PT The Gungan Shield Generator

If the droids can walk through the shield, can the tanks be driven through the shield as well?

If not, why not?

 

I always felt they could, but they lose their effectiveness being that close to the enemy troops.

 

Yes but not in Battlefront if I recall correctly.

 

That's a video game...

In the movie we see the Gungans Boombas taking out the tanks relatively easy just by rolling into them. So sending in infantry to take out the shield generators, which then allows the tanks to shell the Gungans from a safe distance is a plausible strategy. If they roll the tanks up to and inside the Gungans generators the tanks are now easy targets.

 

Having the tanks sit back and shell the gungan positions from a distance makes them more effective than bringing them forward and into close quarters with the gungan infantry. The droidekas and battle droids were better equipped to fight the enemy infantry.

 

yes you can drive the tanks through the shield in battlefront.

 

The question that should be asked rather than the tanks is: why are projectiles deflected by the shield but the droids are not?

It might be set at a specific wavelength just for projectiles.

 

I always felt it had to do with speed of the object that was trying to penetrate the deflector shield. Something slow moving can work its way thru the field, but something fast moving and the shield deflects it. Kind of like water. If you're going to jump into a body of water and your close enough (can't generate speed) you're fine. However, if you jump from a distance and generate speed, you hit the water harder, too much speed it kills you.

 

TCW explicitly shows this to be how those kinds of shields work. When Anakin, Obi-Wan, and Ahsoka are training the rebels on Onderon, they show them how to roll droid-poppers on the ground slowly enough to penetrate the shield of a droideka. I assume the same principle would apply to the Gungan shields.

 

Going purely by the movies alone, my interpretation was that they could not. The tanks pretty much stay in place at the top of the hills until the shields are lowered. Once the shields go down, the tanks charge in.

I certainly admit it's open to other interpretations, but that's mine.

 

That is right. Only small, slow-moving objects like the B1 battle droids can penetrate the shield. Depending on the power of the shield generator and due to the big size of the AAT, the tanks can not pass through it. From "Star Wars Essential Guide to Warfare" (pages 68-69):

The gungan shield generators were originally used to keep giant swamp creatures and sea monsters away from settlements, but they are portable - provided something as big as a fambaa is available to move one. In battle one fambaa carries on its back a shield generator, which fires an arc of plasma into a capacitor carried by another fambaa. The resulting plasma shield is 150 meters in diameter, and typically calibrated to repel small, fast-moving objects that generate heat, as well as big, slow-moving objects. At Great Grass Plains, it protected the gungans against the Trade Federation artillery and tanks, forcing individual droids to engage the gungans. The two part dynamos overheat quickly, and are typically among the first units targeted, giving the cockpit of the shield generators the grim nickname "suicide seat."

 

I agree, the film shows the tanks charged as soon as the shields were down, which indicates they could not while the Gungan shields were still up. I think this is another Dune influence where "the slow blade penetrates the shield". In Dune, people can have personal shields that blocks fast moving objects but slow moving blades or slow projectiles can defeat it. Another possibility is that AATs hover and don't have a ground to earth, while B1s walk on two legs and can ground the shield to earth.

 

I'd say you've got it in one.

 

Thanks, I think it is mostly one too. If you watch the scene you can see the battle droids slow down and carefully step though the shield before resuming their matrching speed.