2014-09-28

Rebels Begins

Just a first blush from after watching Rebels:

1.  TIE firepower is comparable to what people who actually watch Star Wars would expect.

The bolts emerge from the red dots on the front via whatever means . . . that's rather different than most SW weapons which actually feature a barrel aperture.   We'll see what that's about sometime, I trust.

2.  The new small Imperial Transport vessel is an interesting design.   From the front it looks somewhat generic, but from above or below the Imperial pedigree becomes obvious as the delta wings provide the appearance of a triangular shape for the ship.   Alas, there's no tower, however . . . would've been a nice touch to have a little cockpit action in that fashion, though as it stands, given the position of the cockpit within the forward rectangle, it appears that this is more the love-child of a Light Cruiser and a Republic Frigate.   Can't wait for a 3-D model to play with, especially to compare against the Republic Light Cruiser.

It features a small paired blaster turret that seems tougher than TIE weaponry, a big platform that drops down for egress, and somehow four TIEs can be attached on the underside.   It isn't clear if the pilots just sit there the whole time or if they're somehow supposed to be crawling in from the outside.

Edit:  After a closer look it appears there are docking tubes that hang down and are attached to the central TIE sphere, meaning egress occurs through the tube.

3.  Star Destroyers may have an upper hangar in addition to a lower hangar.

4.  The Ghost can completely elude ISD sensors, perhaps even masking its hyperspace exit.

5.  Was that a hull-breach atmosphere containment forcefield I saw?   Or was that some other existing forcefield ("shield")?

6.  I've already heard of Brian Young claiming that the Ghost turned in hyperspace, but the claim is based on insuffficient evidence.   The ship's in hyperspace, they talk about changing course, and then the ship's seen in hyperspace.  There's no turn, though the ship is slightly rotating . . . rotating has been seen before, though, in TCW.

Logically, then, the ship either continued on in its hyperspace lane until it reached the next waypoint and then took a different path, or exited hyperspace completely and turned around on the same lane, or concluded the  escape microjump they were engaged in and then went off on the new path, et cetera.

In other words, if I'm on an interstate and plot a new course on my GPS, I don't actually veer off-road at that moment, even if I speed up with a new sense of purpose.

If we get a lot more examples then there might be sufficient smoke to declare a fire, but as it stands all we have is an inflationist getting really over-excited at the thought of hyperdrive being as good as possible compared to other sci-fi FTL systems.   Frankly, I don't think hyperdrive's too bad off even if they can't change course while in mid-flight as per the entire Star Wars canon, but then I am not an extremist who's ready to ditch canon at the first sign of inflation.

More to come . . . 




4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Being able to turn while in Hyper-space wouldn't be anything new, but the degree to which you can turn would be what matters.

The old pre-Disney Hyper-Lane maps didn't depict Hyper-Lanes as perfectly straight, but rather having gentle curves to them.

Guardian said...

1. There are no canonical pre-Disney hyperlane maps.
2. Even if the maps were canon and are as described, some natural curvature is hardly the same thing as "faster than light, no left or right" (to coin a phrase). A train can turn, too, by that standard.

Thanks!

Anonymous said...

1) You're a movie purest, I understand that, but you know what I meant, and last time I checked, hyper-lanes originated in the pre-Disney extended universe

Here is one of the maps I was talking about: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/File:GalaxyNEC.jpg

I don't think any of the maps they published ever agreed with each other.

2) As I said, it would be a matter of degree.

Anonymous said...

There's a "go to lightspeed" sound effect when they plot the new course and the camera jumps to the external view.

Inconclusive so far IMO, but the added sound effect might be alluding to them jumping out, then jumping back in with the new course.

I'd prefer the TIE to have a little better firepower than a speeder bike, but then, in ESB they do little to the asteroids they hit. So that fits.

The ISD-I had a common swimming pool sized hole blown in it IIRC.