Ship shields in Star Wars have NEVER been seen to flicker when hit.
And the 'more guns so more hits' logic is bad; the Falcon would be much harder to hit from a fixed platform like a Star Destroyer. The TIEs scored far more hits, but presumably with lower calibre guns. It all evens out.
The Millenium Falcon seemed to be abl to take hits, for sure. Fighters do not; the shields seem to provide only slight protection. But all the computer games have the shields being very strong, hence this unfair perception of TIEs as being crap. I still blame ROTJ.
Ush, thank you for the speech. 😄
Well, the video games are supposed to be fun and exciting, not frustrating because your shields are the wimpiest things in the world. That's why Kyle has a shield in Jedi Outcast, although in the Star Wars stuff I've read about personal shielding, it says that it has ill effects, such as scorched skin.
You know, I think they should be brave enough to dump the shield in Jedi Knight games. You should do it like a Jedi does and use a sabre for all your protection.
And Rex, there was still plenty of fun to be had in the game TIE Fighter (BRILLIANT game!) flying highly manoeuvrable ships, even though they fell apart in seconds. It was only annoying that your targets did NOT fall apart in seconds! It can be done.
But the whole strong shield fallacy started with the prequel to that game, X-Wing. WHich made the X-Wing miles better than the TIE Fighter just so the players could get high scores, like 30 in one mission (still a classic game, though- even though you couldn;t miss the exhaust port even if you were blind).
Which in turn, I think, goes back to the EU perception that TIEs were crap because they don't have shields, and people were thinking of shields too much in Star Trek terms instead of actually watching the films and seeing how much good those shields did.
Note that no Star Wars fighter combat game has ever had guns that track their target instead of just firing forwards, even though from ANH onwards the guns have always directed themselves (I always assumed those lovely little target displays from ANH were these guns locking on).
People just don't WATCH the things they are making games out of...