Star Wars were about the Imperials capturing a vessel. I don't know if tractor beams are possible to do, but ion cannons mounted on a Star Destroyer will certainly do the trick.

All in all I liked the Gunboat in TIE Fighter. It made for lots of interesting missions. Capture missions, reconnaissance, attacks from hyperspace - none of these would have been as fun without the abilities given by the gunboat

Yes, I agree. But the gunboat will have to wait a little, especially taking our priorities into consideration. Until then, you'll have to be satisfied with the old "Star Destroyer drops out of hyperspace and deploys TIEs from its hangar" story.

[chief1983]

The point is that to make the Defender remotely balanced, it would be nothing like it's supposed to be.  It would essentially be a Defender in name and appearance only.  That's how incredibly broken the info on that thing is.  It's one thing to take liberties to fill in the holes, but the defender has too much known info to just say it's 20% as strong as people think it should be.  We may eventually have it in the game, but I see no reason anyone would use it in a campaign, or in anything other than Defender only multi player matches.

[brandx0]

...I'm fighting hard to keep both the Defender and the Missile boat out completely.  They're just too frakkin uber (according to the Wookie, the TIE Defender is better than any other fighter by quite a bit, except the Avenger is slightly more manueverable.  The Defender's shields are supposedly 4 times more powerful than any rebel fighter as well)

Well, then what of the TIE Defender we already have? It works just fine; it would be a waste to throw it out. Again, I would like to remind you that we mustn't maniacly stick to what is in canon. As much as you have the artistic liberty to make Greeble #34 on the ISD's bridge 88.5m long instead of 89.5, we can permit ourselves to make some other modifications in our tables.

We don't have a TIE Defender, the mesh in the testing package is just a placeholder

The reason it was introduced in the games, I suspect, is that otherwise the empire has no starfighter armed with ion cannons. That doesn't make a lot of sense given how often the empire would want to capture ships to interrogate the occupants ...

The TIE Bomber is supposed to have ion cannons, so that part is dealt with.

Where the hell did you hear that?  The TIE Bomber has no Ion Cannons.

[Akalabeth Angel]

If you guys put the Stormtrooper transport from X-Wing etcetera in there that'd be some ion cannons for capturing ships (and then later boarding them). Looks a little bit like the Starcruiser from the Ewok movies.

As a possible alternative anyway. If the Imperials require Ion Cannons.

[chief1983]

Gunboats are also Ion equipped, if we were to use them.  But I'm sure we'll use what makes the most sense at the time.

[brandx0]

Also note that Ion Cannons are not the only method of capturing a ship. They're merely one way.  Note that in the opening scene of Star Wars, even though the ISD is equipped with Ion Cannons, it doesn't use them against the corvette, preferring turbolasers.  The neccesity of Ion Cannons is simply an idea purveyed by the X-Wing games, where there are no alternate ways of disabling a ship. 

[Akalabeth Angel]

Also note that Ion Cannons are not the only method of capturing a ship. They're merely one way.  Note that in the opening scene of Star Wars, even though the ISD is equipped with Ion Cannons, it doesn't use them against the corvette, preferring turbolasers.  The neccesity of Ion Cannons is simply an idea purveyed by the X-Wing games, where there are no alternate ways of disabling a ship. 

Buzz droids!

[Turambar]

Buzz droids!

No!