That’s kind of like asking why the Allies didn’t use the amphibious stuff in the Battle of Dunkirk. The rebels were primarily trying to get the hell out of there, and the X-Wings were better suited (and indeed the only things they had) for getting pilots out of Dodge.
The resistance effort against the AT-ATs was mostly to try and buy a little time for the retreat. They knew they weren’t able to STOP the invasion, that’s why they started the evacuation at the same time as the counter-offensive. Resources to the counter-offensive were also probably minimal because fighting those forces was seen a near-suicide effort.
Tripping the AT-ATs was Luke’s idea, though. He passed it to Wedge when Dack to a bolt to the grill setting up for thier first attempt. Luke pulled the grapnel gun out of the cokpit of the snow speeder, so at least it was not something he was carrying around with him all the time.
My question is, given that the Rebels seem to have pretty equal spaceship/fighter technology to the Empire, the Rebels don’t have AT-AT armor or AT-AT-armor-piercing technology. I mean, if the AT-AT armor is basically indestructible, then either slap some on a speeder and send it out to fight the AT-ATs or build a little pillbox on the defensive line. (Or just put some armor in front of the base doors and send taunting radio messages to the AT-ATs).
If the AT-ATs have strong enough guns to defeat an armored door, then why don’t the Rebels have similar guns? I mean, they have an ion cannon that can easily defeat a BattleCruiser but they can’t knock out a frikken’ tank?
In the specific case of the Rebel and Imperial fighters, though, it sure does look like they meant to have the X-Wings (which aren’t ever called that in the movie, but are later) be very diistinct from the TIE Fighters right from the very beginning. They’re much bigger than TIEs, slower and less maneuverable, have visibly large engines, more armament, are equipped with shields, have onboard life support systems, can fly in an atmosphere, and are sufficiently complex that they load astromech droids onto them for some reason. Obi-Wan specifically distinguishes a TIE fighter as “A short range fighter,” suggesting there are, in fact, long range fighters. None of this is retconning; you learn all this before the end of “Star Wars.”
Given that the X-wing’s ability to achieve interstellar travel is established less than halfway into “The Empire Strikes Back,” I say it’s clearly established very early on that the X-Wing is quite the spacecraft.
You assume that the speeder could carry the weight of said armour. And armouring the door isn’t going to help unless you can armour the generator first, because if the ion cannon and theatre shield go down, the fleet of dedicated orbital bombardment vessels above you are going to blast that door to slag.
They have one ion cannon, that they only fire when they drop the theatre shield, so it doesn’t even have competition for the base’s generating capacity.
I just watched Episode IV yesterday, so it’s pretty fresh in my mind, and I don’t remember any talk of shields. Can you tell me where that’s discussed?
Why is a Black Hawk helicopter or a Humvee not armored like an M-1 tank? Why don’t the Iraqis just slap M-1 tank armor on their crappy Russian tanks?
If they slapped AT-AT armor on a speeder, it would move as slow as an AT-AT and need legs or wheels because it would be too heavy to fly or float or whatever.
To quote Rumsfeld, “you go to war with the Army you have, not the one you want.” It sounds idiotic if you are the ones deciding when to go to war, but for the Rebels, they are stuck with whatever crappy guns they had on Hoth when the Imperials landed.
You got really used to all that when playing the X-Wing and TIE Fighter computer games. It was interesting messing with the shield balance and power distribution. IIRC you could put power to the shields, engine, and weapons in any ratio you wanted.
Really in the movies it didn’t seem like the X-Wings had shields, seemed like every hit resulted in damage. Maybe reduced damage though.
If you watch when ships are getting shot at (the Falcon is a great example since it gets shot at so often) you’ll see laser blasts streaking toward it (or near it) and then kind of flashing out in a puff of yellow.
I can deal with it if I just shut my brain off. But it just bugs me in general. Farscape had its share of muppet-aliens, most were well done too. But one difference was that you got the idea that this alien was the member of a spacefaring race. Sometimes you’d see more than one of them. And they weren’t as over the top as some Star Wars aliens appear to be.
Sure, SW is geared more for kids and its more fantasy than fiction in general, so its not too big of a deal. But when I see all kinds of wierdo aliens, most of them unique to each other it ruins the suspension of disbelief for me a little bit. I still can kind of enjoy the movies (I say kind of because the “prequels” were at least to me, mediocre. YMMV, thats just my opinion.) but as I said I have to just not think at all when watching them.
