[Toru-chan]

It's a fair bet everyone remembers the trench scenes in SW4. You know: Rebel fighters, three at a time, fly down a little trench trying to drop a 'proton torpedo' down a little 'thermal exhaust port'. While one of the fighters gets ready for the drop, the others "stay back far enough to cover you". But each time Darth and his two spring-stepped wingmen mercilessly chase them down the trench and pick them off one by one.

But covering doesn't seem to mean anything here, other than sounding paniced and getting picked off one by one. Maybe sticking their deflectors on "double rear" (which never seems to do much good) and swirling around so they take the bullet rather than the boss? Stopping a bullet/laser with a fighter seems pretty expensive way to do it, especially when you only have 30 fighters to begin with. They do slow the pursuers down, just long enough to get shot down. The Wedge/Biggs comment "Hurry Luke, they're coming in much faster this time, I can't hold them" suggests that's all they are there for.

Wouldn't it be better if the wingman, having spotted the bad guy coming up the rear, dropped back to engage him? Yeah, Tom Cruise says "a wingman never leaves his position", but Tom says a lot of things. Careful not to confuse movies with real life, lets look up USNI "Fighter Combat" page 197: a wingman's task is to provide "rear-hemisphere defensive lookout". Nothing about being there to stop bullets for the boss.

If they're covering the Proton guy from in the trench, by the time they see the bad guys it will be too late. So, while the proton guy races down the trench, why don't the two wingmen follow from just above the trench where they have room to maneuver. When they see Darth's threesome come in, they can drop back to engage them or follow enough distance not to engage them but lay suppressing fire. If Darth himself is getting shot at, he won't be calmly picking off his targets one by one.

Even as a kid I wondered why didn't the Proton guy go into the trench near the end rather than flying straight and level along the length while they were picked off one by one.

I'll throw this open:

A. How should the Rebels have attacked the death star? (Yeah, they won, but I say they fluked it)
B. How should the Empire have defended against them?


BTW You might argue Han Solo worked out what the entire rebel alliance's best military minds could not. Maybe they made him a general not because he was good, but because everyone else is so bad.

This post has been edited by Toru-chan: 16 April 2007 - 10:31 PM

[civilian_number_two]

They should have shot the crap out of it with ion cannons from the surface of the moon. According to ESB, that's a pretty good gun. Then they should have traveled round to the part of the station that had the port on it from a safe distance, and done a dive down to the trench from there, rather than spend so much time traveling along its surface getting hit by tower guns. If they'd acted quickly enough, the tie fighters wouldn't even have been released in response. Inside the trench, they should have just slowed down before firing the torpedoes. I understand that in a fighter plane on Earth you can't just sit and hover, but in an X-Wing in space you can. Of course, the ion cannon hadn't been invented yet, and Lucas hadn't thought about the X-Wing being a hovercraft until ESB, so I guess both of those ideas are out. They still should have done the dive though.

Also they should all have been midgets.

The Empire should have defended by sending out more tie fighters. Of course, this is again before ESB, so Lucas didn't know that the Death Star had hundreds of tie fighters on board. Since the Empire didn't know what it was the Rebels were after, and since the exhaust port was an unknown weakness, I won't say anything about specifically defending it. But yeah, more fighter planes. It looked like they sent out just as may as the Rebles attacked with, and the X-Wings seemed to be much better vehicles.

[TruJade]

Wouldn't it be better if the wingman, having spotted the bad guy coming up the rear, dropped back to engage him? Yeah, Tom Cruise says "a wingman never leaves his position", but Tom says a lot of things. Careful not to confuse movies with real life, ...

It's sooo clear that
if the Rebel attack

on the death star happened
in a real world situation the

rebels would've been
destroyed easily

[Toru-chan]

It's sooo clear that if the Rebel attack on the death star happened in a real world situation the rebels would've been destroyed easily

With only 3 out of 30 fighters left, they pretty much were destroyed. Only a lucky proton shot did it. And Governor Moff Tarkin would have got away with it if it wasn't for those damned kids.

But Star Wars is quaintly 1970s. We know stuff now we didn't know then. Like the skies of Baghdad lit up with anti-aircraft fire and, on the first night, every aircraft making it back alive. Stealth technology and electronic jamming can do that. If the guns can't lock onto you, they can't shoot you. With today's tech they'd use a radar tracking beam or a laser beam. You can jam radar, and it takes pretty fancy tech to track a moving object that fast at long range with a laser. I contend: Yes, you could conceivably attack something that big with something that small and not get shot down. But if they get off their ass and launch fighters, might change the equation.

Even when you look at the X-wings, they sort of resemble 1970s fighter aircraft. If Star Wars was made these days they'd be sleek, painted black-as-night, sealed stealth things. Kind of boring I guess. The Death Star is decorated in 'Industrial Ikea' style. Modern, simplistic and economical, but with recessed fluorescent lighting rather than Ingrid lampshades. To Governor Tarkin's credit, he opted for black and polished-gunmetal finishes rather than the alternative Ikea white so disasterously used on Moonbase Alpha.

They should have shot the crap out of it with ion cannons from the surface of the moon. According to ESB, that's a pretty good gun. Then they should have traveled round to the part of the station that had the port on it from a safe distance, and done a dive down to the trench from there, rather than spend so much time traveling along its surface getting hit by tower guns.

Actually if they're diving straight down from above, they can skip the trench entirely!

If they'd acted quickly enough, the tie fighters wouldn't even have been released in response.

In the movie it took a looong time to release the fighters. You would have thought they would have done it first thing. And why are all the stormtroopers running around in circles during the battle. Not like they can do anything? (Commander Cody would at least have taken his helmet off.)

Inside the trench, they should have just slowed down before firing the torpedoes. I understand that in a fighter plane on Earth you can't just sit and hover, but in an X-Wing in space you can.

X-wings have 4 engines and Y-wings 2, so in both cases (assuming they are still flying down the trench), they could shut off one side, spin around while they have forward momentum, then slow to brake. They'd be orbiting stationary right over the exhaust port. Pit... Pit.... Kaboom!

BTW if you haven't heard of it, I recommend this: http://www.orbitersim.com
Uber-realistic space simulator where you can try this sort of stuff. Free. Written by a genius with *A LOT* of free-time. Cool thing is, it's all done with real-world physics. And yeah: People have written TIE fighter and a Millenium Falcon plugin. No dogfighting though.

Of course, the ion cannon hadn't been invented yet, and Lucas hadn't thought about the X-Wing being a hovercraft until ESB, so I guess both of those ideas are out. They still should have done the dive though.

Agreed!

Also they should all have been midgets.

The Empire should have conscripted Ewoks as Stormtroopers. Ewoks fight better than stormtroopers. I've seen an Ewok take out a Stormtrooper with a stick. Imagine what one of them could do with a laser gun. Now if you dress Ewoks up as Stormtroopers and put them in tie fighters, you really have something. If I proposed something this ludicrous for Lord of the Rings, you mind couldn't comprehend it. But George has already softened your brain, so I bet as you read that you visualized an Ewok fiddling over a TIE fighters controls?

The Empire should have defended by sending out more tie fighters. Of course, this is again before ESB, so Lucas didn't know that the Death Star had hundreds of tie fighters on board.

Didn't Leia say "They only sent out 4 tie fighters. They could have sent out hundreds" or something like that. So why didn't they? There's a "Death Star Conspiracy" thread here somewhere that asks that question :-) The guns were pretty useless, but if the sky had a few hundred tie fighters optically tracking the X-wings the Empire would have definitely kicked ass. (Memo to next Sith lords: try painting all fighters black next time. It's call camouflage). BTW in the LucasArts games Tie fighter / X-wing they claimed the Tie fighters had no shields. Of course, that would also be "Ion Canon retro" too.

Since the Empire didn't know what it was the Rebels were after, and since the exhaust port was an unknown weakness, I won't say anything about specifically defending it.

Maybe one of the Stormtroopers running around could take a quick spacewalk and put block the exhaust port with of those Ikea tables. "It didn't go in. It just inflected on the Ulrick."

This post has been edited by Toru-chan: 19 April 2007 - 08:13 AM

[TruJade]

Well why'd you

have to go and be

all logical and stuff?

[Toru-chan]

Well why'd you have to go and be all logical and stuff?

Never argue logic with an Ewok Stormtrooper. They will bite your knees :-)

[Casual Fan]

Its pretty clear from the movies that Lucas has no ability to understand military tactics or strategy, and eventually this hurts the series. But in the original Star Wars he gets the basic idea right. The Rebel attack on the Death Star is supposed to be a desperate suicidal ploy with almost no chance of succeeding, that works pretty much because of Luke's godlike relationship with the Force. Unfortunately, in the rest of the movies Lucas reruns this type of situation over and over again, until it becomes a parody, at leasat by The Phantom Menace.

That said, if Lucas could have gone back and released Star Wars with all sorts of digital tech, he probably would have put in more Tie Fighters, and placed most of them above the trench. The additional Tie Fighters would be the reason the X Wings dropped into the trench to approach the exhaust port, to get away from the Tie Fighters. It would also have explained why the wingmen never left the trench to engage Vader. Only a couple of Tie Fighters at the time can enter the trench (and they have to be really well piloted, which pretty much means piloted by Vader). So only one X Wing at a time can be picked off, as long as they are in the trench. If the X Wings leave the trench, they get swarmed by Tie Fighters. So the best thing the wingmen can do is to stay in the trench and get picked off instead of the leader. It really is a suicide mission.

More Tie Fighters would do that, but given what was available to Lucas we have to suspend disbelief and imagine the battle kind of went the way I just described.

[Toru-chan]

Agreed, Casual. To Lucas' credit, nobody picked up on this at the time (or if they did they didn't have the Internet to tell the rest of us). In 1977 none of the audience had "space combat experience", but after Microprose+Wing Command+Tie Fighter+X-wing there is a generation that more or less does! In 1977 with SFX being so expensive, that seemed like a big battle, until we saw the one in Jedi.

The Rebel attack on the Death Star is supposed to be a desperate suicidal ploy with almost no chance of succeeding, that works pretty much because of Luke's godlike relationship with the Force.

Yeah. Only 30 fighters is suicidal. In the script he could have said 200 or something, but then it wouldn't have seemed anywhere near so desperate.

Unfortunately, in the rest of the movies Lucas reruns this type of situation over and over again, until it becomes a parody, at leasat by The Phantom Menace.

LOL. Like, for some reason, having a mother ship that controls every single battle droid. And the 'yipee' accidental missile firing stuff. What was Lucas thinking? Guess he thought he was making a 'movie for kids', but in the department stores the 'kids' I saw hovering over TPM merchandise were in their thirties and forties. To a youngster who grew up on a diet of Bablyon 5 and Matrix (well, Matrix #1 anyway :-) TPM must seem pretty bland.

More Tie Fighters would do that, but given what was available to Lucas we have to suspend disbelief and imagine the battle kind of went the way I just described.

So far as saving the film: Hundreds of Tie fighters mounting slashing attacks over the trench. The X-wings forced to descend to avoid fire, and engage Vader directly all they can do is switch their deflector-shields on double-rear and swirl around and slow them down. Just don't tell Lucas or he'll have a special-special-special-edition-out. Maybe he can put Darth Vader's eyebrows back too? :-)

[TruJade]

Never argue logic with an Ewok Stormtrooper. They will bite your knees :-)

Ha ha ha

Ewok Stormtrooper....
wow they've really
lowered their standards


As for all that
new trilogy buisness
And his whole these are children movies
What a load of BS and poppycock
Really if SW is really meant for

kids then perhaps the whole
Anakin/Padme relationship is
sending the wrong message to youth.
If you love aka have an unhealthy
obession with someone

Stalk them!
At least until they give in
Then get overly protective
and strangle them
Yes that is a beautiful message....

Its only a childrens movie
so he can mass produce SW crap
and make more millions on
the whims of a screaming 8 year old
when the older SW fans

all the want is a good story,
an excellent script and perhaps
a sex scene here or there
but of course thats too much to ask.

[Toru-chan]

Its only a childrens movie so he can mass produce SW crap and make more millions on the whims of a screaming 8 year old when the older SW fans

all the want is a good story, an excellent script and perhaps a sex scene here or there but of course thats too much to ask.

I did read... somewhere... that he said he cast Jake Lloyd so prominently because they were 'kids movies'. Someone should make a database of all Lucas quotes so we can look this stuff up, and run a script to find all his contradictions and where he changed his mind but wouldn't admit it later :-)

Scene: A Conference Room at Skywalker Ranch

LUCAS (rubbing beard): Ewok Stormtroopers eh?
MATTEL REP: Yes, we'd sell a million! Imagine the merchandising! Every kid will want one! It'll be even more popular than our Matrix Revolutions merchandise!
BURGER KING REP: Eat your heart out McDonalds! Imagine drink containers and kidz mealz packz!
CGI GUY I: Screw that. They'd be cool to animate. That's what really matters! In the concept meeting all us animators were fighting over who would get to do it. Please George!
LUCAS: I don't know. I've been copping a lot of crap over at ChefElf.com. I'm starting to wonder if I shouldn't just go back to good Story telling.
CGI GUY II: Hey! Maybe we could have them in a scene with Jar Jar Binks. Imagine him tripping over them or something? I have the Jar Jar model on a floppy somewhere. I could import him into the new animation software. That could be really interesting.
(CGI GUY I and II enter a quiet conversation. We can only hear snippets like "WAY COOL" and "THAT WOULD BE COOL" and "COOL")
LUCAS (coming to): Jar Jar? Yeah! Why didn't you say so? STAR WARS 7: EWOK EMPIRE!
FANYBOYS CUM STAFFERS: (All applaud)

This post has been edited by Toru-chan: 26 April 2007 - 10:29 PM

[TruJade]

LOL

gasp!
OH GOD!!!

Knowing GL and the
rest of his cronies/yes men

such a meeting has
already taken place. . .

The horror

[barend]

And his whole these are children movies
What a load of BS and poppycock
Really if SW is really meant for
kids then perhaps the whole
Anakin/Padme relationship is
sending the wrong message to youth.

what? That if you kill a room full of children, a tribe of natives, embarass your girlfriend infront of people, constantly make the wrong choices, whine alot, be over obsessive about your mother, and abuse any power you have, that an atractive girl will still want to be with you as long as your attractive? (and she'll go from a storng willed woman to bubbling bimbo over the course of the relationship)

nope... that seems pretty acurate to me.

an attractive girl will go out with guy who always wears black?
now that's bullshit.

This post has been edited by barend: 30 April 2007 - 07:03 PM

[Despondent]

an attractive girl will go out with guy who always wears black?
now that's bullshit.

Jedi mind trick.

[TruJade]

What's wrong with Black?!!?!?
Everyone loves black
it's slimming and carries
the stereotype that all black
wearers are badass

oh! hmmm...
leave it to Lucas to
ruin a staple of cool.
BTW i doubt Anakin needed
to use any mind tricks

on Padme, just his cocky grin.
The whole reason why they hooked
up is b/c as a 12yr. old she was
corrupted by Palo (see nitpickers guide ATOC
in reference to her 'First Time')
and felt the urge to spread that terror

on a defenseless 10 yr. old boy.
That's why Anakin turned to the darkside!!!!!