The practicality of Star Wars weapons

magick

Ok more kinda discussing the Imperial Weapons, now needless to say the size and scope of the Imperial Weapons are impressive , but would you consider it overkill ?
Sure the size of the AT-ATs, or Star Destroyers/Death Star have a psychological effect on anyone,but do their mass out weight their effectiveness? Example, when the death Star was destroyed im sure that was a huge blow to the Empire, but instead of Learning from their mistakes,they build a bigger one,same could be said for the AT-ATs, in the battle of hoth, impressive to look at but brough down so easily.

slave1

The imperial weapons and fleets are mere pawns in the grand scale of things.
The Emperor's mastery of the dark side far outweighs any weaponary.
In TPM and AOTC huge sacrafices of these pawns to lead Anakin along the path to the dark side
Overkill only from a terror point of view to mere mortals and to crush the Jedi

bloggs

Originally posted by magick
Ok more kinda discussing the Imperial Weapons, now needless to say the size and scope of the Imperial Weapons are impressive , but would you consider it overkill ?
Sure the size of the AT-ATs, or Star Destroyers/Death Star have a psychological effect on anyone,but do their mass out weight their effectiveness? Example, when the death Star was destroyed im sure that was a huge blow to the Empire, but instead of Learning from their mistakes,they build a bigger one,same could be said for the AT-ATs, in the battle of hoth, impressive to look at but brough down so easily.

You have to think of scale. The size of the Imperial Navy/Army is huge! The loss of the Death Star to the Empire would the the same as the loss of a Aircraft Carrier to the US Navy. A big loss but they can get over it.

Anyway back on target. I think the size of the weapons used is for psychological effect, but as the resources of the Empire are such great, the loss of a Star Destroyer or AT-AT isn't worth worrying about. (I read somewhere that the Imperial Navy had abotu 1,500 Star Destroyers (800 metre long class))

I think the idea of the Imperial Navy/Army was that if you managed to knock out one of their massive machines/weapons, there was another one 'just like that' to replace it.

To rebuild the Death Star was a bit mistake, but if you use the logic (bad logic that is) of my above argument, it sorta makes sense that they made a bigger, bolder one. (or perhaps George Lucas was just lazy)

TheSonOfBattles

Ye all seem to forget that the second Death Star was built as a trap, as such, it had to be big, scary, and powerful to draw the rebellion in, and not give them much time.

The most powerful imperial weapon ever built on the other hand, the Sun Crusher, was relatively small. So, not wholly true, but most of the time, the Empire seemed to think bigger was better.

spooiirt!!

i think most star wars wepons are very impractical. the majority of them exist only to look cool. at-st s are particularly stupid. the fact that they are so elelvated means that they would be simple to take out with a rocket launcher or something like that

Mick L

The issue with the death stars was discussed in one of the books as a means for the Emporer to keep better control of the Imperial Navy. It is also mentioned that officers in the Navy disagreed with the construction of both Death Stars. As for practicality, well the first one worked didn't it?

As for Star Destroyers, it's not just the imperials who have big ships. The Mon Cal cruisers are about the same size. Look at todays navies, you have large and small ships, patrol boats and aircraft carriers. Take that comparison and apply it to a larger area like space and you have star detroyers.

AT-STs are a bit awkard, and AT-ATs are vunerable IF you happen to have an airspeeder with a tow cable handy. If not too bad.

mr smiley

Perhaps one of the reasons for the AT-AT and AT-ST design was the fact that they would have to be used on a huge variety of different surfaces on planets all over the galaxy, the designers wouldn't even know all of the type of surfaces they would be used on so they had to come up with something versatile and durable.

Remember that the AT-AT that was brought down in Hoth was brought down by a speeder that was flown by Luke, who had somewhat developed Jedi powers, no other speeders got near the AT-ATs. So maybe the designers thought of the whole "shooting a cable" from a small airborne craft and so the AT-ATs had weaponry designed to stop them.

Skyclad

Also, the total number of ATATs that were taken down in Hoth was quite minimal - 2, maybe 3 (that were shown anyway). All the ground based weapons the rebels had were quite ineffective against them, so maybe they weren't that bad a weapon after all.

Dave

spooiirt!!

actually, dash rendar, luke, and wedge all brought down AT-ATs

Drazhar

Dash Rendar???

only go by the canon stuff (ie the films)

Wedge brought down the first AT-AT

Luke brought down the second by harpooning himself to the underside of the AT-AT, hoisting himself up, cutting open a hole in the power generator (that big round thing on the underside of the AT-AT, running length ways) and throwing a proton grenade into the generator.

Only one AT-AT was brought down by the airspeeders, flown by the legendary Rogue Squadron. then consider how many of Rogue squadron were lost, at least five by my count. (Rogue 2, two people, Dak, lukes gunner, and another speeder you see being blown away) thats almost half a squadron (12 in a squadron)

spooiirt!!

if you read shadows of the empire, it says that dash brought down an AT-AT.

charlie_says

I don't think when they came up with the AT walker design it was really supposed to be practical. I think it is supposed to represent a powerful large animal (eg an elephant) and hence looks like one. This is for the effect it will have on the audience that it will represent something (most) of them have seen and can relate to. Big, heavy and powerful.

What is the Sun Crusher? Sounds interesting.....

You might like this fellow Star Wars heads....http://www.therockalltimes.co.uk/2003/06/09/saddam-death-star.html

heheeh.....

TheSonOfBattles

Right, i'm goin to write up a huge overview of what I remember of the Sun Crusher. It won't be 100% accurate i.e. some of the spellings may be wrong and the timeline may be off somewhat, but I haven't read the books in years so, there you go. Before you read this, know that this WILL entirely spoil the Jedi Academy Trilogy, so if you don't want that, look away and read them instead. They're by Kevin J. Anderson. That's that outta the way. Now....

The Sun Crusher was a small thorn shaped spaceship developed in the same think tank installation that the Death Star was. This installation was called the Maw installation because of it's location. It was located in the middle of a group of 5 or so black holes, and this group was known as the Maw.

It was developed mainly by Qwi Xux and Bevil Lemilisk, and was finished about the time of Return of the Jedi. The ship wasn't used for years because of the fact that no one knew the installation existed. Grand Admiral Tarkin, the Emporer and a few select others were the only one's privvy to this info.

However when Han Solo and crew flew into the Maw installation in a bid to escape the mine's on Kessel, Admiral Daala led her Star Destroyer's out, and began a new bid to reform the Empire.

The ship was built out of an indesctructible material I can't remember the name of. It's main armament was a payload of missles designed to be shot into the heart of a system's sun. The missles would drill all the way to the centre of the sun, and cause the sun to explode. The resulting supernova would then blow the rest of the system, planets and all along with it. The only thing to survive would be the Sun Crusher because of it's invincible Armour.

The ship itself could also be used as a weapon by gaining speed and ramming straight through enemy ships.

The sun crusher's main missles were first fired by Kype Durron on the Carrida's systems's sun, and it went of perfectly. Unfortunately Kype failed to save his long lost brother.

The Sun Crusher was sent into the atmosphere of Yavin to stop it being used. Unfortunately Kype fell back to the dark side, and with Exar Kun's help managed to pull the Sun Crusher out of Yavin.

When Kype realized the error of his ways, he set the Sun Crusher on auto pilot into one of the black holes surrounding the Maw installation, and put himself into a message tube which was fired toward the Millenium Falcon. The falcon picked up the tube and welcomed Kype back.

Kype however wanted to make sure nothing like the Sun Crusher was ever built again, and used the Dark Side to wipe out much of Qwi Xux's memory. Qwi wasn't to unhappy with this situation though, as she didn't want a lot of those memories.

Can't remember what happens to Lemilisk, like I said haven't read the appropriate books in years, so, that's my excuse and i'm sticking to it damn you!

And there you go....

charlie_says

Indestructible armor? :rolleyes:
You gotta love it, sounds like something out of a cartoon.

jaggeh

the practicallity of an AT-AT

Good: mounted 2 Anti ship class turbolasers, 2 light anti-vehicle blasters and 2 rapid firing anti personnell blasters, enough armor to withstand a direct hit from a proton torpedo and carried a platoon of storm troopers.

Bad: vulnerable to pit traps, trip wires and plucky pilots with tow cables.

Psychological effects? think of ESB the rebel troops heard and felt them coming long before they could see them, hows that for a moral killer, you know they are coming, you know they are big.

and in the end of the battle of hoth, they did in fact succeed, the empire could afford to lose 2 crew and a platoon of stormtroopers in each one if they killed even 1 rebel trooper/pilot.

AT-ST has no place in any military force, the AT-PT was much better suited for the job the at-st did, the only benefit of the at-st was speed.

Super weapons, tbh everytime a superweapon is introduced to a book or film i cringe cos tis such a boring plot item and its been done a million times.

Death star
Death star 2
Death star prototype
Durgas Deathstar
Hyperspace gun
World Devastators
Sun crusher

tbh the only weapon of worth out of the lot was the devastator because it performed a decent function, ripping raw materials in and building droid ties. coupled with shields stronger than a star destroyer and more guns than you could shake a very big stick at, if it hadnt been for lukes intervention mon cal would have been annihlated and the reborn emperor would have won outright.

TheSonOfBattles

If I remember correctly, I read someplace, that someone actually figured out the flaw in the design of the AT-AT's when they were being designed, and instead of rewarding him and redesigning the AT-AT, the Empire killed the man to cover up the flaw. :ninja:

Show's how dumb the Empire was really. Still, Jaggeh's point is true. From the Empire's standpoint, even though Hoth started badly with some General or other disobeying Darth Vader's orders in a bid to gain glory, the AT-AT still performed more than adequately.