"How, pray tell, would the viewport be covered with paint,
Its called an indirect shot. Currently wave rockets, grenade launchers, etc. which easily launch to AT-AT height. However the simplest way is simply to shoot at the damn things. You cannot armor your eyes extenisvely because it intereferes with operation (hence why tanks use *periscopes* instead of viewports), further the thing has to let some form of EM through to be useful to target with. Shooting it with a turbolaser (which we've seen produce char) could easily accomplish this"
What kind of tactic is this? Which modern armies have adopted paint launchers for the purpose of blocking out tanks periscopes? Why the fuck would anyone requisition such a silly weapon?
And to put a nail in this frigging nitpick: The ICS shows tha the AT-AT has both viewport AND forward sensors. The vehicle commander: "uses a periscope display capable of tactical and photographic readouts" The two pilots guide their machine with terrain sensors under the cockpit and ground sensors built into the feet of the vehicle.
"Sigh dumbass. Did you read the adjective MECH in front of infantry? The days when infantry were limited by the propulsion of their own two feet went the way of the dinosaur decades ago. Currently mech infantry can outpace armor which is moving at speeds *vastly* faster than an AT-AT. The Imp assualt was *piss slow* for an all armor assualt, any current MBT could do literal *circles* around them and any good mech infantry (you know using HMMWVs) can do circles around those"
Oh and these fancy mech infantry that the rebels should have, how are they going to
a- survive AT-AT fire
b- survive AT-ST fire
c- survive dismounted infantry that *might* be deployed
d- survive the speeder bikes that *might* be deployed (AT-ATs hold speeder bikes)
"Wrong dumbass. Luke most certainly had weaponry powerful enough to breech the hatch. Given that the accelerations shown by their missiles, torpedos, fighters, cap ships, hell even the DEATH STAR ... they most certainly have the ability to produce enough KE to punch through a couple of metres of metal. It is technologically feasible. Luke's torp goes through at least 10,000g's, do you have any frikking idea how fast a KEP or KEM would be going after being subjected to that type of force for even a fraction of a second?"
Your burden of proof. It doesn't matter if its feasible or not, their big fucking cannons on the snowspeeders and the portable artillery they wheeled out was ineffective.
"But just for the sake of mocking you, how much more powerful do you think the amry's current LOSAT-KEM is than something the rebs could whip up? It can penetrate over a *metre* of solid metal (which BTW is farther more than Luke could have possibly chopped through). I are SW AT weapons really so pathetic compared to 20th century ones?"
Get real! "The US Army has LOSAT which can kill modern tanks, ergo, the rebels can make a man portable missile which they can kill AT-ATs with by firing at them from underneath." How the hell are they gonna get there?! If the weapon is LOSAT sized, it MUST be mounted on a vehicle- hence, fodder.
"Any number of chemical agents block transmission of the visible EM spectrum. The simplest method is a nice projectile with an altitude detonator. You fill your projectile with a an opaque glue, send it aloft and let the splatter hit the viewport, any other sensors locations. Further we have seen blasters char their strikes all they need to do char the viewport."
Another bullshit tactic thought up by you to make the AT-AT designers appear incompetent. Furthermore, as for charring Luke fired DIRECTLY at the viewport with his blasters and they did NOTHING.
"Damn you are stupid. You don't even need to shoot the thing to do this. Just use *WHITE NOISE*. Any radio transmitter/receiving emits waves and reads them. There are always some in the background which make you signal:noise ratio not infinite. With white noise you just transmit noise until the ratio becomes too low to be useful (this is the *basic* explanation, getting into tricks to make better jamming and ways to circumvent it are going to get out of my league fast). Not to mention oh say electrifying the anttena."
Here's a taste of your own medicine: the US Army and any other army worth its salt has radios that hop frequencies (SINGCARS?). It is possible to have secure communications on a modern battlefield, it just takes work. You think the Imps cant deal with radio jamming? Jeez you really are desperate to make the Imps look bad. Too bad you have no proof, and its a *red herring* anyway.
"Look at the screen when Luke is scaling the AT-AT, now look how small he is in comparison to the AT-AT. He will appear pathetically small to the gunner, unless the gunner is using a scope of some type, but that limits his feild of vision. Some nice artic *camo* means you just lay down and wait. AT-AT's and AT-ST's have *crap* for vision (as was demonstrated in RoTJ) and plenty of distractions (like the air cover, fixed guns shooting at them and dozens of other targets running around). Given that an AT-AT is essentiall *1* gun the operators have not the range of vision nor the time to shoot you in battle. This is why you need more eyes. Battlefeilds result in massive amounts of information running through your head, even if the imps have *omniscient* sensors the poor sap commanding/gunning the AT-AT has far too many threats/targets to go after them all. This is why you want *close support* guys dedicated to saving your ass from threats you didn't see or had time to deal with. This is also why you want more eyes ... they can process more information."
As I said, the AT-ATs only had something to fear from a guy with an ancient jedi weapon, a harpoon and a bomb. Yep I'm sure everyone gets warned about that in breifings.
"Dumbass. Let me explain something about airborn infantry and mech infantry ... you are *NOT* limited by what you can carry. Mech infantry get vehicles, the most well known of which is the HMMWV, one weapon system ported by the HMMWV is the LOSAT-KEM. This sucker fires off 80 kg KEM which can penetrate any MBT in service today. Can you physically carry 80 kg weaponry? No. Can a simple Hummer? Hell yes. When I say mech infantry I'm not talking about exoskeletons and servo suits. I'm talking about guys in vehicles which carry loads heavier than normal infantry can and do so faster than armor can move.
As for airborne infantry. You can airdrop anything, including multitonne tanks with todays technology. In SW's I most certainly hope they haven't regressed to the point where you can't drop heavy missiles to fired from tripods."
Stop wanking off about LOSAT. Pray tell, how would these vehicles SURVIVE against AT-AT and AT-ST fire?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
As for airdrop infantry- man you are on a fishing expedition aren't you. While those vehicles and men are floating down on parachutes or repulsors or whatever I'm sure the AT-STs will be having a ball.
"As far as climbing on an AT-AT ... ask Luke, last name Skywalker. It really didn't seem to be that much trouble for him."
Yup really need to anticipate the light-saber and harpoon equipped bomberman next time, who did it late in the battle after the AT-STs had presumably all been knocked out, and the battle was decided in the Imps favor anyway!
The only REAL weakness of the Imp attack in the CONTEXT IN WHICH IT WAS FOUGHT, is the AT-STs were too weak- blown away by Rebel arty.
"The imps don't know if the rebel infantry are thus armed ... thus it is *negligent* to assume otherwise"
For fucks sake! I'd love to see the lightsaber harpoon guy beware briefing at the next Imp AT-AT/ST crew meeting. Negligent! Oh ok, from now on, every army that doesn't anticipate EVERY eventuality, no matter how UNLIKELY, is NEGLIGENT.
"We have KEP's that make mince meat out of thick metal armor, why wouldn't they be able to make such?"
We have such weapons NOW. However, what if the battle was fought before such weapons that could take out AT-ATs were developed? Infantry couldn't do much against tanks during WW2 until the Panzerfaust, Bazooka, PIAT etc. were developed, could they! All they had was- AT artillery pieces- which the Rebels had- and AT rifles that were useless.
Or, here's another WHAT IF- the requirements for blasting through AT-AT armor with a manpack weapon are simply too high for the Rebels to meet? Vehicle isn't an option- they'd get destroyed.
"its called chemistry. There are a limited number of solid, opaque substances in existance. You can't use salts because those dissolve. You can't use fun organics because those are acid/base vunerable. So you are looky at mainly small molecules with covalent bonds. Most likely we are talking a silicate of some sort, which can be distorted easily.
Besides which you can also go for lasing. You know shining the opponent with a laser to blind him (particularly nasty if he uses simple photomultipliers)."
Bloody hell- the nitpicking NEVER ENDS. How do you know the viewport isn't protected against such things!?
"Rebel incompotence does not excuse lesser imperial incompotence. Get it through you thick skull, good AA is as damn close to omnidirectional as you can have it. Rebels were flying predicatble courses, when you try to loop a walker *3 times* its damn easy to predict where you are going to be after the second loop. Circling modern AA guns 3 times in tight circles is pretty damn close to a death sentence. Further you don't even have to have a really close shot. Flak bursts can be dozens of metres wide. Meaning once the speeder goes into those circles they are *downed*. Compotent AA would have lost perhaps *1* AT-AT in the whole mission."
The only good point in the whole post. Still, the tow cable run only worked once. They need armored AA. Infantry AA isn't an option. In apocryphal sources AA AT-XX vehicles exist but we're talking about Hoth aren't we.
"Dumbass AT-AT's are ARMOR . Armor can survive multiple shots from heavy guns, mech infantry can't. Is an MBT mech infantry? Nope. Its called Armor for a reason dumbass. Further they are APCs, why do you think the official literature describes them as kneeling to unload their stormies? Does Veers not tell a stormie behind him to deploy? Hell Mike says they are APCs, or do you claim he's stupid too?"
NO YOU ARE WRONG. APCs are NOT armor. APCs *ARE* mech infantry. You clearly don't know your defintions. You seem to think mech infantry are inf in jeeps- thats absolute BULLSHIT. Look up the OOB of any US Army Mech infantry unit; you will find that
Mech infantry units are equipped with Bradley IFVs, which replaced the M113 APC
or in the Russian Army:
Motorized Infantry units are equipped with either BMP IFVs, or BTR APCs.
"We see 1 walker downed onscreen. Curiosly we also see only 1 walker left at the end of the battle. If the rebels attacked from the rear they'd had have had *no* causualties. If the IMP's used sensible AA they'd have killed every speeder and likely suffered *no* losses."
The Imps had the initiative. They chose where to land from, and clearly attacked according to the Rebels defense. How would the rebs get behind them? How on earth would they have time?
"In other words the speeders could have taken a long curved path around the speeders, hell down around the mountains, and come up from behind."
True.
