The "X-Wing" series Trivia Quiz

Answer: Imperial craft

Red dots are always Imperial craft, regardless of which faction you are playing as. Rebel craft are always green. There are also many other craft designations. Other factions such as pirates or planetary militaries can be blue, yellow, and purple, and are usually designated depending on whether their allegiance is to the Empire or the Alliance.

Answer: Y-Wing

The Y-Wing is one of the few ships that has ion cannons. Ion cannons are blue beams (as opposed to red or green lasers) and disable a craft's systems. In missions where the Rebellion wishes to take ships intact, or live prisoners, they will normally employ Y-Wings or B-Wings (which also have ion cannons).

The Y-Wing also has strong lasers, and can carry large amounts of warheads. This, coupled with their superior hull and shield strength make them good for taking on medium sized ships. They are also slow, though, and have poor maneuverability, which makes them vulnerable in a dogfight against most other fighters.

Answer: Assault Gunboat

The B-Wing is best associated with the Assault Gunboat. The B-Wing is a cross between the X-Wing and Y-Wing. It has ion cannons, strong lasers, and is good at taking out large targets, but can also hold its own in a dogfight with improved maneuverability.

The Assault Gunboat is pretty similar: lasers, ion cannons, warheads. It deviates from the standard Imperial norm, however, in that it is equipped with shields and a hyperdrive, making it a much tougher enemy that either the TIE Fighter or TIE Bomber.

The B-Wing and the Assault Gunboat both have a normal (unaltered) top speed of 90 mglt.

Answer: 1/3 power

Although the actual numbers may vary, the optimal maneuvering speed for any craft is 1/3 power. You can see a noticeable difference compared to 2/3 and full speed. The system will only register the speed at these points (0, 1/3, 2/3, and full). What this means is that if you get your system to register 1/3 speed, you will get the best maneuverability, but you can also bump up the actual speed to about 50% or so before it'll kick into 2/3 speed.

This means, when dog fighting, you can fly at about half your top speed with max turning speed.

Answer: B-Wing

One of the few craft in any of the games that you can fly that has three laser cannons (others include the Otana, and the Millennium Falcon, but those are freighters, not fighters). The B-Wing's structure consists of a cockpit mounted on a single long wing pointing down (although the specs say that the wing can rotate around the cockpit, the usual orientation in games is to have the main wing pointing down) with two smaller wings coming out of the main wing, perpendicular to it. On the tip of each wing is a laser cannon and an ion cannon.

Answer: TIE Fighter, TIE Bomber, TIE Interceptor

The Empire, when funding its navy, mass produced weak fighters, and relied heavily on swarm tactics. It is mentioned quite often that the early Rebel pilots faced odds of 3:1 on average. To cut costs, though, the Empire chose a design that did not have deflector shields or hyperdrives. All TIE Fighters, Bombers, and Interceptors had to rely heavily on their personal skill, and their allies to destroy their enemies quickly, as it would take very few hits to destroy a single TIE. Shields can recharge, but hull damage cannot be repaired during a battle, so a TIE can only take so many hits per battle, while an X-Wing, for example, given enough time, could recharge its shields after every shot, lasting much longer. Some of the other Imperial models, reserved for distinguished pilots, came with shields, and they are quite tough to fight, but also rare.

Another point about the TIEs is their lack of a hyperdrive. This means they cannot quickly escape from a conflict, and must dock with a larger ship with hyperdrive capabilities (usually a Star Destroyer). If their home ship is destroyed, then TIEs are trapped in the engagement area (and if there was a force strong enough to take out their Star Destroyer, that's generally not a good thing for the TIEs).

Answer: Missile Boat

Introduced in the second expansion for "TIE Fighter", the Missile Boat was an odd craft. It could carry two different kinds of warheads and lots of each (i.e. 80 concussion missiles, or 8 space bombs). It truly was meant for an anti-capital ship role (more so than the TIE Bomber or Y-Wing).

It was a variation of the Assault Gunboat, and had both shields and a hyperdrive. Against enemy fighters, it has a particularly difficult time as it had a single laser cannon mounted on the bottom of the cockpit.

It had a high rate of fire, also, quickly draining the laser cannon's charge, even if the recharge rate was set to maximum.

Answer: B-Wing and X-Wing

Both the B-Wing and the X-Wing have S-foils (strike foils). These are the wings of the craft which have both a closed position and an open position. They must be closed in order to jump to hyperspace. The control to open or close the foils is X, though there is no need to do this.

They will automatically close when you engage your hypespace sequence, and open when you exit hyperpace. On the X-Wing, the four wings close into each other to make two wings. On the B-Wing, the open position is the central wing pointing "down" away from the cockpit, with its two secondary wings forming a "t" shape.

Its closed position has the two secondary wings folded down into the main wing, and having the main wing rotated to point out to the left of the cockpit.

Answer: A-Wing

Each Rebel ship has an Imperial counterpart. The X-Wing and the TIE Fighter are both the stock fighter of each faction with moderate maneuverability and firepower, with a normal top speed of 100 mglt (normal meaning that no power systems have been redirected to or away from engines). They can be applied to many situations, but are best at dog fighting.

The A-Wing and TIE Interceptor are both fast (120 mglt normal top speed), lightly armored, with decent firepower, meant for taking on enemy fighters.

The TIE Bomber and the Y-Wing have improved armor, and carry large payloads of missiles/torpedoes. They are slow (80 mglt, normal top speed), however, and easy targets for other fighters, and are best used against large targets.

The B-Wing's Imperial counterpart, as said before, is the Assault Gunboat.

These are the main craft that are used in the games, and can easily be paired with each other. Other craft have different specs and do not have a clear counterpart, especially the new designs for the Empire introduced in the "TIE Fighter" expansion packs.

Answer: TIE Hunter

The TIE Hunter was introduced in "Rogue Squadron III: Rebel Strike" as the new Imperial project. They are not featured in the "X-Wing" series. They had four pointed wings that could close together (similar to an X-Wing). They were meant to be fast and deadly, but were also poorly shielded, and proved not be as much of a threat as the TIE Advance or TIE Defender.

The Z-95 Headhunter is a cheap fighter used mostly by pirates or police forces, and sometimes by the Rebel Alliance. It looks similar to an X-Wing, but has only two wings instead of four. They are generally easy to defeat.

The next two craft are quite scary. The TIE Advance, as it's called in the game, is a variation of Darth Vader's personal TIE Advance x1. They are also known as TIE Avengers. They have a different wing design, and are even faster/more powerful. They have hyperdrives, deflector shields, four laser cannons, warhead launchers, and a top normal speed of 145 mglt (the "interceptor" fighters had a top speed of only 120 mglt). These characteristics make this fighter difficult to hit, and you have to hit it a lot to destroy it. Because of its shields and firepower, head-on attacks, even in a Y-Wing, generally turn out to be lethal.

The TIE Defender was introduced after the TIE Advance. It had a recognizable design that included three convex solar wings. The two bottom mounted ones each had two laser cannons, while the top one had two ion cannons. The Defender also had two warhead launchers, and could be fitted with a beam system (i.e. tractor beam to slow enemy fighters). It's max normal speed was 144 mglt, although some pilots prefer to not use their beam weapons. If this is the case, they can shed the power that would normally charge the beam weapon into engines, and get an even higher top speed.