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Hello folks, glad to be back and posting here again. Used to have an account, but I suspect it got vaped for inactivity. General George or somesuch. At any rate, enough of this intro crap.

I was watching the Empire Strikes Back the other day and couldn't help but notice that the AT-AT's blasters weren't so much as cratering the ground, even though they were ripping everything else to shreds.

Have I missed something somehow? Because this seems rather disturbing to me...

well we never get clear view of the impacts to the ground and as Echo base is build on a glacier (IIRC), those could impacts wouldn't be that visible unless very close (as there's nothing to burn).

They create quite big explosions on the ground though as you can see. That we don't see the craters may be because the camera doesn't stay around till after the smoke has cleared.


On an unrelated note: I always find it amusing that they shoot that random guy right after Veers orders maximum firepower. As if they ramp up the power just for him...

Dooey Jo wrote:On an unrelated note: I always find it amusing that they shoot that random guy right after Veers orders maximum firepower. As if they ramp up the power just for him...

Actually the AT-AT has two sets of blasters, the chin are the heavy guns and the ones on the side of the head are the anti-personnel guns, seeing as we saw blaster bolts nearly the size of the Rebel Troopers and the one that hit him were so small he got pegged by the smaller guns.

General Schatten wrote:

Dooey Jo wrote:On an unrelated note: I always find it amusing that they shoot that random guy right after Veers orders maximum firepower. As if they ramp up the power just for him...

Actually the AT-AT has two sets of blasters, the chin are the heavy guns and the ones on the side of the head are the anti-personnel guns, seeing as we saw blaster bolts nearly the size of the Rebel Troopers and the one that hit him was so small he got pegged by the smaller guns.

You can even see that it's one of the small guns that shoots the trooper just before the chin guns let loose against the generator. They made a big boom too, if the generator itself did not contribute to the explosion then max-power AT-AT blasters are equivalent to a tactical nuclear weapon.

Lord Revan wrote:well we never get clear view of the impacts to the ground and as Echo base is build on a glacier (IIRC), those could impacts wouldn't be that visible unless very close (as there's nothing to burn).

Well, yes. But I can't even find any craters in the aftermath...

Plenty of wreckage, but to be honest, the rebel snow speeder that crashes into the ground towards the end is the biggest explosion caused by anything hitting the ground itself, rather than, say, armour.

This greatly confuses things for me, because we know that there's no way in hell that the Empire or the Rebellion would be using materials that can't even compete with ice...

So, can somebody help me figure out what's going on here?

--- --- ---

Aren't those chin guns, while of the anti-infantry variety, still more powerful than blasters? Shouldn't we be seeing more damage from them?

the ground underneath theatre shields apparently is "protected" - there's clearly a groud-shield interaction of some kind, given that in TPM we see blaster bolts "bounce" off of the ground underneath Gungan theatre shields. At Hoth we see bolts strike the ground without even harming the snow (all we see is a odd flash like we usually see around shields - prime example is when the snowspeeder is strafing the AT-AT Wedge tripped before it explodes)

Any weapons fire hitting the ground therefore probably will not exhibit any of the destructive effects we'd associate with its grade of weaponry.

Ryan Thunder wrote: Well, yes. But I can't even find any craters in the aftermath...

Plenty of wreckage, but to be honest, the rebel snow speeder that crashes into the ground towards the end is the biggest explosion caused by anything hitting the ground itself, rather than, say, armour.

This greatly confuses things for me, because we know that there's no way in hell that the Empire or the Rebellion would be using materials that can't even compete with ice...

So, can somebody help me figure out what's going on here?

I remember answering this ages ago!

Subject: Re: Federation vs. Empire **GROUND COMBAT**
Date: 1998/01/14 Message-ID:
Newsgroups: rec.arts.startrek.misc,rec.arts.sf.starwars.misc,
alt.startrek.vs.starwars

Doug Fortunato wrote:Artillery blasts from the AT-ATs fail to cause massive craters or even minor craters when they hit the snow and ice surface of Hoth.

Wayne Poe wrote:These are energy blasts, not mortar rounds. Please inform me of the ONE SCENE IN ANY PART OF THAT MOVIE, where a camera closes in on an energy blast that hits the ground, and STAYS there for more than 1 or 2 SECONDS, and AFTER ITS DONE SMOKING. You won't find one. Not one example. But you're too intellectually dishonest to acknowledge this. But this is nothing new. You've made the same old claims for three years without "proof."

Doug Fortunato wrote:Hell, the AT-AT blast that hits the Golan Arms Anti-infantry battery starts it on fire and then that fire doesn't melt the surrounding drifted snow.

Wayne Poe wrote:And the camera stayed on this how long? 3 seconds after it got hit? You're probably one of those shut-in TV geeks that think your nose blasts open with blood like a ketchup packet in real life when hit.

Doug Fortunato wrote:Flaming snowspeeder wreckage bounces on snow and STAYS on top of it, continuing to burn.

Wayne Poe wrote:Refer me to ONE SINGLE SCENE where the camera was close enough to debris falling on the snow to SEE melted snow, or was on the scene for more than a SECOND to even discern this.

Tell you what, Doug. Next time your go outdoor camping in the winter, (And no, your tent in your parent's back yard doesn't count.) do me a favor: After you cook your breakfast, toss your still-hot skillet on a nearby snow mound for me, and let me know if the mound explodes into vapor. Let me know HOW LONG it takes for that skillet to melt down into that mound, alternately.

Adrian Laguna wrote:

General Schatten wrote:

Dooey Jo wrote:On an unrelated note: I always find it amusing that they shoot that random guy right after Veers orders maximum firepower. As if they ramp up the power just for him...

Actually the AT-AT has two sets of blasters, the chin are the heavy guns and the ones on the side of the head are the anti-personnel guns, seeing as we saw blaster bolts nearly the size of the Rebel Troopers and the one that hit him was so small he got pegged by the smaller guns.

You can even see that it's one of the small guns that shoots the trooper just before the chin guns let loose against the generator. They made a big boom too, if the generator itself did not contribute to the explosion then max-power AT-AT blasters are equivalent to a tactical nuclear weapon.

This raises an interesting question, though: if the AT-ATs have that kind of a yield, then why didn't they use it on the Rebel defensive lines? One shot and all the annoying Rebels plinking away at your legs are gone.

The only reason I can think of is that firing at such a high yield severely drains their reactors or power generators.

A little thing called overkill, I should think. It's not like the Rebel soldiers/turrets were actually doing anything detrimental to the AT-AT's, so the Imperials have little reason to waste that kind of power on them. Seems roughly analogous to hitting a swarm of mosquitoes with a shotgun.

Peptuck wrote:This raises an interesting question, though: if the AT-ATs have that kind of a yield, then why didn't they use it on the Rebel defensive lines? One shot and all the annoying Rebels plinking away at your legs are gone.

The only reason I can think of is that firing at such a high yield severely drains their reactors or power generators.

They wanted prisoners, can't get prisoners if they're all glo-in-the-dark ash. That's the same reason Death Squadron didn't knock down the shield with their ortillery and turn Echo Base into a radioactive lava lake.

Begging your pardon, but I seem to recall a certain General Veers holding a rather different assessment of the Rebels' shield:

"Com-Scan has detected an energy field protecting an area around the sixth planet of the Hoth system. The field is strong enough to deflect any
bombardment."

All that aside, do you really think that the Imperials give half a rats ass about taking ground troops as prisoners? More likely than not, they wind up capturing Private First Class Leeroy Jenkins: a green, uninformed, unimportant recruit who would be much more useful to them dead than in an interrogation room. The troops forming that line probably don't know enough to tell the Imperials anything their intelligence apparatus can't turn up.

If you're not jiving with me, General Veers' lack of interest in taking ground troops as prisoners can be quite clearly seen at time marker 8:34 of the youtube link posted earlier. Does anyone else find his slightly too-short uniform sleeves amusing?

Lord Poe wrote: I remember answering this ages ago!

Ah, alright. Well, I did a search and it didn't seem to turn up anything. Thanks.

Desdinova wrote:Begging your pardon, but I seem to recall a certain General Veers holding a rather different assessment of the Rebels' shield:

"Com-Scan has detected an energy field protecting an area around the sixth planet of the Hoth system. The field is strong enough to deflect any
bombardment."

All that aside, do you really think that the Imperials give half a rats ass about taking ground troops as prisoners? More likely than not, they wind up capturing Private First Class Leeroy Jenkins: a green, uninformed, unimportant recruit who would be much more useful to them dead than in an interrogation room. The troops forming that line probably don't know enough to tell the Imperials anything their intelligence apparatus can't turn up.

If you're not jiving with me, General Veers' lack of interest in taking ground troops as prisoners can be quite clearly seen at time marker 8:34 of the youtube link posted earlier. Does anyone else find his slightly too-short uniform sleeves amusing?

Do you honestly believe that a shield that doesn't even completely cover the planet can deflect "any bombardment?" Death Squadron has more than enough firepower to BDZ the planet if necessary, but that's not what Vader wanted. Vader wanted Skywalker alive, and if he slags the rest of the planet, then Skywalker is fucked.

I honestly believe what the character says, yes. I somehow think an Imperial Officer as competent as Veers would know these things. However, I've always taken his statement to mean that the shield could stop anything that Death Squadron itself could throw at it; were the Imperials to bring enough warships in, sure, they could crack through.

3 ISD-II's were expected to be able to raze Bothawui and prevent any ships from escaping, even with a top-of-the-line shield protecting most of the surface, in less than a day. Death Squadron could take out the most-likely-second-hand shield on Hoth just fine; the only problem was that such a bombardment would kill everyone on the ground. Which defeats the purpose of Vader's obsessive search for Skywalker for the past 3 years.

However, I've always taken his statement to mean that the shield could stop anything that Death Squadron itself could throw at it; were the Imperials to bring enough warships in, sure, they could crack through.

Another possibility is that he was talking about an air-based bombardment (via TIE bombers) rather than a space-based one.

I'm well aware of the firepower that a squadron of Imperial-II Star Destroyers represents, to say nothing of an Executor-class Star Dreadnought. I'm also quite well aware of the power that a Base Delta Zero operation represents, but I would point out that in the case of Bothawui--as in Caamas, Mon Calamari, and other scenarios--Imperial Intelligence sabotaged the planetary shields in question before launching the bombardment operation. Clearly they considered these planetary shields to be significant, or they wouldn't have bothered--as General Veers' reaction supports.

That the Imperial fleet would continuously attempt to circumvent such shields can only lead to one logical conclusion: while a BDZ is obviously a force to be reckoned with, the technology of the Star Wars universe allows for an equally powerful defensive counter in the planetary shield.

The planetary shield at Alderaan only delayed the destruction of the planet by a fraction of a second, but even that is an astounding feat, given the sheer amount of energy involved.

Darth Yoshi wrote:3 ISD-II's were expected to be able to raze Bothawui and prevent any ships from escaping, even with a top-of-the-line shield protecting most of the surface, in less than a day.

And a major plot point, IIRC, was the team of Imperial Commandos charged with taking out the shield generator.

Desdinova wrote:I honestly believe what the character says, yes. I somehow think an Imperial Officer as competent as Veers would know these things. However, I've always taken his statement to mean that the shield could stop anything that Death Squadron itself could throw at it; were the Imperials to bring enough warships in, sure, they could crack through.

The novelization expands on this by clarifying that he means a "clean" bombardment. Death Squadron could blast through that particular shield, the only problem is that it would also likely destroy everything beneath. In any case, blasting around the shield would still be effective in killing everyone inside. They still have to breathe, after all.

Master_Baerne wrote:And a major plot point, IIRC, was the team of Imperial Commandos charged with taking out the shield generator.

The team never expected to take down the entire shield, just the portion protecting the capital city.

But that's beside the point. The fact of the matter is, if the Imperials weren't interested in the slightest about taking Rebel prisoners, then simply slagging the part of the planet that wasn't shielded would have done the job. It's not like Alderaan or Caamas, where there was a complete planetary shield system in place. Hoth had only the one theatre shield.