I don’t know how tall this fricken thing is but its HUGE
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Markov
I just love heavy walkers,The All Terrain Siege Platform quenches my thirst for a walker that can do most things aside from scouting and recon. It’s rotary canons will achieve an anti-personnel role, while the laser cannons and what I assume to be grenade/rocket launchers can easily deal with any ground vehicle. The sheer firepower of this behemoth would be a little impractical though. In the navy, the guns they have create so much heat, that you can’t be outside near the guns without getting burned. In addition to the cost of all the materials needed(guns, armor, batteries, cooling cells…)… Read more »
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aj_reader
I dig this… if it has the First Order Gorilla Style legs.
But no to six stupidly elongated and vulnerable legs.
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Nathan Redder
If only the Empire had these on Hoth and Endor
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OriginalSchmill
Why would they need them? It’s not like they had much of a challenge on Hoth, and they wouldn’t even be able to get through the trees on Endor.
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Tyler
I love this design because it’s upper body looks imposing and ready to fight on all sides. The only issue I have is the legs. The foot design looks good but I feel like the legs look to small and fragile for the massive body they support. They made me think of a big elephant with giraffe legs. An idea I had was making the legs shorter and giving the AT-SP more spread out legs like the AT-TE. Bigger legs like the AT-TE would make look stronger while also giving it better balance.
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Kal Skirata
When it comes to assault/mechanized infantry walkers, I tend to agree that the AT-TE style design is better. However, this is a siege walker. And siege walkers need to be able to take out enemy defenses at long range. In this case, the additional height translates to extra range, allowing the AT-SE’s LTLs to take out enemy units even before it came within their range. It also provides additional visibility, although I think that’s an overused excuse for tall walkers.
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Kal Skirata
*sorry, AT-SP’s, not -SE’s
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Lexington
Love all your designs! Just don’t buy into the whole 6-downward-legs-concept. If it was a viable form of locomotion it would exist in nature … yet it does not.
I mean yeah, it does on ants but those legs are different, we’re talking mammal-like legs on this one.
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Markov
I’m not sure if you can get behind this idea, as it is a walker, but what if it were to be supported by repulsor-lifts as opposed to legs. I feel like it would be less of a siege platform, but more along the lines of a heavily armed platoon transport.
So Fractal, since this monster is gigantic, I was wondering of it could fit into any Landing Craft, Or even how it fits in hangar bays who are not large enough. How do you transport these?
As of right now there are no known dropship type that can carry a AT-SP yet and when Fractal does make one it will be either a Chi class heavy dropship variant or a titan class variant.
As for the hanger bay that carry them there are as of right now 4 ships that can carry them with those hanger bays (Which are the huge square ones) which is the Impellor, the Compellor, the Legator and the Consolidator.
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OriginalSchmill
Space catapults. BIG space catapults.
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Kal Skirata
Forget catapults, just drop it from low orbit and let gravity do the work. Reentry could get messy though…
So Fractal since you said the AT-SP is 56 meters in height then what the length is?
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Anonymous
OK the AT-M6 walker size was revealed to be 40.87 meters in length, 17.95 meters in width and 36.18 meters in height.
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Anonymous
Also the First Order also have the AT-AT and the AT-ST but the difference is: 1. The First Order’s AT-AT have increase leg armor but it’s chin heavy laser cannons were replaced to it’s side which remove it’s medium blasters, the size is change to 24 meters in length, 10.19 meters in width and 22.03 meters in height. 2. The First Order’s AT-ST was quote “Clad in next-generation reinforced composite armor” and it have improved gyroscopic systems which make it more stable than the GE’s AT-ST, it’s weapons remained the same but it’s size is now 6.43 meters in length,… Read more »
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Anonymous
Also the First Order’s AT-AT’s front toes was reinforced for smashing aside obstacles and it look stubby.
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Anonymous
Also it’s front shin have extra reinforced armor.
Another thing about the M6 is that at the top back there are some containers that are fuel cells for the megacaliber 6 turbolaser cannon while it’s front legs were design like that for reducing the turbolaser cannon’s recoil.
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Anonymous
So Fractal does the AT-SP move the same speed as the AT-AT or slower?
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Jackalope
Forget the gorilla walker, this thing is amazing.
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Anonymous
Ikr?
If echo base was screwed with AT-AT’s, then imagine these. The first transport would have never gotten away.
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Noah
The first transport got out before the walkers got on the ground, so your argument is invalid.
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HardwarJo
Hes exaggerating for effect.
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Shaun
I imagine the things that look like little quad lasers with radar dishes behind them [and nostrils if we’re getting anthropomorphic] are, in fact, weaponized ghetto blasters…? But actually, I’ve been spending a lot of time wading through all these posts and thought it’d be great to see a ‘kit of parts’ post that itemized and walked-through standard weapons, ship components, and the like. You have a post that showed a range of standard components when you where describing some of your rationale on power/mass/size requirements and what-not, and it’d be nice to have that reference… Also, might result in… Read more »
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Anonymous
So the tops guns that is mostly going to be use for attacking very heavily fortified bases are the basic 6 megatons light turbolasers or most likely a cut-down sub megaton version?
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StellarMagic
I think they’re derived from the old AT-TE’s main gun, in which case it’s not an energy weapon but a mass driver.
Visually, but they are designed as LTL (or at least a heavy laser)
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Todd
How would those guns compare to the dual turbos on a Light Cruiser (imp)?
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StellarMagic
Hmm… ironically this thing looks to be about the same size as the new ‘Gorilla’ walker the First Order uses (I will not say it’s name because everything new that got named for the sequel trilogy seems to have been named by a comic book author or something, so many dumb names). Except that thing is just a giant artillery piece.
This thing is a Star Wars siege tower. XD
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gorkmalork
Sensible choice to make this brute somewhat no-neck (that’s what all the turrets & sensors are for), though from the side my fool eyes take a second to distinguish ‘tween fore & aft. Those upper & lower-midsection hatches imply at least some light-vehicle/troop capacity and/or missile magazines, so staying below its horizon may not help quite enough. Speaking of which, fiendish idea: training remote/interrogator droid-scale target designators.
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gorkmalork
Whoops, didn’t intend this as a reply. Decent analogy on Stellar’s part, though.
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PhantomFury
Interesting design, reminded me of that vehicle being described as a link between an AT-TE and an AT-AT. That said, the tall, lanky looking leg is a little odd for me and I think it would be more fitting if the legs are angled outwards more.
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Anonymous
Ah yes this behemoth I bet it would destroy the so called First order’s Mega caliber 6 walker no problem.
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Anonymous
Nah, a MegaCaliber Six shot to those lanky legs would spell disaster for them I think.
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Anonymous
You sure about that? The Megacaliber 6’s cannon above it’s head look to be fixed in one direction the front which means the gorilla walker need to turn from right to left to be able to fire on the target while the AT-SP’s guns can move around reliable like the heavy laser cannons, gatling cannons, anti personal guns and it’s light turbolasers on the top also those guns are all around the walker leaving it with almost no blind spots while the gorilla’s guns are again only in the front leaving it very vulnerable especially the back. Also the SP… Read more »
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Chris Bradshaw
If you need that much ground firepower, at what point does it become more feasible for a Victory class Star Destroyer to drag an extendable spike from its ventral hangar to maintain ground contact in order to breach a theater shield? These superheavy walkers are cool, but is there really a tactical niche for a walking fortress of this size?
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Arvenski
This thing seems to me to be like a ground-based Death Star. Massive, but impractical.
All mecha are impractical. But see my other comment for a possible rationale (with the understanding that all mecha are basically crazy).
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gorkmalork
Eh, at least this thing can theoretically cover its own flanks & aft (unlike most of its AT-series brethren), and mines capable of wrecking its day might be most prohibitive to deploy.
Even if it gets wrecked, so what? Ground equipment must be ridiculously cheap compared to spacecraft, by power generation and propulsion if nothing else. Use vehicles so you don’t risk a something huge and (relatively) expensive like a frigate in atmosphere. A tank would be better, but this looks cooler 🙂
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Noah
The juggernaut looks cooler than any walker.
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gorkmalork
I’m still partial to Juggernaut variants or that ground-support repulsor platform you were tinkering with a while back, though doubtful the former would want to engage this thing piecemeal. As for coolness: point in full, though I’m curious what its locomotion cycle usually looks like.
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Steve Bannon
The CIS might operate under that kind of pragmatic, numbers-driven philosophy, but the Empire is run by men, and men are loss-averse. These big walkers probably have hundreds of crew if you scale up from Juggernaut/AT-TE crew densities, and even if a corps level formation of walkers is still cheaper than a frigate, most field commanders would probably rather put two thousand men at risk than fifty thousand. After all, the budget isn’t their problem.
AT-ATs have 4 pilots. AT-TEs have what, 8? I doubt an AT-SP would have more than 20, mostly gunners. And they may not even carry troops. And I guarantee you a corps of walkers is far cheaper than a frigate. Walker guns are at most megaton scale and mostly sub-megaton, and MTL are hundreds of gigatons per shot. The power systems alone would indicate that a few hundred walkers would not remotely compare to the cost of a ship with numerous MTL, and this ship also has shields against same, and heavy electronics, and a hyperdrive, and enough hypermatter fuel… Read more »
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Anonymous
AT-TE’s have 7 pilots.
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Anonymous
Everything in Star Wars is impractical, who cares really?
My thinking is that this is a beach-head walker. The thing about how shields seem to work is that the breach happens in a fairly predictably way. Under the shield the defenders can have great mobility with repulsorlift vehicles; they don’t need to cross the shield barrier, just prevent the attacker from setting up underneath the edge and preparing a major attack on the generators. So, first assault troops under the shield edge can get hammered by mobile defenders. This would be one of the first attacker vehicles in – dropped very close to the edge of a theater shield… Read more »
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Steve Bannon
My question is how often does a theater shield assault require something of this kind of tonnage? When the defenders have the budget to repel lighter walker assaults of AT-AT type units, surely they would be able to put up a total planetary shield that would preclude this kind of massive assault in the first place, and the critical siege units would be torpedo spheres (love to see a fractal redesign) instead of walkers. If you’re attacking that kind of fortress world, manage to bring part of the planetary shield grid, and have to assault another shielded hemisphere of the… Read more »
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gorkmalork
Not sure how I swing on the ‘superheavy walkers or capital craft on repulsors?’ question yet, but fortress worlds probably mount their share of destroyer-to-battlecruiser-grade surface guns in addition to the superheavies. Destroyer/frigate-scale units might have to wait for said defenses to get locally denuded before risking low-altude antics inside a planetary shield breach, which could be where walker dropships come in. Plus, as Fractal hinted at with the ‘crashing frigate’ factor there is the question of how far attackers *or* defenders are willing to take BDZ-borderline procedures.
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Chris Bradshaw
Thanks Steve for backing me up. When you’re up against destroyer grade HTL ground batteries, a walker is going to be destroyed in a single hit while a capital ship on repulsors can tank a volley or two with shields and have enough time to get to a safer position. Besides, if the defenders are using 70+ teraton HTL batteries to fire at targets maneuvering between skyscrapers, the entire landscape is going to get wrecked for dozens of miles around by the heat released from a single hit. Nothing is survivable in that kind of hellscape except for something with… Read more »
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gorkmalork
Just gotta note that having mentioned destroyer-caliber ground batteries, most walker dropships would have a much easier time ducking those at close quarters (or mid-descent) than your average light capital, besides their innate expendability by comparison. ‘Sides, they’d also have plenty of fighter/gunboat-scale fire support to contend with lighter defenses unless the siege itself gets abruptly broken up/called off.
AT-ATs should be killable by fighter-grade weapons, and theater shielding proliferates. Both are going to be relatively common systems, to the extent that terrorists have them. Obviously there are certain bands of enemy threat that limits the use of certain assets. If there’s teraton firepower being freely used in atmosphere, taking something intact is probably not all that important, and ground forces would not be deployed at all. Very heavy ground forces only exist because you can’t (or at least wouldn’t want to) slag everything. A frigate has hundreds, maybe thousands of crew and troops aboard – if something goes… Read more »
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gorkmalork
I’m more/less sold on the expendability angle for mass armor. Plus, it’s an open question as to how many passive/active defensive layers most worlds have the means (or political leeway/inclination) to stack up in the first place.
Total war fortress worlds/systems in SW would be insane – dreadnought-scale mobile defense platforms/monitors, huge stockpiles of missile/minefields, multiple layers of planetary shielding, secondary theater shielding for shield generators and for ground batteries of v-150 and w-165. Kilometer-wide and deep bedrock-cut anti-armor trenches, deep crust vacuum subways for protected strategic mobility, mass use of self-replicating droid defenders, HTL point defenses on kilometer-high armored towers for high-depression-angle fire. Basically imagine the cost of a fleet, sunk into a planet. That type of world is probably super rare, but would be ridiculously hard to take without strategic weapons like superlasers and such.
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Chris Bradshaw
The whole point of deploying a capital ship in atmosphere is to bring an overkill level of survivability, firepower, and mobility that no land unit can match, even if the capital ship is absurdly expensive compared to walkers. Since Star Wars has always been heavily inspired by the 2nd World War, let us postulate what would have happened if someone had invented the repulsorlift in 1939, and you could fly the HMS Warspite over Normandy in support of the Guards Armored Division at Operation Goodwood. Sure, you wouldn’t want to risk it by flying it into range of something like… Read more »
I agree that a warship should guarantee superiority over a field army, but the fact that we don’t see frigates slagging armies outright on the field all the time suggests that there are reasons why. The original fantasy aspect of it all is a given. We know it’s because that it would be limiting in a narrative sense to a movie, but we need to be deducing more logical reasons for why we see what we see otherwise why bother having a technical discussion at all? That said, you can nuke a foxhole with an SLBM salvo instead of storming… Read more »
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Anonymous
In season 1 of SW: The Clone Wars, Separatist proton cannons (which seem to be the Invisible Hand’s mass driver cannons mounted on legs) easily shoot down an Acclamator with a few hits.
Then in AotC a Trade Fed Core Ship with about an order of magnitude more shielding than an Acclamator is shot down by five SPHA-T walkers. I’d say frigates have a lot to fear from ground armies with mobile artillery, never mind dedicated fixed defenses.
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keb
Oops, that last anonymous post was by me.
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valoren
I don’t really understand the “ground contact mast” part. Freely passing through theatre shields can’t be as simple as having whatever appendage touching the planet surface, otherwise it would be true of any repulsorlift vehicle. That type of shields should logically be way superior to the ones of frigates, if they have to be effective at repelling capship fire for extended periods of time, so said frigate would just fry itself trying to hammer through, and then be trapped under the shield canopy, damaged or seriously weakened and unable to retreat, if it can go under it at all.
It’s not my idea, I’m responding to it. I also think it can’t be as simple as that, otherwise we’d see capital ships used against shielded targets often.
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valoren
@Fractalsponge
Sorry for the confusion. I was responding to Steve who was, at least I think the first to evoke the idea.
My guess on how it works is that the shield become more matter-tolerant as it approach the surface, since it needs to account for the ground and the particular geography of the environment it is deployed in. Since walkers make ground-contact and have a relatively low profile (at least compared to a 30 km-wide shield “bubble”), the shield might just not make the difference between them and the local terrain.
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CRMcNeill
I concur on the ground contact mast; just because Gungan shields go all the way to the ground is not conclusive proof that ALL shields do. IMO, the Gungan shields are more Tactical Shields than Theater Shields, designed to be somewhat mobile and provide protection to mobile units. I’ve always pictured a Theater Shield as being more like an umbrella; providing overhead coverage out to about a 10-kilometer radius from the shield generator, ~1 kilometer or less off the ground, and open around the edges. This explains a couple problems with the Battle of Hoth… 1). Depending on the altitude… Read more »
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CRMcNeill
My first thought on this thing’s mission derives from your use of “Siege”. To me, that implies a long term mission of some sort. Unlike an AT-AT, I picture this as having actual crew quarters / barracks and such for ground missions that last weeks or months, almost like a mobile firebase or something. Armaments-wise, it’s basically a light corvette, just without the necessity of a hyperdrive, ion drive, repulsorlift, space-grade life support, etc. As an aside, I’ve noticed quite a few questions scattered around your various projects about dimensions, armaments and the like. This is a subject of interest… Read more »
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Astro1derboy
Love all these re-renders!
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chuck schumer
How do you get a picture next to your username here?
I don’t know how tall this fricken thing is but its HUGE
I just love heavy walkers,The All Terrain Siege Platform quenches my thirst for a walker that can do most things aside from scouting and recon. It’s rotary canons will achieve an anti-personnel role, while the laser cannons and what I assume to be grenade/rocket launchers can easily deal with any ground vehicle. The sheer firepower of this behemoth would be a little impractical though. In the navy, the guns they have create so much heat, that you can’t be outside near the guns without getting burned. In addition to the cost of all the materials needed(guns, armor, batteries, cooling cells…)… Read more »
I dig this… if it has the First Order Gorilla Style legs.
But no to six stupidly elongated and vulnerable legs.
If only the Empire had these on Hoth and Endor
Why would they need them? It’s not like they had much of a challenge on Hoth, and they wouldn’t even be able to get through the trees on Endor.
I love this design because it’s upper body looks imposing and ready to fight on all sides. The only issue I have is the legs. The foot design looks good but I feel like the legs look to small and fragile for the massive body they support. They made me think of a big elephant with giraffe legs. An idea I had was making the legs shorter and giving the AT-SP more spread out legs like the AT-TE. Bigger legs like the AT-TE would make look stronger while also giving it better balance.
When it comes to assault/mechanized infantry walkers, I tend to agree that the AT-TE style design is better. However, this is a siege walker. And siege walkers need to be able to take out enemy defenses at long range. In this case, the additional height translates to extra range, allowing the AT-SE’s LTLs to take out enemy units even before it came within their range. It also provides additional visibility, although I think that’s an overused excuse for tall walkers.
*sorry, AT-SP’s, not -SE’s
Love all your designs! Just don’t buy into the whole 6-downward-legs-concept. If it was a viable form of locomotion it would exist in nature … yet it does not.
I mean yeah, it does on ants but those legs are different, we’re talking mammal-like legs on this one.
I’m not sure if you can get behind this idea, as it is a walker, but what if it were to be supported by repulsor-lifts as opposed to legs. I feel like it would be less of a siege platform, but more along the lines of a heavily armed platoon transport.
Thanks, but I’ll stick with the Juggernaut.
So Fractal, since this monster is gigantic, I was wondering of it could fit into any Landing Craft, Or even how it fits in hangar bays who are not large enough. How do you transport these?
As of right now there are no known dropship type that can carry a AT-SP yet and when Fractal does make one it will be either a Chi class heavy dropship variant or a titan class variant.
As for the hanger bay that carry them there are as of right now 4 ships that can carry them with those hanger bays (Which are the huge square ones) which is the Impellor, the Compellor, the Legator and the Consolidator.
Space catapults. BIG space catapults.
Forget catapults, just drop it from low orbit and let gravity do the work. Reentry could get messy though…
So Fractal since you said the AT-SP is 56 meters in height then what the length is?
OK the AT-M6 walker size was revealed to be 40.87 meters in length, 17.95 meters in width and 36.18 meters in height.
Also the First Order also have the AT-AT and the AT-ST but the difference is: 1. The First Order’s AT-AT have increase leg armor but it’s chin heavy laser cannons were replaced to it’s side which remove it’s medium blasters, the size is change to 24 meters in length, 10.19 meters in width and 22.03 meters in height. 2. The First Order’s AT-ST was quote “Clad in next-generation reinforced composite armor” and it have improved gyroscopic systems which make it more stable than the GE’s AT-ST, it’s weapons remained the same but it’s size is now 6.43 meters in length,… Read more »
Also the First Order’s AT-AT’s front toes was reinforced for smashing aside obstacles and it look stubby.
Also it’s front shin have extra reinforced armor.
Another thing about the M6 is that at the top back there are some containers that are fuel cells for the megacaliber 6 turbolaser cannon while it’s front legs were design like that for reducing the turbolaser cannon’s recoil.
So Fractal does the AT-SP move the same speed as the AT-AT or slower?
Forget the gorilla walker, this thing is amazing.
Ikr?
If echo base was screwed with AT-AT’s, then imagine these. The first transport would have never gotten away.
The first transport got out before the walkers got on the ground, so your argument is invalid.
Hes exaggerating for effect.
I imagine the things that look like little quad lasers with radar dishes behind them [and nostrils if we’re getting anthropomorphic] are, in fact, weaponized ghetto blasters…? But actually, I’ve been spending a lot of time wading through all these posts and thought it’d be great to see a ‘kit of parts’ post that itemized and walked-through standard weapons, ship components, and the like. You have a post that showed a range of standard components when you where describing some of your rationale on power/mass/size requirements and what-not, and it’d be nice to have that reference… Also, might result in… Read more »
So the tops guns that is mostly going to be use for attacking very heavily fortified bases are the basic 6 megatons light turbolasers or most likely a cut-down sub megaton version?
I think they’re derived from the old AT-TE’s main gun, in which case it’s not an energy weapon but a mass driver.
Visually, but they are designed as LTL (or at least a heavy laser)
How would those guns compare to the dual turbos on a Light Cruiser (imp)?
Hmm… ironically this thing looks to be about the same size as the new ‘Gorilla’ walker the First Order uses (I will not say it’s name because everything new that got named for the sequel trilogy seems to have been named by a comic book author or something, so many dumb names). Except that thing is just a giant artillery piece.
This thing is a Star Wars siege tower. XD
Sensible choice to make this brute somewhat no-neck (that’s what all the turrets & sensors are for), though from the side my fool eyes take a second to distinguish ‘tween fore & aft. Those upper & lower-midsection hatches imply at least some light-vehicle/troop capacity and/or missile magazines, so staying below its horizon may not help quite enough. Speaking of which, fiendish idea: training remote/interrogator droid-scale target designators.
Whoops, didn’t intend this as a reply. Decent analogy on Stellar’s part, though.
Interesting design, reminded me of that vehicle being described as a link between an AT-TE and an AT-AT. That said, the tall, lanky looking leg is a little odd for me and I think it would be more fitting if the legs are angled outwards more.
Ah yes this behemoth I bet it would destroy the so called First order’s Mega caliber 6 walker no problem.
Nah, a MegaCaliber Six shot to those lanky legs would spell disaster for them I think.
You sure about that? The Megacaliber 6’s cannon above it’s head look to be fixed in one direction the front which means the gorilla walker need to turn from right to left to be able to fire on the target while the AT-SP’s guns can move around reliable like the heavy laser cannons, gatling cannons, anti personal guns and it’s light turbolasers on the top also those guns are all around the walker leaving it with almost no blind spots while the gorilla’s guns are again only in the front leaving it very vulnerable especially the back. Also the SP… Read more »
If you need that much ground firepower, at what point does it become more feasible for a Victory class Star Destroyer to drag an extendable spike from its ventral hangar to maintain ground contact in order to breach a theater shield? These superheavy walkers are cool, but is there really a tactical niche for a walking fortress of this size?
This thing seems to me to be like a ground-based Death Star. Massive, but impractical.
All mecha are impractical. But see my other comment for a possible rationale (with the understanding that all mecha are basically crazy).
Eh, at least this thing can theoretically cover its own flanks & aft (unlike most of its AT-series brethren), and mines capable of wrecking its day might be most prohibitive to deploy.
Even if it gets wrecked, so what? Ground equipment must be ridiculously cheap compared to spacecraft, by power generation and propulsion if nothing else. Use vehicles so you don’t risk a something huge and (relatively) expensive like a frigate in atmosphere. A tank would be better, but this looks cooler 🙂
The juggernaut looks cooler than any walker.
I’m still partial to Juggernaut variants or that ground-support repulsor platform you were tinkering with a while back, though doubtful the former would want to engage this thing piecemeal. As for coolness: point in full, though I’m curious what its locomotion cycle usually looks like.
The CIS might operate under that kind of pragmatic, numbers-driven philosophy, but the Empire is run by men, and men are loss-averse. These big walkers probably have hundreds of crew if you scale up from Juggernaut/AT-TE crew densities, and even if a corps level formation of walkers is still cheaper than a frigate, most field commanders would probably rather put two thousand men at risk than fifty thousand. After all, the budget isn’t their problem.
AT-ATs have 4 pilots. AT-TEs have what, 8? I doubt an AT-SP would have more than 20, mostly gunners. And they may not even carry troops. And I guarantee you a corps of walkers is far cheaper than a frigate. Walker guns are at most megaton scale and mostly sub-megaton, and MTL are hundreds of gigatons per shot. The power systems alone would indicate that a few hundred walkers would not remotely compare to the cost of a ship with numerous MTL, and this ship also has shields against same, and heavy electronics, and a hyperdrive, and enough hypermatter fuel… Read more »
AT-TE’s have 7 pilots.
Everything in Star Wars is impractical, who cares really?
Everyone, really.
My thinking is that this is a beach-head walker. The thing about how shields seem to work is that the breach happens in a fairly predictably way. Under the shield the defenders can have great mobility with repulsorlift vehicles; they don’t need to cross the shield barrier, just prevent the attacker from setting up underneath the edge and preparing a major attack on the generators. So, first assault troops under the shield edge can get hammered by mobile defenders. This would be one of the first attacker vehicles in – dropped very close to the edge of a theater shield… Read more »
My question is how often does a theater shield assault require something of this kind of tonnage? When the defenders have the budget to repel lighter walker assaults of AT-AT type units, surely they would be able to put up a total planetary shield that would preclude this kind of massive assault in the first place, and the critical siege units would be torpedo spheres (love to see a fractal redesign) instead of walkers. If you’re attacking that kind of fortress world, manage to bring part of the planetary shield grid, and have to assault another shielded hemisphere of the… Read more »
Not sure how I swing on the ‘superheavy walkers or capital craft on repulsors?’ question yet, but fortress worlds probably mount their share of destroyer-to-battlecruiser-grade surface guns in addition to the superheavies. Destroyer/frigate-scale units might have to wait for said defenses to get locally denuded before risking low-altude antics inside a planetary shield breach, which could be where walker dropships come in. Plus, as Fractal hinted at with the ‘crashing frigate’ factor there is the question of how far attackers *or* defenders are willing to take BDZ-borderline procedures.
Thanks Steve for backing me up. When you’re up against destroyer grade HTL ground batteries, a walker is going to be destroyed in a single hit while a capital ship on repulsors can tank a volley or two with shields and have enough time to get to a safer position. Besides, if the defenders are using 70+ teraton HTL batteries to fire at targets maneuvering between skyscrapers, the entire landscape is going to get wrecked for dozens of miles around by the heat released from a single hit. Nothing is survivable in that kind of hellscape except for something with… Read more »
Just gotta note that having mentioned destroyer-caliber ground batteries, most walker dropships would have a much easier time ducking those at close quarters (or mid-descent) than your average light capital, besides their innate expendability by comparison. ‘Sides, they’d also have plenty of fighter/gunboat-scale fire support to contend with lighter defenses unless the siege itself gets abruptly broken up/called off.
AT-ATs should be killable by fighter-grade weapons, and theater shielding proliferates. Both are going to be relatively common systems, to the extent that terrorists have them. Obviously there are certain bands of enemy threat that limits the use of certain assets. If there’s teraton firepower being freely used in atmosphere, taking something intact is probably not all that important, and ground forces would not be deployed at all. Very heavy ground forces only exist because you can’t (or at least wouldn’t want to) slag everything. A frigate has hundreds, maybe thousands of crew and troops aboard – if something goes… Read more »
I’m more/less sold on the expendability angle for mass armor. Plus, it’s an open question as to how many passive/active defensive layers most worlds have the means (or political leeway/inclination) to stack up in the first place.
Total war fortress worlds/systems in SW would be insane – dreadnought-scale mobile defense platforms/monitors, huge stockpiles of missile/minefields, multiple layers of planetary shielding, secondary theater shielding for shield generators and for ground batteries of v-150 and w-165. Kilometer-wide and deep bedrock-cut anti-armor trenches, deep crust vacuum subways for protected strategic mobility, mass use of self-replicating droid defenders, HTL point defenses on kilometer-high armored towers for high-depression-angle fire. Basically imagine the cost of a fleet, sunk into a planet. That type of world is probably super rare, but would be ridiculously hard to take without strategic weapons like superlasers and such.
The whole point of deploying a capital ship in atmosphere is to bring an overkill level of survivability, firepower, and mobility that no land unit can match, even if the capital ship is absurdly expensive compared to walkers. Since Star Wars has always been heavily inspired by the 2nd World War, let us postulate what would have happened if someone had invented the repulsorlift in 1939, and you could fly the HMS Warspite over Normandy in support of the Guards Armored Division at Operation Goodwood. Sure, you wouldn’t want to risk it by flying it into range of something like… Read more »
I agree that a warship should guarantee superiority over a field army, but the fact that we don’t see frigates slagging armies outright on the field all the time suggests that there are reasons why. The original fantasy aspect of it all is a given. We know it’s because that it would be limiting in a narrative sense to a movie, but we need to be deducing more logical reasons for why we see what we see otherwise why bother having a technical discussion at all? That said, you can nuke a foxhole with an SLBM salvo instead of storming… Read more »
In season 1 of SW: The Clone Wars, Separatist proton cannons (which seem to be the Invisible Hand’s mass driver cannons mounted on legs) easily shoot down an Acclamator with a few hits.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-gaCrrz-9M (the shoot-down scene starts at around 1:23)
Then in AotC a Trade Fed Core Ship with about an order of magnitude more shielding than an Acclamator is shot down by five SPHA-T walkers. I’d say frigates have a lot to fear from ground armies with mobile artillery, never mind dedicated fixed defenses.
Oops, that last anonymous post was by me.
I don’t really understand the “ground contact mast” part. Freely passing through theatre shields can’t be as simple as having whatever appendage touching the planet surface, otherwise it would be true of any repulsorlift vehicle. That type of shields should logically be way superior to the ones of frigates, if they have to be effective at repelling capship fire for extended periods of time, so said frigate would just fry itself trying to hammer through, and then be trapped under the shield canopy, damaged or seriously weakened and unable to retreat, if it can go under it at all.
It’s not my idea, I’m responding to it. I also think it can’t be as simple as that, otherwise we’d see capital ships used against shielded targets often.
@Fractalsponge
Sorry for the confusion. I was responding to Steve who was, at least I think the first to evoke the idea.
My guess on how it works is that the shield become more matter-tolerant as it approach the surface, since it needs to account for the ground and the particular geography of the environment it is deployed in. Since walkers make ground-contact and have a relatively low profile (at least compared to a 30 km-wide shield “bubble”), the shield might just not make the difference between them and the local terrain.
I concur on the ground contact mast; just because Gungan shields go all the way to the ground is not conclusive proof that ALL shields do. IMO, the Gungan shields are more Tactical Shields than Theater Shields, designed to be somewhat mobile and provide protection to mobile units. I’ve always pictured a Theater Shield as being more like an umbrella; providing overhead coverage out to about a 10-kilometer radius from the shield generator, ~1 kilometer or less off the ground, and open around the edges. This explains a couple problems with the Battle of Hoth… 1). Depending on the altitude… Read more »
My first thought on this thing’s mission derives from your use of “Siege”. To me, that implies a long term mission of some sort. Unlike an AT-AT, I picture this as having actual crew quarters / barracks and such for ground missions that last weeks or months, almost like a mobile firebase or something. Armaments-wise, it’s basically a light corvette, just without the necessity of a hyperdrive, ion drive, repulsorlift, space-grade life support, etc. As an aside, I’ve noticed quite a few questions scattered around your various projects about dimensions, armaments and the like. This is a subject of interest… Read more »
Love all these re-renders!
How do you get a picture next to your username here?
Gravatar.com
It’s supposed to be a global avatar, but it’s not implemented on every site.