For that matter, how the heck did AT-ATs stay upright on ice in the first place? Treads are what you need here, or sleighs.
Then there’s the bizarro fate of the first one. The armor’s too thick to shoot through, so tie it up and tip it like a cow. But it doesn’t explode, so…they shoot it, and THEN it explodes. I spend the rest of the battle wondering why the pilots don’t dive on those on the walkers and shoot them in the sweet spot in the back of the head.
I just tell myself it was a coincidence. It was going to explode anyway because of internal damage from the fall. The snowspeeder’s blasters didn’t have anything to do with it.
'Course, that’s not what the pilot tells everyone when he’s back in the cantina…
Of course, the logical descendant of the AT-ATs were the ED-209 robots from Robocop that looked really big and scary but couldn’t navigate stairs or manholes.
Well I always wondered why doors were so insecure. I mean it seems any R2 unit that you pick up from a Jawa junk dealer an open a door even if “they changed the code”.
Well, any droid you pick up from a Jawa junk dealer that was previously owned by a starship captain highly placed in an armed insurrection against a galactic empire can.
I don’t think R2-D2 was “factory standard.”
A tow cable I can understand, like one on the front of a truck that you can spool out and hook onto or around something. A tow cable that you shoot out the back with extreme force and velocity while you are flying at a couple hundred miles an hour doesn’t seem to be very practical.
There goes my coffee… all over the screen. Damn you Iamthewalrus, damn you and your stinky geek humor!
I assumed that they have some sort of powered “defense screens” like the shields on spacecraft. Knocking the AT-AT over did enough damage to the interal systems to bring down the screens, leaving the vehicle vulnerable to blaster fire from the speeders.
I know, but still, it seems a tad too easy, doncha’ think?
I see parallels to the Soviet Union in some of the Imperial military hardware. The submarine K-19 for example was rushed into service, but it suffered a reactor coolant failure and many of the crew died of radiation sickness while trying to repair it. The incident was covered up until recently. Here’s an article about it. So I could totally see an Imperial who noticed the flaws in the Death Star or AT-ATs to shut up about it for fear of execution.
As for the snowspeeder hitting the neck area, it seems like they can’t get very high off the ground, so the neck is normally unreachable.
Well no, but the speeders could hover. Firing a tow cable out the front of a 4x4 while you’re cruising along at 60k/h doesn’t make much sense either…
[obi-wan] Only Imperial stormtroopers are this accurate [/obi-wan]
Corollary
“Unless they are shooting at a crucial character, then they can’t shoot worth a damn”
Maybe the AT-ATs were moving too fast to stop when the tow-cable was released. Normally they could be a bit like the Tripods, just standing silently off in the distance watching over the security of a local occupied village or something. Here they’ve been called into action and the pilot doesn’t see anything but open tundra ahead, so he cranks it up to twenty miles an hour.
In favour of this argument is that the bloke driving one of them seems a bit arrogant. Didn’t he prematurely announce that the Empire could start landing?
I seem to remember reading somewhere that the Stormtrooper armour deflects shots that hit it at an angle, but not direct hits… whatever that means. Now, this was in something semi-official, a Lucasarts annual or a poster or something, round about 1983 or 84. So there had probably been plenty of time for people to complain about the armour being crap. Personally I was just chuffed to find out it WAS armour, because being only seven or eight I’d only just realised the stormtroopers weren’t robots.
Also re. the ludicrous vulnerability of the Death Star design. I also “read somewhere” that the design flaw was supposed to have been noticed in production but considered too insignificant to prevent such a prestige venture. Besides, for a modernday parallel one need only look as far as the incredible longshot “bouncing bomb” attack on the Möhne Dam that was immortalised in the movie “Dambusters”. In fact that attack was so dangerous and important and just downright brilliant that I’d be prepared to bet Lucas got the idea there. Clips from the movie here: http://simscience.org/cracks/dambusters.html
Now, does anybody know the name of the book where Luke goes to the Dark Side for a bit? Only my brain has worn out and I need a break.
Oh come on. It’s not just a tow cable, it’s a tow cable that’s been mounted onto a swiveling gun on the rear of the speeder and is considered so important, it’s got a person manning it. The rear gunner doesn’t have any other weapons, except a tow cable gun.
[QUOTE=Ross]
Besides, for a modernday parallel one need only look as far as the incredible longshot “bouncing bomb” attack on the Möhne Dam that was immortalised in the movie “Dambusters”. In fact that attack was so dangerous and important and just downright brilliant that I’d be prepared to bet Lucas got the idea there. Clips from the movie here: http://simscience.org/cracks/dambusters.html
[QUOTE]
You would win, Lucas loves to crib scenes and plots from old movies, "Dambusters" has long been known to have been the source for the the Death Star attack.Okay, fine. It’s time for my inherent geekness to shine.
In Tales from the Mos Eisley Cantina (non-canon), there’s a story of a young Imperial trainee who has the fortune to be chosen for the AT-AT training program. While on a training mission, he notices that the AT-AT is vulnerable to attacks from below. He suggests that an attack with a cable wrapped around the legs could bring down his mighty vehicle.
This gains notice of General Veers, who, in a brilliant display of Imperial wisdom, hides this fact and sends the poor recruit to a stormtrooper unit. Our recruit is “seen” in the trilogy, with this stunning line:
Despondent at his assignment, he later tells the Rebels of the huge design flaw in the AT-AT.
In retrospect, I guess Veers took the correct choice. Send some recruit to Tatooine, or suffer the force choke? No brainer.
What is a driod?
It’s been said before, but it is a plot device.
It’s all well and good to say the reason the Stormtroopers couldn’t shoot straight was because their equipment sucked, but then how come Luke/Han/Leia or really anybody could pick up the same gun and have dead-on accuracy? Especially Luke, who never touched one before? Was he using the force?
A driod is a technological spirit that lives in binary trees in cyberspace. If you call a destructor function on the binary tree, the driod dies also.
You ought to see how poorly the sand people shoot. You think they’re all wrapped up to remain cool in the Tattooine suns?
Hey don’t knock it 'till you try it.