The player is expected to designate how much power is allotted to each system as their mission demands, and with all systems drawing from the same power source, an importance is placed on finding the right balance between all three necessarily systems, as increasing power to one system directly decreases the amount available to the other two. With the exception of some of the Empire's weaker ships, which are unshielded, all starfighters have individual subsystems for engines, shields, and lasers. Failure of any primary objectives will result in mission failure, as will the destruction of the player's ship.Įnergy management is another crucial gameplay mechanic which must be properly accounted for in most missions. In addition to fighting off the enemy, the player is often tasked with accomplishing additional objectives in the midst of combat, such as defending a vulnerable allied target or acquiring important data, and furthermore missions may sometimes unfold in phases. To prevail in combat, most ships are equipped both with short range beam weaponry, most commonly Laser Cannons or Ion Cannons, which can be recharged, as well as a limited supply of long range warheads such as Photon Torpedoes or Concussion Missiles, which must be used more judiciously. During missions, the player controls a single starfighter from a first-person perspective, piloting it through a variety of hostile encounters, which can generally be divided into one of two categories: dogfights occurring between two or more ships of a similar size, or confrontations with larger and more dangerous capital class vessels.
STAR WARS X WING FIGHTER PILOT SERIES
The core gameplay of the X-Wing series revolves around simulated combat engagements between spacefaring vessels of the Empire and the Rebellion. The events depicted within the games are on the whole considered to be canonical happenings in the series' fiction, and over the course of its lifespan, X-Wing added a number of new characters to the Star Wars universe, with some of the more notable creations being Maarek Stele and Ace Azzameen, the protagonists of TIE Fighter and X-Wing Alliance, respectively, as well as Grand Admiral Zaarin, who organized an unsuccessful coup d'état against Emperor Palpatine. Several new types of spacecraft were also created specifically for the series, such as the TIE Defender and the Missile Boat, some of which do not appear outside the X-wing games. The Star Wars: X-Wing franchise directly ties itself not only to canonical Star Wars events, but also to the Stare Wars Expanded Universe with inclusions such as Grand Admiral Thrawn and the Z-95 Headhunter.
TIE Fighter, X-Wing titles are known for their lengthy single-player campaigns, which dovetail with the events of the original trilogy. Though they differ in the particulars, games in the X-Wing franchise focus primarily on dogfighting between spacecraft of the Rebel Alliance and the Galactic Empire, and, apart from X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, and Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance all games in the series, with the exception of the last, received at least one official expansion as well.
There are four primary titles in the franchise, which are, in order of release, Star Wars: X-Wing, Star Wars: TIE Fighter, Star Wars: X-Wing vs. As its name implies, the franchise is set within George Lucas' Star Wars universe, and all releases within it are set concurrent to the original trilogy, as they predate the cinematic release of the prequel trilogy (the last game, X-Wing Alliance, was released roughly three months prior to The Phantom Menace). Introduced to the world in February of 1993 with Star Wars: X-Wing, the Star Wars: X-Wing franchise is a series of space combat flight simulation games created by Totally Games (led by Larry Holland and Edward Kilham) and distributed by Lucasarts.