SPECULATION The Role of the Stormtrooper.

In which case, I have to say I think it's funny that it all comes down to logistics, the supply chain and politics that our heroes in the OT survived to defeat the Empire, simply because of the decision to supply the Stormtroopers all with shoddy weapons. It's like the conversation in Spaced:

 

BlasTech made the powerful, light, and compact E-11 blaster rifles for the Empire, stormtroopers complained about the excessive recoil which diminished their accuracy.
While Han used a DL-44 Heavy blaster pistol, easily modifiable, and powerful enough to penetrate stormtrooper armor.
Kanan Jarrus also used a BlasTech DL-18 blaster pistol.

 

You are over-simplifying it. When you watch OT, and you notice the scenes in EP IV and V in the hangers, you will see a plethora of cables attached to the ships. Presumably, these are refueling or some such, but regardless of what they are doing, these would (again presumably) have some form of connector. Even if the difference in connector types is as simple as a standard or metric type (not to mention size) you can easily understand that you need that type of hose to go to that type of connector on those types of ships.

That doesn't even consider armaments. Even if the lasers fire pure energy, as opposed to some physical pellet which is the catalyst for the energy bolt, you still have the torpedoes and bombs (remember y-wings carry bombs)

While both of these examples are for land bases, carriers are a bit more complicated than that. With land bases, if you need a little more room, you just go over a few more hundred feet. Carriers don't have that luxury. Typically, (and to make some assumptions for starship-based carriers based on modern theories and designs) you would have a "landing bay" area where the ship comes in and settles, then (if it isn't just being refitted and relaunched) it would get put in stowage. There would be a maintenance area also that ships requiring repairs or maintenance would be taken that would allow the maint crew room to get in around it and do what needs to be done.

We have seen a bit of the TIE fighter stowage, where they are stacked, which is designed to pack a maximum number of fighters into a small amount of room. You don't just stack them, you need to have a hanger which has clamps and (presumably) cranes with the proper hooks and such to get the fighters into (and out of) their stowage bays.

Then there are a wide assortment of tools, parts and odds and ends that are needed for maintenance. These all need to be sorted and stored. The fact that x-wings have hyperdrives makes them more maintenance intensive than the TIE fighters, in that its another part that needs to be maintained, with tools, diagnostic equipment, parts and crews for those units.

It isn't just as simple as, "park it over there"

I am trainable, after a fashion...

I think you are looking at this from the wrong angle. We keep talking about TIE fighters and x-wings as if those are the only two "fighters" on each side. On the alliance side, there are (obviously now) several models of "x-wings", along with b-wings, a-wings and y-wings... the common thing in all of these is the fact that they are all (more or less) designated by the wing configuration.

On the Imperial side of things, we have seen a wide variety of designs that we loosely call "TIE fighter" but they are all (more or less) based around propulsion (TIE = twin ion engine) with the solar collectors on the wings. A good article on them is located here, but in typical military fashion, they use common parts making maintenance standardized. It is a bit naive to assume that the TIE fighters do not have hyperdrive capability, as some of them do.

I am going to pull the next part of the quote in here, as I think my response will be relevant to them both...

It isn't that the Empire would commission "cheap" materials. However, even a galactic empire spanning thousands of worlds has a budget. You don't order things you don't need. You order things to based on requirements. In these examples, you order fighters to fill the role of "short range defense of ships and bases" and you order blasters based on "area effect suppression", for example. While it is possible to equip a TIE fighter with a hyperdrive, you don't spend credits on equipping every one of them with it when it isn't necessary.

The Imperial strategy was that a large ship (or group of ships) would move in, and the fighters would support that ship in the attack. The role of the fighters would be to a) intercept and engage small enemy craft (i.e. enemy fighters), and b) engage smaller enemy capital ships in short range combat. For the most part, they would need to do the galactic equivalent of "patrol duty"

This contrasts with the the mission of the Alliance, in which their "fighter" craft need to move in quickly, strike, and retreat to a hidden base. It was only at the Battle of Endor where the Alliance committed their capital ships into battle. Based on the role, the Alliance ships would be better suited if they had hyperdrive units. They simply didn't have that many capital ships, and they could not risk engaging them.

Remember in Ep IV, when our heroes encountered the remains of Aldaraan... "that's a short range fighter". Clearly this alludes to the potential that there are other fighters that the Empire had that were not "short range".

In the same line of thought, it isn't necessarily that the Empire bought "cheap and ineffective" blasters, they bought (or produced) blasters that were suited for the role they were intended for, which at that point would have been area effect suppression. The troops on the ground didn't necessarily need to directly engage an enemy in short range combat, they needed to keep enemy troops (or whatever) pinned down where the other units in the assault (the AT-AT's, for example) could blast them into submission.

The Imperial battle plan was one of combined resources, relying on there being an assault force which they had the resources to commit. The Alliance battle plan was one more of smaller units working against larger, more superior forces, and therefore needed to be more versatile and capable of engaging at shorter ranges, where the Imperial forces were less effective.

I think you are going to see a very big shift in this... first of all, I think you will see more Jedi


Second, you are going to see the Alliance will now have grown into a much more capable fleet. The roles, if you were, will be reversed. The Alliance will either have "the upper hand" or at the least they will be more balanced in their forces, with the remnants either engaging an equal or superior force. In that, there will be more "short ranged" combat, both in the ground and in space. The remnants will be a little less willing to engage their capital ships into combat, with the knowledge that repairing and replacing the ones that they have will be far more difficult (if not impossible) without the full weight of the Empire at its prime behind them. Where before, the Empire would have had the ability to blockade a world, lay down heavy assault vehicles and blast a city into submission, and the populace of that world would be more weary of revolt, you will see the troopers having to engage more directly... they will have to get more up close and personal, and in that, the vibro-swords and shields would make a lot more sense.

Or... perhaps I am putting too much thought into this... I might need a hobby...

 

I agree with your explanation of Imperial and Rebel battle tactics completely.

I still think you are doubting the versatility and utility of X-Wings. Being capable of pretty much just guerrilla tactics for most of the Rebellion the Alliance would need the ability to pack up and move quickly. Ideally a dedicated hangar would be used for X-Wings, but I think the movies show they can handle most situations. Do you really think a TIE Fighter could get up and fly again after crashing into a swamp? The Empire could afford to replace TIE Fighters, they had the material. The Rebel Alliance had to milk everything they could out of their fighters which means if they settled on X-Wings then they had to be a tough and durable ship. Even if the analogy is very poor an X-Wing could be considered an AK-47, durable and easy to maintain with just a little bit of care.

Lacking the resources to handle a large TIE Fighter fleet to support their capital ships the Empire would have to bring in more independent and durable ships such as X-Wings since they can't afford to constantly replace their ships anymore.

The basic TIE Fighter does not have a hyperdrive and that made up most of the Imperial fighter fleet. I don't think TIE Interceptors or TIE Bombers had hyperdrives either. The only TIE fighter shown in the films that I think had a hyperdrive was the TIE Advanced that Vader flew.

 

Agreed on most points... and yes, in the same line as I was speaking of, as the "role" of the remnant forces has moved from, "part of a grand vast fleet" to "we gotta make do with what we have" they will most likely need something other than TIE fighters... I would like to see a few designs from the galaxy other than "x-wing vs. TIE fighter" As the people who make the x-wings are kinda sympathetic to the Alliance, I can't see them sending a shipment to the remnants... although times may be hard.. perhaps an evolution of the TIE design, which their shipyards are already geared for, or some new design from the Trade Federation (or some such)

 

Retrofitting TIEs to make them longer range (adding lightspeed capabilities, plus extra consumables) is probably way easier than retrofitting Star Destroyers to carry X-Wings or other fighterplanes, but both options are probably extremely expensive. If we are assuming that the Imperial Starfleet is running low on funds, I think its more likely that they would continue using the TIE fighterplanes they have now, just with new like strategies and junk focused on keeping the people and hardware intact.

 

Agreed... and something to note is that we aren't necessarily talking about a shortage of cash... its the supplies that the cash can buy that may be an issue. All things need maintenance... TIE fighters included. As the Alliance grows in ability, like any military campaign, one of its goals will be to take out the enemy supply lines. And, of course, the remnant forces will be focused on keeping them secure.

Take the example of Kuat, the legendary shipyard responsible for building the majority of the Imperial fleet. While Kuat did not sell solely to the Imperial navy, it was understandably a large amount of its business. Now if the Alliance somehow convinced Kuat to stop supplying the remnant forces, they would have to secure another avenue... or their ships would stop working in rather short order.

I think what you will find is that Alliance resources are going to increase while remnant ones decrease... and they have most likely reached some form of stasis where the remnants have secured what they can defend, and the Alliance is building its support and content to let the remnant exist for now, as long as they don't cause problems... but reaching that point probably took a lot of fighting and devastation...