Darths & Droids

Never let the bogeyman of realism get in the way of a fun game.

Doubly so if it's the players who bring up the fact that something in the game world isn't "realistic".

This is a well-known law of gaming known as the "In a game that has mind-powered levitation and parrying of energy weapons, why are you complaining about conservation of angular momentum?!" Law.

Commentary by memnarch (who has not seen the movie)

Ahhh, there's the mishap! Definitely not what I was expecting though; with a fuel line hooked in place I bet we can expect the whole place goes up in flames in about 3-4 comic pages. The red bit on the PIE looks a bit odd though. It's visible in just about the same location on the fighter in panels 2, 3, and 6, so it doesn't seem to be a reflection of ambient lighting. Maybe it's a part of the fueling system as well?

And of course it needs a fuel line, Pete; where else is it going to get the energy needed for a reactionless drive? It's not like there's been a large number of super energy dense devices like the Orb available. And even "old-school" long-term energy sources like nuclear fission plants need to be refueled now and then. With a fuel line though, I can't see it being powered with an extremely energetic source like antimatter, so we're probably not using that kind of power supply here.

Hmmm. I think maybe the armoured tanks (armoured tanks) could be argued to not break conventional laws of physics just by their existence and the method of locomotion. They'd still go out the window of realism once they start shooting laser blasts of course. It's important to note that impractical is different than impossible however. There's a reason we Earthlings use wheels everywhere for ground transportation when we're not using our own legs; wheels tend to be much more simple to build and maintain than mechanical legs.

Commentary by Keybounce (who has not seen the movie)

Never mind "Why does Grevious still have a bunch of internal organs?"

WHY IS THERE A FUEL LINE WITH SOLAR PANELS?!?

The actual picture (thanks to the 2× comic and a good screencap frame) looks like just a tether, not a fuel line. There's no actual connection into the ship. So it's not a fuel line, but it is a tether. Why do you have a tether? The ship is docked/locked into a holding spot, and released. Any additional holding system is only asking for a disaster/accident.

How in the heck is this thing in the air? It's inside a gravity field. We don't see people running around with gravity/magnetic boots in the ship, so there must be some form of artificial gravity. Which means the TIE fighter should be falling down. These are not wheeled take-off vehicles, so they would need either a launch rail, or a Babylon-5 style spin release - but again, these ships are not spinning. (Ok, that artificial gravity could give them a drop launch).

I'm actually now—and only now, go figure—questioning the whole "ion engine" idea on a fighter. Ion engines are great for low thrust, long distance, high terminal velocities, but horrible for actual maneuvering. I can actually pass that as some sort of advanced technology. But then, looking at the size of a PIE fighter, and what's got to be a tiny engine, especially compared to the size of an X-wing, the question has to be: If you've got that level of engine technology; if you can make that much thrust power from solar panels and tiny engines, how in the heck do you not have crazy over-powered weapons in those large ships? You should be able to blast through any opposition like the Federation ships in that scene from the distant future clip we see in one of the last episodes of Deep Space 9.

I mean... I cannot even fathom the technological design of this Empire. And this is after such things as:

Force fields that make guard rails pointless.
Guard rails not stopping you from falling anyways.
Infinite falls inside the ships just like Portal 2.
Races where you have to make turns faster than reaction time, so you have to have the race route memorized (and why then do you not have computerized control of the turns?).
High tech cloning and... nothing comes of it until we see the Muppets.

... And, in the last panel? There's another PIE already in that same slot.

Possible title? Don't Think, and Fly.

Transcript

GM: The fighter takes off and you head for the hangar opening and freedom.
GM: But the fuel line is still connected! The ship wobbles unsteadily as it strains against the tether.
[SFX]: Yank!
Rey: Hang on. The torque should slam them into the ground or walls.
Poe: That’d be true if it were a momentum-conserving reaction engine.
GM: Riiight. Yeah, it’s not one of those.
Rey: So... it violates the laws of physics?
GM: Um...
Poe: Well obviously. All the vehicles in this campaign do.
[SFX]: tug... tug...
Rey: Why does it even need a fuel line, then?
GM: It obeys the convenient laws of physics.