Simon_Jester wrote:The tanks sink into a snowdrift en route to the battlefield and never make it to the objective, because their legs aren't long enough to punch down through three meters of snow to the bedrock underneath.
I don't remember the AT-ATs with their excessive ground pressure punching through 'meters of snow' in the movies or any source.
...Nevermind. Assuming the tanks make it, they have to drive into effective range of the Rebel defense line because they need to get closer to have line of sight on the defenses, which exposes them to close-range fire from those antitank blaster turrets. At the very least, getting into firing position is likely to take longer for them.
Why? The Rebels, a cash strapped insurgency, could view the AT-AT from kilometers away with their hand-held sensors, why wouldn't the Empire be able to procure better ones and mount them on a tank chassis? A tank chassis is also a much more stable platform than the lumbering AT-AT and is thus inherently more accurate. The idea that any AFV could perform less admirably than a walker given the same technology and engineering standards is preposterous.
-snip-
All of those would require the Empire to suck at building tracked AFV, vastly simpler constructs than any walker could ever be.
OK, I seem to have run headlong into defilade fire from the local detachment of the Heavy Armor Brigade. Should have seen this coming. Sorry, guys.
I've been thinking about the AT-AT concept a lot lately, mostly because I'm trying to come up with any context in which it makes sense to deploy it, ever. Let alone making sense to do it on Hoth.
The obvious explanation, and probably the right one, of course, is that Veers and Vader have the tactical sense of a concussed wombat. But just for the heck of it, I tried assuming that the AT-ATs actually had some vaguely useful capability that would allow them to succeed at the mission in question where other vehicles might fail. If so, then what could that capability possibly be?
The only things the AT-ATs have that are worth anything at all is a high vantage point for their main guns, relatively heavy armor, and high resistance to getting bogged down (as opposed to tripping and falling) because their legs are so absurdly long.
Heavy armor is not unique to walkers, so I had to assume that the tracked tanks would have it too. But the tanks would not have long lines of sight (especially in hilly terrain), and they could (possibly) run into trouble going up against multi-meter soft terrain (like deep snow drifts). This would not happen with a well designed all terrain tracked vehicle, of course; what if the Empire didn't have one? What if the AT-ATs were honestly the best thing they had available for the job, God help them?
If so, if Vader actually made a quasi-rational decision to approve the deployment of AT-ATs, given the equipment at his disposal, then it would be because he was expecting:
1) Deep snowdrifts, not necessarily at the battle itself, but somewhere on the line of march. This could bog down (poorly winterized) tracked AFVs and would bog down dismounted infantry. It would not bog down AT-ATs, which can ignore any snowdrift less than calf-deep. This is at least somewhat supported by EU descriptions that claim that the AT-ATs approached the battle through mountainous terrain, where non-packed snowdrifts would be likely.
2) At the site of the battle, rolling terrain rough enough that line of sight for blaster cannon was limited to a few kilometers, forcing the heavy armor to push past multiple Rebel positions and lines of defense before getting into range of the shield generator, assuming they were not carrying ballistic artillery. Which, by all appearances, they weren't.
3) Rebel defensive positions sited to take maximum advantage of this, with antitank guns heavy enough to at least inconvenience tanks at relatively short ranges (again, a few kilometers).
Given this combination of problems, AT-ATs are at least vaguely useful, because they can bombard the Rebel antitank positions from outside the range at which their guns will be effective against the AT-AT's armor, and see over rolling terrain from long range to take down the shield generator as fast as possible.
This is one of the few situations where I can even imagine an AT-AT being worth the trouble. It would have been better to bring along a howitzer battery; I can only assume that they didn't have one for whatever stupid reason.
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Frankly, this was not my main interest in the first place; I was more interested in exploring the second-order consequences of the Rebel defenses on Hoth holding out longer (Luke gets more training, but may not find out Vader is his father until much later; Leia and Han might never get together, or not until years later).
General Schatten wrote:the one where Vader finds Leia on Aldreaan
I should be interested in this, never heard of it. Do you have a link or the title?
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Simon_Jester wrote:This would not happen with a well designed all terrain tracked vehicle, of course; what if the Empire didn't have one? What if the AT-ATs were honestly the best thing they had available for the job, God help them?
Those poor basterds. Shit, if the only other alternative would be those stupid tracked TIE fighters, they might as well use a mecha that transforms from a variable configuration TIE fighter or something. At least a variable TIE fighter could use its radiator panels as phalanx shields, and something else as a spear.
Frankly, this was not my main interest in the first place; I was more interested in exploring the second-order consequences of the Rebel defenses on Hoth holding out longer (Luke gets more training, but may not find out Vader is his father until much later; Leia and Han might never get together, or not until years later).
Yeah... if Cloud City never happened, and if Luke stayed on Dagobah and never got his hand chopped off? Man, who knows! If Yoda and co. never tell Luke, and if by the time Luke confronts Vader Yoda's already long dead... would this make it actually easier for Luke to fall into the dark side with this sudden revelation?
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