I have a few questions on SW tech

[FOG3]

Then at Hoth where they waited until they could see the Walkers through magnified optics before they actually opened fire.

Doctrinally they don't seem to favor that long of range.

You know, that was on a planet - at some point (about 5km, IIRC) the planet will get in the way with LOS-weapons.

That's a meaningless excuse. They use viable missile technology and there is nothing we have seen that means it could not be deployed in a rocket or gun form. Particularly as they had as much carriage as the Empire could ever hope to have in one place.

The ranges are set where they are because they have doctrinally limited themselves to those ranges. Hoth is by far the most open battle we see, besides possibly Geonosis where everything was also rather close ranges.

Vader's ISD (Devestator?) was using light weapons, possibly even point-defense weapons, to try to hit a precise target on a ship that Vader wanted disabled, not destroyed. If Devestator was shooting to kill I doubt it would have had to get so close.

Novellization is the only thing that would spec that one way or the other, and it says jack. By all rights it should have been the secondaries, not point defense. Leia's ship is not from ST, and thus you can get away with claiming the use of AA guns against cap ships, for crying out loud. Nevermind given as people have so nicely pointed out that there is not a ballistic range restraint, if anything light guns should be more precise. As Mike himself has pointed out the bigger the gun, the more difficult the problem of making it track a moving target.

The bottomline is they weren't exactly not missing the Blockade Runner entirely even at that range, either. So I find no merit in your objections. The clean shot, verse Fing over your sensors and dealing with a maneuvering target is another matter.

[Norade]

Then at Hoth where they waited until they could see the Walkers through magnified optics before they actually opened fire.

Doctrinally they don't seem to favor that long of range.

You know, that was on a planet - at some point (about 5km, IIRC) the planet will get in the way with LOS-weapons.

That's a meaningless excuse. They use viable missile technology and there is nothing we have seen that means it could not be deployed in a rocket or gun form. Particularly as they had as much carriage as the Empire could ever hope to have in one place.

The ranges are set where they are because they have doctrinally limited themselves to those ranges. Hoth is by far the most open battle we see, besides possibly Geonosis where everything was also rather close ranges.

The rebels were clearly under supplied and perhaps the only missiles they had weren't heavy enough to damage the walkers or weren't able to operate properly under the shield. We also know they were so short on missiles that when they attacked the first DS they hardly had enough missiles to arm the fighters they launched. They might have also thought that they had a better chance of scoring meaningful hits if they held off firing to a shorter range and/or didn't want to give away positions early when they didn't have much to fire back with.

Vader's ISD (Devestator?) was using light weapons, possibly even point-defense weapons, to try to hit a precise target on a ship that Vader wanted disabled, not destroyed. If Devestator was shooting to kill I doubt it would have had to get so close.

Novellization is the only thing that would spec that one way or the other, and it says jack. By all rights it should have been the secondaries, not point defense. Leia's ship is not from ST, and thus you can get away with claiming the use of AA guns against cap ships, for crying out loud. Nevermind given as people have so nicely pointed out that there is not a ballistic range restraint, if anything light guns should be more precise. As Mike himself has pointed out the bigger the gun, the more difficult the problem of making it track a moving target.

The bottomline is they weren't exactly not missing the Blockade Runner entirely even at that range, either. So I find no merit in your objections. The clean shot, verse Fing over your sensors and dealing with a maneuvering target is another matter.

Once the shields were down they could easily use point weapons to slowly pick away at critical systems. Also they may have wanted to be close by a board quickly so they could make sure they found the information they were looking for. In such a situation they would have wanted to be as near as they can for a quick boarding operation.