Set piece battle: Grand Army of the Republic vs Terminators

[sonofccn]

Taking place in the grimiest section of a generic, deserted "city-planet" this quick and dirty matchup will pit brawn and skill of the respective sides in a fight to the death. Fighting for Truth, Justice and the Republic way of life we have the Hero without fear Anakin Skywalker whom will command a Clone battlegroup consisting of:

(12) All Terrain Tactical Enforcers
(18) Low Altitude Assault Transports
(500) Clonetroopers with standard kit.

Implacably waiting in the other corner, loyal servant to the Skynet computer mind, is a T-X series Terminator commanding an assault force consisting of:

(12) Hunter-Killer Tanks
(18) Hunter-Killer Aerials
(500) 800 series Terminators with standard kit.

Which Commander shall steal victory? Which shall be trampled beneath their mass produced foes' heels? You decide!

[Mr. Oragahn]

Taking place in the grimiest section of a generic, deserted "city-planet" this quick and dirty matchup will pit brawn and skill of the respective sides in a fight to the death. Fighting for Truth, Justice and the Republic way of life we have the Hero without fear Anakin Skywalker whom will command a Clone battlegroup consisting of:

(12) All Terrain Tactical Enforcers
(18) Low Altitude Assault Transports
(500) Clonetroopers with standard kit.

Implacably waiting in the other corner, loyal servant to the Skynet computer mind, is a T-X series Terminator commanding an assault force consisting of:

(12) Hunter-Killer Tanks
(18) Hunter-Killer Aerials
(500) 800 series Terminators with standard kit.

Which Commander shall steal victory? Which shall be trampled beneath their mass produced foes' heels? You decide!

The AT-TE has a great range and firepower with its main cannon.
Plus its side guns are more capable of pointing up than the cannons on HKTs.
However, whoever owns the air will largely have a great advantage, if not obtain the decisive hand in this battle, and although both air units carry missiles, if Salvation is of any indication, then Terminators' HKAs can combine copter-like hovercraft maneuvering and jet-like rushes which would leave LAATs far behind. HKAs are deadly agile and could circle LAATs all day long.

Besides, as a whole, clones suck as troopers in comparison to T-800s, in terms of resilience, and perhaps aim as well.
Plus those fuel cells that turn into mini-nukes make me nervous.

Anakin isn't going to be facing droids that can't hit shit under 10 meters either. And let's hope that ALL Terminators have switched to plasma guns, otherwise our Jedi fellow will have a taste of lead I'm sure he'll consider hurtful.

The T-X on the other hand won't be much useful. His best trick will be passing off as a human, or even a clone, whatever use you find in that.

[sonofccn]

The AT-TE has a great range and firepower with its main cannon.
Plus its side guns are more capable of pointing up than the cannons on HKTs.

As well as here, the battle of Teth, @ roughly 36 seconds mark shows that the Tactical Enforcer, and the Clone Troopers, can scale a vertical cliffside. So its possible, depending on the exact composition, they could climb the very buildings to reposition and fortify favorable vantage points.

However, whoever owns the air will largely have a great advantage, if not obtain the decisive hand in this battle, and although both air units carry missiles, if Salvation is of any indication, then Terminators' HKAs can combine copter-like hovercraft maneuvering and jet-like rushes which would leave LAATs far behind.

True, here starting @ 1:48 we do get to see HK-As mix it up with human jets and it does impressively "launch", catch up to and destroy both targets in about thirty seconds.

Through it does appear a HK-A can be "blindsided" with an attack from behind. Which in the chaotic landscape of the "planet-city" might appeal more to the hover capable LAAT then attempting a more fighter esque role it is, admittedly, ill suited for.

As well LAATs have equal use transporting infantry which, at least in the movies, the HK-As don't appear to do. And in War mobility can be a crucial advantage.

Besides, as a whole, clones suck as troopers in comparison to T-800s, in terms of resilience, and perhaps aim as well.

Agreed the T-800 is a rugged, dependable killing machine the likes of which the Clone Troopers have ever seen. At least in mass produced quanities.

Plus those fuel cells that turn into mini-nukes make me nervous.

No issue then as that should be the 850 series Terminator rather than the 800. And in any event I intended these to be the Terminators from One and Two, the kind you can crush, blow up and dissolve in molten lead without any mini-nuke explosions.

The T-X on the other hand won't be much useful. His best trick will be passing off as a human, or even a clone, whatever use you find in that.

Well the City is deserted so any "human" other than a Clone or Anakin would be useless. Through I suppose she could "hide" as a T-800 for what ever that's worth.

Physically she's also strong enough to throw down with a T-850 and win, armed with a plasma cannon and can "infect" and remote control vehicles. The only real disadvantage is that at the end of the day she's a glorified assasin not a Soldier or leader.

[Mr. Oragahn]

As well as here, the battle of Teth, @ roughly 36 seconds mark shows that the Tactical Enforcer, and the Clone Troopers, can scale a vertical cliffside. So its possible, depending on the exact composition, they could climb the very buildings to reposition and fortify favorable vantage points.

It would if the buildings could be reliable. Not to say that it would probably just make them stick out even more, now that they're on walls which are easier to shoot at than the ground, which is at an angle for any aircraft.

Besides, the HKAs in TS could fire hybrid torpedo-missiles in fact. They seem to be kept and used for special purposes though, like destroying a submarine.

Through it does appear a HK-A can be "blindsided" with an attack from behind. Which in the chaotic landscape of the "planet-city" might appeal more to the hover capable LAAT then attempting a more fighter esque role it is, admittedly, ill suited for.

A LAAT needs to get on a HKA's six first. The warthogs were straffing at a high speed and had an element of surprise.
If this is bound to happen, I can see it occur on both sides. Besides, the kind of pitiful firepower that can take down a LAAT is not reassuring either.
In retrospect, they could be easy breakfast for HKTs, especially since the cityscape is not going to allow for mad moves which would allow the crafts to avoid being funneled into street corridors.

As well LAATs have equal use transporting infantry which, at least in the movies, the HK-As don't appear to do. And in War mobility can be a crucial advantage.

The GAR's objective is the opposite army. Maneuvering infantry left and right, assuming the LAATs don't get shot down, will just bring clones closer to their death.

If anything, LAATs are better off being sacrified to missile spam the enemy as much as possible. That is some serious firepower and will certainly greatly lower Skynet's forces if they go for some kind of kamikaze alpha strike. They better try that fast, on the opening move, before Skynet spreads its forces across the city. Otherwise, at the game of cat and mouse, Skynet will have the upper hand.
LAATs can level a whole sector with their cumulated missile load. They can attempt to topple nearby buildings as well.
LAATs are as agile as whales with chicken wings, they can't waste time. HKAs will finish off the remaining LAATs otherwise in a mere phase of mop up.

Of course, this kind of hyper brutal and overkill release of firepower on the opening moves is just unseen.
So the GAR is screwed imho.

Plus those fuel cells that turn into mini-nukes make me nervous.

No issue then as that should be the 850 series Terminator rather than the 800. And in any event I intended these to be the Terminators from One and Two, the kind you can crush, blow up and dissolve in molten lead without any mini-nuke explosions.

In TS, the nuclear fuel cells are intended for T-800s.
Although that was quite silly.
T1 and T2 bots, ok.

[sonofccn]

It would if the buildings could be reliable. Not to say that it would probably just make them stick out even more, now that they're on walls which are easier to shoot at than the ground, which is at an angle for any aircraft.

Well I was thinking more along the lines of climbing up and entering the "office buildings" or going to their roof if possible for better elevation/vantage rather than just clinging to the side of the wall.

And in any event it still offers the possibility of superior movement in the enviroment compared to T-800s and Hunter-Killer tanks.

Besides, the HKAs in TS could fire hybrid torpedo-missiles in fact. They seem to be kept and used for special purposes though, like destroying a submarine.

I'm sorry, I'm unsure of the advantage of an aquatic missile in a city fight.

A LAAT needs to get on a HKA's six first. The warthogs were straffing at a high speed and had an element of surprise.

Well that's the issue. Imagine fighting in an enviroment like this but at "ground level" and I think you'd be hard pressed to go zipping around at " high speed". As for surprise an enviroment of a congested city offers wonderful concealment for vehicles like the LAAT and HKA so that shouldn't be a problem.

If this is bound to happen, I can see it occur on both sides.

Certainly but if the HKAs are crawling along playing hide and seek through the cityscape they've been reduced to little more than poor man's LAATs. If they stay "above the fray" where they can use their superior speed to their advantage their effectively irrelevent to the engagment.

Besides, the kind of pitiful firepower that can take down a LAAT is not reassuring either.

Neither is the HKA, as well as being taken down by a pair of AA-missiles we can observe one being taken down by a shoulder fired missile in the Terminator 2 Future War scene as well as their general use in a combat situation.

In retrospect, they could be easy breakfast for HKTs, especially since the cityscape is not going to allow for mad moves which would allow the crafts to avoid being funneled into street corridors.

Doubtful. HKTs have a rather obscenely tall profile, have displayed less agility than the LAAT and are more restricted in their movements than it. Its guns were not observed to be particularly powerful and may have difficulty shooting up, depending on how its turrets and "arms" are designed.

In contrast a LAAT carries missiles which would kill or at least badly damage a HKT. "Mad moves" or not I'd say if anything is going to be eaten for breakfast its going to be the HKT.

The GAR's objective is the opposite army. Maneuvering infantry left and right, assuming the LAATs don't get shot down, will just bring clones closer to their death.

In contrast placing your troops where they're needed when they are needed is a major boon. Or to be concise it matters little if a HKA is dispatched and comes zooming in if the Clones have already swooped in, blown up the detachment of T-800s and bugged out.

Admittedly Clone Trooper doctrine limits the application of the advantage, true Air-Cav tactics being lightyears ahead of them, but they have been observed using the LAATs as dragoons. Fast steads to ride into battle on and, following its conclusion, ride out on.

If anything, LAATs are better off being sacrified to missile spam the enemy as much as possible. That is some serious firepower and will certainly greatly lower Skynet's forces if they go for some kind of kamikaze alpha strike. They better try that fast, on the opening move, before Skynet spreads its forces across the city. Otherwise, at the game of cat and mouse, Skynet will have the upper hand.
LAATs can level a whole sector with their cumulated missile load. They can attempt to topple nearby buildings as well.

While ground support is one of the LAATs two main duties, and should be conducted resources permiting, such a "plan" would sacrifice one of the advantages of the Clonetroopers, being able to move large quanities of troopers quickly across the battlefield, for very little gain.The HKAs would be virtually free to conduct ground support operations which the Clonetroopers, deprived of any means to quickly relocate, would be hard pressed to deal with. They could easily be pounded, isolated and taken piecemeal by the surviving Terminators.

LAATs are as agile as whales with chicken wings, they can't waste time. HKAs will finish off the remaining LAATs otherwise in a mere phase of mop up.

Well LAATs aren't super nimble fighters, but then neither are A-10s, but they don't strike me as particularly worse than any RL helicopter. Any particular example you're thinking of?

Of course, this kind of hyper brutal and overkill release of firepower on the opening moves is just unseen.
So the GAR is screwed imho.

IMO I think you are concetrating too greatly on one aspect of the wider conflict, one which may not be of consequence in the actual fight.

[Mr. Oragahn]

It would if the buildings could be reliable. Not to say that it would probably just make them stick out even more, now that they're on walls which are easier to shoot at than the ground, which is at an angle for any aircraft.

Well I was thinking more along the lines of climbing up and entering the "office buildings" or going to their roof if possible for better elevation/vantage rather than just clinging to the side of the wall.

And in any event it still offers the possibility of superior movement in the enviroment compared to T-800s and Hunter-Killer tanks.

Not only I doubt the AT-TEs are going to be able to get into the office, but there's nothing superior there.
Higher? Perhaps. Then the walkers are just stuck in buildings and need to crawl down to be "free" and able to move around again.

Besides, the HKAs in TS could fire hybrid torpedo-missiles in fact. They seem to be kept and used for special purposes though, like destroying a submarine.

I'm sorry, I'm unsure of the advantage of an aquatic missile in a city fight.

Puddles, ponds and sewers are tactical opportunites. :P

But the missile can still be fired in dumb mode anyway, and represents a higher source of firepower.
Although, considering how exceptional it appeared to be, I think it's best to leave them out and claim pure plasma weapons.

A LAAT needs to get on a HKA's six first. The warthogs were straffing at a high speed and had an element of surprise.

Well that's the issue. Imagine fighting in an enviroment like this but at "ground level" and I think you'd be hard pressed to go zipping around at " high speed". As for surprise an enviroment of a congested city offers wonderful concealment for vehicles like the LAAT and HKA so that shouldn't be a problem.

You said a run down section of a "city", not a pristine Coruscant with its multi-km tall skyscrappers.
Any kind of a normal city with vastly destroyed sections offers enough areas where HKAs can fly high above and achieve fast speeds while still have a good sight of the ground.

If this is bound to happen, I can see it occur on both sides.

Certainly but if the HKAs are crawling along playing hide and seek through the cityscape they've been reduced to little more than poor man's LAATs. If they stay "above the fray" where they can use their superior speed to their advantage their effectively irrelevent to the engagment.

But this won't be the case. Plus HKAs still have the ability to considerably alter their speed and they have demonstrated, in the canyon run, that they're very agile.
Even your exceptional Coruscanti setting is a piece of cake for them.

Besides, the HKAs in TS had rear belly guns, suggesting at least a capacity to aim at targets on the ground behind them.
Something that they share with LAATs.

Also, in TS, there wasn't much the HKA could do against two homing missiles. And considering its cruising speed and the distance it put between the conveyor and itself (we see the HKA flying much closer to the transport ship moments before), it seems quite clear that the HKA had spotted them, or eventually sacrificed itself to soak enemy fire.
Besides, it's the same HKA which took a hit to the turbine. So, although we don't see the ship suffering, it is hard to claim that it was in pristine condition when covering the transport's six.

Besides, the kind of pitiful firepower that can take down a LAAT is not reassuring either.

Neither is the HKA, as well as being taken down by a pair of AA-missiles we can observe one being taken down by a shoulder fired missile in the Terminator 2 Future War scene as well as their general use in a combat situation.

A LAAT in AOTC was taken down by a bolt which, as we've seen, can't even blow up the tip of a small sand dune, nor damage the mundane rocky surface of a cliff, even after several hits here and there.



On the other hand, the example you pick against the HKA is about an aircraft being taken down by a flying bomb that could easily be in the low megajoule blast range, with perhaps a perforing head (considering the future time). That, versus some whateverium bolt that can't even decently scrap natural and inert landscape elements.
Which we can directly compare with the firepower displayed by a HKA during the Terminator Salvation chase, as one shot blew a significant section of the stone wall.
In the same TS, a HKA took the impact of a magnet heavy ball and the moto-terminator glued to it, straight to its left turbine and didn't visibly suffer from this.
Perhaps minor damage happened (see my point earlier on), but the hull was not visibly damaged.

In retrospect, they could be easy breakfast for HKTs, especially since the cityscape is not going to allow for mad moves which would allow the crafts to avoid being funneled into street corridors.

Doubtful. HKTs have a rather obscenely tall profile, have displayed less agility than the LAAT and are more restricted in their movements than it. Its guns were not observed to be particularly powerful and may have difficulty shooting up, depending on how its turrets and "arms" are designed.

In contrast a LAAT carries missiles which would kill or at least badly damage a HKT. "Mad moves" or not I'd say if anything is going to be eaten for breakfast its going to be the HKT.

LAATs couldn't even avoid being shot down in AOTC while having like a whole open vista to wizz over, only facing a legion of droids on the ground, well known for their shitty aim. How are they going to fare better with limited mobility and against machines with superior aim?
LAATs need to be able to fire missiles. They need time or surprise, but this can't be without taking care of the HKAs, preferably ASAP.

The GAR's objective is the opposite army. Maneuvering infantry left and right, assuming the LAATs don't get shot down, will just bring clones closer to their death.

In contrast placing your troops where they're needed when they are needed is a major boon. Or to be concise it matters little if a HKA is dispatched and comes zooming in if the Clones have already swooped in, blown up the detachment of T-800s and bugged out.

I wasn't thinking about any HKA strike specifically, but just the fact that the clones will get mowed down against T-800s.
They're not stupid robots, far from it.
In TS a T-800 took a hit to the chest from a grenade shotgun, and that made it fly, but hardly stoppped it.
Neither did being doused with molten metal, which is quite much more than the amount of thermal energy seen delivered by guns in SW in general, which are largely thermal.
And that's not at odds with T2. Arhnuld neeeded to take a bath in the entire pool to be destroyed, and even totally engulfed, was obviously still functionnal.

Not to say that T-800s have no reason to limit themselves to the streets. They can enter buildings too. They were largely designed for that in fact.

If anything, LAATs are better off being sacrified to missile spam the enemy as much as possible. That is some serious firepower and will certainly greatly lower Skynet's forces if they go for some kind of kamikaze alpha strike. They better try that fast, on the opening move, before Skynet spreads its forces across the city. Otherwise, at the game of cat and mouse, Skynet will have the upper hand.
LAATs can level a whole sector with their cumulated missile load. They can attempt to topple nearby buildings as well.

While ground support is one of the LAATs two main duties, and should be conducted resources permiting, such a "plan" would sacrifice one of the advantages of the Clonetroopers, being able to move large quanities of troopers quickly across the battlefield, for very little gain.

On the contrary, there is much gain in doing that. Their amount of firepower gives the LAATs, if they can achieve anything close to an alpha strike, the capacity to dramatically tilt the forces in favour of the GAR.
I'm surprised that you can't see the obvious advantages in that.
Homing missiles are very effective against machines or packs of T-800s when possible, and all the guns bristling on LAATs would allow them to engage T-800s if not threatened by HKs.

Your deployment and mobility tactics are useless against machines which can tank the clones' firepower and have greater aim than both battle droids and clone troopers combined.
Movement is useful when it allows you to use superior firepower for a decisive strike, although risky, or take down enemies when your standard weapons allow you to.
Clones have neither.
We've seen some of them with repeated guns and very rarely, rocket launchers, but that's just... for merchandising I guess.

The HKAs would be virtually free to conduct ground support operations which the Clonetroopers, deprived of any means to quickly relocate, would be hard pressed to deal with. They could easily be pounded, isolated and taken piecemeal by the surviving Terminators.

Precisely.

LAATs are as agile as whales with chicken wings, they can't waste time. HKAs will finish off the remaining LAATs otherwise in a mere phase of mop up.

Well LAATs aren't super nimble fighters, but then neither are A-10s, but they don't strike me as particularly worse than any RL helicopter. Any particular example you're thinking of?

Of what?
The SW movies don't show the LAATs even achieving anything close to the moves displayed by the A-10s or HKAs in TS, and their guns are quite ill suited to aim in a predatory way if they ever had to chase a target. In fact, AOTC has quite clearly demonstrated that they will generally not be able to engage an aerial target right in front of them!

Of course, this kind of hyper brutal and overkill release of firepower on the opening moves is just unseen.
So the GAR is screwed imho.

IMO I think you are concetrating too greatly on one aspect of the wider conflict, one which may not be of consequence in the actual fight.

How so?
Where does leveling as much of the enemy forces as possible with the GAR's greatest forms of firepower somehow likeable to missing the point?
Skynet's forces are superior in way too many departements. The GAR needs to level the field.
Having LAATs pissing missiles like if they had leaky bladders is the way to go. The sooner the better, after that they're skrewed.
They have quite a shit ton of them btw. A mere glance at AOTC when one leaves the arena already suggests 14 missiles per LAAT, and that's not counting the fact that the feeding mechanism goes deeper into the craft. Plenty to spare against the HKAs as well. We know that the LAATs can use the missiles against small aircrafts, such as Dooku's swoop bike.
But as I said, we've never seen the GAR do that.
They don't have the tactical acumen to even think of that. Just looking at the battle of Geonosis shows that they didn't even use their normal blaster batteries against enemy droids in plain sight during the first straffing runs, only doing so later in the engagement, and generally deigned doing so only when coming close to suicidal ranges.

So basically the only thing that could have saved them won't be used because they're just too thick to do it in time.

[sonofccn]

Not only I doubt the AT-TEs are going to be able to get into the office

Well AT-TEs have cannons and the Clonetroopers should have thermal detonators and perhaps rocket launchers. I don't think making a hole is an absolutely impossible task.

Higher? Perhaps.

Higher would give them a better vantage making it more likely they'll shoot first and have a better field of fire than the T-800s and HKTs on the "ground". It would also add concealment from any "eyes in the sky".

Then the walkers are just stuck in buildings and need to crawl down to be "free" and able to move around again.

Less stuck than deployed. Trading some mobility issues for the advantages of superior lines of sight.

You said a run down section of a "city", not a pristine Coruscant with its multi-km tall skyscrappers

I said the grimiest section of a "city-planet", strictly speaking. Coruscant is a city-planet. However,if you'd prefer another example, take New York and imagine trying to fly through that.

Any kind of a normal city with vastly destroyed sections offers enough areas where HKAs can fly high above and achieve fast speeds while still have a good sight of the ground.

There are no "vastly destroyed sections". Its more 70's New York than 42' Stalingrade.

But this won't be the case. Plus HKAs still have the ability to considerably alter their speed and they have demonstrated, in the canyon run, that they're very agile.

The most impressive thing in the canyon run was the barrel roll thing it did to detach itself from the harvester thing. The actual run itself was quite gentle, likely not much more difficult than the Trench Run on the Death Star. Certainly does not prove the HKA could zig-zag at high speed through the congested sprawl of a metropolis.

Besides, the HKAs in TS had rear belly guns, suggesting at least a capacity to aim at targets on the ground behind them.

Suggesting a possibility without any evidence as to their effectiveness.

And considering its cruising speed and the distance it put between the conveyor and itself (we see the HKA flying much closer to the transport ship moments before), it seems quite clear that the HKA had spotted them, or eventually sacrificed itself to soak enemy fire.

Or perhaps it altered its speed for completely unrelated reasons, perhaps because of "engine trouble" as you suggested, in any event speculation unattached to evidence is not going to get us anywhere.

A LAAT in AOTC was taken down by a bolt which, as we've seen, can't even blow up the tip of a small sand dune, nor damage the mundane rocky surface of a cliff, even after several hits here and there.

Okay? I have at no point denied or argued a HKA couldn't shoot down a LAAT.

On the other hand, the example you pick against the HKA is about an aircraft being taken down by a flying bomb that could easily be in the low megajoule blast range, with perhaps a perforing head (considering the future time).

The T2 example? There is no reason to assume its anything more than what it looks like, a stinger type system, and the HKA is not a particuarly armored or durable aircraft.

That, versus some whateverium bolt that can't even decently scrap natural and inert landscape elements.

That's hollywood for you. Now grant you we've seen smaller blasters do better but if you want a very strict, literial analysis that's fine. For both franchises.

In the same TS, a HKA took the impact of a magnet heavy ball and the moto-terminator glued to it, straight to its left turbine and didn't visibly suffer from this.

Refresh my memory, I'd like a clip of the scene in question so that we may attempt to determine relative speed and total kinetic energy.

LAATs couldn't even avoid being shot down in AOTC while having like a whole open vista to wizz over, only facing a legion of droids on the ground, well known for their shitty aim.

Well obviously I would like clips and timestamps of particular LAATs hit so we better ascertain what is occuring but from what I recall the LAATs were performing strafing runs against fields of battledroids rather than whizzing all about over open vistas.

How are they going to fare better with limited mobility and against machines with superior aim?

I would like evidence of "superior aim" By what are you basing this?

I wasn't thinking about any HKA strike specifically, but just the fact that the clones will get mowed down against T-800s.
They're not stupid robots, far from it.
In TS a T-800...

As already previously stated these are T1 and T2 Terminators rather than TS ones which, as such descrepencies as fusion fuel cells show, are distinct and seperate. We have no way of knowing if these descrepencies are due to medling with the time line, an earlier "trial run" which was lost when Conner blew up the facility or whatever but they are there.

And that's not at odds with T2. Arhnuld neeeded to take a bath in the entire pool to be destroyed, and even totally engulfed, was obviously still functionnal.

First his CPU fuctioning for a few seconds after submerging at some level is quite far away from being completely undamaged after being doused as the TS T-800 was. Second the issue wasn't so much to destroy as in render inoperative the Terminator but erase all trace of his advanced technology.

Conversely the future scene shows Skynet fighting, and supposedly ultimatly losing too, humans wielding energy weapons not radically different in effect than blasters. And indeed may be in the 40 watt range if you trust what the Terminator said in T1. Taken togather I don't see issue with blasters, after multiple shots, taking down Terminators. Then taking some more to ensure they stay down.

Not to say that T-800s have no reason to limit themselves to the streets. They can enter buildings too. They were largely designed for that in fact.

Never assumed they wouldn't. This is a city fight, I assumed they'd take and fortify buildings as the situation dictated. However it should be noted Clones, via their grappling gear, can go up the side while a Terminator would be forced to use the stairs/elevators ect creating chokepoints/places to ambush and set explosives.

On the contrary, there is much gain in doing that.Their amount of firepower gives the LAATs, if they can achieve anything close to an alpha strike, the capacity to dramatically tilt the forces in favour of the GAR.
I'm surprised that you can't see the obvious advantages in that.

Well one this is less a plan than a mad gamble and depends entirely on the enemy doing exactly what you want. Two T-800s are rugged and fairly hardy fighting machines and even a near AOE blast is more likely to "stun" them or mildly inconvience them than kill them. Simply put you are not going to kill huge numbers in a series of uncoordinated, hectic and sloppy missile spams. Third, as already mentioned, it leaves the HK-As free to run air missions which are likely to be more detrimental to the Clones in the long run.

Your deployment and mobility tactics are useless against machines which can tank the clones' firepower and have greater aim than both battle droids and clone troopers combined.

At issue is I disagree the T-800s can tank their fire to the extent you believe and I'm far from certain the combat T-800s have displayed that much greater aim. Check the future war video again, we see a lot of shooting from both sides but few if any hits.

Movement is useful when it allows you to use superior firepower for a decisive strike, although risky, or take down enemies when your standard weapons allow you to.

Actually movement is useful period. It allows, for instance, the concetration of force against your enemy which is even more vital if your individually weaker.

Clones have neither.
We've seen some of them with repeated guns and very rarely, rocket launchers, but that's just... for merchandising I guess.

I don't know. That rocket launcher might be comparable to the pipe bombs Reese used to take down the T-800 in T1. Okay it was alive still but its combat ability was reduced.

Of what?

"whales with chicken wings" for starters. I feel I was quite clear in what I was requesting.

The SW movies don't show the LAATs even achieving anything close to the moves displayed by the A-10s or HKAs in TS

The moves were quite tame. Other than the barrel roll I'm not sure there was any manuver the LAAT couldn't replicate.

their guns are quite ill suited to aim in a predatory way if they ever had to chase a target.

The LAAT's forward arc looks quite well armed to me. What exactly is preventing "predatory" aiming specificly?

Where does leveling as much of the enemy forces as possible with the GAR's greatest forms of firepower somehow likeable to missing the point?

I did not claim you missed the point persay but that you were focusing on one aspect to the extent of the others. Namely because HKAs are faster than LAATs you've assumed they will totally own them in combat. Ergo the need to expend the LAATs in a frantic "alpha strike".

Conversely I posulate in an urban enviroment the HKA's speed is meaningless and would end up no better than a LAAT.

Skynet's forces are superior in way too many departements

Certainly the easy favorite to win but its strengths are hampered and partially mitigated by its own weakness. For starters a grasp of tactical acumen equal if not worse than the Clonetroopers, seeming to employ its forces in close bunched "packets", and a hindered tactical/strategic movement limited to the foot speed of the Terminators.

The GAR needs to level the field.

Greater tactical/strategic mobility would be a way to level the field.

They have quite a shit ton of them btw. A mere glance at AOTC when one leaves the arena already suggests 14 missiles per LAAT, and that's not counting the fact that the feeding mechanism goes deeper into the craft. Plenty to spare against the HKAs as well. We know that the LAATs can use the missiles against small aircrafts, such as Dooku's swoop bike.

Again I doubt the effectiveness of such a bombing not the LAATs ability to deliver it.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Ok, I admit understanding that the city was broken since deserted.
But it's just *magically* empty. Aye sir!

So I'll adapt my arguments.

Not only I doubt the AT-TEs are going to be able to get into the office

Well AT-TEs have cannons and the Clonetroopers should have thermal detonators and perhaps rocket launchers. I don't think making a hole is an absolutely impossible task.

The idea of nesting AT-TEs isn't totally without merits, but the idea of damaging buildings to do so is most unwise, especially as the amount of explosives needed to do that, considering the size of the walkers, is impressive, as much as the fact that they can't control the blast precisely.
AT-TEs would need to use their cannons, which won't be discrete, nor that easy considering that the closer they are to the face of a building, the harder it will be to make a hole. Read, impossible in fact. They'd have to be at a good distance, and theoretically, the best tool there is the LAAT, hovering some meters from the face and using the green rays to gouge pits. And of course, assuming they just don't completely ruin the building or even weaken the structure where the nest is made: simply put, the method is so awkward that I easily picture AT-TEs arriving close to the edge of the holes and falling simply because they hang to parts of the tower that barely held and couldn't withstand the pull from the multiton walkers.

And, as hinted at a few lines above, how is that going to help them mask their presence?
The noise, smoke and rubble, you bet Skynet's bots won't miss that.
I say no, bad idea from A to Y.
Z below:

Higher? Perhaps.

Higher would give them a better vantage making it more likely they'll shoot first and have a better field of fire than the T-800s and HKTs on the "ground". It would also add concealment from any "eyes in the sky".

Considering that nothing is known about the topology of said city, what you're essentially doing is forcing your walkers into a fixed positions with a limited arc of fire (the buildings will obviously preclude walkers from moving around). It also forces them into a much more passive tactic, and easier to take down by HKAs.
The tactic would be good if Skynet's air forces were absent and the ground ones forced to pass through a couple chokepoints or known areas.
Considering that HKAs will be doing the scounting, those AT-TEs will be rather exposed methinks. Besides, depending on the distance between both forces and the size of the city they start in, the time it would take for AT-TEs to go up there would expose them uselessly if HKAs were to arrive too soon.
Which considering their speed, is more than likely going to happen.
Also, if the city is too small, the climbing would be a total waste of time.

Then the walkers are just stuck in buildings and need to crawl down to be "free" and able to move around again.

Less stuck than deployed. Trading some mobility issues for the advantages of superior lines of sight.

That swings both ways. Or are Skynet's forces, possessing all knowledge about contemporary warfare, supposed to ignore the idea that troops could be firing from buildings?
If they're looking for troops, including sentinels and small units capable of firing rocket launchers, AT-TEs will hardly be invisible.
Especially after having blown huge holes on the face of those buildings and with the risk of starting fires.
Now, machines are not omniscient and by default, they tend to scout zones in a limited radius ahead.
For example in TS, Connor could approach an area under control by Skynet and trick a HK to test the signal.
Connor were barely hiding, and their heat signatures at night would have been rather obvious. But the machine was attracted to the explosion and the heat from the burning carcass.
Of course, designs in TS are logically going to be a bit more primitive than the ones equipped with plasma repeaters.

As for the legions of machines walking in groups, lanes and napoleonian formations, it appears that this happened when they largely were in control of the area and that there weren't many places to hide for the Resistance anyway.
When infantry has to move on and there's basically nothing else but ruins and open areas, marching in more or less tight formations is what machines will do.
Where clones are better is that they run.

But again, that's hardly going to help them.

You said a run down section of a "city", not a pristine Coruscant with its multi-km tall skyscrappers

I said the grimiest section of a "city-planet", strictly speaking. Coruscant is a city-planet. However,if you'd prefer another example, take New York and imagine trying to fly through that.

A city-planet is rather too big. They'd take ages before finding each other.

And Coruscant has some very flat areas btw. Other places like Christophsis or some other super cities from SW's EU don't necessarily involve worlds with cramped districts and multi-km tall towers.
The scenario doesn't hinge around a goal-beacon for both sides that would funnel them into specific areas.

Any kind of a normal city with vastly destroyed sections offers enough areas where HKAs can fly high above and achieve fast speeds while still have a good sight of the ground.

There are no "vastly destroyed sections". Its more 70's New York than 42' Stalingrade.

Noted!

But this won't be the case. Plus HKAs still have the ability to considerably alter their speed and they have demonstrated, in the canyon run, that they're very agile.

The most impressive thing in the canyon run was the barrel roll thing it did to detach itself from the harvester thing. The actual run itself was quite gentle, likely not much more difficult than the Trench Run on the Death Star.

Save for the linear path along the battle station's surface and the fact that it weren't LAATs which did the run but smaller and faster fighters? :)
Try again?

Certainly does not prove the HKA could zig-zag at high speed through the congested sprawl of a metropolis.

Certainly does.
If it can do it in a canyon, unless the congestion you think of makes for narrower avenues, the HKAs will do very fine.
Besides, with compact avenues, your tactic of placing AT-TEs higher will prove even more futile, as the gain in sight will be most limited in fact.

Besides, the HKAs in TS had rear belly guns, suggesting at least a capacity to aim at targets on the ground behind them.

Suggesting a possibility without any evidence as to their effectiveness.

We can infer a firepower at least on part with that of an infantry gun, even if the gun was bigger than any plasma carbine carried by a T-800.
It's not really essential either anyway.

And considering its cruising speed and the distance it put between the conveyor and itself (we see the HKA flying much closer to the transport ship moments before), it seems quite clear that the HKA had spotted them, or eventually sacrificed itself to soak enemy fire.

Or perhaps it altered its speed for completely unrelated reasons, perhaps because of "engine trouble" as you suggested, in any event speculation unattached to evidence is not going to get us anywhere.

OK, I will consider that its passive rear scanning is not stellar.
In fact, in TS, it appears that unless they had a reason to believe otherwise (or a routine telling them to), HKs would generally be worried about a very nearby area of activity.
Thing is, they're more like a wasp nest. Because once you kick it, it's all buzzing around like mad: while the first HKA in TS seemed to just be content on flying casually, closing the march to let the convoy pass through a narrower section of the canyon, the other one was jsut plain vicious and violent.

That said, things tend to be a bit blurred when you consider that a large part of what happened was actually planned by Skynet all along.

A LAAT in AOTC was taken down by a bolt which, as we've seen, can't even blow up the tip of a small sand dune, nor damage the mundane rocky surface of a cliff, even after several hits here and there.

Okay? I have at no point denied or argued a HKA couldn't shoot down a LAAT.

I proved that you needed much less than a pair of AA-missiles or some rocket launcher to get a LAAT down.
You clearly were under the assumption that the firepower needed to take down a LAAT was similar to what took care of HKs:

Besides, the kind of pitiful firepower that can take down a LAAT is not reassuring either.

Neither is the HKA, as well as being taken down by a pair of AA-missiles we can observe one being taken down by a shoulder fired missile in the Terminator 2 Future War scene as well as their general use in a combat situation.

This is not the case. A LAAT is definitely reported as going to down to a considerably lesser level of firepower than what is seen in the T series.

On the other hand, the example you pick against the HKA is about an aircraft being taken down by a flying bomb that could easily be in the low megajoule blast range, with perhaps a perforing head (considering the future time).

The T2 example? There is no reason to assume its anything more than what it looks like, a stinger type system, and the HKA is not a particuarly armored or durable aircraft.

It still fires a missiles that uses a warhead that "is a 3 kg penetrating hit-to-kill warhead type with an impact fuze and a self-destruct timer."
Or about 12.5 MJ of energy delivered by a penetrative warhead.

Or the less powerful hand grenades, which could at least gouge a decent hole in a mere sand dune:

30 g TNT equivalent -> 130 KJ for a large hand grenade.
Examples of concussion grenades: 200 g and 228.6 g of TNT.
Anti-tank hand grenade example RKG-3: "Filling: TNT/RDX with a steel lined shaped charge with 220 mm penetration of RHA. ; Filling weight: 0.567 kg."

Stuff spat by the Geonosian fighters barely nears the hand grenade yield. At best we could say that they shoot anti-armour energy bullets. And that those silly bullets, for some reason, diffuse without a bang.

That, versus some whateverium bolt that can't even decently scrap natural and inert landscape elements.

That's hollywood for you. Now grant you we've seen smaller blasters do better but if you want a very strict, literial analysis that's fine. For both franchises.

The excuse doesn't even work as Hollywood is fond of exaggerated explosions and the whole scene was artificial, CGI'ed.
LAATs went down to shitty firepower, and they're just good to tank the even shittier firepower from battle droids's blasters, that's all.
If the Geonosian fighters fired magic penetrators, the bolt would have come out of the tip of the sand dune. It's a damning case because it neither blows up magnificently, nor comes out if it had some perforation/drilling property.
No, it's just pure suck. It's not isolated either because ALL the impacts demonstrated the same tame firepower. That's more than enough.

In the same TS, a HKA took the impact of a magnet heavy ball and the moto-terminator glued to it, straight to its left turbine and didn't visibly suffer from this.

Refresh my memory, I'd like a clip of the scene in question so that we may attempt to determine relative speed and total kinetic energy.

Can't find a clip. It's when Marcus, Reese and the kid are fleeing in the truck, chased by motobots. They arrive at a bridge and a HKA hovers above them before facing them and blasting something in front of the truck.
Marcus slams the brakes and basically the moto which was still stuck to the magnet ball violently hits a car wreck which sends it into the air.
You get an impact at several meters per second, with an explosion that largely vaporizes the moto.

LAATs couldn't even avoid being shot down in AOTC while having like a whole open vista to wizz over, only facing a legion of droids on the ground, well known for their shitty aim.

Well obviously I would like clips and timestamps of particular LAATs hit so we better ascertain what is occuring but from what I recall the LAATs were performing strafing runs against fields of battledroids rather than whizzing all about over open vistas.

No clip found.
Just run the movie and find those moments when the LAATs leave the arena, and another sequence a bit later on.
They're flying in groups towards and above the large open areas.

How are they going to fare better with limited mobility and against machines with superior aim?

I would like evidence of "superior aim" By what are you basing this?

Maybe by the fact that CIS-droid aim in Star Wars is a very, very bad joke?
You just have to watch ROTS to see droids and clones standing in the open and separated sometimes by even less than ten meters and missing.
Perhaps everyone in SW is a hero?
Yes, autofire tends to dramatically lower accuracy, but there are limits to that. Especially since in SW weapons actually fire on semi auto nearly all the time.
In T1 and T2 it's full auto with plasma rifles. And we don't find that collection of embarrassing impotent brawls.

And that's not at odds with T2. Arhnuld neeeded to take a bath in the entire pool to be destroyed, and even totally engulfed, was obviously still functionnal.

First his CPU fuctioning for a few seconds after submerging at some level is quite far away from being completely undamaged after being doused as the TS T-800 was.

The amount of molten metal was significantly inferior, and therefore so was the cumulative heat. That easily explains the difference. In T2 the molten metal was overloading, everywhere and never cooling fast enough either, never exposed to air that much save for the pool's surface.
Besides, it is impossible to gauge the final level of damage on the T-800 in TS.
In fact, nothing proves that the exoskeleton in T2 was damaged before the more sensitive parts inside (which would have been "cooked" inside the armour conducting the heat).
What I mean is that the exoskeleton acts as armour, and a constant exposure and therefore rise of the internal temperature could easily damage the electronic components before damaging the armour through heat.
In order to obtain a constant deposit of energy, you need a constant source, which happens to take the form of a molten metal bath in T2, where said metal doesn't cool down.
You also have to take into account the pressure of the fluid metal on the damaged section. That pressure would nowhere be as massive in TS, with metal flowing over the surface of the exoskeleton for the most part.
The neck also is a sensitive part, and removing the head destroys a T-800. That would obviously be one of the parts to go first when dousing an entire robot in a pool of molten metal.

In the end, the clones have no way to apply a constant stream of heat nor a similar pressure at the same time, and the blasting ability of their weapons is most limited.

Second the issue wasn't so much to destroy as in render inoperative the Terminator but erase all trace of his advanced technology.

That part is irrelevant I'm afraid. What I looked at were signs of the terminator stopping to function after being sunk inside the pool of molten metal.
The reason why this was done don't matter.

Conversely the future scene shows Skynet fighting, and supposedly ultimatly losing too, humans wielding energy weapons not radically different in effect than blasters. And indeed may be in the 40 watt range if you trust what the Terminator said in T1. Taken togather I don't see issue with blasters, after multiple shots, taking down Terminators. Then taking some more to ensure they stay down.

Well, I don't remember the movie well, but aren't you extrapolating a bit?
Unless it's precisely pointed out, perhaps?
The glimpses of future in the movies never left me with the impression that the humans were anywhere winning.
In fact they never suggested to me any decisive move on either side.

As for the 40W figure, the plasma rifle is supposed to be a light bulb?
Obviously that doesn't fit with any of the observed impacts.

But if you want to take it literally, is it a recharge rate, because it cannot be a firepower one...
Is the figure given really related to firepower or something else?

Not to say that T-800s have no reason to limit themselves to the streets. They can enter buildings too. They were largely designed for that in fact.

Never assumed they wouldn't. This is a city fight, I assumed they'd take and fortify buildings as the situation dictated. However it should be noted Clones, via their grappling gear, can go up the side while a Terminator would be forced to use the stairs/elevators ect creating chokepoints/places to ambush and set explosives.

Yes. How many explosives do clones carry? And what kind of explosive is necessary to take down T-800s?

On the contrary, there is much gain in doing that.Their amount of firepower gives the LAATs, if they can achieve anything close to an alpha strike, the capacity to dramatically tilt the forces in favour of the GAR.
I'm surprised that you can't see the obvious advantages in that.

Well one this is less a plan than a mad gamble and depends entirely on the enemy doing exactly what you want. Two T-800s are rugged and fairly hardy fighting machines and even a near AOE blast is more likely to "stun" them or mildly inconvience them than kill them. Simply put you are not going to kill huge numbers in a series of uncoordinated, hectic and sloppy missile spams. Third, as already mentioned, it leaves the HK-As free to run air missions which are likely to be more detrimental to the Clones in the long run.

There are more than enough missiles per LAATs to engage HKAs if they do it soon enough and use surprise.
That is basically the only option I'm kind to leave them.
The trouble is that they don't seem to think in such ways.
They'll do like you and think too much of the LAAT as a trooper carrier first with weapons in second.

Your deployment and mobility tactics are useless against machines which can tank the clones' firepower and have greater aim than both battle droids and clone troopers combined.

At issue is I disagree the T-800s can tank their fire to the extent you believe and I'm far from certain the combat T-800s have displayed that much greater aim. Check the future war video again, we see a lot of shooting from both sides but few if any hits.

What matters for this point is what takes down a T-800 and how the same firepower acts on humans.

Movement is useful when it allows you to use superior firepower for a decisive strike, although risky, or take down enemies when your standard weapons allow you to.

Actually movement is useful period. It allows, for instance, the concetration of force against your enemy which is even more vital if your individually weaker.

So what are you saying? That clones will hop in and out of LAATs repeatedly to engage T-800s in fewer numbers?
We've seen LAATs used to deploy troops, but we haven't seen them repeatedly do this. It's possible, but this presupposes that they'll stumble upon conveniently divised packs of robots.
It also assumes a capacity to fly unhampered or even unspotted, and obviously also requires spotting robots first without being spotted.

Clones have neither.
We've seen some of them with repeated guns and very rarely, rocket launchers, but that's just... for merchandising I guess.

I don't know. That rocket launcher might be comparable to the pipe bombs Reese used to take down the T-800 in T1. Okay it was alive still but its combat ability was reduced.

Ok so we basically know that 99.99% of their firepower will be near useless.
The very low occurence of heavy repeaters (use?) and rocket launchers clearly support my percentage figure.
Heck, based on movies alone the clones they have rifles and long carbines, nothing else.
Clone Wars may be a lower level of canon, but it's so asinine in its rendition that it can only be used to get an overall idea of certain topics, not specific ones.

Of what?

"whales with chicken wings" for starters. I feel I was quite clear in what I was requesting.

Then you just have to watch the SW movies. Have you seen anything spectacular about LAATs?
The best we get is the more or less linear run and shooting against some CIS ships (aim for right above the fuel cells).
Where do we see LAATs with an ability for a barrel roll or make a loop, or even engage a chase against agile aircrafts ?
The best I've seen on the LAATs' part is some interesting braking ability, first during the first barrage of fire, secondly when they deploy more troops and Jedi.

their guns are quite ill suited to aim in a predatory way if they ever had to chase a target.

The LAAT's forward arc looks quite well armed to me. What exactly is preventing "predatory" aiming specificly?

The fact that in AOTC, they didn't use them when they could have against anything else than a rather relatively easy to hit target on the ground.

Where does leveling as much of the enemy forces as possible with the GAR's greatest forms of firepower somehow likeable to missing the point?

I did not claim you missed the point persay but that you were focusing on one aspect to the extent of the others. Namely because HKAs are faster than LAATs you've assumed they will totally own them in combat. Ergo the need to expend the LAATs in a frantic "alpha strike".

Conversely I posulate in an urban enviroment the HKA's speed is meaningless and would end up no better than a LAAT.

Depends on what they'll be doing. A chase would give the HKA the edge. And TS HKAs are also agile enough to outmaneuver LAATs. Now, you seem to restrict Skynet's forces to feats demonstrated in T1 and T2, but we don't see much from those movies as far as combat ability goes. Mostly mopup-style operations.

Skynet's forces are superior in way too many departements

Certainly the easy favorite to win but its strengths are hampered and partially mitigated by its own weakness. For starters a grasp of tactical acumen equal if not worse than the Clonetroopers, seeming to employ its forces in close bunched "packets", and a hindered tactical/strategic movement limited to the foot speed of the Terminators.

Do terminators need to run?

As for marching in packs, that is a behaviour demonstrated when they had numbers and not much competition against them, no?
Moves of large squads is also totally WWI-WWII, even post WWII in many cases. We're in the domain of SW tactics.
At least they don't display the idiocy of clones at Geonosis (running at the enemy on open plains while said enemy has serious firepower and quantities of troops... which it couldn't put to good use either) or engaging the enemy in close quarters when said enemy can shoot down any of your troopers in one shot from the most basic blaster rifle, that's laughable.

The GAR needs to level the field.

Greater tactical/strategic mobility would be a way to level the field.

Constanly moving in support transportation needs much greater organization and constantly puts the LAATs at risk, literally wasting their firepower.
Clones are largely useless. Their firepower simply sucks, their aim ain't stellar either.

They have quite a shit ton of them btw. A mere glance at AOTC when one leaves the arena already suggests 14 missiles per LAAT, and that's not counting the fact that the feeding mechanism goes deeper into the craft. Plenty to spare against the HKAs as well. We know that the LAATs can use the missiles against small aircrafts, such as Dooku's swoop bike.

Again I doubt the effectiveness of such a bombing not the LAATs ability to deliver it.

Why the doubt?
Those missiles have enough firepower to destroy the heavy units, and the LAATs have plenty of weapons to engage infantry on straffing runs. Plus more missiles to disable groups of terminators, and eventually directly blow one or two of them on each impact.

[sonofccn]

The idea of nesting AT-TEs isn't totally without merits, but the idea of damaging buildings to do so is most unwise, especially as the amount of explosives needed to do that, considering the size of the walkers, is impressive, as much as the fact that they can't control the blast precisely.

Its hardly a perfect or flawless idea I agree but it is possible provided the building doesn't collasp of course. And you did question what the Walkers could do climbing buildings.

And, as hinted at a few lines above, how is that going to help them mask their presence?
The noise, smoke and rubble, you bet Skynet's bots won't miss that.

For refrence concealment was in refrence to air borne HK-As but in any event any noise will most likely be too attenuated and reflected off the city-scape to aid in triangulation, the smoke should dissipate fairly clearly and if they can see the resulting rubble its likely too late.

Considering that nothing is known about the topology of said city, what you're essentially doing is forcing your walkers into a fixed positions with a limited arc of fire (the buildings will obviously preclude walkers from moving around).

Not as much as you may assume. Presuming the building is somehow solid enough to withstand it they could scale up or around it like metallic spiders giving them quite a freedom of movement.

It also forces them into a much more passive tactic, and easier to take down by HKAs.

Not particularly. HK-As, based upon the observed performance in the canyon scene, would have to come in close to engage the position,likely switching to hover mode, and would have to shoot out/through the "shell" of the building itself.

Not only would it risk its own destruction from a lucky shot by the AT-TE, any nearby LAAT or perhaps rocket launched by a Clonetrooper but every HK-A which is spent searching for these Walkers is one less to provide air support to the Terminators or circling high above being "eyes in the sky".

Besides, depending on the distance between both forces and the size of the city they start in, the time it would take for AT-TEs to go up there would expose them uselessly if HKAs were to arrive too soon.

Well there is risk in War plain and simple but rushing off and scattering to "scout" without the support of the rest of its forces could prove dangerous unless they stay high above the city. Through of course its an open question what they could observe at that height, IIRC every example of the HK-A was at extreme low altitude.

That swings both ways. Or are Skynet's forces, possessing all knowledge about contemporary warfare, supposed to ignore the idea that troops could be firing from buildings?
If they're looking for troops, including sentinels and small units capable of firing rocket launchers, AT-TEs will hardly be invisible.

Invisible? No, but I do not expect or demand that it does. Instead I merely expect to raise the difficulty of shooting the AT-TE while lowering the difficulty of shooting the Terminators.

Connor were barely hiding, and their heat signatures at night would have been rather obvious. But the machine was attracted to the explosion and the heat from the burning carcass.

Are we sure it was the heat rather than the light of a burning carcass? Because if a normal human can hide from them at night that really sounds like crummy detection systems.

As for the legions of machines walking in groups, lanes and napoleonian formations, it appears that this happened when they largely were in control of the area and that there weren't many places to hide for the Resistance anyway.

They certainly were not "in control" during the future War scene and, traditionally, you disperse your forces to prevent disproporante causualties not on account or not that your enemy has "places to hide".

When infantry has to move on and there's basically nothing else but ruins and open areas, marching in more or less tight formations is what machines will do.
Where clones are better is that they run.

They are also free-thinking individuals who will attempt to "adapt" and solve issues on the battlefield rather than simply blundgeon on over and over like drones. As the Umbara arc demostrated effectively.

And Coruscant has some very flat areas btw.

I'm sure it does. But it also has built up, congested areas and which do you think your enemies would prefer?

Other places like Christophsis or some other super cities from SW's EU don't necessarily involve worlds with cramped districts and multi-km tall towers.

Christophsis is certainly roomier through if one had to run air support to within each tower cluster you'd come back to the risk of collision.

Save for the linear path along the battle station's surface and the fact that it weren't LAATs which did the run but smaller and faster fighters? :)
Try again?

Except I at no time implied or suggested LAATs were used during the Trench Run nor was attempting a comparison between LAATs agility and the HK-As but rather the agility, or lack thereof, displayed in the canyon example itself. Needlessly to say flying in a straight line between two "walls" may require a steady hand on the stick but it is not a display of agility.

Certainly does.
If it can do it in a canyon, unless the congestion you think of makes for narrower avenues, the HKAs will do very fine.

It is less the issue of wingtip clearence than the need to make sudden alterations to your trajectory. For examples if we assume the A-10s in the canyon run were pushing thier maximum speed and as consequence a HK-A could match it then it would traverse the equivilent of the breadth of New York city, 13.4 miles, every 1.8 minutes. Attempting that through, at ground level, a congested urban sprawl will require frantic and quite specific course correction.

Now if you have an example of a HK-A going full throttle and turning on a dime through city streets I'll gladly alter my opinion but as it is, with the evidence presented so far, I'm just not seeing it.

We can infer a firepower at least on part with that of an infantry gun, even if the gun was bigger than any plasma carbine carried by a T-800.

I was less concerned with overall firepower as I was with its general usefulness.

Thing is, they're more like a wasp nest. Because once you kick it, it's all buzzing around like mad: while the first HKA in TS seemed to just be content on flying casually, closing the march to let the convoy pass through a narrower section of the canyon, the other one was jsut plain vicious and violent.

The first appeared to be flying escort, presumbly as a precaution of the air attack which was carried out, with the second being launched in defense of the attacked harvester. I'm not sure it was particularly more "vicious" or more energetic in its duties than the previous one.

That said, things tend to be a bit blurred when you consider that a large part of what happened was actually planned by Skynet all along.

Its openly debatable how much of what occured was planned and how much was simply dumb luck.

I proved that you needed much less than a pair of AA-missiles or some rocket launcher to get a LAAT downYou clearly were under the assumption that the firepower needed to take down a LAAT was similar to what took care of HKs:

I was and am under the assumption both vehicles can equally destroy each other, which still appears to be the case, and therefore neither have a particular advantage in that regard. You conversely, by bringing it up, clearly felt the HK-A held the advantage. So I responded and corrected you.

This is not the case. A LAAT is definitely reported as going to down to a considerably lesser level of firepower than what is seen in the T series.

Actually, reviewing the video footage, that may not be as cut and dry as you suggested.

Here @ 3:58 we observe what is either a hit or a close flak burst which failed to destroy the LAAT in question, achieving nothing but to knock Padme out, while the fatal damage @ 5:07 appears to originate in the LAATs engine reminiscent of the Tie Fighter/X-Wing display in A New Hope. Its possible the kill was something of a "lucky" shot.

Of course if I missed any other LAATs being shot down I would feel enlightened to have you point them out.

The excuse doesn't even work as Hollywood is fond of exaggerated explosions and the whole scene was artificial, CGI'ed.

Actually Hollywood is fond of cinematic gasoline explosions rather than exaggerated or acurate explosions. Further my point was more its a movie, a work of fiction, colluated and cobbled for what looks good for that particular scene rather than inherent logic or consistency.

LAATs went down to shitty firepower, and they're just good to tank the even shittier firepower from battle droids's blasters, that's all.
If the Geonosian fighters fired magic penetrators, the bolt would have come out of the tip of the sand dune. It's a damning case because it neither blows up magnificently, nor comes out if it had some perforation/drilling property.

The Geonosian fighters are far from impressive through I can't help but feel your offering derogatory, and subjective, opinion in the steed of impartial evidence.

No, it's just pure suck. It's not isolated either because ALL the impacts demonstrated the same tame firepower. That's more than enough.

I would disagree. The Geonosian bolts are quite peculiar. Not only do they seem to explode with a far greater frequency than any other laser cannon I can recall but when they do they output greater energy then when they just hit a sand dune and "wink out". Then there is the issue of how they interacted with the LAAT itself...far from freeing us to breeze over the issue a strict analysis forces us to be methodical.

No clip found.
Just run the movie and find those moments when the LAATs leave the arena, and another sequence a bit later on.

Here, which covers the desired time period I believe, I only spotted one LAAT which was clearly destroyed, @ 13:48 its struck "head on" by a large red bolt. The previous scene established the LAAT and its "squadron mates" evading similar bolts through we at no point see the firer.

As for the cause said LAATs did appear to be on run for ground attack/insertion, Anakin's targets the "fuel pods" of some structure or ship for instance, and there are a lot of droids with unobstructed fields of fire into the skies.

Now I could quite possibly have missed some LAATs exploding in the background, and I would be most apreciative to have you point out where if so, but losing a single confirmed "chopper" during an extremely hostile LZ doesn't strike me as too terrible.

Maybe by the fact that CIS-droid aim in Star Wars is a very, very bad joke?
You just have to watch ROTS to see droids and clones standing in the open and separated sometimes by even less than ten meters and missing.

Then it should be quite easy to demostrate a HK-T has superior aim.

Yes, autofire tends to dramatically lower accuracy, but there are limits to that. Especially since in SW weapons actually fire on semi auto nearly all the time.

This seems a reversal of your argument from the last time we've argued accuracy:

Seconds later, a group of SBDs fire from roughly 25~30 meters away and the three clones can't even hit one with two auto rifles firing on auto and the gatling. That while there's a total lack of flashes and explosions, in play daylight.
Then comes the infamous scene I've been talking about, featuring the same three clones and SBDs, which despite the snail-like pace, manage to be standing like 40 meters behind the troopers... a distance that they'll close so fast apparently that the last of the three trooper has barely jumped off the boulder that the SDBs are already on the edge of the same boulder.
Now I really want to know why in the world I should pay this kind of retarded scenography any attention?
In comparison, the vast majority of the action in ANH takes place with heroes, rebels and stormies using their weapon on semi-auto only and achieving higher ratios of hit vs miss

Where you argued struggling to hit with semi-auto was better than struggling to hit with full-auto.

Further I question if the Terminators are shooting any faster, or hitting any more accuratly, than the Clones and Droids in this clip of the battle of Christophsis.

In T1 and T2 it's full auto with plasma rifles. And we don't find that collection of embarrassing impotent brawls.

"Embarrassing impotent brawls" is a matter of opinion and perspective. Quickly cutting between two opposing forces is far more dynamic cinematography but the actual battlefield doesn't appear much larger than that battle of Christophsis and the Resistence's battleplan seems eerily similar to the Clones lets get up and charge the Droid army.

Besides, it is impossible to gauge the final level of damage on the T-800 in TS.

There was no apparent damage I guess to be more accurate to say.

In fact, nothing proves that the exoskeleton in T2 was damaged before the more sensitive parts inside (which would have been "cooked" inside the armour conducting the heat).

And nothing proves it wasn't. In the end we have two different events with two different results, they do not support each other. At best they do not disprove each other.

You also have to take into account the pressure of the fluid metal on the damaged section. That pressure would nowhere be as massive in TS, with metal flowing over the surface of the exoskeleton for the most part.

Forgive me but unless I'm missing something the pressure in the T2 scene is minimal and irrevelent, damaged sections or not, compared to the fluid's moltent tempature.

The neck also is a sensitive part, and removing the head destroys a T-800. That would obviously be one of the parts to go first when dousing an entire robot in a pool of molten metal

Depends on your definition of "destroys" is. In T3 the T-850's head maintains a faded blink in its eyes for some time after the detonation of its fuel cell, and destruction of its body, while similarly in T2 the T-800 had lost primary power and was "dead" yet its CPU was still operative enough to reroute power to an auxillery source. So I would argue the "CPU death" we observe at the film's end,mere seconds after submergion, is the Terminator's processing unit/system being rendered inoperative due to the extreme tempatures.

In the end, the clones have no way to apply a constant stream of heat nor a similar pressure at the same time, and the blasting ability of their weapons is most limited.

In the end its far from clear they'd need to in order to kill a Terminator in the "it stops trying to kill me" sense rather than "obliterate every trace of its existence" sense.

Not only are you attempting to create a baseline on a prototype being produced chronologically early with out of whack endurance, as observed here, sorry for the Russian, taking a full burst of gunfire with no damage to its organic sheath and then two grenades to the face/chest without apparent damage to the internal "skeleton", but we also have a bit of deductive reasoning. If Terminators, and presumbly Skynet robots in general, were generally "immune" to energy weapons and concetrated applications of heat why then would the Resiestence switch to those instead of the conventional slug throwers we observed them carrying in TS?

That part is irrelevant I'm afraid.

It is relevent because we do not get to observe the Terminator's condition once its submerges and only have one other, loose, benchmark concerning its fate. That its CPU, operating at an unknown level, ceases to function a few seconds after it is submerged. Therefore it is fairly important, in order to extropolate what likely occured "off screen", to consider the context. Which is that the Terminator would be utterly dissolved before anyone could salvage him. Not merely rendered inert, as the first Terminator was, but totally erased from existence. That the "molten bath" was extreme overkill.

Well, I don't remember the movie well, but aren't you extrapolating a bit?
Unless it's precisely pointed out, perhaps?

Dr. Silberman: Why this elaborate scheme with the Terminator?
Kyle Reese: It had no choice. Their defense grid was smashed. We'd won. Taking out Connor then would make no difference. Skynet had to wipe out his entire existence!

Now Reese was a grunt, and mistaken about the time machine being smashed after his depature, but its fair to assume he has a rough idea on how the War was progressing.

The glimpses of future in the movies never left me with the impression that the humans were anywhere winning.
In fact they never suggested to me any decisive move on either side.

Even if its a stalemate that would still show that Skynet and its armies can't route the Resistence which employs energy based weapons. Weapons whose visual operation is quite similar to blasters.

As for the 40W figure, the plasma rifle is supposed to be a light bulb?
Obviously that doesn't fit with any of the observed impacts.

Show me an impact from a hand held gun which requires more than 40W.

But if you want to take it literally, is it a recharge rate, because it cannot be a firepower one...
Is the figure given really related to firepower or something else?

First three seconds of this clip:

Or the full scene:

Terminator: The 12-gauge auto-loader.
Clerk: That's Italian. You can go pump or auto.
Terminator: The .45 long slide, with laser sighting.
Clerk: These are brand new - we just got them in. That's a good gun. Just touch the trigger, the beam comes on and you put the red dot where you want the bullet to go. You can't miss. Anything else?
Terminator: Phased plasma rifle in the 40-watt range.
Clerk: Hey, just what you see pal.
Terminator: The Uzi nine millimeter.
Clerk: You know your weapons, buddy. Any one of these is ideal for home defense. So uh, which will it be?
Terminator: All.
Clerk: I may close early today. There's a 15 day wait on the hand guns but the rifles you can take right now, and you have to fill these out too.
[Terminator is loading slugs into the shotgun]
Clerk: You can't do that.
Terminator: Wrong. [Shoots Clerk]

There is no pressing reason the plasma rifle would be recharged as opposed to simply switching out power cells so its doubtful the wattage would refer to that.

How many explosives do clones carry?

Unknown. Off hand it appears goverened by role of drama.

And what kind of explosive is necessary to take down T-800s?

Highly dependent on application.

There are more than enough missiles per LAATs to engage HKAs if they do it soon enough and use surprise.

If LAATs are focusing on bombing T-800s they are not engaging HK-As. If they are focusing on HK-As they are not engaging T-800s. Barring a most spectatcular amount of luck and finding, in sufficent strenght and coordination to act, them all on the ground and bunched togather its suicide. The Clones might as well blow their own brains out and save the Terminators the trouble.

What matters for this point is what takes down a T-800 and how the same firepower acts on humans.

No, your statement made two claims. That the T-800 can "tank the clones' firepower" and have "greater aim than both battle droids and clone troopers combined". We disagree to the extent of the former and totaly on the latter. That the T-800 can tank more firepower than a human has never been doubted or questioned.

So what are you saying? That clones will hop in and out of LAATs repeatedly to engage T-800s in fewer numbers?

No, I'm saying there is nothing mechanically preventing the Clones from doing so should they chose to. As I've previously elaborated the Clones use their LAATs more like dragoons than as air mobile cavalry.

It's possible, but this presupposes that they'll stumble upon conveniently divised packs of robots.

T-800s would presumbly be trying to "hunt down" the Clones, the very topography of the city and the need to check the buildings does require some division of units.

It also assumes a capacity to fly unhampered or even unspotted, and obviously also requires spotting robots first without being spotted.

Considering the limited numbers and the expanse of the enviroment those are not grevious assumptions in and of themselves.

Ok so we basically know that 99.99% of their firepower will be near useless.

That, I feel, is an unwarrented assumption. It will certaintly be less effective than against a "Clanker" but other than that it would require "a lot" would be the only conclusion I would feel safe to draw. Hell here shows us the T-800's older, uglier brother the T-600 whose cranium can be perforated, at least, by a point blank burst from what appears to be a M-60.

The very low occurence of heavy repeaters (use?) and rocket launchers clearly support my percentage figure.

And I would gladly like to look over your analysis to see how you reached that percentage figure.

Heck, based on movies alone the clones they have rifles and long carbines, nothing else.

Regretabbly the Clone Wars takes up only a tiny fraction of the two movies which bracket it. Hence why you kind of have to delve into the Clone Wars.

Then you just have to watch the SW movies. Have you seen anything spectacular about LAATs?

I did not claim the LAAT flying was "spectacular". You stated they flew like " whales with chicken wings" and I requested evidence to support this assertion.

Now, reviewing the AOTC clips, I would say the LAATs, for ground attack aircraft, appear quite manuverable and are not simply flying bricks, or whales, even if they not particularly nimble compared to fighters. Indeed they could have easily flown the canyon run which, you have argued, is a sign of excellent agility.

The fact that in AOTC, they didn't use them when they could have against anything else than a rather relatively easy to hit target on the ground.

Well they are ground attack crafts, not air superority fighters, for starters. Two there was virtually no air to fight against save a pair of Genosian fighters which the LAAT was ignoring and Dooku whom is more manuverable, and endowed with force powers, than a LAAT. Third the reasoning, or lack thereof, in the Clone pilot doesn't make the "guns are quite ill suited to aim in a predatory way" as you claimed.

And TS HKAs are also agile enough to outmaneuver LAATs.

Reviewing data I'm far from sure of that. The HK-A doesn't do anything in terms of changing its vector that's impressive. At least from what has been posted so far.

Now, you seem to restrict Skynet's forces to feats demonstrated in T1 and T2

Have I, at any point, objected to the canyon run or argued it wasn't canon? No. I did specify that we were dealing with T1 and T2 Terminators, which you agreed to without a problem, but that is completely different from declaring the entire movie is uncanon. Conversely you seem inclined to restrict to feats demonstrated in TS.

Mostly mopup-style operations

Well zoom and boom strafing tactics would certainly have been useful in the battle we see, which we have no indication is a mop up or is a Skynet victory I might add, and suggests the Terminators may not even think along those lines.

Do terminators need to run?

I don't know.

As for marching in packs, that is a behaviour demonstrated when they had numbers and not much competition against them, no?

They were also observed to only doing it on planet Earth as well but that doesn't mean if they were transported to another planet they'd suddenly develop dispersal tactics.

Moves of large squads is also totally WWI-WWII, even post WWII in many cases. We're in the domain of SW tactics.

We are speaking of far more than a squad through. As well its questionable if the T-800s are aware of or care about the greater tactical situation or instead are merely moving in the same general direction shooting at anything which moves. While Clonetroopers, led by Anakin, are capable of something above mere mass rushes. That flanking manuver he and his squad employed at the battle of christophsis may be childish to our eyes but where is the example of Skynet doing anything approaching even that?

At least they don't display the idiocy of clones at Geonosis (running at the enemy on open plains while said enemy has serious firepower and quantities of troops... which it couldn't put to good use either)

I fail to see how walking towards an enemy who has serious firepower and quantities of troops is any smarter on the Terminators part.

Constanly moving in support transportation needs much greater organization and constantly puts the LAATs at risk, literally wasting their firepower.

Considering your entire "plan" was to try a deluge of missiles and pray for the best I don't think you have ground to get on me for wasting firepower. Second, as I've stated, moving to where your needed magnifies/multiplies your offensive power. Any risk is vastly more acceptable than your forlorne hope.

Clones are largely useless. Their firepower simply sucks, their aim ain't stellar either.

Their firepower is, based on strict analysis of cinema footage, no different than the human soldiers who tied Skynet's panties in such a knot he started sending back killbots back in time to try and assinsate their leader. Tactically speaking they are equal if not superior to the Skynet's prowess so they are far from useless.

Why the doubt?
Those missiles have enough firepower to destroy the heavy units, and the LAATs have plenty of weapons to engage infantry on straffing runs

The observed durability of the T-800s, their numbers as well attending HK-As. As well as this being a frantic push on the Clones part and unlikely to be effectively coordinated.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Let's try to summarize things.


AT-TEs on buildings

I think it's obvious that smoke won't magically dissipate when weapons, largely thermal in nature as it all happens with SW, will be blasting at buildings.
In fact I don't see the need in nesting the walkers at all. Just sticking on walls will be plain enough, although not exactly super comy for the crews.
What they want to do with that trick is be as stealthy as possible, certainly not go blasting holes. Noise? HKA might have a long range sound detection system as found on the motos.
Not guaranteed but possible. If so, they might either fly to the source slowly, or fast. If they do it fast, they'll arrive even before the AT-TEs have reached the point, before the smoke has dissipated.
If they come slowly, there's still the risk of reaching the buildings before the AT-TEs lodged themselves into the holes they had to create at a long range (very problematic), or most likely done by LAATs with their energy weapons.
Although it would take ages, as I haven't seen much in the department of firepower here.
AT-TEs are horribly slow when climbing. All in all, chances of them reaching their holes before being caught on scans by machines are slim. The holes have to be particularly by the way to be of any use. It just makes the problem greater for the GAR.
It also goes without saying that we haven't seen the GAR rely on any of such methods. Anakin is a smart dude, so we can expect him to exploit the topology as best as possible, but only to the extent of what we've seen him do: stick AT-TEs in unusual places.
So, returning to a mere spiderman tactic, obviously much more discrete, we still have the AT-TEs crawling over the faces of buildings. This provides them a greater sight on the incoming enemies.
This allows them to pepper an area at long range, to destroy both infantry and tanks.
The moment they start firing though, HKAs will be aware of their position and machine overall will know about the trick.
The GAR could hopefully take down groups of machines that way, but not the whole army.


Terminator formations

Future war scenes have not shown legions of infantry walking in packs. It has shown -rather scantly btw- infantry units moving forth in no particular configuration, especially considering the ruins they were walking through.
T3 is the only movie to have featured massive amounts of T-800/850s at once, and there clearly were no signs of much resistance as machines advanced over that terrain (there even was a massive carrier ship in the background).
Some terminators were firing at the distance, but not a single shot was thrown at them. T3 was an utter demonstration of complete flood of an area by machines.
Besides, the machines had largely been fighting humans on feet. We have never seen much of how would Skynet use the full extent of modern warfare if to fight heavy armour and more mobile units.
The idea that the machines will adopt the same kind of formations when advancing through a non-devastated area and tracking anything else than packs of humans largely reduced to guerilla warfare is odd.
If this were true, Skynet would have stood zero chance at winning against human units and vehicles pushed back to post-WWII/non-modern tactics because of a lack of network.
Especially considering that it would have a limited amount of machines to work with.
Flanking an enemy is good if you can shoot it down before it can retaliate.
The question is, have we seen terminators being over tricked by flanking maneuvers?
I don't remember any particular glaring case.


Detection systems

Regarding the HKAs, I forgot that they more than likely use optical detection first like all other machines have been shown using, from probes, sentry-HKs, aquabots to T-800 and T-850s.
Thinking of it, have we ever seen them switching to some other form of detection? Can't remember...
That largely explains the searchlights.
It also explains why the bait worked on the HKA whihc served as a test for the signal. It used visible light and I agree that it was lured by the light.
Odd that machines would limit themselves to that primary mode of tracking.
Even the giant robot that picked humans and threw them into the transport ship was seen firing a red beam of light fractions of seconds before shooting the plasma cannon that perhaps doubled as a laser pointer.


Agility: HKA vs LAAT

The question isn't if the HKA can do impossible maneuvers down some city streets, but if it has the edge over a LAAT.
Proof is that it has the advantage rather clearly, and can from hover mode to chase mode very fast.
In a case of aerial combat, if LAATs can't manage to get a quick lock on the fast HKAs, most likely coming at them first, they'll be outmaneuvered.
HKAs in the future have also always been shown to use three turbines instead of only two, which is ought to provide them with even greater mobility.
LAAT have only shown to be impressive when they already have speed. And that's how far it gets. That is, not much.
Now, can HKAs do barrel rolls under a second? Yes. Why? Because they can rotate their engines for such maneuvers. Which means that this same possibility for angular thrust will also allow them to quickly bank left or right, or anything else you can come with that uses that kind of vectoring.
Have they been shown to be able to complete a loop? Yes as well.
That's about a kind of maneuverability that's superior to a LAAT.


Aerial firepower and resilience on both sides

The only advantage I pointed out is that the LAAT goes down to firepower that is extremely low. It doesn't matter if it was a lucky shot or not, because the simple fact that it could happen is more than enough to know that the ship isn't armoured enough to protect itself from a dramatic hit in a sensible area.
A close flak burst that doesn't do any better than knocking a character off balance at a range of 2 meters is just as ridiculous.
And that "steed of impartial evidence" is not subjective. If you feel my observation is derogatory, perhaps that's because you had put too much stock into the LAAT's resilience?
There's nothing you have opposed to the obvious low display of firepower from the Geonosian fighters and I'm not under the impression that you will provide anything, so my point firmly still stands.
Said point was only that, the disparity between what was known to take down HKAs (missiles thus far), and what was shown to take down LAATs (much lower firepower).
Besides, if we were to consider that any interaction with matter would prevent bolts from flak bursting, then there's no reason to believe one second that the bolts that downed the LAAT ever bursted either, instead of doing the unimpressive little displays of fireworks seen when they, for example, were hitting the rock cliff. We even see one of those bolts hitting a clonetrooper squarely and that simply tips him off the platform! (let's compare that to the bolt that literally vaporizes the woman soldier in T1 if you want)
The LAATs have missiles though and a good number of energy weapons, but I also pointed out that they won't use them in air battles, because of undisputable evidence right from AOTC.
So once without missiles, LAATs won't be able to do a thing.
Thus far, we haven't seen LAATs acquire particularly agile vehicles. The most mobile vehicles they took down were the CIS' droid missile launchers, which didn't look to be particularly armoured either.
But that should still be enough to acquire HKAs when flying at any other pace than the chase one.


Finding the enemy and fight for air control

In the city, for both sides to find each other, Skynet's T-X will rely on the HKAs while Anakin will rely on the LAATs.
If the LAATs find and acquire most of the HKAs for a missile lock, then that's a good thing, they'll take enough of the HKAs down.
If LAATs can't clear ALL HKAs, then they're most likely fucked, as they'll be taken down by the remaining HKAs one by one.


Anakin vs machines

We haven't talked about that at all, surprinsingly.
He may be good at deflecting some bolts, but not only he'll have to deal with a better enemy aim and a higher rate of fire (again, most of the time seen used on full auto), he won't be able to block all shots.
Now, he's quite very skilled and his best chance is to engage machines at close range.
In reality, his best chance is to use his men as a distraction before he goes leaping into terminator packs to cut them with his lightsabre.
But he better be careful and engage only small packs of machines. He won't be able to deal with too many of them at once.
Besides, since we've seen T-800s carry two guns at once, we can infer that they won't hesitate picking up their comrades' weapons for some akimbo fun.
There's not much Anakin will be able to parry there with already two salvos coming from two different vectors. Of course add more guns and the problem becomes rather obvious.
When machines want to be accurate at close range, they've been shown to be. That's the main difference why he could engage droids at close range so easily and why it could very well be totally suicidal against Skynet's forces.


Infantry accuracy

I don't need to prove that droids in SW have plain crappy accuracy. That, straight from the movies.
Now, you demand that I provide evidence that machines in the Terminator movies have better accuracy.
Where do we start from?
First of all, have we ever seen a human come close to a terminator handling a plasma rifle?
We have the terminator in T1 getting inside the outpost and using a heavy plasma rifle on full auto, constantly (so it's bound to heat up and lose efficiency over time btw), and the dude still cleans the tunnel on both sides.
Other than that, it is going to be tough to make any comparison.
The second step, therefore, is to look at how, in general, terminators succeed at using man made lower tech rifles and shotguns for example.
T2 and T3 provide, on the average, good demonstrations. At least anything better than the abyssal aim demonstrated by CIS droids which can't even hit a single man walking up stairs at a low runner's pace straight at them.
Well known scene, the terminator in T2 shooting at knees.
The worst case scenario comes the outdated T-600 and its gatling that has such a wide cone of fire that it could be safely considered totally broken. :)
Besides, you really do have time to waste to go look for a totally different post in another thread, back in 2012. I also jsut said "auto", without bothering to be particularly specific back then because it didn't strike me as important.
It's also from the CGi show, isn't it? Notice that I don't use it much. I pointed that out in this very thread I believe. But just for a quick addendum: be it even semi-auto, CIS droid's aim just plain suck. Of course, as I said, we already have the movies. Superior canon.
You have a particularly strong bad faith when comparing battles scenes in the T movies and in SW ones. There's simply no comparison to be made. You can pick any engagement, all action on Naboo, anything in Geonosis' battle arena or its plains, even Pau City's port or inner roads, or up to inside the Invisible Hand, it all plain sucks.
The odds are totally stacked against the CIS droids. It wouldn't even matter if you were to find one or two good shots, because they'd be completely lost in an ocean of aim-suckage.
Do we have to make a Benny Hill clip of CIS droid aim now to make the point clear?
I'd rather think we don't.


Exoskeleton vs damage (heat, pressure and else)

In the comparison between T2 and T4, you consider that if TS were not to breal continuity, the T-800 should have been damaged to the point of the CPU stopping to function after several seconds:

First his CPU fuctioning for a few seconds after submerging at some level is quite far away from being completely undamaged after being doused as the TS T-800 was.

I had to show then that, as I claimed, the cases were different enough so as not to contradict each other.
I had not claimed they had to support each other, merely that there wasn't a contradiction.
Two events supporting each other would obviously involve the nearly exact same conditions.
In the end, you come to agree with me that these events are different. So why force a contradiction when there's no need for any?
Unless you can precisely show one, I don't see any reason to reject T4 and believe that a T-800 cannot endure heat, and therefore more or less tank clonetrooper's standard fire (assuming they can hit).
You also quickly brush away the importance of fluid metal pressure, despite the fact that aside from the obvious difference of volume, in one case the metal can flow off the sides of the machine, and in the other case has nowhere to go and will obviously apply more pressure onto the machine. LIke, erm, imagine having to cope with already 20 cm of metal, as when the terminator's hand is the only element still visible (and the problem only gets worse beyond that point).
Pressure + heat = more damage than heat alone. It presses against metal that sees its strength disminished because of the application of energy. It presses against the weakest sections, such as those found all around the neck. It completely presses against the eyes... heck, do we even know for sure that when the camera cuts, it's the CPU that really goes off and not just the eyes, which are obviously far more exposed?
Contrary to what you think, why the terminator was thrown into the pool in T2 is irrelevant, especially as I never disputed that much heat and pressure would not destroy the CPU.
Now, the "it stops trying to kill me" state involves destroying enough of the terminator. TS shows that this "enough" is leaps and bounds beyond what SW generally brings to the table.
This is not helped by the fact that in the prequels, blaster firepower is piss poor as well, hardly any more significant than a .45 bullet or anything lesser in fact.
That kind of firepower, a T-800 can reasonnably cope with it before really going down.
If clones want to stand a chance, they'll have to rely on the mechanized units.
T-600s aren't even funny. Nor are the sort of sentries guarding the base's tunnels. Skynet makes advances in its tech very rapidly.
However I don't recall similar assault rifles doing anything really impressive against T-800s. The alloy has gotten quite better.


Why use energy weapons in Terminator then?

In Terminator, if humans have largely switched to energy weapons, it's because they're available. So is their ammo.
Now, the only case of a terminator going down to plasma rifle involves one already downed machine (stuck under rubble in fact) being shot at point blank range.
The trooper feels the need to fire two bursts and we don't even get to see the effects on the exoskeleton.


40 W

I put this apart because I don't even know what you're asking for with your handgun question.
I'll quote it because I'm just totally baffled by it:

Show me an impact from a hand held gun which requires more than 40W.

Are you asking me if handguns deliver more than 40W?

We're obviously dealing with a writing mistake if it was meant to be a reference to firepower.
I'll ignore it. It's silly, you can't kill shit with 40W.


LAATs using their missiles = fuck vs dragoon tactic

If LAATs are focusing on bombing T-800s they are not engaging HK-As. If they are focusing on HK-As they are not engaging T-800s. Barring a most spectatcular amount of luck and finding, in sufficent strenght and coordination to act, them all on the ground and bunched togather its suicide. The Clones might as well blow their own brains out and save the Terminators the trouble.

Well then that seals the deal. If you think it's suicide while it's one the ships' best advantage, and one that doesn't even require the application of a face-climbing tactic never seen in order to merely attain greater sight, the clones should really blow their brains out, indeed.
The thing you miss is that if the LAATs are to fly unspotted, because of the size of the city or else, it also means that they won't be dropping clones anywhere close to the machines.
So, ok, you just moved easy to mow down clones from spot A to spot B. Now what?
Oh yes, nothing. Clones approach machines, try to sneak, they're more mobile but it changes nothing in the end.
If T-800s have to get inside each damned building to find the clones, clones would have to assume the same. In this silly game of cat and mouse, I largely give the advantage to the machines indoors, sorry.
Logically, LAATs pretty much become irrelevant there, btw.
I'm not sure where you get the idea that the missile run was a fire and pray kind of tactic. I'd expect the clones to be smart enough to spot the enemy first and try to take down as many as possible, on focusing on the heavy units first you know? T-800s can wait.
But if you consider this a frantic push and even "unlikely to be effectively coordinated", then they're toasted. You have precisely removed them the only way to even the field against the HKs, especially the HKAs.


Standard equipment

Terminator: one single terminator seen to use a heavy plasma rifle.
Terminator 2: for about ten T-800s, we see one using two plasma rifles.
Terminator 3: for about twenty identifiable terminators, we see one using a heavy plasma rifle.

AOTC & ROTS: racks upon racks of clones using either the short rifles or eventually the longer carbines, which don't seem to present any superior advantage other than some range I guess, and perhaps, for the sake of fairness, a bit more punch. Heavy repeaters and rocket launchers are actually only seen in the CGI show. That is, after seeing legions after legions of clones not using such weapons. So much that it would be quite a miracle to even see only one among those 800 copycat heads.

Any solid reason to believe the clones will carry something better than those rifles and carbines, especially in greater numbers?


Standards of canon

As a whole, it would be nothing more than a mistake to believe that I restricted evidence to Salvation, really.
Now, I'm not remembering when I said I'd limit the evidence to the first two movies. It's possible I typed that, but I can't find it again.
Considering the little amount of data we have, that would be severaly hampering I think.


Conclusion

You deny the GAR the only tactic that will exploit their best strength, under the form of missiles used as fire and forget, perhaps all that in order to enforce some kind of fantasy of a romanticized tactic involving AT-TEs climbing on walls.
I'd gladly give AT-TEs the edge over HKTs any day, but since you do everything possible to expose them uselessly and prevent LAATs from using their weapons before they become hunted while reduced to a transport role, I don't see any reason why the GAR should win here.

[sonofccn]

I think it's obvious that smoke won't magically dissipate when weapons, largely thermal in nature as it all happens with SW, will be blasting at buildings.

There is nothing "magic" about smoke attenuating in open atmosphere. And it isn't like blasters and the like produce copious amounts of the stuff anyway.

Noise? HKA might have a long range sound detection system as found on the motos.

I suppose asking for clarification of "long range sound detection" would be too much?

If so, they might either fly to the source slowly, or fast.

Assuming they have "long range sound detection" and assuming its refined enough for them to trail it back.

AT-TEs are horribly slow when climbing.

Faster than a HK-T at it.

All in all, chances of them reaching their holes before being caught on scans by machines are slim.

Why? The HK-A is, so far, far from impressive as a detector.

It also goes without saying that we haven't seen the GAR rely on any of such methods.

Never said they would, I said they could. We've mainly been discussing feasbility and practicality.

Anakin is a smart dude, so we can expect him to exploit the topology as best as possible, but only to the extent of what we've seen him do: stick AT-TEs in unusual places.

Not to state the bloody obvious but putting AT-Tes in buildings is sticking them in unusual places.

The GAR could hopefully take down groups of machines that way, but not the whole army.

Well that is the thing, no tactic or trick is going to take down the "whole army" and if that is your only criteria of success then...you lost. In War, like life, there are no silver bullets.

Future war scenes have not shown legions of infantry walking in packs.

It shows a sizable number. It isn't just a T-800 or two bumbling along as sentries.

It has shown -rather scantly btw

Well I work with what I have and it still the longest, most coherent pitch battle we have of the Future War. Regretabbly TS decided to focus on a cyborg with a heart instead of setpiece battles.

infantry units moving forth in no particular configuration, especially considering the ruins they were walking through.

The fact they have no "particular configuration" is a bad thing. Ruins or no does not excuse such a performance.

T3 is the only movie to have featured massive amounts of T-800/850s at once, and there clearly were no signs of much resistance as machines advanced over that terrain

There is no sign of a battle honestly and they are still packed shoulder to shoulder and showing the tactical ability of a B1 battledroid.

Some terminators were firing at the distance, but not a single shot was thrown at them

There isn't any evidence there was anyone there to throw it. Simply put the T3 scene is vastly inferior to the T2 scene in terms of gauging combat.

Besides, the machines had largely been fighting humans on feet. We have never seen much of how would Skynet use the full extent of modern warfare if to fight heavy armour and more mobile units.
The idea that the machines will adopt the same kind of formations when advancing through a non-devastated area and tracking anything else than packs of humans largely reduced to guerilla warfare is odd.

Well unless Skynet is a Resistence symapthizer there is no reason for it to deliberate hamper the effectiveness of its forces and employ them in suboptimal manners. And its formations are a bad idea against ragtag militia let alone a professional military, which TS shows formed the core of the Resistence, irregardless.

To put it simply bunching up makes delicious targets for IEDs or mortar strikes or asymmetrical warfare in general.

If this were true, Skynet would have stood zero chance at winning against human units and vehicles pushed back to post-WWII/non-modern tactics because of a lack of network.
Especially considering that it would have a limited amount of machines to work with.

Well one has to debate what there is not what one thinks there should be. So provide evidence of Skynet performing superior tactics or that is what we'll go with.

The question is, have we seen terminators being over tricked by flanking maneuvers?

Due to the sparse examples of large scale battles such a question, which itself would require further clarification before answering, can not be answered in the postive. Extrapolating on the T2 scene would suggest a vulnerabiltity to it.

The question isn't if the HKA can do impossible maneuvers down some city streets, but if it has the edge over a LAAT.

No. I posulated that within the urban area the HK-A would be forced to traverse at a reduced speed, optimally switching to its hover mode, and you argued it was agile enough to manuver without issue. Do you still argue that yes or no?

Proof is that it has the advantage rather clearly

Now, can HKAs do barrel rolls under a second? Yes. Why? Because they can rotate their engines for such maneuvers. Which means that this same possibility for angular thrust will also allow them to quickly bank left or right, or anything else you can come with that uses that kind of vectoring.

So, after all of it, your basing its superior agility not on its performance but an extropolation of what you think it should be able to do. And that this unquantifiable agility should give it an advantage over the observed manuverbility of the LAAT. Wouldn't it just be simplier to give me an example of its manuvering, surely if its so badarse it must have done it sometime in the movie.

The only advantage I pointed out is that the LAAT goes down to firepower that is extremely low

In relation to us discussing it vs the HK-A implying it was relevent.

It doesn't matter if it was a lucky shot or not, because the simple fact that it could happen is more than enough to know that the ship isn't armoured enough to protect itself from a dramatic hit in a sensible area.

The how and why a shot did what it did is important I'm afraid. Or would you consider it accurate dismissing the Death Star because it can be taken out by a pair of proton torpedoes.

A LAAT taken out because its engine was set off in a chain reaction is different than if the LAAT was taken out with a hit directly against its hull armor.

A close flak burst that doesn't do any better than knocking a character off balance at a range of 2 meters is just as ridiculous.

It does however indicate that it is not the weapon in and of itself which is destroying the LAAT.

And that "steed of impartial evidence" is not subjective.

I am, and have been, open to discussing the evidence. Hence why I stress posting of clips and screencaps with time caps so it can be impartially observed. You don't seem to be so much.

If you feel my observation is derogatory, perhaps that's because you had put too much stock into the LAAT's resilience?

No. I find your observations "derogatory" because in leiu of arguments or evidence you offer a paragraph stating X is so made of fail it fails. You talk down on the abilities/person/thing in question but seldom show what you are talking about or demostrate how "your side" is better in the area. You do this even when I make a specific request for evidence.

There's nothing you have opposed to the obvious low display of firepower from the Geonosian fighters and I'm not under the impression that you will provide anything, so my point firmly still stands.
Said point was only that, the disparity between what was known to take down HKAs (missiles thus far), and what was shown to take down LAATs (much lower firepower).

As I have shown it is far from as cut and dry as you state. Or if I stuffed a match into the HK-A fuel tank, just supposing it has a liquied fuel tank and that it would work for the moment, and it blew up would you agree that the match's "firepower" was enough to take down the HK-A?

We even see one of those bolts hitting a clonetrooper squarely and that simply tips him off the platform!

Timestamp? I don't recall a Clonetrooper being struck squarely by one of those beams.

let's compare that to the bolt that literally vaporizes the woman soldier in T1 if you want)

I would love it if you'd post the revelent scene. I definatly don't remember a woman literally vaporizing in T1 but then again that's why I prefer video instead of relying on memory.

The LAATs have missiles though and a good number of energy weapons, but I also pointed out that they won't use them in air battles, because of undisputable evidence right from AOTC

"Undisputable evidence" which I'm still unclear on. Are we talking about Dooku or some other scene?

Thus far, we haven't seen LAATs acquire particularly agile vehicles. The most mobile vehicles they took down were the CIS' droid missile launchers, which didn't look to be particularly armoured either.

Here and here should show LAATs firing on Geonosian fighters.

In the city, for both sides to find each other, Skynet's T-X will rely on the HKAs while Anakin will rely on the LAATs.
If the LAATs find and acquire most of the HKAs for a missile lock, then that's a good thing, they'll take enough of the HKAs down.
If LAATs can't clear ALL HKAs, then they're most likely fucked, as they'll be taken down by the remaining HKAs one by one.

LAATs are, over all, the more versital and useful of the two through. It has been observed better supporting ground forces and it can transport troops quickly. Avoiding direct confrontations but keeping the possibility of ambushes open would serve to create an area of denial and keep the LAATs in use.

He may be good at deflecting some bolts, but not only he'll have to deal with a better enemy aim and a higher rate of fire (again, most of the time seen used on full auto), he won't be able to block all shots.

Again compared to the Christophsis clip if there is any difference in the rate of fire its in favor of the Clones/Droids rather than the Terminators.

I don't need to prove that droids in SW have plain crappy accuracy. That, straight from the movies.

The issue is not that SW has "crappy" accuracy or not but if Terminators have better accuracy and if so by how much.

First of all, have we ever seen a human come close to a terminator handling a plasma rifle?

Depends upon definition of "close". Terminators have been observed to miss humans at ranges comparable with Star Wars ranges ala Christophsis.

We have the terminator in T1 getting inside the outpost and using a heavy plasma rifle on full auto, constantly (so it's bound to heat up and lose efficiency over time btw), and the dude still cleans the tunnel on both sides.

T2 and T3 provide, on the average, good demonstrations. At least anything better than the abyssal aim demonstrated by CIS droids which can't even hit a single man walking up stairs at a low runner's pace straight at them.

Which does beg the question why they did so poorly in the T2 scene. Normally I'd chalk it up to rule of cool and that you can't expect wholesale constistency but I feel that would be in violation of the hardline approach we've decided to take to analysis.

Besides, you really do have time to waste to go look for a totally different post in another thread, back in 2012

Actually that was fairly quick and easy. Finding and evaluating the LAATs in the arena scene took far longer.

I also jsut said "auto", without bothering to be particularly specific back then because it didn't strike me as important.

In any event you distinghished between "auto" and semi-auto and clearly argued the latter was a better excuse for poor performance. You now argue the reverse.

It's also from the CGi show, isn't it?

Yes, as the video makes clear, it is from the CGI show.


This is a stupid question but you can view Youtube videos correct?

Notice that I don't use it much. I pointed that out in this very thread I believe

I'm aware you dislike the Clone Wars. I'm also aware we have a disagreement on how accurate a protrayal of the Star Wars universe it is. All that said its still canon.

Of course, as I said, we already have the movies. Superior canon.

Except if we want information on the actual Clone Wars the Clone Wars show is the highest canon we have. From mortars, to heavy cannons to the grappling gun the Clone Wars has expanded our understanding on how the Clones fought.

You have a particularly strong bad faith when comparing battles scenes in the T movies and in SW ones.

I made comparison between Clones and combat T-800s via a scene of a pitched battle. You certainly could have posted counter examples instead of wasting my time with an evidence less rant.

There's simply no comparison to be made. You can pick any engagement, all action on Naboo, anything in Geonosis' battle arena or its plains, even Pau City's port or inner roads, or up to inside the Invisible Hand, it all plain sucks.
The odds are totally stacked against the CIS droids. It wouldn't even matter if you were to find one or two good shots, because they'd be completely lost in an ocean of aim-suckage.

Again its not do Droids or Clones aim good its do Terminators aim better. At the moment we have a seemingly consistent datapoint of flesh covered Terminators aiming good but fleshless ones don't be they T-600s with a minigun or a T-800 with a plasma rifle.

Much like the Geonosis scene we need to focus and shift through the evidence rather than spout trite generalizations.

In the comparison between T2 and T4, you consider that if TS were not to breal continuity, the T-800 should have been damaged to the point of the CPU stopping to function after several seconds

Incorrect. While I personally feel the T-800 should have been damaged, through not neccessarly "fatally", I am in no way arguing its CPU should have ceased to function "after several seconds".

had to show then that, as I claimed, the cases were different enough so as not to contradict each other.
I had not claimed they had to support each other, merely that there wasn't a contradiction.

Due to the ambigiousness of the T2 scene it is by nature a relatively flexiable scene.

In the end, you come to agree with me that these events are different. So why force a contradiction when there's no need for any?
Unless you can precisely show one, I don't see any reason to reject T4 and believe that a T-800 cannot endure heat, and therefore more or less tank clonetrooper's standard fire (assuming they can hit).

To recap:
1. Due to observed technological features incongruious with T2 T-800s (hydrogen fuel cells)
2. Due to observed endurance greater than T2 T-800s, taking grenades to face/chest with no apparent "internal" damage
3. Due to the T-800 prototype being incongrously developed years ahead of the previous timeline
4. Due to Resistence fighters converting to/employing hand held energy weapons in field operations against T-800s

This I fell is more than sufficent grounds to question the viability of using the TS Terminator as a baseline.

You also quickly brush away the importance of fluid metal pressure, despite the fact that aside from the obvious difference of volume, in one case the metal can flow off the sides of the machine, and in the other case has nowhere to go and will obviously apply more pressure onto the machine.

Fine, enlightment me. What is the pressure per square inch?

Pressure + heat = more damage than heat alone. It presses against metal that sees its strength disminished because of the application of energy. It presses against the weakest sections, such as those found all around the neck. It completely presses against the eyes... heck, do we even know for sure that when the camera cuts, it's the CPU that really goes off and not just the eyes, which are obviously far more exposed?

We have no reason to assume its only weak points which are being affected. That is your assumption which presumes the T2 T-800 and the TS T-800 are comparable which would need to be independently verified, preferably by side by side benchtests, and is not a given.

Contrary to what you think, why the terminator was thrown into the pool in T2 is irrelevant, especially as I never disputed that much heat and pressure would not destroy the CPU.

The context established it was extreme overkill ie its likely closer to melting into a ball of goo than totally intact save for a weakpoint snapping. Context is extremely important when we have an ambigious event to try and analysis.

TS shows that this "enough" is leaps and bounds beyond what SW generally brings to the table.

The TS Terminator is not involved in this discussion and I have laid out multiple reasons why it is incongruent with T2 Terminators.

This is not helped by the fact that in the prequels, blaster firepower is piss poor as well, hardly any more significant than a .45 bullet or anything lesser in fact.

Meh. In the Hunt for Ziro, from the Clone Wars, a hand blaster blew a gaping hole through Ziro the Hutt. I'd like to see .45 caliber amunition do that.

That kind of firepower, a T-800 can reasonnably cope with it before really going down.
If clones want to stand a chance, they'll have to rely on the mechanized units.

And conversly, pegging a blaster set to high somewhere between fifty caliber and anti-material, am not sure they can "reasonably cope". T1 and T2 style Terminators have, to my knowledge, never been subjected too anything greater than assault rifle fire, likely hollow points to try and prevent perforation, so its an open question how well they'd resiest.

T-600s aren't even funny. Nor are the sort of sentries guarding the base's tunnels. Skynet makes advances in its tech very rapidly.
However I don't recall similar assault rifles doing anything really impressive against T-800s.

Could be, as I suggested, the difference of load out, Full metal Jacket for instance.

In Terminator, if humans have largely switched to energy weapons, it's because they're available. So is their ammo. Now, the only case of a terminator going down to plasma rifle involves one already downed machine (stuck under rubble in fact) being shot at point blank range.
The trooper feels the need to fire two bursts and we don't even get to see the effects on the exoskeleton.

If you have evidence those soldiers' weapons were ineffective, that Conner was sending them to die uselessly, you may present it. Otherwise we may safely assume the guns issued to the footsoldiers in an infantry heavy War are reasonbly effective in killing the opposing side.

Are you asking me if handguns deliver more than 40W?

I want you to provide an example yes. The vaporization of the lady from T1 would be a good start.

We're obviously dealing with a writing mistake if it was meant to be a reference to firepower.
I'll ignore it. It's silly, you can't kill shit with 40W.

You can't ignore it, its canon. A lot of what we deal with is "silly". Inconsistent weapons effects, infantry tactics Napolean wouldn't have used but we have to make do and soldier on. You want to be critical and exact concerning Star Wars, I'm fine with that but we have to be just as hard on the Terminator franchise and the Terminator says 40 watts.

Well then that seals the deal. If you think it's suicide while it's one the ships' best advantage, and one that doesn't even require the application of a face-climbing tactic never seen in order to merely attain greater sight, the clones should really blow their brains out, indeed.

No. Blatantly wasting good resources in a no hope situation is what I disagreed with.

The basic issue is your assuming the Terminators are so much "better" that anything in regards to a straight up fight is a huge curbstomp in the Terminators favor. That the Clones will be useless.

I in turn am assuming a performance closer to the T2 scene, that they'll sporadicly hit the Clones and can not tank blaster fire as well as they can 20th century small arms. That they are far from useless and employed with a modicrum of intellgience could actually defeat the rather straightfoward and simplisitic Terminators.

The thing you miss is that if the LAATs are to fly unspotted, because of the size of the city or else, it also means that they won't be dropping clones anywhere close to the machines.

Finding and converging upon a footbased army is far different than intercepting an aircraft.

Oh yes, nothing. Clones approach machines, try to sneak, they're more mobile but it changes nothing in the end.

Actually it would likely be closer to a LAAT screaming in softening them up with missiles before the Clone Troopers deploy and finish turning them to scrape metal.

If T-800s have to get inside each damned building to find the clones, clones would have to assume the same.

I have said nothing about the T-800s having to get inside "each damned building". I have posulated the Clones are more posed to exploit that enviroment and the Terminators, being foot based, are more vulnerable to it.

In this silly game of cat and mouse, I largely give the advantage to the machines indoors, sorry.

And in any game of anything but simple brute force I lean towards the Clones. Skynet has not impressed me with its battle prowess or the independent thinking it allows its soldiers.

I'm not sure where you get the idea that the missile run was a fire and pray kind of tactic.

Your plan is to find an enemy you have, at best, a general idea where they are at, converge upon it quickly enough to destroy the bulk of the enemy's conviently bunched togather troops before being overwhelmed by the enemy air units you have repeatedly argued are far superior in air to air operations. Unless you have one helluva example of Clones possesing a forward air command there is no way this is going to be anything but a hectic mess.

I'd expect the clones to be smart enough to spot the enemy first and try to take down as many as possible, on focusing on the heavy units first you know?

Your honestly expecting to catch HK-As on the ground or to fight them head on?

But if you consider this a frantic push and even "unlikely to be effectively coordinated", then they're toasted. You have precisely removed them the only way to even the field against the HKs, especially the HKAs.

In your opinon. My evaluation of the topic, obviously, differs.

Heavy repeaters and rocket launchers are actually only seen in the CGI show. That is, after seeing legions after legions of clones not using such weapons.

We see a solitary battle in AOTC and only fragments of some others in ROTS. So we do not see legions of anything. One could certainly review the Clone Wars and try and make some sense to the distribution of heavy weapons but trying to result to some rules lawyering to try and effectively erase them from existence is low.

As a whole, it would be nothing more than a mistake to believe that I restricted evidence to Salvation, really.

Between the two of us you do seem to cite Salvation almost exclusively.

Now, I'm not remembering when I said I'd limit the evidence to the first two movies. It's possible I typed that, but I can't find it again.

I've never asked you to limit it to the first two movies, have in fact posted evidence from all four movies, so I don't know where this is coming from.

Edit: If you mean in refrence to the T-800

No issue then as that should be the 850 series Terminator rather than the 800. And in any event I intended these to be the Terminators from One and Two, the kind you can crush, blow up and dissolve in molten lead without any mini-nuke explosions.

In TS, the nuclear fuel cells are intended for T-800s.
Although that was quite silly.
T1 and T2 bots, ok.

You deny the GAR the only tactic that will exploit their best strength, under the form of missiles used as fire and forget, perhaps all that in order to enforce some kind of fantasy of a romanticized tactic involving AT-TEs climbing on walls.

Ok, I'm getting a little steamed. I point out AT-TEs can climb walls and that it is an advantage. You argue that there is no point to it and we get into a little scuffle over it.

I have at no point argued the Clones will do it, merely that they could, and I certainly don't consider it the end all be all.

[sonofccn]

Here clip of the Terminator (1984). So-so quality and Reversed but otherwise seems "intact"

@ 1:27:54 the "Lady Trooper" is blown up/vaporized and the beam is of higher grade than the shots seen on the humans in the T2 scene. It should be noted through the preceeding scene, 1:28:03, establishes Reese is crouching extremely close to the "Lady Trooper" but does not appear to suffer any harm from the proximity of what should be a high energy event. Further when she's struck two beams/bolts arc over her angled to hit the surronding area.

@ 0:34:07 We observe the "second Terminator" shoot up the Resistence tunnel. Damage inflicted is variable, average appears to be bullet scale, with heavy amount of blaster like smoke and flash. Greater than 40 watts I'll conceed. Accuracy appears, on my glance over, on the lower end of the scale. Multiple misses at variable distances against Reese, the civilians and the other Resistence soldiers. The "blaster flash" makes analysis difficult but I counted about eight kills, plus the dogs, at least three at close range maybe four. Two appeared to be the guards for the door with the third a civvie trying to hide in the corner.

Also of note is that due to the nature of it being a tunnel the target satuation was relatively densely packed.

Any comments/further analysis would be greatly apreciated.

[Mr. Oragahn]

This is getting way too long. It iakes me several days to go through it, and wears down my patience.
Obviously if I sense that there's some obtuse mind behind silly arguments that makes my bullcrap meter reach for the stars, I'm not going to display any kind of friendly affection.
We'll see to that.

There is nothing "magic" about smoke attenuating in open atmosphere.

There is when you think it will dissipate fast enough as not to leave any sign of what is going on and where.
The point is simple. Either there's so much distance between both forces that the GAR can afford shooting at buildings and then moving walkers in, or they can't and will be spotted.
In the former case, of course, all the time the AT-TE spend at climbing to those positions is all the more time the machines will have to spread.
Fact is, however, than explosions make a ton of noise over many kilometers and it's very easy to have a rough idea of which direction the sound came from.
Frankly the whole idea that the holes could be produced in any kind of discretion is bound to fail, and if you count on distance to attenuate the problem and induce a lag that will compensate for the origin and time of production of the sound, you'll be dealing with a city so stupidly large that I don't even see why both sides would have any chance of ever crossing each other.
No matter what, the sound of explosions will reach the machines (over 300 meters per second) and the HKAs will be already active.
Rubble falling during explosion or eventually bits falling off later, including when the AT-TEs generate tremors and slide into the holes when walking on the damaged sections of the building (quite a silly plan in fact, they'll need to stick to surface they have voluntarily weakened)? Same.
In fact, forget the explosions. These machines make an awful lot of noise when walking. No way in hell they'll not get noticed the moment they start moving, even on the ground.

Sure, HKTs are no match for AT-TEs and I never pretended the contrary. Whatever Skynet used before to clean all armour the humans had over the globe, decades later, the HKTs we saw have been anti-infantry vehicles. The humans never had any mechanized units left other than technicals at best. Things that a HKT would easily destroy. Although I have not seen any impresse armour capacity on the AT-TE's part either (technically, droidekas can destroy them and they have a firepower nowhere superior to that of HKTs), the AT-TEs still have several guns and above the main cannon, its superior range and firepower. The shot to kill Obi-Wan was very good. Wasn't that a range of one kilometer or so?
The problem is that AT-TEs are rather easy to pick for HKAs and the secondary guns on AT-TEs are yet to demonstrate a level of firepower better than what might a T-800 in one shot. This leaves us with the main cannon, which for obvious reasons whill be most ill suited to shoot down Skynet's aerials.

And it isn't like blasters and the like produce copious amounts of the stuff anyway.

Several shots needed to put holes in buildings plus weapons largely thermal in nature are bound to trigger fires, also powderize materials. It's a no brainer.
I don't see where you even think you'll get some conveniently clean enough explosions when damaging buildings with the intent to clearly gouge large holes in them.
Just looking at the mess done to the cliff just in front of Obi-Wan is rather telling.
Smoke will come out of both pulverized materials and whatever would start to burn because of the exposure to heat.
Not to say that buildings aren't built as bunkers: they don't rely on nor are stuffed with military-grade materials.

The idea is just plain bad. Yet it seems it was the best trick according to you. Or more precisely, it is the main poney trick you really can only think of, instead of being pragmatic and going for a no BS attitude.

Noise? HKA might have a long range sound detection system as found on the motos.

I suppose asking for clarification of "long range sound detection" would be too much?

Forget the long range, I realized that echo is going to be a bitch down a city's streets.

If so, they might either fly to the source slowly, or fast.

Assuming they have "long range sound detection" and assuming its refined enough for them to trail it back.

Not going to be hard to avoid the sound of both LAATs and AT-TEs on the move.

AT-TEs are horribly slow when climbing.

Faster than a HK-T at it.

Perhaps here would be a relevant remark if I claimed they'd ever attempt to?

All in all, chances of them reaching their holes before being caught on scans by machines are slim.

Why? The HK-A is, so far, far from impressive as a detector.

Noise, smoke, noise and smoke. Those are not stealthy.
No need to spend more time debating the obvious.

It also goes without saying that we haven't seen the GAR rely on any of such methods.

Never said they would, I said they could. We've mainly been discussing feasbility and practicality.

Which also include probabilities. The difference between the would and would not is related to the chances of this ever being devised.
We already know what would happen if Anakin considered this plan.
We also know that if the AT-TEs are used in the most mundane way, here goes the attempt at being original and obtaining a greater view of the battlefield.

Anakin is a smart dude, so we can expect him to exploit the topology as best as possible, but only to the extent of what we've seen him do: stick AT-TEs in unusual places.

Not to state the bloody obvious but putting AT-Tes in buildings is sticking them in unusual places.

Yes, it is.
But is there any other trick that seems remotely plausible?
I don't see any that doesn't involve a rather complicated mind that would be equal to a death note for an entire legion on the battleground.
Like, hey! perhaps we could make an AT-TE pyramid!!

:/

The GAR could hopefully take down groups of machines that way, but not the whole army.

Well that is the thing, no tactic or trick is going to take down the "whole army" and if that is your only criteria of success then...you lost. In War, like life, there are no silver bullets.

If AT-TEs are not going to take down the whole army, since clones are useless and HKAs superior to LAATs, how are they supposed to win against the machines then?

Future war scenes have not shown legions of infantry walking in packs.

It shows a sizable number. It isn't just a T-800 or two bumbling along as sentries.

Context is important here. By pack, one has to understand a form. Like a pack.
What they do, at best, is spread and cover terrain. They don't walk shoulder to shoulder when they're scouting.
Plus they've been seen to run when needed anyway.

infantry units moving forth in no particular configuration, especially considering the ruins they were walking through.

The fact they have no "particular configuration" is a bad thing. Ruins or no does not excuse such a performance.

It is not a bad thing when there's no gain to it, no reason to force a unit into a given formation just for the sake of parade. Squares? Triangles? What next? No point.
As we saw, they were spread and basically walked where one could walk.

T3 is the only movie to have featured massive amounts of T-800/850s at once, and there clearly were no signs of much resistance as machines advanced over that terrain

There is no sign of a battle honestly and they are still packed shoulder to shoulder and showing the tactical ability of a B1 battledroid.

No sign of battle? And the explosions and T-850s shooting at something is no sign of the enemy I suppose?
Do I need to point out that in T3, they literally swarmed a whole area btw, and yet managed not to be literally shoulder to shoulder?
You know, even human infantry bataillons in modern times tend to be quite cramped when advancing through such areas in large numbers.
Nothing to blame for the terminators.

As for the smartness, it's quite disingenuous to compare the stupidity of a battledroid to what we've seen terminators do in the movies, were they on the good side or bad side, really.
That's quite mind boggling that in order to force a desperate issue, you literally negate rather solid evidence of superior intellect. You don't really try hard enough now.

Some terminators were firing at the distance, but not a single shot was thrown at them

There isn't any evidence there was anyone there to throw it. Simply put the T3 scene is vastly inferior to the T2 scene in terms of gauging combat.

Hello? Good lord. Terminators shoot whne they have a good reason to do so. They're not really known to waste ammo for nothing.

Besides, the machines had largely been fighting humans on feet. We have never seen much of how would Skynet use the full extent of modern warfare if to fight heavy armour and more mobile units.
The idea that the machines will adopt the same kind of formations when advancing through a non-devastated area and tracking anything else than packs of humans largely reduced to guerilla warfare is odd.

Well unless Skynet is a Resistence symapthizer there is no reason for it to deliberate hamper the effectiveness of its forces and employ them in suboptimal manners.

Indeed, so we can expect a level of adaptation when fighting against properly mechanized legions.

And its formations are a bad idea against ragtag militia let alone a professional military, which TS shows formed the core of the Resistence, irregardless.
To put it simply bunching up makes delicious targets for IEDs or mortar strikes or asymmetrical warfare in general.

And what makes you think Skynet, a databank and a networked military-organizing system intelligence, wouldn't know that?
Infantry robots are deployed in very unique and short times, and Skynet obviously also has to count on limitations. Again, what makes you think Skynet is going to deploy troops in the same way when fighting anything else than groups of humans moving on foot exclusively, through ruins?
In all timelines, Skynet has always been a military global supervision system, both strategical and tactical. It has everything ever typed and put onto a computer that deals with war, weapons, strategies and tactics.
How could have Skynet ever defeated anything mechanized the humans would still possess if applying the same formations seen in the future war scenes?
Skynet's meagre forces would have been disposed of rather swiftly.
The area and conditions are totally different, and Skynet isn't really that thick for a villain AI you know?
Nor that it matters, since the T-X is smarter than a T-800/850, and it leads this army.

If this were true, Skynet would have stood zero chance at winning against human units and vehicles pushed back to post-WWII/non-modern tactics because of a lack of network.
Especially considering that it would have a limited amount of machines to work with.

Well one has to debate what there is not what one thinks there should be. So provide evidence of Skynet performing superior tactics or that is what we'll go with.

Not so much. In order to reach the state observed in future times, Skynet would first have to survive everything that the humans still had at their disposal.
Not to say that back then, Skynet would have probably not gotten anywhere close to the capacity to build itself such massive legions.
If anything, TS quite proves that Skynet was damn limited and needed human labour. And it goes without saying that Skynet's maximum range was largely limited to what it took control of under US/NATO influence, which still leaves massive areas out of its reach.
Skynet couldn't establish itself firmly in the future if solely knowing and using such tactics suited for post apocalyptic guerilla warfare in ruined urban environnements.
Right from the future timeline which triggered the events of T2, we know that Cyberdyne computers were mounted in stealth bombers.

The question is, have we seen terminators being tricked by flanking maneuvers?

Due to the sparse examples of large scale battles such a question, which itself would require further clarification before answering, can not be answered in the postive. Extrapolating on the T2 scene would suggest a vulnerabiltity to it.

Based on what clues precisely?

The question isn't if the HKA can do impossible maneuvers down some city streets, but if it has the edge over a LAAT.

No. I posulated that within the urban area the HK-A would be forced to traverse at a reduced speed, optimally switching to its hover mode, and you argued it was agile enough to manuver without issue. Do you still argue that yes or no?

Define "without issue" please.
Did I say the HKA would run into walls? It can easily zap ahead and a HKA was shown capable of making a rapid vertical ascension and loop back as well.
If HKAs are going to have LAATs in narrow streets, they can move up quickly and get the clearance and superior range.
Also, its front cannons literally dictate the machine to have its target in front or below, so it's bound to try to obtain a superior altitude.

Now, can HKAs do barrel rolls under a second? Yes. Why? Because they can rotate their engines for such maneuvers. Which means that this same possibility for angular thrust will also allow them to quickly bank left or right, or anything else you can come with that uses that kind of vectoring.

So, after all of it, your basing its superior agility not on its performance but an extropolation of what you think it should be able to do. And that this unquantifiable agility should give it an advantage over the observed manuverbility of the LAAT. Wouldn't it just be simplier to give me an example of its manuvering, surely if its so badarse it must have done it sometime in the movie.

I don't feel like producing a transcript of the whole canyon run, you know? I'd expect the roll, the quick acceleration, the equally rapid ascension and following dive, the zig zag in the canyon, to be kinda enough.
If streets are narrower, LAATs will suffer even more, have even more difficulty to have a good firing cone for missile launch, even more chances of seeing the enemy at the last moment. AT-TEs will just be as squeezed and putting them on building faces will offer them nothing advantageous much because they'll basically be stuck at firing down the same narrow streets. What prevents HKAs from flying over of making passes the other way round, I don't know.
Wouldn't it just be simplier to give me an example of a LAAT's equal capabilities?
For the moment you have provided none.

The only advantage I pointed out is that the LAAT goes down to firepower that is extremely low

In relation to us discussing it vs the HK-A implying it was relevent.

Actually I don't recall my point only being stuck in the confines of a duel.
All units and forms of attack were to be taken into account. In the end it doesn't matter, since point is that HKT's do also have more than enough firepower to take them down.

It doesn't matter if it was a lucky shot or not, because the simple fact that it could happen is more than enough to know that the ship isn't armoured enough to protect itself from a dramatic hit in a sensible area.

The how and why a shot did what it did is important I'm afraid. Or would you consider it accurate dismissing the Death Star because it can be taken out by a pair of proton torpedoes.

All we see the LAAT's aft blowing up after being fired at. Asserting that it's a lucky shot is unsubstantiated conjecture.
Now, excuse me believing that (obviously dedicated) Geonosian fighters are ought to take down enemy crafts with odds greater than anything limited to "lucky shots", whatever you wish to pass as that.

A LAAT taken out because its engine was set off in a chain reaction is different than if the LAAT was taken out with a hit directly against its hull armor.

Proof of chain reaction?
And where did the culprit bolt land, then, btw?

A close flak burst that doesn't do any better than knocking a character off balance at a range of 2 meters is just as ridiculous.

It does however indicate that it is not the weapon in and of itself which is destroying the LAAT.

How?

And that "steed of impartial evidence" is not subjective.

I am, and have been, open to discussing the evidence. Hence why I stress posting of clips and screencaps with time caps so it can be impartially observed. You don't seem to be so much.

I have nor the time nor the material to produce the necessary clips.
It already took me ages to make animated GIFs.
Why should I even bother since you could not defend your theory if you had not the video to observe at hand's reach?
Why ask me to produce material you already have?

If you feel my observation is derogatory, perhaps that's because you had put too much stock into the LAAT's resilience?

No. I find your observations "derogatory" because in leiu of arguments or evidence you offer a paragraph stating X is so made of fail it fails. You talk down on the abilities/person/thing in question but seldom show what you are talking about or demostrate how "your side" is better in the area. You do this even when I make a specific request for evidence.

I state what we see. Shitty bolts still manage to take down a LAAT without any clear evidence of whatever form of chain reaction resulting from a preliminary lucky shot whatsoever.
Now it is definitely time you produce your evidence or I'll have to consider that after two long posts, you have nothing more than pure speculation to press forward, which is so weak I don't need to draw a picture.

There's nothing you have opposed to the obvious low display of firepower from the Geonosian fighters and I'm not under the impression that you will provide anything, so my point firmly still stands.
Said point was only that, the disparity between what was known to take down HKAs (missiles thus far), and what was shown to take down LAATs (much lower firepower).

As I have shown it is far from as cut and dry as you state. Or if I stuffed a match into the HK-A fuel tank, just supposing it has a liquied fuel tank and that it would work for the moment, and it blew up would you agree that the match's "firepower" was enough to take down the HK-A?

Conjecture, conjecture.
Or perhaps that missile that downed a KHA also hit a fuel tube, who knows?
Perhaps the warthog pilot shot two missiles because he wasn't sure that one only could take a HKA? Or perhaps he tought the HKA could actually evade one missile?
Etc.

On the other hand, we saw HKAs of various iterations from being able to shoot through troopers (low firepower) to blow huge volumes of rock.
In fact in the very TS movie we see varying levels of firepower coming from the same weapons.

We even see one of those bolts hitting a clonetrooper squarely and that simply tips him off the platform!

Timestamp? I don't recall a Clonetrooper being struck squarely by one of those beams.

Yet you seem to have enough evidence for your theory about the LAAT's odd demise.
Please, just watch the movie or whatever clip you can find, it shouldn't be hard to spot.
FYI, it's the second geonosian fighter that did it.

let's compare that to the bolt that literally vaporizes the woman soldier in T1 if you want)

I would love it if you'd post the revelent scene. I definatly don't remember a woman literally vaporizing in T1 but then again that's why I prefer video instead of relying on memory.

Terminator 1, Reese and that woman lob heavy explosives under the tracks of a HKT, but the woman exposes herself too much and the HKT fires three bolts, the third one blowing her to bits.

The LAATs have missiles though and a good number of energy weapons, but I also pointed out that they won't use them in air battles, because of undisputable evidence right from AOTC

"Undisputable evidence" which I'm still unclear on. Are we talking about Dooku or some other scene?

I'm not.
Dooku is right in front on his lousy motobike, the craft has two front guns to use and could even gain altitude in order to use the globe-weapons embedded at the tip of the wings (we know they're weapons, as demonstrated by the very first LAAT to open fire in the arena), or even stick out the two other manned big ones.

Thus far, we haven't seen LAATs acquire particularly agile vehicles. The most mobile vehicles they took down were the CIS' droid missile launchers, which didn't look to be particularly armoured either.

Here and here should show LAATs firing on Geonosian fighters.

Good, now we have a complete contradiction. Not that the LAATs were particularly good at shooting the fighters down anyway, all weapons counted.
Basically, you just replaced an incapacity at shooting with an incapacity at hitting anything, unless eventually it's literally right in front of them.
Oh, and it also shows those fighters taking down LAATs with shots from totally different angles than those of AOTC. All shots damage them easily, passing their armour, and screwing LAATs big time.
Lucky shots and chain reactions again? :)

In the city, for both sides to find each other, Skynet's T-X will rely on the HKAs while Anakin will rely on the LAATs.
If the LAATs find and acquire most of the HKAs for a missile lock, then that's a good thing, they'll take enough of the HKAs down.
If LAATs can't clear ALL HKAs, then they're most likely fucked, as they'll be taken down by the remaining HKAs one by one.

LAATs are, over all, the more versital and useful of the two through. It has been observed better supporting ground forces and it can transport troops quickly. Avoiding direct confrontations but keeping the possibility of ambushes open would serve to create an area of denial and keep the LAATs in use.

To create an "area of denial", LAATs have to be active.
Active LAATs are an easy find for HKAs.
If anything, the two clips you provided tell me enough about how the LAATs would be ruined by HKAs. Plus LAATs still don't use missiles against fighters, suggesting a lack of AA capacity (Dooku might have been an acceptable target because just hovering in front of them basically, that is, relatively moving even slower than the wheel droids shot down earlier on).
But all we can assert is that missiles are used against at least vehicle-sized targets, slow moving or immobile (the fastest target I can remember are those wheel droids firing missiles, nothing spectacular).
This alone has pretty much nailed the LAAT's coffin.

He may be good at deflecting some bolts, but not only he'll have to deal with a better enemy aim and a higher rate of fire (again, most of the time seen used on full auto), he won't be able to block all shots.

Again compared to the Christophsis clip if there is any difference in the rate of fire its in favor of the Clones/Droids rather than the Terminators.

And Clone Wars has demonstrated some the shittiest aim ever seen in all history of video entertainment.
Christophsis: Clones charging... against a wall of droids... and even managing to reach fucking punching-range point.
LOL.

You persist to use it literally, so be it.
What do you make of the pitiful and utterly embarrassing display of "aim" here?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aE_CVWMWK74
... geez

I don't need to prove that droids in SW have plain crappy accuracy. That, straight from the movies.

The issue is not that SW has "crappy" accuracy or not but if Terminators have better accuracy and if so by how much.

To the terminator's defense, it used heavy weapons against mobile targets and often had to go through several layers of metal before having the possibility to reach its targets, or successfully shot through windows but the targets were taking cover. That while the terminator held the weapons one handed and had to drive as well. By judging on the impact holes and the metal bounces, most shots hit.
Now, did people manage to run in his direction and still get miraculously unhit by bullets he'd fire at close ranges?
Because that's the kind of shit we get served with a lot in Star Wars.

First of all, have we ever seen a human come close to a terminator handling a plasma rifle?

Depends upon definition of "close". Terminators have been observed to miss humans at ranges comparable with Star Wars ranges ala Christophsis.

Like when and under what conditions precisely? And what are those ranges? How any times in general?
In T2 the reprogrammed model didn't have problems to hit padlocks in one shot with a shotgun while riding a motorbike and attempting to catch up with John Connor, in ranges of 5 to 10 meters.

T2 and T3 provide, on the average, good demonstrations. At least anything better than the abyssal aim demonstrated by CIS droids which can't even hit a single man walking up stairs at a low runner's pace straight at them.

Which does beg the question why they did so poorly in the T2 scene. Normally I'd chalk it up to rule of cool and that you can't expect wholesale constistency but I feel that would be in violation of the hardline approach we've decided to take to analysis.

I have the scene, and we don't see any clear evidence of shots coming, for sure, from terminators and wholly missing at close ranges.
There is precisely nothing under the form of a terminator shooting and missing at a shitty range, because we simply don't even get to see one single terminator shooting at a human trooper.
The entire sequence is done with terminator shooting at stuff offscreen. Did you watch the clip you provided?
We see plenty of shots flying in all directions, often times short full-auto bursts, but how do we define which bolts came from terminators?

I also jsut said "auto", without bothering to be particularly specific back then because it didn't strike me as important.

In any event you distinghished between "auto" and semi-auto and clearly argued the latter was a better excuse for poor performance. You now argue the reverse.

In any event, it's an other thread, another context, another mood and that is all. You have way too much time on your hands. Way too much.
I can't believe you need to drag an entirely different thread, old at that, and pick material partially out of context.
Let's stick with this thread.

It's also from the CGi show, isn't it?

Yes, as the video makes clear, it is from the CGI show.
This is a stupid question but you can view Youtube videos correct?

I just asked to be sure if it were me commenting on the CGI show.
I didn't reread the whole of my post.

Notice that I don't use it much. I pointed that out in this very thread I believe

I'm aware you dislike the Clone Wars. I'm also aware we have a disagreement on how accurate a protrayal of the Star Wars universe it is. All that said its still canon.

Canon in general, in substance, but the protrayal, the cartoonish rendition and therefore minute details are hardly something I'll be stuck onto as far as this show goes.
It's just too silly and Disneyish (oh... oh, but---).

Of course, as I said, we already have the movies. Superior canon.

Except if we want information on the actual Clone Wars the Clone Wars show is the highest canon we have. From mortars, to heavy cannons to the grappling gun the Clone Wars has expanded our understanding on how the Clones fought.

And how many times have we seen those devices used on the average in face of the torrent of clones deployed time and time again, over the entire length of the show and movies who never ever used anything special?
That's the thing!
Exceptionnal elements are exceptionnal.
Otherwise, HKAs get missiles and goodbye.
Notice, in fact, that the occurances of a HKA with missiles largely surpass any occurance of a clone trooper sporting annything else than a blaster rifle or carbine.
Meaning that itf you could tweak the parameters of this scenario on the move, like changing server parameters, by lowering the outlier shreshold, HKA missiles would appear much much sooner than the moment clone troopers would begin to get their desperately needed superior weapons.

You have a particularly strong bad faith when comparing battles scenes in the T movies and in SW ones.

I made comparison between Clones and combat T-800s via a scene of a pitched battle. You certainly could have posted counter examples instead of wasting my time with an evidence less rant.

SW movies are the epithome of bad robot aim seen in the latest 15 years or so.
Having the gal to put terminators and CIS droids on equal footing is baffling. Even more when praying support from the CGI show, which just made things worse!
You make ridiculous claims, really.
And this is where my patience really begins to die, honestly.

There's simply no comparison to be made. You can pick any engagement, all action on Naboo, anything in Geonosis' battle arena or its plains, even Pau City's port or inner roads, or up to inside the Invisible Hand, it all plain sucks.
The odds are totally stacked against the CIS droids. It wouldn't even matter if you were to find one or two good shots, because they'd be completely lost in an ocean of aim-suckage.

Again its not do Droids or Clones aim good its do Terminators aim better. At the moment we have a seemingly consistent datapoint of flesh covered Terminators aiming good but fleshless ones don't be they T-600s with a minigun or a T-800 with a plasma rifle.

So you admit that for the limited number of cases of terminators shooting, they aim quite well, but that isn't enough?
You then speak of bad unskinned terminator aim from T2, but reality actually provides absolutely no case at all to analyse, contrary to your pure hot air claim.
Conclusion: T-800 terminators aim better.
And considering the abysmal aim displayed by CIS droids, it's literally night and day.

Talking about night and day, T2 confirms that terminators have enhanced night vision.

Much like the Geonosis scene we need to focus and shift through the evidence rather than spout trite generalizations.

Hahaha.
This is really getting silly.
Please point out those trite generalizations you think might exist on my side.

In the comparison between T2 and T4, you consider that if TS were not to breal continuity, the T-800 should have been damaged to the point of the CPU stopping to function after several seconds

Incorrect. While I personally feel the T-800 should have been damaged, through not neccessarly "fatally", I am in no way arguing its CPU should have ceased to function "after several seconds".

Bull, that is exactly what you claimed.
Besides, the CPU stopping to function is precisely the only sensible damage we get to know in T2.
The CPu is stuck deep down the skull, so it would still some time for heat to reach it.
We never see the exoskeleton liquifying in any shape or form.
So you don't really know what you're talking about.

had to show then that, as I claimed, the cases were different enough so as not to contradict each other.
I had not claimed they had to support each other, merely that there wasn't a contradiction.

Due to the ambigiousness of the T2 scene it is by nature a relatively flexiable scene.

Oh, now it is flexible?
What is that?
And how is it going to be useful for that contradiction of yours, now that this scene is "flexible"?

In the end, you come to agree with me that these events are different. So why force a contradiction when there's no need for any?
Unless you can precisely show one, I don't see any reason to reject T4 and believe that a T-800 cannot endure heat, and therefore more or less tank clonetrooper's standard fire (assuming they can hit).

To recap:
1. Due to observed technological features incongruious with T2 T-800s (hydrogen fuel cells)
2. Due to observed endurance greater than T2 T-800s, taking grenades to face/chest with no apparent "internal" damage
3. Due to the T-800 prototype being incongrously developed years ahead of the previous timeline
4. Due to Resistence fighters converting to/employing hand held energy weapons in field operations against T-800s

This I fell is more than sufficent grounds to question the viability of using the TS Terminator as a baseline.

T1 and T2 don't provide enough material.
The inclusion of a T-X implies a better level of technology and it is very likely that the future war scene in T3 is where/when the T-X was sent from. As we can see, vehicles are different from the designs in T1 and T2, which were not totally identical either.
This T-X, after transporting to the past, triggers another newer timeline in T3 with hacking and perhaps, a faster update of Skynet (conjecture on my part), which for all intents and purposes seems to be the one continued in TS.
If you want to leave TS out, we're left with the mysterious intermediary timeline the T-X came from.

You also quickly brush away the importance of fluid metal pressure, despite the fact that aside from the obvious difference of volume, in one case the metal can flow off the sides of the machine, and in the other case has nowhere to go and will obviously apply more pressure onto the machine.

Fine, enlightment me. What is the pressure per square inch?

Do we need to get into such details?
Isn't it obvious enough that having a layer of metal which flows to the sides (T4) is not the same as having a volume of metal ontop of the terminator's body which not only remains constant, but actually keeps increasing because the robot... sorry, the cybernetic organism goes deeper into the pool?
Oh yes it is.
Even if both molten materials had the same density, obviously the greater and greater quantity piling up ontop of the exoskeleton is going to provide a greater mass, thus a greater pressure. And that is leaving aside the metal's flow of T4.
What do you really need for proof of an obvious difference of exposure to pressure (and heat)?
Basically everything the T-800 has to cope with is greater than what the T-800 in T4 did.
Cumulative heat, higher and increasing pressure, and a longer time.

Besides, the T-800 in T4 wasn't exactly totally invincible. The molten material still hit him on the head. Notice how it seems to go off before reawakening, like if it had to reroute power.
All in all, both T2 and T4 represent very good cases of resilience to pressure and heat in large quantities.

We can even compare that with the first terminator, which got literally smashed right in the head and top upper torso by a heavy fuel truck clearly driving at more than 70 kph, then toasted later on as the entire fuel container of the same truck blew up (while the cyborg was driving it), the cabin included. Then the machine kept burning for a while and felt to the ground... until all flesh would be gone and system good for another go.
And it kept coming... only to be cut in half by a home made grenade which boom recipe relied on a close cousin of nitroglycerine... which still didn't stop the machine from working.
It only got destroyed once compressed into a third of its thickness.
Oh and if the red eye thing is indicative of its activity, then let's just point out that said red eye was still ON until the very end of the squishing procedure.

Yeah, like if there was any doubt about the resilience difference between a CIS "battle" (target practice) droid and a terminator.

Pressure + heat = more damage than heat alone. It presses against metal that sees its strength disminished because of the application of energy. It presses against the weakest sections, such as those found all around the neck. It completely presses against the eyes... heck, do we even know for sure that when the camera cuts, it's the CPU that really goes off and not just the eyes, which are obviously far more exposed?

We have no reason to assume its only weak points which are being affected. That is your assumption which presumes the T2 T-800 and the TS T-800 are comparable which would need to be independently verified, preferably by side by side benchtests, and is not a given.

Aside from the fact that it's the weakpoints that would fail first?
You're denying the most obvious now. I find that both desperate and silly.

Next to a potential difference in the power source (former termies might have had very advanced batteries), there's nothing to jump at.
You initially tried your best to pit T2 against T4 but now you've admitted to T2 being "flexible".

As said just above, in this debate about resilience, we still know that a terminator will continue to hunt even if bisected (The Terminator).
It took a homemade explosive straight to the chest to actually disable a terminator, and that didn't stop it from trying to kill.
The hyper-alloy used for the machines is of higher quality, so the explosive cannot be shitty either. The fact that it still could cut the machine in two means it had to be powerful.
Yet that power was bound to generate shrapnel, but that never hampered the machine. Shrapnel is bad, it sends metal at sonic/supersonic speeds.

All incapacitated terminators we can observe are constantly getting finished, shot for good, when already pinned down.
The very basic T-600 takes several shots straight in the head at very close range from a pistol and survives. A very dangerous thing to do at close range, because of metal shards and ricocheting bullets.
A heavy assault rifle got rid of the thing after a massive rain of shots at less than three meters (helicopter scene, point blank range). Even more dangerous!
It took an assault rifle, at an even closer range, the muzzle aimed at the temple, to get another T-600 really destroyed (after getting squished by an helicopter). Equally dangerous but Connor is both badass and desperate I guess.

Contrary to what you think, why the terminator was thrown into the pool in T2 is irrelevant, especially as I never disputed that much heat and pressure would not destroy the CPU.

The context established it was extreme overkill ie its likely closer to melting into a ball of goo than totally intact save for a weakpoint snapping. Context is extremely important when we have an ambigious event to try and analysis.

The "context" never said how long it would take to obtain said ball of goo.
It also still takes time to heat up material.

TS shows that this "enough" is leaps and bounds beyond what SW generally brings to the table.

The TS Terminator is not involved in this discussion and I have laid out multiple reasons why it is incongruent with T2 Terminators.

First two movies' terminators are still plain good enough.
They tank levels of firepower, heat and momentum that would decimate clonetrooper squads: all droids and clones go down to firepower that doesn't leave impressive marks on walls.
Oh I'm sure you might gouge out an extreme outlier here and there eventually, which would you do no good but confirm that probabilities in this debate say it won't matter, because the vast majority prevails.

This is not helped by the fact that in the prequels, blaster firepower is piss poor as well, hardly any more significant than a .45 bullet or anything lesser in fact.

Meh. In the Hunt for Ziro, from the Clone Wars, a hand blaster blew a gaping hole through Ziro the Hutt. I'd like to see .45 caliber amunition do that.

"A" handblaster, one shot... all that from the CGI Clone Wars, a dubious source when it comes to details and not general plot points or overall impressions. Paint me unimpressed, really.
Let's just stack that against the gazillion of shots from clones and droids combined in AOTC and ROTS for example.

That kind of firepower, a T-800 can reasonnably cope with it before really going down.
If clones want to stand a chance, they'll have to rely on the mechanized units.

And conversly, pegging a blaster set to high somewhere between fifty caliber and anti-material, am not sure they can "reasonably cope". T1 and T2 style Terminators have, to my knowledge, never been subjected too anything greater than assault rifle fire, likely hollow points to try and prevent perforation, so its an open question how well they'd resiest.

In T1, most likely yes, although we never get a view at the ammo in the clips of the assault rifles which are picked in the police station for example.
In T2, it gets a bit more complicated but it's possible that even the heavy police forces would use hollow point ammo.
Now, the loss of penetration isn't that huge, it above all defines the behaviour of the projectile if it gets inside the target. With metal against metal, it's largely reduced to a question of momentum over a given diameter, and there hollow vs. plain don't differ much safe for the slight loss of mass due to the hole.

Now, please provide a sizeable amount of cases of great firepower in favour of the clones in order to increase the odds.
Other than that, extreme outliers are not going to get you anywhere.

T-600s aren't even funny. Nor are the sort of sentries guarding the base's tunnels. Skynet makes advances in its tech very rapidly.
However I don't recall similar assault rifles doing anything really impressive against T-800s.

Could be, as I suggested, the difference of load out, Full metal Jacket for instance.

What? Do you claim that AP rounds were used against the tunnel sentry, hydrobots and the T-600s (from HK416s), but softcore whatever rounds against the T-800?
Because the very first assault the fresh T-800 has to deal with precisely is a three seconds close range rain of bullets from a M4A1 carbine (that should be at least 30 rounds, all the clip if it's a standard one), which has no reason to be fitted with foam rounds. Rounds have all reasons to be 5.56x45mm NATO, at least at 1.68 KJ per round.
We've got plenty of videos here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2leiCxmc5Ao
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLitgXZnjjw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLitgXZnjjw
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50_3Yyo0Nt0 (like this one, gel wobbling reminds me of... err.... it's like my byrd's... complement... in motion... oh ok here's some info about the M193 and other cartridges)

In Terminator, if humans have largely switched to energy weapons, it's because they're available. So is their ammo. Now, the only case of a terminator going down to plasma rifle involves one already downed machine (stuck under rubble in fact) being shot at point blank range.
The trooper feels the need to fire two bursts and we don't even get to see the effects on the exoskeleton.

If you have evidence those soldiers' weapons were ineffective, that Conner was sending them to die uselessly, you may present it. Otherwise we may safely assume the guns issued to the footsoldiers in an infantry heavy War are reasonbly effective in killing the opposing side.

I didn't say they were ineffective. But you assume they were marvellous. We simply haven't seen one single use of a plasma rifle against a pristine terminator.
Perhaps they have to fire multiple times. Perhaps there has to be two or three troopers focusing their fire on one terminator to start to damage it seriously.
Humans are far less resilient than terminators, and hardly wear any bullet-proof or plasma proof gear. Why would Skynet equip its infantry with weapons which will surely kill its precious terminators if collected, instead of something weaker and good enough to still mow down fleshbags by the dozen?
We simply have no idea how much firepower from such a plasma rifle it takes to destroy a terminator.

The plasma rifle used by the infiltrator in TT did some good damage to humans, the plasma bolts burning flesh and clothes once released, in great splendour sometimes even.
I think the concept that humans in T1 and T2 scavange plasma rifles may have nothing to do with an easy capacity to defeat terminators, but rather with the problem that they may have fuck else to use against Skynet.
It is a simple question of logistics here.

Are you asking me if handguns deliver more than 40W?

I want you to provide an example yes. The vaporization of the lady from T1 would be a good start.

Are you screwing with me or something? Requiring proof that handguns are more lethal than lightbulbs?
It seems that you just have no fucking idea what you're talking about, and you've set a new low in your (debilitating) standard of "debating" skills.
At a moment I thought you were serious enough but this is just looking like a pissing contest and you'll throw at me anything silly that flies beyond your feet's range.
Come on, you can do better than that.
Like stop at once and concede.

We're obviously dealing with a writing mistake if it was meant to be a reference to firepower.
I'll ignore it. It's silly, you can't kill shit with 40W.

You can't ignore it, its canon. A lot of what we deal with is "silly". Inconsistent weapons effects, infantry tactics Napolean wouldn't have used but we have to make do and soldier on. You want to be critical and exact concerning Star Wars, I'm fine with that but we have to be just as hard on the Terminator franchise and the Terminator says 40 watts.

Lulz, no dude, on one side there's the tolerable and on the other we find the plain retardedly impossible and anyone sensible would obviously ditch the later, while a moron would stick to it.
Not to say that the cases I pick in Star Wars are actually verified several times in the movies.
40 W would mean that the torchlight attachment on a rifle would be lethal. Do you copy?

Somehow, I'm expecting a "roger roger!" here.

Perhaps you could suffocate someone by gagging a person with a lightbulb.
Although technically, it would not be using its wattage into any lethal way, but I guess that by present (retarded) standards, it's good enough? :)

Now, if say a single shot from a plasma rifle was rated at 2 KJ, and the thing could fire 60 shots on full auto before going black, at 40 W you'd still need at least 3000 seconds of recharge. Or 50 minutes.
Recharge rate seems a barely decent explanation, although it makes the weapon shit.
Or it's about the kickstart power, the one that activates the chamber that generates the bolt (the real energy of the bolt being far superior).

Well then that seals the deal. If you think it's suicide while it's one the ships' best advantage, and one that doesn't even require the application of a face-climbing tactic never seen in order to merely attain greater sight, the clones should really blow their brains out, indeed.

No. Blatantly wasting good resources in a no hope situation is what I disagreed with.

What? It's not a waste of ressources.
I'm sorry if the tactic you're so in love with and which obviously warranted that thread is actually totally mediocre. But we have to be pragmatic here.
The LAATs have 14 missiles each and can fire them in pairs (the reload takes around two seconds I think or less).
If they don't take the advantage ASAP, HKAs will.
Goodbye clones.

The basic issue is your assuming the Terminators are so much "better" that anything in regards to a straight up fight is a huge curbstomp in the Terminators favor. That the Clones will be useless.

They will. Mobility doesn't make up for a lack of punch. If they can't do more than scratch termies, clones are precisely useless. Not to say that according to your deployment model, clones will be moved around by LAATs, which implies out of AT-TE support. Meaning that there'll be nothing to prevent the clones from being mowed down by HKTs and HKAs.
Considering their past behaviour at Geonosis, PauCity and Christophsis, I'm not really in the mood of giving them the benefit of any doubt.
They'll just be whiter targets than the usual human in rags. A new definition of point blank, really. :)

I in turn am assuming a performance closer to the T2 scene, that they'll sporadicly hit the Clones and can not tank blaster fire as well as they can 20th century small arms.

Blaster fire during the clone wars hasn't really demonstrated a firepower that superior to assault rifles' firepower. And it still takes more to take down a terminator for sure.
Like, you know, even having an explosive destroy something like 50% of the exoskeleton on contact, producing supersonic shrapnel from the very material it blew, didn't stop the very first terminator seen in theaters.

Said terminator has tanked a total of 10 bursts from an ithaca 37 (most likely 12 gauge since it was a police weapon) at distances between 2 and 5 meters.
That's point blank (the first five shots were the most distant ones and we didn't see people being hit among those running behind the terminator).
As for destruction:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index ... 801AAd1TP3

What 12 gauge shotgun load will do most damage to a human at point blank range, aiming at the chest?

Crimsontide'13 asked 5 years ago

What 12 gauge load will do most damage to human (if hit in chest) at point blank? I have a 10 gauge load I want to build, it has a hollow point slug, with bbs in its deep core, so when it expands, it will blow a hole and send bb's through your body. Behind the slug is 6 000 sized pellets, and behind that is a bird shot mixed with hundreds of razor blades. Will this load do more damage than any other known load? Or any hand gun cartridge hollow point? im worried about damage because I dont want an attacker getting away.
Additional Details
Can someone tell me what the exact damage would be? If they were shot in the chest, what would happen my the load I want.

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Best AnswerVoter's Choice

thinkingblade answered 5 years ago

Well, depending on exactly the load at the muzzle a 12 gauge shotgun generates something in the neighborhood of 2,500 foot pounds of energy give or take. With that much energy, virtually regardless of what the load is you will have a shot go all the way through a human target.

12 gauge shotgun slug has a diameter of about .73 inches, or almost 3/4 of an inch. Not too many ways to survive a through and through hole augered through your chest at that diameter.

A 3 1/2" magnum 00 buck shell has between 9 - 15 00 buck pellets in it at .33 inches diameter per. Again at point blank range all are going through. So now you are looking at an aggregate of at least a 3" hole (9 x .33) and something like a 5" (15 x .33) hole max.

Step back and think about that for a minute.

A 5" hole is something that you could put your clenched fist through and for most people have clearance all the way around. A 3" hole you can get 4 fingers into the hole to 2nd knuckle on most people before you touch skin anywhere.

So, to close a long answer to your question ... the load you are talking about is not going to be any more effective than a standard 00 buck load.

In fact, because of the total quantity of different bits of stuff you want to stick in the shell it will arguably be less. Remember, you have a fixed amount of energy which is propelling all of this. So, the more items that the energy is divided up between the less each one of them has. This is why fine bird shot has much less range than buck shot, which has less range than a slug because the energy is spread over more projectiles.

Now, at point blank, it isn't really going to matter.

As an aside, gently, remember this - professional ammunition people get paid good money to develop defensive loads for use by people who have crazed armed armored felons as part of their typical scenarios. Further, those special ops sort of groups, whether in police, military or private, will pay a premium (check the price of defense loads in anything compared to range loads) for those sorts of rounds.

If you are asking us about the effectiveness of a round which you are jigging up, what do you think the odds are that you know more than the people who design this stuff for a living in a really competative market?

Thinkingblade

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shotgun_sh ... hell_sizes

Shotgun shells are generally measured by "gauge", though in Britain and some other locations outside the United States the term "bore" is used with the same meaning. Rifles and handguns are almost always measured in "caliber", which is simply a measurement of the internal diameter of the barrel measured in millimeters or inches and, consequently, is approximately equal to the diameter of the projectile that is fired. By contrast, shotguns are usually measured by "gauge", which is the weight, in fractions of a pound, of a pure lead round ball that is the same diameter as the internal diameter of the barrel.

For example, a shotgun is called 12-gauge because a lead sphere that just fits the inside diameter of the barrel weighs 1/12 of a pound. This measurement comes from the time when early cannons were designated in a similar manner—a "12 pounder" would be a cannon that fired a 12 pound (5.5 kg) cannonball; inversely, an individual "12-gauge" shot would in fact be a 1/12 pounder (38 g). Thus, a 10-gauge shotgun has a larger-diameter barrel than a 12-gauge shotgun, which has a larger-diameter barrel than a 20-gauge shotgun, and so forth.

No.of lead balls in one pound: 12
diameter of the requisite pure lead ball: 0.73" (18.5 mm)

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index ... 841AA1GBue

3" 1oz slug vs. 3" 00 buckshot for bear protection (12 gauge)?

One Dollar asked 2 years ago

Which would you choose and why?

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Best AnswerAsker's Choice

Bear Crap answered 2 years ago

Forget the buckshot. Each buckshot ball has less energy than a .38 special. In fact it has around 250 ft lbs per pellet;
http://www.thehighroad.org/archive/index...
I looked up the energy of buckshot and its from 170 foot pounds to as high as 240 ft lbs per pellet. Another way to figure this is divide the energy of the shotshell by the number of pellets. In the case of 00 buck with 9 pellets you divide the 2000 ft lbs or so by 9, this results in about 222 ft lbs. That’s about the energy of a .380 pistol.
There have been instances where a person shot a black bear just a few yards from them several times with 00 buckshot and the bear was still able to move just fine. I have seen it fail on black bears that weighed hardly 300 pounds. There are a few instances where it did kill a black bear because one or more pellets entered the brain at point blank range. And there are documented cases where a black bear was shot numerous times with buckshot and when they finely killed it and skinned it out they found most of those buckshot balls just under the hide.
The problem is buckshot will not penetrate deeply enough for a quick kill, slugs will. This is why in some states buckshot is illegal to hunt bears with.

People who advocate buckshot for bears are placing others lives in danger.

I have a great deal of experience with bears. I don’t give a crap about best answer but I DO care about people not getting killed by a bear like a dear friend of mine did. And if buckshot preformed so badly on black bears just imagine how it would do on a grizzly.

Here in Alaska you will find locals and law enforcement load their 12 ga shotgun with slugs for bear. Buckshot is not bearshot. So load that puppy up with slugs. I prefer the 12ga 3 inch magnum 1 oz or heaver slugs. But the 2 ¾ inch slug shells will do.
Source:
I am a retired Alaskan big game guide, have hunted black bears and Griz for years.
I know my bears, I have to they are every place I go in Alaska and are on my property every year.

http://world.guns.ru/ammunition/smooth- ... ges-e.html

You get an average of 3.166 KJ of muzzle energy. Which is acceptable since we're dealing with point blank range, which means the mass is still largely one big group of ballsand seems to act more or less like one single element for a brief amount of time. This is interesting once compared to the values I posted here:
http://www.starfleetjedi.net/forum/view ... f=5&t=1542

That they are far from useless and employed with a modicrum of intellgience could actually defeat the rather straightfoward and simplisitic Terminators.

Based on wishful thinking.
Time to stick with reality. T-800s far from being stupid (I think all movies shall largely demonstrate that).
But I guess that clones and their superior intellect will put it to good use, like to assault the machines with witty remarks perhaps?
Because, certainly, the absurdity of the Christophsis charge will forever stick in my mind.
This is nothing very new either since the whole bay lagoon battle at Kashyyk didn't look that well thought out either, with both forces charging at each other, even the one on the defensive, with the massive star destroyer sitting in plain sight a few km behind.

The thing you miss is that if the LAATs are to fly unspotted, because of the size of the city or else, it also means that they won't be dropping clones anywhere close to the machines.

Finding and converging upon a footbased army is far different than intercepting an aircraft.

My point is that if they don't want to be spotted, they'd have to drop clones at a good distance, a very large one, and that leaves the clones condemned to proceed on foot from there.
To their dooom, of course.

Oh yes, nothing. Clones approach machines, try to sneak, they're more mobile but it changes nothing in the end.

Actually it would likely be closer to a LAAT screaming in softening them up with missiles before the Clone Troopers deploy and finish turning them to scrape metal.

Like HKTs were not going to lay down defensive fire, and HKAs magically would not intervene.
Of course, if clones ever are to deploy somewhere, you haven't demonstrated that they could take down terminators.
What I see here, is that you're imagining scenarios that won't come to fruition.

If T-800s have to get inside each damned building to find the clones, clones would have to assume the same.

I have said nothing about the T-800s having to get inside "each damned building". I have posulated the Clones are more posed to exploit that enviroment and the Terminators, being foot based, are more vulnerable to it.

Yes, they'd be more tempted to get inside buildings. And then what?
Shoot from windows or roofs?
With their crappy aim and weak firepower?
They'd have more chance to kill terminators by jumping and landing on them.

In this silly game of cat and mouse, I largely give the advantage to the machines indoors, sorry.

And in any game of anything but simple brute force I lean towards the Clones. Skynet has not impressed me with its battle prowess or the independent thinking it allows its soldiers.

The brute force part is solved on the infantry level by the sheer superiority of machines.
Although HKTs are the most useless unit there (unless they have hidden missiles we never see), the vehicle domain is covered by the superiority of HKAs.

I'm not sure where you get the idea that the missile run was a fire and pray kind of tactic.

Your plan is to find an enemy you have, at best, a general idea where they are at, converge upon it quickly enough to destroy the bulk of the enemy's conviently bunched togather troops before being overwhelmed by the enemy air units you have repeatedly argued are far superior in air to air operations. Unless you have one helluva example of Clones possesing a forward air command there is no way this is going to be anything but a hectic mess.

Because it's going to get better once the machines are fully deployed and all robots on full alert? Oh.
As I said several paragraphs above, your clone army is far from being discrete even when simply on the move. Womp chomp and vvrrrrbbbrrrr in a desert city hardly are subtle.

I'd expect the clones to be smart enough to spot the enemy first and try to take down as many as possible, on focusing on the heavy units first you know?

Your honestly expecting to catch HK-As on the ground or to fight them head on?

I'd honestly try to blast Skynet's forces ASAP.
Otherwise they'll be the ones finding the GAR -- which, anyway, is what I consider will happen because HKAs are, above all, HUNTER killers.
Or how do you expect clones to hide their noisy machines from the HKs' sensors?
Tough eh?

Besides, having watched T1 again, it is actually confirmed that HKs DO have IR sensors for night patrols. They seem to act like fiendish dogs, especially the aerials.
With that in mind and with the behaviour shown in T4 and how Reese escaped a HKA in T1, it's clear that the HKAs are vicious once on the run, but rather simple minded.
The trouble is that the clones have never been shown to come out on top of enemies displaying any particular form of good enough tactical acumen.

They win against droids because they are probably built to suck, literally, giving the GAR a chance to win against an enemy of massive proportions, which is all good for war propaganda.
The droids have the resilience of a redfish against a grenade: you can shoot down the run-of-the-mill B1 droid by shooting it anywhere in head or torso, and that pulls one done for good, despite the fact that we know their "head" and body can work separately. Even Force pushes which we don't even see or hear compress metal take droids down easily.
CIS droids are just an excuse for the Republic to waste tibanna gas.
The reasons for the droids sucking that much are irrelevant though, and the observations of battle events are what matters.
Clone troop deployment hardly shows any kind of subtlety either in the vast majority of cases. It's not like they have much to do aside from "drop me here" and "I'll walk to objective A".
This will not suffice to evade Skynet's machines.

But if you consider this a frantic push and even "unlikely to be effectively coordinated", then they're toasted. You have precisely removed them the only way to even the field against the HKs, especially the HKAs.

In your opinon. My evaluation of the topic, obviously, differs.

An unsubstantiated opinion is barely acceptable at the very beginning of a debate.
We're way past that point, in case you didn't notice.

Heavy repeaters and rocket launchers are actually only seen in the CGI show. That is, after seeing legions after legions of clones not using such weapons.

We see a solitary battle in AOTC and only fragments of some others in ROTS. So we do not see legions of anything. One could certainly review the Clone Wars and try and make some sense to the distribution of heavy weapons but trying to result to some rules lawyering to try and effectively erase them from existence is low.

HAHAHA
Stop lying, we do see legions.
We see entire regiments of clones at Geonosis, in plain daylight. Not a single of them carries a single damned rocket launcher or some original blaster weapon.
http://images2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb2 ... Charge.jpg
http://cdn2.planetminecraft.com/files/r ... 484110.jpg
http://images.wikia.com/starwars/images ... rocket.jpg
We see plenty of squads in ROTS, never do we see them using those so much needed weapons.
Odds are so totally against the use of those exceptionnal weapons that they can safely be discarded sa total outliers, certainly not part of the standard gear mentionned in the OP.
Probabilities are a bitch, I know.

As a whole, it would be nothing more than a mistake to believe that I restricted evidence to Salvation, really.

Between the two of us you do seem to cite Salvation almost exclusively.

Because it is quite rich in content, especially as far as war-type scenarios are concerned. Is that surprising?
But other movies do very well for a study of resilience.

Now, I'm not remembering when I said I'd limit the evidence to the first two movies. It's possible I typed that, but I can't find it again.

I've never asked you to limit it to the first two movies, have in fact posted evidence from all four movies, so I don't know where this is coming from.

Edit: If you mean in refrence to the T-800

No issue then as that should be the 850 series Terminator rather than the 800. And in any event I intended these to be the Terminators from One and Two, the kind you can crush, blow up and dissolve in molten lead without any mini-nuke explosions.

In TS, the nuclear fuel cells are intended for T-800s.
Although that was quite silly.
T1 and T2 bots, ok.

Thanks.

There are few things I'd like to cover about those post T2 fuel cells.
First of all, terminators formerly used Iridium nuclear-energy cell. Likely cold fusion, if you want (data obtained from the novelization of the first movie).
Let's quote the entire data set:

The Series 800 Terminator is powered by an iridium nuclear-energy cell.

The cell could supply enough power to run the lights of a small city for a day and could allow a T-800 to operate at full power for twenty-four hours per day for 1,095 days.

It could last significantly longer than this if the unit dropped off-line into economy mode. In this mode, power was cut to 40 percent of nominal function.

Compact energy sinks collected and stored excess energy for later use, optical systems switched to infra-red only and motivation units lost 40 percent of hydraulic pressure as the pumps slowed. Combat situations notwithstanding, the T-800 has a functional period of 120 years on one power cell.

It's either that, or some nuclear device that's unknown, or a super duper battery.
in T2 it's again said to be a power cell, which does provide a "liefspan" of 120 years (max?).

Anything else would be too problematic in terms of size and power, and exhaust.
In T3, the fuel was hydrogen. Fusion is obviously the method for power production.

Secondly, nuclear explosions don't happen just because you expose nuclear fuel to some pressure and some heat.
You have to attain very specific high levels of pressure and heat, and this has to be focused and confined.
Thing is, you could most logically crush and melt a billions termies before ever triggering the slightest nuclear reaction.
How the fuel cell of the T-850, once damaged, started to turn into a bomb (aside from plot fiat) is quite hard to explain.

Thirly, the process in T3 which led to the explosion of a fuel cell seems rather odd, because we're facing a case where the fuel in question was almost like transmutating into its own supercritical mass.
Nuclear fuel isn't supposed to be a ticking bomb. Hydrogen doesn't do that by any chance. It's got plenty of energy to deliver, but under very specific and hard to obtain circumstances!
The T-X was built to destroy other machines. Skynet had built T-X for that purpose, and it was superior by all means. Even the T-850s was obsolete.
It appears that massively overtaxing a fuel cell in T3, like ordering an overload, induces a reaction that a cascade of particles which themselves trigger an alteration in nearby molecules and all neutrons start bouncing around like crazy, more and more, with some kind of reflecting process happening. This phenomenon must be inherent to the taxing of power out of the fuel. Under normal levels, this threshold, I suppose, is never crossed.
But to go supercritical, the whole fuel cell or perhaps the outmost layers at least, begin to form a crude neutron reflector.
And then, somehow, a tamper even has to manifest. I doubt it would be fissible, so that would be shitty to emphasize the explosion, but the alloy would be dense enough to provide the barrier needed. In the case of the 850 in T3, the fuel cells were already encased in metal. Although the mass would be terribly small, maybe it might suffice to produce the reaction resulting into an explosion such as seen in the desert (hard to peg, IEDs have been shown to produce large explosions).
But it just doesn't happen *like that*.
So there's no reason for it to happen anytime a Terminator is destroyed. You actually pretty much kill any chance to achieve such a reaction, because it requires a form of controlled environment and, still, fragile conditions.
Although that's totally weird to me, the fact that Skynet found a technology where the smallest fuel cell can build its own supercritical mass and turn into a mini-nuke is impressive.

Now, that said, we can go back to TS.
In that movie, the first explosions were of a very low level, and oddly spread. This suggests that if the fuel cells are the source of those explosions, they did not blow up properly.
Either the nuclear reaction was very, very limited, or it didn't happen and therefore we'd have to consider the fuel used by Skynet to be somewhat volatile, assuming it's exposed to some kind of high explosive.
Otherwise, even when exposed to pressure and heat (like dropping in a laval pool), nothing like that would ever happen.
The second option is the one of low nuclear reaction: most of the fuel is actually wasted and minute quantities of it ever undergo a chain reaction.
We still have to assume that the fiber John uses is that kind of high explosive. Once directly put into contact with the fuel, it can eventually provide enough heat and pressure for a limited amount of time against the first millimeters of nuclear fuel closest to the explosive fiber, basically reproducing the triggering mechanism of a kiloton atomic bomb.
We'd have to assume John knew this would be a limited explosion. Therefore, the final super explosion at the end was something else which he didn't count on.

In the end, the T-700/800 in TS is perhaps a hybrid design, a step above the T-600, but with a newer fuel cell design.

You deny the GAR the only tactic that will exploit their best strength, under the form of missiles used as fire and forget, perhaps all that in order to enforce some kind of fantasy of a romanticized tactic involving AT-TEs climbing on walls.

Ok, I'm getting a little steamed. I point out AT-TEs can climb walls and that it is an advantage. You argue that there is no point to it and we get into a little scuffle over it.

I have at no point argued the Clones will do it, merely that they could, and I certainly don't consider it the end all be all.

Climbing walls offers no advantage for all inconvenients I presented. Aside from building instability and the fact that puts the walkers in a very exposed position, either to hit with a larger profile btw than if they were on the ground, the element of surprise is totally screwed by the fact that they walkers make too much noise and shooting at building will also make smoke and likely start fires.
And they're terribly slow.


Now, looking at the heroes again, let's think about the T-X here.

SW computer tech is hardly that advanced: hydrospanners, wires and even an artificial limb that could be of a Skynet infiltration M101, a T-X might manage to hack any GAR vehicle.
The T-X processor would have to acquire a compatibility by reading the vehicles electronic protocols first. This could take some time to achieve, or not. It's hard to tell, because we can't really pick the achievement times from the terminator movies since Skynet knows that technology.
However, electronic computers still process the same way once the core code is understood.
The T-X is already a dangerous oponent to Anakin: it can hit and possesses various weapons, including plasmathrower and chemical gun, and even some kind of slug-launcher it seems.
But in close combat, unless it manages to hit Anakin rapidly, I cannot see the machine surviving more than a couple seconds once the Jedi is on top of it and waves his lightsabre.
However, the T-X can manage the army on a level that is inaccessible to the Jedi.
The T-X is an infiltration model so it follows that it would do its best to acquire forces to its advantage, like it did in T3.
Most likely, it would try to acquire a few vehicles. A LAAT is the prime candidate, mostly because they'll be the first to come close to Skynet's forces and they'd be deploying troops at some point anyway.
The T-X just has to mimic a clone trooper. The T-X took a rocket at its right shoulder and that didn't even incapacitate it.
The impact during the pursuit damaged the fragile appendage and merely incapacitated its main weapon system. Needless to say, clonetroopers stand no chance to take it down.
The robitch also has the firepower to take down a LAAT or her own, as demonstrated with her energy cannon which she uses to blow a variety of things up, displaying a firepower that's already in exess of the Geonosian fighters' spits.
So the T-X isn't useless, even if it couldn't hack into GAR vehicles. Well of course if it could, oh boy what a mess in perspective we'd have here, lol, no Jedi could handle that.

[sonofccn]

Obviously if I sense that there's some obtuse mind behind silly arguments that makes my bullcrap meter reach for the stars, I'm not going to display any kind of friendly affection

Well I have no right to judge, having gotten plenty steamed in this thread, but what the hell. Personally I think you take this whole thing way to seriously and suck whatever fun there is from these romps. And, speaking my opinion, I think you are unfairly harsh and critical on factions you dislike, like Clone Wars, and more leniant on the ones you prefer.

This is getting way too long.

Well then I do apologize. These things do sometimes seem to get carried away. I'll try and keep this compact. While I conceed nothing I do not forsee anything constructive in furthering this so I'm calling it an end. Have fun.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Obviously if I sense that there's some obtuse mind behind silly arguments that makes my bullcrap meter reach for the stars, I'm not going to display any kind of friendly affection

Well I have no right to judge, having gotten plenty steamed in this thread, but what the hell. Personally I think you take this whole thing way to seriously and suck whatever fun there is from these romps.

I don't take it any more "seriously" than you do, really, judging by the length of your replies.
Now I can understand that the fun is lessened when the side you're longing for would obviously get quite a beating. ;)

And, speaking my opinion, I think you are unfairly harsh and critical on factions you dislike, like Clone Wars, and more leniant on the ones you prefer.

Everyone has an opinion. Now, you probably know that logic, observation and evidence rank higher when it comes to such debates, right?

I think it's quite obvious that The Terminator wouldn't have been the same movie if it had featured a B1 battle droid as the main nigh unstoppable antagonist. :P