Aldnoah.Zero had another good episode. It wasn't as dramatic or intense as before, but it is a transitional episode between the initial excitement and what I presume will be a new status quo of the students entering the military resistance and the constant tension of exposing the Martian Princess's secret identity.
Another Martian mecha, another bout of clever planning and critical thinking helps the students do what the military could not. They don't outright win, but do enough damage to delay and convince the enemy to retreat in the face of reinforcements.
If I had to poke anything in particular at the trope of the rookie students doing what the real military couldn't, it's more that the military hasn't been moving around and dodging than anything else. It's basically just one instance after another of standing still, unloading ineffectually, and letting the martians come in. I don't mind the weak weapons- even the students have had to deal with it- but when just about every martian mech we've seen is slower than the terran robots they'd at least put up a longer resistance if they forced the martians to run them down.
Otherwise the difference wasn't too bad this week- nothing as bad as not noticing the drones in episode 2. I can even forgive the lack of evasion by the official troops considering the close quarters they were in. As it was, the hero more or less guessed his way to identifying the enemy's strength, and the plan didn't even rely on that per-see.