Imperial Walker versus 40K Anti-Armor Weapons

[Purple]

Sorry, I have to side with Sav here. While I do think, say, the Warhound looks cool

Case in question.
http://i668.photobucket.com/albums/vv44 ... 1242145590

[Sea Skimmer]

That's pretty fucking dumb. Imagine what people would say if an M1 Abrams could do nothing against flank infantry attacks if it wasn't baby sitted by a bunch of Doomvees or Badley fighting vehicles or Strikeout LAVs or whatever.

It would still be no worse off then every assault gun ever; and people built something like 40,000 such vehicles in WW2. You must realize that the weapons dead space around a typical tank with a revolving turret is still 20-30 meters wide against a crouching attacker because of the limited depression of the gun, plus the gun simply hitting the side of the tank. Sometimes it is much worse firing to the rear over the engine deck, so they remain highly vulnerable to close in infantry attack all the same. The AT-AT is very dumb though simply because being so big, firing ports or remote weapons stations ect... should be no big deal. But the innate idea of an AFV that can't fend off a point blank range attacker is just reality. I really doubt an advancing M1 tank crew would notice someone running up behind them either, and indeed you could easily kill an M1 with a grenade if you got that close too it, or near any other tank. No need for an open hatch either. Russia makes a shaped charge anti tank grenade, hand thrown, not an RPG, called RKG-3 that can pierce 165mm of armor and the rear turret armor and roof armor on an M1 is only about 40mm thick. The US had to add spaced armor onto the rear of M1 TUSK models, which are only a small minority of M1s around, in ordered to help counter act this danger as a number of them were destroyed by rear hits in Iraq.

Many other modern tanks are even worse protected then that from behind or even from the sides; and actually more then one WW2 era heavy tank has thicker rear armor, but since armor plate was of inferior quality back then the actual protective value may be less. Anyway, just goes to show that tactics can easily matter more then hardware and in sci fi we really get a coherent view of one side or the others tactics, let alone get shown tactics that aren't idiotic.

[Todeswind]

Sorry, I have to side with Sav here. While I do think, say, the Warhound looks cool

Case in question.
http://i668.photobucket.com/albums/vv44 ... 1242145590

The warlord isn't to shabby either

http://i46.photobucket.com/albums/f149/ ... ctatio.jpg


Either way esthetic choices are more or less a matter of taste and are pretty much irrelevant to this discussion. Look at the Millennium Falcon, it's not pretty by anyone's standards but it is the function, not the form, of the machine that matters.

Edit: It's worth mentioning that the Emperor Battle Titan, the one chosen by Sav in that photo, is massively larger than the AT-AT. The AT-AT is about as tall as the knee of an Emperor Titan... maybe the waist.

[Batman]

I don't see why. The point of the comparison was to show that the Titan looks patently stupid, which it does, regardless of whether or not it is massively larger than an AT-AT and can grind it into so much space dust.

[Todeswind]

I don't see why. The point of the comparison was to show that the Titan looks patently stupid, which it does, regardless of whether or not it is massively larger than an AT-AT and can grind it into so much space dust.

Because the esthetic distinction is pretty much a matter of taste, some people like the whole excessive gothic stuff, some people don't. Esthetics are ultimately irrelevant in the face of function, at least where a war machine is concerned.

[Batman]

I don't see why. The point of the comparison was to show that the Titan looks patently stupid, which it does, regardless of whether or not it is massively larger than an AT-AT and can grind it into so much space dust.

Because the esthetic distinction is pretty much a matter of taste, some people like the whole excessive gothic stuff, some people don't. Esthetics are ultimately irrelevant in the face of function, at least where a war machine is concerned.

I absolutely agree. What I was questioning was your decree that the size difference was worth mentioning, which it wasn't.

[Todeswind]

I don't see why. The point of the comparison was to show that the Titan looks patently stupid, which it does, regardless of whether or not it is massively larger than an AT-AT and can grind it into so much space dust.

Because the esthetic distinction is pretty much a matter of taste, some people like the whole excessive gothic stuff, some people don't. Esthetics are ultimately irrelevant in the face of function, at least where a war machine is concerned.

I absolutely agree. What I was questioning was your decree that the size difference was worth mentioning, which it wasn't.

Irrelevant to Sev's comment, relevant to the general comparisons being made in the thread between Titans and AT-AT's.

[Simon_Jester]

Titans look way more awesome than AT-ATs. It's a classic case of "we are so badass we can ride around in a goddamn walking church", instead of being "we are so badass we can ride around in a goddamn mass-produced dog-tank".

Sorry, I have to side with Sav here. While I do think, say, the Warhound looks cool, the one he cites is clearly a result of the designer going overboard with the 'gothic' theme, hence it looks retarded.

Agreed. Imperial hardware can look really impressive; it's just that when the gothic architecture gets taken overboard it can easily start looking silly and dysfunctional: "what's that extraneous crap on its back?"

Form should at least vaguely follow function, and while the AT-AT is hardly a poster child for that, the Emperor-class Titan is a really big violation of the theme.

As to tripping vulnerability, one point that occurs to me is that an AT-AT stands at least some chance of being able to stand on three legs- again, we see them show a surprising ability to shift posture when taking potshots at the speeders. Titans would be very hard-pressed to stand with one leg shot out; they don't show a lot of ability to shift their center of mass.

On the other hand, people seldom try to trip titans because they're seldom used without support- it's a little difficult to trip them up when you've got infantry and conventional armor fanning out ahead to search for traps.

Plus, tripping (as distinct from crippling leg-shots) is something of a one-off tactic; the doctrinal counter when you know it's a possibility is pretty simple. Stand still, and let someone disengage the tripwire using light weapon fire. That would probably have worked well enough on the AT-ATs, but since the damn things were being fielded for the first time, the tactics were still being worked out I guess.

[Meest]

Wonder how Stormtroopers or crewmen inside the AT-AT would handle anti-armour weapons actually making it through. Like a melta or krak, meltas use extreme heat or de-molecular magic to burn through, will it boil the people inside? Same thing with Krak it's a shaped or focused warhead I thought, same idea as today's stuff a hot jetstream getting inside the armour. Guess my question is even if 40k stuff can penetrate will it be less effective compared to light-armoured Leman Russ crews.

[Shroom Man 777]

Now, on the actual topic, there's not a lot of evidence for 40k antitank missiles being good at arcing over/under a target to exploit weak spots.

Lascannons are also man-portable and might have the precision to do that.

Mines can explode from the underside.

Meh, Titans are way more vulnerable to tripping than AT-ATs which have four legs.

As for anti-air ordinary AT-ATs are designed as ground combat vehicle. That they can engage fast moving aircraft at all is amazing.

Only when the aircraft, or any target for that matter, is right in front of them. If those speeders came from the side.... uhh... the AT-AT would've had to turn its entire body to engage them.

If the AT-ATs come under real attack they have their own dedicated anti air support vehicle based on a AT-AT chassis. Sort of like how the Russian ZSU-23 was based on a PT-76 light tank.

http://images.wikia.com/starwars/images/6/61/AT-AA1.jpg

This is a very dangerous vehicle. It is equipped with same kiloton level laser cannons that can one shot shielded fighters. As well missiles that reach into megaton range. Anything foolish enough to overfly an Imperial armored force protected by AT-AAs is dying a fast, painless death.

That is an obscure vehicle known only to some geeks

And 40k can bring out multi-megaton weapons as well.

Phew, thank goodness the Rebels didn't launch a "real" attack, or else those bunch of shitty Rebel soldiers in those trenches and those speeders would have to face VERY DANGEROUS VEHICLES. How could a bunch of soldiers in trenches ever withstand such kilotons and megatons? If the Rebels made a real attack at Hoth, they would've certainly been doomed!

IoM tanks are slower than WW 2 tanks. AT-ATs make mincemeat out of SW hovertanks and repulsorcraft which can reach upto 500 kilometers/hour. Suffice to say AT-ATs are not getting flanked by anything the IoM has.

On the other hand the speederbikes AT-ATs carry are going to flank any IoM tanks with ease. Heck with PLX-1M missiles issued they could wipe out large number of tanks all by themselves.

Idiot. Those SW shitcraft came directly in front of the AT-AT. Show to me how AT-ATs can engage targets coming from behind/beside it. Show to me how IoM armored vehicles are slower than WW2 tanks, aside from the ridiculous numbers of the Leman Russ. Land Speeders, Predator tanks, Chimeras, Salamanders, Sentinels, these all go considerably faster than the Leman Rus or the AT-AT and can either carry anti-tank weapons or carry infantry teams with the requisite weapons.

Unlike AT-ATs, IoM tanks can turn their turrets around easily and engage threats coming from the sides, unlike the AT-AT that cannot shoot at anything that is not in front of it.

Anyway I can't believe Shroom is attacking the AT-AT on aesthetic grounds

Just take a look at how stupid Titans look
http://images.wikia.com/warhammer40k/im ... _Titan.jpg

And compare them to AT-ATs
http://images.wikia.com/starwars/images ... Jabiim.jpg

There is a reason why AT-ATs are an icon of science fiction while Titans are doomed to remain an obscure vehicle known only to some geeks.

I am attacking the AT-AT because it can't shoot at anything that is not in front of it? That stupid castle-Titan at least has swiveling guns that allow it to shoot at targets coming from its side. The AT-AT has to turn its entire body around because it can only shoot at targets in front of its head-guns.

When a stupid mecha with a fucking castle on top of it has superior weapons coverage than your supposed "icon of science fiction", that means your icon is a piece of shit.

The reason why AT-ATs are an icon of science fiction was that they were featured in a blockbuster science fiction movie in the 1970s that influenced an entire generation of sci-fi fans? Everything in the original triology of SW is an icon, from the lightsaber to the most obscure Greedo characters. SW is so iconic that even stupid people/objects seen for a split second end up getting interesting backstories in the Extrauterine Universe.

Here is a Titan that doesn't have castles on top of it.

It would still be no worse off then every assault gun ever; and people built something like 40,000 such vehicles in WW2. You must realize that the weapons dead space around a typical tank with a revolving turret is still 20-30 meters wide against a crouching attacker because of the limited depression of the gun, plus the gun simply hitting the side of the tank...

Skim, the thing is, tanks and other normal vehicles can easily turn their entire bodies around to face their sides/rears and reorient themselves thanks to their treads.

The legged AT-AT would have a harder, and longer, time to do this.

[Simon_Jester]

Now, on the actual topic, there's not a lot of evidence for 40k antitank missiles being good at arcing over/under a target to exploit weak spots.

Lascannons are also man-portable and might have the precision to do that.
Mines can explode from the underside.

You'd need one hell of a mine to hit an AT-AT in the gut effectively. Lascannons are a distinct possibility, but you need an engagement range to be short enough that the underside presents a highly visible target- which is relatively close. But it's a very distinct possibility- which is one of the reasons why I'd rate AT-ATs as being comparable to the lowest-end 40k superheavies; it mostly gets into that category on sheer size and "that armor's too strong for blasters!"-tude, not because of any really amazing and impressive design, OK?

Again, AT-ATs are undeniably in big trouble if something gets close to them; they can only fight to any good effect as long range gun platforms.

We all know this, OK?

Though, mang. Good Titan pic.

Only when the aircraft, or any target for that matter, is right in front of them. If those speeders came from the side.... uhh... the AT-AT would've had to turn its entire body to engage them.

What's impressive is the targeting systems that make useful AA fire possible from AT-AT guns, when that would not normally be expected of them. Not all the countless other points you've already made about its many vulnerabilities and suboptimalities

It would still be no worse off then every assault gun ever; and people built something like 40,000 such vehicles in WW2. You must realize that the weapons dead space around a typical tank with a revolving turret is still 20-30 meters wide against a crouching attacker because of the limited depression of the gun, plus the gun simply hitting the side of the tank...

Skim, the thing is, tanks and other normal vehicles can easily turn their entire bodies around to face their sides/rears and reorient themselves thanks to their treads.

The legged AT-AT would have a harder, and longer, time to do this.

I'm not entirely sure- we don't see AT-ATs turning around during their one on-film appearance, but we do see them adopt a very odd posture here, at around 6:15-6:20. That may have implications for their rate of turn, I don't know.

Honestly, the AT-AT's really significant vulnerability doesn't seem to be its legs or sides or rear; the Rebels shoot at all those with antitank weapons without stopping it. It's the underbelly that's particularly vulnerable to normal weapons on the ground, but without guided missiles, that vulnerability is best exploited from ranges of, oh, 500 m or less... which sort of relies on intelligent use of terrain, though that is very obviously a possibility.

[Shroom Man 777]

You'd need one hell of a mine to hit an AT-AT in the gut effectively. Lascannons are a distinct possibility, but you need an engagement range to be short enough that the underside presents a highly visible target- which is relatively close. But it's a very distinct possibility- which is one of the reasons why I'd rate AT-ATs as being comparable to the lowest-end 40k superheavies; it mostly gets into that category on sheer size and "that armor's too strong for blasters!"-tude, not because of any really amazing and impressive design, OK?

Again, AT-ATs are undeniably in big trouble if something gets close to them; they can only fight to any good effect as long range gun platforms.

We all know this, OK?

Though, mang. Good Titan pic.

The mine can jump up and latch on to the gut. You have mines designed to kill helicopters today, so why not in the grimdrakstrak future. And who's to say that a soppy soldier might not be an actual component of the mine?

As for the lascannon, I meant that they would use it to kneecap the AT-AT. Not for gutshots.

What's impressive is the targeting systems that make useful AA fire possible from AT-AT guns, when that would not normally be expected of them. Not all the countless other points you've already made about its many vulnerabilities and suboptimalities

Eh, aren't turboblasters capable of flak?

I'm not entirely sure- we don't see AT-ATs turning around during their one on-film appearance, but we do see them adopt a very odd posture here, at around 6:15-6:20. That may have implications for their rate of turn, I don't know.

If it can use that technique to somehow do a weird mabuhay shuffle and turn to face its enemies at the side, like some weird crab-walking S-tank, hmm... my complaint may be moot. Who knows?

Honestly, the AT-AT's really significant vulnerability doesn't seem to be its legs or sides or rear; the Rebels shoot at all those with antitank weapons without stopping it. It's the underbelly that's particularly vulnerable to normal weapons on the ground, but without guided missiles, that vulnerability is best exploited from ranges of, oh, 500 m or less... which sort of relies on intelligent use of terrain, though that is very obviously a possibility.

The rebels shot at it from the side? I thought the AT-ATs were facing towards the defenders.

Vulnerabilities not in terms of armor thickness, but in terms of lack of weapons coverage.


Anyway, leik I said before, if we want to know what 40k man-portable anti-tank weapons can down an AT-AT, shouldn't we first know what man-portable anti-tank weapons are used in SW to down AT-ATs? If AT-ATs really do require nothing less than other armored vehicles to down, if 40k and SW yields are comparable (they are, roughly), then the question is moot and 40k will need vehicle-weapons to down AT-ATs, not infantry weapons.

[Simon_Jester]

The mine can jump up and latch on to the gut. You have mines designed to kill helicopters today, so why not in the grimdrakstrak future. And who's to say that a soppy soldier might not be an actual component of the mine?

Eh, maybe. But it'd have to be a pretty specialized mine- you'd build them to kill AT-ATs, and for no other reason. A weapon that forces you to develop a dedicated counter-weapon is generally something that's actually a bit difficult to kill otherwise. Which... well, if AT-ATs are that hard to kill, it sort of undermines the attempt to turn them into the lamest war vehicles in the history of SF.

As for the lascannon, I meant that they would use it to kneecap the AT-AT. Not for gutshots.

Well yes, but the Rebels had big energy guns that I would expect to be about as useful as a lascannon, and failed to kneecap any AT-ATs. Going for the knees of an AT-AT might sound good, but I'm not sure how practical it is. Are they actually poorly armored? Or would it require a very large antitank weapon to meaningfully damage the joints? I don't know; it's hard to tell from the way they're presented in the movie.

What's impressive is the targeting systems that make useful AA fire possible from AT-AT guns, when that would not normally be expected of them. Not all the countless other points you've already made about its many vulnerabilities and suboptimalities

Eh, aren't turboblasters capable of flak?

Got no idea, mang.

Honestly, the AT-AT's really significant vulnerability doesn't seem to be its legs or sides or rear; the Rebels shoot at all those with antitank weapons without stopping it. It's the underbelly that's particularly vulnerable to normal weapons on the ground, but without guided missiles, that vulnerability is best exploited from ranges of, oh, 500 m or less... which sort of relies on intelligent use of terrain, though that is very obviously a possibility.

The rebels shot at it from the side? I thought the AT-ATs were facing towards the defenders.

Vulnerabilities not in terms of armor thickness, but in terms of lack of weapons coverage.

The snowspeeders shot from the side during "Attack Pattern Delta." They didn't penetrate.

Also, the vulnerability of the individual vehicles to fire from the flanks is only important either in close terrain (where they're easy to outflank) and/or when fighting in relatively small numbers (so they can't move en echelon to cover each other's flanks). Also when the available support is minimal.

It's a real issue for the design, but it's not as ridiculous as something like a 40k Penitent Engine.

Anyway, leik I said before, if we want to know what 40k man-portable anti-tank weapons can down an AT-AT, shouldn't we first know what man-portable anti-tank weapons are used in SW to down AT-ATs? If AT-ATs really do require nothing less than other armored vehicles to down, if 40k and SW yields are comparable (they are, roughly), then the question is moot and 40k will need vehicle-weapons to down AT-ATs, not infantry weapons.

True. So, aside from contrivances like tripping that only work under unusual conditions, what kills AT-ATs?

[Shroom Man 777]

Eh, maybe. But it'd have to be a pretty specialized mine- you'd build them to kill AT-ATs, and for no other reason. A weapon that forces you to develop a dedicated counter-weapon is generally something that's actually a bit difficult to kill otherwise. Which... well, if AT-ATs are that hard to kill, it sort of undermines the attempt to turn them into the lamest war vehicles in the history of SF.

If it's presented to be fucking invincible, then fuck it, it is invincible. People go to no end about how other mecha are pretty fucking lame, even when they're presented to be invincible in context of the 'verse they're in, where they need specialized weapons to kill, but this doesn't stop people from bitching about them. I still maintain that the AT-AT is the lamest war vehicle in the history of SF, as lame as any Gundam or Mazinger Z or other shitty mecha. It's even less mobile than those shitsuits, which can actually fly from dirt runways.

If they made a death tank that moved through a dumb giant pogo-stick unicycle skii mechanism, and portrayed it as some invincible harbringer of doom, then it will be invincible and will require specialized mines to blow up - which undermines any attempt to turn them into the lamest war vehicles in the history of SF - even though it is quite clearly a stupid vehicle.

It's really ridiculous, since certain pedantic people bitch about how other sci-fi franchises use designs that perform just as well as real-life Hueys or Blackhawks because they got downed by giant birdstrikes, while jerking off to 1960s shit. Or whining about trigger guards. Yet here's a war machine that's cumbersome, with a design that's far dumber than any real war machine today, and the natives didn't even need spears to defeat it just rope, and nobody makes a peep because, well, whatever. Star Wars.

You can build a T-62 with Star Wars tech and it'd come out superior to the AT-AT in terms of speed, weapons coverage and overall efficiency.

As for the lascannon, I meant that they would use it to kneecap the AT-AT. Not for gutshots.

Well yes, but the Rebels had big energy guns that I would expect to be about as useful as a lascannon, and failed to kneecap any AT-ATs. Going for the knees of an AT-AT might sound good, but I'm not sure how practical it is. Are they actually poorly armored? Or would it require a very large antitank weapon to meaningfully damage the joints? I don't know; it's hard to tell from the way they're presented in the movie.

Maybe their weapons there were all shit. Maybe their knees are better armored than the topside armor (one of the tripped AT-ATs got one-shot killed when the blasterlaser bolt hit the top of the head) because their ball joints are made out of spherical masses of neutronium pellets. Maybe the Rebels' aim was shit, because like the Millennium Falcon's guns, those weapons were manually aimed like WW2 AA guns. Maybe the Rebels' aim was awesome, because their targeting computers can process trajectories at one binillipn paleoflops per mammosecond and because turboblasters actually fire at lightspeed and the visible sublight bolts we see are just tracers (ha-ha), but there was extensive jamming so the Rebels' aim was shit, and those weapons ended up being as accurate as though they were manually aimed like WW2 AA guns or something.

What's impressive is the targeting systems that make useful AA fire possible from AT-AT guns, when that would not normally be expected of them. Not all the countless other points you've already made about its many vulnerabilities and suboptimalities

Eh, aren't turboblasters capable of flak?

Got no idea, mang.

I think they are. And still, only at targets coming right in front of them. If the speeders didn't approach the AT-ATs from right in front of them, the AT-ATs wouldn't have been able to hit shit.

The snowspeeders shot from the side during "Attack Pattern Delta." They didn't penetrate.

How heavy were their weapons? They're light aircraft. Their cannons could be weaker than the large emplaced defense guns at Echo Base. Or, then again, they could be rated for megakilotons or something and the AT-AT's armor was just that awesome because it was ingrained with neutronium to radiate the thermal damage through tachyoneutrinos or something.

Also, the vulnerability of the individual vehicles to fire from the flanks is only important either in close terrain (where they're easy to outflank) and/or when fighting in relatively small numbers (so they can't move en echelon to cover each other's flanks). Also when the available support is minimal.

It's a real issue for the design, but it's not as ridiculous as something like a 40k Penitent Engine.

Well, the AT-ATs by virtue of being armored transports will have to go to close terrain anyway. Unless they disgorge their troopers outside the city limits, and those troops have to march all the way to town or get chauffeured by other armored vehicles that makes riding the AT-AT entirely pointless.

The Pentinent Engine is not designed for practicality, but to make life as miserable for the person crucified on it. It's also not a large land vehicle that ends up failing at transporting troops because of its sheer slowness, it's a close quarters combat machine thing. Closest thing I'd compare it to would be some kind of Super Battle Droid or Magnaguard.

True. So, aside from contrivances like tripping that only work under unusual conditions, what kills AT-ATs?

If they are bloody invincible to man-portable weapons, like 40k Titans, and require heavier weapons to put down? Then fire from superior armored vehicles that aren't as shittily designed and can A.) move faster B.) present smaller targets and C.) fire from different directions because their weapons aren't fixed on heads that require the entire vehicle to turn around to strike at enemies at its flanks/rear?

[Sarevok]

I do hope you've got an actual source for this statement. Because otherwise we'll just laugh at you.

Imperial Armor has details vehicle speeds and armor thickness. They are not very impressive. For example a Lemon Russ has a top road speed of 35 kilometer/hour. Off road it does a mere 21 kph.

In contrast the Empire's tanks are quite advanced. For example the 1-H Imperial-class repulsortank does 300 km/h over any terrain. Yet even they can't defeat an AT-AT by outmaneuvering it.

Evidently this is not the case, since no one has GODDAMNED TRIED to trip a Titan of ANY kind.

Which goes to show the level competence IoMs enemies has. An army is measured by the quality of it's opposition...

Titans look way more awesome than AT-ATs. It's a classic case of "we are so badass we can ride around in a goddamn walking church", instead of being "we are so badass we can ride around in a goddamn mass-produced dog-tank".

No its just dumb looking. Just like galaxy punching Mecha is stupid.

The AT-AT actually looks like a halfway decent vehicle that could exist given the level of technology the Empire has. The Titans... don't make slightest iota of sense.

The AT-AT maybe doomed in practicality due to being a 4 legged mecha but at least it is not made stupider by demanding that it serve a secondary role as a circus attraction. It is pretty awesome looking as far as Western mecha designs go.

Yes, because Star Wars happens to have George Lucas, and Industrial Light and Magic to make AAA-budget movies and numerous television CGI/animated series about it, while 40K is stuck with shit like the Ultramarines movie (which was barely passable as 40K) and a healthy but somewhat unknown number of novels.

FASA operated on practically shoestring budgets. Yet they created some fantastic tank, battlemech and tank designs. I don't think money is the factor here.

[Sarevok]

Anyway I don't see why this thread is so long. Imperial Armor firmly establishes why IoM vehicles don't stand a chance against modern tanks much less AT-ATs.

For instance the frontal armor of a Land Raider tank is mere 98 mm thick and is stated to be "equivalent to 300 mm of conventional steel". The front armor of the IoMs premier tank is weaker than a North Korean T-55. Storm trooper blaster rifles will penetrate that !

In terms of firepower the weapons are just as bad.

When it fired, the breech of the main gun hurtled back into the turret space with one hundred and ninety tonnes of recoil force.

Apparently this tank was a Leman Russ Conqueror, which has a barrel length of 2.42 metres according to Imperial Armour 1. 190 tons works out to be 1.9 * 10^6 newtons. This force applied over a distance of 2.42 meters produces a total of 4.5 MJ of work. That's not much stronger than a blaster rifle at firing a maximum power bolt. And much weaker than a modern tanks main gun.

[Simon_Jester]

Knock it off, Sarevok; you know damn well those numbers are inconsistent with observed effects, or bloody well ought to.

If it's presented to be fucking invincible, then fuck it, it is invincible. People go to no end about how other mecha are pretty fucking lame, even when they're presented to be invincible in context of the 'verse they're in, where they need specialized weapons to kill, but this doesn't stop people from bitching about them. I still maintain that the AT-AT is the lamest war vehicle in the history of SF, as lame as any Gundam or Mazinger Z or other shitty mecha. It's even less mobile than those shitsuits, which can actually fly from dirt runways.

They're air-dropped from large shuttles; they don't really need to be all that mobile since they're for bashing their way into well defended strongpoints that can't move. Are paratroopers mobile? It depends; they can only move around on their own feet (slow)... after jumping out of a plane (fast).

AT-ATs have bad to mediocre tactical mobility and good strategic mobility, which is at least adequate for their mission.

I would argue that AT-ATs are among the more poorly-thought-out vehicles of SF, not the very worst, certainly not good. They are, at best, a mediocre-quality way of achieving a quite specialized mission... which isn't the mission they're used for. How stupid is that? The only way I can even imagine them ending up on the battlefield at all is if they were designed to do something else entirely, then got ordered in to do something they're bad at.

I am not trying to present these things as good, or even adequate, pieces of military hardware for their weight and cost. They do perform well enough to mop the floor with their opposition, albeit with significant losses to heroic and rather desperate improvisations on the defenders' part- but then, the opponent in question is poorly armed.

It's really ridiculous, since certain pedantic people bitch about how other sci-fi franchises use designs that perform just as well as real-life Hueys or Blackhawks because they got downed by giant birdstrikes, while jerking off to 1960s shit. Or whining about trigger guards. Yet here's a war machine that's cumbersome, with a design that's far dumber than any real war machine today, and the natives didn't even need spears to defeat it just rope, and nobody makes a peep because, well, whatever. Star Wars.

I don't do any of those things, and yet you continue to rant at me as if I did.

Well yes, but the Rebels had big energy guns that I would expect to be about as useful as a lascannon, and failed to kneecap any AT-ATs. Going for the knees of an AT-AT might sound good, but I'm not sure how practical it is. Are they actually poorly armored? Or would it require a very large antitank weapon to meaningfully damage the joints? I don't know; it's hard to tell from the way they're presented in the movie.

Maybe their weapons there were all shit. Maybe their knees are better armored than the topside armor (one of the tripped AT-ATs got one-shot killed when the blasterlaser bolt hit the top of the head) because their ball joints are made out of spherical masses of neutronium pellets. Maybe the Rebels' aim was shit, because like the Millennium Falcon's guns, those weapons were manually aimed like WW2 AA guns...

Maybe the shot that hit the AT-AT on the top of the head was hitting after something had already been damaged? Say, highly volatile fuel was sloshing around the inside because the thing had just tripped and fallen and shit had busted open? Or shield generators had been broken by the long fall, if there were any which I don't know? Or ammunition or power cells of some kind were rolling around because the storage locker had broken open?

Drop a tank ten or twenty meters and you may manage to damage it in ways that make it a lot easier to kill, y'know.

But one thing I wouldn't bet on is for 40k lascannon gunners to turn out to be much better shots than the Rebel gunners on Hoth, who were using weapons as powerful or more powerful than a lascannon, and probably with at least as much sighting equipment. It's probably possible to cripple an AT-AT with knee shots, but I doubt it'd be all that easy without a really big weapon.

How heavy were their weapons? They're light aircraft. Their cannons could be weaker than the large emplaced defense guns at Echo Base. Or, then again, they could be rated for megakilotons or something and the AT-AT's armor was just that awesome because it was ingrained with neutronium to radiate the thermal damage through tachyoneutrinos or something.

I figure, they're physically about the same size as the turret guns at Echo Base (the ones the infantry in the trench have), so I figure they're probably about as strong, not a lot stronger or a lot weaker. Seems fair to me until better evidence comes along, yeah?

Would help if we'd seen the same guns shooting at smaller targets- an AT-ST is probably too soft-skinned given what we've seen at Hoth, though.

Well, the AT-ATs by virtue of being armored transports will have to go to close terrain anyway. Unless they disgorge their troopers outside the city limits, and those troops have to march all the way to town or get chauffeured by other armored vehicles that makes riding the AT-AT entirely pointless.

Yeah, which is retarded, I know I know I know. The only thing the AT-AT is even remotely good at is like the exact opposite of that.

Then again, in mitigation, mechanized troops never want to stay in their transport vehicles in a battle- where they're concentrated targets for enemy antitank weapons. The first thing a transport vehicle does is nearly always to deploy its infantry, before reaching any position where it might be taken under fire by enemy infantry.

For AT-ATs, that might be quite a long way from the enemy. Which, yeah, weakens the whole point of having them I KNOW. I can vaguely imagine a plan for using them like "march in under theater shield. Deploy troops to fight their way towards the objective by infantry tactics, a mile or more from the enemy. Support the enemy advance with long range fire from heavy beam weapons, without getting too close to enemies who might fire 'up and under' into the AT-AT's underbelly.

And, YES I KNOW, this is not a great plan and other vehicles could no doubt do it better.

True. So, aside from contrivances like tripping that only work under unusual conditions, what kills AT-ATs?

If they are bloody invincible to man-portable weapons, like 40k Titans, and require heavier weapons to put down? Then fire from superior armored vehicles that aren't as shittily designed and can A.) move faster B.) present smaller targets and C.) fire from different directions because their weapons aren't fixed on heads that require the entire vehicle to turn around to strike at enemies at its flanks/rear?

If you could stop beating that dead horse into hamburger for a moment, please note that you missed my point.

What do guys in SW break out to kill AT-ATs? Bazooka-equivalents? Laser cannon about the size of real life field artillery? Giant fuckoff beam weapons on giant fuckoff vehicles almost as big as the AT-AT is?

What 40k weapons correspond to the weapons used to kill AT-ATs in Star Wars, aside from "LOL ROPE" and you rolling around on the ground laughing at the twentieth repetition of your own joke?

[Sarevok]

Knock it off, Sarevok; you know damn well those numbers are inconsistent with observed effects, or bloody well ought to.

But they give us actual values. 40K does not have much in the way of visuals. Which leaves us with rather unreliable method of interpreting stylistic and symbolic language into empirical quantities. And the prose is often highly inconsistent with itself. If you consider the visual evidence actual 40K battles look a lot like the low end values. In all the cinematics I watched and games I played Space marines don't move in bullet time and their guns look positively weaker and shorter ranged than a real world weapon like the XM-25.

It's really a question of what you consider to be your main personal source of Warhammer 40000. Now if you are a fan of the novels and want to debate literary 40K then be my guest. But that does not look anything like Warhammer 40K most people knows. As I said before versus debate 40K occurs in a separate universe from main continuity.

[Black Admiral]

The Imperial Armour books are fucking bunk, is what they are. Just as one particularly illustrative example; IA5 (Siege of Vraks pt. 1) claims throughout the story sections that Caliban (blown apart ten thousand years before) is intact, and the Dark Angels' primary recruiting world, c. M41.

That, sadly, is symptomatic of Forge World's standards of background writing (and don't even get me started on their treatment of the Raven Guard in IA8).

[Todeswind]

True. So, aside from contrivances like tripping that only work under unusual conditions, what kills AT-ATs?

If they are bloody invincible to man-portable weapons, like 40k Titans, and require heavier weapons to put down? Then fire from superior armored vehicles that aren't as shittily designed and can A.) move faster B.) present smaller targets and C.) fire from different directions because their weapons aren't fixed on heads that require the entire vehicle to turn around to strike at enemies at its flanks/rear?

If you could stop beating that dead horse into hamburger for a moment, please note that you missed my point.

What do guys in SW break out to kill AT-ATs? Bazooka-equivalents? Laser cannon about the size of real life field artillery? Giant fuckoff beam weapons on giant fuckoff vehicles almost as big as the AT-AT is?

What 40k weapons correspond to the weapons used to kill AT-ATs in Star Wars, aside from "LOL ROPE" and you rolling around on the ground laughing at the twentieth repetition of your own joke?

Well apparently they used one of these at the battle of hoth to take out an ATAT

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Particle_cannon_turret.

Which is apparently more or less the same thing as the primary gun mounted on the ATAT itself, so not exactly the sort of thing I'd expect for anyone to be carrying around.

[Juubi Karakuchi]

The Imperial Armour books are fucking bunk, is what they are. Just as one particularly illustrative example; IA5 (Siege of Vraks pt. 1) claims throughout the story sections that Caliban (blown apart ten thousand years before) is intact, and the Dark Angels' primary recruiting world, c. M41.

That, sadly, is symptomatic of Forge World's standards of background writing (and don't even get me started on their treatment of the Raven Guard in IA8).

In defence of Imperial Armour, the writing style for its fluff sections is 'in-universe', meaning that 'conventional steel' is conventional by 41st Millenium standards, in which case it could mean just about anything.

To explain my logic, I offer as an example my attempt to calc Britannian tanks from Code Geass. The visuals left me with two possible conclusions; one being that Britannia's tank-mounted railguns have the same muzzle velocity as 12-pounder Napoleons (around 400 m/s), or that the visuals were unrepresentative. On that same note, we have three conclusions in the case of IA2 and Land Raider armour. First is that Land Raiders have an RHAe of 300mm; second is the answer I mentioned above; third is that the book is incorrect. If we accept that the material in the IA books is in-universe in its style, then the first conclusion is unlikely to be correct in light of evidence to the contrary, despite the disparities between particular sources. The argument then comes down to whether or not the IA books are in-universe in that specific context.

[Black Admiral]

Well, yes, the "armour ratings are given in an in-universe context" explanation is the one I favour, but given their laziness and incompetence when it comes to background writing, I really don't see any reason to give the Forge World writing team any slack. I can go into quite considerable detail as to why, but I think that would be going rather off-topic.

[Darth Hoth]

Anyway I don't see why this thread is so long. Imperial Armor firmly establishes why IoM vehicles don't stand a chance against modern tanks much less AT-ATs.

For instance the frontal armor of a Land Raider tank is mere 98 mm thick and is stated to be "equivalent to 300 mm of conventional steel". The front armor of the IoMs premier tank is weaker than a North Korean T-55. Storm trooper blaster rifles will penetrate that !

In terms of firepower the weapons are just as bad.

When it fired, the breech of the main gun hurtled back into the turret space with one hundred and ninety tonnes of recoil force.

Apparently this tank was a Leman Russ Conqueror, which has a barrel length of 2.42 metres according to Imperial Armour 1. 190 tons works out to be 1.9 * 10^6 newtons. This force applied over a distance of 2.42 meters produces a total of 4.5 MJ of work. That's not much stronger than a blaster rifle at firing a maximum power bolt. And much weaker than a modern tanks main gun.

Careful, Sarevok. Connor will soon be around to blast anyone to a crisp who uses face-value Imperial Armour numbers.

Me, I personally think Warhammer 40,000 is too inconsistently portrayed for anyone to be able to meaningfully quantify or debate it, and I believe I have said so before. The vast amount of books, little consistency, and obscurity of many titles makes any judgment on its capabilities, except perhaps for broad generalities, impossible. Two people can look at a dozen different books each, do perfectly honest and objective analysis, and then come up with as wildly different conclusions as you and Connor. And for lack of a canon policy, neither one is any more "right" than the other, although their results will be mutually exclusive.

Now, then, if this is so, now imagine what happens when the pro- and anti-Warhammer camps in a VS debate do this and each side purposely put their spin on the figures. Say, how it often is on SpaceBattles, when the anti side cite more or less exclusively from the Imperial Armour and Codex books, and the pro side from the novels . . . and more often than not, both sides tend to quote only the parts of their books that reinforce their own ideas and downplay the contrary passages.

It invariably, axiomatically degenerates into namecalling of the "You people are just dishonest wankers who cherrypick what you like and ignore the weaker showings" and "If you have not read every single book ever, then frankly you are not qualified to comment on the franchise, and any weak showings you quote are obvious outliers" kind (said examples being more or less accurate caricatures of the anti- and pro side, respectively), and no conclusion is (or can be) reached.

[Simon_Jester]

Well apparently they used one of these at the battle of hoth to take out an ATAT

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Particle_cannon_turret.

Which is apparently more or less the same thing as the primary gun mounted on the ATAT itself, so not exactly the sort of thing I'd expect for anyone to be carrying around.

That comes from videogames, which are of dodgy canonical status, at least when we get down to details of how individual missions went.

If we regarded as canonical every video game which has depicted the Battle of Hoth, and counted up all the AT-AT kills suffered in those battles, we'd come to the conclusion that the Rebels defeated the Imperial force roughly two or three times over. So I'm not going to assume those "particle cannon turrets," which are only seen in Battlefront games so far as I know, were actually used rather than being a gameplay device.

That said, it at least tends to confirm the idea that AT-ATs can only be readily defeated by heavy weapons that are (in terms of physical size) the Star Wars equivalent of medium artillery- the equivalent of 105 or 155mm guns in a modern army. More like 155s, really.

[Shroom Man 777]

They're air-dropped from large shuttles; they don't really need to be all that mobile since they're for bashing their way into well defended strongpoints that can't move. Are paratroopers mobile? It depends; they can only move around on their own feet (slow)... after jumping out of a plane (fast).

AT-ATs have bad to mediocre tactical mobility and good strategic mobility, which is at least adequate for their mission.

I would argue that AT-ATs are among the more poorly-thought-out vehicles of SF, not the very worst, certainly not good. They are, at best, a mediocre-quality way of achieving a quite specialized mission... which isn't the mission they're used for. How stupid is that? The only way I can even imagine them ending up on the battlefield at all is if they were designed to do something else entirely, then got ordered in to do something they're bad at.

I am not trying to present these things as good, or even adequate, pieces of military hardware for their weight and cost. They do perform well enough to mop the floor with their opposition, albeit with significant losses to heroic and rather desperate improvisations on the defenders' part- but then, the opponent in question is poorly armed.

Fair enough.

Anyway, re: tacticostrategic mobility, uh, the AT-ATs still have to walk towards their objective. If you're comparing them to light paratrooper infantry that move on foot, without any vehicle transport, then that just serves the point. A vehicle with speed comparable to infantry moving on foot!

I don't do any of those things, and yet you continue to rant at me as if I did.

My spiels aren't really directed towards you, it is towards them.

Maybe the shot that hit the AT-AT on the top of the head was hitting after something had already been damaged? Say, highly volatile fuel was sloshing around the inside because the thing had just tripped and fallen and shit had busted open? Or shield generators had been broken by the long fall, if there were any which I don't know? Or ammunition or power cells of some kind were rolling around because the storage locker had broken open?

Drop a tank ten or twenty meters and you may manage to damage it in ways that make it a lot easier to kill, y'know.

But one thing I wouldn't bet on is for 40k lascannon gunners to turn out to be much better shots than the Rebel gunners on Hoth, who were using weapons as powerful or more powerful than a lascannon, and probably with at least as much sighting equipment. It's probably possible to cripple an AT-AT with knee shots, but I doubt it'd be all that easy without a really big weapon.

Well, then sneak to the flanks and then start popping at the vulnerable spots at more effective ranges then when long-distance accuracy won't be an issue, while the vehicle is unable to strike back (because it's not turned towards you/because you've surprised it). It's the standard trick to dealing with armored vehicles, and unless the AT-AT will never ever wade into an area crawling with anti-tank infantry like how a man might stick his toes into a pool and jump back when the water's too cold, the AT-AT will have to encounter this situation.

I mean, how else would it encounter 40k (or other verse) anti-armor weapons? Anti-armor infantry certainly won't be charging straight towards the AT-AT. This is how anti-armor infantry engages armor.

I figure, they're physically about the same size as the turret guns at Echo Base (the ones the infantry in the trench have), so I figure they're probably about as strong, not a lot stronger or a lot weaker. Seems fair to me until better evidence comes along, yeah?

Would help if we'd seen the same guns shooting at smaller targets- an AT-ST is probably too soft-skinned given what we've seen at Hoth, though.

The whole speeder is as big as the turret guns, or the guns the speeder mounts is as large as those big turret guns? Those speeders still use power to fly, and if the blasters and engines use the same power source... Whereas IIRC, those turret guns had cables running around them, didn't they? It'd be a cunning thing, connecting your defense guns to the base's power grid.

Yeah, which is retarded, I know I know I know. The only thing the AT-AT is even remotely good at is like the exact opposite of that.

Then again, in mitigation, mechanized troops never want to stay in their transport vehicles in a battle- where they're concentrated targets for enemy antitank weapons. The first thing a transport vehicle does is nearly always to deploy its infantry, before reaching any position where it might be taken under fire by enemy infantry.

For AT-ATs, that might be quite a long way from the enemy. Which, yeah, weakens the whole point of having them I KNOW. I can vaguely imagine a plan for using them like "march in under theater shield. Deploy troops to fight their way towards the objective by infantry tactics, a mile or more from the enemy. Support the enemy advance with long range fire from heavy beam weapons, without getting too close to enemies who might fire 'up and under' into the AT-AT's underbelly.

And, YES I KNOW, this is not a great plan and other vehicles could no doubt do it better.

Well, if we're gonna go with the AT-AT as a long-range siege platform, then that's like asking who'll win - a guy with an RPG, or an MLRS launcher a dozen miles away.

If you could stop beating that dead horse into hamburger for a moment, please note that you missed my point.

What do guys in SW break out to kill AT-ATs? Bazooka-equivalents? Laser cannon about the size of real life field artillery? Giant fuckoff beam weapons on giant fuckoff vehicles almost as big as the AT-AT is?

What 40k weapons correspond to the weapons used to kill AT-ATs in Star Wars, aside from "LOL ROPE" and you rolling around on the ground laughing at the twentieth repetition of your own joke?

I think I was also asking "hey guise what examples of SW anti-armor weapons are there, so we can compare/look for something corresponding in 40k" too. So... don't ask me. Maybe Sarevok knows. He seems to know about non-AT-AT "obscure vehicles known only to some geeks" from the Star Wars Extroverted Ureter novels.

It's really a question of what you consider to be your main personal source of Warhammer 40000. Now if you are a fan of the novels and want to debate literary 40K then be my guest. But that does not look anything like Warhammer 40K most people knows. As I said before versus debate 40K occurs in a separate universe from main continuity.

What "main continuity" of 40k would that be? Which "Warhammer 40k most people knows" are you talking about? Because most fans and people familiar with the verse seem to know most about the novels. Unless you consider "most people" to be composed of entirely yourself, and excluding all the other people in this forum and elsewhere who seem to actually know their shit more than you and seemingly contradict you at every turn.

Are you talking shit out of your ass without knowing anything about the topic at hand, as is your usual MO?

Judging from your previous whatevers about everything 40k and how people who have actually read the novels have contradicted you and proven you wrong time and time again, I think you're just being full of shit as usual.

So, what 40k main continuity do you speak of, Moff Mon Mothra Sarevokerritch?