It seems to me the X wing was designed to go up against larger ships, thus the more spread out fire range. By that token though, TIE fighters should have pinpoint accuracy.
This is starwars the x wing was obviously designed with the idea that no one can aim so they spread the laser blast out as far as possible in hopes that since the point where the pilot thinks he is aiming will be the last place he actually is they bracket the actual aim point in hopes that one of the misses will intercept the target. Obviously this is related to the fatal flaw of the tie fighters since it's weapons are actually designed to hit where the pilot is actually aiming they will never hit anything. It is not actually bad design the engineers were just genre savvy enough to know what the rules of the universe were.
Don't they? It's just that their pilots don't have pinpoint aim. Don't forget, the clones of the Galactic Republic were FAR superior in combat than the conscripts of the Galactic Empire. I'd take a clone pilot in an ARC-170 over a conscripted pilot in a TIE any day. It's also fairly evident that the Rebellion had better pilots than the Empire too.
@@MKRocker2012 The Clones weren't as good I think, when they met someone like the Umbarans, they struggled suggesting they had limits to their fighting abilities. Once you took them out of the comfort zone of droids, the fight was very much in the air. Plus the Empire held on for 20 years, a good chunk of those without clones so I suspect the Imperial conscripts were a little more competent than supposed. Especially with Episode IV and V showing what they could do and Rogue One implying the Force is the only reason the protagonists survive.
Well the convergence thing with the cannons isn't a new problem. WW2 fighters had this issue, some were set straight ahead, others had a specific distance they met at with odd results if fired at further or closer distances to the target. Still for some fighters, the pilots are sitting on fuel / ammo right below the seat anyway, some jet fighter models have the fuel tanks passing fairly close, and others have the cannon and ammo being really close, same with some WW2 fighters and their ammo situation.
That convergence issue during WW2 was caused by the big spinny thing on the front of your plane that made you fly. Planes could have guns synchronized to the prop, but that puts limits on how many guns you can have in the propeller hub, and complicates feeding said guns as well. There is just no way you could fit 8 50 cals in the nose of a P-47. Funnily enough, that issue went away once we got jet engines and started placing them in the stern of the aircraft.
@@Chopstorm. yes and no. the so called "Unterbrechergetriebe" or in english synchronisation gear is functional for as many guns you like. the FW190a mounted 2 20mm cannons in the wings outside and 4 7.92mm MG´s inside the Propeller radius for example. US and UK figthers faced problems with nose or close to center line mounted weapons due to size and weight of said weapons and due to doctrinal issues. 8 .50cals bring alot more Kilos on the scales than a 20mm and 2 7.92mm. The US planes with nose mounted .50cals + cannon/s tended to be extremly noseheavy and sluggish in turns (for example the P39 and P63) UK and US doctrine was to use "small calliber" (up to .50cal) weapons to have more ammunition and have a higher chance of hitting the target due to "shotgun spread", while the germans early started the use of 20mm and larger cannons, due to the blast effect, resulting in significtantly lower carried ammunition, but the 20mm Minengeschoss (HEI-T) was able to rip a planes wing of with one hit.
And the convergence distance for each plane, and sometimes each pair of guns on a given plane, would be set by the ground crew tailored to an experienced pilot's preferences. While WW2 standard for fighter planes was around 400 yards, some commands went as far out as 1,000, and some pilots preferred close-in fights and set their convergence at 50-100 yards.
Bf 110 and the P-38 are really easy to shoot targets with because of their nose mounted gun package. Of course you need two offset engines for this. Timing belts were used of course on planes with cowl mounted MGs or wing root mounted cannons, but not having to interrupt your ROF is always better. The X-Wing has no excuse
about why wings separate, i would guess its so to better handle heat and or damage. Basicly if one cannon gets overheated/damaged, it wont disrupt the other one. Maybe. But the real answer is of course it looks mad cool as hell on ice.
Fun guess, since standing lore says the wings do that *specifically* to manage heat. Apparently that's the entire actual purpose for S-foils, now anyway. You and some writers think alike.
@@Pyre Ah, good to see the old brain is not entirely dead then ^^ not how heat discipation works in space though, but feck it, if i start that train imma gonna have to stop loving lightsabers. And there simply aint enough blaster-enthusiasts in the world to make that happen. But let just say Lightsabers are equally dumb irl. hmmm now im curious how long it would take a lighhtsaber to melt if activated in a vaccum...
Exactly. I only recently heard that explanation about splitting the mass of the two engines for cooling. It seems an obvious retcon and the real reason is just cuz it looks cool.
if i remember my lore right one of the reason for why the wings split was to aid cooling for the weapons. the wings themselves contain cooling systems and the cannons are overpowered (mostly due to their rather long for a fighter craft effective range along side raw damage potential) and thus produce a lot of heat (depending on the firing mode as you can alter that traditional its single cannon at a time rapid cycling, in pairs (top left and bottom right then the other pair) or fire all at once). the long nose contains the sensor, ECM, and main targeting computer systems (yes the X-Wing is supposed to have some kind of electronic countermeasures) as well as the torp launchers and other systems. the rear of the fighter is mostly the main power generator and Hyperspace generator.
You are correct, sir. The purpose of the Strike Foils was to separate the Laser Cannons (at the time of inception, the most powerful to date on a starfighter) from the fuselage and to sink and dissipate the heat generated by those cannons off into space without raising the temperature of the cockpit since the X-Wing has a life support system (the reason the TIE Fighter doesn't have an environmental cockpit and instead relies on pilot-contained life support is that heat dissipation from the laser Cannons becomes much less of a concern if the pilot sits in a vacuum because the heat is much harder to transfer to the pilot.)
@@digitalis2977 Then move the cockpit forward, switch the engined and lasers, slap some heatsinks near the lasers, and if you want to decrease the heat, depressurise the cabin and use those masks that modern pilots use. I may be wrong.
Thinking about it: Having radiators on the inside of the wings doesn't make much sense. They'll mostly heat up themselves since there is no air in space. So only cooling by radiating is an option. :-D
This makes sense in atmosphere, but zero sense in space. Granted, in Star Wars I think space might low-key have an atmosphere that nobody ever talks about out of embarrassment, so who knows
@@postsingluarity6159 They HAVE "heatsinks near the lasers." They're called Strike Foils. The Laser Cannons are specifically separated from the fuselage of the Z-95, ARC-170, and T-65 by the S-Foils to prevent thermal conductance from transferring heat and interfering with necessary systems. The whole point was to allow for laser cannons so powerful as to provide for One-Shot Kills against other fighter craft and to mount weaponry capable of damaging Capital Ship armor and systems instead of the lower-power rapid-fire fuselage-mounted cannons traditionally used by previous starfighters that required numerous, on-target strikes to be effective.
Parallax and convergence is something WWII fighters dealt with. Fighters had their convergence distances set to the tastes of the pilot. By using tracers, they could adjust the position of the aircraft to walk their machine guns onto the target. The bolts of energy the X-Wing fires glow like tracers... as Star Wars combat parodies WWII purposely... the parallax thing makes sense. Oh.. and to point out, all rifles, especially those with scopes deal with parallax all day.
Uh, actually, the little bulb on the nose of the X-Wing is a deposit of Spermaceti to help with buoyancy and using sonar clicks to find the targetting range for the laser cannons xD
Referring to the original X-Wing game, I cannot tell you how many times I missed a tie fighter, because it was straight in front of my X-Wing! The Y-Wing was better, because its two laser cannons were close together.
Having spent a number of hours playing Star Wars: X-Wing, I understand your consternation; however, as someone who discovered that spinning the stick would let me plug every shot into the same spot - it's worse than you can imagine. But damn if it wasn't easier to aim with than a B-Wing.
That's a low, low bar: _everything_ was easier to aim with than the B-Wing. But yes, the problems with aiming the cannons were a major reason why, when the old LucasArts sims gave me a choice, I preferred the A-Wing and Y-Wing (for hunting capital ships) to the X-Wing and B-Wing.
Let's be perfectly honest: ALL Star Wars ship designs are visually interesting and iconic on screen, but extremely senseless and impractical from an engineering and practicability stand point.
Also is star wars lore, space is not a true vacuum, it is filled with a weird clear pseudo fluid, hence why fighters move like they are in atmo and not a vacuum, perhaps tied to the force, also hyperspace loops in on itself at the galaxy edge preventing hyperspce FTL from leaving the galaxy which is what made the vong in part special because they were able to cross the galactic boundary even if they did so from the outside
I'd go one further and say that with a few exceptions (like the ships in "The Expanse") most spacecraft in science fiction series make little sense from an engineering standpoint. One of their worst flaws is that their decks are parallel to the direction of motion. Thus when a ship accelerates forward or decellerates, there are acceleration forces acting on everything inside the ship. Any unsecured object has the potential of becoming a projectile. Not good!
@@darwinskeeper421 Yeah, but most are even completely useless for their stated purpose by their layout, internal spacing and general size. Star Wars ships in particular. All visually interesting shapes, but no room for the actual important stuff on the inside. And everything is in the wrong place, especially from a tactical and practical perspective.
Their love of enormous, frail, senseless tumors on capital ships and smaller and massive S-foils on anything smaller than a freighter drives me nuts. Huge bullet magnets that offer extremely limited internal volume and no clear operational advantage. The Mandalorian 'fighter' that's actually a thirty passenger shuttle centered in about an acre of 'wing' is another example. If the proportions weren't so cartoonishly dogshit it could have been an awesome design, instead they call it a fighter but it's clearly in a fashion show against the Lambda.
@@idminister see, that's all that retcon garbage that tries to explain ever little inconsistency in star wars and just ruins it. It's trying to fix science fantasy to make it science fiction. Just watch star trek if you want sci-fi.
Out of all the "good-guy" fightercraft from the films, the most sensible design keeps standing out for me as the Naboo N-1. Twin engines, centerline proton torpedo launcher, close-set twin guns ahead of the cockpit as the Force intended, and even an astromech socket for the especially suicidal or combat effective R-series whistlers. The Prequel trilogy did some things in our time but the N-1 and the LAAT were some of the good ones. I'm also forgetting the Y-Wing, one of the Originals, and an even more multi-role ship thanks to it's ion cannons, onboard hyperdrive, and multiple heavy ordinances to choose from.
The look down targeting, the lack of output for its sensors, visual tracking with a cockpit that deep in the plane and no rear sightlines. Video games had to add all those thing to make the thing fightable.
I never really got what benefit the adjustable wings provided. The only thing I can think of is that the X-wing was inspired by the F-14 Tomcat and it's variable-swept wing feature since the F-14 was kind of hot, new fighter jet around during Episode IV's development and release. Hell, the X-wing even has the same 'steel gray with white and red accents' color scheme that a lot of the F-14's had.
Can attest to the issues of the spaced guns. X-wing alliance they had 3 fire modes, 1 at a time, all 4 at once, and pairs. The pairs were diagonally opposite too. So neat note is an average Tie with no shields took exactly 2 shots to blow away, so twin linked fire was easily the most efficient firing method. The distance between the guns though did mean if I wasn't perfectly lined up/rotated 1 would often miss, took a lot of practice to compensate.
The Torpedo storage put’s me in mind to the WW! British built BEc2, that had a fuel tank between the pilot and the observer in a two seater plane. Oh, and the observer was infront of the pilot.
Ok Jeremy, the Rebel Alliance has come asking for an all purpose fighter that can do hit and run attacks on a galactic scale. And the Empire has cheesed my onions too much recently, so I've gone all in on this. I have worked flat out to create an extremely fast, reliable craft that can fight a war, fly across the galaxy, smash into a swamp, stay under bogwater for weeks, and then fly out across the galaxy again with no issues. I have striven to add shields, powerful weapons and repair kits that make this ship so much better than TIE fighters that I suspect one decent pilot can murder several hundred TIEs easily. Ok. What do you want me to do? Just come up with a name. Have a look at the design, and come back later with some ideas. DO NOT TOUCH ANYTHING! ... I hate you Jeremy.
The wings on the ship are actually used for ground combat and as melee weapons when ether there is nothing to shoot with, or when the ship is destroyed the pilots can use them as melee weapons. As for when it functions, just imagine lancing but with eagles against mice on the ground and the lance is just the top of the wings. Kinda like that one movie where a psychopath killed a kid using a engine thruster and fuck’n cremated them in space- Alien, I just remembered the name. Much less the other movie Ridick where a bunch of crippled and blind people were murdered in a similar way They’re just psychopaths man
I see it as more of a broadside or shotgun approach, maybe even a punt gun. Its supposed to be inaccurate since you are counting on a volley of rapid fire to confuse and make dodging harder.
Oh Lord I remember this when actually playing X Wing the video game back in the early 90s. You know what is far far worse? Flying a Tie fighter with no parallax but also no shields! Or a B Wing! Lord save me from flying a B Wing.
Never understood why the X-Wings armaments were reversed. The torpedoes should have been wing mounted on hard points, and the guns should have been recessed inside the fuselage. For that matter, the engines, droid, and other sensitive hardware should have been protected by armor if possible.
Personally always didn't like the X-Wing either but i recall reading that in lore the spreading of the guns like so actually helped accuracy... I can only assume this is because all the pilots were terrible and having more random error helped them hit.
There's actually a really good purpose for a dedicated star fighter to have wings. Its to mount weapons particularly missiles. That way they don't have to be stored right under the pilot and since the wings don't matter in space once you've fired the missles you could ditch them if you really wanted to.
Totally true! Oddly it's for all these reasons that make it iconic and beautiful. ... but it looks really good on screen in a space fight, or in model format. And it makes the little kid in me go "YAY!" regardless. Similar problems plague other iconic ship favorites of mine such as the Space Battleship Yamato.
New to this channel but absolutely loving it. Also, and I definitely mean it as a compliment, but you sound like Nelix from Voyager. Makes it so much more entertaining to picture Nelix working at a shipyard and brutally shitting on horrible starship design, all the while cussing up a storm😂. Love the channel man, keep up the awesome work
I'm a little surprised you didn't point out that if the R2 can be lifted from the ground, why is its head stuck out of the body, exposed and vulnerable...
btw, gun convergence point is an actual thing even on actual planes... or at least it used to be in WW2. and yes, that point could and would be calibrated and re-calibrated partially based on the mission and expected enemies, and partially based on pilot's preferences. but that changes nothing about the fact that x-wing is a horrible design =D
I've read that the mustang pilots did that. some had the guns converge to a single point and some had them more spread out to almost a shotgun-like effect
I feel he might like the A wing and Y wing slightly more...and hate the B-wing with an undying passion. Also, since he missed it, the A-wing has the hyper drive computer built in too (no astromech).
The engines are just completely exposed which looks fun, but also leaves them completely exposed to enemy fire. Some people may think it's good thing for reducing mass, and it sure is. I dare say though that if you reduce mass so hard a single blast from energy weapon/laser will cripple your ship, you probably messed up somewhere. Even in WWII armor began to be presented on important bits of aircraft to keep them going longer. Not to mention that as a ship designed to fly in the atmosphere X wings aerodynamics are not very cash money. You may have better time with a flat plate wide side against the atmosphere than with the X wing.
Hey Cow, I gotta suggestion for ya if you have time: look at the 'star fighters' of the Imperium from 40k (not much lore, but there's stats to use at least).
Many a styrene model kit was bashed to make the SW miniatures, the fuselage of the X-wing came from the body of a top fuel dragster. Long, skinny, lean and mean, it made up in attitude for what it lacked in practicality.
I think the cannons on the x-wing are gimballed so they can be adjusted but as i said before in the b-wing video S-foils are designed to vent heat. actually the x-wing doesn't require an astromech it's just a backup. I'm pretty sure th newer x-wing also has 4 engines they just look like 2, but correct me if I'm wrong.
If you're going to have a cockpit rather than just some sort of control room, then it would be nice if the x-wing didn't have terrible visibility from the cockpit. At the beginning of WW2 most fighters had terrible visibility like this, but by the end, nearly all of them had bubble cockpits so the pilots could, you know, see out. Just try and check your six on this thing and see how far you get. In any kind of dogfight, the pilot would be dead meat within minutes.
I am going to argue for the x-wing. Firstly, compromises were made, and the x-wing as it looks is supposed to function in a realistic physics, but the movie shows magic motion because thats what makes movies exciting. So, the range it fires at is often very far. You dont need large thrusters because using thrust vectoring you can point the ship just like todays rockets. You DO expand the target area because hitting something in space at those ranges is really hard. It doesnt actually have shields, thats movie magic, it doesnt actually hover, thats movie magic,, but it DOES fly in atmospheres, and thats why its wings.it doesnt need wings to fly, its engines have tons of power, but in atmospheres, it needs to point its nose and shoot regardless of momentum, so the blocky wings will allow it to pull up and change vector high-g, but still let it break free of the foils to shoot laterally while drifting on inertia. Finally, how does it land without magic hover?? Easy! If you are blasting along, and you flip backwards and use your engines to come to a stop right above a pad, you should be able to plop right down at the apex of your breaking burn.
movie magic = deflector shields creates it's aerodynamics for atmosphere flight. movie magic = magnetic gravity repulsors gives it vertical take off/ landing. movie magic = Xwing turbine intakes cools the engines in atmosphere as they make electricity to charge the fighters weapon systems. Along with compressing the air charging it into plasma.
The two cents of an armchair general ^^ - The blasters are fixed to the wings but the cannon nozzles do have variable firing angles to a limited degree. This is shown in many time in universe, either the films or other media, that the blaster shots do adjust to the targeted enemy. It also explains why all fighters seemingly need a omputer target lock to accuratly hit their opponents. - The insides of the wings actually hide additional heat radiators, thus extending the wings increases the ships cooling and allows the fighter to perform longer. Funnily enough, its one of the few fighters in Sci-fi that does put consideration towards heat build-up. Space being a great insulator and all. - Astromech droids can actually jump out of their cradles if need be. R2 did that back on Dagobah after Luke crashed his X-Wing. Id wager its not done under regular circumstances out of fear of damaging the valuable droids. Speaking of which... - Id say the reason the X-Wing doesnt have a built-in hyperspace navi computer is because the tech is probably expensive as fuck. And the last thing a rebel group needs is unnecessary expenses when building their own equipment. Stealing Astromechs streight from the production line is probably a whole lot cheaper (think, it fell off the back of a freighter ^^) - Honestly, if a blasterbolt manages to directly hit the torpedo magazine, its probably strong enough to blow up the whole ship in the first place. Funny side note: The design for the T-70 series X-Wing is based on concept art for "A New Hope". ^^
At least Sienar Fleet Systems was smart enough in the TIE fighter's development to mount the guns right up under the cockpit and up front for a nice, tight 2 shot blast that isn't 20 feet apart. The only thing I can give the X wing a plus on is its independence from a capital ship by having a hyper drive. But the TIE isn't by any means bad as it fits the imperial doctrine using star Destroyer mother ships to launch an assault from. Besides like the Mon Calamari Star Cruiser the Rebellion didn't have much in the way of large fleets of capital ships/mother ships so having independent fighters/bombers that could jump to light speed on their own without docking to a mothership for transport isn't a bad thing especially for rag tag guerrilla fighters needing to hit and run to make much of a impact.
Based on what I've seen on screen the lasers don't converge. They lock onto a tie fighter line of sight wise, and spray. The parallax error is compensated by the volume and dispersion of the bolts fired. If you played world of tanks or war thunder you'd know that aimed shots land within a certain target zone based on the range, they don't go straight at where the gunsight is pointed.
It looked cool but in the old X-wing video game if I got in close to a tie fighter I would shoot around it. I preferred the A or Y wings in dogfighting.
Also how do those half-turbine engine things turn now? The angle of the blades clearly indicates it's supposed to spin in a circle, but spin where? It's blocked off!
I don't think a pilot who is happy to get into a space ship in just an atmospheric flight suit and and open face helmet under I big flat piece of glass has the sense to worry about whether straddling a torpedo is a good or bad idea. They hand picked these guys. They saw Luke coming and strapped him right in. Deck commander:"Hey kid can you fly a star fighter?" Luke: 'Of course I can. I used to shoot womprats in my dinky little airspeeder back home..." Deck commander:"But you never flew into space?" Luke: "I'm the best star pilot in the galaxy and...." Deck commander:"Great kid you'll do. Hey Bob, you don't have to fly today, this kids taking your place." Bob: "Dang what idiot did you find to... oh your're right here?" Luke: "Woohoo! Now this is womprat stomping'!" Bob the pilot: "Sweet... He's got thumbs and everything... You got another astromec kid? Mines worked out the mortality rate for droids and won't get on the lift." R2 "Bleep bloop doop (Oh for F*&^ sake....)
Convergence was actually mentioned in the first Rouge Squadron book by Michael Stackbole, Wedge Antillies had Corran Horn’s weapons zeroed for close range when he was actually running a ground attack scenario and Horn complained about it, thus getting chewed out by Wedge.
I remember. They set the convergence for around 1-2000 meters so they could attack ground/station surface targets during strafing runs. As the books focused on dogfighting they dialled it back to 250 meters on account that ship's flying tend to vary their distances more and one flying at you needed a closer convergence point to deal with incoming fighters where the closer it is, the more accurate the shots will be.
This retooling was also done at base, which would indicate that they cannot be reset mid-mission. So, yeah. One convergence point, and aiming at anything not at that point is going to be nearly impossible.
@@Skyblade12 weeeell... Not really. You just have to offset your fire... However that means only one Canon can effectively hit a target, assuming the pilot is not ineffective in placing the shot which the firing rate will effect. Single, dual of quad fire of which only one Canon can realistically target at close range... Not impossible but it means not relying on the targeting system and shooting from the hip.
@@davfree9732 Might not be impossible then but it sure as hell is not effective or efficient. If those same cannons were placed in or even on the sides of the nose and pointed forward it would be 200% more effective at least.
The X-Wing would be so much better if its engines and weapons swapped positions. Of course, it would then be a Starfury. Actually, the Thunderbolt Starfury looks to me to be a much better take on this aethetic style.
@@tedarcher9120 Not normally a problem with space fighter, 1-2 significant hits generally kill them anyway if they are realistic and not covered in plot armour.
@@tedarcher9120 That would still be true even in their current positions, in atmosphere you can use aerodynamics to compensate for offset thrust but in vacuum you need them balanced even when closer in, thrust vectoring and attitude thrusters could compensate to some degree but you'd lose so much manoeuvrability you'd have to retire from the battle anyway if you could survive it but losing an engine in a dog fight against other fighters would most likely prove fatal anyway.
With regards to the turbines, they may not be actual turbines at all. Some real world jet engines have similar looking devices on the front, but they actually non-rotating slats, fixed in position but able adjust their pitch, to regulate the amount of air coming in through the intake. Sort like Venetian blinds in a radial arrangement. Such a system could actually be split in half like we see in the sequels and still work just fine since the blades aren't actually spinning around the central axis (of course, the main reason to arrange them in that manner in the first place is because you want to fit it right in front of a turbine that _can't_ be divided in half, so still kind of a silly design).
The attack configuration makes a lot more sense if you're attacking large targets like cruisers and capital ships... So does the armament. Boom and zoom strafing runs with twice the primary firepower of your typical starfighter to whittle away at shields and then save the torpedos for exposed hard-points. That seems like a workable plan.
Still nose gun apraouch be better. Unguidet wepons close to the pilot line of sight as posible. Guidet on wing tip jus like modern fighter. Even WW2 prop fighters dont put guns on tip of the wings but as close to the fuselage as posiible.
So why do they have bombers then and who fills the role of protecting them while they attack the bigger target and if they extend their wings it would be a bit more easy to hit them in the wings
@@Assassin5671000 Specialized fighters are usually really good at the thing they're specialized for and absolutely horrible at everything else. Y-wings are great at tanking damage and blowing stuff up, but get pretty much wiped out in dogfights. A-wings, in contrast, are excellent interceptors but their small frame and light shielding makes them glass cannons. The concept behind the x-wing was to be a versatile multirole platform capable of doing a number of tasks just adequately enough. I'd almost agree with your comment about extending the wings if it weren't for the large gap of empty space between them. Also, separating the engines adds to survivability. It's literally how Wedge was able to survive Vader's attack and limp home during the Battle of Yavin.
@@Atoronz But if they fight in atmosphere just blowing off one of the wings means the x-wing falls ,not so much in space except that it loses a 1/4 of it's firepower and even if it can go and attack bigger targets I don't think those 4 little guns would do much damage maybe some turrets would get destroyed
Playing Devil's advocate, parallax error aside, Star citizen taught me that having the weapons somewhat spaced out makes it much easier to get hits on target *if* you have a fast firing weapon that, as you said, saturates an area of space by volume of fire. It makes it very hard for an (usually unshielded, in the case of the Empire) enemy starfighter to thread the needle between what is effectively a wide continuous stream of laser cannon bolts coming straight at them. Of course, since Star Citizen made even fixed weapons gimbal slightly to compensate this effect is a little harder to observe. But taken from that perspective the spacing between x wing guns isn't so egregious.
4:40 Even splitting the wings, with actuators you still only need one axis of freedom to bring the weapons onto the flight axis because the centre of the wing crosses about the centre point of the axis of the craft • It's not to hard to fix this problem with servos, the AH64 uses hydraulic azimuth and elevation servos running at around 3000PSI driven by 1960-70's computers to deliver area of effect fire 1-2km away. It's easy with real technology to resolve the convergence issue. My beef is *why* do the weapon systems have to be out there? But please, don't take this as negative against yourself; you're very entertaining 💚
The official reason for the wing tip weapons is heat dissipation. The X-Wing had some of the most powerful fighter guns for its time. The wings were heat sinks and the distance to the cockpit kept the pilot below boiling temperature.
The guns are powerful yes which help them defeat armor and shields but they were on access points far away from the center line to help defeat the deflectors on the shield systems. Yes I'm a hyper nerd and I remember that Star wars has two shield systems one that pushes objects off of it one that absorbs the impact
@@janniszimbalski6652 still doesn't make sense... If you have active cooling, it doesn't matter where the heat source is, just where the cooling fins are. So you could have the oversized heat sink wings with the weapons closer to the body without any problem. Plus if you lose a wing due to the larger target area, all you've lost is sustained-fire potential. You can still fire all 4 guns when you need it, they just need longer to cool off due to the lost radiator area. To keep the pilot from boiling, add some silvered surfaces and leave a tiny vacuum gap between the gun pods and the fuselage.
I think I have a relatively good theory for all of Incoms designs, if they were actual designs and not just a prop maker coming up with something that he thought looked cool. The chief engineer was originally a propulsion and maneuvering engineer. He literally gave them anything they wanted, because he understood it. Everything else tumbles along from that. You've seen this in real life designs of fighters throughout the history of fighter aircraft. I could walk through the design process that would give you a ship that would look like the X-wing given these cases, but I doubt anyone cares all that much.
I don't know, sounds like a good read to me...🤔 Then again, I like reading about people trying to make sense of a fantasy craft using real world physics and engineering and assuming as little "magic" future tech as possible.
Nah the actual reason is that since no one in the star wars universe can aim they decided that putting the weapons in a configuration that would cause a marksman to miss means that all the terrible shots from the pilot will hit instead. Since every pilot misses all his shots by 6 feet the big brain play is to put the actual aimpoint of the weapons 6 feet to away from where the gun sight shows and all the misses will hit.
Actually, no, there are people interested. I too, wanna know how would you justify an X-wing to the high-ups and how you could possibly end up with it. And i suppose the Venator was designed and justified similarly so its two birds with one stone. How i see it right now is they are both good on paper and that's the only reason. "It has 4 cannons and a proton torpedoes and is still a starfighter." and "8 giant turrets + giant starfighter core capable of almost instant deployment" both sound great, right? And the ones making orders aren't really the generals but senators and government officials, and they don't know how to war.
Built a model of this p.o.s. as a youngster. I remember thinking, "Good God! The Rebels had to be really damn desperate to use this p.o.s." As far as the "new" Xwing went, it did the same thing the new movies did. Namely, subverted our expectation that it wouldn't totally suck.
Considering the level of computer technology ( they have self propelled A.I.s wandering around) couldn’t there be micro motors keyed to the weapons and targeting computers I know it adds complexity and you hate complexities , but since we don’t live in the star wars universe so we don’t know if it’s a minor thing that just works or what yes if the rebellion had brains to match their pluck they would be using SA-23Es instead of T-65s or something inspired by SA-23Es . If you are going to conduct analysis on what something is you have to ask why would someone use something if it has the flaws you attribute to it . Example why does most of the empire’s equipment cheep garbage? Because the empire doesn’t really care about individuals it’s overwhelming numbers they rely on, the standard galactic citizen doesn’t know that storm trooper armor is only really good against thrown rocks and shrapnel, they don’t know that stormtrooper marksmanship is mostly propaganda, they know that there are some 100, 000 of these guys on their planet. Now why are AT-ATs top heavy? it’s pretty hard to bring one down it’s short legged republic predecessor could be stopped by barriers and you yourself pointed out how repulsor lift tanks are basically 60+ ton pool balls. Love the righteous anger towards stuff in your videos 👍👍👍
I admit it has been a while since I watch Bab 5, but weren't the Starfury's thruster based? And I don't recall if they were jump capable. But I have to agree that George Lucas wanted WW2 dogfights in space. And he designed the ships accordingly. Ugly Imperial fighters versus sleek Rebel fighters that had no limitations. My biggest hang up with fighter designs in space is the very cramped quarters. In theory even with FTL capability you could be in that fighter for days. One thing that can be said about the Imperial Fighters. In a pinch you could at least move around a bit and shift positions. The X-wing ... it was as snug as a coffin. I've even wondered if flight suits served two purposes. One, to take gravitational pressure off the pilot when in fighting in gravitational space and two to maintain bodily functions for the pilot. Those mechanical devices strapped to the chest of every X-wing and Tie fighter pilot served some intended purpose after all.
Funny enough, the TIE fighter is a better design, despite the stupid heat sinks. A TIE fighter can shoot accurately at a target in front of it as long as that target is in front, the X-Wing requires the target to be in front and also at a specific range. Based on that, in real non plot armour combat, the TIE fighter would be more effective and win more often.
@@Ishlacorrin That's not true of the WW2 aircraft these ships were inspired by. In real life, converging wing guns vs. non-converging nose guns makes a negligible difference in how effective an aircraft is. Flight performance is almost everything; the type of weapons carried does matter but the location of those weapons is nearly irrelevant provided the pilots know how to use them properly.
@@katherinespezia4609 You know that the Fighter of WW2 did not have converging guns for the most part right? They all fires forward because each plane was so flimsy that any half decent hit was enough. It's also true that the most effective fighters of WW2 had central mounted weapons, not the wide wing mounted ones.
@@katherinespezia4609 In WW2 however, the tactic was not to zone in. Just spray in the general area and will eventually start hitting it, they were aimed fully forward.
Thank you for verbalising all the issues I always had with this beautiful craft. I love it, I love Star Wars but the engineer in me wants to scream my head off.
That seems to be the main design aesthetic for most Sci-Fi fighter craft, "If it looks cool while doing it's job, who cares if it can actually do the job?" It's only when they are based on war proven vehicles do these fighters actually have a snowball's chance of surviving a dog fight, let alone a battle. (Think the human fighters from the later Stargate series. Can't recall their name atm.)
4:45 for convergence, the 4 guns only need to rotate on the plane of their wings, so the problem is still 2 dimensional (you can see it a 2 fighters superposed on one another and rotated a bit)
No argument here, there’s plenty of good reasons we never had wingtip mounted weapons. Drag (yes mostly a non-issue for the x-wing), but the worst offender is the convergence, what an actual nightmare. The A-wing design is far superior, low silhouette, high maneuverability, and guns mounted along the body that have traverse.
Well, we didn‘t have wing *tip* mounted guns, but many WW2 planes did have wing mounted guns and had to deal with the same problem. And it was also 2 dimensional for them because of bullet drop. Of course it was phased out over time because of that problem, but we did have it. :)
I actually would prefer something like the Z-95 Headhunter. Just put the guns in the body and put mounts on the wings for missiles. Was actually how I went about a concept for an upgrade used by the New Republic called the Z-100 Headhunter.
@@robertharris6092 All missiles are single launch by nature and missiles go through shields in star wars anyways. Shields only stop the laser fire. Only the larger ships have shields that can stop kinetic weapons and those usually are only on during travel as it prevents the weapons from shooting out of the shields.
After playing star wars squadrons the real issue with all star wars ships is visibility. The cockpit being fixed into the fuselage means that there are no fighters with a rearview and only a few have a tiny useless window at the rear. If there were more advanced sensors of some kind it might not be an issue but the only sensors are forward radar.
In terms of the armament, wouldn't it make sense to swap the positions of the guns and torpedoes? In other words, move the laser cannons to the nose (shortened) and then put the torpedoes on the wings. It's a start...
That's a classic misconception. Spherical/cubic ships are significantly impractical and implausible designs for a number of reasons, more than enough so to offset the potential advantages of such a shape in the vast majority of cases.
Actually this was a problem in the X-Wing game from the 1990s, too, and was the reason why I vastly preferred the Y-Wing to the X-Wing even though the X-Wing's stats were the most balanced: you had to shimmy your ship around slightly to make sure all of your lasers were aiming correctly. With the Y- and A-Wings aiming was much easier.
Because it looks cool. Back in the 90s someone tried tell me the lasers on the X- wing are zeroed at 250 meters. That means you don't aim at the target you herd the target into the lasers.
all they had to do was put the engines on these massive perfect levers for star fighting, and then put the guns next to the pilot. Suddenly you have a faster turning ship, with better gun placement! Yay!
When five year old me is puzzled by the weapons placement, you know it's more than a little off. That said, the separating wings is for cooling. My design would be to have the four where they are for capital ship engagement, but also add a pair of cannons directly in front of the pilot, either on either side of or poking through the sensor bulb on the nose and a rear turret. The rear turret could be AI or squishy powered. Either way, more dakka.
I agree. I was 11 when SW first hit theatres and I noticed the problems with the weapons and engines. I just didn't have the math or science to know the terminology. Maybe it was all the time I spent going over Jane's Aircraft summaries in my old man's Air Force Almanac.
@@chrismanaloe3507 Growing up around the US Air Force, and I didn't have anything leak in thru osmosis (metaphorically speaking)? Also, the educational system hadn't totally failed in the 70s. Plus, I grew up reading Encyclopedias for fun, as well as Science Fiction. Much of it Hard or at least semi hard [insert Matt "Context" Easten meme here] (Asimov, Niven, Heinlein). I was that type of nerd.
@@chrismanaloe3507 Dude, just because you didn't notice doesn't mean others didn't either. Everyone sees something different. For instance, I hadn't noticed that the new X-Wing split its intake*; yet I was a 39 year old Engineering Student at the time. *This makes more sense than it may first appear. If the actual engine is more powerful than the older version, it would need a bigger intake. And, as we see in planes like the Concord and numerous jet fighters, said intake doesn't necessarily need to be symmetrical, much less round. Still a head-scratcher. They would have been better off improving weapons placement, since the OG X-Wing was already fast and agile.
The real-world reason for the X-wing's huge nose, incidentally was George Lucas' love of WW2 air combat movies. The X-wing was loosely based on the Spitfire. Great interceptor, but had a notoriously long nose. You had to swing the plane from left to right while taxiing, because the pilot couldn't see the runway over that long front end
This reminds me of the WWII Spifire and Hurricane fighters. Both initially had 8 machine guns in the wings, but the Spifire's were spread all over the wing, while the Hurricane's were clustered in one spot, closer inside. This was one of the reasons the Hurrican was considered a better & more acurate gun platform.
I play games where you build ships. Space Engineers, Star Made, and such. And I tend to always make guns clustered together. Makes it eayser to hit stuff. Only time I designed something with guns further apart was if the ship was meant to go after a large target, and the weapons are normally explosive.
I could kind of see a variation of the standard design where the weapons and sensors switched positions so the tip of each wing would have a small sensor pod and when they opened up the wings that would spread the sensor packages out a little more for better targeting information.
This is actually a long standing problem in fighter design. The decision is generally to either align them to the axis of the craft and just line your pilot up with a targeting reticle and the shots all stay spread out, or you aim the guns to converge at a set point in front of the fighter. In the first case you assume that either what you are aiming at is big enough to exceed the size of that pattern or lightly armored enough to not need to hit it with every shot to do enough damage. In the second case you have a very intense amount of fire hitting that designated range, and by the geometry of those lines of fire then diverge beyond that point, effectively limiting the maximum effective range of those weapons. It increases the effectiveness at or near that convergence point, but severely limits it at any longer range. In space combat where maximum engagement ranges can be literally astronomical the range limit would be a severe problem, so I'd side with a fixed parallel line of fire. They expect to be facing primarily TIE variants which are notable poor on durability, so less hits and a wider field of fire is a fair compromise. I would however have at least some shots near the center of that pattern as well.
Gun convergence was entertaining in the pc games. In the original X-Wing and TIE Fighter games, the guns had no convergence at all and only fired straight forward. X-Wing Alliance introduced auto-convergence but there was one ship excluded from that, the Z-95 Headhunter. In that game the Z-95 had manual convergence adjustment.
Yeah, I’m late to the party… First, I always considered that the four guns shoot directly forward, and did not need to deal with parallax. Spinning the ship (which, apparently, is a good trick) maximises the number of hits from each emplacement. Standard tactics, I believe, were to extend the S-foils, start your attack run, using a corkscrew manoeuvre, then executing a Kiogran-turn, flying out of range, then starting the manoeuvre all over again. This was used against larger ships. In dogfights, all bets were off - but the T-65 was a far superior ship to the standard TIE/ ln fighter. So much so, that even an average pilot was expected to take out a minimum of three TIEs in each engagement. Oh, also, it just looks so damn cool… Regarding the black variant you show an image of…. Where is this from? I cannot recall ever having seen this craft befo…. Oh, wait. Is that the “T-70” from that bunch of fan fiction that was crapped out by Disney? Everyone knows this was a parody set of films, set in the Star Wars universe, and bears no relation at all to the two previous trilogies, which explored the Skywalker Saga. Word has it that all the new Star Wars related shows coming out on Disney+ will actually be retconning this entire “sequel trilogy”, either through shenanigans with the “world between worlds”, or someone waking up from a terrible fever dream. So it would behoove everyone to pay it no mind…. :) In any event this is the fourth of your offerings I have watched. Based on the strength of them, you have a new subscriber. Thank you.
Couple of notes regarding the Xwing in the RPG and novels sources, .. Xwing are built twice as tough as a T/I and had shields that made it close to being able to last three times longer in a given fight. Second point the Xwing controls were base on the " Sky Hopper," a flying death trap that was scape to save the company from law suites and they drop every model that was built out into the Outer Rim to cover their loses and cause the locals out there where less likely to be able to sue them. Luke Skywalker got his first one at the age of 15, ... So the Rebel pilots had close to four years under their belts pushing their limits in crazy teenager canyon races. Also Imperial bases in the Outer Rim space regions function as academies to educate and recruit the cream of the crop from the farm boys. Then there were the desertion of imperial pilots that join the Rebellion. So on one hand the Rebels just got the more talented pilots, .. barely.
I can think of one reason the "S-Foils" on the X-Wing extend. And even that is all kinds of silly: the wings extend out to extend the fighter's deflector shields. Yeah, HANDWAVIUM, HO! As far as the torpedo magazine is considered, I can't think of *_ANY WAY_* that could be safe for the pilot or the rest of his/her squadron unless that magazine happened to be encased in the heaviest armor that class of space superiority fighter can handle. And that doesn't go into the detriment to speed, performance, and ship's load out that detail may incur… I'll be honest, in spite of the simple and stylistic design of the Arwing, at least that SSP has it's primary armament within the pilot's line of sight. So, no Parallax Conundrum there! (Unless you start getting the power ups. I don't even want to know how plasma bolts fire out the damn G-Diffuser pylons…!)
The X-Wing only makes sense as an allegory of mid-20th century American fighter planes, in particular the World War II-era P-51 Mustang and the Vietnam-era F-4 Phantom II. The guns are out on the wings because the P-51's guns were out on the wings, to clear the propeller. The engines are obviously the J79 jet engines of the F-4. Both fighters had long noses. As for the wings locking in attack position, that's probably based on Navy carrier-based fighters (including the F-4) whose wings unfold as they are preparing to launch. It's also a great way to tell the audience the fight has started. The proton torpedoes are allegories of the notoriously unreliable early guided missiles of Vietnam.
It's kind of interesting having a decent way to compare the different designs in a practical-ish but still obviously fictional setting; playing Star Was: Squadrons really gives you a feel of the good and the bad of every fighter. The X-wing is half decent in it, though the B-wing is is godawful as you'd think, thanks mostly due to the unconventional/strange mechanics of its cockpit. But my favorite fighter to fly is by far the TIE fighter. Sometimes simple and stripped down works better. Assuming you have the skill to use it right.
You are spreading your firing arc, increasing your probability of having one actually hit the target. All 4 were never expected to hit at the same time. That's why strike foils are deployed into an enlarged pattern. And that's why Y-wings don't have them. They are bombers, not fighters. And B-Wings (Blade Wings) were fighter/bombers.
Ok, so I'm a few months late to the commenting.. It's already known that the Star Wars Universe uses different physics so... Meh.. As a concept though the X-Wing does, in part, make some sense even with the Paralax Error. Besides other things shooting at you and trying to make explody bits fly off into space; space itself sucks at removing heat from an object. I mean seriously, go look at the huge ass heat sinks on the ISS just to keep the squishies from cooking inside that oven in space. Then you have those giant ass rapid fire heat generators on the end of the wings.. Yup, I'd want them far way from the squishy and the ordinance sitting under them.. You point about them sitting on ordinance... Uuumm... If that shit gets hit and actually detonates then it doesn't matter were it sits the squishy be a bit toasty. At least being inside the hull will give it some protection. The F-22 and the F-35 both keep their ordinance inside their belly. If it actually sat on hard points on the wings (Which, again, could be acting as radiators) then you're just asking for waste heat to cook the ordinance. The intakes wouldn't be for turbines but would probably be Bussard Scoops as the craft is FTL capable and even at subluminal speed could still be taking it the trace amounts in space. When it hits atmo then it's refueling with hydrogen and/or oxygen.. That ass... Power plant and fuel stores. Yeah, I'm not going to defend that choice.. maybe they wouldn't have one. Nose: Avionics and some additional ordinance. Droid as a Nav computer: That droid is Nav computer, co-pilot, emergency repair tech, RIO, etc.. Makes since to me if it has to go get new maps between missions. Current flight crews do that now. These aren't capital ships with Nav teams and charts for and entire sector. We're talking about a fighter with it's mission flight path(s) and emergency contingencies/detours. Your point about moving parts..... Holy hell I wish I could've kept up with all the moving parts on a modern fighter aircraft even when I worked with the things. Heck, I think the X-Wing actually has fewer moving parts than a modern fighter. As for the wings: We've already used and still, to a limited degree, use (a few) Aircraft with variable wing geometry such as the F-14 Tomcat, F-111 Aardvark, B-1b Lancer, F-3 Tornado, Mig-23, Mig-27, Tu-160(Last one actually designed and produced) and others. Though most have been retired. I'm loving the content. 😁
Ordance like torpedoes and missiles do not heat up and go boom. It is a design feature that the weapon should not go off unless it wes meant too. excessive heat (and it would take a lot) might cause it to not explode because of electronics damage, but again this would be EXTREMLY rare and in all likely hood . that trick in games such as robot tech where missiles denoate in the air and explode is not gun fire its Chaff or other sensor deception that triggers it. again movies and games love explosions. like say..Michal bay.
@@shawn6860 Even with current and extremely stable military ordinance we treated extreme heat an fire with caution and always treated such as a danger. The chances for any of it going off is extremely low it's not 0%. Something can always go wrong. The moment that small fact is forgotten is when the god Murphy decides to strike.
I think the astromech was also supposed to do minor repairs and adjustments while the plane is in flight. A flight engineer, basically. Not saying it's not a dumb fighter, but the astromech was the one part that made sense to me.
Cut 2 wings off, putt all canons on the nose and missiles in wing mounts. SOLVED. Now it's space brick that can dogfight like a normie. Same with arc 170
Most of the ships in Star Wars are crap since they are just WWII ideas thrown into a space setting. I have seen many, even some possible good, explanations, but it breaks down to earth 1930s and 1940s technology.
So…the TIE Fighter was a better fighter because it’s blasters are basically just underneath the pilots seat?? And have you looked at the “Last Starfighter” design ship?
Parralax and weapon gimballing is indeed the biggest complaint about the X-wing from a technical standpoint. The only thing I can think of, and that goes back to the B-wing comment I made, is that the Tam & Bak lasers are so heat-dissipation-happy that you HAVE to space them out so they'll cool quicker. The gimballing could be non-mechanical (magnetic focus components on the tips). I won't over-defend them, they would work better for aiming if they were in close. The proton torpedo launcher magazine is a non-issue. Nobody is trying to specifically shoot the pilot of an X-wing since starfighters are so nimble that just _Getting a hit_ on the thing in general is effort. And direct hits tend to result in fireballs almost every time. PLUS! Plus, proton torpedoes are... Proton Torpedoes. Doesn't matter if they're parked under your ass or sequestered in the nose, they pack enough kaboom to give capital ships a headache. You think the pilot is going to be safe anywhere in that fighter if the magazine lights off? Given that most kill shots come from behind, or from above (as deflection shots to a pilot pulling up), the magazine's probably in the best place it can be. The astromech droid is an up in the air question. Yeah, there's something to be said about having your navigational computer able to go for a walk, but remember the astromech is ALSO a field mechanic. I can see INCOMM saving a few credits by saying: "Well, the mobile mechanic ALSO does hyperspace calculations, so we can save money and weight by just making it do double duty." And if one asks why that's not a built-in feature... There's this thing called Off The Shelf procurement, in which a manufacturer of military components saves R&D and production resources by grabbing a perfectly suitable commercial option 'off the shelf'. R-series astromechs fit that description. Then, the Turbines? Those aren't intakes. I don't know WHAT they are, but they aren't intakes. They look like coils. Why said coils are exposed is anyone's guess. I would say heat, but it would be more efficient to expel excess heat with the engine exhaust than to have coiled radiators exposed facing forwards. The real point of failure on the X-wing would be the S-foil articulation servos and connection. If you ask anyone who understands the swing-wing of the F-14 Tomcat, large mechanical moving parts of that nature are a maintenance nightmare and represent a serious point of failure. While the S-foils aren't lifting the X-wing, and thus aren't experiencing the strain of that lift, I would imagine that the mechanisms WILL get stressed during roll maneuvers or when the X-wing is landed, as the aft landing skids deploy from the lower engine nacelles. Imagine landing your X-wing, and the mechanical linkage of say, the left side fails, and the wing assembly just snaps off.
