TIE Defenders, TIE Avengers, Gunboats and shields

This is the place for chit chat! Everything goes even Star Trek! Just make sure to buy the Moderator a drink!
Post Reply

TIE Defenders, TIE Avengers, Gunboats and shields

AotrsCommander
Recruit
Posts: 9
Joined: Tue Dec 23, 2014 11:28 pm

Post by AotrsCommander » Fri Jan 23, 2015 11:57 pm

For twenty years, I have worked on the basis that the T/D as of TIE Fighter was a superlative fighter, so powerful it was broken for multiplayer, nearly at the pinnicle of the Empire's fighter program.

Now I'm not so sure.

What shields does a T/D have? XWA gave it 100, but TIE always said it was 200.

The problem is, as I've been experimenting - I don't think that's actually TRUE. (All this is done on the 1995 Collector's CD Edition, I should note, so it's on the original as opposed to the 1998 re-release).

I've been running some test in TIE between the GUN, T/A, T/D and MISS, going into some of the early training missions and fiddling around with the power and timing it.

Some things of note.

1) The GUN and T/D take about 7-8 minutes to recharge from zero to maximum shields on full recharge. The MISS takes about 10... and the T/A takes about four.

2) All vessels recharge all their cannons from zero to full in about 32 seconds at maximum recharge.

3) The GUN takes 5 full cannon charge tracks to bring it from zero to maximum shields. The T/A takes two-and-a-half, the T/D 3.5 and the MISS 6.

(Incidently, this proves that shield recharge above normal is absolutely pointless, as cannon => shields is much faster.)

I also attempted to get shot with one (regular) missile at full shields.

Both the GUN and the T/D were taken down to red on the outer layer. The MISS, when shot by an advanced missile, goes down to green on the inner layer. (I hadn't contrived to get a missle shot at a T/A yet.)

This would be consistent with the layers being 50/50 (that is 50/50 in the front arc and 50/50 in the rear arc), being reduced to 20/50 in the former pair and 60/60 to 0/60 in the latter.

I also made sure I shot a a fully-shielded T/D (on T/D mission one, where I could obligingly get one to stop for me). It reduced the shields to 96%. After it had recharged, a single advanced missile hit reduced it's shields to 40%.

I know from prior experimenation that a single shot is about 4 damage in XWA, and like the warhead damage, that hasn't changed from the earlier games.

The evidence is somewhat worrying.

A T/D takes 4 damage and goes to 96%, and takes 60 damage and goes to 40%. Which it can only do if it had 100 SBD shields. Notably, it has the same recharge time asthe GUN, and appears to show the same amount of shield loss as they GUN when hit by a regular missile.

Notably, the GUN's 5 full recharges (x 4 guns) => twenty, and the T/D's approx 3.5 recharges (x 6 guns) => 21... which suggests accounting for the rounding, it is twenty. The same.

The T/A, on the other hand, takes half as long to charge it's shields. This suggests either it has half the shields of the GUN and T/D, or has some sort of fast recharge.

I went and experimented with the T/A in T/A mission one and got hi by a missile. Which reduced the shields to green on the inner layer. So it appears it has less shields than the T/D and GUN... Indeed, the amount of damage taken would seem to support a 50SBD shield (25/25 => 0/20).

I haven't checked yet to see if difficulty levels make any difference (I'm playing on hard mode). I suspect they don't because I was doing a let's play of TIE and Battle 1 mission 5 and the X-Wings were hittin my GUN with advanced missiles and reducing the shields to yellow on the inner (consistent with 50/50 =>0/40) on medium as well, I'm pretty sure. (I will have to check.)

If the warhead damage is the same, though, it's pretty conclusive as far as I can experimentally determine. The GUN and the T/D appear to have the same shields... which is twice that of the T/A. Contrary to everything TIE Fighter said.

(Incidently, I can see no evidence for either TIE of any supposed "rapid recharge" shielding.)

This would also explain how you can KO a T/D with a pair of advanced missiles or a single advanced torpedo. (Which even at the time I thought was odd, since that should really have only reduced the shields to 40% and 25% respectively for a 200 SBD shield.)

The Missileboat, on the other hand, does appear to display consistency with a 120SBD (+20% recharge times in both forms of recharge, plus the evidence of the missile hits.)

So, XvT (and XWA) may actually not have modified the shields of the T/A and T/D much at all - they may have just corrected them to what they appear to have ACTUALLY been, not what TIE told us they were.

(I don't know how I didn't notice this two decade ago, really, or how anyone else hasn't!)



What I would like to do is find some way of cracking open the .lfd files in TIE (where I assume the ship stats are) and having a look in there and seeing what it says. I would greatly appreciate anyone that could tell me how I could extract such information - I really want to get to the bottom of this now.


I'm a bit disheartened, really, since I have spent twenty years cheering on the T/D (and T/A) as ridiculously awesome and having to be toned down for the sake of cowardly rebels in the later games... To find out that, actually, it has been wrong since the start.

Tony Knightcrawler
Commander
Posts: 2263
Joined: Sat Nov 29, 2003 12:01 am
Contact:

Post by Tony Knightcrawler » Sat Jan 24, 2015 5:41 am

That's still pretty good shields. The only thing bad about the TIE Defender is that it's huge, so it's an easier target. I still say it's awesome. ;-)

TieFighterPilot
Recruit
Posts: 1
Joined: Fri Jul 24, 2015 4:36 pm

Post by TieFighterPilot » Sat Apr 23, 2016 12:13 pm

XWA & XvT is balanced for the network battles. That is only reason.
Another point - Tie-Fighter CE + X-Wing CE are only rare & ideal Flysims but will never connect by network.
All later flysims will be balanced

sir_derlin
Cadet 1st Class
Posts: 115
Joined: Tue Sep 14, 2004 11:01 pm

Post by sir_derlin » Fri Jan 06, 2017 10:31 pm

I'm a bit late to the party, but I checked the game files using the surprisingly powerful TIEEDIT, fortunately still available from DarkSaber's archive. It's a Win16 program, so it needs a Win32 build or earlier to work. Anyway, your analysis is essentially correct. The TIE Defender only has 100 SBD shields, the same as a Gunboat. Here's how the other flyable ships compare:

T/D 100 SBD
T/A 50 SBD
Gunboat 100 SBD
Missleboat 120 SBD
T/F 40 SBD
T/B 60 SBD
T/I 50 SBD

Some of these ships don't normally have shields, but it can be toggled in the mission. I'm not sure how it applies, but ships can also be configured to have 200% shields. I think this may only mean both layers of shields are enabled for AI, as I have some recollection of such ships charging up to 200%, but starting from 100%, just like the player who only starts with the inner layer.

User avatar
Mark_Farlander
Rebel Alliance
Posts: 580
Joined: Tue Jan 16, 2018 10:47 pm

Post by Mark_Farlander » Mon Feb 05, 2018 12:38 pm

Sorry if I'm a bit late for this topic, but I tried to answer the same questions a few years ago and maybe I can help.

I will answer these "things of note" one in each post, because I don't know how to do more than 1 "Reply with quote" in the same post.
I don't judge tactics. The Battle is the best and only Judge.

User avatar
Mark_Farlander
Rebel Alliance
Posts: 580
Joined: Tue Jan 16, 2018 10:47 pm

Post by Mark_Farlander » Mon Feb 05, 2018 1:23 pm

AotrsCommander wrote:
What shields does a T/D have? XWA gave it 100, but TIE always said it was 200.
The TIE Defender has shields rated at 100 SBD in X-Wing Alliance, and of course that is the shield value for 100% shield charge, but fighters and light transports can have up to 200% shield charge, so in that case it's 200 SBD total.
TIE Fighter refers to the maximum shield value possible when it reports 200 SBD.
However, the Imperial Technical Starship Report on The Stele Chronicles doesn't even mention the TIE Defender.
Last edited by Mark_Farlander on Wed Feb 07, 2018 2:22 am, edited 1 time in total.
I don't judge tactics. The Battle is the best and only Judge.

User avatar
Mark_Farlander
Rebel Alliance
Posts: 580
Joined: Tue Jan 16, 2018 10:47 pm

Post by Mark_Farlander » Mon Feb 05, 2018 1:33 pm

AotrsCommander wrote:
All vessels recharge all their cannons from zero to full in about 32 seconds at maximum recharge.
It seems this is a sort of game constant in X-Wing Alliance, so the more cannons a fighter have, the higher energy the generator can produce in a given time for cannons.
I don't judge tactics. The Battle is the best and only Judge.

Rich C
Lieutenant
Posts: 873
Joined: Thu Jan 18, 2001 12:01 am

Post by Rich C » Mon Feb 05, 2018 1:42 pm

Mark_Farlander wrote:because I don't know how to do more than 1 "Reply with quote" in the same post.
When you go into the "Post Reply" page (not Quick Reply), there's a thread summary below that updates every time you click "preview"; each post listed there has a quote button in its top right corner, so you can grab whichever ones you want.
"If you're going through hell, keep going."

User avatar
Mark_Farlander
Rebel Alliance
Posts: 580
Joined: Tue Jan 16, 2018 10:47 pm

Post by Mark_Farlander » Sat Feb 17, 2018 8:11 pm

AotrsCommander wrote:
The GUN takes 5 full cannon charge tracks to bring it from zero to maximum shields. The T/A takes two-and-a-half, the T/D 3.5 and the MISS 6.
I don't know how energy conversion worked on TIE Fighter 1995 Collector's CD Edition, so I'd like to compare your data taken from TIE Fighter with mine taken from X-Wing Alliance and the general rule I found.
In X-Wing Alliance when converting energy from cannons to shields (or also from shields to cannons) 1 fully charged cannon is the equivalent of 5 SBD and it doesn't matter which kind of cannon it is (red laser, green laser or ion cannon).
As a direct consequence the number of charge tracks needed to bring shields from 0% to 100% only depends on the rated shield value and the number of cannons.
X-Wing T-65: Shields 50 SBD, 4 cannons, 1 charge track=20 SBD=40% shields, 2.5 charge tracks needed
A-Wing RZ-1: Shields 50 SBD, 2 cannons, 1 charge track=10 SBD=20% shields, 5 charge tracks needed
Assault Gunboat Xg-1: Shields 100 SBD, 4 cannons, 1 charge track=20 SBD=20% shields, 5 charge tracks needed
TIE Avenger: Shields 40 SBD, 4 cannons, 1 charge track=20 SBD=50% shields, 2 charge tracks needed
TIE Defender: Shields 100 SBD, 6 cannons, 1 charge track=30 SBD=30% shields, 3.33 charge tracks needed
Missile Boat: Shields 120 SBD, 1 cannon, this is an exception as 1 charge track=40 SBD (instead of 5 SBD), so 3 charge tracks are needed

5 SBD is also the amount of damage 1 fully charged red laser hit inflicts to shields when shot from a fully stopped starfighter, 4 SBD for fully charged green laser.

As for warhead damage to shields and hull in X-Wing Alliance, keep in mind the speed of the craft from which you are launching the warhead is added to the default speed of the warhead. This increases warhead range, as discussed in the "Weapon ranges?" topic, but also increases damage inflicted. The same thing is valid for cannon shots. All the weapons in X-Wing Alliance also inflict kinetic damage, which is added to the weapon base damage. Now the question is: does kinetic damage behave in the same way as the base damage?
I'll open a "Weaponry tests" topic in the Pilot Lounge to deal with all warhead and countermeasure effects on "targets".
AotrsCommander wrote:
Incidently, this proves that shield recharge above normal is absolutely pointless, as cannon => shields is much faster.
It depends on play style, and I'm not going to judge tactics.
The Battle is the best and only judge.
I don't judge tactics. The Battle is the best and only Judge.

Post Reply