StarDestroyer.Net BBS

The first rule of doors is that all doors can be either opened or breached.

It really boils down on how much power needs to be applied before the door is either opened or rendered otherwise useless.

Stormies spent very little time when breaching the door on the Tantive IV.
As for forcefield cost, the death star had magnetic sealing installed in it's trash compactors, which to me sounds like a forcefield of sorts.

Besides, the blastdoor on the TF ship filled it's purpose. It delayed the jedi long enough for the droidekas to arrive.

The AT-AT should have had close support present. If this had been the case the vulnerability of the bottom hatch would have been a non-issue.


-Gunhead

Well, my point is, if lightsabers are uncommon devices with exceptional ability to breach doors and hatches, then perhaps the AT-AT isn't really as bad off as it seemed.
Perhaps it can't be breached by common infantrymen.

Except, perhaps, in the rare instance when an individual happens to be in possession of an incredibly rare weapon that only achieves its effective power output (high efficiency and focus) due to precision construction and maintenance that can only be performed by someone who's guided by the Force.

As a complete aside that has little bearing on the issue, Luke's fall into the snow after his stunt would have killed most ordinary beings.

I'm fairly sure SW has more effective door breachers than lightsabers available. Not forgetting they can be utilized by a common trooper.

AT-AT is an armored vehicle, It's highly suspect that it's hatches couldn't be breached by devices commonly availabe to well equipped troopers. That hatch would be quite well protected against an infantry close assault by it's placing, so there's really little or no need to make it heavily armored. Not forgetting that you need a route into the vehicle in case the crew needs to be retrieved from the vehicle.

-Gunhead

they have thermal detonators of course (miniature nuclear devices) and proton grenades (which are shaped warheads related ot miniaturized proton torpedo warheads, and can adhere to targets) They can probably defeat most light/medium armored vehicles, but heavy ones (like AT-ATs or Juggernauts) require starfighter level firepower to harm. We know its grenade or missile deployable (but gain hitting the bigger targets would require low kt level firepower for damaging, meaning that most infantry forces probably could not take them out on their own.)

As for the E-weba nd the falcon, IIRC one source (the EGW&T I believe) mentioned that they were hoping for hitting a weak point in order to disable the Falcon, they didn't eactually expect to penetrate the armored portions of the hull.

With regards to thermal detonators, its likely that stormtroopers detonaters are similar to grenades. Dets with heavier yields don't seem to be used by the Imperial army on a regular basis. As it is, I'm hard pressed to find a single example where an Imperial stormtrooper used thermal detonators against vehicles.

E-60R Missile Launcher, from the EU. So the CIS troops do have the means to threaten Republic walkers and tanks.

The E60-R is from Battlefront, so it seems only fair to point out that it takes like 50 of those rockets to kill an AT-TE.

Anguirus wrote:The E60-R is from Battlefront, so it seems only fair to point out that it takes like 50 of those rockets to kill an AT-TE.

That's game mechanics.

Makes one wonder whether the Clone Army has the equivalent of a LAW though..........

We do know that proton torp launchers are available and used in the anti air and presumably anti-armour role, but those launchers appear to be large and bulky.

PainRack wrote:Makes one wonder whether the Clone Army has the equivalent of a LAW though..........

Well, if the E-60R has a place in the databank, I wonder how come the Republic equivalent (from the same game) isn't there.

It is

http://www.starwars.com/databank/technology/plex/

Anguirus wrote:Escorting troops would have ended that little attempt right quick.

Troops are going to escort, the troop carrier, on foot. Brilliant. Explain to me again, why they bothered with making it a troop carrier again.

Anguirus wrote:Thanks for cherry-picking one situation in which one lucky bastard did take out a large armored vehicle and roughly forty troops.

Cherry picking? Do you have anything or are you just whining because your Appeal to Competance can't hold mollasses? Suspension of Disbelief doesn't require what they're doing to be intelligent, or doctrinally justified. They unlike the REAL LIFE military don't actually have to operate in a true warfare environment and deal with such realities. They just have to deal with the scenarios the author comes up with and if that means both sides are being drooling idiots, then they're simply drooling idiots.

Anguirus wrote:I suppose the Tiger tank was useless because rarely a suicidally brave soldier would drop a grenade in the top hatch, despite the fact that its frontal armor could not be pierced by an American bazooka.

Tiger tanks which were doctrinally supposed to have escorting infantry to deal with that, an AT-AT is the infantry carrier fool. You want to reference a vulnerable tank, reference the Ronson Shermans they were nicknamed that for a reason.

Anguirus wrote:I'm still waiting for a B1 with a bazooka-equivalent killing an A6 Juggernaut. (If you can find it in the canon, I'll even take an A5.) Like I said, if this was plausible, burned-out hulks would have littered the beach in RotS.

Why would the CIS go to all the retooling effort to equip B1s with antiarmor weapons when they can just as easily crank out more hellfire droids? Nevermind if your logic held the entire mechanized Clone landing force at the Battle of Geonosis should have been reduced to burned-out hulks. Just because we don't see one particular vehicle really being shot at doesn't change the observed vulnerability of equipment otherwise.

I'll turn it around and demand you give me evidence that the CIS had attempted serious operations against that outpost on Kashyyk before the observed attack. Not to mention recently enough any wrecks wouldn't have been removed. Without both you have no traction, period, due to the beach not being littered with wrecks.

Anguirus wrote:Natural selection ain't just a biological concept.

You're doing an Appeal that works with RL, but too bad for you this isn't RL it's a story and we apply SoD. The author being stupid doesn't violate SoD, welcome to critical analysis. Leave your fanboy stupidity at the door.

Hailfire Droid missiles are pretty good at taking out the AT-TEs in AotC. Though admittedly, they seemed to be designed to blow up just about anything, including fighters, if Galactic Battleground is to be taken at face value.

FIDO droids are an example of melee anti armor. They 'claws' can penetrate the armor of a Juggernaut, according to the old Essential Guide to Droids. Though being melee would make they less than ideal for offensive purposes.

Octapurra Droids, at least the largest scaled up ones, could probably be fitted to fire anti armor munitions as well.

Thing about armored vehicle construction, most modern day armored vehicles tend to concentrate their armor in one location (usually the front, as it is most likely to be hit) because armor is heavy and the whole thing can't simply be encased in a big block of massive armor plate. I would wager that SW armored vehicles are of somewhat similar design, so the underbelly of an AT-AT would probably be much softer than say its front or sides, just like with a modern tank. The idea being that it is very unlikely that an enemy would actually get underneath it to blow it up like what Luke Skywalker did. Of course as we all know, shit happens, but statistically, something like that is rare enough that it would probably not be considered by the design comittee.

wilfulton wrote:Thing about armored vehicle construction, most modern day armored vehicles tend to concentrate their armor in one location (usually the front, as it is most likely to be hit) because armor is heavy and the whole thing can't simply be encased in a big block of massive armor plate. I would wager that SW armored vehicles are of somewhat similar design, so the underbelly of an AT-AT would probably be much softer than say its front or sides, just like with a modern tank. The idea being that it is very unlikely that an enemy would actually get underneath it to blow it up like what Luke Skywalker did. Of course as we all know, shit happens, but statistically, something like that is rare enough that it would probably not be considered by the design comittee.

Considering the height of the AT-AT and its apparent role in overruning base defences, that probability seems very high, not low.

Well, the AT AT's designers probably didn't take lightsabers into account when designing the lower armor of the Imperial Walker. Though I guess it would probably be well armored enough to stop light vehicular lasers at the very least.

The Imperials were probably hoping that the AT-AT would destroy anything powerful enough to threaten its underside before the aforementioned threats came into range to exploit that particular weakness, or that escorts like the AT-STs would do the job of protecting the walkers.

Troops are going to escort, the troop carrier, on foot. Brilliant. Explain to me again, why they bothered with making it a troop carrier again.

If the troop carrier is being surrounded by enemy troops, with no light escorting vehicles and no weapons capable of targeting enemy troops, it might be wise to deploy them before somebody pulls a Luke. Or pull back.

Cherry picking? Do you have anything or are you just whining because your Appeal to Competance can't hold mollasses? Suspension of Disbelief doesn't require what they're doing to be intelligent, or doctrinally justified. They unlike the REAL LIFE military don't actually have to operate in a true warfare environment and deal with such realities. They just have to deal with the scenarios the author comes up with and if that means both sides are being drooling idiots, then they're simply drooling idiots.

I find it spectacularly unlikely that a military force composed of drooling idiots is hanging on to an entire galaxy. You are right, SoD does require me to accept this if there is no other evidence, but SoD also requires us to note that on only one occasion do we see one exceptional soldier disable a large armored vehicle. It is rather obviously an outlier, as every large-scale battle we see during the Clone Wars has heavy and light armored vehicles, troops, and air support working together.

Terrain and Rebel tactics made Hoth an unusual situation.

Tiger tanks which were doctrinally supposed to have escorting infantry to deal with that, an AT-AT is the infantry carrier fool. You want to reference a vulnerable tank, reference the Ronson Shermans they were nicknamed that for a reason.

Ok, fine, next time I'll use a different tank in my counter-argument.

The fact that a Tiger's vulnerabilities did not make it useless still stands. And the fact that escorting soldiers were *supposed* to be there did not prevent it from occasionally being destroyed by the tactics I noted! AT-ATs are probably "supposed" to have more light armor support than they had in ESB. Though it would still be rather brighter of the Imperials to bolt an E-Web and a security camera to the bottom of that thing.

Why would the CIS go to all the retooling effort to equip B1s with antiarmor weapons when they can just as easily crank out more hellfire droids?

Because B1s and bazookas are a million times cheaper than armored vehicles, you moron. If they were equally effective at destroying huge and expensive armored vehicles, they'd be ubiquitous.

Hellfire droids fire missiles that are FAR LARGER than that little rocket launcher. Clearly, there is a reason for the heavier vehicle to exist.

Nevermind if your logic held the entire mechanized Clone landing force at the Battle of Geonosis should have been reduced to burned-out hulks.

Hardly, because the landing force was enormous and the Hailfires were utterly butchered by air support. Did you WATCH the movie?

AT-TEs were, however, quite vulnerable to lighter, missile-firing vehicles, despite countermeasures, etc. Perhaps this was why heavier vehicles were promptly commissioned. I didn't see any SPHA-Ts being lost to Hailfires or Spider droids.

I'll turn it around and demand you give me evidence that the CIS had attempted serious operations against that outpost on Kashyyk before the observed attack. Not to mention recently enough any wrecks wouldn't have been removed. Without both you have no traction, period, due to the beach not being littered with wrecks.

What are you talking about? Of course there's no known attack before the observed attack, but the battle goes on for DAYS in movie-time. A lot of troops and smaller vehicles are killed, but Juggernauts are huge and if any had been catastrophically damaged we'd see them wrecked on the beach by the time Order 66 goes through. It's not like a Venator can even bring very many to the party. At the Battle of Kashyyyk, for whatever reason you care to name, a few very heavy armored vehicles worked, and few if any were destroyed because they were used throughout the lengthy battle, and only as many as could fit on one Star Destroyer were there in the first place. Your blathering about how they should be easy to kill because the Empire is stupid doesn't change that.

You're doing an Appeal that works with RL, but too bad for you this isn't RL it's a story and we apply SoD. The author being stupid doesn't violate SoD, welcome to critical analysis. Leave your fanboy stupidity at the door.

This is actually nonsenscial! Under SoD, "RL" logic CAN and MUST be applied to the fictional universe that is Star Wars.

You have given no evidence that the author is stupid, so this entire post is basically an McEwokian attempt to throw out logic because you are incredulous about the effectiveness of Star Wars armored tactics.

Star Wars armored tactics can and have proven effective. The rest of us are trying to figure out why. You're just claiming that the galaxy far far away is composed of retards, and I'm really not seeing what evidence you have brought to the table for this.