TIE Pilots

[Phalanks Balas]

I consider regular imperial pilot have 4D+1 in SF piloting and 4D in SF gunnery.
Remember, the Tie fighter had been thought as a superiority fighter. That means that the basic tactic is to engage when outnumbering enemy fighter. It's not a 1 vs 1 fighter.
The firepower of a squadron must be enough to quickly destroy the enemy thus imperial have to make combined actions.

So, imperial don't have to be very skilled.

It's rare to only see a tie fighter alone. Generaly you see a wing of 4 or 6 of these.
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Phalanks

A day you will be facing the guns of the Black Pearl. You will know what means damned pirates !

[Trusty]

Use the stats you like. I use the SE stats and reserve SE R&E for squadron leaders. But, When you toss in fire control, manuverability and the like, it evens out. And since when was a 1D less in the PCs skills than the opposition not become fair? Being only 1D less still makes for a fair fight I think.

That and the 2D hull and no shields on a standard TIE fighter is certain death. Whereas the characters stand a better chance of survival in their ships usually.
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Growing old is inevitable. Growing up is optional!

[garhkal]

I mostly go with 6d pi 5d+2 gun...
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[KageRyu]

I have no problem with the official stats listed in the sourcebooks for TIE pilots for a number of reasons. Whenever I have players encounter a Star Destroyer, or major frontline military force, I use the stats as listed for TIE pilots. I will reduce these in backwater systems, or areas where the empire has been complacent, or has second line troops. My reasonings are these:
• In the trilogy, when TIEs square off against Rebel pilots, casualties seem to appear fairly even on both sides. TIEs have even given the main characters some troubles (and the main characters from the trilogy have extremely outrageous stats and skills). This clearly shows that TIEs are a threat, not to be taken lightly.
• Rebel X-Wings have superior Armor, they have shields, and they have superior weaponry and fire control. This gives the X-Wings a major advantage (especially with a competant Astromech droid to effect in flight repairs or handle shields). This easily makes an X-Wing worth 2-3 TIEs for an average brash pilot.
• Rebel's try not to engage the imperial navy in "stand up fights" because of the sheer numbers and training of imperial pilots. They use the Hyperdrive equiped snub fighters to jump in to a target, inflict as much damage as possible, and try to flee before the imperials can scramble sufficient fighters in response. These tactics are clearly outlined in the Rebel Alliance book.

I have run an all-pilot Star Wars campaign, and it was a lot of fun. Even with the stats in the book, the players were chewing threw TIEs easily in their X-wings, and that was when they first started. They didn't start sweating until they encountered veteran units and the newer TIE interceptors.

A good place to find helpful guidelines on generating random pilots, both Rebel and Imperial, is the Star Warriors boxed set. The charts for random piloting is very handy.
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"There's a set way to gain new Force Points and it represents a very nice system, where you're rewarded for heroism, not for being a poor conductor to electricity." ~Jachra

[garhkal]

Kage.

What would you, for a regular game, rank the elite, veteran, expert, experienced and green tie pilots as for piloting and gunnery?
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[KageRyu]

[garhkal]

Interesting...

For me the layout would be

Green, 4d pi / 3d+2 gun
Rookie, 5d pi / 4d+2 gun
Ave, 6d pi / 5d+2 gun
experienced, 7d / 6d+2
expert 7d+2 / 7d+1
veteran 8d+1 / 8d
Elite 9d / 8d+2
Legendary 9d+2/9d+1

I see their begining career as quick advancement, then slowing down after that..
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[KageRyu]

That's not much different from what I said. If you take the base stats for a tie pilot of Piloting 5D and Gunnery 4D and subtract a total of 3D to 4D for green you can end up with Piloting 3D and Gunnery 3D. Which is about where a cadet with no practical experience should be. Where as Legendary characters should be right up there with the main characters out of the movies, stat wise, which means 9D or greater should be added in total, yielding results of 9D Piloting and 9D Gunnery and up. Either way, the average pilot is best represented by the official stats (5D and 4D respectively).
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"There's a set way to gain new Force Points and it represents a very nice system, where you're rewarded for heroism, not for being a poor conductor to electricity." ~Jachra

[Darius]

I dont think that there is anything wrong with the typical TIE pilot stats especially since the players are usually flying better ships. But they are right that only the best get to fly and be assigned to fleets. Anyone else from the Academy who doesnt cut it would end up in the support roles (somebody has to keep those flying coffins fuled and maintained).
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oops - i didnt mean to make it go off

[KageRyu]