Connor MacLeod wrote:
I'd just figure the SW equivalent of ATGMs on a higher end. Proton/concussion grenades, or miniature proton torpedo/concussion missiles. They have them and even in the smaller form they have been noted (or at least some kinds have) to be capable of damaging starfighters. They ought to be able to do the same to an AT-AT. Or even an IED/Mine type weapon like you propose (They oculd shape charge those things to blast up into the leg and blow it off. Even if it doesn't knock the thing over its going to hamper it, since it can no longer move forward.)
I’m sure they have weapons like ATGMs, but ones heavy enough to deal with a target that large may be quite large and difficult to obtain. You may need something more the size of a Maverick missile then a TOW missile for the job.
We know the snowspeeders carried munitions of some kind. My guess is that they would have modified those into some osrt of rocket/missile/bomb deployment method. Or even if not directly attacking, blowing craters in the ground. I doubt stepping in a pothole would be good for an At-At.
The whole situation begged for the snow speeders to exploit all those ridges to simply toss laser guided bombs up and over at the AT-ATs, with forward designation by the infantry, or a million other guided weapons. They’d barely be exposed to counterfire while attacking like this. But I think once more, such weapons might exist but the rebels just didn’t have them and probably deployed the ones they did have for offensive operations. Of course the real answer is just that the creators didn’t think of it back in the 1980s, and wanted a close range battle anyway.
They could use fighters yes, but I imagine that depends on availability and requirements of both vehicles and manpower. That is, having enough techs to rapidly prep all the fighters, and enough fighters to balance between escorts for escaping ships (against enemy fighter attacks) and defending the base. I suspect the speeders were deliberately meant to be stopgaps in that regard (something the pilots could arguably fight in while fighters are prepped, say.) Although they probably could have done better than "two pilots to a single speeder"
It is possible that many fighters had been stripped down for major maintenance and inspections and literally could not have taken off any earlier because they had to be put back together. Kind of unlikely though. I dunno how canon to consider the Star Wars locations ICS, and I don’t have it handy, but I remember it showed Hoth as a relatively sprawling base with the Empire having attacked on several fronts, and the fighters being in valleys some distance away.
It’s quite likely they did not commit fighters for the simple reason that the covering force was 100% expendable and Imperial walkers would just keep coming. The contents of the transports were not expendable and no fighter was to be risked in any way except to defend them.
Course nothing can explain why the Empire didn’t just roll a mobile ‘Space Tomahawk’ cruise missile launcher through the shield, and then volley off dozens of missiles to destroy the power generator. Even if the Rebels did have some unseen air defenses it’s doubtful they would have been able to hold off an attack like that for long given the overall weak defenses. It’d surely have been faster then walkers advancing, especially since they did not in fact destroy the shield generator the moment it was within sight, they had to close the range for one reason or another.
As I said, it gets back to the Rebels' resources, and they apparently didn't have enough of everything, so they had to do the best they could with defenses, even if the defenses were mostly complete or never meant to stand off a complete attack. I mean, I can't believe they literally meant to improvise totally like they did from the start.
The Death Squadrons use of AT-ATs early in an assault may just be exceptional and it would be more typical for smaller faster war machines to be sent in greater numbers. When you have such an absurd dictatorship and someone like Vader around, all talk of balanced tactics is probably squashed. It probably was just ordered that the AT-AT be used for better propaganda films. The Empire would naturally just edit out the destroyed ones.
That could be. Or again, lack of preparation. They DID have the trenches prepared after all. Those towers weren't very portable IIRC (They're fixed) but the dish shaped guns I believe were mobile.
And yeah, smoke could have been useful.
Shallow trenches yes, but without even traverses. A line of foxholes would actually have been a better position because its not death for everyone if a shell or grenade lands in it. But yeah all and all a lack of preparation is certain, besides any lack of material or lack of desire to deploy scare material.
Better part of a year, I think, although they had to do things over that period in small stages. They were gradually deploying people in bits (first the engineers, and so on.) From what I recall of the Radio drama they were understaffed and having to work hard around the clock to even get minimal readiness.
A few people might have been around for a year, but clearly the defense force didn’t have more then about 12 hours to work on its positions because otherwise they’d simply be far more developed. I suspect 4-6 hours is more likely, and that would fit with the way the movie feels, that the walker attack and the departure of the first loaded transports took at least an hour and more likely several to develop after the arrival of the Imperial forces. Prior to this the only defense positions may have been the ones we briefly see early in the movie, right around the ice cave entrance and similar vital locations.
Well I do figure corruption and greed as a rule plays more of a role in the Imperial military than some do, so I'm not going to disagree iwth your point. I just think it extends to far more than just ground forces. I also agree Palpy clearly isn't an absolute dictator for life, he has to make efforst to hold onto his power, and this limits his authority in matters. As I've said before, I tend to look at the GE having a military industrial complex rather similar to the United States, with alot of the problems therein. Possibly worse.
Well the US system is a model of efficiency compared to the Nazis or the USSR, the Empire is would easily become worse then either of the latter because it doesn’t even face a serious external threat. At least not an obvious one it would naturally structure its forces to combat (this is what hurt the US after the fall of the USSR, we have to do capability based rather then threat based planning). That’d mean lots more stupid ideas are developed, since they can’t really fail when tested against small bands of rebels.
It's not so much a matter of "AT-ATs are specialized and highly effective ground vehicles relative to a non-mech design" so much as "for a mech it could be alot worse and it has a few bright spots despite having many of the horrendous flaws inherent in mechs."
I don’t see what bright spot it can have ever. The only obvious reason for it to be so tall is a longer field of fire… and yet the guns are not the highest point! They aren’t even close. The silhouette of the vehicle above the guns is comparable to that of the entire silhouette of a tank. So if an enemy
did have heavy caliber weapons, he could see, engage and destroy the AT-AT before it can even open fire. That’s such a huge disadvantage in everyday fighting that the AT-AT virtually must have been designed for a very specific role.
I fully acknowledge that tracked or wheeled vehicle will be superior for many reasons. It's like the ISD - its got some good points too, but it could be alot better designed for its purpose (like eliminating the huge-ass gaping hanger or the exposed reactor bulb, or the bridge tower.) And this isn't including the possibility the AT-AT has some repulsor capability to (and the legs simply being there for ground contact and propulsion, reminisicent of the way starships can land on planets but don't support their full weight on the landing gear.)
I’ve thought before that it might have repulsors to reduce ground pressure and improve mobility on slopes, but frankly if repulsors can be that prolific then the whole situation just gets more and more retarded. I mean it’s not like you couldn’t just SHOVE a repulsor vehicle through a shield. You could even have a bridge layer tank that lays down rails through the shield to make pushing the damn thing easier. If something inherently prevents
anything will repulsors from passing through a shield, even inactive ones, then this whole situation would perhaps make more sense.
The AT-TE reminds me of something designed for long range assault or support of bigger vehicles (like tanks) rather than a dedicated troop carrier. The troops probably are more an afterthought "mop up" consideration after the vehicle bombards the fuck out of the enemy during advance. Something you might do during police actions or some such other political term.
It has way too much volume for manpower to be anything but a dedicated troop carrier. If it only had troops in the aft section, and no glass cockpit (which makes slight sense, so you can see and avoid stepping on your own men!) then I might believe that was secondary purpose. But as it is it fits perfectly into the profile of an infantry fighting vehicle, with the ball guns taking the place of firing port weapons. It may not be intended to deploy infantry really close to the enemy (this is a matter of tactical concepts as well as design, the early and very massive US M55 APC was not designed to close with the enemy either), but an APC it is.
Maybe they intended it to be that from the start but.. anyhow I figure thats why we saw the Juggernaut. That thing definitely means business in the "assault and deploy troops" category.
The Juggernaut is a fair bit larger, and much more massive so I don’t think it’s a major issue of why they have both. It’s just a fundamentally larger class of armor, for tougher situations. Modern militaries usually end up having several different types of APC, though part of this is just because new vehicles are rarely produced heavily enough to replace all the old stuff.
True, but as Mike says, there is also something to be said for "We can spend massive amounts of resources to create something like this that is still kicking oyur ass despite being horridly inefficient. Imagine how much worse it would be if we brought out an efficient design."
Well, given that the rebels did not break and run until clearly being overrun, and even then the AT-AT lacked the firepower to rapidly annihilate
infantry in the open like machine guns would, it’d say it fails at that no matter how you spin it. The rebels knew they were only an expendable covering force too, that only had to buy time on a worthless ice planet by dieing. That is not a good situation for moral, and yet they held as long as they realistically could. A defender on his own planet, or who thinks he can actually win would have been even more determined.
Excpet the height and mass would work better in the firepower department than the troop transport department. I mean at long range the obvious lack of close in and antipersonnel defenses isn't as big a drawback. Besides, I can see the idea of "its got to carry troops" being more of an afterthought than the firepower, at least from an engineering standpoint.
You really don’t know much about engineering then. You don’t put shit like that in as an afterthought! More like it 100% dominates the entire vehicle design process. Men need lots of protected volume; protected volume is the most basic criteria for determining how big an armored vehicle is even going to be because it gives your overall size and weight. Men all need a lot of auxiliaries too, like for example environmental systems that need non trival space and power too. Providing air alone for 40 men to breath isn’t a minor problem. Furthermore, if it was an afterthought then why does it take up so damn much room? Never mind the name of the thing is that of an armored transport.
I have already pointed out that if the AT-AT was meant to be a gun platform first, it would have had the guns on the roof for a true max range of view, not to mention allowing 360 degree fire. That this was not done and instead the guns are mounted in a head stuck onto one end heavily. Why would they do this if packing men into the entire body was an afterthought? What on earth was that volume ever for otherwise? Why not take up volume in the main hull to support guns on the roof, to eliminate the chunk of height above the guns the thing has that serves only as an enemy target.
It makes far more sense that in fact the armament was largely an afterthought, and was nothing all that heavy for the overall size of the walk.
About the only job the AT-AT makes any sense for would be to assault high rise buildings by delivering men onto the roof or upper stories. But it’s clearly not even remotely optimized for that kind of fighting. Deep fording is another possibility on some kind of Venice Planet, but as I recall a dedicated amphibious AT-AT variant exists.
With the idea that this was a politically motiviated (as opposed to practical) design, I could see some idiot looking at the models and saying "it needs to carry troops" and forcing the designers to go back and accomodate that into the design.
That might happen in the preliminary concept and design phase, it could not occur latter without amounting to designing an entirely new vehicle. It is however possible that the entire program was launched to deal with a very specific tactical situation like assaulting the roofs of luxury houses the Empiredid not wish to flatten, while fording around on Planet Venice. The requirement was assigned to the Empires favorite military contractor, who came up with the most expensive walker based solution that he could. Then it became semi standard instead of a piece of specialist equipment when the Emperor decided he needed to throw that contractor even more duckets and ordered production expanded from 150 to 5,000,000.
They actually have a tank droid from Dark empire that works along those lines, although its a fucking huge tower as I recall, and only a single gun. I'm not sure how big or thick a tower you'd need to support the recoil of the gun, but then again I'm not an engineer either lol.
Yeah the XR-85. A cylinder is a very strong structure, certainly stronger then the box girder legs of an AT-AT (corners are bad), so making a single circular tower support recoil should not be very hard at all in comparison to the weight required by four legs. After all the AT-AT not only needs to deal with its own recoil, it also has to deal with some ridiculous shock and vibration from the act of walking and its own mass. One of those reasons why we use tracks and wheels is because the moment is smooth! Guns on a tracked mast would not suffer from these disadvantages.
Well in my mind its not just a matter of "putting guns on it" isn't a simple task. We're talking large, powerful energy weapons that will have considerable recoil. moreover, you're mounting them on a somewhat flexible neck.
Yeah exactly, it puts the guns at the end of a
flexible neck[i/] which is an engineering nightmare compared to just making a turret! Instead of traverse and elevation, basically two simple gearsets, you have a hoard of individually moving individually powered sliding segments...
The fact that this setup works at all proves that they faced no serious recoil or mass limitations on the armament, which supports the idea that maximum firepower was not the primary consideration. If it was then they’d give the guns the best position, and they’d put them in the strongest mounting they can so they can pack on the heaviest weapon they can.
Handling all those considerations (guns, recoil systems, reactor, cooling systems, etc) probably isn't "minor", and almost certainly, in my mind, less of an issue than the troop transport.
It’s clearly not a major problem if they can make it work at the end of a flexible neck. The socket and ball mounted guns and turreted weapon on the AT-TE are absurdly easier engineering tasks. A whole platoon of men meanwhile need a huge amount of space, and what do we see in the design, a huge a mount of space for men and guns tacked on one end. I don’t see how you can conclude from that that transport was in any way a secondary feature.
Hell, you could probably cut down on the height of the thing some just by knocking off the troop transport capability and doing a redesign.
Yeah that’d be called designing a whole new vehicle. Kind of like how you could make a F-16 smaller if you redesigned it to have no radar, pilot or ability to fly. I dunno why you act like height is a requirement for anything though. What, would an AT-AT just not work with short legs? Clearly height with infantry transport was desired for some dumb reason or another. If it was not, then one is really at an utter loss to come up with any concept of what the damn thing is for. The failure to fully exploit its height for guns kills that axis of thinking. It would be massacred in a duel with enemy armor and heavy weapons before it can even open fire.
Plus the legs make sense for a energy weapons platform, but not a troop transport.
Sorry this argument is invalid. If they wanted height for guns then the guns would be the tallest part. Instead as examining an image of the walker will show, the heaviest guns are only at height above ground equal to about 80% of the total height of the vehicle, maybe even less. This is a glaring shortcoming for a gun platform, but not so important for an APC which is mainly interested in delivering its men onto the objective and suppressing lighter weapons which are a threat to those infantrymen.
In fact it makes the most sense that the weapons are the late design addition. They may have replaced several smaller weapons meant purely for close range local defense (not offensive minded enough for the Emperor!). This would explain why the mounting is stuck on the end in such a complicated manner, and it would help explain why the AT-AT can muster a big burst of firepower to blow up the power generator, but can barely kill infantry in the open. Its guns may well be too big for its limited APC scale power generating capability, so they can only be used in bursts.
And you're right, it makes the thing seem even more inefficient but again I'm not denying the inefficiency of the AT-At because you can't. I'm just saying it seems (to me) less silly than a troop transport on stilts with starfighter grade weapons bolted on as an afterthought.
See above. The guns are incredibly not optimal in position or mounting. They categorically make no sense if the objective was maximum height, and the frailness of the moving neck proves they could be easily mounted other ways, like a roof turret. So clearly they did not dominate the design process.
The lack of close in defenses is even more mind boggling considering the clone Wars era designs. The closest approximation was the SPHa-T, and THAT had them. hell based on current canon the At-At is actually a CW era design, as I recall.
Well the idea is probably just that storm troopers should deploy before they face a close in threat. The ice field on Hoth was not ideal for deploying infantry early, they’d be highly exposed so the Imperials didn’t deploy them early enough. It’s still stupid, but to me it yet further support the armament being an all and all secondary consideration. If you didn’t have onboard troops to cover close in, and designed the damn thing just to mount weapons, then the lack of close in armament would just preposterously stupid. Since the whole thing is stupid, we want the least stupid explanation and assuming that an armored transport was not intended to be a transport is absurdly dumb to me. The infantry fill a natural gap in its capabilities and they provide a means to exploit any advantage its intimidation might ever being. Its worthless to make the enemy scatter and run if you have no infantry to round them up, otherwise they’ll just reform on the other side of a hill instead of being wiped out."This cult of special forces is as sensible as to form a Royal Corps of Tree Climbers and say that no soldier who does not wear its green hat with a bunch of oak leaves stuck in it should be expected to climb a tree"
— Field Marshal William Slim 1956
