Ackbar’s Fightin’ Ships
I promised you a nerdy discussion, and a nerdy discussion ye shall have!
So, Return of the Jedi was on TV the other day; Unfortunately it was the Special Edition, but we’ll not be snobs about that today. It’s still a fantastic film, and I’d forgotten just how much I loved the film as a child!
But, older and (nominally) wiser, naturally questions raise themselves. Because I’m a shut-in who plays a lot of video games, the thing that got me this viewing was the roles of the rebel fighter craft. Specifically, the B-Wing.
Let’s review the other craft: Everybody’s familiar with the popular (and awesome) X-Wing. It’s a fairly manouevreable, moderately shielded and well-armed fighter craft, designed and purposed to engage other fighter craft. A superiority fighter, in other words. In a pinch, it can also deliver one or two rounds of heavy ordinance, so I suppose it may count as a fighter-bomber as well.
Also present at the Battle of Yavin, the less popular (but still awesome) Y-Wing. It’s clearly older and more beaten up than the X-Wing, it’s slow, again with a reasonable amount of shielding, and its main armaments are flexible but pitifully undamaging. It does, however, have an increased capacity to hold heavy ordinance, thus putting it firmly in the role of bomber craft. And that’s fine (I happen to love the Y-Wing, myself).
Introduced at the Battle of Endor (well, technically, a bit earlier than that), the moderately popular (and awesome) A-Wing fighter. Light, with a low profile and light armament, it neatly fits the role of interceptor and skirmisher, designed to harass and disrupt enemy forces then retreat, reform and re-engage rather than to indulge in a stand-up fight.
And then, we have the B-Wing. It looks awesome, and it certainly has a people-pleasing quirky design. But, for me, it just doesn’t quite… Fit anywhere. It has superior weaponry to the X-wing, and I believe is only slightly slower, and its ordinance capacity is close to that of the Y-Wing. It is, almost essentially, a spacebound tank.
To me, it sounds like the B-Wing was intended to be some sort of heavy assault gunship, but are there really many ‘hardened targets’ in space? The closest think I can think of in current military terms is the A10 Warthog, capable of delivering ridiculous amounts of ordinance and even stalling itself out of the sky with the hilarious overpower of its cannons. It’s a Close Air Support vehicle, and is a natural tank-killer.
As we’ve established, though, the B-Wing is ALREADY a tank in space. If its remit is to engage other craft like it, surely the same goal could be achieved with existing technology and different tactics? An X-wing could probably outmanouever something similar and deliver sufficient damage in a reasonably short time to destroy it early enough in the battle that the B-Wings would still be catching up.
Perhaps it’s meant to be used against capital ships? A distributed volley of heavily armoured missile platforms that were capable of defending themselves from fighters would be a formidable threat indeed, but again I can see the sheer volume of ordinance required being more economically provided by mounting more launch tubes on other capital ships?
Maybe I’m overthinking it, or I don’t have sufficient military knowledge (what very little I have, anyway!) to truly appreciate the role the B-Wing actually falls into in the rebel fleet. Any thoughts from people more knowledgable/intelligent/obsessive than I?
M.
My experience is, admittedly, limited to actually flying all four of the craft in question extensively in one of the older (but still exceptionally good) X-Wing flight sims.
In which the B-wing is, unquestionably, a capital-ship killer. That’s what it’s built for, that’s what it’s good at. Less versatile than even a Y-wing–which can still hold its own in a dogfight–and far more heavily armed.
Notably, even if it were just an improved Y-wing, there’d still be a reason for its existence: You improve things as time goes on, and the Y-wing is an old design. You don’t immediately mothball all of them as soon as you have something better being produced–the Rebels can hardly afford to be that choosy–but when it comes to building new heavy gunships, you’re going to build the latest and greatest.
(Random aside: The only way to play that old-school game, in my opinion, is with a second person essentially acting as your R2 unit; the second player has the ability to focus completely on routing power where it’s needed most and quickly transferring power between shields and various weapon systems, or moving shield power exactly where it’s needed. That let you do crazy things like runs on capital ships with your co-pilot keeping all the shields fore, then giving you just enough weapon power when you got close enough to open up, then immediately dumping all power to the aft shields when you turned tail and ran, while the pilot focused entirely on not getting blown out of the sky. Way more fun than flying solo.)
How awesome were the X-Wing/ TIE Fighter sims? I’m intrigued about playing the game with somebody handling power routing; it never struck me before that the R2/R5 units were basically RIOs for the X-Wings and Y-Wings, but now that you mention it that’s actually pretty cool!
I honestly think that if you haven’t played X-Wing with one person handling power routing (and other ancillary commands) while the other flies, you haven’t really played the game. It’s an entirely different experience, and way more fun for a number of reasons (not the least of which being that you can do things that are nearly impossible flying solo).
The fact that it perfectly maps to the actual job of an R2 unit rather than a mere co-pilot (though I believe Y-Wings do have one) is just icing on the cake.