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Star Wars Rebels Season Three (spoilers)

The thing with the TIE defender is that it doesn't need to be made in huge numbers. A few squadrons properly deployed could wipe out the Alliance. Of course they still have to find them first...

So not only does stormtrooper armor do nothing against blaster bolts, their helmets don't protect against a fist to the face. ...Okay.
Well what exactly do you think happened to those two troopers that Han & Chewie ambushed on Falcon? It'd be a bit conspicuous if he and Luke went wandering around the Death Star in armor that had wacking great blaster holes in the chest plates.
It is ironic isn't it? wasn't Thrawn trying to develop a new TIE that was better then the Defender in that game?
Thrawn was in the game and he did get his hands on a Defender prototype, but I don't think that was his project, but some other Admiral. IIRC the game also featured the fighter for which Vader's TIE Advanced was the prototype and the Defender was meant to superseded it. Or probably more like supplement and be the B-wing to the TIE Avenger's X-wing.
 
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One interesting thing I noticed in the recent Rogue One clip is that we see what a blaster does to whatever metal that droid was made of: it burns a hole straight though it.

This leads me to wonder if stormtrooper armor isn't meant to protect against blaster hits because nothing that thin or light physically can. At least nothing made of anything cheap enough to mass produce. Perhaps the reason it's white is an attempt to reflect/refract as much of the plasma's heat as possible, leaving only the physical impact. Which may be fine for most civilian grade blasters (remember, Stormtroopers are less soldiers and more para-military police) but the rebels all use either old military hardware of illegally modded weaponry.
Han Solo's blaster it probably the equivalent of a .44 magnum or Desert Eagle .50 with a custom scope-sight and loaded with armour piercing or explosive rounds. Hmm, maybe that's where DL-44 comes from? Never considered it till now.

Of course the main purpose of the armor is psychological. The both for the intimidation of their adversaries and denationalisation of the solders themselves. see also: only referring to each other as operating numbers and "who gave you permission to remove your helmet?"
 
see also: only referring to each other as operating numbers
That is why I liked how some Clones had 'names'.

Clones are more 'humanized' then Stormtroopers.


Thrawn was in the game and he did get his hands on a Defender prototype, but I don't think that was his project, but some other Admiral. IIRC the game also featured the fighter for which Vader's TIE Advanced was the prototype and the Defender was meant to superseded it. Or probably more like supplement and be the B-wing to the TIE Avenger's X-wing.

I just looked it up, some Defenders were captured by the Rebellion, so Thrawn helped develop the Missile Boat to counter them. That is what I was thinking about.

From Wookieepedia

Both the Emperor and Admiral Thrawn were concerned about the possible spread of the technology and the Empire resolved to eliminate all TIE Defenders in enemy hands. To that end, Admiral Thrawn had been secretly working with Cygnus Spaceworks to develop the Missile Boat—a starfighter specifically designed to counter to the TIE Defender.
 
That is why I liked how some Clones had 'names'.

Clones are more 'humanized' then Stormtroopers.

That wasn't by design though, it was a direct result of being led by Jedi who encouraged their individuality.
In a way Stormtroopers are an inversion of Clone Troopers. The former are individuals who are conditioned into being faceless, homogeneous numbers, the latter are the exact opposite.
 
That's really cool. Even if that's all we see it's still fun.
Maybe this means we'll get an episode that shows events in Rogue One from the Ghost crew's perspective. I know that's very, very doubtful, but it would be fun if the did it.
 
^Given that there's still a time gap of at least a few years, that seams doubtful unless they really jump ahead at some point.
 
The Missile Boat was a lot of fun in-game. While reloading, you had an infinite number of missiles, so long as you kept shooting to avoid getting topped off. After taking out all capital ships, you could then engage any remaining fighters with a full missile load. Its laser was wimpy, but it was very effective at polishing off fighters mostly destroyed by missiles, so it was good for extending the missile load.

In continuity, to a ship like the Ghost, one Missile Boat should be an existential threat. If it were anything like the game version, it could stand off, lock on, and unload enough homing missiles to destroy the ship several times over.
 
I wonder how many Phantoms the Ghost will have over the years. They've lost one, and quite honestly I'm not sure how good their replacement is verses the older one.
 
^Assuming this is just an easter egg and nothing more, I suspect that omission is their out, just in case they ever do a story where the Phantom II and/or the Ghost is destroyed at some point in the interim. Without that, it could just be any VCX-100.

Which actually raises an interesting point: supposedly ships like the stock VCX-100s and the YT-1300s etc. are supposed to be a common sight in the galaxy and yet we never see any others save for the Ghost and the Falcon respectively.
I know there was a YT-1300 in RotS, but IIRC the intent at the time was that was supposed to be the Falcon. No clue if that stands in canon.

Hold on... I knew about Aurebesh, but are you telling me they came up with a Mandalorian alphabet too?
IIRC it was used in AotC for Slave One's computer screens and I think it showed up again later in TCW on Mandalore itself.

There's a few others in canon, two of which I think came from TPM (both Naboo), the ancient glyphs from both the Lothal temple & Malachor and based on Ralph McQuarrie's old Yavin 4 concept art. The Geonosians also had a distinct alphabet, as did the Nemoidians, the Umbarans, and I think Huttese. Probably more I'm forgetting.
 
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Which actually raises an interesting point: supposedly ships like the stock VCX-100s and the YT-1300s etc. are supposed to be a common sight in the galaxy and yet we never see any others save for the Ghost and the Falcon respectively.

Star Trek did the same thing. Deep Space Nine avoided using Sovereign or Intrepid-class ships in its Dominion War battle fleets so that they wouldn't be confused for the Enterprise-E or Voyager. The one time they did use an Intrepid was in an episode that was mostly set aboard a guest starship, and that was because it was cheaper to borrow Voyager's sets than to build new ones.

It occurs to me, though, that an easy way to avoid that confusion would be to give the ships different paint jobs/detailings.
 
^Slightly different scenario. From a meta perspective yes, it's done (or rather not done) to avoid confusion or to keep the primary "special" somehow.
From an in-universe perspective though it makes less sense since. The Sovereign and the Intrepid were fairly new and thus rare designs, so it seems credible that they wouldn't show up much. These Corellian freighters on the other hand are supposed to be *very* common and yet we almost never see them.
 
From an in-universe perspective though it makes less sense since. The Sovereign and the Intrepid were fairly new and thus rare designs, so it seems credible that they wouldn't show up much. These Corellian freighters on the other hand are supposed to be *very* common and yet we almost never see them.

Well, there's also the 24th-century shows' complete avoidance of Constitution-class ships, even though they had a ton of Excelsior, Miranda, and Oberth-class ships from the same era.

And really, the Intrepid and Sovereign classes were meant to be part of the big push to rebuild the fleet in the wake of Wolf 359 with more combat-oriented designs, or at least that was the impression I got from behind-the-scenes sources. So it was incongruous that the Dominion War fleets consisted primarily of older ship classes.
 
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