So many ships, these are my favorites. Most of them are based on EU stats and information for them or just looking and doing cool things in movies and games.
While ships technically can be included in vehicles it means a whole 'nother thing if I just say vehicles without saying I mean ships too. I prefer this way.
Made by the Corellian Engineering Corporation (CEC); It's part of the YT series as is the more familiar YT-1300 the "Millennium Falcon". This was introduced in Shadows of the Empire as Dash Rendar's ship.
I prefer it because it's smaller and has more flat panels on the top instead of curving out. Which means you can fly through smaller gaps and the gunner can be operated from the cockpit. Not to mention better shields and hull. They end up flying the same speed but the YT-1300 does fit more.
This one comes in two flavors; Blue which isn't technically a starfighter but an aircraft the NX Police Cruiser and Yellow which is the one that's in the movies.
They had advanced auto pilot stuff, got green lasers. You actually see these get fueled which is something that I find neat. Apparently it's one of the most eco-friendly ships in-universe.
It's got my favorite shade of yellow, engines glow blue, lasers are green. Most of my favorite colors on one ship that I already like now elevated.
"Wait which TIE?" all of them! I love them all, they hate me.
Look at them, they are pretty cheaply made. Somehow there's two engines in them. TIE means "Twin-Ion Engine" where's it at huh, confirm an exact spot I wanna know exactly how it moves Ion propulsion doesn't work well in atmosphere! Supposedly they are low matinence but I think they just explode before it has to be done. Which is almost no matinence then.
The interceptor is the vanilla one that can actually do anything cool on it's own. They even do some cool stuff in the movies before exploding.
TIE Defenders and the Advanced could have a tractor beam mounted that would just hold your ship and they'd shoot you but, this isn't exclusive to TIEs
It's the bare minimum ships, but you can do so much with them. Survivng in a TIE in most cases means you don't even need shields, most are gone after a few shots winning in a TIE feels like winning the lottery and you are skilled.
Few variants have shields like the previously mentioned Defender and Advanced.
Also they're loud as they fly around, you aren't going to just go around unnoticed.
If you're a rebel, you've seen this one too much. Favorite Rebel bomber, these things are versitile. Could be flown on any mission and come out on top, unless you need to get there really fast. For their size, the shields are amazing; Can have a co-pilot gunner which is always neat and a favorite feature of mine.
There's a clone wars variant with more hull plates but you don't need that. Then there's a scout variant but why not use them for something cooler they are designed for. Air Support, Bombing Runs, Suppresive Fire, maybe even a little dogfight or jousting.
To those that are uniniated but reading my starwars shrine, thanks I love you. Jousting is like a more intimate dogfight. You fly away from each other and turn around then just bombard each other till you get too close. Rinse and repeat until someone dies. Maybe one of you spins while doing it or continues and just collides with you if they can tank.
They're a very common form of ship to ship combat, I think the term has been used as early as 1981 with ELITE but that just might be in the circles I was in telling me so. It isn't viable most times. You usually want to be attacking before you get into a range that could be considered jousting and if you're there, evade until it isn't a joust.
Your ship needs decent stats to be able to pull this off without being punished for doing so. The Y-Wing gets away most cases against similar sized ships and a co-pilot helps confirm that atleast one of you will hit them.
The Empire has some key aesthetics to it's ship designs. The TIE series is made for mass production, cheaply made. The Dreadnaught's were an old design however they were ahead of their time, reused by the Empire.
Slow and slugish in their movements but with an armament that could challenge anything when used for policing a system against pirates or smugglers. The look is quite simple compared to other capital ships most of them show signs of damage from years of service.
With a decently sized docking bay to hold a few TIE fighters. They can be equiped with a slave circuit to automate some ship functions to a single button on a datapad cutting the size of the crew down significantly.
The Katana Fleet used by the Republic for a brief period was comprised of 200 Dreadnaughts using slave-rigged ships, cutting the numbers down from a crew of 16,000 to only 2,200 crew members. With a single drawback due to a strange one time occurrence which I personally believe is a non-issue and should be excluded from using such a feature and should not have hindered this concept and I will not elaborate further. WHYYY
The Empire would mainly use these in the outer rim due in part that they already had them avalible. Sector Moffs would slowly sell them to other forces and upgrade to Star Destroyers over time. The Corporate Sector would buy countless dreadnaughts from the Imperial Navy for their picket fleet.
The Dreadnaught although a carry over would be seen in the hands of all sides during the galactic civil war because of this.