Clone Wars CGI Series

[Estrecca]

A quick question:

They did the "hide AT-TEs in the asteroid" trick in the first part of the last story arc, but wasn't that also tried in the movie?

Closest thing in any of the movies would be using the SPHA-Ts in Geonosis against one of the fleeing Trade-Federation coreships/battlespheres and managing to bring it down.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Indeed, although the AT-ATs are really not that impressive. Their heavy armor grants them some nice defensive capabilities, but their design is so horribly flawd and silly that it is rather apparent why they're designed that way as opposed to the AT-AEs; they're meant to be scary, not tactically sound. That matches up with everything we know about the Empire though, so I don't really see the problem with that.

Actually, there isn't all that much that is tactically "sound" as far as SW is concerned. AT-AEs and AT-ATs are pointless precisely because someone with a little basic knowlege in tactics could employ trenches, pits and mines, special commandoes to slow down or destroy them. They're worthless, except for their armor, and even that is not all that impressive given the actual demonstrated firepower involved.
-Mike

In the CGI movie, an AT-TE's cabin is destroyed by a direct shot from those small spider droids, and yet those bolts hardly put out impressive firepower at all. In truth, AT-TEs, at shorter distances, would go down very quickly against a barrage of low powered bolt, and their main advantage is their abundant armament and their long range cannon.
But the whole walker design is rubbish anyway. And that's certainly not to start a debate on tanks vs mechs, but obviously, in a galaxy where repulsors are so well spread and standardized, one would use them, only to revert to wheels or tracks in proximity of any planetary shield.

[Mr. Oragahn]

I am interested in the solid asteroid bouncing off the forward shield/hull . . . that might not be a bad incident. See also the refire rates of most weapons.

I did a quick scaling on the matter and then ran the numbers:



All in all, you'll be hard pressed to get the incident beyond the terajoule range (more likely either double-digit gigajoule or triple-digit gigajoule). But yes, this is generally higher then what we see in visual Sci-fi. Momentum is a little more impressive, but then again this episode shows us that it's not momentum that's the problem but the kinetic energy. Why project shields double-front if the shield generator is the weak link?

My main question is did they switch the shields double front because they feared the asteroids, or because as they knew the Republic forces couldn't threaten the Munificents with an attack on their six, as the rocks would be a barrier, they could "snipe" the Venators which would traditionally spread their shields more balancedly, notably to avoid a bomber attack on their flanks or sterns?

Arguably, based on ICS yields, a Venator would fuse through that field and vape all asteroids in no time flat.
I recall the droids were worried about the low speed asteroid impacts - besides, this shows particle shields to be hull hugging as well.

EDIT: Alright, it seems photobucket both reduced the size of the pic, so it's not quite accurate.

Use the small "options" link located somewhere in the albums. It lets you redefine which standard your image is inspected about. Put it at 1 Mb size max, logically all your pictures should fit, and will be very wide. I know that, I had the same issue at SBC when my pictures for scalings didn't correspond to the true ones.
There's also a link that let's you define the type of links each picture is displayed with, including thumbnails.

[Mike DiCenso]

A quick question:

They did the "hide AT-TEs in the asteroid" trick in the first part of the last story arc, but wasn't that also tried in the movie?

Closest thing in any of the movies would be using the SPHA-Ts in Geonosis against one of the fleeing Trade-Federation coreships/battlespheres and managing to bring it down.

I think he's refering to the Clone Wars movie released about 2 months ago.
-Mike

[Mike DiCenso]

Indeed, although the AT-ATs are really not that impressive. Their heavy armor grants them some nice defensive capabilities, but their design is so horribly flawd and silly that it is rather apparent why they're designed that way as opposed to the AT-AEs; they're meant to be scary, not tactically sound. That matches up with everything we know about the Empire though, so I don't really see the problem with that.

Actually, there isn't all that much that is tactically "sound" as far as SW is concerned. AT-AEs and AT-ATs are pointless precisely because someone with a little basic knowlege in tactics could employ trenches, pits and mines, special commandoes to slow down or destroy them. They're worthless, except for their armor, and even that is not all that impressive given the actual demonstrated firepower involved.
-Mike

In the CGI movie, an AT-TE's cabin is destroyed by a direct shot from those small spider droids, and yet those bolts hardly put out impressive firepower at all. In truth, AT-TEs, at shorter distances, would go down very quickly against a barrage of low powered bolt, and their main advantage is their abundant armament and their long range cannon.
But the whole walker design is rubbish anyway. And that's certainly not to start a debate on tanks vs mechs, but obviously, in a galaxy where repulsors are so well spread and standardized, one would use them, only to revert to wheels or tracks in proximity of any planetary shield.

That gets into another issue all together, which is why AT-ATs or any "ground" SW vehicle would even bother having wheels, treads, or legs of any kind with repulsorlift tech so well established that Luke or anyone on backwater Tatooine could have a speeder that worked so reliably that no one gave it a second thought. The advantages of such a system are so obvious, too....
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

Obviously the CIS knows how to use repulsors a lot more than the Republic, or for some reason prefer this method. They put it on AATs, small droid transports, heavy droid transports, STAPs and droidekas (for displacement).
But they have walkers as well, wheeled vehicles and sort of tanks.

It's just that the Republic, in comparison, uses very little of the repulsorlift tech.
The republic forces only use them for speeder bikes. Otherwise, they use legs or wheels (Juggernauts).

Then you count the air units, and it's even on both sides.

[l33telboi]

Unlike the two last episodes, this one was great, once again. And there were as usual a few interesting tech related revelations.

The first one is the attack on the Venator-class stardestroyer. It's carried out by only a few vulture droids as well as three boarding vessels. The boarding vessels slam into the ship and tear through them like a hot knife through butter. But hold up, where did the shields go? Did the Vulture droids disable the shields or was the vessel caught off-guard? Either way something is amiss. If it's the former, then it's a repeat of fighters downing the shields of a capship. If it's the latter then it shows that Venators can miss detection incoming fighters, because Vulture droids don't have faster then light drives. Oh, and like said, those boarding vessels just ram straight through the outer hull of the Venator, and they weren't traveling several km/s or anything like that.

The Jedi in the episode do some pretty neat things, far above the feats they perform in the movies.

We also get a fight in the reactor room of a Venator, and I keep thinking there might be something substantial there when it comes to the power generation method of the vessel. But so far I've not seen it.

[Mike DiCenso]

We also get a fight in the reactor room of a Venator, and I keep thinking there might be something substantial there when it comes to the power generation method of the vessel. But so far I've not seen it.

Does it contradict the ICS or the EU even further as far as what a star destroyer's reactor is supposed to look like?
-Mike

[l33telboi]

Does it contradict the ICS or the EU even further as far as what a star destroyer's reactor is supposed to look like?
-Mike

Depends. If that large sphere which is labeled the main reactor is hollow, it could still work with what the episode showed us.

[Mr. Oragahn]

Was there a giant cube based puzzle in that room?

[l33telboi]

Was there a giant cube based puzzle in that room?

Que?

[Mr. Oragahn]

Was there a giant cube based puzzle in that room?

Que?

Crap, I messed up with the Doomgiver's communication array. :/

[GStone]

Well, from the last aired ep, there are boarding ships that just punch right through venator hulls. With the firepower levels of the EU, the kinetic energy resistance of those levels should have prevented pulverizing by boarding ships...unless they had a mini-hyperdrive. ;-P And even if the boarding ships were made with SW neutronium, the venator should have done better.

Also, the clonetroopers couldn't detect Ventress, as she was hiding in the room where she put the explosives.

[ILikeDeathNote]

Also, the clonetroopers couldn't detect Ventress, as she was hiding in the room where she put the explosives.

Uhh, you mean the reactor room? It's possible they didn't detect her because of the, ummmm, radiation in that room.

[GStone]

Okay, in that case, either they have weak/nonexistent sensors that the EU says they have or they have very shoddy reactor shielding.