PT Film gunships vs TCW gunships.

There is a difference between the movie LAATs and TCW LAATs. Many of you know LAAT stands for low attitude assult transport, since they are open aircraft, at least in the films. While TCW versions seem to be space going and unlike their film counterparts, they lack the foreward archway, often lack side turrets, and have double side doors that seal up the craft. While the film versions have single side doors that do not fully close and leave a gap for the side turrets to be attached to a internal bulkhead, lack foreward side doors, and have doorless archways under the cockpit.

Here are pictures of the film versions.








Here are pictures of TCW gunships.

 

I have to respectfully point out that none of this is original to TCW.

I mean, yes these versions are slightly different to the ones in the films. But that's because almost every change made, was made in the original microseries.

Watch at 5:00 minutes in the following video, to see them flying in space, lacking side turrets, forward archways...etc. the whole lot.



TCW was directly inspired by some aspects of the original, you just have to look at the shape of Dooku's head to see that.

So don't blame TCW. Blame Clone Wars.

 

And we do see turreted gunships in TCW - in the Geonosis arc. The hulls are the same in movies, CW and TCW - it's just what's done with them that varies.

 

I just chalk it down to battlefield r&d, the clones modified things to make them work better once the actually saw action. Sarge, or other vets on the boards probably have stories of how they have scene equipment further modified by machinists or mechanics in their military service.

 

Sure, equipment gets modified and updated all the time. A new system gets installed, an old one gets removed or improved, and you can see how it's been changed. On the C-130, we got new radar systems, chaff/flare launchers, countermeasures, and threat detection systems, as well as constant updates to comm radios. That's something that SW has always gotten right, going all the way back to the original Y-wings flying around with most of the fairings removed.

 

We even just got to see a prototype b wing in rebels that has features we would not see later. Anakin, Saesee Tinn, and plo koon all flew starfighters that they had heavily modified to suit personal needs and want. The tcw version of the y-wings went even further by having a gunner position that was referenced in earlier works but never seen till tcw.

It all stems for George Lucas being a gearhead. He loved supeing up hot rods as a teenager and it carried over into american graffiti and star wars. The falcon is a larger example of this as han is always tinkering with it. if you watch the latest tv spot the new first order ties seem to have a new weapons package that includes aft laser cannons.

 

Another difference I didn't point out is that the TCW versions have that triangular niche with a round port that the film versions lack. As for the TCW side turrets, they are mounted to the exterior of the hull instead of to the internal bulkhead which requires the doors to leave a gap as in the films.

In ROTS, we don't see any gunships exhibit any of TCW features or fly in space if these are modifications, they were reverted back late in the war. We see the gunships are ferried into the atmosphere of Utapau by SDs and none have TCW features, they remain identical to the ones in AOTC.

It seems to be more the case of fans and EU writers disliking the LAATs, being low attitude aircraft and rewrote them as spacecraft despite of contradicting the films and even their very name. Yes these changes did start in the microseconds which TCW was originally a continuation of before becoming a retcon of it, a spinoff of a spinoff leading to adaptation decay. This is not helped by video games featuring enclosed space going gunships for game play purposes. This differences seem to be just a symptom of adaptation decay more than anything else, especially with the gunships in ROTS remaining the same as in AOTC. Nobody is blaming anything for this.

 

The doors can airlock and be used for TEMPORARY space flight. They don't have hyperdrives. Also whats wrong with them being space capable in video games? I love boarding enemy cruisers with them in battlefront 2, and I love the deployment to Munnalist in 2003 CW.

 

I think the turreted gunships are well done in their design.

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The issue is the movie versions can't airlock since even in the closed position the doors leave a large gap from the forward bulkhead. I don't have an issue with them being space going in a game for play value, just when stories go against the films to "correct" them. The LAAT, is probably the vehicle with the most discrepancies between the films and spinoffs. I think the game versions have single extra long side doors to fully seal, while TCW version has double side doors to fully seal, then the movie version has short single side doors that don't fully seal. If they are space going then they should remove low attitude from their name.

 

Different versions after Geonosis? Not so much of a stretch considering there were already "sky crane" versions dropping AT-TEs in AOTC.

 

The LAAT ("Republic airships") in Battlefront II are also more similar to the ones in TCW. Since sarlaccsaurs-rex already mentioned using them in space battles.

 

Yep, there are LAAT/C, based off both sky cranes and carry alls, from Dune. Again it is likely an aircraft since we never see them fly in space in the films or if walkers are air sealed or can withstand decompression. We also don't see any TCW or game style gunships in ROTS. All the gunships in that film appear identical to the ones in AOTC including the lack of nose art. It would be very odd if more advanced gunships were developed mid war, only to revert back to the older models late in the war.

 

It's believable that some of the older gunships stayed in service even as new gunships were introduced. So driving Jedi around on Coruscant seems like the perfect place for the AOTC style gunship.

 

If George Never had a problem with it then I don't really care. Models change, things are updated. Take Rebels's B-Wing for example it was an earlier model that got its super laser taken away in latter models.

 

George's role in spinoff material was always limited and passive, he just left spinoff material like games and books to the licensing dept to handle for him. Rebels was made after the sale anyway so he has no involvement in that show.

However all the gunships we see in the battle at Upatau were also indentical to the ones in AOTC, we don't see any of the TCW or game style LAATs in ROTS. We don't see the gunships fighting in the space battle above Coruscant either. The games at least have the excuse of variations from the films are needed for game play. With the spinoff series it is simply adaptation decay (which is not negative, just that things are different because of the adaptation process from live action movies to weekly cartoon series) .

 

Some models are made for space while others arent. The Republic Star Destroyers often go inside planets so there was no reason why gunships, least at first, needed to be space operable.

 

All I can say is that gunships are cool. Gimme more

So far nothing in TFA looks as interesting.

 

They were never said to be low altitude in the movies. They are just referred as gunships. During the production of AotC, they were called "attack helicopters". Their official name is Republic Attack Gunship.

 

TCW likes to do its own thing, Slicer.

 

Helicopters are low altitude too, and attack ones are mostly for close air support to attack ground targets without also killing your own ground troops nearby.

Very true, just some don't want to accept it.

 

Not every heli is low altitude.

And can be used to transport troops across large distances. There's no contradiction here.

 

One could go with "TCW gunships are a newer model" or possibly "don't take what you see on screen literally"

Personally, I figure that a "fully airtight" gunship makes more sense for travel at high speeds, as well as space travel.

 

Except we don't see any of these newer models in ROTS which takes place after TCW series. Unless you consider ROTS to be a strange TCW-A like 1985-A in BTTF2. The gunships were meant to rapidly deploy troops from the capital ships once in atmosphere to the ground and provide close air support. The dropships quickly deploying walkers from the capital ships once in the atmosphere. The LAAT are based on the Russian Mil Mi-24 which is both an attack gunships and a troop transport. I don't see why every flying craft in Star Wars must be space capable, snowspeeders, Skyhoppers, and cloud cars aren't and those at least are enclosed.

But they are more limited than planes in both altitude and speed. highest altitude a helicopter has ever flown, which was 40,820 feet on June 21, 1972. Jean Boulet of France flew a single-turboshaft Aerospatiale SA 315B Lama, which had been stripped of all unnecessary equipment to reduce weight. Alot of how high a copter can hover depends on the "ground effect". For example a copter could hover at 13,000 feet over a mountain, but only 10,000 over flat land.

I never said they didn't or could not transport troops, not sure where you got that from? Again they are based on the Mil Mi-24. The issues here is TCW shows gunships are fully encvlosed and capable of space flight while both AOTC and ROTS shows that they are open, unsealed aircraft and are never seen operating outside of a atmosphere. Of course you don't have to prefer the movie version as it seems many prefer TCW version of things over the PT version.