#tie defender

[alphamecha-mkii]

Grand Admiral Thrawn by Darren Tan

[star-wars-forever]

Tie Defender

by Darren Tan

[short-wooloo]

Thrawn would not have saved the empire had he been around during the original trilogy

This is such a common line of thought I see, that his presence single handedly turns everything around (literally this is just the qui-gon lives thing but evil except the people who push this idea are thrawn stans who can never acknowledge that he is evil), usually because "tie defender is better ship therefore victory inevitable"

There are a few things wrong with this

Regarding the tie defender, aside from the fact that it was still in development a year before Yavin and that even when development was done it would take time to mass produce the craft and train pilots for it, a single weapon does not win a war, not even a "superior" one (see the tiger tanks of wwii), how you use it matters, sure thrawn could use the defenders effectively, but not every imperial commander could, and that's not even addressing how rotten to the core the empire is as a system, or how having small ships without hyperdrives is a deliberate choice by the empire to breed dependency and curb independence in pilots and that the defender flies in the face of this foundational mindset of the empire

Secondly is the nature of the fight against the empire itself

This is not a conventional war, this is a fantasy war (dressed in Sci fi), the way to win is via heroes defeating the evil overlord with friendship, trust, and a little magic

And that precisely why Thrawn lost in Rebels!

He only looked at things as a military conflict, a war of resources, strategies, and tactics, that is why he dismissed Ezra acting as a Jedi to be a losing choice, and why he was so blindsided by the end result

[viv-hollande]

Gotta say, I think an underappreciated aspect of Star Wars that I think Disney Canon (really 90% Andor+Rogue One) is doing better than the EU is getting across the sheer scale of the Death Star project.

In part because they're overused to hell and back, it feels like, to me at least, that the EU doesn't really give the first Death Star its due. This is a planet-killing weapon. Do you know what that means, in terms of physics?

Planets aren't full of C4 waiting to be set off; they are giant balls of rock and metal. To destroy an entire terrestrial planet would require enough kinetic energy to accelerate the entire mass of the planet at escape velocity. You would literally be lifting an entire planet outwards with enough force to prevent it from reforming under gravity. That is an insane amount of energy.

The more Andor and Rogue One flesh out the construction of the Death Star, the more it feels like a project on the scale that should be required to build a planet-killer.

Yeah, it probably should take a material with extremely unusual resilience to survive the conditions in a reactor that creates enough power to destroy a planet. Yeah, it does make sense that such a material would be difficult to find.

We have no idea how long the Empire has been searching for Kalkite. Perhaps it's been a year or so, perhaps it's been over half a decade. Krennic is prepared to deliver equipment and start mining all the way back in 4 BBY, before the ISB plots around Ghorman were even started, because every day is another roll of the dice as to whether or not Stardust gets revealed. They don't have another five years or so to find a more convenient Kalkite source. No wonder the ISB was investing so much into justifying the Ghorman massacre for years.

It would make sense for the Empire to have to dedicate entire planets/moons to the manufacturing of components for a space station a third of the diameter of Ceres. Narkina 5 may have had anywhere between hundreds to hundreds of thousands of prison facilities, with more on potentially dozens of worlds. Narkina-style prison facilities are apparently so numerous that the Empire felt it necessary to develop the electrified floor technology to cut down on payroll, something they wouldn't have done if the savings were minimal. There were probably millions of workers manning these facilities as is. The Imperial prison-industrial complex probably represents one of the greatest mobilizations of labor resources in galactic history.

Yes, it would make sense that a project of this magnitude and complexity would have taken nearly 20 years to develop. It would make sense that the Empire would face years of delays, work stoppages, technical issues, and the like. It would make sense for the program Director to personally intervene in the re-recruitment of a key scientist in the program, because there genuinely may be single-digit numbers of people with the mind and skillset required to solve these specific problems known to the Empire.

For years, whenever I would hear about the Tarkin+Krennic/Thrawn rivalry for funding for Stardust vs the TIE Defender, there was always a part of me that wondered why the Empire didn't just choose both. Surely, I thought, a galaxy-spanning Empire should have resources to spare for both projects. Andor and Rogue One fill in these blanks. Resource extraction on Ghorman, Jedha, Ilum, and hundreds more planets, upkeep for prison facilities incarcerating millions, research funding, construction costs. It would make sense for entire species to be enslaved for the labor necessary to construct this station. To keep a project of this magnitude secret is an enormous task, and every day that passes is another roll of the dice. Stardust probably would be hoovering up enough funding to leave everyone else scrambling for the scraps.

All of these could have been head-canon before Disney Canon established the specifics, but Disney Canon focuses on these aspects and makes the Death Star feel far more enormous than it ever did under the EU.

Moon and stars, I love Andor+Rogue One so much I wanna—

Also fuck Sun Crusher and whoever came up with it. You're the dumbest, and you're worst. For those unfamiliar, its basically an overpowered Wattpad self-insert protagonist written by a twelve year old as a superweapon, except that it was conceived by grown-ass adults and written in published SW EU media.

[haaaaaaaaaaaave-you-met-ted]

Starship Graveyard, Jakku by Mark Molnar

[airakale]

I’ll never get over the fact that Tarkin’s Coruscant fiberweave carpet in his personal quarters on the Death Star was worth more than 200m credits per square meter, much more than an ISD which is 150m credits per ship let alone a kriffing brand new TIE Defender which is 300k credits per unit 🤣🤣🤣

[onetruechromosome]

So, in hindsight. In my recent rewatch of Rebels, I noticed that Tarkin tells Thrawn that he might cancel his budget for the Death Star.

So the Empire has a budget that can either be spent on a planet sized station, or a single Tie factory?

How expensive is the Defender?!!!

It's just a Tie Fighter with the same capabilities of an X-Wing, and rebels are getting those pre-owned.

[electricnik]

TIE Defender from Star Wars, the essebtial guide to vehicles and vessels by Smith, Chiang and Vigil.

The article only mentions that Thrawn was around at the time, not how much he was involved. A lot of this book covers the events of the original Thrawn trilogy.