It was. That's what I loved about it. Blowing those filthy rebels up left, right and center after the long journey to get to that point. Very satisfying.
Unlike the current trends in gaming with "scaling" the enemies to the point where working hard to get an advantage is ultimately rendered pointless.
"OK, so now you deal twice the damage? Fine, we'll give your enemies twice the amount of hit points to keep it 'challenging'"
Because clearly shooting at the same enemy for 10 minutes is twice as challenging and "fun" as shooting at him for 5.
Which is kind of how I feel about CZs in Elite.
Word. I hate how creeping multiplayer focus has resulted in a constant obsession with balance, even when it's irrelevant. I love the power trip in games. The stuff you get from Risk of Rain, Dragon's Dogma, Elder Scrolls games which-are-not-Oblivion-although-you-can-still-do-it-but-it-takes-more-effort, or heck, even the Souls games with their infinite farming.
And the TIE Defender was glorious like that, I enjoyed it a lot. Plus you took it out on ridiculously high budget missions. By comparison, the TIE Advanced was my main issue with the game, it's just so, so utterly
boring. Yes, it's straight up better than the unshielded trio, but that trio is where all the flavour of the game lies. You recognise a real pilot when they take their Y-Wing or TIE Bomber assignment with pride as opposed to retching/sobbing in a corner.