Outrider/Legends

The Outrider was a heavily modified YT-2400 light freighter used by the brash smuggler Dash Rendar. Rendar held that his ship was almost as well known as the Millennium Falcon.
==Design and modifications==
The Outrider started life as a stock Corellian Engineering Corporation YT-2400. Like all the ships in the YT-series, the Outrider featured the trademark saucer-shaped hull, which Rendar reinforced with titanium armor and gave a dark, chrome gleam. The cockpit and main escape pod were attached to the starboard side of the saucer with two bracing arms. The docking hatch and another escape pod were on the port side.
One of the first modifications Dash made was to replace the original engines with three KonGar KGDefender military-grade ion engines stolen from the advanced engineering department of the Imperial Academy on Corulag. The factory-issue hyperdrive was also replaced with a modified SoroSuub Griffyn/Y2TG hyperdrive, giving the Outrider a Class 0.75 hyperdrive rating. The backup hyperdrive engine had a Class 10 performance. Rendar also improved the Outrider sensors and added a countermeasure/stealth package. Though these last modifications were highly illegal, they helped him to avoid unnecessary conflicts.
When Rendar could not avoid combat, the Outrider was more than capable of holding its own. The ship was armed with a pair of Dymek heavy laser cannons, mounted on dorsal and ventral turrets. The standard Corellian 1D servo mounts provided a 180-degree range of fire above and below the ship. These cannons were hand-modified by Rendar to improve both firepower and range, and could be fired from the gunnery wells or from the cockpit. The Outrider was also armed with a pair of forward-firing concussion missile launchers built into the cockpit tube. Each launcher contained a magazine of three missiles.
The Outrider was customized to be operated by Rendar and/or Leebo. It could carry about 75 metric tons of cargo, in addition to up to four additional passengers. When fully stocked, it could go for two standard months before needing to resupply.
==History==
When asked how he acquired his ship, Rendar typically answered, "Not by clean living." The Outrider was a gift from "Uncle" Vanya, a Twi'lek crime boss for whom Dash worked during the early days of his mercenary career. Vanya also provided Rendar with a Rodian co-pilot who ended up dying within the first twenty seconds of Rendar's debut mission.
Rendar immediately began modifying the ship for smuggling duties. Most of the original modifications were done at the Byblos Starport Tower 214 by Rendar and the talented Sullustan engineer Bolabo Hujaan.
Sometime before the Battle of Yavin 4, the Outrider was smuggling cargo through the Maw when it was ambushed by the Galactic Empire. Rendar and his navigator, Eaden Vrill, were able to escape by using a hyperspace jump, but it blew out the primary and secondary hyperdrive engines. They limped to Tatooine on their ion engines and laid the Outrider in a berth in Mos Eisley to effect repairs. Rendar was able to hire his crew to the holostar Javul Charn to get the required money to pay for repairs.Shadow Games
Dash and Leebo were infamous in smuggling circles well before they were hired by the Rebel Alliance to smuggle weapons and badly needed supplies to Echo Base on Hoth after the evacuation of Yavin 4. When the Battle of Hoth began, the Outrider was still berthed in Echo Base's hangar. Dash and Leebo barely escaped the base, and had to fly through the Hoth asteroid field in order to escape the orbiting Death Squadron.Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire video game
Soon afterwards, the Outrider was stationed in the prefabricated base of Kile. It to accompanied the Millennium Falcon in an attempt to rescue Han Solo from the bounty hunter Boba Fett, who had set down for repairs at the Imperial Enclave on the moon of Gall.Shadows of the Empire novel
The Outrider also participated in a battle to secure the Imperial freighter Suprosa, which was carrying the plans for the second Death Star.
Rendar also piloted the Outrider during the final conflict with Black Sun leader Prince Xizor over Coruscant. In that battle it appeared that the Outrider was destroyed and Rendar and Leebo were killed, but it was a trick of timing and perspective; Rendar had decided that his time as a Rebel was over.
==Behind the scenes==
LucasArts developer and artist Jon Knoles came up with a triangular ship designThe Secrets of Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire, Part 4: Battle Zones, II. Battleships that was less of a technical challenge. In retrospect, he would feel the design was too derivative of other ships of different franchises. Kilian Plunkett provided his own early concept with a unusual collapsible design.
ILM veteran artist Doug Chiang helped design several ships of the project, including the Virago and IG-2000. A November 1994 memo by Allan Kausch proposed that the Outrider would be derivative of the Millennium Falcon, to mirror Dash's role as of a similar mold as Solo, but smaller, and not too similar. Sue Rostoni also included the guideline that it should be comparable but smaller than the Falcon. Initially Chiang experimented with a pincerlike form. Knoles gave Chiang the direction that the Outrider should be "a B-Wing mated with a Millennium Falcon." After just one sketch, Chiang had essentially created the final iconic version of the ship to the great satisfaction of Knoles and the team. Jon Knoles proceeded with the schmematics of the Outrider derived from Chiang's sketches on February 22 1995, in order for the video game model to be built.
The final shape of the Outrider (as well as other vehicles and objects) was determined while the Shadows of the Empire 2 comic was under development, forcing artist Kilian Plunkett to erase his drawings and remake them with the revised design.The Secrets of Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire, Part 5: Shadow Play, I. GATHERING OF THE TRIBES
The toy line by Hasbro/Kenner produced a model or the Outrider where the central port-to-starboard section of the hull could pivot like a swing-arm, and give a cross-like shape to the ship during battle. This feature hasn't appeared or been described in any canonical source.
Due to the increasing collaboration between LucasArts and Industrial Light & Magic, the ILM department enquired about any hi-resolution models in the LucasArts archive they could possibly use for the Special Edition releases of the original trilogy. Knoles and the rest of the Shadows of the Empire team had actually created a hi-res model of the Outrider for reference, not ever expecting it to appear in any media; when the ILM team saw the model, they liked it enough to decide to include it in a scene of A New Hope.
==Appearances==
*Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds 
*Star Wars: Battlefront 
*Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II 
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*Shadow Games
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*Star Wars: X-Wing Alliance
*Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire Galoob minicomic
*Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire novel 
*Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire abridged audiobook
*Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire junior novelization
*Star Wars: Shadows of the Empire video game
*Shadows of the Empire 2
*Shadows of the Empire 6
*Star Wars: Galaxy of Heroes
==Sources==
==Notes and references==
Category:Smuggler starships
Category:YT-2400 light freighters