The thread:
http://forums.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=151489
Started with Jack Fetch asking:
At some point appeared the topic of Imperial tactics, and old recurring topic.Jack Fetch wrote: Just curious about this.
Has there ever been any explanation given in either official stuff or fandom for why the At-At guns had practically no affect on the ground in the Hoth assault?
Or likewise the Snowspeeders. With the typical power of star-wars guns could they not have simply blasted holes in the ground beneath the At-At's feet?
I've tried searching on here, SD.net and a few other places but couldn't find anything specific.
As I was about to reply to Lord Vespa's last post (number 70, in date), I got the following message:
Obviously someone couldn't handle his not-so-convincing claim to be challenged and went whining in his mother's skirts.You have been banned for the following reason:
Rules violations in tech debates (sniping, illogical argumentation.)
Date the ban will be lifted: Aug 8th 2009, 10:00pm
One has to love the claim about sniping -the hell, I precisely address all the points-- and illogical argumentation is only an opinion from a mod who obviously didn't pay much attention to the arguments, or perhaps didn't even care, and wanted an absurd nonsensical excuse to slam a ban right here.
But what was the deal, really? Perhaps I could know the mod, if he had posted in the thread.
So I refreshed the thread and here was Cpl_Facehugger intervening (oh the surprise), with the wisdom for which we all know him, surely:
Well... well... well. I don't know where to start from.Oraghan, take a week off for arguments that have little to do with technical details and are poorly reasoned to boot. "we don't know that it was AT-ATs firing on the base" when AT-ATs (and AT-STs) are the only things we saw at all isn't an acceptable argument. The term 'appeal to ignorance' comes to mind.
Forgetful, take an infraction for a post here that contributes nothing to the thread.
Evil Author, you too.
Sayle, you made me laugh so I'll let you off with an informal warning.
All others: The ban finger is itchy. Keep that in mind when you continue this thread.
Thank you for your cooperation.
Once again, I am truly amazed by the capacity of a warsie mod to show a great deal of intelligence and showing his total detachment to the topic. He surely got pissed off, obviously, so he fell he had to stop me before I could reply.
But let's see his points, one by one.
Never mind that thus far, in the thread, I have been the one presenting most technical data, including numbers and several pictures and sources.Oraghan, take a week off for arguments that have little to do with technical details and are poorly reasoned to boot.
As for the appreciation about my arguments, I have to say that considering past debates with CPL, I should probably take that as a compliment.
And yet we never saw them firing at the base."we don't know that it was AT-ATs firing on the base" when AT-ATs (and AT-STs) are the only things we saw at all isn't an acceptable argument.
The term 'appeal to ignorance' comes to mind.
And yet, as a great EUphile, he seems to miss the list of other Imperial units present at this battle. I suppose they're not even worth the mention. Nevermind that the thread never started with a criterion such as movie canon only.
Pot Kettle Black. I just happen not to be a mod.Forgetful, take an infraction for a post here that contributes nothing to the thread.
I'll let you appreciate the standards of moderation here.Evil Author, you too.
Sayle, you made me laugh so I'll let you off with an informal warning.
All others: The ban finger is itchy. Keep that in mind when you continue this thread.
Thank you for your cooperation.
And CPL_Facehugger, I know you'll be reading this.
You have my most sincere finger, and I'll see you in one week.
And, anyway, the reply I intended to post:
What is the source for this bolded part?Lord Vespasian wrote:Well, as I pointed out, Leia ordered the ground troops to cover the fighters, which were presumably near the transport landing zone, which is near the ion cannon. So yeah, there would have been some resistance. Not enough to stop the AT-ATs, but they're not particularly fast anyway.What resistance? They had nothing before, they were running away, their forces nearly destroyed, and the Imperials unstopped.
It's certainly not in agreement with the WOTC data.
Not that I'm feeling bound to WOTC's guide...
According to this schematic, for all the parts that are right, yes.Ok. So it's a couple of kilometers away?As for the position of the Ion Cannon, a schematic in a RPG guide Rebellion Era Sourcebook, from WOTC, shows the following
Now, the main power generator was a couple of kilometers away as well, but it didn't prevent Veers from shooting at it.
More importantly, according to this source, the ion cannon was totally isolated.
There's no reason why Vader's transport, which if it was a Lambda shuttle, would be well suited for the bombardment task, or any other troop transport shuttle or TIE, couldn't go off shooting that damn globe.
And although you recognize Vader's personnal involvment (and we all know his bad temper as well), you don't see how putting ships around the landing zone and at the exit would help him capture his target, or the princess if she were to jump on any random transport.Vader probably couldn't have cared less about the transports. Capturing Luke or, failing that, the Falcon was all he cared about. It's not exactly unlike him to go off and do his own thing while a battle's raging around him.We're supposed to think that the Imperials had not enough numbers to attack the shieldless landing zone, yet Vader still went down there. Then, as he wandered into Echo Base, no one would actually help him, making sure that no one would leave.
The claim that he wouldn't care about the transports is silly, considering that his targets could very well escape onboard them. Actually, many high ranking Rebels did, and Leia would have been among them, if it has not been for some lumps of ice.
Of course Vader could not know if Luke would be on one of those transports either, or on the Falcon, or aboard any of these X-wings for the matter of fact.
However, conveniently, you set Vader as a guy convinced that the Falcon was all there was to chase.
Fortunately I think most people would understand it's absurd.
He was even lucky, in fact, that Leia and Han ended on the same ship. The same ship which escaped because no one had the exit covered.
If at least there was a sign of DCA or something beyond the X-wings that were not enough to cover even two transports at once!
The hell. Arbitrary?Moreover, so far as the novelization says, only eighteen Imperial ships left Hoth (six Star Destroyers, a dozen supporting ships). With at least two knocked out by the ion cannon and at least eighteen transports to chase, yeah, I'd say they're pretty busy. So no, I don't see anything wrong with them not attacking that final transport in the arbitrary time frame you've insisted they could have easily attacked it in.
You think there is anything arbitrary between the moment Veers blows the generator up and the time Luke, on foot, finally reaches the take off zone, or if you want a short timeframe, between the moment the Imperial land at Echo Base and the time Luke slowly joins the departing ships?
I can rewatch TESB without a problem, but that part does not make sense. A Sith Lord does not assume the lead of a search and capture mission, to grab the leaders who'd remain till the end, only to leave a major grouping of ships that have no departed, plus a whole gaping exit, completely unassaulted.
It's retarded.
If at least there was any dsecription of even some kind of DCA around that place and on the the mountain ridge, preventing any flying ship the Imperials had used to get down there, that would really help.
At least you could continue to insist that not a single warship could have been shooting at the North entrance from orbit eitber because of the ion cannon or them being busy catching all the transports.
This does not matter. Refer above, about Vader's goal and the stupid idea of giving Rebels a chance to get off, completely counter productive to Vader's mission.Sure it is. Of course, practically every transport had already lifted off before the shield was taken down.It's still much easier to capture or shoot down ships when they're on the ground and all parked in the same spot, then spread throughout the Hoth system
See, you can't have both ends. If there were no ships available to shoot at the base, there's not going to be anyone to catch Luke and co when they depart.
That would explain Luke's easy escape once in space, but certainly not the total freedom the Rebels benefited from outside of the base, on the ground, and the lack of barrage fire at the North entrance.
Yet there was one sd alread there to chase the MF, plus two others to cut her path.
That does not really sound that there were no warships to intercept the remaining fleeing cargos.
It's not assumption, it's logic.Maybe they did. Maybe they didn't. Again, just a pile of assumptions on your part.And with all that prep and Vader being called for landing, the Imperials could still not manage to attack the ion cannon by a surprise counter attack.
If they didn't shoot the cannon, then the warships wouldn't approach. However, it makes little sense that by now, no Imperial unit would have brought this cannon down. As I said, even a warship coming from outside the ion cannon's LOS could have attacked it, if only by shooting the mountain cliff from orbit or using collateral damage with constant bombardment around said cannon.
If the cannon was down, the situation makes even less sense.
You're playing the dumb one but you perfectly know this method wouldn't require much intelligence to conceive.I'm sure you think you have a point in there somewhere...Now, the Imperials didn't know the Rebels had such a weapon. But once the gun was fired, there was nothing to mask the origin of the fire to the Imperial forces.
Also, they'd know very quickly how many of such defenses the Rebels had, based on how many times they got fired at, and where those bolts came from.
Two star destroyers down from the same gun, it doesn't require a genius to know how many guns are firing.
You'll just have to pardon me for not thinking "I think they should have done X in Y amount of time!" is very convincing.
You have two clear targets that are problematic to the supremacy of Imperial forces: the shield and the gun. I don't think it's that hard to understand that taking down that gun ASAP would also be an advantage, if not a priority, just after the shield.
Now your reaction should not be surprising, considering that warsies like you seem rather fine with the Imperials demonstrating utter stupidity in their tactical choices.
Another silly point of your I guess. It's not like the ion cannon was a sitting duck with a low rate of fire, with no sure idea where the Executor could come from, especially during an assault where sensors might be jammed or even damaged.Sure, Executor could take more damage than any ISDs, but that doesn't translate into your assumption that she can take out the ion cannon before it takes her out.Don't you think that just the fact that the ship is gigantic wouldn't help just a bit to soak up some shots before failing, eh?
Then, on the other hand, as I said, you have the Executor, obviously capable, just by its sheer size, to take more shots than the two or three that took care of an ISD.
I don't even see why the Executor would be too slow to fire at the cannon, since it would obviously be looking forward to this quick shot. But I guess warsie logic is at apain, again.
Now, that's an Executor that's either 17.6 or 19 km long, bristling with weapons, knowing where its target is, and capable of coming in from any vector, at any angular speed.
Funny how those who loved to claim that those destroyers, capable of super accuracy, super firepower and ultra-accelerations/decelerations, would suddenly lose all those fantastic abilities against a fixed gun with a low ROF, firing bolts which themselves didn't travel fast enough to hit a ship that would be moving faster than a beached whale. :rolleyes:
Oh yes it does, and that's rather easy to understand why, by the way. So I will tell you to refer above, for I have made the point even clearer about Vader's involvement and the stupidity of not assisting him.This doesn't actually have anything to do with what you're responding to, so I'll just tell you to refer above.And the fact that Vader got down there wouldn't be of importance? He just did it for the kicks? Looking for brawling maybe?
And as I have already said several times, no, because at this point the shield was down.And, as I've said who knows how many times, until some undetermined amount of time beforehand, it was safely behind a shield and under the protection of a gun capable of knocking ships out of the sky.Also, that transport was of importance because it was huge, and much easier to capture on the ground, with all fighters pinned down, than in space.
But never mind!