Author Topic: Tie Bombers ?  (Read 2224 times)

Offline no-wan

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Tie Bombers ?
« on: July 22, 2006, 07:01 PM »
Look'n for info like size of squadons, names, numbers, or insignias ?

Any Information would be most appreciated !!   ;)
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Offline Desfiy

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Re: Tie Bombers ?
« Reply #1 on: August 14, 2006, 11:14 PM »
Try wookieepedia, they have that sort of information thats what I use a lot.

Offline Jesse James

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Re: Tie Bombers ?
« Reply #2 on: January 5, 2007, 03:07 AM »
Man No-Wan asked this oen a long long time ago and I just haven't been active in talk about stuff like this lately...

Basically, if you're going by games (which tend to be the only source info on squads and whatnot, there isn't a ton to go on otherwise), fighter squadrons have less a specific craft and more that pilots are trained on various craft and assigned what is suitable for the mission or a rotation system or whatnot...

Specific pilots assigned specific ships is not necessarilly a rarity, but it's maybe something done for base squadrons perhaps, or for the "elite"...  But even then that's not necessarilly the "truth" as it were.  For instance Rogue Squadron are known for being X-Wingers of course, but if you keep the games as part of the Rogue Squad story (which I do) then the RS'ers could fly A, B, X, Y, or even possibly other fighters into battle...  I envision that they have full complements of vessels to pick from for their entire squad, and RS probably (logically) would also have what ammounted to a "minor league" team too...  Kind of A team and B team versions of Rogue Squadron... 

Let's say for arguments sake that Hoth is stationed (and Yavin) with JUST Rogue Squadron...  They're just a planetary squadrion at Yavin, no "Rogue" yet, but they get that later on due to their exploits...  Anyway, they have a plethora of fighters available to them, and they have way more than a dozen pilots as well, but there's like the "First String" 12 who make up the core...  From there they rotate the "2nd string" in as needed due to casualties or fatigue...  They'd act as any other squadron in the Alliance and this fits with the games pretty well for this squad.

One could argue that they change after Endor to kind of a "Special Forces" squadron that only use X-Wings or some such of course, but up till then and maybe some years afterwards, they're a regular squadron assigned to what maybe is the "core" alliance base...  not the ONLY alliance base, but maybe their best and most effective scalpal agains the Empire.  At least that's how I viewed it...

Anyway, this topic's about TIE Bombers and so I gotta get back on track with that...

The way games were set up, such as TIE Fighter had Bomber squads as basically just part of the rotation of any fighter-carrying vessel...  Basically the ship is equipped with X # of Pilots, and they're the squad(s)...  These pilots are trained on all fighter types within the Empire from hyper-capable like the Starwing Gunboat to the TIE series craft...  During any engagement, you could be assigned to fly a TIE Fighter, or Bomber, whatever...  In TIE Fighter, the names of squads deployed into battle were very blanket simple names of Alpha, Beta, Delta, Gamma, etc....  Usually Gunboat groups were listed Tau, Mu, Nu, etc...  bombers seemed to generally be like Zeta, Eta, etc.

But they were the same pilots...  It wasn't like there was a squad of pilots for Gunboats and things.  This is partly for the game's dynamics of course, but when you think about it, Star Wars is a pretty (seemingly) static universe in that anyone can jump in any ship and fly...  or at least fighters seem that way to an extent.  So it's reasonable to assume that at least inter-group ships like Imperial vessels would be built similar and fly similar.

So anyway, if No-Wan is still reading and finds this, hopefully it's answers to an extent...  The issues of insignia and things, I think it's pretty much a matter of either the Empire didn't allow it, or squads are just generic numeric designations like the "327th Fighter Squadron Assigned To the ISD2 Viscount" or some **** like that...  Nothing flashy, though I could see them adopting a logo maybe for their mess hall but nothing they'd wear on uniforms or mark on ships.

Like maybe a polar bear (walk with me here) on a blue circle background is a patch they have for the "squadron" aboard some Destroyer somewhere, and they call themselves the "Ice" squadron, but to the Empire and in any formal ceremony they're the 327th and those logos are not seen or displayed anywhere but in the pilot's bunks and such...  If that makes sense.

Plus of course, the pilots aren't "Bomber" Pilots, but rahter they're just Imperial Pilots who may be flying a bomber, a fighter, an interceptor or whatever depending on what their CO assigns them for any given mission.

Hope that makes sense...
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Offline Paul

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Re: Tie Bombers ?
« Reply #3 on: January 5, 2007, 02:03 PM »
I like to think of Bomber Pilots as more specialized personally.  I know what West End and the Games have shown us, but I like to think the Fighter-Bomber pilot as set apart from the Fighter/Interceptor pilots.

That is more my personal preference, whereas Bombers and Gunships are a class and Fighters, Interceptors, Advanced and Defenders are another.

In fact in the game Xwing Vs Tie Fighter, I had a pilot I used for Fighter Missions and one for Bomber/Gunsship missions.  But again that is my preference.

I do agree that the Squadrons are only known as "The Black Sheep" or what not among the ranks at the Stategic point they are The 201st Fighter Group, Carida....or some such.

Offline Jesse James

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Re: Tie Bombers ?
« Reply #4 on: January 6, 2007, 05:04 AM »
I definitely see your point of view Paul, no doubt...  But I think it's a matter of thinking too Earthy about something that, at least to my eyes, seems simplified.  What I mean is that fighters in general seem...  simplistic.  Like you aren't needing to be the elite person you need to be in say today's modern US Airforce to be a pilot...

I remember a kid I went to school with who was pretty smart, and who was claiming he was going to be a pilot in the USAF...  It never happened because he couldn't meet the requirements necessary, and this was one of the top percentile of my school for intelligence, but there's all the other factors he just didn't live up to.  US Pilots aren't slouches afterall.

Whereas in Star Wars it seems more like if you want to do it, you can...  That some of the "kids" do it in their spare time pissing around on the farm even.  It just seems like flying anything in Star Wars doesn't take a lot to accomplish...  The physical stresses seem lessened (I mean look at Luke crashing, he's hardly jostled around in the damn thing from a physical impact), the intellect seems to be average (anyone can do it if they have the drive and maybe just some inherent ability)... 

What I'm getting at though is that the Bombers seem, at least to me then, to be simplified as they are in the games...  Targeting is fairly crude or simple, you can target from the regular pilot's seat and such... 

But I also look at the TIE Bomber not as a "Bomber" class fighter, but as just a sub-class of fighter...  A fighter-bomber, ala the Y-Wing and such, and not a craft that is "ideal" for bombing, it just is the best fighter you can have to unload some ordinance with (as the Y-Wing is for the Alliance)...  Now, real "Bombers" I agree are a different story...  Like let's say hypothetically there is a ship in the Alliance arsenal...  It looks like a B-Wing cockpit at either end of a B-Wing body, kind of like this:
O======O if you were looking at it straight forward.

One cockpit's a pilot, one a bombadeer...  This craft is a BOMBER, nothing more and nothing less.  At best it has an automated turret or something for defense, or maybe even a dorsal and bellie gun ala the Falcon and there's a crew of 4 (2 gunners, 1 pilot, 1 co-pilot/bombadeer).  This craft isn't huge, it's not much bigger than a B-Wing in width or overall size, it's maneuverable, semi-fast...  But it's a bomber and not used for anything else...  NOw this type of ship I agree would need some dedicated people with advanced training.

For me though, the Y-Wing or TIE Bomber (since they're kind of the two ships compared to each other and most recognizeable) are ships the average Joe Pilot could fly, could operate...  You won't do precision bomb work with it, and only the warhead launchers feature the more advanced targeting (but operable by anyone as evidenced by the X-Wing pilots and A-Wing Pilots and such we see who also obviously have warhead launchers) for "precision" work but that's more bombing on the scale of attacking capital ships and things...

There-in lies a weird area you get into where Star Wars fighters don't have good real-world analogies...   The closest you can come to is fighters flying in on a carrier or battleship and firing air-to-air warheads at it in an attack...  The closest actual thing you could come to is WW2 warfare, especially in the Pacific, with planes attacking ships...  That's a sort of strange thing when you think about it, but I digress. 

Anyway though, yeah I see your line of thinking on it too Paul, I just view the ships as really dumbed down fighter-bombers with pretty simplistic targeting/bombing systems for use in some form of atmosphere or gravity for their "bomber" feature, while their "bomber" feature in space against stations or capital ships is more just using warhead launchers that carry larger payloads than other fighter units...  But I totally do see where you're coming from man.
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