It has long bugged me that the Rebellion could field a fleet in ANH similar to the one from ROTJ. This was my look at how the battle could work with only the ships seen in ANH. The emitter plot was just the first one that came to me, but it establishes elements like the targeting computers, abilities of the various ships, and attitudes of the flight leaders that will become important in ANH.

Another change was to imply that the spies couldn’t escape the facility because they were trapped and using the only method of delivering the plans that was now available to them, whereas the film made it sound like there was some great strategy in broadcasting the plans through the shield instead of stealing a ship, despite later realizing that the shield must come down for either method to work.

Vader is now introduced by his methods as an effective and ruthless pilot. There needs be no other scene with him, and this gives us some good Vader action without the gratuitous lightsaber nonsense.

Finally, since the Tantive IV is never seen at the battle, Leia has plausible deniability when she is intercepted at the start of ANH and her detour to Tatooine makes sense because she truly believes that she was not tracked. Vader’s mission also comes into focus as there is now an implied history of him tracing the movements of the Rebellion for quite a while.