Author Topic: Ep3 Sneak Preview Anakin's Starfighter  (Read 26985 times)

Offline Jeff

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Re: Ep3 Sneak Preview Vehicle
« Reply #60 on: February 10, 2005, 12:17 PM »
I've been hearing (or rather reading) an interesting tidbit on this Starfighter.

It seems that the "R2 unit" on the starfighter is a junky 1-peice half-droid, but it is removable and the reports are saying that you can fit a regular R2 Droid in open space. 

Sort of like a Droid Socket if you want to fill it or a half-droid to fill it if you can't spare an R2.  I'm anxious to hear/see pictures from someone who has it to see if this pans out to be true...   :-\
 
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Offline Scott

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Re: Ep3 Sneak Preview Vehicle
« Reply #61 on: February 10, 2005, 12:37 PM »
Still scratching my head over the whole Droid Socket deal on this Fighter to begin with

Offline Jeff

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Re: Ep3 Sneak Preview Vehicle
« Reply #62 on: February 10, 2005, 12:49 PM »
I agree, if they wanted one in there why did they stray from the "behind the cockpit" co-pilot look of the OT?  Would have made much more sense in the back for both the Ep2 and Ep3 versions.  :-\

Now we'll see some lame EU story to explain that Incom moved the R2 unit on the X-Wing from the "front of ship" design to the back because the little droids took so much damage up front, not to mention throwing off the balance of the ship... blah blah blah. 

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Offline CHEWIE

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Re: Ep3 Sneak Preview Vehicle
« Reply #63 on: February 10, 2005, 01:03 PM »
On the back of the ship was definitely cooler.

 :P

Offline Scott

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Re: Ep3 Sneak Preview Vehicle
« Reply #64 on: February 10, 2005, 01:10 PM »
Truth be told, the droid sockets on all three prequel ships are lame

Naboo Fighter: Telescoping R2 head
Jedi Starfighter I: Head only (How stupid is that!)
Jedi Starfighter II: Not sure how this will work yet

Jeff is spot on, some Lame ass EU excuse will get doled out for why this is (Anakin found R2 giving Padme a foot rub and as punishment he hard wired half of his body in to the front of his starfighter since he's easier to blow up from the front)

Offline Pete_Fett

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Re: Ep3 Sneak Preview Vehicle
« Reply #65 on: February 10, 2005, 02:49 PM »
Not trying to defend the design here, but the ARC-170 which I would consider more of a predecessor to the X-Wing than the Jedi Starfighter has the slot for the astromech unit behind the front cockpit (where the pilot and co-pilot sit) of the vehicle and "behind" the astromech is the rear-gunner cockpit. So already at this point in the SW universe, ship designers have seen the need/importance of putting the navigation droid in a safer spot.
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Offline darkksith

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Re: Ep3 Sneak Preview Vehicle
« Reply #66 on: February 10, 2005, 06:36 PM »
nataku, i picked up the preview star fighter today and i grabbed a couple R2 figs i had access to (potf2 holo leia and episode 1) and tried to fit them in the socket. they will only go in about a 1/3 of the way. maybe some of the other R2 versions will fit better. it looks sorta okay but much better with the half R2 that comes with it. btw, the head on the R2 rotates. i gotta say this is one awsome hunk of plastic of a vehicle. very hefty and solid. it looks great with the side wingy-flap-things  :-\ up. it's like a combo of darth maul's infiltrator and a tie fighter. i highly reccomend this.
« Last Edit: February 11, 2005, 09:30 AM by darkksith »

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Re: Ep3 Sneak Preview Vehicle
« Reply #67 on: February 10, 2005, 08:58 PM »
nataku, i picked up the preview star fighter today and i grabbed a couple R2 figs i had access to (potf2 holo leia and episode 1) and tried to fit them in the socket. they will only go in about a 1/3 of the way. maybe some of the other R2 versions will fit better.

I picked one up this afternoon and found the same thing - just plugging a regular astromech in won't work, and it's not a matter of fiddling with it, either. The ship was plainly designed to use the plugs, and the removable feature is obviously more intended to make it easier doing ship repaints than as a play feature.

To get one to fit, you have to start with at least removing its feet, and even then, it's going to sit too high. For it to be done right, the plug is going to have to be removed, the silver base component seperated by dremmelling, and then affixing the two brackets produced by that work to a sawed-off droid. The droid plug has no detail on it other than the head, so just doing a headswap isn't really an option. It's a total customization job.

EDIT: OK, a little more info -- from the instructions:
Quote
Removable droid panel. Insert R2 figure (not included). Most R2 figures will fit in droid socket.

I was able to get the astromech from the TRU Hoth 4-pack to fit in it, and it seems to fit snuggly, except that its way, way too high. I've got to see if I have a spare R2-D2 I can sacrifice the feet off of and see if it improves things.

The fighter itself does look to be quality, though. Feels really solid, but I haven't tinkered too much yet beyond pondering the droid socket.
« Last Edit: February 10, 2005, 09:10 PM by Tydirium »

SilverZ

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Re: Ep3 Sneak Preview Vehicle
« Reply #68 on: February 10, 2005, 09:47 PM »
Just a few other observations on the ship:

When the wings are in the open mode (TIE-style) there are two small connector holes on the panels underneath that are probably meant to attach the "buzz droids" from the Droid Tri-Fighter. Sweet.

The grey plastic as a metallic gunmetal paint spray on it that looks really nice. It fixes the problem that the AT-RT seems to have of the plastic looking "cheap".

The wing release button is a well-design mechanism. When the wingers are down, they seem to stay put, instead of popping up if touched wrong like the AOTC fighter.

Pretty good, and I'm looking forward to the cooler paint scheme from Obi's version, and curious to see what is different about Plo Koon's that is apparently coming later.

Offline Jesse James

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Re: Ep3 Sneak Preview Vehicle
« Reply #69 on: February 11, 2005, 12:28 AM »
EU's kind of shown that astro's are placed all over on ships...  Roaming about freely on ships like Amidalas, or even having fixed sockets "outboard" on big ships like that as well.

To me, none of these ship's designs imply that they're building into anything else really...  The Jedi Fighter, when you look at it, really doesn't look like anything (A-Wing's been said in the past, but beyond it being red I don't see this similarity), and the new Jedi Fighter's really not like anything else besides it maybe having SOME similarity to the old Jedi Fighter...  "improvement" for the war there is practical so I can link those two, but I can't link the Jedi Fighters to anything in the modern era really. 

The ARC-170's design is just out there...  Beyond its basic shape of an elongated hull with 2 wings that can split for maneuverability/stability, I can't say this is a ship that I look at and think "X-Wing" at all.  XW and this don't even look like they'd be in the same role/category given that the ARC's are bigger/bulkier, have a rear gunner...  I'd say it's maybe closer in relationship to the Y-Wing, but it doesn't resemble that fighter at all either, but if you run iwth the Y-Wings 2-seater variant it seems more along those lines.

EU's placement of astro's is weird then...  The Jedi Fighter's one is weird, and I think it was mostly a cop-out to have a dedicated astromech.  Almost like they designed the fighter but later realized they didn't design it to support an astromech and Lucas wanted it to be able to...  Simple answer then is to make it a dedicated on-board system with a dome...  for no reason.  ::)

I'm pretty sure EU has Astro's popping up on ships in different places though, some toward the front, some to the back...  I don't mind the placement really on the new Jedi Fighter...  If it doesn't support a removable (full) droid then it's sort of a bummer.  It leads me to believe Hasbro butchered the scale somewhat perhaps.   :-\ 

I don't mind the astromech being up front but I do think it bites if they don't make it so a full astromech fits in the socket.  That implies an underscaled ship to me, which sucks.
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SilverZ

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Re: Ep3 Sneak Preview Vehicle
« Reply #70 on: February 11, 2005, 01:33 AM »
I don't mind the astromech being up front but I do think it bites if they don't make it so a full astromech fits in the socket.  That implies an underscaled ship to me, which sucks.

I don't think its a scale issue if you mean the toy. It’s just about as big as the (oversized) vintage/POTF2 snowspeeder, and def bigger than the AOTC Starfighter.

The problem is with the shoddy ship design logic coming from the PT, in my opinion. Most of the ships they've crammed droids into don't physically fit them. They’re there because they’re trying too hard to emulate better designs and bridge designs that don’t have much purpose to be bridged. If you look at this the ROTS starfighter’s front profile with the wings popped vertical, you can see how close it resembles Vader's TIE. It's clever I suppose, but if they were shooting for design evolution it’s pointless.

So here, just as the Naboo Fighter has a visual dodge that drops the "shoulders" of the droid, or the Jedi Starfighter's hull not having physical room for the droid body, this one just abandons the droid’s feet to make the design work. All so they can cram the stupid R2 in there, whether story needs one there or not.

So I blame the whole R2 thing on crappy PT design from the movies, not much else. And that leads me to my little bitch session that is a larger reason we see these little problems like the R2 socket in ships that can’t accommodate them:

The design sense in the PT sucks. If I showed any ship design from the OT to a layman, they’d easily determine that one side had grey colorless ships, and the other side had sporty, colorful designs. When you looks at the ones that don’t fit that sense, they belong to a character. “Oh, that’s Han Solo’s ship,” etc.

Try doing that with the PT.

The designs coming from the PT films are more aesthetic than functional, from how I see it. (And sometimes a ****** aesthetic). They’re more whimsical, and some are neat, but a lot of them are so whacked out it probably flusters the average moviegoer, who just wants to track characters and action. Bad guys equal grey ships. Good guys equal red ships. Not here.

There was this moment in TPM when I saw Maul’s Sith Interceptor that I thought they understood a good philosophy in an easy visual message – bad guys fly the grey ships with TIE wings. Then that went away. Enter: Bad guys have vulture droid robot transformers looking things. No, they have wingless brown pod things. No, they have Tron looking solar sailer things. Rockets. Donuts. Whatever the **** they feel like.

For the first movie you had Doug Chiang drawing whatever retarded round looking anime wannabe jaggof design he pleased, with no evolution planned, and then hit this point in AOTC where Church/Tiemens take over and try to recover the fumble, with Lucas in the middle, approving anything he finds visually interesting.

So the whole thing is disconnected. Then the evolution comes screeching to a halt in the OT.

What a trainwreck!

Offline Jeff

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Re: Ep3 Sneak Preview Anakin's Starfighter
« Reply #71 on: February 11, 2005, 10:07 AM »
Thanks for the info darksith and Jared!  Interesting to note that at least Hasbro made a small effort to restore the droid socket technology of the 80s.   ;)

Let us know how the "droid chop" goes Jared, I have a spare '95 R2 I could use to dress up my Jedi Starfighter (when I find the dang thing that is  >:().

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Offline darkksith

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Re: Ep3 Sneak Preview Anakin's Starfighter
« Reply #72 on: February 11, 2005, 04:19 PM »
ok guys, check out this link of pictures of someones starfighter opened. it has R2's body below the dome painted with the normal blue/white R2 deco. my R2 is totally white below the dome. the box i have also shows the deco below the dome. what gives?

http://www.rebelscum.com/article.asp?i=88898


Offline CHEWIE

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Re: Ep3 Sneak Preview Anakin's Starfighter
« Reply #73 on: February 11, 2005, 04:42 PM »
Hmmm... you might have gotten a lemon.  Meaning yours didn't get the proper factory paint... probably not considered a variation, just a bad job by Hasbro on that one.  Kinda sucks...   :-\

 :P

Offline Pete_Fett

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Re: Ep3 Sneak Preview Anakin's Starfighter
« Reply #74 on: February 11, 2005, 05:08 PM »
ok guys, check out this link of pictures of someones starfighter opened. it has R2's body below the dome painted with the normal blue/white R2 deco. my R2 is totally white below the dome. the box i have also shows the deco below the dome. what gives?

http://www.rebelscum.com/article.asp?i=88898

Could the colored details be stickers you have to apply and not paint-ops?
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