[Discuss Thrower]

Originally Posted by DJ's left nut

Upon further reflection - is this an F-15 vs. F-16 thing? The F-15 is simply a better airframe. It's more versatile, more powerful and nearly as agile. It's also a hell of a lot more expensive than the F-16.

So when you're the empire and can just keep churning out storm troopers, having a ton of fighters to pilot is an advantage. Meanwhile, if you're the rebels, you have far fewer pilots so its important that they A) Survive and B) have every possible advantage. So you get them the better sled and hope that it's enough.

Because it doesn't seem to me like the tie fighters can hang with the X-Wings at all.

The old Expanded Universe aka "Legends" material states that Imperial doctrine is based on spamming massive amounts of cheap troops and fighters to overwhelm the opposition. TIE fighters don't have shields and hyperdrives for the cheap factor for both and for dominance in the second and there isn't a shortage of pilots signing up to replace losses.

The Rebels get whatever they can get -which were castoff Y-Wings and Z-95 Headhunters, and again the EU material said X-Wings were an elite project developed by the Incom Corp. which were stolen by its designers in defecting to the Alliance. Rebel doctrine was all about using the superior design and construction (shields; hyperdrives) of their fighters in sneak or hit and fade attacks to counteract the numbers advantage the Imperials had.

As for capital ships, the Rebels relied heavily on civilian vessels (CR-22 Blockade Runners and the GR-75 transports), Mon Calamari luxury liners turned war cruisers (Home One et al in RotJ) or Imperial defectors stealing smaller cap ships (Nebulon-B frigates) to bolster their fleet. I never got too deep in EU stuff beyond playing videogames like X-Wing Alliance where it's somewhat implied that the Rebels only have a handful of capships centered around Mon Calamari cruisers (Liberty and Independence, the former of which was the winged ship blown up the second Death Star) with a handful of fighter squadrons per cruiser. Even smaller groups were based around other converted civilian ships or stolen Nebulon-Bs with maybe one squadron of fighters attached.

Small fleets were tasked with commerce raiding and quick strikes against lightly defended targets while the Mon Cal cruisers were used for bigger operations but weren't exactly looking to go toe-to-toe with Imperial-class star destroyers. Seems to me that according to the EU, Palpatine's trap at Endor would have successfully wiped out the Rebellion as any sort of serious threat to the Empire's military.