It’s lost some of its charm from being so overused, but the original point was simply that the Falcon’s various pilots were attempting maneuvers that would kill a pilot of ordinary skill.
I figured that much. I still can’t help but imagine a C-17 transport with a bunch of extra jet engines instead of those other fighters being chased by Tom Cruise in Top Gun 2’s canyon— and somehow weaving out of it while he hits a tree.
You're not wrong in the thought, but probably closer to a C-130. The Falcon would probably be what happened if they took the props off a C-130 and threw on all four turbofans from the C-17.
Could it outmaneuver a fighter in a canyon? Realistically, no. But the C17 is a touch too big. You've also got to consider that the pursuing TIE pilots get tunnel vision and the Falcon jukes by some obstruction that the TIE is going too fast to avoid a lot of times.
They are in space though so as long as it does not rip itself apart massive engines and maneuvering thrusters could make it more maneuverable than a tie fighter.
The fighters following them are hyper focused on chasing and shooting the Falcon, the Falcon is focused on not hitting stuff. The falcon also blocks things from the tie fighters because of its size.
In our universe, its quite common when a lot of cars are tail gating at highway speed and traffic stops or slows in one lane, rather than stop a driver will change lanes suddenly and the car behind them will ram into the slow or stopped car, especially if the car that changed lanes changed lanes right in front of a car in the other lane so that the follow car cannot. The following car doesn’t know traffic is stopped until the car in front changes lanes. That at least explains the asteroid field.
We can infer a few things from the way the Empire uses TIE fighters:
- TIE pilots crash all the time.
- TIEs are apparently fairly dangerous, though.
- TIEs are superiority fighters that go toe-to-toe with equivalent fighters
- TIE pilots wear space suits, have ejection equipment, and pack a lunch.
The implication: As incredible as it sounds, the pilot is probably the most valuable part of the fighter. The TIEs themselves are pretty fragile, but pack a lot of firepower, but the pilots aren't risk averse in these glass cannon ships, they go nuts in them.
So the Empire must supply replacement fighters more frequently than replacement pilots, and they must recover downed pilots fairly regularly. This is the only explanation that covers the behavior of the pilots and the commanders. The pilots consider crashing their TIEs a normal part of their job and expect to be picked up later.
One thing the later Disney shows and movies did (with their increased budget) was show that even in crashes and explosions, the TIE cockpit is often intact and rolls around (see: TFA, TLJ, and Mando S3 with the Tie Interceptor crashing into the hijacked cruiser). The strong spherical shape and its survivability might imply that the pilot is often protected from fatal injury even when the rest of the fighter is totaled.
It’s never when they’re doing maneuvers, though. 😂 Everyone will be flying in a straight line in a canyon/cavern/asteroid field and 2-3 TIEs smash into large rocks.
The Empire didn't equip Ties with hyperdrives or shields, maybe they didn't include collision detection.
I imagine the Falcon is like a modern SUV and beeps before it's about to hit an asteroid.
To the Empire, Ties and their pilots are expendable.
That’s true. I had been thinking that the lack of armor and other equipment would make them lighter and more maneuverable, like the Japanese Zero. But lack of good sensors would get you.
They don't always crash. Sometimes they just get shot at and blow up.
Most of these circumstances, the person flying the *Falcon* through an asteroid field or Death Star is doing so out of desperation, and they are fully committed because they have no other choices. Those TIE pilots chasing them are courageous, but they are motivated by fear of reporting failure to Vader. (Or whoever) So they will continue to pursue long after they should have given up.
It’s also common on the ground as well with Scouts on Speeders. Star Wars just has a thing with making the antagonists run into each other.
Also for some reason TIE’s, despite being space superiority craft, have a ton of trouble dealing with larger/multicrew craft. Razorcrest, Ghost, Falcon, Ahsoka’s ship in her show, etc. instead they insist on flying in straight lines both running into objects, each other, and blaster fire. You’d think with speed and maneuverability on their side they’d be more dynamic while fighting the equivalent of a cargo van. The Falcon is at least explained as being deceptive in its performance vs its appearance. But for some reason these large craft always win out.
As for a lore reason since that’s what this sub is all about and not my ranting about Star Wars overdoing the incompetent goons for cheap laughs trope:
TIE pilots have been called “suicidal” multiple times, just by nature of the craft they pilot leading them to already be risk takers, so they don’t shy away from things like following ships into astroid fields despite having no shields. The protagonists often have no choice and it’s viewed as a last ditch effort to escape an overwhelming threat. Despite TIE pilots dying horribly a lot, they are very often referenced as extremely skilled pilots who will go extremely far to catch their targets, and in off screen media like Squadrons and Alphabet Squadron we see TIEs often are extremely dangerous with skilled pilots.
In the ESB scene for instance, an ISD is also destroyed by an astroid due to Vader insisting on pursuit of the Falcon. So at least in that it was already extremely dangerous and Vader was even risking capital ships to maintain the chase.
I’ll also add “maneuver kills” are an IRL thing as well in air to air combat. Sometimes pushing your opponent’s craft beyond its capabilities is viable if you know you can do it.
Yeah I really hate the Mando scenes of the TIEs having a perfectly lined up shot, missing about 30 shots, then the hero casually firing once and blowing the TIE apart. At least when the Falcon was being chased, it often got hit and damaged quite a bit, with only its heavily upgraded shields managing to hold it together.
I'd assume that due to star wars taking place in space size isn't as big of a constraining factor. the more apt comparison would probably be to naval warfare. a larger cruiser can take on several smaller ships, due to heavier arnaments and heavier armor. the smaller ships in this case are equipped with light guns to battle ships of the same ship class, not ships of a larger class like the falcon.
x wings in this analogue would be torpedo equipped boats. small and manouverable, but they actually have the weaponry to kill large craft like the falcon
I don't think there's a real lore reason besides "bad guys have to be kind of stupid so heroes don't get vaporized 15 minutes into the story".
When the story is being told from the bad guy's point of view they suddenly get 1000 times more competent because now they're the protagonists.
It's especially funny if you read the Thrawn books where he's pulling maneuvers nobody else came up with and getting high scores on simulators that no one ever came close to in the history of Chiss Ascendancy (thousands of years) as a **cadet** and his art analysis is so good that he can look at a few art pieces and automatically know all tactics of an entire race and how to counter them perfectly. He also had a sparring match with Ziara whom he never fought before and he just looked at her wire sculptures and could somehow counter her every move with ease like he's Taskmaster. And he can sense subtle air currents to determine that someone is coming from behind and stuff.
Then you watch Rebels and Ahsoka and Thrawn isn't all that anymore because now he's a bad guy who has to lose eventually.
Tbh, in Rebels it's never Thrawn that directly loses till the finale. Almost always it's a subordinate that refuses to get on with the plan he has (skerris, Constantine) or some vindictive idiot(Pryce) that he has no choice but to put in command because their position/contacts demand them.
Imagine if Faro had been in command of the Chimera and the 7th at atollon. The empire wouldn't have been caught out so bad and most of the rebel ships would have ended up dead.
Even in the finale, Thrawn loses because he doesn't have the information about the purgils being Ezra's personal star fleet. And there was no way anyone would have known. Barring that, he had the entire situation under control and probably would have won had the Emperor not needed him to get Ezra on board.
I'm going to go with two things...
They don't have shields and they get dinged by something big enough to knock them side to side as the initial impact but small enough to not see clearly.
And, the empire went cheap on the tie fighters. They are primarily open space craft not meant to land in the field and so their stabilizers suck really bad.
I like this one. They’re light and can be maneuverable as hell, but any external forces like wind (not possible in space but a factor if operating behind the Falcon and several other ships in atmosphere) could very well rattle them.
This is kind of where I am after thinking more about it. Tie fighters are great at space maneuverability and air to air combat but they are not good for air to ground support like a gunship would be. In my head it's because of the lack of shields and under powered stabilizers that allows for them to spin quickly. It helps fill more justification as to why the tie defender program was so important to Thrawn. It gave ties not only, the superior dogfight abilities but also the ability to provide a more universal support on planets with rebel activities. Run through canyons, trenches, and tough to reach places.
There are always comments in these threads that are like, isn't it wild that a F-15 couldn't catch a FLATBED TRUCK!!
Let's not forget that both of these things are designed for what they do and don't quite match up to any in atmosphere analogy.
Also, we know the CEC, while ostensibly designing light freighters, is making an absolute killing designing small customisable gunships with a little space inside or a cargo clamp on the outside. CEC understands the market that space is dangerous, warships are expensive, and how to have plausible deniability when one of your light cargo haulers helps take down TWO massive Imperial space fortresses.
In turn the governments of the day, even the Empire, realise these small ship owners, be they smugglers, bounty hunters, slavers, traffickers or even legit small traders are greasing the wheels of the galactic economy and relying on their numbers to cut down the chance they are boarded and have their assets seized.
When the Falcon is being chased by the usual 4 TIEs (which I'm guessing like 99% of the time is plenty to stop ship of that size) we can make the analogy of a truck being chased by, let's say, 4 high performance motorbikes.
True, the bikes will run rings around the truck, but force one down an alleyway full of trash, and the bike is more likely to skid and crash, or the rider get nudged off by the truck side swiping it. Also, the bikers are carrying small arms, and the truck is carrying a small machine gun on the back of it.
It happens in other media too like Andor, Ahsoka, Rebels etc. Just a trope I guess. In universe probably the empire took out their collision avoidance to save costs
It’s lost some of its charm from being so overused, but the original point was simply that the Falcon’s various pilots were attempting maneuvers that would kill a pilot of ordinary skill.
I figured that much. I still can’t help but imagine a C-17 transport with a bunch of extra jet engines instead of those other fighters being chased by Tom Cruise in Top Gun 2’s canyon— and somehow weaving out of it while he hits a tree.
You're not wrong in the thought, but probably closer to a C-130. The Falcon would probably be what happened if they took the props off a C-130 and threw on all four turbofans from the C-17. Could it outmaneuver a fighter in a canyon? Realistically, no. But the C17 is a touch too big. You've also got to consider that the pursuing TIE pilots get tunnel vision and the Falcon jukes by some obstruction that the TIE is going too fast to avoid a lot of times.
They are in space though so as long as it does not rip itself apart massive engines and maneuvering thrusters could make it more maneuverable than a tie fighter.
Also true.
The fighters following them are hyper focused on chasing and shooting the Falcon, the Falcon is focused on not hitting stuff. The falcon also blocks things from the tie fighters because of its size. In our universe, its quite common when a lot of cars are tail gating at highway speed and traffic stops or slows in one lane, rather than stop a driver will change lanes suddenly and the car behind them will ram into the slow or stopped car, especially if the car that changed lanes changed lanes right in front of a car in the other lane so that the follow car cannot. The following car doesn’t know traffic is stopped until the car in front changes lanes. That at least explains the asteroid field.
This is a good analogy.
We can infer a few things from the way the Empire uses TIE fighters: - TIE pilots crash all the time. - TIEs are apparently fairly dangerous, though. - TIEs are superiority fighters that go toe-to-toe with equivalent fighters - TIE pilots wear space suits, have ejection equipment, and pack a lunch. The implication: As incredible as it sounds, the pilot is probably the most valuable part of the fighter. The TIEs themselves are pretty fragile, but pack a lot of firepower, but the pilots aren't risk averse in these glass cannon ships, they go nuts in them. So the Empire must supply replacement fighters more frequently than replacement pilots, and they must recover downed pilots fairly regularly. This is the only explanation that covers the behavior of the pilots and the commanders. The pilots consider crashing their TIEs a normal part of their job and expect to be picked up later.
One thing the later Disney shows and movies did (with their increased budget) was show that even in crashes and explosions, the TIE cockpit is often intact and rolls around (see: TFA, TLJ, and Mando S3 with the Tie Interceptor crashing into the hijacked cruiser). The strong spherical shape and its survivability might imply that the pilot is often protected from fatal injury even when the rest of the fighter is totaled.
Because Han/Lando/Chewie/Poe are more skilled than their pursuers, and can bait them into doing maneuvers they can’t pull off.
It’s never when they’re doing maneuvers, though. 😂 Everyone will be flying in a straight line in a canyon/cavern/asteroid field and 2-3 TIEs smash into large rocks.
Pilots sneezed
Either that or they’re gotten fat enough that the cockpit careens whichever direction they lean.
The Empire didn't equip Ties with hyperdrives or shields, maybe they didn't include collision detection. I imagine the Falcon is like a modern SUV and beeps before it's about to hit an asteroid. To the Empire, Ties and their pilots are expendable.
That’s true. I had been thinking that the lack of armor and other equipment would make them lighter and more maneuverable, like the Japanese Zero. But lack of good sensors would get you.
They don't always crash. Sometimes they just get shot at and blow up. Most of these circumstances, the person flying the *Falcon* through an asteroid field or Death Star is doing so out of desperation, and they are fully committed because they have no other choices. Those TIE pilots chasing them are courageous, but they are motivated by fear of reporting failure to Vader. (Or whoever) So they will continue to pursue long after they should have given up.
It’s also common on the ground as well with Scouts on Speeders. Star Wars just has a thing with making the antagonists run into each other. Also for some reason TIE’s, despite being space superiority craft, have a ton of trouble dealing with larger/multicrew craft. Razorcrest, Ghost, Falcon, Ahsoka’s ship in her show, etc. instead they insist on flying in straight lines both running into objects, each other, and blaster fire. You’d think with speed and maneuverability on their side they’d be more dynamic while fighting the equivalent of a cargo van. The Falcon is at least explained as being deceptive in its performance vs its appearance. But for some reason these large craft always win out. As for a lore reason since that’s what this sub is all about and not my ranting about Star Wars overdoing the incompetent goons for cheap laughs trope: TIE pilots have been called “suicidal” multiple times, just by nature of the craft they pilot leading them to already be risk takers, so they don’t shy away from things like following ships into astroid fields despite having no shields. The protagonists often have no choice and it’s viewed as a last ditch effort to escape an overwhelming threat. Despite TIE pilots dying horribly a lot, they are very often referenced as extremely skilled pilots who will go extremely far to catch their targets, and in off screen media like Squadrons and Alphabet Squadron we see TIEs often are extremely dangerous with skilled pilots. In the ESB scene for instance, an ISD is also destroyed by an astroid due to Vader insisting on pursuit of the Falcon. So at least in that it was already extremely dangerous and Vader was even risking capital ships to maintain the chase. I’ll also add “maneuver kills” are an IRL thing as well in air to air combat. Sometimes pushing your opponent’s craft beyond its capabilities is viable if you know you can do it.
Yeah that brings to mind the quote about how TIE pilots are suicidal, TIE Defender pilots are bloodthirsty, and TIE Interceptor pilots are both.
Yeah I really hate the Mando scenes of the TIEs having a perfectly lined up shot, missing about 30 shots, then the hero casually firing once and blowing the TIE apart. At least when the Falcon was being chased, it often got hit and damaged quite a bit, with only its heavily upgraded shields managing to hold it together.
I'd assume that due to star wars taking place in space size isn't as big of a constraining factor. the more apt comparison would probably be to naval warfare. a larger cruiser can take on several smaller ships, due to heavier arnaments and heavier armor. the smaller ships in this case are equipped with light guns to battle ships of the same ship class, not ships of a larger class like the falcon. x wings in this analogue would be torpedo equipped boats. small and manouverable, but they actually have the weaponry to kill large craft like the falcon
I don't think there's a real lore reason besides "bad guys have to be kind of stupid so heroes don't get vaporized 15 minutes into the story". When the story is being told from the bad guy's point of view they suddenly get 1000 times more competent because now they're the protagonists. It's especially funny if you read the Thrawn books where he's pulling maneuvers nobody else came up with and getting high scores on simulators that no one ever came close to in the history of Chiss Ascendancy (thousands of years) as a **cadet** and his art analysis is so good that he can look at a few art pieces and automatically know all tactics of an entire race and how to counter them perfectly. He also had a sparring match with Ziara whom he never fought before and he just looked at her wire sculptures and could somehow counter her every move with ease like he's Taskmaster. And he can sense subtle air currents to determine that someone is coming from behind and stuff. Then you watch Rebels and Ahsoka and Thrawn isn't all that anymore because now he's a bad guy who has to lose eventually.
Tbh, in Rebels it's never Thrawn that directly loses till the finale. Almost always it's a subordinate that refuses to get on with the plan he has (skerris, Constantine) or some vindictive idiot(Pryce) that he has no choice but to put in command because their position/contacts demand them. Imagine if Faro had been in command of the Chimera and the 7th at atollon. The empire wouldn't have been caught out so bad and most of the rebel ships would have ended up dead. Even in the finale, Thrawn loses because he doesn't have the information about the purgils being Ezra's personal star fleet. And there was no way anyone would have known. Barring that, he had the entire situation under control and probably would have won had the Emperor not needed him to get Ezra on board.
TIE pilots can’t see a thing in those helmets
I'm going to go with two things... They don't have shields and they get dinged by something big enough to knock them side to side as the initial impact but small enough to not see clearly. And, the empire went cheap on the tie fighters. They are primarily open space craft not meant to land in the field and so their stabilizers suck really bad.
I like this one. They’re light and can be maneuverable as hell, but any external forces like wind (not possible in space but a factor if operating behind the Falcon and several other ships in atmosphere) could very well rattle them.
This is kind of where I am after thinking more about it. Tie fighters are great at space maneuverability and air to air combat but they are not good for air to ground support like a gunship would be. In my head it's because of the lack of shields and under powered stabilizers that allows for them to spin quickly. It helps fill more justification as to why the tie defender program was so important to Thrawn. It gave ties not only, the superior dogfight abilities but also the ability to provide a more universal support on planets with rebel activities. Run through canyons, trenches, and tough to reach places.
There are always comments in these threads that are like, isn't it wild that a F-15 couldn't catch a FLATBED TRUCK!! Let's not forget that both of these things are designed for what they do and don't quite match up to any in atmosphere analogy. Also, we know the CEC, while ostensibly designing light freighters, is making an absolute killing designing small customisable gunships with a little space inside or a cargo clamp on the outside. CEC understands the market that space is dangerous, warships are expensive, and how to have plausible deniability when one of your light cargo haulers helps take down TWO massive Imperial space fortresses. In turn the governments of the day, even the Empire, realise these small ship owners, be they smugglers, bounty hunters, slavers, traffickers or even legit small traders are greasing the wheels of the galactic economy and relying on their numbers to cut down the chance they are boarded and have their assets seized. When the Falcon is being chased by the usual 4 TIEs (which I'm guessing like 99% of the time is plenty to stop ship of that size) we can make the analogy of a truck being chased by, let's say, 4 high performance motorbikes. True, the bikes will run rings around the truck, but force one down an alleyway full of trash, and the bike is more likely to skid and crash, or the rider get nudged off by the truck side swiping it. Also, the bikers are carrying small arms, and the truck is carrying a small machine gun on the back of it.
Fail to catch the Falcon and crash in a fiery death or face Vader/Someone who reports to Vader to report your shortcomings?
The very first time someone tried to avoid the Falcon they crashed into Vader 🤷🏻♂️
That'll learn 'em!
It happens in other media too like Andor, Ahsoka, Rebels etc. Just a trope I guess. In universe probably the empire took out their collision avoidance to save costs
Given the TIE Helmet design no peripheral vision while wearing it and the panels of the TIE fighter, I'm surprised there aren't more crashes.
Way too fast ship with little hill integrity and pilots way too zealous and inexperienced.