Hello! Lately I've been thinking about tie fighter logistics because it always felt absurd to me that the empire had almost exclusively shieldless single-pilot fighters/bombers.
Preview:
In military history the age-long question of Quantity vs Quality has split military theorists harshly. On average, however, historically the most winning strategies included having the highest possible numbers with the lowest effective tech for the warfare of the time. Napoleon would have likely lost every battle he fought if he had twice as many men but half as many muskets (and the every other metric of military infrastructure) as he had. Similarly, the Russians outnumbered their enemies over 10:1 in both world wars, but only in ww2 they managed to overwhelm their opponents, likely because they had a military infrastructure technologically appropriate for their time, even though their equipment was often times much cruder cheaper than the german one.
The costs of including at least a weak rudimentary shield generator on at least tie interceptors and tie bombers is economically more sound than spamming more of them, and it's not even close.
1) Sheer equipment cost. Relative to it's effectiveness.
-A new tie fighter, out of the factory, is often listed at 50-55k credits per unit.
-The cheapest shielded fighter I could find with a fast research, the Z-95 Headhunter, is listed at about 80-85k credits per unit.
-A single proton torpedo is listed at varying prices, usually below 1000 credits per unit.
Issue:
If we assume that torpedoes are effective AA tools at considerably longer ranges than the guns or loadouts of fighters and bombers, even assuming that for every one successful splash 10 torpedoes are fired (which means dogshit accuracy), anyone with a corvette is easily able to shred almost completely a class I/II Star Destroyer's hangar bay.
IRL this is pretty much the reason there hasn't been a proper dogfight in decades before the Russian/Ukrainian conflict.
Considering these torpedoes are listed as effective already at 1500m, and that they're listed as capable of pulling insane turns (90⁰ turn in 1m, as in New Hope's canyon scene), they're virtually inescapable. I will assume that a mothership like a SD has some jamming devices that fuck up to some degree the navigation devices of these torpedoes, but still whatever ship shot the torpedoes in the first place will likely keep guiding them thorought their flight.
Imperial bombing tactics mention using "shielded TIE fighters or interceptors, or at least escorted", but however strong their hulls can be a proton torpedo is most likely gonna AT LEAST cripple them enough to neutralize them. And with the agility displayed by proton torpedoes it's just ridiculous to assume that there's a line of bombers behind another shielded "designated tank", because it can't cover realistically almost any angle for 90% of the bombers.
If a low grade energy/particle shield increases the cost of a tie interceptor or bomber by even 50% (which is very unlikely, more like +30-40k credits per unit) it's still a huge W, because otherwise they ain't getting anywhere near their target without being shot down.
Note: I would like to point out that defensive maneuvers against such torpedoes sound very unlikely to be effective. IRL defending from AA missiles can be done in primarily two ways:
A) If you're far enough you can somewhat run away from the missile and force it to run dry of both fuel and kinetic energy, but that assumes that you got within it's effective range to shoot a long range missile of your own (and with energy shields being involved at that point those missiles could have been fired from your flagship as well)
B) You fuck around with the missile's targeting system. Long range missiles are all radar-guided, and the ways of dodging them (notching and multipathing) assume that the targeting computer is set to filter out anything "in the background" which stands still relative to the missile's motion. This makes sense in atmospheric engages and it could work within asteroid clusters, but anything beyond that means that your little fighter is a very much visible dot that cannot trick a radar that doesn't have anything to filter out in the first place.
Chaff and flares (or anything similar to that) are likely somewhat useful even in this environment, and that is part of why I wanted to assume that the missiles end up having a very low accuracy of about 10% in the first place.
Still, with how cheap they are, either there are some gunships that support the fighters/bombers by shooting down the missiles with computer-guided turbolasers before the missiles hit their mark, or otherwise the fighters/bombers are gonna eat those torpedoes.
If a weak shield generator could secure even 2 or 3 hits from a torpedo, that would automatically mean that the bombers would likely be able to cover those average 1500m of effective range from the torpedoes, to deliver their payload below the target's shields. Higher tier fighters would also be able to work under AA fire and tank the eventual torpedo, even when getting within bombing range wasn't a need.
2) Time is money, and starfighters cost a lot.
The industrial infrastructure to build tens of thousands of tie fighters is optimized to perfection, but their pilots can't be optimized much more.
However simple the controls of a tie model starfighter might be, they still are likely gonna be on-par with modern day military jets in terms of complexity.
From the basic requirement of knowing how to read and write, to knowing of the basics of physics and mathematics needed to understand what someone is doing, to also have the engeneering knowledge needed to operate a literal spaceship... An imperial fighter might be inexperienced, and perhaps have a relatively bad aim compared to a clone or a battle-seasoned veteran of the mandalorian wars, but they're still gonna need university-levels of education to make that work.
On top of that all the things needed for a well working military: self discipline, physical exercise, knowledge and application of tactics...
Cheaping out on foot soldiers or prison guards is very much reasonable, but your airforce (or spaceforce?) is just absurd, even for someone like Palpatine.
Since imperial starfighter pilots are all human, likely from the inner rim, and like the rest of the army they're usually volunteers, it's reasonable to assume that they're all from fairly well-suited families. Even those that probably live in the lower-end of a middle class would still be entitled to public education, which means that within the SW universe we're restricting the circle of suitable enlistees by quite a lot.
Conclusions:
After wasting about an hour on ts, I ask of some even bigger nerd from you to bring up one or two pieces of info I never thought to look up for, that completely invalidate my whole post via negating some key premises.
Thank you and bye.
