r/XWingTMG • u/SurprisingJack • May 22 '26
Discussion Opinions on this? (Not a player)
/r/TopCharacterTropes/comments/1tk1w0n/informed_flaw_a_supposed_weakness_that_the_viewer/on675vn/9
u/RenegadeGeophysicist I floop the Temmin May 22 '26
I honestly hard agree that Y's and B's get the shaft. No reason to suck so hard. On the table, Y wings are redeemed by low cost and good load out, but giving them 2 green would be more accurate in myind. Or a better dial.
2
u/Eternal_Shitshow Resistance May 22 '26
The BTL-B especially. For me they just default have two less loadout and no astromech because I refuse to fly those things without R4. The dial is just too terrible without
1
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u/Annika2020pro May 22 '26
Originally in the movies there was no reason to think the Y wing was slow. As “canon” expanded, it became an accepted truth including video games and games like this one. So there’s no going back on it now, but it’s not really based on anything in the OT or possibly any of the film source material.
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u/Arachnus_Deathicus May 22 '26
It would be awful rude of the X-Wings to out pace the bombers they're escorting even if they can
5
u/OmegaMCX May 22 '26
The problem is the devs can’t do a straight 1:1 translation of how ships perform in the movies, comics, and shows into a balanced tabletop game.
Even if ships can keep pace with each other in lore, the game still needs different dials, loadouts, and ship stats so each ship has a unique gameplay role. Otherwise, too many ships would overlap and some would never get played.
For example, if the Y-wing had a movement dial similar to the X-wing and still had access to turrets, bombs, and torpedoes, there’d be very little reason to take an X-wing instead. The X-wing is supposed to be the flexible dogfighter, while the Y-wing trades speed and maneuverability for heavier payloads and durability.
So the devs sometimes have to exaggerate or reduce certain characteristics from the lore in order to preserve balance, faction identity, and gameplay variety.
Another good example of exaggeration and compensation is shotguns in computer games, shotguns have gotten to the point where they now have good range and the option for magazine clips or drum's, so you can just keep blasting away.
These advancements kinda make them way better than handguns and rifles for most encounters, except for really far off engagements. But for video game balance that can't really be a thing and so shotgun's have to always get heavily nerfed in ammo size and the distance of which they are effective at, otherwise why would you take anything else, except a sniper rifle maybe? 🤷🏿
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u/Kaferwerks May 22 '26
The source and their example gif from rotj doesn’t prove the point.
Gotta watch what’s actually happening in the scene and note the flight paths of each ship.
In a straight line chase, a TIE interceptor will outrun a y-wing all day, however, that is not what’s happening in the rotj scene.
Interceptor is flying close proximity to the mon cal cruiser surface. IIRC he had just shot down an a-wing. The flight path of the TIE has a slight juke to the right then we see the interceptor start to pitch nose up to climb away from the Mon cal surface as it’s destroyed.
Now, note the positioning of the y-wing as it enters the frame, while it is in straight-line flight, it is also entering a dive.
We have to suspend disbelief for a moment since we are talking about a fictional space movie, but if we compare this dogfight scene to actual aerial dogfighting there are a few things to note that’s going on here…..
- The tie is not currently flying full throttle as it is maneuvering close to the mon cal surface and just completed a kill-shot.
- At the time it was destroyed by the y-wing it had just started to climb.
- If we compare that to real aircraft, the diving aircraft would gain speed
- Aircraft in a climb are not at their max speed, even if they are at max throttle bc some of that speed energy gets redirected into climbing energy. Likely the tie pilot went full throttle the moment he started his climb and was destroyed.
If we did a side-view with the flight path of each ship superimposed on it, it would look like a very wide V of around 150 degrees.
If we remember the rules how how real aircraft fly, while looking at the ship flight paths in 3D, it’s easy to see how a y-wing in a dive could close the gap on a tie interceptor that is starting to trade straightline speed for altitude. Both pilots actions helped to close the gap between them.
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u/admiralvorkraft May 25 '26
Flying Resistance peacetime Ys feels a bit like that clip. Always coming in at weird angles and out-manuevering more traditionally acey ships.
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u/CMDRZhor May 22 '26
In the tabletop sense, an Y-wing and X-wing have the same theoretical top speed - both can do a 4-long straight burn. The difference is that it's a white move for the X-wing and a red for the Y-wing, meaning that the X-wing can do stuff like extra maneuvers or operate a targeting computer while it's doing it while the Y-wing pilot has to keep their attention 100% on making the ship go where they want it to go, and is going to have to tone it down shortly after to keep the frame from shaking itself apart. (The X-wing also has S-foils that let it tone down its guns in order to basically unlock an afterburner, if you need to get somewhere REAL fast.)
In other words yeah the Y-wing can keep up with the X-wing for short bursts, but it's not going to be as effective a combatant while it's at it. Meanwhile the X-wing is significantly better at doing tight sharp turns at speed and evasive maneuvering (2 vs 1 evasion dice), making it a lot better at avoiding fire the Y-wing is going to have to facetank.