Time to re-examine the Battle of Hoth

[ILikeDeathNote]

Some things I noticed while rewatching TESB:

- Luke's speeder survives at least a glancing blow from an AT-AT and is able to make a relatively soft crash landing. We don't know what setting the shot was set at, but it's safe to say it was somewhere in between "anti-infantry" settings and powerful enough to blow apart the DF-9 "anti-infantry turrets"

- Another speeder shot by AT-ATs initially survives in much the same state as Luke's speeder, but isn't so lucky on the landing, pretty much plowing straight into the ground

- The AT-AT that shot down Luke steps on the speeder and doesn't appear to exert a lot of force at all, only managing to smash the cockpit canopy.

- Same said AT-AT is blown up from the inside by a proton gernade; however, its HEAD explodes, despite the gernade being thrown in the walker's BODY, which remains intact

- Another AT-AT explodes violently when downed and shot up by speeders. Although explained by being a lucky shot at the neck joint, these two scenes simply don't make any sense (other than "Star Wars = explosions + backdrop of mysticism = cool!); in fact, they only make about as much sense as a tow cable not being made of neutronium being able to fell an AT-AT by being wrapped around its legs ;)

[Mike DiCenso]

Some things I noticed while rewatching TESB:

- Luke's speeder survives at least a glancing blow from an AT-AT and is able to make a relatively soft crash landing. We don't know what setting the shot was set at, but it's safe to say it was somewhere in between "anti-infantry" settings and powerful enough to blow apart the DF-9 "anti-infantry turrets"

Luke, it should be noted, has a personal deus ex machina in the form of the Force helping him to pilot to a safe landing, just as his father did decades prior with the landing of the Invisible Hand's bow section on Coruscant.

The power of the AT-AT bolts are generally calculated to be between a few megajoules to up to 100 megajoules per shot based on the hits on snow which leave small craters not much more than a third of a meter wide, with the ice flash evaporating into small clouds of steam and smoke.

The shot used to take out the shield generator was "maximum firepower" and the bolts fired by Veer's AT-AT were noticeably thicker than the anti-infantry shots. About double in size.

- Another speeder shot by AT-ATs initially survives in much the same state as Luke's speeder, but isn't so lucky on the landing, pretty much plowing straight into the ground

- The AT-AT that shot down Luke steps on the speeder and doesn't appear to exert a lot of force at all, only managing to smash the cockpit canopy.

That would suggest a few things; that namely the AT-AT's aren't as massive one might expect, or the armored snowspeeders are a bit tougher than they look, or both.

- Same said AT-AT is blown up from the inside by a proton grenade; however, its HEAD explodes, despite the grenade being thrown in the walker's BODY, which remains intact

Not surprising if the grenade set off a series of secondary internal system or munition explosions.

But this sort of thing shows off the general ineptitude of SW ground forces. In this case the Rebels should have had known all about the walkers, specially as there was a Clone wars predecessor. Luke certainly knew what he was looking for, and it was fairly easy for him to go unnoticed during the fight. If the Rebels truly wanted to screw over the Empire's efforts and given themselves more time, they'd have had special commandos waiting hidden in the snow for the walkers to come by, then fire cables, climb up, cut open the underside hatches on all the walkers, and then toss in explosives. Boom goes the walkers.

- Another AT-AT explodes violently when downed and shot up by speeders. Although explained by being a lucky shot at the neck joint, these two scenes simply don't make any sense (other than "Star Wars = explosions + backdrop of mysticism = cool!); in fact, they only make about as much sense as a tow cable not being made of neutronium being able to fell an AT-AT by being wrapped around its legs ;)

Conversely why didn't the Rebels ever dig anti-tank and walker traps, or plant a minefield. That kind of thing would really have slowed down General Veer's assault.
-Mike

[Mr. Oragahn]

They relied on their shield a bit too much.

Their frontal assault of the walkers was terrible as well.
It would have not increased the trip to the walkers that much by taking a parallel route and flanking them, or coming from the walkers' six more often.
As long as the shield was up, the rebels were more or less fine.
That said, their very low powered weapons weren't good enough.

Maybe using an X-wing would have been a good choice, but I guess it was all too risky to spend such fighters against the walkers.

As for the commandos and explosives, obviously it would have been good, but dispatching them in advance, with enough minutia without exactly knowing where the Imps would land, would have been tricky.

Transporting them to intercept the walkers would have been equally hard, especially since transport ships were all needed for something else, like living the base ASAP with the most rebel hardware that could be saved.

[ILikeDeathNote]

Some things I noticed while rewatching TESB:

- Luke's speeder survives at least a glancing blow from an AT-AT and is able to make a relatively soft crash landing. We don't know what setting the shot was set at, but it's safe to say it was somewhere in between "anti-infantry" settings and powerful enough to blow apart the DF-9 "anti-infantry turrets"

Luke, it should be noted, has a personal deus ex machina in the form of the Force helping him to pilot to a safe landing, just as his father did decades prior with the landing of the Invisible Hand's bow section on Coruscant.

The power of the AT-AT bolts are generally calculated to be between a few megajoules to up to 100 megajoules per shot based on the hits on snow which leave small craters not much more than a third of a meter wide, with the ice flash evaporating into small clouds of steam and smoke.

Yeah, I could've sworn I mentioned that these "anti-infantry" settings cause unarmored troopers to fall down from near misses, despite no real visible damage, almost as if they were actors ordered to fall down in front of a camera ;)

That would suggest a few things; that namely the AT-AT's aren't as massive one might expect, or the armored snowspeeders are a bit tougher than they look, or both.

My "gut" reaction would be to believe the former. If we assume that the canopy was made of the same material as the rest of the speeder, then there should've been more deformation, if not having been outright crushed, since the canopy was outright crushed. One could argue that the speeder's hull material was simply thicker, I suppose. But the end result looked rather like, well...a scale model foot gently stepping on a scale model speeder ;)

But this sort of thing shows off the general ineptitude of SW ground forces. In this case the Rebels should have had known all about the walkers, specially as there was a Clone wars predecessor. Luke certainly knew what he was looking for, and it was fairly easy for him to go unnoticed during the fight. If the Rebels truly wanted to screw over the Empire's efforts and given themselves more time, they'd have had special commandos waiting hidden in the snow for the walkers to come by, then fire cables, climb up, cut open the underside hatches on all the walkers, and then toss in explosives. Boom goes the walkers.

The AT-STs were there specifically for anti-infantry screening fire, so I suppose the Rebels would've believed it to be of limited success. This is why you find few, if any, incidents of Iraqi insurgents suddenly popping up from nowhere and hitting tanks with RPGs on open ground, and why you do find them doing this in urban terrain where there's craploads of cover. Even in snow, there isn't much place to hide as long as it's an open field.

I'm surprised that they, however, didn't do the one devistating tactic that is well heard of - placing IEDs (or mines) right along the path of the walkers. They know where they're coming from (look at the terrain of Hoth - there's mountains in the other direction, greatly narrowing possible routes of attack). They could simply bury proton torpedo warheads in a massive minefield and set them to detonate if something heavy enough to be an AT-AT walks over it. Even if the walker's foot completely misses it, it will still exert enough area ground pressure to be able to trigger it, especially if it's as heavy as Warsies say. Even if the proton warhead doesn't damage the AT-AT, it will collapse and bury it in a sinkhole. Meaning the assault is stopped, the Rebels now have a lot more time to evacuate, and there's little the Empire can do other than to send engineering and recovery teams.

Conversely why didn't the Rebels ever dig anti-tank and walker traps, or plant a minefield. That kind of thing would really have slowed down General Veer's assault.
-Mike

Well...there you go.

[ILikeDeathNote]

That said, their very low powered weapons weren't good enough.

That was a part of the point. The DF-9 anti-infantry tower is just that - an anti-infantry tower. The other turret (forgot its name) was an aging, obsolete design and may not have even been working at full power, but regardless was incapable of taking down an AT-AT anyway. They are Rebels after all, not strictly speaking a professional army, and they make do with what they have to make do with, especially on a hasty set-up like Echo Base.

Maybe using an X-wing would have been a good choice, but I guess it was all too risky to spend such fighters against the walkers.

That's another good point. In one of the X-Wing books, Wedge pretty much literally carves up AT-ATs with his lasers alone, and nevermind the proton torpedoes. Going by the X-Wing book, a single X-Wing should've been able to greatly slow the advance; then again, it has been suggested flight is greatly hampered within the influence of a shield, hence the walkers.

As for the commandos and explosives, obviously it would have been good, but dispatching them in advance, with enough minutia without exactly knowing where the Imps would land, would have been tricky.

That's the beauty of a minefield - if you're not sure which direction the enemy will go, just plant them everywhere (and besides, Echo Base was built against a mountain range, which at least cuts down the possible number of directions in half), plus you achieve the same results without risking the lives of commandos, and you stay concealed.

Or heck, just go back to the roots of why mines are even called mines - just dig a giant cave underneath the likely route of attack, and pack it with explosives - or just dig a giant cave period and let the AT-AT's own weight do the work.

[Mike DiCenso]

They relied on their shield a bit too much.

Their frontal assault of the walkers was terrible as well.
It would have not increased the trip to the walkers that much by taking a parallel route and flanking them, or coming from the walkers' six more often.

The overreliance on the shield is a big point. It did hold a while, but it was still not enough.

As for overland travel by the walkers, they only had a few choices of where to come in from, if the mountain terrain we see in the establishing shots is any indication. Which gets to another point I'll deal with later...

As long as the shield was up, the rebels were more or less fine.
That said, their very low powered weapons weren't good enough.

The output of the so-called DF-9's among other things, and the little blaster files held by the Rebel infantry were nothing up to the task of what they were fighting. Interestingly enough, the DF-9s look to about on the same level as the Trade Federation/CIS hovertank cannons.

Maybe using an X-wing would have been a good choice, but I guess it was all too risky to spend such fighters against the walkers.

As for the commandos and explosives, obviously it would have been good, but dispatching them in advance, with enough minutia without exactly knowing where the Imps would land, would have been tricky.

I never suggested using any of the big starfighters since they have to be used for escort operations.

The commandos don't need to know exactly where the Imperial walkers are going to be landed, just the approximate path they will take, and that is made fairly easy by the terrain the walkers have to follow in getting through the mountains to the Echo base glacial plain.

Transporting them to intercept the walkers would have been equally hard, especially since transport ships were all needed for something else, like living the base ASAP with the most rebel hardware that could be saved.

Why would you use the big GR-75 medium transport ships, when you can simply send around a smaller speeder craft, or have the commandos go out on the glacial plain on foot and dig into position. They had plenty of time to do so.
-Mike

[Roondar]

Just a small note:

Obviously the Walker can't have been exerting stupendous amounts of force on the speeder.

After all, it doesn't sink into the ground nor cause the kind of tremors/thuds you'd expect for it to do so. Remember, the surface area of the walker feet is relatively small compared to it's total size and that will (anti-grav tech set aside for the moment) limit how much it can weigh rather effectively.

[Airlocke_Jedi_Knight]

Maybe using an X-wing would have been a good choice, but I guess it was all too risky to spend such fighters against the walkers.

That's another good point. In one of the X-Wing books, Wedge pretty much literally carves up AT-ATs with his lasers alone, and nevermind the proton torpedoes. Going by the X-Wing book, a single X-Wing should've been able to greatly slow the advance; then again, it has been suggested flight is greatly hampered within the influence of a shield, hence the walkers.

I'm a little surprised that this wasn't mentioned in the x-wing books:
They aren't atmospheric fliers, so the atmosphere would slow them down and greatly hamper they're efficiency. Yes, the heavy laser canons and proton torpedoes of an x-wing would have been helpful, but the risk, at that point, would have been too great. The rebel alliance didn't exactly have money falling out of their pockets, after all.