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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.
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.
traceroute -m 100 216.81.59.173
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.
WHAT?
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.
An (apparently serious) complex battle analyses of a hastily written mythical battle !!
All the while not blinking an eye in disbelief at either FTL or the existence of Darth Vader.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
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....
US=Empire North Koreans=Rebels South Korea=Echo Base Harry S. Truman=Darth Vader
Except that a popular but absolutely mediocre general like Douglas MacArthur pulled the trick of a lifetime with the Inchon landing, neatly regaining control of the capital city/ transport node, cutting away supplies to the north Korean thrust, and giving the enemy the unpalatable choice between an hasty but long retreat or trying to basically fight a three front war against an enemy which could make good use of a reasonable ability to deny ground movement.
they could have tried to leave a screen south, fight their way back to Seoul, pressure Seoul from the north as well and mass the army reserves in the region east of Seoul. In the end, they could not or would not.
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
Better yet, have sex without paying for it. I know, I know. I must be new here.
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
Stuff that mattered in 1980...
Many years ago, before the world wide web existed, I went to some online system, maybe Compuserve, I don't remember, and I noticed that they had a bunch of forums for Star Trek, Star Wars, etc. Being a big sci-fi fan fan I thought "this sounds pretty cool." Wrong. It took me all of about 5 minutes to discover that having serious discussions about fictional characters and events is boring, pointless and just plain stupid.
Why did [some character] do [something] instead of doing [something else]?
Why? Because it was in the script. That's why.
Are people really so dense they can't figure out that every movie and television show contains giant holes in the story line that don't make sense because telling the story that the writer wants to tell is the number one priority.
Really, the author of TFA had nothing better to write about than a science fiction battle happening in a movies from 30 years ago????
Ever read "Falkenberg's Legion" or other Scifi of mixed "sci fi / military" theme? they are actually quite good. and anyway, I am quite sure that the powers that be have wargamed scenario that would seem farfetched even to a preteen on a high from "battlestar galactica". It's cheap, it's outside the box, and it's effective.
on a sidenote, I had a classical education at school, and please do remember that the basic ingredients of the classical epic story are the same. I always joke with my son about how his generation is basically fed good second hand scrap, simply because they do not know the real things. Xenofon is a nobody to them, no point screaming "thalassa! thalassa!" any more.
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
I didn't need sex for Star Wars to lose its cool.... George Lucas did that with his wretched prequels and constant fiddling with the originals.
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
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.
or the existence of Darth Vader.
I hope he does not find you lack of faith disturbing, for your sake. Lord Vader is not as forgiving as I am.
Dude, get laid... Then you won't care about what one very rich man does to a bunch of kids movies.
Wait a second, I forgot this was Slashdot... Nevermind.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
Except that a popular but absolutely mediocre general like Douglas MacArthur pulled the trick of a lifetime with the Inchon landing...
That wasn't exactly a mediocre move, was it? Some people point out that he relied on some previous staff work, but staffs exist to plan for every possible contingency, and MacArthur found this solution and implemented it. I must grant, however, that even a mediocre general may display an occasional flash of brilliance. In addition, his success also contained the seed of eventual failure. Once the Inchon Landing succeeded and MacArthur kept on rolling, the Chinese saw a general coming toward their borders at the head of a powerful army who was on record calling for the Communist government's eradication (he frequently called for "unleashing" Chiang Kai-Shek) and who advocated the use of nuclear bombs against China. It was not at all clear to them (nor to me) that he would have stopped at the border. It's damn hard to stop a popular and victorious general—as one biographer points out, the man was effectively the U.S. viceroy in Asia. The Chinese reaction was pretty predictable.
My respect for MacArthur doesn't arise so much from his generalship (as you imply, he did much that can be faulted), but for his administration of Japan. I think he was probably a much better administrator than he was a strategist. It seems that he understood the Japanese well enough to grasp that leaving the emperor in power and positioning himself as a Shogun would play well with Japanese culture and practices. They were used to having a figurehead emperor and a military dictator. MacArthur provided both. And he did it so well that he was able to administer Japan with no resistance at all.
Great men are almost always bad men--Lord Acton's Corollary
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"?
It's crap all right. Not enough Bothans died to bring us this information.
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.
Lord Vader died a long, long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.
It was damn cold. The good guys got away, as expected.
Unless these are the chicks you are doing: http://pinterest.com/picwar/hot-star-wars-chicks/
I have to concur... but nothing takes out of my mind that somebody would have smoked the move if the Spruance - Fletcher team had been there. Let's face it, that landing was not in character.
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
All this happened a long time ago, and the Rebels (later the New Republic) won. So who do you think wrote that history?
Landings like that had been conducted in WW2 in the Mediterranean during Sicily by Patton when he made his drive from Palermo to Messina. So there's definite preexisting work that had been done regarding using amphibious landings to cut off enemy forces. In Patton's case, the landings were done with smaller detachments that couldn't hold long and required the main body to punch through and join up rather than drop a corps behind enemy lines to relieve a defense.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
They were also made in the Central Pacific, to very good effect, while MacArthur leapfrogged in a predictable way from island to island north of Australia. To be fair, landmass dictated the strategy: the nuisance value of a Japanese garrison in a speck of land in central pacific was practically nil, while leaving for example the whole of Rabaul unscathed would have posed problems and risks best left to the enemy.
I am familiar with the Sicily campaign, and it was not the high note of Patton's career: a significant proportion of forces were allowed to repair to Calabria, since the Allies were unable to plug the small sea lane between Sicily and the continent.
"If a boss demands loyalty, give him integrity. But if he demands integrity, give him loyalty." (John Boyd, 1927-1997)
I'm not sure I would compare bypassing islands in the pacific that were cut off from Japanese reinforcements on the same degree as using a maneuver to cut off or otherwise place pressure on the enemy's force. In the Pacific, if I remember correctly, skipping those islands was a trivial matter since we had naval and air dominance by that time. So there was no point wasting troops on islands that had little to no strategic values, like the Philippines.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Just because magic exists in a story’s universe doesn’t excuse plot holes and behaviors that make no sense. Internal consistency matters in works of fantasy, not the hard-science plausibility of the setting.
One can not expect internal consistency in any situation where they accept the presence of magic.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Nonsense. You establish rules for your universe and then the story has to follow them, whether the rules make any scientific sense or not. Superman can't suddenly be invulnerable to kryptonite because the writer is lazy; he has to at least take a serum or be granted that power somehow. Characters’ ability to breathe on a planet with no source of oxygen doesn’t mean their motivations and actions can be untethered from each other.