Well much has gone on in this thread since my last visit.

There are just a few issues I want to address:

1. To those who still think tracked vehicles are more terrain-capable than the curiously named All Terrain walkers, your logic is faulty. Yes, tracked vehicles in our modern world can go more places than untracked vehicles. But that is because we don't have walker-type vehicles. If we did they would go more places than tracked vehicles. Think of the average infantryman, they can go over much more varied terrain than a tracked vehicle. The technology in Star Wars allows AT-walkers to move in much the same way as an infantryman, or in the case of the AT-AT as cavalry. So yes, tracked vehicles trump wheeled vehicles, but walkers trump the lot.

2. The Classic Trilogy is not simply based only on World War 2. Certainly A New Hope is based on World War 2 fighting styles, but the others I would argue are not. To me the Battle Of Hoth is more intentionally reminiscent of World War 1: the fact of trench warfare and the extraordinary power of vehicles over men goes hand in hand with ideas of the Great War. Return of the Jedi is intentionally similar to Vietnam: Guerilla warfare and the triumph of primitives over a technologically advanced foe.

As a side note this thinking has come to me recently in the form of yet another thesis of my Star Wars Scholarly nature. I believe George Lucas has tried to capture a different period of history in each battle; as mentioned above ANH=WW2, TESB=WW1, ROTJ=Vietnam, but looking back we can see that the very formal and orderly battle lines of the armies in TPM refer back to the ancient battles of Greece and Rome, while the masses of infantry led by heroic knights and backed by powerful seige weapons in AOTC is reminiscent of Medieval warfare. The glimpse of the space battle we see in the ROTS teaser shows two huge cruisers alongside each other letting loose their fire salvos, much like the Man O Wars seen in the Napoleonic period.

That's not a bad idea.

Back on Crawlers, though: Why not have them? I want as many different units to select from as possible, as long as it does not hurt balance or diversity, and as long as it's clear to me which vehicles do what (take Empire Earth - it's not always clear which units to use, to say the least).

TIE Crawlers are probably OK in battle. AT-ST drivers have a better overview and the AT-ST has grenades and rockets as well as lasers (although it might not have them in this game), but the Crawler is still a fairly neat vehicle.

my only question on the issue is why would a ground vehicle need ion engines? i've only ever heard/read of ion engines being used for flight. so if a TIE-crawler has no ion engines, how can they call it a TIE series?

It's a TIE cockpit with tracks strapped on it. :)

You do the math. :D


Welcome to LucasForums, Anton!

I hope your stay will be a pleasent one. :)