Just how effective would an AT-AT be in actual combat?

Depends where. Deploying a walker to a forest like Endor is pure stupidity. Unsurprisingly, Vader was the only Imperial combat commander to ever really use them effectively, in territory that suited them - flat, open, and unobstructed. Doubtless having seen AT-TEs try to get around places like Geonosis, Umbara, and Felucia drove the point home about where to use them and where to not use them.

Hardly, i coupd get several companies worth of 2-M tanks for the cost of one of those. Faster and much more useful when dealing with the Rebellion's hit-and-run tactics

Would be useful to cross mini nuke field mines

Palpatine did nothing wrong
*thunderous applause intensifies*

>while the AT-TE is knocked out by the dozens
To be fair, the wete fighting what was esentially a peer-conflict, so it makes sense that the opposition would have something that could deal with them. The Empire never really had to fight something that could match them 1-to-1 on military terms

Useless

>Just how effective would an AT-AT be in actual combat?

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Not as long as EaW has an active mod community

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it is retarded, too tall for no reason, lacks guns, why the fuck is so huge in the back. it does nothing. prequel beats the shit out it.

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Late Clone Wars/Early Empire gear was literally better.

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Late CW/early Empire vehicles were better in use, but they were phased out for designs that were meant to work with the tarkin doctrine starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Tarkin_Doctrine

Basically the idea is if you make all of your shit look really intimidating, any would-be resistance fighters will surrender.

These books were the shit

I'm not even a star wars fag but
>Long ass legs are the only form of mobility
>If they're taken out the entire thing drops like a sack of potatoes
>High as fuck so that topple is probably lethal

Even from a theoretical perspective that's a horrible idea and design.

But that is retarded

You'd think after Tarkin died when a squadron of fighters destroyed a superweapon that cost the Empire more than a whole fleet of conventional ships, they'd have gone a different way.

>A giant, 3-story, quintuple-axle APC with sawblades for wheels, bristling with turrets, and going almost 100 mph isn't scarier than a mecha camel.

I know you're just relaying the reasoning and you're not necessarily arguing for the Tarkin doctrine, but god damn. Not only is it a retarded idea, but the shit they phased out for the new shit was both scary AND more effective

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>FTL viable civilizations
>Building large, slow, resource intense military equipment that has no hope of concealing itself
It's retarded even then. Congratulations on doing the scifi equivalent of having a T55 in the open desert when there is a bored A10 pilot flying around somewhere.

Don't forget

>Tall as fuck so exposed to anything for literal miles around when in relatively flat and open terrain
>Reliant on infantry and other supporting elements to not get flanked from all sides, or swarmed by a bunch of infantry waiting for it to pass overhead.
>Bodied by an well placed mine field
>Slow enough to be vulnerable to constant, accurate artillery fire.

The only reason the idea works beyond "Cool thing in snow" Is muh shields and the rebels on Hoth being on their last leg.

If you look at them as a mobile base/troop carrier instead of an assault vehicle they make more sense. The long legs are because they are deployed all over the galaxy and it lets them move over a wider variety of terrain. The artillery support they provide is minimal. They are almost always deployed with actual assault vehicles and infantry and they are 100% always deployed with a star destroyer over head which can provide pinpoint orbital bombardments. The torso is so heavily armored that if you take out its legs the infantry get out and walk.

This- Remember in Hoth the reason they get bodied by snowspeeders is because the commander on the ground is a fuckwit that wants to shock+awe

>artillery
>high altitude bombers
>bombers of any kind really
>holy shit look at those long exposed legs
>IT CANT FUCKING TURN AROUND
yea, no

this
based but no

>flat, open, and unobstructed
Literally the worst possible terrain to use them in

>why the fuck is so huge in the back

So kids could put action figures in the back of the toy they begged their parents to waste money on.

What about a universe that has cable wires?

imagine being stationed in that missel magnet

you're half right- quadrupedal locomotion is for dogs- bipedal locomotion is pretty energy efficient though, if not super fast, and the best endurance running animals on the planet are bipeds (Humans, kangaroos, Africans, etc)

This. The knee, hip, and angle joints are all exposed. The Main Guns are limited to the forwards arch and have limited elevation\depression due to being fixed on the command module. The whole thing is horribly top heavy. The neck is vulnerable from both sides and there's no armaments covering that angle.

It's also a pain in the ass to get in and out of.

Legs are only even remotely efficient in a biological organism. When you are dealing with the realities and limitations of machinery like gears, levers, motors, etc, legs are horribly efficient.

There is nothing even remotely practical about the AT-AT. It's something that was designed to look cool in a sci-fi movie and sell toys, nothing more.

not to mention the big, flat, sides of it might as well have a target painted on them. It seems like the imperial weapons designers had never heard of angling armor in order to deflect incoming projectiles.

The only reason I can think of that the empire would start using these things is scare tactics. The empire was regularly invading lightly defended worlds with basically no heavy weapons and large civilian populations. If they came up against even a slightly competent fighting force they were neutralized.

we didnt say the empire was smart....

yes in any other situation the empire would have had an easy day.

Hell, at least those sides are armored. if they had the side hatches open you could kill the entire passenger compliment with a single shell.

If you use them as giant tall SPGs that sit in the back they work. They're supposed to be the big intimidating thing in the back blowing enemy lines to bits before strolling up and dropping a couple platoons of men to clean up the rest. Meanwhile infantry and things like AT-STs and the 2-M are up front doing their work. The AT-AT eats TONS of fire that would otherwise go towards other ground forces and basically ignores it while continuing to blow the hell out of things with some big guns.

The AT-AT was basically invulnerable until a certain someone had a primitive but effective idea. Even if you DID get behind it or on it's flanks it's pretty likely that nothing you had could even scratch it, that includes the big guns, missiles, and bombers. If the Empire had brought dedicated AA or some TIEs the Empire probably would only have lost the one Luke dealt with on foot assuming he even got that close again in the first place. The big problem isn't the AT-AT's design, in universe it does it's job. It demoralizes the enemy, blows shit up from far away, and moves troops. The problem is that the Empire itself is burdened with supreme levels of overconfidence and they don't plan on or even really expect the rebels using abnormal tactics like the tow cable hogtie no matter how many times it happens.

That said personally I'd have just upgraded the AT-TE with the AT-AT's armor plating, an enclosed cockpit, and remote top gun. The Juggernaut tanks are also a great already very capable option for upgrades.

You guys are forgetting they have an almost impregnable shield. That's probably the reason they need to be sk big

>Hell, at least those sides are armored
It better be some kind of magical unobtanium armor because it sure doesn't look very thick given the size of the vehicle. A fucking RPG can get through hundreds of mm's of armor-grade steel.

The snowspeeders shot it a few times so I'd say fairly good. There was a bit in Rebels where it shrugged off AT-TE shells but scaling in SW is all over the place.

>RPG
>Star Wars

It wasn't shields it was armor.

The AT-AT used "9095-T8511 grade durasteel" which is supposed to be an extremely strong alloy . Basically would take a starship blasting the hell out of it, not some dinky RPG. The problem here is you're trying to compare it with terrestrial armor as if they're even close to each other. Common armor types would likely be considered "better than nothing" junk compared to even the more typical durasteel alloys. There are also metals WELL beyond the durability or durasteel out there too, they just tend to be rare, highly expensive, and as you'd expect hard to work.

Do explosives not work in the star wars universe? Or were the rebels too inept to make them? It just seems so wierd to see the characters on screen make a big deal about AT-ATs while it appears that even the most basic of improvised weapons would take one out. Your plasma blasters can't take it out? Fine, where are the IEDs? A gunpowder cannon?

I realize that it's a movie and thus you need to consider how things work "in the movie universe" but this just pushes the suspension of disbelief a little too hard.

in universe gunpowder / solid projectile weapons are called slug throwers and under almost all circumstances are inferior to the "blaster" plasma weaponry.

>The problem here is you're trying to compare it with terrestrial armor as if they're even close to each other.

Yes, exactly. My point is that the AT-ATs certainly LOOK like even a WWI-era anti-tank weapon would take one out, while that's not the case because of the movie magic fictional alloy. I think they ought to have done a better job stressing that detail, or better yet, show the audience that conventional attacks don't work. (Or perhaps they did stress that in a later film which I haven't seen?)

The Galactic Republic walkers that they during the clone wars would be more effective.

Does the universe canon explain why they can't, for example, use landmines to defeat walkers? They're obviously not too hard to knock over, and an explosive underneath a big, wide, foot is sure a great way to do that. The bomb doesn't even need to penetrate the unobtanium durasteel to achieve that effect.

they didnt have them at hoth.

rebels didnt have much of anything

The Chinese dude in rouge one shoots an atat in the head with a shoulder mounted rocket launcher. The atat shrugged it off.

In ESB that's what the thing not even registering hits from aircraft and field guns is supposed to illustrate. Only reason the rebels stopped any of them was because Luke was a quick thinker using something that wasn't even supposed to be a weapon to do the trick. In other media it takes lots of bombing runs or even orbital strikes to break one with raw firepower.

The Republic actually already solved that problem with a repulsorlift tank funny enough, the UT-AT. Specifically meant for shitty or unstable terrain that'd topple or otherwise fuck up a walker. It'd have to be absurd amounts of explosives to just outright topple the AT-AT. Those big ass feet don't really care unless suddenly the ground isn't there anymore. That foot also needs to be one supporting more weight so a bomb going off on a foot that just dropped might not do the trick.

Another thing is the rebels were not expecting a big ground assault. They had their basic defenses up but they were expecting star destroyers to show up and bombard the place for a month trying to get through their base shields. Safe bet the Empire has just said "fuck it" and bombarded them before. They were not expecting those new fancy AT-ATs.

>42055430
That wasn't even an AT-AT, was an AT-ACT, a giant dumb cargo hauler with less armor, a big gaping completely unarmored side port where cargo pods are meant to sit, and no chin guns.

Wheels and treads get really bumpy on any terrain that isn't flat. Maybe in that universe they've got magical stabilization devices seeing it's space fantasy but legs are still going to be better in that regard.
Powered legs are less efficient than muscle power. Unpowered legs are more efficient than legs though, but require flat ground to work. But realistically, powering mech legs with an engine is going to introduce it's own inefficiencies.

>In ESB that's what the thing not even registering hits from aircraft and field guns is supposed to illustrate.
Weren't those all energy weapons though? I don't recall them showing the AT-ATs shrugging off conventional weapons but then again it's been years since I watched ESB.

> It'd have to be absurd amounts of explosives to just outright topple the AT-AT.
Assuming we're talking about real-life physics and the AT-AT is built from something that is of similar density to steel, even a modest explosion could easily topple it. Those feet have a massive amount of surface area for the pressure of the explosion to act against. The bigger they are the less explosive you need to achieve the same effect because there is more area for the explosive blast to act against.

>Maybe in that universe they've got magical stabilization devices seeing it's space fantasy but legs are still going to be better in that regard.

The thing is that making mechanical legs work well really is the ultimate "space fantasy". Tires and treads certainly have drawbacks, but they're also really simple. Legs are fantastically complex, not just to make them work mechanically, but also to control them. The need to balance alone is a huge problem. So is the problem of allowing joints to flex to a certain degree in order to maintain good footing, but without allowing them to flex too much and becoming unstable. IMHO, the idea of legs with reasonable dexterity is far more out there than plasma weapons, energy blasters, shields, etc. The complexity is just insane.

Of course legs have potential advantages in very rough terrain...but that's assuming we've gotten past the hiccup of making legged vehicles work that well in the first place, and it's assuming that we aren't making flying vehicles instead.

For every dumbass walker Palps had made he could have had entire tank companies that would steam roll through sheer numbers alone. Tarkin was a dumbass whose crowning achievement was getting vaporized on top of a colossal waste of resources that got BTFO’d by a ragtag rebel strike team in space combat. Seriously, looking critically at it all it is beyond any realm of comprehension just how the fuck ANYONE thought that leaving this super weapon that would bankrupt the entire galaxy should it be destroyed be left completely alone without so much as a single destroyer as at least an escort. I get the whole point of it all is just to make things look cool and seal the whole “underdog good guy beats the big bad guy” thing more, but it is amazing just how fucking stupid and/or incompetent so many in the galaxy were, especially in the Empire.

>without so much as a single destroyer as at least an escort
it had more firepower than half the imperial fleet
and no other fleet in existence is even close to the imperial fleets size

and people in real life have left superweapons unguarded, overconfident in their power

>it had more firepower than half the imperial fleet
so? It's still only one object and thus is susceptible to a single point of failure, making it idiotic to leave alone.

Using conventional weapons in Star Wars is like taking a simple bow to war for us. Sure it can still kill but blasters are superior in almost every way much like a rifle is to us. If you shot the latest greatest MBTs with one of those dish guns in the way they shot the AT-AT bad things would happen to those poor tanks just like bad things would happen to an AT-ST.

The feet are also fairly solid and extremely heavy, they're where were a lot of weight lives. They're also flat on the bottom so while they're not MRAPs they're certainly not the path of least resistance or blast catchers. If you don't have enough you get an unsatisfying pop and a scorch mark on/in the ground as the walker chugs along instead of the walker tripping in a fresh crater or being tossed over by the explosion, which would be hilarious. You either have to move enough dirt for the thing's foot to fall into a hole or put enough down to blast it upward and at that point you probably could have used less and gone with enough to crater. Then you still have to go through the trouble of planting a whole field of mines like that or get close enough to drop the bomb under it's foot as the foot comes down.

The other thing to take into account is targeting the AT-AT is stupid. It's one of the reasons why they're so big and menacing. As I said earlier the idea is the enemy sees them and focuses on them because "oh shit that's big and scary" instead of the infantry and smaller ground vehicles that are coming to kill them that are realistically the bigger threats.

It's doubtful the imperials even realized the flaw was there until they realized what the rebels were up to and they undoubtedly never thought they'd be ballsy enough to throw fighters at it like that. It was probably figured if it ever engaged rebel ships they'd be cap ships like the MC80, not a relatively small group of fighters and attackers.

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>Using conventional weapons in Star Wars is like taking a simple bow to war for us
Yeah, I get that is what the canon of the universe dictates. My point is a little different. I'm saying that based on what we can see in the films, especially the original trilogy, I think they're straining suspension of disbelief a bit too hard. The AT-ATs, etc, look like they'd be flat-out wrecked by even a 19th century bombard, let alone a WWI era gun. I realize that this is incorrect based on universe canon; my claim is that the filmmakers failed to *show* us this, so instead they simply tell us.

> They're also flat on the bottom
That's a nearly ideal blast catcher.

>You either have to move enough dirt for the thing's foot to fall into a hole or put enough down to blast it upward
Exactly. And it would take much less explosive than you think to achieve either of those.

>The other thing to take into account is targeting the AT-AT is stupid. It's one of the reasons why they're so big and menacing. As I said earlier the idea is the enemy sees them and focuses on them because "oh shit that's big and scary" instead of the infantry and smaller ground vehicles that are coming to kill them that are realistically the bigger threats.
Sure, that's certainly valid, but it's also off-topic. the whole point of this thread discussing the viability of AT-ATs. While I agree that targeting them would be a poor tactical decision compared to various alternatives that IS the whole point of this thread.

>It was probably figured if it ever engaged rebel ships they'd be cap ships like the MC80, not a relatively small group of fighters and attackers.
>The battle station is heavily shielded and carries a firepower greater than half the star fleet. It's defenses are designed around a direct, large-scale assault. A small one-man fighter should be able to penetrate the outer defense.
>Pardon me for asking, sir, but what good are snub fighters going to be against that?
>Well, the Empire doesn't consider a small one-man fighter to be any threat, or they'd have a tighter defense. An analysis of the plans provided by Princess

Why didn't the empire just use the star destroyers to delta base zero the ice around the hoth base and melt it into the planet? Sure there's a shield. The shield isn't very big though.

I don't think angled armour works on lasers and plasma and shit.

Reminder that Thrawn threw a shitfit about the death stars and wanted more fleets built instead, but Palpatine was a nigger

To be fair, at the velocities you're working at to penetrate an AT-AT with conventional projectiles, angling wouldn't matter. It's the same reason modern tanks don't care about shot traps anymore: it wouldn't help.

They do: They show an RPG smashing an AT-AT in the face in Rogue One, and only shaking up the crew a bit.

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I just fucking love it when Jow Forums does starwars. Just to keep it going, I claim, that on a tactical level, it was the CIS who had the best combined assault tactics and tanks. Convince me otherwise.

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>To be fair, at the velocities you're working at to penetrate an AT-AT with conventional projectiles, angling wouldn't matter

See Yes, that's what the universe's canon says.
But the impression one gets from watching the original films is that a WWI-era cannon could one-shot the damn thing. The canon might state that the sides of an AT-AT are impervious to just about anything, but the canon sure doesn't match the feel one gets from watching the film.

Nice that they added that sort of detail in later films. It was sorely missing from the original trilogy.

Angles work great on lasers, and they do diminish the effects of plasma cutters too--at least the real life ones we use to cut steel in welding/fab shops. Who's to say how that extends to fictional weapons.

> fully exposed my gun gunner

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They're not going to have a bunch of M-60s roll out and shoot at it but yeah, they probably could have had y-wings bomb them at least once or twice or something like that to reinforce how tough they are.

Things like to go path of least resistance though and the soil is definitely less resistant in most cases. My point is basically it's better to fuck the ground rather than even bother attempting to toss the walker. If the foot was concave on the bottom it'd be much nastier to blow up a big bomb under it but it's flat and heavy as fuck. Best blast catcher is a concave space, like the bottom of a Humvee.

It's not really off topic though. Part of considering viability is considering the role and place in battle.

Palps trusted Tarkin more for some reason...

Again
>That wasn't even an AT-AT, was an AT-ACT, a giant dumb cargo hauler with less armor, a big gaping completely unarmored side port where cargo pods are meant to sit, and no chin guns.

And uh, by the best, I mean least retarded. Also I do think their AAT and MTT are the universes most practical looking, if not most aesthetic armored ground vehicles.

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>they probably could have had y-wings bomb them at least once or twice or something like that to reinforce how tough they are.
Yeah, that's what I was thinking. Or at some point show some rebels try and use various improvised weapons against it.

>My point is basically it's better to fuck the ground rather than even bother attempting to toss the walker
Agreed completely. From what it looks like in the movies the AT-AT's couldn't even attempt to cross soft ground. Making a crater for it to step in is viable, as is simply having soft ground, hiding behind water, etc.

> Best blast catcher is a concave space, like the bottom of a Humvee.
Yes, but not relevant. Even a flat surface catches plenty of blast. Hell, even the convex bottom of an MRAP--specifically designed to resist things like this--can be flipped over by an IED blast.

Outside of the B-1s and T-series droids being inept yeah. While I love the Republic forces if you gave me a choice I'd pick CIS hands down. If the war was "real" instead of some stupid revenge game run by Palpatine the CIS probably would have won even though the clones were so superior at fighting. I absolutely love CIS naval equipment especially. Munificents and Lucrehulks are glorious. Everything they have either is a droid, run by droids, or can be. Loss of actual life can be minimized greatly and there is basically no place the CIS cannot go with some degree of safety.

You literally see one in the movie rotate itself extremely fast
fast to shot down a speeder

The separatists at least equipped most of their walkers with a rotating weapon / rotating body.

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The CIS would have stomped the Republic had the Sith not meddle around, had a rather admirable cause too, but again, space wizards with big glow sticks ruin everything.

I was about to claim this too, but wasn't absolutely sure as I have seen the movies ages ago. But yeah, the CIS has the most logical vehicles, if memory serves correctly, the reason those AAT were crewed instead of autonomous drones was so that the manufactrurers could sell those to factions who use humans or close-enough-equivalents. Am I the only one who gets a bit T-54/55 esque vibe from this thing?

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Definitely not effective

um sweaty thats Blue Milk and theres deep lore behind it

>has huge economic benefit
>uses robots because cheaper & moral
>awesome weapons built by finest engineers in the galaxy

>gets beat by a bunch of warrior monks who are supposed to be politically neutral
Screw Jedi

>older "obsolete" equipment is unironically superior to the modern shit that replaced it

Where have I heard this one before?

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>not fattening up desk jockeys for emergency use as sandbags

>gunganiggers literally just sit behind their fucking shields in a giant fucking field with absolute not natural protection and watch the MTTs deploy legions of battle droids to march in and slaughter them
>didn't even bother sending some riders up armed with those blue EMP balls and tossing them inside the MTTs to disable them and destroy their passengers

How the Hell did this mentally defective excuse for a civilization manage to thrive anyway? How did the human Naboo not exterminate them in a bloody race war?

Even the Ewoks had objectively superior tactics, luring Imperial troops deep into the forest and into crude, but effective ambushes.

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>walking sandbags

I like it. Still, see filename.

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AT-ATs are retarded for all the reasons other anons have mentioned, but the Rebels were somehow even fucking worse.

>main tactic is to have snowspeeders shoot unguided tow cables at walkers and literally run circles around them in the hopes that they would become snagged (like this couldn't be counteracted by simply stopping the walker and having someone go out and cut away the cables).

You'd literally be better off ordering them to just ram walkers Kamikaze-style at that point. Really. At least that would garuntee a kill.

>it occurs to literally no one apart from Luke Skywalker to have infantry take out the walkers by getting in close, breaching the hatch with a plasma torch, and throwing explosives inside.

They literally could've ended the battle before it began by hiding a few dozen rebel soldiers in spider holes ahead of the main defensive line and launched a coordinated ambush on the walkers.

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