Re: Stormtroopers

John Leary wrote:

> --- Robert A Crawford <crawford@kloognome.com> wrote:
> > Brian Bilderback wrote:
> > > Richard Bell wrote:
>  the rest of red and gold squadrons,
> ...
> > > >die  in pathetic and futile efforts at
> > resistance.
>
> The Red and Gold squadrons performed a holding action
> against 100 to 700 tie fighters, only 6 ties managed
> to
> breakthrough the screen.

Star Wars: A New Hope does not give any indication that there are that
many tie fighters.  Given that the tie-fighters enjoy full 3D freedom of
movement, it is really hard to keep them from going where they please
without comparable numbers.  Fighters cannot hold space, or even deny
space, they can only intercept.  I think that if two rebel squadrons
could hold off that many tie-fighters, we would have been treated to
combat scenes much like those seen in Battlestar Galactica (the cylons
had great numbers of poorly piloted craft).

If I was commanding a wing of tie-fighters that outnumbered the rebels
3-1, and they were trying to screen something, I would detail two thirds
of my force to drive away the screen and use the remaining third to blow
away the protected units.

Not being a fighter pilot, I am not an expert, but I suspect that the
only way that Luke could be screened by his fellow pilots would be if
the imperials did not have enough fighters to crush the screen and send
fighters hurtling past it to Luke, which brings about the odd conclusion
that the imperials never outnumbered the rebels by any real margin, at
any point in the combat.  This is corroborated by the rebel radio
chatter which implies that they were not all engaged at all times.

I have also played EA's "Janes' WWII Fighters", and one situationthat
you can find youself in is flying a single P-51 against four FW-190's.
The only shots I can get are head-to-head gunpasses, because chasing an
enemy only lines one or two up on MY tail.  So I believe that we would
have seen a lot more head to head passes if the rebels were severely