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The Battle of Hoth: Vader the Invader
JustOK writes "Darth Vader did a lot of bad things and did a lot of things badly; the Battle of Hoth was of both types. The Empire's attempt to capture Echo Base, while successful, was still a horrible failure. Sure, the Empire overran the ground defenses and captured the base, but most of the Rebels escaped. Luke, Leia and Han all got away. The Rebels had a poorly-laid-out ground defense, and a planetary shield that can't keep an invader out while complicating their own escape. This article at Wired takes us through all the missteps in the battle."
nuff said
Silence is a state of mime.
NERDS!
The shield it's job quite well enough - the base wasn't glassed from orbit.
Also, the article asks why Vader didn't bomb out the base. One explanation is that he senses Luke is inside and it's his duty to turn Luke over to the Emperor. Another explanation is that they're dug in too far and they don't have the bunker busting utilities on the ATATs and ATSTs.
He flies into an asteroid belt — which somehow the Imperial Fleet had failed to account for when planning its hasty “blockade” — and the Falcon has defied the odds.
I would have guessed that since the odds of successfully navigating an asteroid belt are so low (as threepio notes) that the blockade used that as a natural barrier like you would a mountain or sea in an earthly battle. When they flew into it, nobody was expecting them to opt to be blown up in an asteroid belt and they reluctantly gave chase.
Yeah, I know, I'm the life at parties and this is all done tongue in cheek but I could probably come up with apologetic responses. I'm actually really glad that Lucas didn't decide to have meaningless strategic dialogue of Tom Clancy proportions so that we could all follow why every little thing was happening. I've read fantasy books by authors with military backgrounds and the battles get tedious -- though very informative.
My work here is dung.
Had to be said.
Solving Unix problems since 1989...
US=Empire
North Koreans=Rebels
South Korea=Echo Base
Harry S. Truman=Darth Vader
traceroute -m 100 216.81.59.173
Really, the author of TFA had nothing better to write about than a science fiction battle happening in a movies from 30 years ago????
...save up a few hundred bucks, get on Backpage, and GO GET LAID.
You'll be astonished at how fast Star Wars loses its cool when you actually grow up a little.
Vader didn't want to eliminate this particular Rebel Base, he wanted to deal with the whole alliance, and the Emperor had a plan for that, his fully operational Death Star which was a honeypot meant to suck in the Rebels yet again, but this time with surprise on their side.
And most of those authors with military backgrounds just sound like pompous asses in my experience. Armchair generals declaring their own vacuous superiority instead.
I don't know why they call it Hoth, they should call it "Coldth"
I think what the author is missing is that Vader may have wanted to take the base intact, probably to recover information on remaining resistance cells elsewhere. Nuking the base from orbit was never his plan.
He actually succeeded in prompting an evacuation of the base; his only failure was in assuming that the star destroyers could handle the mop-up operation and prevent ships from escaping the system. Either he didn't anticipate the presence of the ion cannon, or he gravely overestimated his forces' competency in that regard (personally the fact that one ion cannon so easily facilitated their escape always seemed like a bit of a stretch).
In any case it seems like the rebels always planned to use the ion cannon to cover their escape path, so the issue of the shield creating a "chokepoint" was probably moot.
It's well known that Admiral Ozzel came out of hyperpsace too close to the system and cost them the element of surprise. He's as clumsy as he is stupid....
Stuff that mattered in 1980...
Haven't most of these points been argued to death before, like why everyone attacks the AT-ATs from in front?
Why not flank them and attack from behind or from the sides? The trip cables don't care which part of the body they start from, and you're less likely to be shot with cannons that only shoot in the front quadrant...
"We know what happens to people who stay in the middle of the road. They get run over." - Aneurin Bevan
If you're thinkin about the battle tactics
and other milit'ry facts (la! la! la!)
Just repeat to yourself, "It's just a show...
I should really just relax."
The real point of this is how a good story doesn't need to be consistent or even especially believable, if it's told well. The characters in Empire are vivid, the story is strong, and the direction is fantastic. The goal isn't to write a plot so airtight it can't be nitpicked apart, it's to get the audience so caught up that they don't bother with any nitpicking.
That said, this article picked some very entertaining nits.
and commando units, had Ozzel come out of light speed undetected. But seriously, paratroopers ahead of the main assault force.
your thin skin doesn't make me a troll
I don't always analyze the battle strategies of fictional characters but when i do, It's usually the characters from Star Wars, or Jurassic Park.
Whenever a player quits EVE to go play WoW, the Average IQ of both games increase.
Even an incompetent reporter should know that a planetary shield protects against orbital bombardment from capital ships and is not a kinetic barrier to ship movement. It's exactly this lack of diligence in reporting that we were protected from by the previous regime, and I for one, miss the grav-trains running on time.
If the Rebel shields couldn't stop matter entering (and the Imperials didn't even have a crowbar) - then how does it prevent the Rebel ships from leaving? A shield that won't stop a kinetic bombardment or even an invasion, but still blocks your own retreat, is worse than useless.
Why would anyone engrave "Elbereth"?
This battle analysis seem to be based on the movie (correct me if I'm wrong), but about the book version? Was there only 1 Ion cannon easilly detectable by the imperials? Was there only 6 Star Destroyers?
What if those mistake was only change make during the movie creation for other reason?
There's that darn Imperial Stormtrooper school of marksmanship...
The most interesting commentator in hyperspace.
I think the author is missing the point about Vader's motives. The article said:
The author assumes that Vader actually cared about winning whatever military objectives the Empire had. I don't think he did. In Episode V, Vader wanted only one thing: to get Luke Skywalker. I imagine that after the Death Star was destroyed and there was a big ceremony highlighting to everyone in the Rebel Alliance that Luke was the hero, word got to the Empire (and Vader) that someone named Skywalker was involved. Vader may have claimed that the name had no meaning for him, but it certainly did. So that's why he went down to the base. He didn't trust the stormtroopers to be able to capture Luke; he was going to do it himself.
In Episode IV, Vader seemed to be nominally to be a team player (at least he stopped choking that guy in the conference room) and willing to take orders. By the time Episode V rolled around, Vader was off the leash. All he wanted was to get Luke to turn him into his Sith Apprentice and everything else (stormtroopers, admirals, star destroyers, what have you) was just fodder. So although I enjoyed the article, I don't think Vader's tactics weren't because of poor planning or insight. If every Rebel escaped and every Imperial died, it wouldn't matter to him if he captured Luke.
It other words: it's not that I'm a bad driver. It's that I needed to get to the airport to make my flight and that now-dented car was a rental.
Insert simplistic political, ideological, or personal proselytization here.
Let's not forget...
Hiding the base on Hoth was Luke Skywalker's one major leadership decision.
The base was discovered and attacked before even becoming fully operational. Although the rebels themselves escaped, there would have been a massive loss of costly and difficult to replace military hardware.
Skywalker did at least have the sense not to show his face again except for personal rescue attempts in The Empire Strikes Back and then not to even attempt to participate in the actual rebellion until after the strategic decisions had already been finalized in The Return of the Jedi.
The Rebels had a poorly-laid-out ground defense, and a planetary shield that can't keep an invader out while complicating their own escape.
But they didn't really have a planetary shield. It was merely a shield over Echo Base. With highly limited resources and a shoestring budget, it was better than nothing. Don't forget, this was not a well funded, professional army, it was a ragtag group of rebels on the run.
This is a hacked account, for which the owner can not be held responsible.
It was damn cold. The good guys got away, as expected.
So, first phase?, probe droids scout the nearby planets. One doesn't come back, which is a pretty good clue.
So, head to that planet. Incompetent Admiral comes out of Hyperspace too close, giving them away. Mistakes happen... Vader just deals with them a bit differently them.
So, they know you are coming, and raise their shield. Due to the basics of physics, it's easier to produce the shield in empty space. Just like radar coverage has gaps because of the terrain. Star Wars is one of the only groups that consider the difficulties of consistent shield coverage, (take the Droidekas, who could only create their shield when using their slower movement style over flat terrain).
Far from what the article describes, Echo Base is rather a sideline. It has the main storyline characters, but only one of them is considered a Rebel Leader, and most of the rest of them came on the same ship.
Why would Darth Vader be way out on the ass-end of the galaxy dealing with this shitty little rebel base?, well, Luke, of course, (or maybe Leia). The entire point of the Empire Strikes Back is the Vader / Luke relationship. He doesn't want to annihilate the base. Even if Luke wasn't there, he still wouldn't want to annihilate the base; he'd want to capture the Rebel Leadership for interrogation.
The AT-AT's are completely invulnerable to the firepower the rebels have. The only thing that even slows them down is 1) an almost-a-Jedi, doing something that's pretty obvious no one had ever done before, and 2) an almost-a-Jedi and his light saber. Before the fall of the Republic, Jedi Knights operated in 1 or 2-man teams, and took on armies. Why is Vader leading the attack?, because he is a Jedi Master, increasing the effective strength of his little attack force 100x. Also, he is looking to make sure the rebel leadership is captured alive, (it's a lot more difficult to capture soldiers alive, especially if they feel the need to hold the line for the good of the entire galaxy).
The attack succeeds. Again, contrary to the article, the blockade only has to blockade the side of the planet they are likely to escape from. Chances are they aren't going to fly through the planet's core, and pop out the other side. Also, it's not just the capital ships, a small group of TIE's is more then a match for almost any ship the rebels are using. The only reason the Millenium Falcon is doing so well is 1) they didn't just bomb the crap out of it at first glance, (remember in A New Hope, when they escaped from the Death Star?, it is explicitely mentioned that they were let go, with only token show resistance), and 2) the fact that Corellian YT-series freighters have an uncanny amount of armament for civilian ships, so much so that the Empire was explicitely considering arresting the developers for treason, (they were distracted by civil wars, and the untimely death of the Emperor). What do they send after the Millennium Falcon?, a Star Destroyer, (meaning they knew how dangerous it was).
The only thing that let's rebels through the blockade is 1) a massive planetary ion cannon powerful enough to, (temporarily), disable a Star Destroyer with a single shot, and 2) that some of them were crazy enough to fly through an asteroid field that normal odds were over 3000 : 1 in favour of dying, (the only reason they made it is that smugglers are known to fly through there habitually, like say, Han Solo, implying he has previous knowledge of it). Considering how much firepower it normally takes to even dent a Star Destroyer, it was nearly incomprehensible to expect one that powerful to be on Hoth.
"the only ones remaining at the base when Vader arrives are Han, Leia, Chewbacca and C-3PO."
The people he wants to capture and interrogate. Imagine that. Maybe, just maybe Darth Vader wasn't leading the ground forces for the shear visceral pleasure of stabbing people with his light saber Leia isn't even the political symbol of the Rebel Alliance, that's Mon Mothma, who wasn't even there.
The only reason
All this happened a long time ago, and the Rebels (later the New Republic) won. So who do you think wrote that history?