Ground warfare

[Simon_Jester]

I suspect Juggernauts could have done the job (they're too big NOT to be effective as heavy tanks; their sheer size would make them a waste of money and resources if they couldn't handle the job of heavy armor).

But as E_F notes, AT-ATs are taller; speculatively, this may give them longer engagement range with direct fire weapons.

Juggernauts might have had to roll through the shield, encounter the Rebel trenches at relatively close range, where their antitank blaster turrets would have maximum effect. The Rebel weapons might still have been inadequate against the Juggernauts' armor, but neither we nor the Imperial commanders planning the assault can be sure of that- they didn't know what the heaviest Rebel antitank weapons would be.

Meanwhile, the AT-ATs were able to fire on the Rebel trenches from a long distance away. Granted, the Rebels could shoot back, but one might reasonably expect their weapons to be less effective from long range. Moreover, as I understand it (can't check a video clip right now) the AT-ATs were able to shoot shield generator over the heads of the Rebel defenders- whereas Juggernauts, lower to the ground, might well have had to go through the Rebels to get into a firing position on the shield generator.

Now, overall the Juggernauts would be more effective in many situations. But the AT-ATs do have a significant advantage of being able to shoot from farther away (at the price of being shot at from farther off). For purposes of designing a superheavy ground unit that's meant to beat up weaker ground units, this makes a lot of sense. You're maximizing your offensive capability and flexibility, at the cost of presenting a bigger target to enemies that probably can't kill your heavy units anyway.

So against a peer competitor (like CIS droid tank factories), the Juggernaut is a better design. But as a heavy fire support platform for what is essentially counter-insurgency, the AT-AT has some advantages... mainly as a mobile firebase capable of quickly destroying any opposition up to and including light or medium armor. Also as a command post that is effectively immune to man-portable weapons, even antitank weapons.

The real headscratcher is why or even how, having designed such a vehicle, with its crew compartment something like fifty feet in the air if not more... how do you make that a troop transport? It makes infinitely more sense as anything BUT a troop carrier. How would you even deploy troops from it? Does the AT-AT kneel? Do the troops abseil down from the torso on long lines?

[Eternal_Freedom]

The OT ICS mentioned deploying troops via drop cables out of side hatches.

[Elheru Aran]

IIRC, the drop cables are one option, as is kneeling. It's more of a heavy APC for deep-striking troops into a hot battle zone-- it can take a lot of fire so it can pass through the enemy lines and drop off its troops in the middle of the enemy. How it can do that without all the enemy troopers pot-shotting its soldiers as they're dangling in the air, I don't know... but its dual purpose as terror weapon explains a lot.

EDIT: And obviously if the walker finds a platform or rooftop on a rough level with its hatches, the troopers can just jump out on top and embark that way.

For the drop-cables, perhaps it deploys some kind of small force-shield at least around the hatch area, or the hatch is actually held outside of the body to protect people going through the door? The time they would be in the air is only a second or less, after all... they would be most vulnerable while exiting the vehicle (not to mention the potential for some bright boy to either throw a grenade or send a rocket through the hatch).

[U.P. Cinnabar]

IIRC, the drop cables are one option, as is kneeling. It's more of a heavy APC for deep-striking troops into a hot battle zone-- it can take a lot of fire so it can pass through the enemy lines and drop off its troops in the middle of the enemy. How it can do that without all the enemy troopers pot-shotting its soldiers as they're dangling in the air, I don't know... but its dual purpose as terror weapon explains a lot.

I.M.P.S., non-canon, though it is, demonstrated one possibility, that of having dedicated door gunners with E-Webs covering the troops fast-roping to the deck. The short film(s) in question also have scout walkers covering their flanks.

Also, according to the old EU, AT-ATs could also hold (I think) sixteen speeder bikes; mixed in with the walkers carrying troopers, the speeder bike-equipped AT-ATs could be used to secure the drop zone with biker scouts, while the other troopers fast-rope in.

Or, the Imps could use their scout walkers to secure the drop zones for the troopers in the AT-ATs.

[Simon_Jester]

Yes... but honestly, that doesn't really explain the problem. The AT-AT makes a lot of sense as a mobile command post and gun platform when fighting enemies who lack the firepower to seriously threaten it from ranges in excess of a kilometer or two. It does not make sense as a troop carrier. For that purpose, something lower to the ground, from which you could deploy troops with less... awkwardness... would make more sense.

[RogueIce]

Considering how utterly ineffective the rebel artillery and T-47 blasters were against the AT-ATs on Hoth, I can't help wonder what they were expecting the Empire to deploy against them. After all, the rebels identified the AT-ATs on site as Imperial walkers so it's not like they were some unfamiliar new superweapon, but Luke seemed surprised to discover that their armor was too strong for blasters.

It just seems paradoxical to me that they'd be so well-prepared at defending Echo Base against an Imperial bombardment, and yet so ill-prepared to mount an effective defense against an Imperial ground assault.

It may be that they didn't have access to weapons powerful enough to deal with AT-AT armor. To take a RL example, a bunch of guys with assault rifles (legit ones, not "assault weapons") and machine guns could handle light infantry in non-uparmored Humvees fairly well. But the moment a MBT shows up, they're utterly screwed. And if that's the only weaponry you have access to, well, you're in trouble.

As for the snowspeeders, who knows. We do know they were having trouble adapting them to the cold, so maybe they had to make some sacrifices on the amount of energy they could put through the blasters or something. So perhaps in more ideal conditions those blasters might have been enough, but they didn't have ideal conditions.

Or Luke just didn't know what the true strength/thickness of the AT-AT armor was, and neither did the Rebels. They don't have to be a secret superweapon for the Rebellion to have incomplete or faulty intelligence on the walkers' capabilities.

[Elheru Aran]

There were scout walkers on Hoth as well (one is seen briefly in the Special Edition versions), so that makes sense. It does mean that AT-AT's aren't quite capable of operating as APC's solely on their own though, but then nobody sends an APC on its own without support, do they?

One wonders why Vader's forces didn't bother to use speeder bikes, if they had the capability for it. Perhaps it was a case of simply not caring-- they knew well enough where the enemy forces were deployed and had a decent idea of where their target was, all they had to do was get there, shoot the shield generator, and land troops to take the base.

Though that does bring up an interesting thought. We never actually see troops deploy from the AT-AT's in the film, though that's the obvious implication. If you want to forget parsimony, perhaps there were repulsorlift troop transports/LAAT's just waiting on the AT-AT's to blow up the shield generator before they flew in to drop troops? That would have been a simple way to do the job, and if for whatever reason the AT-AT's fail and get destroyed, you didn't lose a bunch of stormtroopers in the mix.

Another thought re deployment: If they're capable of kneeling low enough (someone should ask fractalsponge if he's figured that out yet), they could potentially extend some kind of ramp from their side, or use the hatch as part of a ramp. It would make sense, in such a context, to orient the AT-AT so that its broad side protects deploying troopers (open the hatch on the side that is *not* taking fire). The ICS explicitly depicts fast-roping, which is mildly absurd, but what can you do.

[U.P. Cinnabar]

Why would fast-roping from an AT-AT be mildly absurd, when modern air-assault troopers can fast rope from a hovering helicopter thirty feet off the deck? Just curious.

As for the kneeling to deploy, I think I've seen this in the SW:Battlefront series of games. Don't know for sure, as it's been a while since I've played Battlefront.

[NecronLord]

Juggernauts:

Juggs have missiles. They far out-range the AT-AT, having a range of 30Km (RotS ICS) which is beyond the line-of-sight range from the top of an AT-AT on an earthlike planet, even on flat terrain - no, being tall doesn't do anything except expose the AT-AT to enemy fire and maybe provide some protection against landmines.

As for maintenance, while that may be an element of truth in that, the design is intrinsically easier to construct. You could make a replica of the drive system of the Jugg with off-the-shelf parts in the school workshop I went to ten years ago. I wouldn't know where to begin with the multiply-rotatable legs of an AT-AT.

The Jugg is also double the AT-AT's length (standard model, at least, maybe not the Rebels one?) and presumably able to carry heavier armour.

As for the drive train being exposed; you can shoot artillery guns at the AT-AT drive train.

As with all mechas, AT-ATs can only really be explained by political/religious factors. Going by EU media, lots of war machines from different cultures are built with scariness over effectiveness in their design (B1 battle-droids are designed to look scary by Geonosians, the droid Tri-fighters and HMP gunships by Collicoids, at least) and presumably the big-dog design of the AT-AT is another one of these.

AT-ATs and what rebels know about them

Remember there are at least three canonical models of AT-AT in use, the one in Empire Strikes Back, the one in Rebels - note the rear gun on top and ball mounts - and the short-shinned thing that Rey lives in. While they may not be contemporary, it's possible that the Empire model was more armoured than others they'd encountered.

[Captain Seafort]

While they may not be contemporary, it's possible that the Empire model was more armoured than others they'd encountered.

Another possibility is that the ESB model is shielded while the standard models aren't - it would explain why Luke commented that their armour was too strong for blasters, when the screenshot I posted above seems to show a shield flash.

[Micro-Balrog]

To add to what has been said:

Yes, some of the measures which rebel forces take at the battle of Hoth look like they're not particularly planned. The whole "try to trip mecha with ropes" thing doesn't strike me as something that a trained professional force would do - a professional force would have some kind of anti-AT-AT weapon.

But the history of rebel forces around the world - and generally, the history of all outmatched military forces - is full of tales which boil down to "we didn't have the proper weapon for the job, so we improvised some weird thing and it worked."

This seems relatively credible in broad terms to me.

P.S. Another piece of evidence for the idea that the walkers are shielded is the fact that once they shoot at a downed walker, it explodes quite handily.

[biostem]

I always wondered why they didn't just launch a couple Y-Wings from the base and bomb the walkers from above their effective firing arc, (I didn't see any Imperial air support).

It is odd that the tripped walker was immediately susceptible to blaster fire from the snow speeders - I suppose the fall could have knocked out its shields.

[NecronLord]

Y-wings might be too valuable to risk on that kind of thing, instead of evacuating them.

[biostem]

Y-wings might be too valuable to risk on that kind of thing, instead of evacuating them.

What's weird is that, short of the walkers, the base wasn't actually under any imminent threat. Sure, the Imps could have tried to starve them out, but that would have taken a while. If they weren't willing to fire down on the planet, then I can't see why rebel fighters could simply stay above where the walkers could shoot and just bomb them out, (even if they cratered the terrain in front of them enough to make forward progression come to a crawl).

[Eternal_Freedom]

That does assume that Echo Base had any Y-Wings or any suitable ordnance; there is no sign that any of the X-Wings there had any proton torpedoes for instance.

[Sea Skimmer]

What would really be the point of trying to draw out the ground battle anyway? Seriously the real question is why they committed any ground forces at all past a couple of guys to man the expendable fixed guns, considering they appeared able to inflict almost zero delay on the Imperial Walkers anyway. And while we only saw a few walkers... even by the lowball WEG stats that Imperial force had plenty more to spare. The ICS locations portrayed the Hoth battle as being numerous fronts at once, which kinda made more sense to explain why so few walkers appeared at any one point. Rare case of the EU actually encouraging larger scale anything.

Since Hyperdrive is a thing, while only a few Imperial ships were in the blockade when the battle commenced ungodly hoards more would be able to arrive within hours making an unbreakable blockade. The rebels needed to evacuate personal and absolutely key equipment as quickly as possible, and considering the hyperspace capable fighters are both vital for escorting transports, to stop Imperial fighters the ion cannot cannot hit, and for future operations sending them out to do the ground battle would just be unwise at best. They themselves are key equipment, while the Empire might as well have unlimited AT-ATs.

[biostem]

Personally, I think a lot of the other Star Wars material kind of spoiled the battle of Hoth - If we looked at the walkers as some relatively new and unknown Imperial tech, then you can understand how the rebels would be caught so unaware.

Still, it doesn't excuse why the rebels didn't launch the freighters at low altitude, fly to the others side of the planet, then just leave unaccosted...

[Galvatron]

Why would fast-roping from an AT-AT be mildly absurd, when modern air-assault troopers can fast rope from a hovering helicopter thirty feet off the deck? Just curious.

As for the kneeling to deploy, I think I've seen this in the SW:Battlefront series of games. Don't know for sure, as it's been a while since I've played Battlefront.

I never assumed the AT-ATs carried troops. I always figured they landed with Vader shortly after Veers brought the shield down.

[Khaat]

Still, it doesn't excuse why the rebels didn't launch the freighters at low altitude, fly to the others side of the planet, then just leave unaccosted...

Make ready to land out troops beyond the energy shield and deploy the fleet so that nothing gets off that system. You are in command now, Admiral Piett.

I think the fleet had that covered. The first transport also didn't make any evasive maneuvers (or it could have been hit by the ion cannon), so maybe just "run for it!" was enough.

CONTROLLER
Sir, Rebel ships are coming into
our sector.

CAPTAIN
Good. Our first catch of the day.

[Galvatron]

I think the fleet had that covered. The first transport also didn't make any evasive maneuvers (or it could have been hit by the ion cannon), so maybe just "run for it!" was enough.

CONTROLLER
Sir, Rebel ships are coming into
our sector.

CAPTAIN
Good. Our first catch of the day.

Funny, I seem to remember them not catching much of anything, except a few shots from the rebel ion cannon.

[Khaat]

But they were deployed around the planet, which was my point: the Imperial fleet wasn't lined up like Napoleonic-era Man-o-Wars.

[Sea Skimmer]

Still, it doesn't excuse why the rebels didn't launch the freighters at low altitude, fly to the others side of the planet, then just leave unaccosted...

That assumes a small freighter in a thick atmosphere can out accelerate a giant warship that appears to be built around its engines in the vacuum of space. That does not strike me as likely, and once outside the shield and ion cannon arc of fire the freighter would still need to climb to reach a safe point to jump to hyperspace. It'd be completely vulnerable.

Going straight up under cover of the ion cannon gave them the shortest possible distance to cover, seems like the best plan to me. Had all freighters been loaded and ready to launch scattering in all directions might have had merit, but that doesn't not seem to be the case, ships seemed to still be loading even after the power generator was blown up. Thus the departure in the background of Luke's takeoff

[Eternal_Freedom]

I think the fleet had that covered. The first transport also didn't make any evasive maneuvers (or it could have been hit by the ion cannon), so maybe just "run for it!" was enough.

CONTROLLER
Sir, Rebel ships are coming into
our sector.

CAPTAIN
Good. Our first catch of the day.

Funny, I seem to remember them not catching much of anything, except a few shots from the rebel ion cannon.

Family Guy was right, that Captain really didn't know anything about fishing.

[Crazedwraith]

I always wondered why they didn't just launch a couple Y-Wings from the base and bomb the walkers from above their effective firing arc, (I didn't see any Imperial air support).

It is odd that the tripped walker was immediately susceptible to blaster fire from the snow speeders - I suppose the fall could have knocked out its shields.

Wedge approached from a specific angle and punched through the armour on the front of the fuselage, ie) the soft neck section. Usually covered by the head section with its guns to stop anyone getting to it.

[NecronLord]

What would really be the point of trying to draw out the ground battle anyway? Seriously the real question is why they committed any ground forces at all past a couple of guys to man the expendable fixed guns, considering they appeared able to inflict almost zero delay on the Imperial Walkers anyway.

But even the strength of the defenders might have dissuaded the empire from trying to bring say, Imperial Troop Transports, or AT-OTs that could have otherwise shortened the battle.

Of course, there's many defects in the rebel defences compared to what they could be (uncovered trenches, etc) but it seems reasonable to imagine that the empire was being cautious by sending in only the most heavily armoured units.

Still, it doesn't excuse why the rebels didn't launch the freighters at low altitude, fly to the others side of the planet, then just leave unaccosted...

That would mean they wouldn't get covering fire from the Ion Cannon.