Lucasarts Space Flight Sims

[Alinestra Covelia]

TIE Fighter was indeed amazing, especially as it managed to incorporate so much of the plot of the original trilogy, and the Thrawn trilogy by Timothy Zahn.

I have found a few tools that can convert TIE Fighter missions to XvTIE format, and I might one day give it a try at converting the whole thing.

Remember that one mission in TIE Fighter when the Emperor was ambushed on his way to the Super Star Destroyer?

Well, with the capacities of XvTIE, SSD battles are a distinct possibility.

(Although that having been said, I don't recall the SSD itself as putting up much of a fight in any mission...it just sits there and gets hit.)

[Boris Godunov]

There wasn't any SSD in TIE Fighter, IIRC. It wasn't introduced to the games until XvT, and only then in the Balance of Power expansion.

I would LOVE to convert all of TIE Fighter into XvT format, but would you still have the story in between missions?

The SSD isn't really supposed to do much, actually. It's a command ship, and was never really meant for ship-to-ship combat. That's what the ISDs are for. That's partly why Ackbar ordered his ships to hit the Executor in RotJ. They knew it was far too unmanueverable to contend with an onslaught of smaller, faster rebel cruisers.

That being said, the SSD has an amazing amount of turbolasers, and will easily take out a single Calamari cruiser that engages it. At least, I've seen it do so in the custom missions I've made for XW: Alliance

[Alinestra Covelia]

Yes, the main difficulty that the game has is that the starships have very poor anti fighter defences. In fact, the lowly frigate is the main starship of choice because of its ability to bring a large amount of firepower to bear on an enemy while keeping itself to a low profile.

I think XWA rectified this slightly by having ships of different sizes do different damage. The cannons of a capital ship of MC-80 size or larger would do more damage than a smaller ship and far more than a starfighter.

In XvT the cap ships only come armed with a few warhead launchers and a few beam weapons (mostly jamming) and almost no ion weaponry. In most pencil and paper SW RPGs I've played, the cap ships come equipped with the full complement of ion/warhead/beam weapons, and thus are extremely dangerous.

SSDs don't have to be maneuverable - their design is such that the cannons A) can't be targeted and destroyed by warheads, and B) can fire at pretty much any visible foe across a 180 degree arc. Imagine some poor bugger of a starship facing the prow of the SSD - you've automatically got around 16 square km of lasers targeting you, from all four horizontal quadrants!

I think there was some code in XvT that weakened the SSD in the single player missions and training missions.

[Alinestra Covelia]

Just a brief bump and I'll let this thread sink to forgotten oblivion. I've discovered the pizza delivery easter egg in the warhead interception training mission and I'm still laughing at it.

To accomplish it:

Choose to fly the Assault Gunboat instead of the TIE Bomber. Launch pairs of Advanced Missiles at each of the transports, except one. Tell your wingman to ignore it, and disable it instead. If this transport is ever destroyed, a new wave of fighters will hyperspace in and attack the Interdictor, giving you a major headache. By disabling it, you stop it from attacking, and by not killing it outright, you prevent the fighter backup from materializing.

Now comes the waiting game. The Interdictor Cruiser should progress steadily towards the Shipyard. Watch your wingman TIE Bomber. When it gets to the Shipyard and turns to go elsewhere, tell it to wait (Shift W).

Now wait until a load of Muurian Transports hyperspaces in. Tell your wingman to attack them and you join in too, destroying all but one with your missiles. Disable the one you don't destroy, and make sure that your wingman doesn't destroy it.

Repeat this with every wave of craft that comes against you, destroying all but one of their number, then disabling the survivor. After the Interdictor Cruiser finishes its mission, sit back and watch the Pizza Delivery Easter Egg!