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NecronLord wrote:I always interpreted this as Vader bringing down more troops, he could concievably be just landing on his own, but that seems unlikely. Certainly there were snowtroopers who disembarked the AT-ATs though.

Indeed.

I wonder if the troops being carried by the AT-ATs were the ones who actually stormed the base with Vader though. If the base was anywhere close to the power generator and the distance from Veers' AT-AT to the generator was really 17.28km, I doubt the troops were supposed to pound snow that far to the base. Do the AT-ATs carry APCs?

Could their mission have been to sweep and clear the rebel trenches while Vader's troops took the base itself?

Echo Base was obviously mostly underground (or carved out of glacial ice, but that's basically the same thing). It's possible the generator was on the *other* side of the base rather than the near side, and you simply couldn't see Echo Base underneath in *front* of it.

Okay, so does that mean Veers' AT-AT was near the base?

Lord Revan wrote:In general that's what dictatorship "superweapons" tend to be not totally pointless but pretty much always impractical or just inefficient to the task.

Lets look at the Tiger tank for example as pointed out it had better armor and main gun then any other tank of the era, how ever due the design flaws its logistal cost was higher per tank then Germany could afford. Also as I stated the Soviet ending up in the balistic missile race with the US contributed to their fall since the Soviet Union didn't have the logistics to maintain such a race.


It's not impossible to assume that the Empire had loads of inefficient designs that worked "good enough" when faced with essentially inferior opponents (aka Rebel Alliance) but when the New Republic gain semi-parity with imperial troops and the Empire no longer had the benefit of having vastly stronger logistical reserves the wastefulness of the designs meant to impress this or that Moff ended up hurting the Empire and could easily be the reason for the political situation in TFA basically post Endor Empire had more resouces to work with but they wasted those resources on designs meant to impress the brass rather efficient battlefield designs, while the Rebels/Republic did the exact opposite.


Lets take another real life example, on paper the Soviets should have easily won the Winter War as they had signifigantly more resources but they used those resources poorly, with designs while impressive on paper were utterly impractical like the T-35 Heavy Tank (which probably was not used in the Winter War but similar designs were) and poor deployment of forces (largely due to the purges that were mentioned previously).

While this is a reasonable justification, it doesn't make sense in light of the fact that the Republic used AT-TEs during the entirety of the Clone Wars, while the CIS used a bizarre mix of equally complex designs. The Republic standardized on something horribly inefficient while the CIS went with an ever changing mix that wasn't much better, which was the fatal flaw in WW2 German armored design.

IThough one thing that is rather odd in any case is the fact that SW combat vehicles almost never move faster than human running or walking speed. The idea of motorized ground units is something that no one seems to adopt. While the AT-AT is stated to be capable of moving 60 km/hr, we never see any indciation of this sort of thing nor an indication of how it would do so. The AT-TE is even worse, with it regularly being used in a role in which it walks at the same speed as advancing infantry, even on Geonosis, which is the sort of open battlefield that armor is supposed to dominate.

One justifiable reason for this is that instead of being motorized, every major ground unit in Star Wars is instead air mobile. As we see with AOTC and ROTS, almost the entire Republic army is air mobile to varying degrees. Even the heavier AT-ATs should really be classified as this, if rather less so than AT-TEs. One wonders what the Empire has in the AT-TE class that would be light airmobile armor. It is possible they stick to the AT-ST for this role, given that they are fighting insurgents rather than a peer enemy. Somewhat akin to the US military using tin plated humvees and Strykers. The AT-ST has enough firepower to deal with light enemy ground vehicles, even if its armor is somewhat insufficient against its own weapons.

Galvatron wrote:Indeed.

I wonder if the troops being carried by the AT-ATs were the ones who actually stormed the base with Vader though. If the base was anywhere close to the power generator and the distance from Veers' AT-AT to the generator was really 17.28km, I doubt the troops were supposed to pound snow that far to the base. Do the AT-ATs carry APCs?

Could their mission have been to sweep and clear the rebel trenches while Vader's troops took the base itself?

Luke makes it from the AT-AT he takes down to his X-wing in the same time that Vader makes it from his landing spot to the Millennium Falcon. So they can't have been that far away. That would also suggest that snowtroopers would have made it to echo base as well.

It is possible that the power generators were on the opposite side of the base as the Imperial assault, probably as a safety precaution to protect the base, given the violent explosion produced when it was hit. Though it is debatable how much of that explosion was produced by the guns of the AT-AT vs how much was produced by the generator itself.

Adam Reynolds wrote:While this is a reasonable justification, it doesn't make sense in light of the fact that the Republic used AT-TEs during the entirety of the Clone Wars, while the CIS used a bizarre mix of equally complex designs. The Republic standardized on something horribly inefficient while the CIS went with an ever changing mix that wasn't much better, which was the fatal flaw in WW2 German armored design.

In terms of military procurement, the CIS was severely handicapped by the fact that it didn't really have a unified command structure- it was a confederacy of factions and corporate interests. These interests included groups like the "Techno Union" and "Intergalactic Banking Clan," and honestly you wouldn't really expect such organizations to have well-balanced, diverse military forces designed to shoot it out with heavy armor and entrenched defenses in major planetary battles.

So while they had plenty of heavy metal and industrial capability, they couldn't really standardize on a single efficient design for anything. Not without having to retool much of their existing industrial base. The closest they came to that was in the infantry battledroid designs, which were fairly standardized.

IThough one thing that is rather odd in any case is the fact that SW combat vehicles almost never move faster than human running or walking speed. The idea of motorized ground units is something that no one seems to adopt. While the AT-AT is stated to be capable of moving 60 km/hr, we never see any indciation of this sort of thing nor an indication of how it would do so. The AT-TE is even worse, with it regularly being used in a role in which it walks at the same speed as advancing infantry, even on Geonosis, which is the sort of open battlefield that armor is supposed to dominate.

Theater shielding may have a lot to do with this. The Republic and Empire seem to plan their doctrine around the idea of having space superiority most of the time- of being able to pick and choose what worlds they fight over.

In that context, major ground operations tend to be fought on the strategic offensive for the Republic (by contrast, the CIS used masses of droids to try and 'tie up' Republic forces in such ground actions, as I understand it.

The main reason to use ground vehicles and not hovermobile ones, so far as I can tell, is to assault through a theater shield. Theater shields are only installed around key targets. And if you're committed to doing that, you're inevitably stuck trying to break into a concentrated, prepared defense a la Kursk. At which point, you're probably not going to advance much faster than infantry pace anyway, if nothing else because of the hazard of mines and other ambush defenses.

So on the occasions when the Republic/Empire actually needs a heavy ground vehicle, what they really need is a super infantry tank, and its plodding speed isn't a major disadvantage.

[/speculation]

We should also remember that there had not been any major conflicts since the end of the Sith Wars a millenia before the start of the Clone Wars that's more then enough time for your military knowledge to become largely theoretical with little to no practical experience. In fact the Old Republic didn't seem to have any army at the time before the Grand Army of the Republic(aka the clone army) was founded.

Lord Revan wrote:We should also remember that there had not been any major conflicts since the end of the Sith Wars a millenia before the start of the Clone Wars that's more then enough time for your military knowledge to become largely theoretical with little to no practical experience. In fact the Old Republic didn't seem to have any army at the time before the Grand Army of the Republic(aka the clone army) was founded.

They had a small security force in the old canon, that's the guys manning the cruiser that Obi-wan and Qui-gon arrive on the Trade Federation cruiser with. Obviously not particularly strong. IIRC they're also depicted as manning a small fleet during a pre-Clone Wars conflict, which I'll be goddamned if I remember the name of, but it was Jedi against an alien race who used cortosis armour against their lightsabers and actually infiltrated the Jedi Temple. This was pre-TPM, but Obi-wan was serving under Qui-gon, so not *that* long ago.

The Stark Hyperspace War?

NecronLord wrote:The Stark Hyperspace War?

That might be it. *casts Summon Wookieepedia*

Nope, Yinchorri Uprising. But the Stark Hyperspace War would qualify as well, I suppose.

By 'security force' I was thinking the Judicial Forces...
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Judicial_Forces/Legends

Just as a note, in the new Disney canon there were Imperial Juggernauts on Hoth, along with other Imp vehicles.

In Twilight Company, one of the protagonists is assigned to Perimeter Outpost Delta, northwest of Echo Base and a hundred meters outside the energy shield. The main Imperial advance overruns Outpost Beta to their east, but the Imperials send a flanking force to hit Delta, an AT-ST and a couple of "floating gunnery platforms" carrying Snowtroopers. When the attack is over the survivors of Delta make their way back to Echo Base and come across a disabled Juggernaut, "Broad scorch marks on its armored sides suggested it had been hit by cannon or snowspeeder fire" but they get it working again and make it back to Echo in time for the retreat order.

Also the Rebels knew their ground artillery couldn't penetrate the AT-AT armor, "At best, precise, targeted bursts might disable the machines' weapons," but their entire hope was that the shield would force a ground assault and that said assault could be slowed down long enough for all the important people to get out of Dodge. Also the AT-ATs are described as stomping through Beta's minefields without issue.