We take a look at Sienar Fleet Systems, one of the most consequential starship manufacturers during the late Republic/Imperial era. Led by the brilliant Raith Sienar we discuss the rise and impact this company had on the Galaxy.
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ALLEN XIE
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I Think the Tie Fighter Program Design is exemplifies both the best and worst in starfighter designs. Yes its a highly flawed design and not the best in terms of having more offensive utiility but with their large swarms they can excel in a defensive and interce[ptor capacity. so Seinar systems did have something going for it with the program however the rebel alliance was always adapting and finding ways to outsmart the imperial star fighter core as well, And a lot of the tie fighters design limitations held it back from becoming something truly formidable in space combat.
But I wouldn't say its the worst star fighter ever I am sure their are worse designs out there just the tie fighter is kind medicore to decent at best the rebel snub fighters were just that much better overall I will say. But it certainly was one of the best designs in terms of something that was mass produceable and cost effective for a design and like the y wing had a legacy that led to some more improved designs especially for the first order as they tried looked to fixing some of it short comings.
It just one of the iconic star wars designs though certainly I wouldn't want to fly one in any astroid belts as it had tendancy to become human operatorated ping pong/pin ball when coming into contact with said asteroids.
Glad you're back to content that matters. So here's my scenario, what if droids were used instead of pilots. TIEs are already so affordable, low maintenance and the swarming tactics they were designed for already screams automation. I think ATIEs(Automated TIE) or TIE-D(TIE droid) would have been devastaing, especially if the brains were repurposed Vulture droids. This would also alter the design a bit, the cockpit could be streamlined and the silhouette could be made even smaller.
Skunk Works is a myth!
19:52
not the ai art
I’ve always loved the TIE Fighter, even from a young age. Watching episode IV, I loved the shape, the speed and of course the iconic scream that it had.
For an industrial supply of fighters the TIE was not bad.
Both, definitely both.
I slagged the TIE Fighter a lot, and it deserves it, but I will admit Seinar did really well to build the line. Not the standard fighter, it's crap, but all it's variants and the way they performed really well for a cheap cost show that Seinar did good work.
Not sure how true it is in canon, but I though an ISD needed 6 squadrons of fighters?
Sad thing is if the defender project won instead of project stardust the rebels would have likely been defeated
“Palpatine is a deal maker like Nancy Pelosi or Mitch McConnell”
Why did you have to do Palpatine dirty like that?
OFF SUBJECT: i think it is soo wizard having Star Wars cityscapes outside of the window in your videos. perhaps a different city every video: Nar Shaddaa, Malastare, Taris, Cato Niemoidia, Empress Teta, Munnilist, Mygeeto. just a idea but i think it's a cool one.
Tbh the TIE being 30% the cost of an x-wing seems ridiculously expensive. Given that it has no hyperdrive, no shields, no missiles has a super cheap engine and it was unpressurised.
Honestly, it’s the same with many services for the government as the mentality is lowest bidder with highest expectations.
Very Nice
Cool clips during this script Allen GT . 👍🧐
Well TBF, fighters are usually made to fit government-issued specifications, though, occasionally, a government will accept a company's own design into service. Therefore, any flaws with the TIE fighter lie with the Empire for either not issuing better specifications, or for accepting a design which was clearly limited.
Is this the cartoon age of Generation Tech?
👍
In having Raith Sienar design the Empire's principal fighters, Palpatine demonstrated yet again how Personnel is Policy.
In the 90's Star Wars "X-Wing" game, I used to ram Tie Fighters with my full shields to destroy them fast. RAMMING SPEED! 💪🏻
The TIE Fighter and TIE program in general has it's flaws, but it's still one of the best fighters and fughter programs out there. Fast, agile, great targeting systems, no munitions but had pretty powerful blasters for being sonsmall and a hard target to hit and in space….hard to see until they pop up on your radar. I would like to think they stealth panels from thr Scimitar is what eventually led to the TIE Phantom(even though it's no longer canon).
Very convenient with the discovery of selling to separatists and then bankrupted by lack of business due to sanctions, and then acquired by the IGBC, then banking crisis forces all IGBC assets to go to the Republic
Corruption 😂
Deciding whether or not fighter development was a corrupt project or effective weapons program? If I know gen tech then I KNOW there will be ZERO real world references in this one
Ironically, TIE’s not having shields was an EU thing, created by West End Games in their Star Wars RPG as a way to allow Rebel players to kill Empire NPC’s while not being as fragile themselves. This got into other EU works as well as official lore.
One of the wonders of the TIE Fighter was simple. Any shield small enough to fit on one, was weak enough to be taken down in almost a single shot. And the charging system which fed the Twin Ion Engine vie Solar Panel couldn't maintain the shield generator in addition well.
I imagine several experimental TIE designs for a baseline shield generator having the shield system almost doubling the price of the ship for a durability increase that was measured in single percentile as well as a small loss of maneuverability that in turn undid even that.
It is my opinion that the APEX of the Tie Line wasn't the over-designed Defender but rather the TIE/IN (Interceptor). With the Defender you may as well buy Custom works. Have full livability and comforts. As well as a mass of weapons and fixtures and hot-points for ace pilots. BUT THE INTERCEPTOR, it maintained the (Relative) cheapness, increased the firepower, maximized the maneuverability, kept the dependence. Everything bulky was removed. It was faster, better, and increased survivability against the basic TIE/LN by multiples, justifying the cost, while keeping it cheap enough for it not to be 'ACE PILOT ONLY'.
The only reason I figure the IN didn't replace the LN was that most TIE Fighters acted as policing vessels, flying from their mobile station to escort and monitor local traffic as well as patrol duty in the strange, off hand chance someone got a bright idea to attack one of the larger imperial ships. Meaning if you flew 300 days a year, and most years you never fired your turbo-lasers the LN was flat more than enough for anything your job would entail. While the IN would be more military deployment and high priority mission.
One other 'problem' most TIE Model ships have is the top entry cockpit, large foils, made you require a feat of physical aptitude to even get in your ship if you weren't in a TIE Dock. You could land on the ground but you'd better hope the Starport has some really long ladders or that you're a master climber. The Interceptor's longer fins as opposed to the taller ones meant that it could land easier making it better for lower orbit patrols than its more baseline Counterpart.
Take it from me, back I've been a TIE Advocate most of my imperial, and post imperial career and I still have my Original TIE/IN which after the fall of the Empire has received every Aftermarket Improvement you can imagine. Including a Super Compact Hyperdrive (Compactness over Speed) an Ion Converter for her Turbo Lasers as well as a Tiny Shield Generator. She can get me too and from planets in far away systems in hours. As well as having enough compact storage space for things like basic camping gear and rations. The concept being the Shield Generator reduces attrition and micro-damage from space debris, which, while the base armor and hall is qualified to deal with, farther reduces the already low maintenance time to almost nothing. As she stands she could sit 100 years and all you'd need is new padding in the seats, everything else would still run golden.
TIE is about Survival through Skill. Reliable, robust mechanics, and always being able to outmaneuver your opponents. Anyone changing that fundamental doesn't understand "True Imperial Elegance".
I love your videos man. Such a rich resource for Humanity to enjoy Star Wars even more deeply.
Great video as always
Efficiently corrupt or corruptly efficient 😉
He went back to his room on Alderaan. Good for you, Allen
Havant watched one of your videos for a while. Glad to be back! X
Alan I love how you are pretending to be in the sw universe it’s funny
Just realised that the ghost appeared in rogue one. Look to 18:31. Probably not new to most of you but putting there just in case 😊
If the Empire would had let Siener CEO go full creative mode the Rebels would have be finished.
I tremble at the thought of having to pay and supply for regular maintenance of fighters in X4…
Despite the TIE fighter's flaws, training pilots to not rely on shields ultimately makes them better pilots (if they last long enough to learn). The hands down BEST non-Force sensitive pilot in the SW galaxy, Baron Soontir Fel, is a TIE Interceptor pilot.
The TIE fighter in EU is a great example of everything that went wrong with Star Wars even before the Disney takeover. From original Star Wars novelisation I read around 1979, the original TIE was defined by its engineering, which is a visual concept and not simply technomagic, for the suspension of disbelief and audience immersion. It was basically a stripped-down structure built around a twin-ion sublight drive, each fed by a massive solar collector to cut fuel weight although the obvious consequence is a very short range which, logically would diminish all the way to backup generators the further you get away from local solar radiation such as in deep interstellar space. As virtually all naval action for the Empire occurs within star systems, generally in siege or fortification of systems defences and combat around planets this isn't a particular issue and presents numerous benefits from production cost and complexity to performance.
The crew section is an exposed, armoured cockpit without an external hull, containing minimal accommodations as the pilot wears a personal life support and systems integrating, vehicle interfacing space suit, without which operating the craft would be nearly impossible. It has no shielding, no safety equipment like inertial dampeners, no insulating hull structure, no cockpit environmental systems. Instead of complex technologies the manoeuvring system is provided by the engine exhausting through a two-dimensional screen of vanes set in a hexagonal outlet at the rear of main pod (giving its howling noise signature), so each engine provides thrust offset to the other, these are rotated and the engines modulated asymmetrically to turn the craft in space entirely by thrust vectoring, which combines with its intensely lightweight vehicle mass to provide extreme agility and acceleration. In a sense these are limited only by the survivability of the pilot to the forces involved, compensated as much as technologically possible by the advanced integrated flight suit.
Now the thing to remember about the Star Wars universe is that it is the product of many thousands of years of interstellar civilisation and most technologies have evolved towards their limitations and have a developmental plateau. There aren't a constant stream of newer and more powerful starship engines or hyperdrives for example, their performance has been fairly similar and economically governed for millennia. So you don't have a starfighter that moves at 75MGLT one year and then a few years later it has more powerful engines and moves at 100MGLT, there must be engineering reasons for the speed increase, a crew member is deleted or some spacecraft systems, the hyperdrives are removed, or if engines from a much heavier craft are fitted its fuel capacity is a fraction of what it was previously and there are now jury rigging issues with other systems. Generally speaking, only marginal increases in performance through production refinement are available through successive model generations, dramatic changes in performance only come through engineering compromises or complete redesign of the craft.
And this is where we run into problems with the EU TIE series. It's not an issue for the TIE/advanced-X prototypes like the X1 flown by Darth Vader, these are technology testbeds and demonstrators for TIE systems mounted aboard a far more traditional spacecraft chassis using engine thrusters, inertial dampeners, full shielding capabilities, cockpit environment systems, insulating hull structure and even a lightweight hyperdrive. You're not just taking a regular fleet TIE and adjusting the specifications figures without concrete, visible engineering reasons for those changes, which is what the EU TIE fighters do. It's not even an issue with the TIE Interceptor which is, in fact a marginal refinement of the regular Line TIE in terms of performance figures with a significant visual cue with its solar collectors and weapon mounting, explained as a much more expensive production refinement for elite squadrons analogous to the regular Stormtroopers and the elite Royal Guardsman selected from their ranks and elevated with more advanced training and expensive equipment. The main area the TIE interceptor streaks ahead of the Line TIE is in manoeuvrability, which was ostensibly achieved through systems refinement developed in the Advanced-X testbeds. There is a little bit of reasoning fudge here but it works within the context of the Emperor's special, small unit elite forces and trying not to overplay it, which again the EU fandom does to a shocking degree.
It's the difference between sci-fi and technomagic, which yes Star Wars is prone to because of its best feature: lightsabres. But the whole point is to create the suspension of disbelief for lightsabres you need a more gritty and pragmatic sci-fi environment in which it's a feature that genuinely stands out as atypical in the story. Han Solo, the classic space western, rough and banged up spaceships, frontier settings, blaster guns modelled on real world military small arms with a few cosmetics. It's all very familiar and immersive and then the lightsabre well it just stands out as such an exception that you could almost believe it exists in this universe as the product of some mystic wizards and sorcerers using an energy field called the Force. But if you go and turn all the spaceships into nonsense technomagic you throw the whole damn thing against a wall. Which is what the EU did even by the time of the Prequel trilogy, which followed suit and it all became a decision of alienating any youth/adult sci fi enthusiasts from the franchise in favour of a child target audience and the screwy political extremists that like to target children with adult lifestyle themes such as we see with Disney producers/directors. Turning the whole thing infantile basically crafts it specifically for children and wackos, all the maturity leaves the room to go do something less intellectually painful. I was a massive fan as a child but I can't stand what Star Wars turned into, with the exception of Rogue One anything beyond the original standalone film is just shit to me. It all went so far off the rails despite starting with a great idea that just had too much potential not to be completely exploited to the point of stank by human nature.
So I admin the wiki for the niche manga and anime, Elfen Lied. My point in this being a realization, that, except for the top brass, the guards at the facility holding the central McGuffin, the new species Diclonius had Snub-nosed Saturday Night Specials – effective against you and me and the people down the block, but the 'special' girls were all telekinetics – and to them these were noisemakers. When the denouement started, the whole island facility had a bunch of guards who couldn't contain normal varieties of these girls, let alone the super-breed that escaped at the end – and this was by design of the Big Bad, who was so short-sighted and delusional, Palps would slap his forehead to watch him do his thing. You can view your human resources as disposable, but this will cause them to run out – in both senses of the phrase. Odd thing was, the First Order supposedly treated its people better – or at least less completely disposable – except we now know Palps was running the whole thing again. Past Luke's withdrawal, past the sudden assertion that both sides got arms from the same place (when the Resistance were scroungers with limited funding) past the ambiguity of Finn scampering off after awakening (when the entire first film took care of that), past keeping the 'brilliant escape plan' top secret and all the rest – I cannot believe anything run by Palps could even fake being more concerned about its soldiers and pilots. Palps wanted to do it all on the super-cheap, and that's what he got.
Great video! I always loved the Tie Fighter for the Empire. It fits their stated mentality. It's the starfighter equivalent of the M4 Sherman Tank. Mass-producible, cost effective, reliable, and effective in quantity. The concept is sound for the expectations they had about how it would be used. Even Democratic regimes fail miserably at predicting the future of warfare. The Empire didn't fail because of the Tie Fighter. The Empire failed because of the inherent self-destructive qualities of Fascist regimes. The Rebellion didn't defeat the Empire, they manipulated the Empire into destroying itself. In a non-Fascist regime, the Tie Fighter could have been a war winner. A sound basic platform that could be evolved with greater and greater capability. However, when you build two Death Stars, you don't have money left over for improving your starfighters. Imagine an Empire with no Death Stars, but ISD's full of Tie Defenders and hyperdrive capable Troop Transports. The Rebellion would have been crushed, along with all military resistance. The fear factor of the Tarkin Doctrine would have been accomplished by the ever-present swarms of Tie Defenders.
The TIE/ln was amazing technology, a speedy and viable interceptor on the cheap, a quarter of the cost of the Incom X-wing. Its flaws are well documented, huge wings that block lines of sight, forcing pilots to rely on their instruments. The TIE interceptor was so much better, and if Grand Admiral Thrawn had been given a wider budgetary latitude, the Empire would have refit all TIE/ln models to Interceptors, with practical plans to give them the addition of hyper-drives and shield generators. Then you have the TIE Defender, it was the crowning glory of the TIE line, and it would have been devastating to Alliance forces had it gone into full production. Don't mistake me, I'm a Rebel, an Incom and a C.E.C. guy all the way, but TIE fighters are still very fun to fly! And deadly.
The Tie fighter program sounds like it could've been developed further but they prefer the bare bone version as it's disposable in term of material and human resources.
Glad you are no longer showing signs of STD's like your early videos.
Financial/material situations have long been one of the most impactful things when it comes to retaining political support or just remaining in power. Even the most morally-forthright, courageous person has to eat and sleep, and even if their morals are unshakable they can only do so much when they're homeless and starving.
Then when people do finally snap, the hungrier and poorer they are the harder it is for them to overcome repressive force.
Hence a general reason for the prevalence of the "middle class" (disturbing how much the French Revolution has defined Western politics and political terminology) or what we might consider as such in past societies–such terms were coined for a particular worldview and time-place, hence the caveat–in revolutions. Poor people–I phrase it this way with the intention of drawing attention to its imposition as a condition, similarly to the use of "disabled people" in lieu of person-first language–can and do "take charge of their own destinies, but even at the best of times the "middle class" is not only in a better position to resist due to, as I mentioned, their material condition typically allowing them more freedom of action, but in all the modern revolutions I've"studied" (i.e. listened to Mike Duncan's Revolutions podcast, I highly recommend it) the middle-classes were just as terrified of poor people as the elites, and thus they had that much more reason to get ahead of the proverbial curve.
People are motivated by moral reasoning too, but not everyone is able to put that before material stability, and this is one of those points where we really have to work on ourselves without judging others. It demands that if and hopefully when it is appropriate for us to speak on this to others, we speak as befits their situation and never with the notion of "one size fits all."