Це відео не доступне.
Перепрошуємо.
The X-Wing is a horrible starfighter design. I said what I said.
Вставка
- Опубліковано 16 сер 2024
- And I mean it, too.
And, as horrible as the B-Wing was itself, at least it had a certain style about it. This thing? Meh.
About the only positive things that can be said for it is that it is hyperspace capable and it does bring a lot of guns and torpedoes to the party.
Which is good.
Because you're going to be missing a lot.
(If you feel like helping me improve my recording situation, you can do so here: / sacredcowshipyards )
0:00 Setting some ground rules
1:46 Actually talking about the X-Wing
It seems to me the X wing was designed to go up against larger ships, thus the more spread out fire range.
By that token though, TIE fighters should have pinpoint accuracy.
Given the ARC-170 role I wouldn't deny it
This is starwars the x wing was obviously designed with the idea that no one can aim so they spread the laser blast out as far as possible in hopes that since the point where the pilot thinks he is aiming will be the last place he actually is they bracket the actual aim point in hopes that one of the misses will intercept the target. Obviously this is related to the fatal flaw of the tie fighters since it's weapons are actually designed to hit where the pilot is actually aiming they will never hit anything. It is not actually bad design the engineers were just genre savvy enough to know what the rules of the universe were.
@@FakeSchrodingersCat Ah, designing with stupidity in mind. That's fiendishly clever.
Don't they? It's just that their pilots don't have pinpoint aim. Don't forget, the clones of the Galactic Republic were FAR superior in combat than the conscripts of the Galactic Empire. I'd take a clone pilot in an ARC-170 over a conscripted pilot in a TIE any day. It's also fairly evident that the Rebellion had better pilots than the Empire too.
@@MKRocker2012 The Clones weren't as good I think, when they met someone like the Umbarans, they struggled suggesting they had limits to their fighting abilities. Once you took them out of the comfort zone of droids, the fight was very much in the air. Plus the Empire held on for 20 years, a good chunk of those without clones so I suspect the Imperial conscripts were a little more competent than supposed.
Especially with Episode IV and V showing what they could do and Rogue One implying the Force is the only reason the protagonists survive.
Convergence was actually mentioned in the first Rouge Squadron book by Michael Stackbole, Wedge Antillies had Corran Horn’s weapons zeroed for close range when he was actually running a ground attack scenario and Horn complained about it, thus getting chewed out by Wedge.
I remember. They set the convergence for around 1-2000 meters so they could attack ground/station surface targets during strafing runs. As the books focused on dogfighting they dialled it back to 250 meters on account that ship's flying tend to vary their distances more and one flying at you needed a closer convergence point to deal with incoming fighters where the closer it is, the more accurate the shots will be.
This retooling was also done at base, which would indicate that they cannot be reset mid-mission. So, yeah. One convergence point, and aiming at anything not at that point is going to be nearly impossible.
@@Skyblade12 weeeell... Not really. You just have to offset your fire... However that means only one Canon can effectively hit a target, assuming the pilot is not ineffective in placing the shot which the firing rate will effect. Single, dual of quad fire of which only one Canon can realistically target at close range... Not impossible but it means not relying on the targeting system and shooting from the hip.
@@davfree9732 Might not be impossible then but it sure as hell is not effective or efficient. If those same cannons were placed in or even on the sides of the nose and pointed forward it would be 200% more effective at least.
Why does it need to be set anyway?
This is why they bring a droid with them, isn't it?
about why wings separate, i would guess its so to better handle heat and or damage. Basicly if one cannon gets overheated/damaged, it wont disrupt the other one. Maybe.
But the real answer is of course it looks mad cool as hell on ice.
Fun guess, since standing lore says the wings do that *specifically* to manage heat. Apparently that's the entire actual purpose for S-foils, now anyway.
You and some writers think alike.
@@Pyre Ah, good to see the old brain is not entirely dead then ^^
not how heat discipation works in space though, but feck it, if i start that train imma gonna have to stop loving lightsabers.
And there simply aint enough blaster-enthusiasts in the world to make that happen.
But let just say Lightsabers are equally dumb irl.
hmmm now im curious how long it would take a lighhtsaber to melt if activated in a vaccum...
thats corect and the "wings" r heat-sinks to bleed bilt up heat into space as heat dosent dissipate well in a vacume
@@Shard18 well that makes sense. Even more reason to split them then, more area to bleed heat from.
Exactly. I only recently heard that explanation about splitting the mass of the two engines for cooling. It seems an obvious retcon and the real reason is just cuz it looks cool.
The X-Wing would be so much better if its engines and weapons swapped positions. Of course, it would then be a Starfury. Actually, the Thunderbolt Starfury looks to me to be a much better take on this aethetic style.
That's a much worse position for engines, as if one dies, you'll need to shut down the opposite one to not start tumbling
@@tedarcher9120 It gets better if you think of them as thrusters instead of engines, which would make more sense anyway. Just adjust the outputs.
@@tedarcher9120 Not normally a problem with space fighter, 1-2 significant hits generally kill them anyway if they are realistic and not covered in plot armour.
@@tedarcher9120 That would still be true even in their current positions, in atmosphere you can use aerodynamics to compensate for offset thrust but in vacuum you need them balanced even when closer in, thrust vectoring and attitude thrusters could compensate to some degree but you'd lose so much manoeuvrability you'd have to retire from the battle anyway if you could survive it but losing an engine in a dog fight against other fighters would most likely prove fatal anyway.
@@popuptoaster you can use gaa thrusters in the nose to compensate, but the force moment from an engine so far away will be gigantic
Well the convergence thing with the cannons isn't a new problem.
WW2 fighters had this issue, some were set straight ahead, others had a specific distance they met at with odd results if fired at further or closer distances to the target.
Still for some fighters, the pilots are sitting on fuel / ammo right below the seat anyway, some jet fighter models have the fuel tanks passing fairly close, and others have the cannon and ammo being really close, same with some WW2 fighters and their ammo situation.
That convergence issue during WW2 was caused by the big spinny thing on the front of your plane that made you fly. Planes could have guns synchronized to the prop, but that puts limits on how many guns you can have in the propeller hub, and complicates feeding said guns as well. There is just no way you could fit 8 50 cals in the nose of a P-47.
Funnily enough, that issue went away once we got jet engines and started placing them in the stern of the aircraft.
@@Chopstorm. yes and no.
the so called "Unterbrechergetriebe" or in english synchronisation gear is functional for as many guns you like.
the FW190a mounted 2 20mm cannons in the wings outside and 4 7.92mm MG´s inside the Propeller radius for example.
US and UK figthers faced problems with nose or close to center line mounted weapons due to size and weight of said weapons and due to doctrinal issues. 8 .50cals bring alot more Kilos on the scales than a 20mm and 2 7.92mm. The US planes with nose mounted .50cals + cannon/s tended to be extremly noseheavy and sluggish in turns (for example the P39 and P63)
UK and US doctrine was to use "small calliber" (up to .50cal) weapons to have more ammunition and have a higher chance of hitting the target due to "shotgun spread", while the germans early started the use of 20mm and larger cannons, due to the blast effect, resulting in significtantly lower carried ammunition, but the 20mm Minengeschoss (HEI-T) was able to rip a planes wing of with one hit.
And the convergence distance for each plane, and sometimes each pair of guns on a given plane, would be set by the ground crew tailored to an experienced pilot's preferences.
While WW2 standard for fighter planes was around 400 yards, some commands went as far out as 1,000, and some pilots preferred close-in fights and set their convergence at 50-100 yards.
Bf 110 and the P-38 are really easy to shoot targets with because of their nose mounted gun package. Of course you need two offset engines for this. Timing belts were used of course on planes with cowl mounted MGs or wing root mounted cannons, but not having to interrupt your ROF is always better. The X-Wing has no excuse
@@zhufortheimpaler4041 there is a french Post war pusher prop that has 6 MG151/20 in its nose imagine the destructive power of that.
With regards to the turbines, they may not be actual turbines at all. Some real world jet engines have similar looking devices on the front, but they actually non-rotating slats, fixed in position but able adjust their pitch, to regulate the amount of air coming in through the intake. Sort like Venetian blinds in a radial arrangement. Such a system could actually be split in half like we see in the sequels and still work just fine since the blades aren't actually spinning around the central axis (of course, the main reason to arrange them in that manner in the first place is because you want to fit it right in front of a turbine that _can't_ be divided in half, so still kind of a silly design).
if i remember my lore right one of the reason for why the wings split was to aid cooling for the weapons. the wings themselves contain cooling systems and the cannons are overpowered (mostly due to their rather long for a fighter craft effective range along side raw damage potential) and thus produce a lot of heat (depending on the firing mode as you can alter that traditional its single cannon at a time rapid cycling, in pairs (top left and bottom right then the other pair) or fire all at once). the long nose contains the sensor, ECM, and main targeting computer systems (yes the X-Wing is supposed to have some kind of electronic countermeasures) as well as the torp launchers and other systems. the rear of the fighter is mostly the main power generator and Hyperspace generator.
You are correct, sir.
The purpose of the Strike Foils was to separate the Laser Cannons (at the time of inception, the most powerful to date on a starfighter) from the fuselage and to sink and dissipate the heat generated by those cannons off into space without raising the temperature of the cockpit since the X-Wing has a life support system (the reason the TIE Fighter doesn't have an environmental cockpit and instead relies on pilot-contained life support is that heat dissipation from the laser Cannons becomes much less of a concern if the pilot sits in a vacuum because the heat is much harder to transfer to the pilot.)
@@digitalis2977 Then move the cockpit forward, switch the engined and lasers, slap some heatsinks near the lasers, and if you want to decrease the heat, depressurise the cabin and use those masks that modern pilots use.
I may be wrong.
Thinking about it: Having radiators on the inside of the wings doesn't make much sense. They'll mostly heat up themselves since there is no air in space. So only cooling by radiating is an option. :-D
This makes sense in atmosphere, but zero sense in space. Granted, in Star Wars I think space might low-key have an atmosphere that nobody ever talks about out of embarrassment, so who knows
@@postsingluarity6159 They HAVE "heatsinks near the lasers."
They're called Strike Foils.
The Laser Cannons are specifically separated from the fuselage of the Z-95, ARC-170, and T-65 by the S-Foils to prevent thermal conductance from transferring heat and interfering with necessary systems.
The whole point was to allow for laser cannons so powerful as to provide for One-Shot Kills against other fighter craft and to mount weaponry capable of damaging Capital Ship armor and systems instead of the lower-power rapid-fire fuselage-mounted cannons traditionally used by previous starfighters that required numerous, on-target strikes to be effective.
Playing Devil's advocate, parallax error aside, Star citizen taught me that having the weapons somewhat spaced out makes it much easier to get hits on target *if* you have a fast firing weapon that, as you said, saturates an area of space by volume of fire. It makes it very hard for an (usually unshielded, in the case of the Empire) enemy starfighter to thread the needle between what is effectively a wide continuous stream of laser cannon bolts coming straight at them. Of course, since Star Citizen made even fixed weapons gimbal slightly to compensate this effect is a little harder to observe. But taken from that perspective the spacing between x wing guns isn't so egregious.
Funny thing is Star Citizen is adding an X-Wing, with a turret. Useful? Maybe not. Cool? Yes.
The attack configuration makes a lot more sense if you're attacking large targets like cruisers and capital ships... So does the armament. Boom and zoom strafing runs with twice the primary firepower of your typical starfighter to whittle away at shields and then save the torpedos for exposed hard-points. That seems like a workable plan.
Still nose gun apraouch be better. Unguidet wepons close to the pilot line of sight as posible. Guidet on wing tip jus like modern fighter. Even WW2 prop fighters dont put guns on tip of the wings but as close to the fuselage as posiible.
@@adrewadrew5860 could fucking put it on the nose eliminate the problem entirerly
So why do they have bombers then and who fills the role of protecting them while they attack the bigger target and if they extend their wings it would be a bit more easy to hit them in the wings
@@Assassin5671000 Specialized fighters are usually really good at the thing they're specialized for and absolutely horrible at everything else. Y-wings are great at tanking damage and blowing stuff up, but get pretty much wiped out in dogfights. A-wings, in contrast, are excellent interceptors but their small frame and light shielding makes them glass cannons. The concept behind the x-wing was to be a versatile multirole platform capable of doing a number of tasks just adequately enough.
I'd almost agree with your comment about extending the wings if it weren't for the large gap of empty space between them. Also, separating the engines adds to survivability. It's literally how Wedge was able to survive Vader's attack and limp home during the Battle of Yavin.
@@Atoronz But if they fight in atmosphere just blowing off one of the wings means the x-wing falls ,not so much in space except that it loses a 1/4 of it's firepower and even if it can go and attack bigger targets I don't think those 4 little guns would do much damage maybe some turrets would get destroyed
Parallax and convergence is something WWII fighters dealt with. Fighters had their convergence distances set to the tastes of the pilot. By using tracers, they could adjust the position of the aircraft to walk their machine guns onto the target. The bolts of energy the X-Wing fires glow like tracers... as Star Wars combat parodies WWII purposely... the parallax thing makes sense. Oh.. and to point out, all rifles, especially those with scopes deal with parallax all day.
Built a model of this p.o.s. as a youngster. I remember thinking, "Good God! The Rebels had to be really damn desperate to use this p.o.s."
As far as the "new" Xwing went, it did the same thing the new movies did. Namely, subverted our expectation that it wouldn't totally suck.
I think I have a relatively good theory for all of Incoms designs, if they were actual designs and not just a prop maker coming up with something that he thought looked cool. The chief engineer was originally a propulsion and maneuvering engineer. He literally gave them anything they wanted, because he understood it. Everything else tumbles along from that. You've seen this in real life designs of fighters throughout the history of fighter aircraft. I could walk through the design process that would give you a ship that would look like the X-wing given these cases, but I doubt anyone cares all that much.
I don't know, sounds like a good read to me...🤔 Then again, I like reading about people trying to make sense of a fantasy craft using real world physics and engineering and assuming as little "magic" future tech as possible.
Nah the actual reason is that since no one in the star wars universe can aim they decided that putting the weapons in a configuration that would cause a marksman to miss means that all the terrible shots from the pilot will hit instead. Since every pilot misses all his shots by 6 feet the big brain play is to put the actual aimpoint of the weapons 6 feet to away from where the gun sight shows and all the misses will hit.
Do it, please
Actually, no, there are people interested. I too, wanna know how would you justify an X-wing to the high-ups and how you could possibly end up with it. And i suppose the Venator was designed and justified similarly so its two birds with one stone.
How i see it right now is they are both good on paper and that's the only reason. "It has 4 cannons and a proton torpedoes and is still a starfighter." and "8 giant turrets + giant starfighter core capable of almost instant deployment" both sound great, right? And the ones making orders aren't really the generals but senators and government officials, and they don't know how to war.
@@GorNaKat I mean, The venator makes sense if you think of it as a carrier not a battleship/cruiser. Problem is it was used as both
You ever get the feeling that spacecraft designers in star wars have a seething hatred of rearwards visibility
At Least the X-Wing has some...
4:40 Even splitting the wings, with actuators you still only need one axis of freedom to bring the weapons onto the flight axis because the centre of the wing crosses about the centre point of the axis of the craft
• It's not to hard to fix this problem with servos, the AH64 uses hydraulic azimuth and elevation servos running at around 3000PSI driven by 1960-70's computers to deliver area of effect fire 1-2km away. It's easy with real technology to resolve the convergence issue. My beef is *why* do the weapon systems have to be out there?
But please, don't take this as negative against yourself; you're very entertaining 💚
The official reason for the wing tip weapons is heat dissipation. The X-Wing had some of the most powerful fighter guns for its time. The wings were heat sinks and the distance to the cockpit kept the pilot below boiling temperature.
The guns are powerful yes which help them defeat armor and shields but they were on access points far away from the center line to help defeat the deflectors on the shield systems. Yes I'm a hyper nerd and I remember that Star wars has two shield systems one that pushes objects off of it one that absorbs the impact
@@janniszimbalski6652 still doesn't make sense... If you have active cooling, it doesn't matter where the heat source is, just where the cooling fins are. So you could have the oversized heat sink wings with the weapons closer to the body without any problem. Plus if you lose a wing due to the larger target area, all you've lost is sustained-fire potential. You can still fire all 4 guns when you need it, they just need longer to cool off due to the lost radiator area.
To keep the pilot from boiling, add some silvered surfaces and leave a tiny vacuum gap between the gun pods and the fuselage.
There's no mechanical parts to the "Gimballing" effect of the beam-directors. It's purely the magnetic bottling effect of the plasma blast generator.
The E-wing fixes basically all the problems of the X-wing whilst getting some of the benefits of the A-wing.
Makes the visibility problem worse though... That cannon over the cockpit, good grief.
"The X-Wing is a horrible star fighter design"
- So say we all!
We have spoken
Battlestar Galactica basically copied that design.
@@ancapftw9113 actually it's a very common design that even Lucas from some where else. It's basically copied from basic fighter jet.
@@ancapftw9113 No, they guy who designed the X-Wing designed the the BSG ships too.
SO SAY WE ALL
I don't thing the X Wing is that bad, there is another design that makes it a TIE...
Funny enough, the TIE fighter is a better design, despite the stupid heat sinks. A TIE fighter can shoot accurately at a target in front of it as long as that target is in front, the X-Wing requires the target to be in front and also at a specific range. Based on that, in real non plot armour combat, the TIE fighter would be more effective and win more often.
@@Ishlacorrin That's not true of the WW2 aircraft these ships were inspired by. In real life, converging wing guns vs. non-converging nose guns makes a negligible difference in how effective an aircraft is. Flight performance is almost everything; the type of weapons carried does matter but the location of those weapons is nearly irrelevant provided the pilots know how to use them properly.
@@katherinespezia4609 You know that the Fighter of WW2 did not have converging guns for the most part right? They all fires forward because each plane was so flimsy that any half decent hit was enough. It's also true that the most effective fighters of WW2 had central mounted weapons, not the wide wing mounted ones.
@@katherinespezia4609 In WW2 however, the tactic was not to zone in. Just spray in the general area and will eventually start hitting it, they were aimed fully forward.
@@Ishlacorrin what? The p47 was renowned for being heavily shot up and returning home. And was easily the most effective aircraft of the war.
In terms of the armament, wouldn't it make sense to swap the positions of the guns and torpedoes? In other words, move the laser cannons to the nose (shortened) and then put the torpedoes on the wings. It's a start...
4:45 for convergence, the 4 guns only need to rotate on the plane of their wings, so the problem is still 2 dimensional (you can see it a 2 fighters superposed on one another and rotated a bit)
Actually this was a problem in the X-Wing game from the 1990s, too, and was the reason why I vastly preferred the Y-Wing to the X-Wing even though the X-Wing's stats were the most balanced: you had to shimmy your ship around slightly to make sure all of your lasers were aiming correctly. With the Y- and A-Wings aiming was much easier.
No argument here, there’s plenty of good reasons we never had wingtip mounted weapons. Drag (yes mostly a non-issue for the x-wing), but the worst offender is the convergence, what an actual nightmare. The A-wing design is far superior, low silhouette, high maneuverability, and guns mounted along the body that have traverse.
Well, we didn‘t have wing *tip* mounted guns, but many WW2 planes did have wing mounted guns and had to deal with the same problem. And it was also 2 dimensional for them because of bullet drop.
Of course it was phased out over time because of that problem, but we did have it. :)
wepon on the wings is one thing, having them on the literal ends is r/crappy design worthy
Even in-universe the A-Wing is considered superior, with the X-Wing being more like the F-16 and A-Wing being the F-22 or F-15
You have a lot of very good points, however I feel like you missed the best argument for the X-Wing:
It looks awesome.
That seems to be the main design aesthetic for most Sci-Fi fighter craft, "If it looks cool while doing it's job, who cares if it can actually do the job?"
It's only when they are based on war proven vehicles do these fighters actually have a snowball's chance of surviving a dog fight, let alone a battle. (Think the human fighters from the later Stargate series. Can't recall their name atm.)
Honestly most TIE variants look cooler to me. Like Interceptor or Defender make X-wing look so boring.
It was better than 99% of stuff you would see in western media, but nostalgia aside x-wings look mediocre at best..
After playing star wars squadrons the real issue with all star wars ships is visibility. The cockpit being fixed into the fuselage means that there are no fighters with a rearview and only a few have a tiny useless window at the rear. If there were more advanced sensors of some kind it might not be an issue but the only sensors are forward radar.
Starfury: Engines on the ends of the wings/struts, weapons on the roots.
X-wing: Engines on the roots, weapons on the ends.
There's your problem
Mixing up your maneuverability requirements and your firepower requirements are like mixing up imperial units and metric units.
Oh.
Wait.
@@SacredCowShipyards Comedy gold. LMAO.
@@SacredCowShipyards Only if you work at NASA...
Look. The only spaceship design that really makes sense is the Borg Cube.
LOL! I prefer the Diamond but it does not land so well on a planet.
That's a classic misconception. Spherical/cubic ships are significantly impractical and implausible designs for a number of reasons, more than enough so to offset the potential advantages of such a shape in the vast majority of cases.
Uh, actually, the little bulb on the nose of the X-Wing is a deposit of Spermaceti to help with buoyancy and using sonar clicks to find the targetting range for the laser cannons xD
LMAO
Let's be perfectly honest: ALL Star Wars ship designs are visually interesting and iconic on screen, but extremely senseless and impractical from an engineering and practicability stand point.
Also is star wars lore, space is not a true vacuum, it is filled with a weird clear pseudo fluid, hence why fighters move like they are in atmo and not a vacuum, perhaps tied to the force, also hyperspace loops in on itself at the galaxy edge preventing hyperspce FTL from leaving the galaxy which is what made the vong in part special because they were able to cross the galactic boundary even if they did so from the outside
I'd go one further and say that with a few exceptions (like the ships in "The Expanse") most spacecraft in science fiction series make little sense from an engineering standpoint. One of their worst flaws is that their decks are parallel to the direction of motion. Thus when a ship accelerates forward or decellerates, there are acceleration forces acting on everything inside the ship. Any unsecured object has the potential of becoming a projectile. Not good!
@@darwinskeeper421 Yeah, but most are even completely useless for their stated purpose by their layout, internal spacing and general size. Star Wars ships in particular. All visually interesting shapes, but no room for the actual important stuff on the inside. And everything is in the wrong place, especially from a tactical and practical perspective.
Their love of enormous, frail, senseless tumors on capital ships and smaller and massive S-foils on anything smaller than a freighter drives me nuts. Huge bullet magnets that offer extremely limited internal volume and no clear operational advantage.
The Mandalorian 'fighter' that's actually a thirty passenger shuttle centered in about an acre of 'wing' is another example. If the proportions weren't so cartoonishly dogshit it could have been an awesome design, instead they call it a fighter but it's clearly in a fashion show against the Lambda.
@@idminister see, that's all that retcon garbage that tries to explain ever little inconsistency in star wars and just ruins it. It's trying to fix science fantasy to make it science fiction. Just watch star trek if you want sci-fi.
I could kind of see a variation of the standard design where the weapons and sensors switched positions so the tip of each wing would have a small sensor pod and when they opened up the wings that would spread the sensor packages out a little more for better targeting information.
This reminds me of the WWII Spifire and Hurricane fighters. Both initially had 8 machine guns in the wings, but the Spifire's were spread all over the wing, while the Hurricane's were clustered in one spot, closer inside. This was one of the reasons the Hurrican was considered a better & more acurate gun platform.
Referring to the original X-Wing game, I cannot tell you how many times I missed a tie fighter, because it was straight in front of my X-Wing! The Y-Wing was better, because its two laser cannons were close together.
I thought it had auto convergence or was that only later games? I remember doing manual convergence in the Z95.
The astromech droids also act as in-flight engineers, which makes sense considering how many constant repairs x wings must need to stay in the air
Because it looks cool.
Back in the 90s someone tried tell me the lasers on the X- wing are zeroed at 250 meters. That means you don't aim at the target you herd the target into the lasers.
Considering the level of computer technology ( they have self propelled A.I.s wandering around) couldn’t there be micro motors keyed to the weapons and targeting computers I know it adds complexity and you hate complexities , but since we don’t live in the star wars universe so we don’t know if it’s a minor thing that just works or what yes if the rebellion had brains to match their pluck they would be using SA-23Es instead of T-65s or something inspired by SA-23Es .
If you are going to conduct analysis on what something is you have to ask why would someone use something if it has the flaws you attribute to it .
Example why does most of the empire’s equipment cheep garbage? Because the empire doesn’t really care about individuals it’s overwhelming numbers they rely on, the standard galactic citizen doesn’t know that storm trooper armor is only really good against thrown rocks and shrapnel, they don’t know that stormtrooper marksmanship is mostly propaganda, they know that there are some 100, 000 of these guys on their planet. Now why are AT-ATs top heavy? it’s pretty hard to bring one down it’s short legged republic predecessor could be stopped by barriers and you yourself pointed out how repulsor lift tanks are basically 60+ ton pool balls.
Love the righteous anger towards stuff in your videos 👍👍👍
I admit it has been a while since I watch Bab 5, but weren't the Starfury's thruster based? And I don't recall if they were jump capable. But I have to agree that George Lucas wanted WW2 dogfights in space. And he designed the ships accordingly. Ugly Imperial fighters versus sleek Rebel fighters that had no limitations.
My biggest hang up with fighter designs in space is the very cramped quarters. In theory even with FTL capability you could be in that fighter for days. One thing that can be said about the Imperial Fighters. In a pinch you could at least move around a bit and shift positions. The X-wing ... it was as snug as a coffin. I've even wondered if flight suits served two purposes. One, to take gravitational pressure off the pilot when in fighting in gravitational space and two to maintain bodily functions for the pilot. Those mechanical devices strapped to the chest of every X-wing and Tie fighter pilot served some intended purpose after all.
@@superdave8248 they weren’t jump capable per say but they could tag along with bigger ships or use jump gates
The real-world reason for the X-wing's huge nose, incidentally was George Lucas' love of WW2 air combat movies. The X-wing was loosely based on the Spitfire. Great interceptor, but had a notoriously long nose. You had to swing the plane from left to right while taxiing, because the pilot couldn't see the runway over that long front end
To be fair, a lot of tail-dragging fighters had to zig-zag on the ground
Having spent a number of hours playing Star Wars: X-Wing, I understand your consternation; however, as someone who discovered that spinning the stick would let me plug every shot into the same spot - it's worse than you can imagine. But damn if it wasn't easier to aim with than a B-Wing.
That's a low, low bar: _everything_ was easier to aim with than the B-Wing.
But yes, the problems with aiming the cannons were a major reason why, when the old LucasArts sims gave me a choice, I preferred the A-Wing and Y-Wing (for hunting capital ships) to the X-Wing and B-Wing.
When five year old me is puzzled by the weapons placement, you know it's more than a little off. That said, the separating wings is for cooling.
My design would be to have the four where they are for capital ship engagement, but also add a pair of cannons directly in front of the pilot, either on either side of or poking through the sensor bulb on the nose and a rear turret. The rear turret could be AI or squishy powered. Either way, more dakka.
I agree. I was 11 when SW first hit theatres and I noticed the problems with the weapons and engines. I just didn't have the math or science to know the terminology.
Maybe it was all the time I spent going over Jane's Aircraft summaries in my old man's Air Force Almanac.
More dakka is always more better.
@@chrismanaloe3507 Growing up around the US Air Force, and I didn't have anything leak in thru osmosis (metaphorically speaking)?
Also, the educational system hadn't totally failed in the 70s. Plus, I grew up reading Encyclopedias for fun, as well as Science Fiction. Much of it Hard or at least semi hard [insert Matt "Context" Easten meme here] (Asimov, Niven, Heinlein).
I was that type of nerd.
@@chrismanaloe3507 Dude, just because you didn't notice doesn't mean others didn't either. Everyone sees something different. For instance, I hadn't noticed that the new X-Wing split its intake*; yet I was a 39 year old Engineering Student at the time.
*This makes more sense than it may first appear. If the actual engine is more powerful than the older version, it would need a bigger intake. And, as we see in planes like the Concord and numerous jet fighters, said intake doesn't necessarily need to be symmetrical, much less round. Still a head-scratcher. They would have been better off improving weapons placement, since the OG X-Wing was already fast and agile.
I actually would prefer something like the Z-95 Headhunter. Just put the guns in the body and put mounts on the wings for missiles. Was actually how I went about a concept for an upgrade used by the New Republic called the Z-100 Headhunter.
Unless youre fighting unshielded fighters single launch missiles wont help much.
@@robertharris6092 All missiles are single launch by nature and missiles go through shields in star wars anyways. Shields only stop the laser fire. Only the larger ships have shields that can stop kinetic weapons and those usually are only on during travel as it prevents the weapons from shooting out of the shields.
I play games where you build ships. Space Engineers, Star Made, and such. And I tend to always make guns clustered together. Makes it eayser to hit stuff. Only time I designed something with guns further apart was if the ship was meant to go after a large target, and the weapons are normally explosive.
This is why all best x wing pilots have astromech droid to assist in targeting😅
Was it a revelation compare to Headhunter where pilots had to eyeball their shots most of the time?
@@thanakonpraepanich4284 we see they have targeting systems in the battle of scipio.
Thank you for verbalising all the issues I always had with this beautiful craft. I love it, I love Star Wars but the engineer in me wants to scream my head off.
I'm sad you didn't mention the landing gear, which extend out the bottom of the engines, thus leaving no room for engines.
There was already so much else wrong.
all they had to do was put the engines on these massive perfect levers for star fighting, and then put the guns next to the pilot. Suddenly you have a faster turning ship, with better gun placement! Yay!
Extend the wings? So someone can say the line, "lock wings in attack position"
"Lock S-foils in attack position"
Whatever an "S-foil" is.
"and DO NOT let the positive pressure side hatch to hit you on the way OUT" You got a sub and bell from me.
Would that I were always so reliably flippant.
@@reserva120 Ok.
@@chrismanaloe3507 It's adorable how you're so blissfully ignorant of Brandolini's Law.
But, then, you're proof of it.
So that's understandable.
The wing separation actually has a semi-logical explanation in Cannon though. The idea being that more surface area equals better heat dissipation
It is near vacuum with no radiators heat dissipation will be minimal and the slight increase of surface area along the inside of the wings is not going to change that to any meaningful degree. You would be better off installing heatsinks to concentrate the heat and venting the superheated coolant if heat is that much of a problem.
@@FakeSchrodingersCat my understanding is that’s why the wings (“s-foils”) extend into “attack position” before they can fire their cannons.
The insides of the wings are radiators to help dissipate heat.
@@lgmmrm Except that they are not designed as radiators they are flat surfaces there is a a reason radiators are designed the way they are it is to maximize surface area and radiate heat hence the name and the s foil is not a radiator in any shape or form.
The actual reason is it looks cool for them to extend before battle end of story. Trying to claim that there is an actual purpose to it besides it was dramatic is simply trying to justify your love of the drama of the design but refusing to admit that is why you love them. There is nothing wrong with liking x wings, aesthetically they are an excellent visual design but lets not pretend that any thought to why they were designed that way from an engineering perspective was anything but retconning years later.
@@FakeSchrodingersCat You sir do not have a space magic engineering degree! You can't possibly fathom how much handwavium is built into the X-Wing.
@@davidm.corbin4643 That is the basic of the basics you hardly need a degree to calculate that. All you do is take a rudimentary knowledge of real engineering and then calculate how far off it is from the design to find out how much magic is needed to make it work and then take that magic value in thaums and use the Moorcock equation and that is how much handwavium you need to add.
Can attest to the issues of the spaced guns. X-wing alliance they had 3 fire modes, 1 at a time, all 4 at once, and pairs. The pairs were diagonally opposite too. So neat note is an average Tie with no shields took exactly 2 shots to blow away, so twin linked fire was easily the most efficient firing method. The distance between the guns though did mean if I wasn't perfectly lined up/rotated 1 would often miss, took a lot of practice to compensate.
I remember when I was studying the Eurofighter Typhoon design I came across a PDF how the gun on the typhoon was placed in such a way that made it harder to shoot down enemies. Most modern fighters tend to have their guns somwhere adjacent to the pilots line of vision.
Out of all the "good-guy" fightercraft from the films, the most sensible design keeps standing out for me as the Naboo N-1.
Twin engines, centerline proton torpedo launcher, close-set twin guns ahead of the cockpit as the Force intended, and even an astromech socket for the especially suicidal or combat effective R-series whistlers.
The Prequel trilogy did some things in our time but the N-1 and the LAAT were some of the good ones.
I'm also forgetting the Y-Wing, one of the Originals, and an even more multi-role ship thanks to it's ion cannons, onboard hyperdrive, and multiple heavy ordinances to choose from.
The look down targeting, the lack of output for its sensors, visual tracking with a cockpit that deep in the plane and no rear sightlines. Video games had to add all those thing to make the thing fightable.
Yeah, I’m late to the party…
First, I always considered that the four guns shoot directly forward, and did not need to deal with parallax. Spinning the ship (which, apparently, is a good trick) maximises the number of hits from each emplacement. Standard tactics, I believe, were to extend the S-foils, start your attack run, using a corkscrew manoeuvre, then executing a Kiogran-turn, flying out of range, then starting the manoeuvre all over again. This was used against larger ships. In dogfights, all bets were off - but the T-65 was a far superior ship to the standard TIE/ ln fighter. So much so, that even an average pilot was expected to take out a minimum of three TIEs in each engagement.
Oh, also, it just looks so damn cool…
Regarding the black variant you show an image of…. Where is this from? I cannot recall ever having seen this craft befo…. Oh, wait. Is that the “T-70” from that bunch of fan fiction that was crapped out by Disney? Everyone knows this was a parody set of films, set in the Star Wars universe, and bears no relation at all to the two previous trilogies, which explored the Skywalker Saga. Word has it that all the new Star Wars related shows coming out on Disney+ will actually be retconning this entire “sequel trilogy”, either through shenanigans with the “world between worlds”, or someone waking up from a terrible fever dream. So it would behoove everyone to pay it no mind…. :)
In any event this is the fourth of your offerings I have watched. Based on the strength of them, you have a new subscriber. Thank you.
Welcome aboard!
Couple of notes regarding the Xwing in the RPG and novels sources, ..
Xwing are built twice as tough as a T/I and had shields that made it close to being able to last three times longer in a given fight.
Second point the Xwing controls were base on the " Sky Hopper," a flying death trap that was scape to save the company from law suites and they drop every model that was built out into the Outer Rim to cover their loses and cause the locals out there where less likely to be able to sue them. Luke Skywalker got his first one at the age of 15, ...
So the Rebel pilots had close to four years under their belts pushing their limits in crazy teenager canyon races. Also Imperial bases in the Outer Rim space regions function as academies to educate and recruit the cream of the crop from the farm boys. Then there were the desertion of imperial pilots that join the Rebellion. So on one hand the Rebels just got the more talented pilots, .. barely.
If I understand the splitting of the wings has to do with heatsinks of the lasers/power system, and is closed for hyperspace to narrow the shield I think
I think the astromech was also supposed to do minor repairs and adjustments while the plane is in flight. A flight engineer, basically. Not saying it's not a dumb fighter, but the astromech was the one part that made sense to me.
Laughs in Gunstar
Sweats in Gunstar
Oh, it's on the list.
@@SacredCowShipyards Quick, somebody get a Valkyrie from Macross as a sacrifice
@@r.connor9280 It would be out of his normal diet, but throw him a Seaquest DSV...
@@timberwolf1575 That sub went more places than just 20,000 leagues under.
next one: TIE fighters, another nightmare
*twitches*
Can we talk about the damn QUACK QUACK noise the damn cannons make?
Sometimes design is just a compromise.
It's really dumb to put the fuel tanks in the wings (i.e. the most surface area and most likely to be hit), but it was standard practice in WW2.
I never really got what benefit the adjustable wings provided. The only thing I can think of is that the X-wing was inspired by the F-14 Tomcat and it's variable-swept wing feature since the F-14 was kind of hot, new fighter jet around during Episode IV's development and release. Hell, the X-wing even has the same 'steel gray with white and red accents' color scheme that a lot of the F-14's had.
Gun convergence was entertaining in the pc games. In the original X-Wing and TIE Fighter games, the guns had no convergence at all and only fired straight forward. X-Wing Alliance introduced auto-convergence but there was one ship excluded from that, the Z-95 Headhunter. In that game the Z-95 had manual convergence adjustment.
The way i see this is an easy fix, just swap out where the proton torpedo's and laser cannons (4 proton torpedo's and 2 laser cannons are the end result) and these explain the following-
1) the wings store missiles and torpedo's (explains why it has wings)
2) the wings fold and "X up" because if one of the wings are hit only that wing explodes (putting distance between each independent arsenal)
3) the lasers are right next to the pilot (making the aiming system practical and easier to engineer)
4) if the laser system underneath the pilot is hit, it doesnt rip the fighter in half with an explosion underneath the pilot, instead you would only lose your laser system (but still have a very large arsenal of missiles and torpedo's because again you have 4 wings full of them)
Years back I tried to figure out why they would do this. And I figured they didn't have microservos to counter parallax effects and that spreading the fire was considered beneficial somehow.
And wracking the little grey cells brought me up with the idea that volley fire of them creates an area of effect that has a higher chance of causing a hard or soft knockout that a tightly grouped cluster that provides a harder punch. As in Starwars dogfight combat it does seem to be a MOSTLY one hit kill situation so the ability to get any hits matters more than absolute precision of all firepower on a target point.
Also as parallax is highly based on the ratio between the delta-X(viewpoint-viewpoint)/delta-X(viewpoint-target) which as we are in theory in space the delta-X(viewpoint-target) should be very large and thus reducing parallax effects to approaching zero...but dogfights.
WWII/Korea dogfights in space are...unsettling...
also would love to see a breakdown of the Imperial class Star Destroyer who I think gets a bad rap in terms of speed and maneuver vs demonstrated abilities in the EpIV (where I have been impressed with Its roll speed) and EpV.
The Torpedo storage put’s me in mind to the WW! British built BEc2, that had a fuel tank between the pilot and the observer in a two seater plane. Oh, and the observer was infront of the pilot.
This is actually a long standing problem in fighter design. The decision is generally to either align them to the axis of the craft and just line your pilot up with a targeting reticle and the shots all stay spread out, or you aim the guns to converge at a set point in front of the fighter. In the first case you assume that either what you are aiming at is big enough to exceed the size of that pattern or lightly armored enough to not need to hit it with every shot to do enough damage. In the second case you have a very intense amount of fire hitting that designated range, and by the geometry of those lines of fire then diverge beyond that point, effectively limiting the maximum effective range of those weapons. It increases the effectiveness at or near that convergence point, but severely limits it at any longer range. In space combat where maximum engagement ranges can be literally astronomical the range limit would be a severe problem, so I'd side with a fixed parallel line of fire. They expect to be facing primarily TIE variants which are notable poor on durability, so less hits and a wider field of fire is a fair compromise. I would however have at least some shots near the center of that pattern as well.
Astromechs also act as in-flight engineers, not just navi-computers. Also, the Legends X-wing books did established that the weapons would be zeroed in at a certain point, 150m-250m for dogfights and 1000m or more for ground attacks; the idea being they would be zeroed by trained engineers at base for their mission, where repairs can be made if something breaks. I also suspect that astromechs could make adjustments to the zeroing when landing for emergency repairs or hiding. The "wings" may provide some lift in atmospheric flight, but they are actually called "s-foils" in-universe and are established to be heat radiators since the weapons produce a lot of heat, so they are placed far from the pilot and they are also separated from each other, hence the the x-configuration of the s-foils is called attack position. but seriously the X-wing books from Legends does a great job of showcasing the use of the x-wing and it addresses 99% of the "flaws" are mention. Ad the split engine from the sequels - "rule of cool" is the best answer I got.
+1
I can understand some of the points however consider a few counter points.
The magazine under the pilot looks odd, however real life fighters have had the fuel tanks under, or behind the pilot before. Also magazines for the gun in front, or directly behind.
The wings doe have small thrust ports along the back edge. The main engine bells could be directional like in modern fighters.
The wings could also act as more surface area for heat radiation.
The big intakes might be ram scoops, or Bussard ramjet, or a scram or ram jet like devise. Could be a hybrid of both.
The A wing also has an internal astrogation computer.
Some 50's-60's pickup trucks had the GASOLINE tanks right behind the driver and passengers... INSIDE the cab.
The whole premise of Star Wars vehicles is that the tech is so advanced as to make no sense to our primitive understanding of engineering and physics. The more outlandish, the better.
The tech is a total mishmash of advanced and primative. Stat fighters should be engaging at range with guided missiles which is shown to be possible and effective in universe and modern planes do it.
Ultimately the premise is they look cool and aestheticly fit their faction and that's it.
@Intergalactic Dust Bunny That's how it is now, but it certainly didn't start out that way. They didn't even MAKE any toys for a movie that cost only 12 million to make and was expected to barely make a profit.
When they saw the lines forming around the block, they scrambled to create a toy line that should have been in the design stages years ago. That Christmas Santa left promisory coupons under the tree. When the toys finally arrived, the poor proportions and sloppy assembly of a rushed job was evident, so they didn't sell well and the toy market wasn't given much consideration when The Empire Strikes back was made. By the third move....Ewoks, need I say more? The toymakers has taken over. That's why, although I like the franchise overall, A New Hope and Empire are the only installments that I truly love.
@Intergalactic Dust Bunny But it took him two movies before he figured that out, and those remain the best of the bunch.
A-wing best wing.
Yes this is a challenge.
Hm.
Seconded!
Rule of cool strikes again, besides if you remove the wings then you essentially get the geonsian starfighter, which I'd love to hear your take on.
On the intake issue, it gets worse when you realize that the split intakes were actually the original design from before the first film was shot.
It's kind of interesting having a decent way to compare the different designs in a practical-ish but still obviously fictional setting; playing Star Was: Squadrons really gives you a feel of the good and the bad of every fighter. The X-wing is half decent in it, though the B-wing is is godawful as you'd think, thanks mostly due to the unconventional/strange mechanics of its cockpit. But my favorite fighter to fly is by far the TIE fighter. Sometimes simple and stripped down works better. Assuming you have the skill to use it right.
This fighter has a large thruster between each wing and the main hull. Imagine all the problems they could solve if they swaped the placement of the thrusters and weapons around. Putting the thrusters on the tips of the wings and the cannons next to the cockpit
Take the A-10 Wart hog" frame idea. You still have the weapon and ammo under the pilot. Easy fix is armor the hell out the weapon and ammo and give them shielding to reduce pilot injury from weapon hits on the fighter. Like the hog it would not look 'pretty' to most, but gets the job done. That said...anyone who ever truely understood the Hog would never say she was ugly. She's a girl with personalty!
@@shawn6860 Yes! I would love to see a Star Wars fighter design based on the Warthog!! It's basically a BFG to blow the enemy up with some wings and engines to get said gun to the enemy. 😁 Everything else is window dressing.
I think that I've seen that design in science fiction before, but then again, maybe I'm just babbling.
Wouldn't putting thrusters on the wing tips just stress the absolute shit out of the wings, since they'd be constantly trying to rip away from the back of the fuselage as they dragged it forward?
@@ToastyMozart if your fighter's wings are that weak then you should probably rethink your fighter design.
The only logical reason for a fighter to have wings is for atmospheric flight. If they can't handle a few small bursts from a thruster then they can't handle the constant pull of gravity when in atmosphere.
WRT to proton torpedoes being right beneath the pilot: the original M1 Abrams (and M1IP) had three 105mm rounds for the main gun, stored right inside the turret (at the Loaders feet). Of course, later models did away with those, and all 120mm ammo is behind armored doors in compartments with blow-out panels. Point being, there is only so much space inside the hull, and stuff has got to go somewhere.
But....then again, Star Wars vehicles don't generally rely on aerodynamic flight principles, so external ordnance pods would seem like an alternate solution; put all the dangerous "BOOM" stuff out on the S-Foils.
There's also the fact that swinging the "s-foils" open reduces the distance between the port and starboard pairs of engines, lowering the turning moment they exert on the ship, thus impairing maneuverability. See diagram at 6:00
Don't look at me, I didn't design it.
LOL I'm pretty sure the hatch on the back is for servicing the reactor.
an X-Wing fighter has all of the aerodynamics of a flying brick, and none of the benefits.
George Lucas wanted Star Wars to look like WW2 in space and the moving wing design was inspired by the F-14 Tomcat.
Also I have been told my ship is now a cube , so I'm here to pickup my cube .
Laughs in Starfury. :-)
Funny you should mention that: ua-cam.com/video/wXRwBXZn2yE/v-deo.html
Flying as your wingman in Viper MK II
Personally always didn't like the X-Wing either but i recall reading that in lore the spreading of the guns like so actually helped accuracy... I can only assume this is because all the pilots were terrible and having more random error helped them hit.
Fun fact: the old-school X-Wing DOS games demonstrated this quite a bit. The X-wing SUCKS for gunnery unless you figure out the lanes in which each individual laser travels to hit the zero point for the targeting system. It's incredibly inefficient. The X-Wing's saving graces are its speed and agility. Now if we could combine that with the glorious Y-wing's armament setup on the centerline, we'd be in business.
Maybe they're regular turbines but in a hemispherical housing, in the picture it looks like there is some form of cylinder behind the turbine.
Yeah the F-16 engines never worked IRL because the the air intakes ahead of the turbines could get in any air because it wasn't round...
a fight between that and a starfury..... over fast
In regards to the wings in Star Wars, I believe they’re meant to dissipate heat in the ship from the engines and laser canons. Similar to the radiators on the International Space Station
So…the TIE Fighter was a better fighter because it’s blasters are basically just underneath the pilots seat??
And have you looked at the “Last Starfighter” design ship?
Had this very argument with a fanboy a few years ago, He was shocked when I said that my favorite star wars fighter was the y-wing :).
I am going to a bit further. I am a huge fan of the N-1 starfighter. Yes the engine placement is stupid, but all things considered I think that is the biggest design flaw (The astromech droid slot does not count). Though it is only a design flaw in a Combat aircraft, in a personal aircraft there is some merit to having engines at the wing tips.
Ok, so I'm a few months late to the commenting..
It's already known that the Star Wars Universe uses different physics so... Meh..
As a concept though the X-Wing does, in part, make some sense even with the Paralax Error. Besides other things shooting at you and trying to make explody bits fly off into space; space itself sucks at removing heat from an object. I mean seriously, go look at the huge ass heat sinks on the ISS just to keep the squishies from cooking inside that oven in space. Then you have those giant ass rapid fire heat generators on the end of the wings.. Yup, I'd want them far way from the squishy and the ordinance sitting under them..
You point about them sitting on ordinance... Uuumm... If that shit gets hit and actually detonates then it doesn't matter were it sits the squishy be a bit toasty. At least being inside the hull will give it some protection. The F-22 and the F-35 both keep their ordinance inside their belly. If it actually sat on hard points on the wings (Which, again, could be acting as radiators) then you're just asking for waste heat to cook the ordinance.
The intakes wouldn't be for turbines but would probably be Bussard Scoops as the craft is FTL capable and even at subluminal speed could still be taking it the trace amounts in space. When it hits atmo then it's refueling with hydrogen and/or oxygen..
That ass... Power plant and fuel stores. Yeah, I'm not going to defend that choice.. maybe they wouldn't have one.
Nose: Avionics and some additional ordinance.
Droid as a Nav computer: That droid is Nav computer, co-pilot, emergency repair tech, RIO, etc.. Makes since to me if it has to go get new maps between missions. Current flight crews do that now. These aren't capital ships with Nav teams and charts for and entire sector. We're talking about a fighter with it's mission flight path(s) and emergency contingencies/detours.
Your point about moving parts..... Holy hell I wish I could've kept up with all the moving parts on a modern fighter aircraft even when I worked with the things. Heck, I think the X-Wing actually has fewer moving parts than a modern fighter.
As for the wings: We've already used and still, to a limited degree, use (a few) Aircraft with variable wing geometry such as the F-14 Tomcat, F-111 Aardvark, B-1b Lancer, F-3 Tornado, Mig-23, Mig-27, Tu-160(Last one actually designed and produced) and others. Though most have been retired.
I'm loving the content. 😁
Ordance like torpedoes and missiles do not heat up and go boom. It is a design feature that the weapon should not go off unless it wes meant too. excessive heat (and it would take a lot) might cause it to not explode because of electronics damage, but again this would be EXTREMLY rare and in all likely hood . that trick in games such as robot tech where missiles denoate in the air and explode is not gun fire its Chaff or other sensor deception that triggers it. again movies and games love explosions. like say..Michal bay.
@@shawn6860 Even with current and extremely stable military ordinance we treated extreme heat an fire with caution and always treated such as a danger. The chances for any of it going off is extremely low it's not 0%. Something can always go wrong. The moment that small fact is forgotten is when the god Murphy decides to strike.
@@knightaries13 ya, I can agree there. Murphy is a mean SOB. Due to the nature of ordnance, I would treat it with caution regardless.
Point of order on the Hyperspace Computer complaint.
It is cannon that astromech droids are an extremely unique breakthrough in technology that has never really been replicated. As such, you have two options for making hyperspace jumps: have a housing for an astromech droid, or have a full ROOM on your vessel dedicated to the banks of traditional computers needed to do the same calculations.
This is why its only capital ships that benefit from 24/7 hyperspace capability (even the B-Wing was considered a light corvette; NOT a starfighter).
Furthermore astromechs need to be recharged in one form or another on a fairly consistent basis (wish they showed this more often in the movies), and the process requires standardized charging stations that are inaccessible to one "jacked in" to a starfighter.
And no actually, you CAN'T just hook the droid up to the starfighter's power source. It's been tried. They have so many different systems that need power and so many differnt rates simultaneously that ANYTHING beyond charger stations fries their electronics.
So yes, a starfighter's "computer" had damn well better be fairly detachable, or its gonna die
I heard somewhere that space in Star Wars just doesn't work anything like it does in our universe. It's a vacuum, but still behaves somewhat like air. I don't understand it, but that's a super simplified version of what I was told.
Basically like you said: space magic.
I would also imagine that the torpedoes are inert until armed and fired. If they aren't, I can't imagine that the pilot is safe anywhere on the ship if that magazine is hit. Look at modern jets like the F-22 or F-35. They're stowed in the central axis behind the pilot. _If_ they were to detonate, I don't think the pilot would be around long enough to complain.
I'm told that the Star Wars 'verse is filled with phlogiston, which would explain why some ships have aetheric rudders.
Totally true! Oddly it's for all these reasons that make it iconic and beautiful. ... but it looks really good on screen in a space fight, or in model format. And it makes the little kid in me go "YAY!" regardless. Similar problems plague other iconic ship favorites of mine such as the Space Battleship Yamato.
That damn intro was freaking epic!
Just to confuse and annoy you a bit more, there are actually real and functional answers to all of these questions. It would just take a very long time to type them all out. The convergence issue alone isn't new. Its been a problem/issue ever since we started mounting multiple weapons on vehicles. It just got a bit worse with aircraft. You question about the engine change between the T-65 and the T-70 is reasonably valid and has two answers. The first is basically because they aren't spinning fan blades on the T-70. The second reason is because the designers/builders thought it looked cool and they weren't thinking of the consequences. Common failing on mot sci-fi properties.
My largest complaint about the X-Wing has always been the damn wings. The is no reason in the universe to open the damn things in space and it would in fact cause a number of problems. Its entire function is to add visual drama, and nothing more. It looks cool on screen. That is all.
Keep up the good work!
So, I know the fans keep trying to call Star Wars science fiction, but Lucas, over and over, keeps trying to explain its space opera. It's not meant to be anymore realistic then an opera, it's meant to tell a moving story. So, while in Science Fiction, it may be a failing to make the ships realistic, Star Wars is not Science Fiction.
The in-universe reason to open the wings is heat management. Like the radiant panels on space stations, the "wings" opening increased the surface area available to radiate heat.
@@Celtchief As soon as the 1980's WEG ( west end games ) Star Wars table top RPG core book came out and put .. numbers .. to space travel and ship speed, the nerds started to crack down on the math. Also the Thrawn series used the WEG RPG books as a campaign novel source. Lucas said and mean one thing, but the fans started to turn it into a science math wargame that leaked into the novels.
It is still more of a science fantasy than a soft/ hard science fiction setting, .. even Star Trek messes up their canon jargon from time to time. Also the novels writers took plenty of ideals from WW II, along with Cold War events.
My take on the X-Wing is that it was designed to be a strafer with the blasters as the primary weapon rather than bombs or torpedoes. You take a relatively large gun, dedicate an entire engine to it for power, then strap it to a large radiator panel for a heat sink. Add three more, and you have an X-Wing.
The goal would be heavy sustained fire to break a deflector screen or strafe the weapon turrets of an enemy, punching a hole in the defenses for the Y-Wings to get through with the big boom-boom. Basically, they're the 'Wild Weasels' of the Star Wars universe-- purpose-built to suppress or neutralize heavy enemy defenses to allow other ships to get in and do their work.
exactly the reason why the Germans, japanese and italians in WWII, even tho wings had become strong enough and planes big enough to put guns in the wings, kept putting their guns around the nose of their fighters, accepting the drawback of propellor synchonization.... it's also what made the twin engine american P38 so great, with that cannon and 4 mg's all in the nose right under the pilot's aiming vizor. the french in the 30's even made their planes more complicated by putting a cannon through the spinner of their single engine fighters....
People getting pissy about whatever. Just wait until you get into Mass Effect.
The tech described by the name is bad enough...
@@SacredCowShipyards
It all runs off this stuff called "Element Magic" or something.
My point is, the ME fanboys are a salty bunch of fundamentalist, "Thou shalt not speak heresy against BioWare, infidel!!!"
Yes, I have had the occasional argument. There art no perfection like Mass Effect.
@@clintcarpentier2424 And I thought SW geeks were bad enough.
Why you inflict this on me?
@@SacredCowShipyards
Because, the holy grail of all things ME perfection, is the Normandy.
Bathrooms aside, this ship has a loading ramp out the front. It doesn't land for you. It does a fly-by of the planet and spits out your exploration vehicle (with you in it).
ua-cam.com/video/_s2IwniEh5I/v-deo.html
No wonder it takes so long for those things to get a target lock.
I’m not sure if it was before my time at these shipyards but what should we do with the Mk2 vipers from that big old battlestar on crushing line ?? Would you want to have a look for any useful parts or just leave them to the cubbing machine ??
It would have made a LOT more sense if the lasers were below in the hull and the missiles on the tip of the wings.
..Those things suppose to have guidance systems anyway..
..mostly aimed at larger targets..
..Launched from longer range..
..when hit and explode lesser change to take the whole fighter with it..
.. if multiple are fired at once, you do not want them to hit each other in mid flight to the target.. (also would make more sense to the separated wing system)
Ah well, I was not there at the design table.
You are right, man! Stay true to your mission statement. I want you to critique these ships. It doesn't diminish how much I love them. Keep up the good work! :-)
We'll try.
btw, gun convergence point is an actual thing even on actual planes... or at least it used to be in WW2. and yes, that point could and would be calibrated and re-calibrated partially based on the mission and expected enemies, and partially based on pilot's preferences.
but that changes nothing about the fact that x-wing is a horrible design =D
I've read that the mustang pilots did that. some had the guns converge to a single point and some had them more spread out to almost a shotgun-like effect
I see it as more of a broadside or shotgun approach, maybe even a punt gun. Its supposed to be inaccurate since you are counting on a volley of rapid fire to confuse and make dodging harder.
The X-Wing only makes sense as an allegory of mid-20th century American fighter planes, in particular the World War II-era P-51 Mustang and the Vietnam-era F-4 Phantom II. The guns are out on the wings because the P-51's guns were out on the wings, to clear the propeller. The engines are obviously the J79 jet engines of the F-4. Both fighters had long noses. As for the wings locking in attack position, that's probably based on Navy carrier-based fighters (including the F-4) whose wings unfold as they are preparing to launch. It's also a great way to tell the audience the fight has started. The proton torpedoes are allegories of the notoriously unreliable early guided missiles of Vietnam.
Oh goddammit, another sub to add to my ever growing list! Seriously though; great content, just discovered you and am currently binge-watching.