The Defender of the Empire

[Jerac]

I started my MOC year 2018 by making the cheapest TIE craft in the Imperial fleet, and now I end this year by making the most expensive one. The TIE Defender only recently made it into canon, but back in 1994 when it debuted in Lucas Arts' TIE Fighter game, it was a beast.
Faster than an A-Wing, tougher than a B-Wing and more manouverable than the Interceptor, the Defender does all a starfighter does, just better*. 

Now I have it in LEGO form... which was pretty interesting to get to. Because since there is no true canon representation of the ship except for Rebels... which I'll get to in short... I could give myself some leeway when it comes to accuracy and give it the coolest shape I could think of while still preserving core features.

The Defender as seen in Rebels has slightly different shape:

Much like... well, almost everything, Rebels took a nice design and changed it... for reasons unknown. Let's just say I am not a fan of this rear-heavy design, nor do I like the tall-neck ISDs or featureless toy-looking basic T/F line fighters. Not to mention if I went with this one it would tip forward because the center of mass is further to the front than the furthest flat piece of the wings.

Instead I based my design having this one in mind:

The only real alteration I did was making top guns a bit different to distinguish them - after all these are supposed to be ion cannons, and added visible missile launchers in a place which made at least some logical chance - on the panel centers. 
Anyway no matter which design you pick, the Defender is an odd one. The ball is just tacked on to a triple support base, panels are bent in wrong way and it is always going to look top heavy because, well, it is. 

 

Engines were contested point between me and BrickVault. We tried several solutions, but the final fight was between these two:

I still believe the Defender, being THAT FAST should have large, prominent engines, but eventually we picked a less-in-your-face design as seen on top, while still making more sense than what Rebels did with theirs.
 

Structurally this design perhaps the toughest one of all the ships to date, except maybe the Bomber. But it is hard to compare something to the Twin Flying Brick,

This is the first TIE in my line which has an interior, thanks to Inthert for inspiration!

It fits any kind of TIE pilot and altough you need to remove the quarter dome pieces to put him there, they are lightly attached on one stud so this is super easy.
 

Tell me what you think!

This build, as usual this year, is available through http://brickvault/toys as instructions, which you can get to support us!

*When it comes to OP starfighters, the Defender is the top dog - with sole exception of the Missile Boat which is as ridiculous compared to the T/D as the T/D is to anything else. To put it shortly, Missile Boat is almost twice as fast, holds enemy ships in place with tractor beams and carries ten times the ordnance count of what B-Wing carries. And the MB is pretty small ship.

Edited December 15, 2018 by Jerac
forgot tags.

[Hollander]

I see a topic with a new MOC from Jerac, I click. 

What can I say? This is another excellent creation, which is expected from you I think we can say! I wanted to write about how I thought a particular part of the build was the best, but after scrolling up again I had to decide there is no best part ... let me summarize.

- Wings, very well done, they seem a lot harder to pull off than regular, square shaped TIE wings and the missile launchers look cool and realistic, and the four 1x1 tiles on the end of each wing give it that extra detail.
- The engines + stucture holding the wings and cockpit together, maybe not the first thing you would look at but looks great nonetheless. I think the engines not being too large actually looks good on this type of ship, and this comes from someone who loves big engines! Also, the red detailing at the engine compartment nicely breaks up the gray and black of the ship. 
- The cockpit, the design doesnt look too complicated but it doesnt have to be, your main goal seemed to be to make the round shape and you pulled it off very well. Nice and smooth, the cockpit interior is a nice detail as well. 

 

Edited December 15, 2018 by Hollander

[Darnok]

Brilliant build, I am at a loss of words! If this was an UCS set, I would buy it!

 

P.S.: What would the parts cost, as a rough estimate?

[Jerac]

3 minutes ago, Drunknok said:

Brilliant build, I am at a loss of words! If this was an UCS set, I would buy it!

 

P.S.: What would the parts cost, as a rough estimate?

Well, at ~1.3k pieces it already is in UCS range ^^

It has more parts than (all of these are UCS): TIE Interceptor, TIE Advanced, original X-Wing, the Aethersprite and the AT-ST.

Right now the cost I see in EU is €130, and in US about $160. Remember the prices change all the time and this is using automatic shop finding. If you refine it a bit or can reuse something from your collection, the cost dramatically drops.

 

Thanks @Hollander!
Actually the wings were easier than in any other TIEs because I was not bound by exact dimensions. So finally I could use some angled piece and then match the length of the framing without any problem. The biggest challenge so far were the... basic T/F's panels! And they still are... I have had an idea how to cover the holes there are there but this idea caused another problems elsewhere, eh.

[Schneeds]

I'm not a fan of the ship within the Star Wars universe, but your build itself is excellent.  The 'struts' with the wedges to recreate the bladed parts look great.  The cockpit looks awesome as well. 

I'll second Hollander; I know I'm going to be impressed before I even load the link :)

[Cylo]

This is probably one of my favorite ships from SW and I would love to be able to build this some time!

[azzer86]

Another excellent build! Tie defender was my favourite ship from the x-wing Vs tie fighter game during my childhood.

What are the approximate size dimensions and is there a photo of it next to your other tie- fleet?

[La Chupacabra]

Impresive!

[KevinYoung]

Not a fan of this ship but my oh my your work makes it beautiful.Gorgeous build.

[Ellisss_2]

Amazing build as always, I love the interior of the cockpit!

[Bricktastrophe]

This is a great quality reproduction of arguably the coolest TIE design in Star Wars. I recently completed this model and recoloured it as Vult Skerris' TIE Defender Elite, from the Rebels Season 4 episode Rebel Assault. The construction of the model is, as with all of Jerac's designs, solid and sophisticated. The wings are held in place through a friction technique involving a hollow 4x4 plate and a series of 2x8 plates and other modified plates which is ingenious in my opinion. 
 

The shape of the solar panels is expertly captured, and although there are some gaps between the black sections of the panels and the grey (or in my case yellow) borders, they are hardly noticeable. The model is well balanced and easy to handle and the minifigure pilot fits snugly in Jerac's first decorated TIE cockpit. 
 

I think this was the perfect model to round out your collection of TIE designs, Jerac. I plan on building one of your X-wings in Phoenix squadron colours to accompany the Defender Elite, I'll post another picture here when I do so. 
 

I'd love to see your version of a TIE Phantom, if you're ever wondering what to build next. Rebel Builder on Youtube has a great version built in lego's signature style, but I prefer your SNOT-solar panels. 
 

Thanks for a great model!

Edited January 3, 2020 by Bricktastrophe

[delta_assault]

I've always been a fan of the TIE Defender, but I really prefer the depiction by the original creators Totally Games. These guys created the fighter in their game TIE Fighter and then made their most detailed model of it in the sequel X-Wing Alliance.

As you can see, it has elongated struts and rear hull compared to most other depictions of this craft. The only guy I've seen who has faithfully followed along this original vision is Fractalsponge with his CGI model: TIE Defender – Fractalsponge.net

Jerac, do you have any ideas for how I could mod your design to more closely resemble this? 

 

 

[Jerac]

This is a major rework. Panels are completely different, almost symmetrical lengthwise, while mine uses more tie-interceptor like panels. 

I'd say it needs to be done from scratch if you wish to have this look like this ship you posted. Really the only common part is the triple-fold symmetry. Even the front is not a ball anymore, but something else. 

[macaron35]

I was wondering... do you choose to build thick wings on purpose on all the Ties ?

 

because of all MOCs, your cockpits are among the best but the wings are also the thickest

and based on the picture you picked as a model for your MOC, the wings are very thin

[Jerac]

You basically have those options, and mine is not the thickest:

- 1 plate thick wings which have studs on one side and understuds on the other side. I didn't like it because I generally don't like visible studs.

- 2 plate thick wings, with tiled studs on one side and visible understuds on the other. This is better but only half better and you still have an ugly texture on one side.

- 3 plate thick wings with tiled studs on both sides and some shenanigans inbetween allowing to have those tiles on both sides. Now this looks good from the sides, but is now in total 3-plate wide...

- 1 stud thick wings which have smooth sides and edges. This is equivalent of 2.5 plate thick wings.To me this was the best solution.

That said, we should not really look at total thickness but percieved thickness, which in turn is the thickness of an edge. Which means you could do something like what Reputator did in 2017 with his small but nice Interceptor:
https://www.eurobricks.com/forum/index.php?/forums/topic/117309-moc-yet-another-tie-interceptor/

So this has narrow edges and also you could tile some of the studs. There is no way to tile all (or even most) of them really, and the edges have not very nice hole-y texture stemming from 2x4 / 2x3 wedge tiles.


All in all, I believe for now, given the parts choice, the brick-built approach is optimal.

[macaron35]

2 hours ago, Jerac said:

 I generally don't like visible studs.

that's what i thought ;)

Edited December 16, 2020 by macaron35

[jasoriab]

Hi @Jerac

Returning to the thread, I would like to ask you if you have planned version 2 of the TIE Defender, applying similar changes that you have made in the Fighter and the Interceptor, new 4x4 top dish from 75300 T/F, stand, etc...

[Kage Goomba]

Didn't know Jerac did a TIE/d - learn something new.
Really wish I could clean up my UCS variant stand wise. Getting that itch again lol.

[Jerac]

18 hours ago, jasoriab said:

Hi @Jerac

Returning to the thread, I would like to ask you if you have planned version 2 of the TIE Defender, applying similar changes that you have made in the Fighter and the Interceptor, new 4x4 top dish from 75300 T/F, stand, etc...

I didn't plan a full update, just a small one to extend pylons by 1 stud and make attachment point for new stand and the 4wide hatch, but there's a problem: my original instructions made in lpub no longer open in lpub and I don't remember which exact version I was using back then. So I'd basically need to make new instructions from scratch just to add these minimal modifications. It was a bit different in case of TF and TI, as they were basically total makeovers, but with defender, advanced and bomber I am mostly satisfied as they are.

For now I prefer to spend my lego time on new MOCs instead of investing quite a lot of time to redo instructions so I could apply these minimal changes.
Maybe just few photos showing how to do it would suffice for a while?

 

14 hours ago, Kage Goomba said:

Didn't know Jerac did a TIE/d - learn something new.
Really wish I could clean up my UCS variant stand wise. Getting that itch again lol.

TIE/d would be TIE Droid and this I indeed did not do ;)
 

[jasoriab]

3 hours ago, Jerac said:

I didn't plan a full update, just a small one to extend pylons by 1 stud and make attachment point for new stand and the 4wide hatch, but there's a problem: my original instructions made in lpub no longer open in lpub and I don't remember which exact version I was using back then. So I'd basically need to make new instructions from scratch just to add these minimal modifications. It was a bit different in case of TF and TI, as they were basically total makeovers, but with defender, advanced and bomber I am mostly satisfied as they are.

For now I prefer to spend my lego time on new MOCs instead of investing quite a lot of time to redo instructions so I could apply these minimal changes.
Maybe just few photos showing how to do it would suffice for a while?

 

It's a project I want to build this year, so if the mods aren't too complex, and they show up clearly in the photos, it would be a good choice along with the instructions in Brick Vault.

Do the current instructions include the stand? Could you add them as a separate file to the current instructions zip?

And one last question, are you planning to add the Defender to The Perfect TIE Collection - Minifig Scale pack?

[Jerac]

4 hours ago, jasoriab said:

It's a project I want to build this year, so if the mods aren't too complex, and they show up clearly in the photos, it would be a good choice along with the instructions in Brick Vault.

Do the current instructions include the stand? Could you add them as a separate file to the current instructions zip?

And one last question, are you planning to add the Defender to The Perfect TIE Collection - Minifig Scale pack?

1: Definitely possible to show on renders on photos.

2: The stand is not included, but instructions for the stand are free: https://drive.google.com/file/d/11SfMiMGVaY7CBWSgUCFUd3H424gJc0ZR/view?usp=share_link

3: No - TD is not a part of the classic trilogy. There must be a balance between amount of models in the bundle and total price.

[a246]

@jasoriab Did you ever modify your build? If so, could you post some photos?

[Kage Goomba]

Still owe you thanks for helping me with my UCS TIE Defender Jerac :)

[jasoriab]

On 5/5/2023 at 8:58 PM, a246 said:

@jasoriab Did you ever modify your build? If so, could you post some photos?

Hi!

No, I haven't started building the TIE Defender yet, I'm in the process of collecting bricks to use.