Gil Hamilton wrote:I'm reasonably sure that the battle on Hoth and the battle on the Forest Moon were by the Imperial Army.
The walker armor on Hoth was operated by Stormtroopers. General Veers is an Army commander, but since ranks above Major don't seem to exist within the Marines, this is understandable. Similarly, Navy commanders have given direct orders to Marines before.
On the Forest Moon, oddly enough, the Walker Armor was operated by Army personnel. Nevertheless, I'm reasonably convinced that the Walker armor is primarily at Stormtrooper asset.
Gil Hamilton wrote:Even so, that doesn't explain why the Marine Corp would be using mechas, given all the problems that mechas have, yet the Army using sensible vehicles.
That would be the entire point of the thread. I was simply refuting your comments that the Imperial Army usually uses walkers--they don't.
Here's how it works.
Mines:
Mines are area-denial weapons, which is perfectly in concert with the AOTC ICS suggestions. Think about it. You have a base. You put a theatre shield over it--they want stuff on the base, so now they can't pin-point bombard you or slag the world around you. Now at the shield edges, the shield comes down to terminate near the ground. We know from AOTC ICS and observation from TPM that bad things happen to vehicles not having full-ground contact when they pass through shields.
What does this leave? Tracked and wheeled vehicles.
Tracked and wheeled vehicles have vastly greater ground contact than a walker. This is, in fact, one of the standard combat disadvantages of a walker--it can't perform in the same terrain, because it has so much ground pressure, and this also causes stresses on the frame.
What does this also mean? This also means that deploying mines is quite effective. Contacting so much ground, and having little armor save for where it expects to encounter enemy tanks (the front and sides) that mines pretty much will always win the day. They're cheaper, and simpler. Booby-traps with old Soviet artillery shells can pop the turret off of the M1A2SEP in Iraq. Mines are area-denial weapons. Tanks have to clear the field or drive around (which isn't always possible). This takes time.
So basically you put your base in shitty territory. Put it in a mountain valley, surrounded with Himalaya-esque peaks all around, and put the shield all the way around that. Similar to Hoth, where ridges and bad ground conditions made assault from any pass but the North prohibitive. Allow a single way in, and already starfighters and speeders are out, as are repulsortanks. Tracked and wheeled vehicles? Well you're a terrorist group, or a enclave of insurgents, or some pirates. If Iraqi resistance can make some cheap anti-tank mines, or get ahold of some, so can you. You plant these along the only good ground approaches to your base, and basically the enemy has to sit and clear the minefield, or use extremely heavy vehicles which are slow. Either way you, the bad guys, have ample time to sit and prepare for assault and make escape runs.
Now, here's the key. Defeating armored vehicles is done one of four ways: overwhelming firepower, kinetic penetrators, focused-explosives, and/or hitting where there is little or no armor.
Well you're making mines. What are your options?
Overwhelming firepower on the SW scale is out. You'll be making enormous mines which, if placed together to deny territory, will take out large sections of your minefield everytime one goes off. If they're really spaced apart, then the vehicles will be able to navigate around by staying along the perimeters of the kiloton-yield blast-radii mines. Furthermore, you're the underdog, or you'd be under a full-planetary shield and a ring of defensive warships. Do you have the money to spend on enormous yield mines? When you can only put a pair of small missiles aboard your superiority fighters? (The Rebels at Yavin; additionally, multiple sources including XWA say the Rebels had warhead shortages).
Kinetic-penetrators? Well that's odd, really. Its a bit complex to build complex and expensive high-velocity superguns buried underground which only become useful upon being stepped on. If you put them above ground they're really turrets, and if Stormtrooper armor, and the most common armament in the SWU is any indication, the energy weapon versus the kinetic cannon is a conflict being won by the former. Do you have the money for this if you can't afford your own armor at HQ? (Rebels at Hoth).
Focused-explosives and hitting where there's no armor--this is where it is. Modern AT mines basically work on this principle. In the conflict of efficiency, tanks put heavy armor in front where it will do the most good against guns--put it all over, and you're slow, expensive, inefficient, and the guns can just outmanuver you. Plus they need to get in quick. The base is digging in and preparing evac--time is crucial.
Here is where it is at: because walkers cover far less surface, it is vastly easier for them to walk over and avoid mines which are spaced to blow up tanks which are much, much wider. If we have to have so much denser a minefield against walkers, then we can't defend as many bases, allowing them to concentrate their forces on our fewer, more centralized bases--it is lose-lose, and since we're Rebels, we can't afford to have a centralized structure.
Secondly, because they cover so much less ground area, it is much simpler to armor just the footpads of the walkers than the near-ground chassis, and the tracks or wheels. If they do armor all of that with the same that just the soles of the footpads on the walker has, then they are going to be a lot slower, and we will have more time to prepare. If we have to have so much more powerful mines against walkers, then we can't defend as many bases, allowing them to concentrate their forces on our fewer, more centralized bases--it is lose-lose, and since we're Rebels, we can't afford to have a centralized structure.
Thirdly, the chassis is raised above the ground so far that it becomes much more easily defensible. The Stryker example was used because focused explosives generally don't work unless they're detonated directly against the armor--the slats don't do anything except blow-up RPGs about half a foot from the hull. Just six inches takes thousands of millimeters of penetrative ability to hull-scorching.
Allow me to paint a picture: planets with low-key enemies and suspected Hoth-style defenses are rapidly assaulted with walker armor.
The walkers are landed, and cross anti-tank minefields which is basically all the organization can afford. They repulse vastly inferior opposition--the infantry and pitiful light vehicles at Hoth--and take out the shields, opening the way for standard Army occupation and air support.
Don't get me wrong: the walkers are probably vastly more expensive, complex, and difficult to repair than tanks built with the same technology. It is only the sheer magnificance of SW materials science and engineering which makes walkers even feasible on paper.
Walkers should only be useful for these highly-specialized situations and missions. A base equipped with a decent armored vehicle force should utterly fuck walkers.
I propose that the Grand Army of the Republic, essentially the Republic's Marines, were developed with intent of assaulting cash-strapped but significantly protected (with passive defenses) Seperatist worlds. Remember, the GAR was only brilliant for the purpose of starting the war with the CIS, and cannot fight it on its own, it is little more than a fire-brigade force for rapidly assaulting backwater worlds with Seperatist threats to Republic security.
How does this apply to my plan? Well the
Acclamators may have expected or considered the possibility that Geonosis had theatre shielding--indeed it had anti-orbital cannons which Master Windu and Luminara destroyed before major landing operations.
The GAR engaged a vastly inferior enemy, the droid forces of the Seperatists are mainly intended for bullying small worlds into submission and intimidation tactics toward one another. Even her repulsortanks are very light vehicles, the frontal armor of which can be destroyed by guns mounted on police/guard forces on small worlds (which fits with its role). The TX-130s are mostly for Clone commanders and Jedi to take the field once the shields and defenses are neutralized and be able to persue their objectives.
By the Battle of Jabiim and other conflicts, the level of armor support has vastly decreased compared to the Battle of Geonosis. I believe this is precisely because the shitty walkers cannot withstand any form of extended campiagns, and due to their highly inefficient systems, are probably constantly in repair and service and have low longevity.
The evolution of the GAR, the Imperial Marines or the Stormtroopers, notice this failing and severely curtail the use of walker armor, abandoning such inefficient extravagances as the SPHA. Remaining to the heart of the highly-specialized walkers' intended use, they also dispose of overly complex and expensive stuff like the AT-XT. I believe Stormies land in walkers, procede through AT minefields (improved, hence the taller walkers and more robust footpads in the AT-AT), with the most heavily armored AT-ATs plowing first through the field, and narrow columns of AT-STs and other smaller walkers proceding line with haste, lighter because the forward AT-AT is to take the brunt of any mine detonations, and the smaller walkers only designed to take the occasional mine hit.
At Endor, the Imperial garrison was poorly thoughtout from the beginning. Vastly underdefended, with a single legion of Marines and a small Army crew contingent supplied only with some token specialized Marine armor, it complements the poor thinking at the shield generator base at Endor.
The ISD is designed to carry the scaled-up equivalent of elite forces like the Rangers, and their support. Notice that the Superiority Fleet only had under 60,000 Stormies, and that is not enough to occupy a world in the high billions. ISDs are designed to support a minimalistic form of Hoth-style operations, and thusly carry no standard or dedicated ground armor. Army transports and ships like Giel's fleet carrier and the Executor fullfill that for true ground battles.
I'm suggesting the walkers were originally designed ONLY for very limited duration assaults on theatre-shielded bases on out-of-the-way planets against cash-strapped enemies with little to no armor opposition. Any other use beyond that is stupid, but I think the premise of a highly specialized form of armor for a specific purpose works, especially since it wouldn't be designed to engage in the long term against true armor and win. Because it wouldn't. Standard armor should kill these things. And I think this satisfies the AOTC ICS.
