Star Wars: TIE Fighter vs Vulture Droid (Legends Sources) - Spacedock Versus 

Two ships from the same IP this time. Don't worry, cross-universe stuff will keep happening, but sometimes there are two craft from the same franchise that make for an interesting comparison. :)

the argument that droids don't have the accuracy of a living being always bothered me, they should on the contrary be frighteningly accurate. I get that they are cheap, but even the most rudimentary targeting system should at least be able to equal the accuracy of a skilled living being. current real robots already outperform us in many tasks.

Vulture can wait in destroyed ships for a long time and is perfect for "mining" asteroid fields, crashed ships, can be used as a tank on surface or tunnels,... I just love them.

I find it ironic that the Empire shifted away from the starfighter doctrine to avoid people from remembering the swarms of vulture droid in the Clone Wars, yet produce a starfighter that is _only_ effective in swarm tactics.

I think the vulture, while having a tactical disadvantage, would most likely have better accuracy than the TIE, as it can correctly calculate laser travel times, lead angles, etc. Additionally, it would be cheaper to manufacture, as you said, the TIE has advanced avionics (which are very handy, but very expensive to mass produce). the fuel limit of the vulture is a severe issue though

I've always loved the design of the vulture droid. It's just so sleek and fast looking. The design screams "speed and maneuverability over armor". It's like the Mitsubishi Zero of the SW galaxy.

Actually in Legends, the TIE Fighter did face Vulture Droids in combat over Mustafar. But the Imperial forces in question were 501st Veterans, so they were experienced clones.

Droid tri-fighter vs A-wing, now that's the one I want to see.

I thought a vulture Droid costs 20000 credits than a 60000 credit tie fighter. That should've been mentioned as well. Basically credit for credit it be more like a 3 on 1 fight. With no great lose should the droids be destroyed where as losing a TIE pilot is a great and expensive loss on its own let alone the tie pilot

The Empire was quite stupid not to continue using droids as weapons. Especially things such as vulture droids.

It's strange that Star Wars droids are almost always inferior to humans at their task, where in real life a human pilot would have no chance against a autonomous drone with equal weapons.

I would more than accept the argument of the biological pilot. But I do not think that TIE pilots have ever really demonstrated tactical acumen. I think that although the droid pilot is incapable of abstract thought, its superior reflexes would make up for that against the average TIE pilot.

well, the 35 minute time limit for the vulture is quite the handycap as it also needs fuel to return, so it could only ever engage targets that are 17 minutes away. in a lot of scenarios than include obstacles, such as an asteroid field, a smart TIE pilot could avoid the droids until they hit bingo fuel and then strike while they are returning.

So in essence: Take the Tie's engines and lasers and strap them to a Vulture-Droid (rip out two of the blasters (at best the "walker-mode" blasters!) and the drive-system it uses) and you've got a great, cheap fighter...hell, tinker with the droid-brain a bit (make it adaptive like say IG-88 or HK-47) and you might get something that can challege most human pilots (except those on Rogue Squadron maybe and Jedi-Pilots!) ps: if you gave it shields, a hyperdrive and an integrated warhead-launcher then you would have something that can easily take on most known fighters (even the Tie-Defender!)

Interesting, so in terms of a straight up big star wars style space battle, where both sides just spam fighters at eachother untill capital ships get within shooting range. A swarm of Vulture droids would most likely be preferable. Their superior weapons loadout and the swarm focused dogfight combat of star wars would mitigate the advantage of any individual pilots creativity. Their light tank support ability also makes them seem preferable in a war for a planet, as they could be reassigned to any ground battle going badly from the space battle. But since the tie-fighter is cheaper, they could eventually outproduce any similarly powerful vulture droid producing group.

To expand on what you said, while the Vulture is superior in combat, the TIE is far better at other tasks while remaining a powerful ship in combat. TIEs were useful for patrolling, scouting etc and a live pilot could carry out more tasks than a droid. So, as you said, the TIE is a great general purpose ship, just what the empire needed.

Its funny how the droid army was probably equal or even superior to the empire in a lot of ways. The story writers probably don't think about technical evolution's between eras they just want to make a good story.

The TIE fighter has never made any sense to me. An intense and time consuming train up to put pilots in a craft with almost no field of view and marginal weapons. Even though it's said only the elite make it to be TIE pilots, other sources say a TIE pilot is considered a lucky veteran to make it back from their first combat sortie. Are they expendable chaff or well engineered fighters? and if the latter, why do aging X-Wings with marginal support facilities consistently mop the floor with them? I want to like StarWars spacecraft, but the theory and lore behind them all is just random as to the physics and capabilities of the universe. Ships just do whatever the plot demands.

Really, the only complaint against the Vulture droid I can hear is the engines, as the TIE’s ion engines are better for a fighter than the solid fuel pellets. That’s not much of a difference, but usable, there;s an easy fix: just install ion engines onto the droids. Also, I’m curious how the Legends-verse TIE-d droid fighter would stack up, considering it too has a droid brain and is slightly altered from the TIE.

“Production time and resource cost is far lower than the Vulture droid.” ExCUSe me? Vulture droids cost about a third in terms of credits and don’t need any pilots which no doubt cost a frightening amount to maintain and train, especially to the degree the imperials trained their pilots. Vulture droids would be far better for the way the empire used their starships, IE in swarm tactics, cause you can throw as many of them away as you like without wasting years worth of training with each pilot lost. Imperials are friggen dumbasses for throwing highly skilled pilots away in flying trash cans the the TIEs are.

Spaceball One vs. Eclipse SSD

Also remember, the organic pilot can be a disadvantage because it limits the maneuverability of the ship.

canon fodder vs canon fodder

I liked the part in the Thrawn Novel when they fight against Vulture droids. And then there was that mission in the OG Battlefront II where you fight Seps as the Empire on/over Mustafar.

hello I found the Vulture Droid 19,000 cerdits TIE fighter 60,000 cerdits so the price is 1/3 does not pilot training but the main blind man on fuel for a haf hours of flight, but that can be altered by prichicenim on the ship see episode III

I love this format. Thank you for making it :)

i love you videos Spacedock. your information is more accurate and used properly then other vs groups.

Vulture droids are ridiculously smart. They figured out how to form hives after the war, and there's an entire community of them living in the extreme orbit of a star somewhere. They're supposed to be able to out fly almost any pilot, and indeed, I can't think of any time in which a TIE managed to survive being attacked with missiles. There's really no comparison. I don't think the TIE Fighter stands a chance against the Vulture in any instance excepting particularly skilled, ace pilots. These things were able to throw down with clone pilots, who brought a life time of training and the blood of a highly competent mandalorian with them. Machine brains are usually superior to biological brains, and vulture droids which survived more than a few battles were given veteran paint jobs marking them as such. They are insanely hard to bring down (and I used one quite extensively in a star ships minis game back in the day). Droids learn very fast, making them hyper competent at their jobs. It's why no one can do R2's job better than R2, and why the IG Magna Guards after only weeks of training by Grievous were able to be a serious threat to jedi knights. Vulture Droids also can vector their thrust and LAND on objects in space, unlike a TIE Fighter. You'd be unlikely to see them crash in to asteroids as often as we see TIE Fighters doing this. Usually, when you see incompetent droids, they're hive minded like the B1's, where a single processor is splitting up its power between thousands of linked, lesser minds. Or they're not experienced droids, which most aren't due to mind wipes. So when you say the biological pilot is superior, what you're saying is a freshly forged droid's lack of experience and reliance on pre-programmed maneuvers won't be as good as a pilot with actual experience. This happens, but.. not as often as you think. Which is why B2 battle droids can throw down with your average Clone Trooper. A TIE Fighter is designed to swarm, defeat with numbers, and weed out the weak from the strong. They are weak on purpose. A Vulture Droid is designed for cost effectiveness. Efficiency is the word used with them. That alone should tell you which is better.

Thanks guys. Another great video keep up the great work

Please keep this Series going. It became my favorite Spaceship comparison or versus series ever.

Imperial TIE Interceptor (Star Wars) vs Wraith Dart (Stargate)

So I'm thinking a Vulture droid, upgraded with ion engines to back up their existing engine system, add a shield generator, and maybe have some of them remotely piloted from the command ship.

I think that something that should be taken into account is the tactics of the two fighters. While both are used to swarm enemy ships with little regard to their own safety, I think that a squadron of TIE fighters could have the chance to outthink and outmaneuver Vulture droids due to the training of the pilots. If you ever do continue these VS series between fighters or other ships, I think that this should be brought up.

Thanks for the closing comments, I was about to make an order of 500 Vulture droids for my fleet but you've convinced me to choose the Tie-Fighters instead! Alas! Now I'll have to train some pilots and that'll cost me credits. But well met friend, well met.

Anybody else think of the book Tarkin (Cannon)? In the opening chapters there's a battle between TIEs and Vulture Droids among others. The TIEs won in the end but it was an example of how it could play out.

Vulture vs BSG Cylon Raider. That would be cool match - both unmanned, very maneuvrable, and I would even dare say - somewhat similar crafts.

Oh my god YES. So happy you guys did another vs video 😁😭

4:34 Good. Have as much truth as you can. I applaud you sir.

This was very enjoyable and I found it truly fascinating but I do prefer the setup that was used for your first Versus episode. But keep up the awesome work!!

I snorted when I saw the title of the video, the vulture's gunna just kill the TIE Fighter in a space dogfight.

Never understand why expend so much in training pilots when they and their ships are made to work on swarm formations and sheer numbers and are clearly expendable. To use that a fighter that way it would be logical to have less trained pilots and less time consuming trainings. If you expend so much in training pilots, give them a tool that can make that investment worth.

I'm surprised that you did not consider the considerably smaller profile of the vulture droid compared to manned fighters.

The 1998 Star Wars Encyclopedia has an "acceleration compensator" entry, which says these are used in "medium- and larger-sized spacecraft such as the Millennium Falcon." Rogue squadron has the x-wing as the FIRST star-fighter, to be equipped with Inertial Dampeners, though they were set so the pilot could still feel the g forces, such that he wouldn't over-stress the ship. This, is very key, the Tie fighters LACKED any form of life support including... Acceleration Compensation limiting the fighters to the G-forces the pilots could sustain. They didn't even have artificial gravity. One needs to consider this... the vulture droid is limited to the structural limits of the fighter in a dog fight, while the pilot is limited to their own g tolerance.

The 501st in THQ's BF2 stated that combat against the fighters in their gear was nostalgic (implying that they enjoyed the combat) resulting in the easy destruction of Gizor Delso's droid military on Mustafar.

This is awesome!!! Hope you can do the Interceptor and Defender vs Droids.

When I analyze starwars militaries I always find myself concluding that a mix of droids and biotics would be the best strategy. The swarm strategy of battledroids offers the obvious advantage of numbers, but the lack of creative and adaptive problem solving makes them easily outstrategized. B1s will just stand in the open shooting until the target is dead or they're destroyed. Imagine how much they could accomplish if there was a person there to command them to take strategic fire possitions and cover. The same is true for space. If I were building a navy, the vulture droid would make up the bulk of my starfighter force. Deploying a swarm of vulture droids with primarily defensive missions, escorting my manned fighter squadrons and screening any fighters that attempt to engage the capital ship. The droid fighters are faster, more maneuverable and completely expendable. They could be programmed to throw themselves into the path of missiles to defend the more valuable assets. A fighter squadron could have 3 Xwings on an attack run, with a complement of 6 vulture droids. Every manned fighter with 2 automated wingmen. The vultures benefit from a command structure with creative problem solving allowing their superior aspects to shine. As this strategy continues the droids will move more firmly into the primary weapons platforms, while the manned ships prioritize shields and maneuverability. Perhaps a ship more like the arc 170, where the copilots quardinate their droid fighters squadrons, with the ship itself engaging in primarily defensive actions. If a brain ship is lost, it's contingent of droids seamlessly blends into the rest of the battle, either replacing another pilot's lost droids, or running independently on it's base programing. To me, droid swarms seem significantly more effective than point defense guns when it comes to keeping the enemy fighters away as well, seeing as they can engage enemy fighters outside of the point defense range. When you need cannon fodder, droids are the best bet.

I think overall the vulture is better for the Empire. As damaged vultures can be retrieved and cannibalised for parts and its versatility is far higher

I've always been surprised at what bad shots droids often are. I mean, it's mostly math and timing, a computer should be able to handle that pretty well.

Now an interesting one on one fight would either be a Tie Bomber vs Y-Wing, or a Tie Defender vs B-Wing.

Regarding the weapon layouts: Since a lot of SW space combat is directly based on WWII, maybe this analogy will be helpful. The center-mounted guns on the vulture would be the equivalent of the rifle-caliber MGs (7.62mm, for example) found on pre-WW2 designs (and quickly recognized as completely obsolete), while the wing-mounted guns would be roughly the equivalent of .50cal MGs. The TIE's guns on the other hand would be comparable to the 20mm autocannons that became more and more prominent as the war progressed.

great video! still waiting on the b wing!!

I love this. Please do more. My suggestion, Rebellion A-Wing vs Republic-Empire V-Wing.

7:32 It may be true that a TIE can be produced faster and cheaper than the Vulture, but it takes years to train a pilot and you have to feed and pay him

As great as this versus episode is SD. So far nothing has surpassed your first one when you pitted The Scimitar from Star Trek against Sovereign of Mass Effect.

Small correction. If i recall legends lore right, independent planets and organization and even individuals acquired number of vulture droids after the clone wars, from crashed Confederate ships, weapons stockpiles, repaired wrecks and so on. After that Empire pushed forwards and started to conquer those systems, so yes TIE fighters and Vulture droids have been in combat. Heck there might have been even canon sources to this in rebels, but i really cant remember for certain.

I like the new video structure by categories

One other area that the Vulture droids have an advantage over the TIE is if they are deployed on a "carrier" that is sacrificed in order to get the droids closer to the star destroyer. With out the munitions, it would be a challenge for them to board said ship and cause trouble. With munitions, especially the buzz droids, the Vultures could easily rip open the Imperial Carriers without much strain.

The Great Ship from Robert Reed's Great Ship series! It's bigger than Jupiter and fascinating!

Harrower Dreadnought vs Imperial Star Destroyer I or II.

TIE Fighters were meant to fight with TIE Bomber support, which would provide any needed additional ordinance.

we need more of these, (at least i miss them)

Twelve secs in, and I'm calling it now: that TIE is toast. Edit: Given the canon scenes of TIE pilots simply dying by asteroid or missing easy head-on jousting shots, I'm surprised the human component was the high point of the Fighter. But I was right. xD

Cylon Basestar vs Halcyon-class cruiser? A bunch of us had a huge debate in the comments about it during the last VS match. Would love to see it be taken to the screen.

That hexagon on the back of the tie is the ion engine output point and has lovers for thrust vectoring. Those solar panels power the weapons they ruder lock maneuvering in atmosphere, limit visibility and there lose means weapons don't work. All other tie variants use the same for the most part cockpit but you can't see out of that ether. in the movies rear windows are in the top hatch, the space behind the pilot is engine.

The empire had a good economy, so they could've just built so many of the Vultures, without being dependent on Pilots, [Training Time, Growth, supplies etc]

Despite the Tie being less expensive to produce than the Vulture on a one to one basis, I still get the impression that a faction using Vultures can afford to lose, and can more easily replace, larger numbers of them than a comparable faction using ties. While the Tie is cheaper than the Vulture, the pilot operating it is not... It's easy to replace AI, but very difficult to replace skilled pilots. If enough Ties are shot down the quality of pilots operating their replacements will continually decline... the replacement Vultures will always be just as potent as their predecessors.

Another one to think about is the Rebel Alliance A-Wing starfighter vs a Harvester Attack ship (then again, that is likely unfair on the Harvesters considering they got their arses kicked by 1996s Air Forces once the shields had been knocked out).

Vulture has missiles, it's unmanned and can be reconfigured. TIE is faster and has sun batteries as wings.

You forgot one major thing. Humans are prone to error in high stress situations while robots aren't really as interested in survivability or anything like that. So basically the droid can keep a cool head while human might freeze or make a mistake.

When you get a Battlefront 2 ad before hand :D

While I appreciate the low maintenance cost of TIEs, I wonder how much of that cost is off-set by the life support (and salary) required by the organic pilots. The production cost of TIE/LNs were 3x that of a vulture droid. As much as TIEs may have relied on swarm tactics, vulture droids are likely a better choice for the task.

Because TIE/LN and /IN didn't have shields, their missile countermeasures were quite good. They could jam the sensors or override the programming. Since the vulture droids relied so heavily on sensor readings, jammers would've been crippling.

Here's a good one: how about the Imperial Navy Voss-pattern Valkyrie vs. the D77H-TCI Pelican.

Id say that if a command ship were to command the vulture then the biological pilot of the tie fighter would be outmatched in creativity id say.

One thing about the buzz droids breaching the cockpit. When it comes to doing that to a tie fighter, it's pretty pointless considering the pilot wears a space suit since the cockpit of a tie doesn't afford much in the way of life support.

The CIS did fight with the Empire, kind of... pitting TIE fighters against the Vulture Droids. Gizor Delso and his mini-rebellion on Mustafar.

Star wars Battlefront 2 2006-version had the empire go to mustafar, and battled vulture droids in tie fighters

At 5:42 that image shows former CIS ships with Rebel Alliance markings. Not something you see very often.

I've always felt the TIE Fighter would have been better off as a remote controlled unit. The spend all this time training pilots only to put them in expendable ships. However if the pilots all flew the ships remotely from their base ship, they wouldn't die when defeated and could learn from their mistakes.

UNSC Infinity Vs USS Enterprise (Sovereign Class)

Well I can safely say that a lot of Vultures fell under my TIE fighter's blasters during the Mustafar space mission in the original battlefront 2 ;)

this reminds me of that mission on battlefront 2 were you go to kamino afther oder 66 I believe

Vengeance-Class Dreadnought (Star Trek: Into Darkness) versus and Imperial Star Destroyer (Star Wars). Madcat/Timberwolf (Battletech) versus AT-AT (Star Wars) (Planetside) Doomsday Machine (Star Trek) Versus Star Killer Base (Star Wars) Gunstar (The Last Starfighter) Versus Delta Flyer (ST: Voyager)

I want a vulture droid updated with empire tech. Aka destroy everyone else shockingly easily and cheaply.

now I want to know how a full fleet of Vulture droids would fare against a single Stardestroyer...

You know, if you take the twin engines, fuel tank and chin mounted guns and put those onto a vulture droid with some adaptive learning or a pilot's clone brain inside it similar to a cylon raider and you got quite a 'upgrade'.

The buzzdroid sequence is a lot of fun, but if those missiles had contained explosives, Obi-Wan would have been dead

Arc 170 vs droid tri fighter

Can you do stuff on the ARC 170 and the Naboo N1 starfighter next? I love those!

Is there any chance we could ever see a VS on Imperial Navy (WH40k) vs Imperial Fleet (star wars)

Well, technically, if you think of it - Tie is basically an adaptation of advantages of Vultures, driven by CW experience. Lightest possible piloted craft, configured specifically for a space superiority/intercept mission. And a good example of a proverb that militaries always prepare for the last war. Would've worked marvelously against both Republic and CIS. Not so much against the rebels, whose X-wings(with some Mary Sue tricks, of course) have essentially turned the table over. It's a shame that trilogies&prequels were so well thought through, yet thrown under the train for that we have now.

hey can you do a versus on the macross sdf-1 ship to a star destroyer.

From where is the picture at 5:34 ?

So, in other words, it's like the F-4 Phantom II vs the MiG-17 in Vietnam. The Phantom, by and large, was a much better plane with superior weaponry at far range, it wasn't really able to compete with the MiG at visual range until the late 60s, when guns and better flight training were implemented for both the Air Force and the Navy. The Phantom was also durable, although its ruggedness didn't really mean much when on the receiving end of a 37mm autocannon, as well as 2 23mm autocannons.

5:55 Where did you take that image from?

Styrofoam balls with 2 blinders welded to each side. lol.

The fact that droid can be controlled by central intelegence AI makes a swarm of vulture droids able to act as ONE unit and fight more effectively.

The 'fact'/lore explanation that the empire puts time consuming, best of the best TIE pilots on a manuervable yet cheap and fragile starfighter, which (I assume) lowers the chance of their survival after a battle against equally competent enemy force (compared to a starfighter that has higher chance of survival for the pilot), which in turn lowers the chance of pilots getting more experience and thus becoming even more skilled, always seemed like a huge contradiction and boggled my mind. Yeah yeah, I get it, you have stupendously massive resources and pool from which you can get new recruits from, but if those pilots were even better, you'll have easier time crushing the rebels! Space IJN at it's finest!

I agree completely

How about the following versus? 1. Vger vs narada 2. Long night of solace vs super star destroyer. 3. B wing vs tie defender 4. Death star vs beast planet(From shadow raiders) 5. Drej fortess vs mantle's approach 6. battlemoon(shadow raiders) vs death star 7. Leviathan(starcraft) vs ice bug(starship trooopers)