Chapter 1 -Why X-Wing?

Indeed, that is the question. Why X-Wing? It’s certainly the oldest of the four flying platforms, has numerous technical limitations in comparison to TIE, forces you to fly Rebel ships with no, as of yet, working TIE patch for X-Wing 95, and is not generally flown by most TC pilots. While all of this is true, there’s still plenty of reason to build on X-Wing. First off, because it’s the oldest and lacks a number of the advancements brought on by TIE, it’s significantly easier to build for then all the other platforms. If you’re just starting out in mission building, learning X-Wing is the best way to start, especially if you want to make XvT missions (XvTED can convert X-Wing missions and runs very similarly to X-ED). Because it forces you to fly Rebel ships, it also forces you to come up with a bit more of original plots, and most of the newest X-Wing missions have some excellent plots compared to the usual garbage thrown around with newer TIE missions. And while not a lot of people fly X-Wing, those who do are pretty into it; you’ll always get great feedback and information on how you can improve whenever you build for X-Wing

Technical Limitations
X-Wing has a number of technical limitations. Like TIE, it can only support 28 ships on screen at a time, which XWA designers find atrocious. This forces you to be more careful about how you place your ships, as well as usually limits the amount of support you want to give the player. Like TIE, you cannot have “must NOT” goals like you can in XvT and XWA. However, X-Wing has even less goal choices then TIE; something can only be captured, destroyed, inspected, survive, be docked with, or arrive. All of those can be for the full flight, 50% of the flight, or only for the special ship of the flight. That’s it. This gives you significantly less to work with then TIE, and with no global goals it forces you to either be smarter and more innovated with your battles, or to be a lot lazier. It’s your choice, but hopefully you’ll fall into the category of the former rather then the latter. Another significant and obvious technical limitation of X-Wing is that it only has 18 different types of vessels, which is a far cry from the amount of ships found n TIE, and later XWA. You’re also limited to what you can specify for each flight group; you’re going to have to accept that only A-Wings, T/Bs and T/As can fire concussion missiles and so on. There’s also virtually no patching for it, which means that you’re pretty much limited to only flying Rebel craft at this time. This will definetly take some getting used to if you’re used to dealing with a wide variety of craft. If you’re new, then it’s a much easier way to get into everything; X-Wing gives you the bare basics, and if you’re good, you can still deliver.

Making a plot for an X-Wing battle
Because of these technical limitations, you’re certainly going to have to work harder to come up with an original concept. Try to stay away from “Our squad is gonna fly rebel ships for no good reason!” missions, although if you can make it original with a good twist, feel free to. Good ideas usually can consist of original characters being thrown into service for the Empire, rebel pilots going rogue for various reasons, or our own EH crew being put in a situation where they must place their lives in the hands of a dirty rebel fighter, etc. Because you’re limited on craft, you’re going to have be smart in how you use each ship. For example, you won’t want to forget that in X-Wing, you can put down a ISD’s shields by destroying the generator; therefore, you might want to use the CRS if you want a long cap ship battle, while you might want to consider using a ISD if you want a snub fighter assault, although you should limit the amount of bombers in the mission so that it is still a challenge. A lot of this you’ll learn as you fly other X-Wing battles and begin to create your own, and that’s what we’re going to start on in the next Chapter.

.: Chapter 2: Using X-Ed - Mission :.