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As I usually do when looking for ideas, I went searching online for Star Wars spaceships that someone didn’t like. Whether it’s the ‘worst’ spaceships, ‘dumbest looking’ spaceships, or ‘my least favorite Star Wars ships’, there is always something to spark creativity as you look through other people’s opinions and lists. However, it turns out that I’ve already redesigned a bunch of the usual suspects on these lists, and I couldn’t find much in the way of inspiration. It wasn’t until I came across a list of the ‘wierdest’ ships that I found the one I was looking for. The Tie Predator.

I know some of you love this thing, but for me, it hits all the wrong notes. In an effort to showcase advancing technology, it’s a design pet peeve of mine to give a ship upgraded stats without any visual cues. The Predator does this in spades, keeping the eyeball of the tie fighter the same size (or smaller, actually) but saying ‘now it has a hyperdrive and faster engines! On top of this, there is one other glaring design flaw. Its aerodynamics. I know, I know, they’re make believe spaceships in a make-believe universe, but there seems to be a rule that ships in Star Wars should look like they could actually fly…with the right propulsion. But these things have 2 giant sails attached to the sides that would make it ridiculously difficult to fly in-atmosphere. Like, completely impractical! Now, I suppose I wouldn't mind flying one of these if the power goes out. It could probably give you a pretty soft landing when you spread those wings out, but other than that, there’s no possible way this ship could even get to 60MPH on a planet with any kind of atmosphere.

Now we come to my trip in 2021 to the Hill Air Force Museum here in Utah, where I fell in love with the giant 6 bladed helicopters like the sikorski ch53-E Super Stallion. There was something about the multiple blades working together in perfect synchronization that I just couldn’t get out of my mind!

Of course, I’d like to say that I combined these ideas from this point, I did not. I needed one additional push to make the connection. And in this case, the final puzzle piece came from the incredibly fertile creative ground that is the ILM Art challenge on ArtStation. I came across a series of art called simply “tie fighter evolution” by Joseph Diaz. And suddenly, everything clicked! I quickly started combining the wing shape of the predator with a wing configuration that combined the basic idea of the “tie fighter evolution” and the feeling of the 6 bladed helicopter.

The end result was this, I call it, the Tie Cyclone. Now, I gave you the out of universe history, but now for the In-universe idea!

This Tie would have been reserved for only the most elite pilots in the galaxy. I imagine that after the loss of Thrawn, many of the remaining imperial leaders began their own Tie Improvement projects. One such officer, Moff Sikor, was responsible for this particular model. Developed from the original Tie Defender plans, the cyclone stripped down many of the original advantages in favor of more traditional Imperial Naval doctrine. The hyperdrive was removed, as were the bulky collection panels, and in their place, came rotating wings, an increase in speed, and 3 different types of lasers. Rapid firing light and medium cannons on the ball, and heavy lasers on the center wings.

And now for the wings. A major concern that happens to me when designing a Tie fighter in particular, is how the pilot gets in and out. In this case, with the wings sticking out so far, I knew the wings would need to get out of the way, no matter what. So in the spirit of the Glaive and the Javelin, I created a rotating wing mechanism!

A couple of notes on the design. The wings were some of the first things I built, knowing that I wanted a smaller wing design than the concept art, and also more along the lines of the Tie Predator. It took a surprisingly short amount of time to get the outer line to work with the 3x12 wedge plates, but the center wing and outer wings needed to be different, so there was a bit of redesigning once I discovered that.

The rotation mechanism was rebuilt the most, and even as I worked on the instructions I tried a couple of times to modify and improve it. There are parts of it that I don’t like, but at some point you just get diminishing returns if you keep building, and that’s where I got to with this one. I really wanted the rotation mechanism to be as hidden as possible on the ship, and I think it turned out pretty good.

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