fuloki
replied to your post “my contention is IF the rebels take back lothal, they can attend to…”
they had to take out the source of fuel because the tie defender factory with fuel could spit tie defenders out. The rebellion ships are incapable with dealing with the tie defenders, even with all the best pilots on the job it was a dificult task without taking out the fuel depot.
@fuloki yeah that’s definitely true, but in the final battle TIEs – even regular ones – are nearly a non-entity.
they don’t affect whether hera + allies get back to lothal because they use hondo’s pirate tricks to sneak in. they don’t affect their approach to capital city because they use an imperial ship and pose as imperials. and then most of the final battle is waged on the ground with storm troopers. ezra flies up to the chimaera using a stolen imperial ship, so they don’t deploy any ships to attack him. the only time i can think of that TIEs ended up playing a major role in the battle was when the purrgils came and they pretty much got torn up by the purrgils.
like the plan ezra and his friends use circumvents the threat of aerial attack almost completely EXCEPT for from thrawn’s star destroyer, and ezra takes care of that with the purrgils.
space 