ok, in the battle of hoth, there are numerours AT-AT’s walking around doing their thing, and they are transported onto the planet from a star destroyer… but my question is, how does that transportation of them actually take place? like is there some kind of drop ship that takes them down? or do the AT-AT’s have the ability to drop down onto the planet on their own? any insight to this would be appreciated. thanks.
Oh, that’s an easy one. See, in the Quaantum Universe we’ve been privy to, the Empire AND the Federation co-exist. They beamed them down.
Now, it’s 3:14, time for my Thorazine.
Cartooniverse
If you want to kiss the sky, you’d better learn how to kneel.
I got this from www.starwars.com…
“The Imperial-class Star Destroyer has enough firepower to reduce a civilization to slag or take on a fleet of enemy vessels. Each carries a full stormtrooper division, complete with assault craft and ablative heat-shield for orbital drops, 20 AT-AT and 30 AT-ST walkers for ground assault, and six TIE fighter squadrons for escort and patrol.”
My guess is the AT-AT’s and AT-ST’s are packed on the ‘assault craft’ and deployed. I don’t recall ever seeing an ‘assault craft’, but since the AT-AT’s don’t appear to have subspace propulsion systems, and they look way too heavy to parachute in, my guess is the ‘assault craft’ lands, and these guys pop out, kinda like humvees of a cargo aircraft.
I’ll dig around, see if I can get clarification on ‘assault craft’.
-sb
They say the Lord loves drunks, fools and little children.
Two out of three ain’t bad.
Aha. Here we go. Again, from www.starwars.com
“Since they are not designed to enter planetary atmospheres, each Star Destroyer also carries 12 landing barges for crew and cargo transfer and for ground assault. Landing barges are shielded and armed, and carry up to four AT-AT’s (or eight AT-STs) and 1,000 troops each. They can also haul the heavy weapons, supplies, and equipment required for planetary operations.”
There ya go.
-sb
They say the Lord loves drunks, fools and little children.
Two out of three ain’t bad.
Wait a minute Spankboy, I have no doubt that your link says that, but I think that Star Destroyer’s capabilities have been exaggerated somewhat since Episode 5. If I remember correctly, there were only five or six AT-ATs in the battle for Hoth … one quarter of a single Star Destroyer’s capacity? And what’s this about a Storm Trooper division? I hope that’s not a 16,000-man unit like a modern U.S. Army division.
Now I may have things confused, but I was pretty convinced that the Star Destroyers were the run-of-the-mill Imperial capital ships, not the rather rarer beast Han Solo calls a “command ship”, that appears first in Episode 5. I could believe the latter monster could carry all those AT-ATs and the six TIE squadron. The smaller kite-shaped vessels could be disabled by a few blasts from an ion cannon, after all.
By the way, I’m really annoyed that the two-legged walker are called AT-STs. All-Terrain Scout Tranports? They should be called AT-ASs - All-Terrain Armored Scouts. But then, I didn’t write the movies. sigh
True-there weren’t a whole lot of AT-AT’s on Hoth, but figure old Darth was just using them like bird dogs; just flush the game out where he could get a bead on 'em with his spaceborne units.
Here’s some more numbers–
http://www.swdatabase.com/swtd/imperial1/star_destroyer.html
There should be better/more info on the old Texas A&M page (http://www.theforce.net) but the page is down right now…:>(
-sb
They say the Lord loves drunks, fools and little children.
Two out of three ain’t bad.
Huhn. The AT-ATs are constructed like Transformers, they fold up into a neat little cube, easily dropped to the planet’s surface.
Okay, I’ve decided to throw away any and all chance I have of getting laid this year by delving into my Star Wars knowledge in a public forum. sigh
Note that a lot of this information comes from West End Games’ RPG which, while sanctioned by Lucasfilm and generally held to be authoritative, is not official information.
The Imperial-class Star Destroyer (aka Imperial cruiser, or just Star Destroyer) is 1.6 km long, has about 35,000 officers, men and troops on board, and carries more war-making equipment than it needs.
While I don’t think that there are 16,000 stormtroopers on a Star Destroyer, there are several thousand. They are ferried from ship to shore in Sigma-class troop shuttles – they look like the Lambda-class shuttle that is used extensively in Return of the Jedi but with an elongated fuselage. You see a few of these in the Special Edition of SW:ANH.
AT-ATs aren’t all that big when compared to a Star Destroyer, so why can’t they have 20 of 'em? The legs fold up under the body for transport and to disgorge their troops. For that matter, one AT-AT can carry 2 AT-STs instead of its usual 40 troopers.
Remember the opening sequence of Star Wars: A New Hope? The Rebel blockade runner ship (a Correllian Corvette) that they tractor into the main bay is 150 meters long. Look at the size ratio – the Imperials could have held several of those ships inside.
Stationed aboard an Star Destroyer is one full wing of TIE craft – 72 ships in all, broken down into 6 squadrons. One squadron is TIE bombers (the twin hulled things from The Empire Strikes Back), which replaced the earlier TIE/gt attack fighter. The rest of the fighters are the standard TIE/ln throwaway ships, though one of the squadrons was replaced by TIE Interceptors when they became available.
Now where shall I begin? Those are indeed the run-of-the-mill Imperial capital ship, but there are supposedly only (?!?!) 25,000 of them in service. They replaced the older Victory-class destroyer which was used by the Republic in the Clone Wars – the two ships look similar, but the Victory is only 900m long. The “command ship” is a very rare bird, a Super-class star destroyer. It’s 8 km long, and houses over a quarter-million people. The ion cannon which you pass off so easily is one of the most powerful ground-based anti-capital ship weapons ever built. It cost the Rebellion sorely to have to abandon it on Hoth. Several shots from it could probably have disabled the Super SD.
Lastly, we must remember that reason must give way to storytelling in any space opera like Star Wars. Why didn’t the Imperials send down some fighters or atmoshperic assault craft when they landed the Walkers, and let them wreak havoc on the Rebels? Why didn’t the Rebels use their X- and Y-wings against the Walkers? We know they can operate in an atmosphere, and would have torn holes in the Walkers that the Rebels’ ground-based equipment couldn’t. Why didn’t the Imperials deploy their fighters as part of the blockade? (This one is easy – Imperials are always overconfident). Why why why why why why ad infinitum. I love these movies and the various other stories they’ve spawned, but it’s all fiction – enjoy the roller-coaster ride, don’t step out and analyze it too hard.
–Da Cap’n
“Playin’ solitaire 'til dawn
With a deck of fifty-one.”
Here’s my guess. In The Phantom Menace, troops, AATs, and other means of destruction are deployed by the landing ships, the things with four huge wings. Now, the Trade Federation Battleships can be said to be the precurser to the Empire’s star destroyers. Maybe there was some kind of drop-ship we didn’t see in The Empire Strikes Back or Return of the Jedi that deployed the giant walkers.
I emailed my friend Rob, the veritable Star Wars encyclopedia, and who owns the Star Wars Encyclopedia, and he had this to say: “…According to the Ultimate Guide to the Star Wars Universe, there are such things in the Imperial arsenal as ‘drop ships’, which have no landing engines, only repulsors. They literally drop from orbit, slowing before landing, carrying such things as walkers and stromtrooper compliments.” Thanks, Rob, for proving me right. I love that.
How can Lucas be this ignorant of military beauracracy? There is no such thing as overconfidence - beauracrats will always do whatever they can to cover their ass, especially if some dude in a black mask will decide to have you stop breathing if you screw up.