BioDroid wrote:Except that they were'nt vastly outnumbered (Remember tactical stupiity in ESB that I mentioned)
Only if we apply creation math to the situation regarding the military forces at Hoth, I'm afraid. The tradtional maths I go by say that the Imperials had, at minimum, 58000 troops on six stardestroyers available to them.
A handfull of X-Wings WOULD have made a HUGE difference, your denials not withstanding.
I'm afraid I'm not the one in denial, here. Six full mechanised regiments vs. one groundbase and a handful of X-wings. Work it out.
There were only a handfull of AT-AT's attacking in Veers main strike force that would have been made into hash by said X-Wing.
Assuming it doesn't ram itself into the Rebels' own shield bubble at maximum burn.
By the time the Empire's force had gotten off their collective asses, the rebels would have been gone.
Naturally, there would have not been any troops in orbit on launch alert, and the stardestroyers would not be monitoring the ground battle in any way, shape, or form.
As far as giving the blocade more time, this is nonsense as well. The Blockade was already in effect, and without the attacking AT-ATs the Ion Cannon would have had more time to evacuate more troops.
Naturally, the stardestroyers would simply sit in a parking orbit and make no moves whatsoever to close the space around the planet. And while a few ships might be able to slip past a blockade line, most remain tightly bottled up. See the American Civil War as example.
Remember, that they were so pressed for time from the empire's attack that they were trying to protect two transports at a time with the damned thing. Had the X-Wings put a stall on the AT-AT advance, they wouldn't have been in a position where they had to rely on such drastic measures. By the time the first transport had been launched, the blockade already was in full effect (That's why the Tyrant was trying to intercept it, because it was comming into their assigned sector.)
Unfortunately, X-wings need lots of room to manoeuver properly, simply due to the speeds they are capable of. Take away their speed and altitude advantages, and they become targets for the AT-AT guns.
As far as your assertion that groundtroops are meant to die when called upon....I think Patton said it best...their job was to make the other poor dumb bastard die.
Yes, all nice and colourful. In a practical sense, meaningless. See Ulysees S. Grant.
Furthermore, X-wings were of limited supply to the Rebel Alliance; far more so than TIE fighters to the Empire. A defensive war, which the Rebels were forced into in that phase of the conflict, demands the conservation of resources as much as possible and the avoidance of battle unless the odds are in the favour of the defenders or where no alternative exists.
Bullshit, they were sitting on the snow waiting for their pilots (at least those who weren't killed in their speeders) to come get them. Once again, the X-Wings would have had a much higher survivablity factor against the AT-ATs (Shields, higher flight ceiling, higher speed.) If the X-Wings were so indepspensible then, they should have used them instead of speeders. (Or did it not occur to you that for every speeder shot down, there were TWO X-wings left lying in the snow waiting to evacuate pilots who'd never show?) The one thing that is of a must to conserve in any war is keeping your trained and experienced pilots alive. Using X-Wings would have saved both material and lives!
Speeders are more expendible in comparison to X-wings, which the Rebels needed for every engagement. Your proposal would have been akin to RAF Fighter Command deciding to sacrifice its every last Spitfire to defend Dunkirk in 1940. Furthermore, you concede that the X-wings were indispensible to the Rebellion, yet propose throwing them into a useless battle for a base which is going to be abandoned anyway.
Every invasion follows the same pattern: the landing of a spearhead force to neutralise shore (or in this case, planetside) defences followed by the body of the main force to secure the territory. No commander throws his entire force in on the first wave.
That's when your invading a country that has additional forces besides their initial blocade force. That wasn't the case here. They weren't invading a planet with the intent of occupying it and taking another chunk of the planet after they landed. The rebel base was the objective period! So your analogy doesn't fit the scenario. If there's only a small resistance area, it doesn't make sense NOT to throw in your entire force, because there's no one to attack on the second wave! Get it?
I suppose that's why we more or less followed that same strategy in Panama in 1990 despite knowing of the very limited forces available to Manuel Noriega. That's standard military operating procedure. Get it?
The forces under General Veers went to attack the rebel base, and to destroy the shield generator so more troops could be landed directly from stormtrooper transports comming from the star destroyers. Had they sent their entire AT-AT force in (who were superfluous after the shield was down, because the said troops could have been landed directly on top of the base) they could have made a multi pronged attack with much larger groups.
The fastest attack route was the key to victory in this case; that being the path to the shield generator. Other routes around the base could well have been bloked by terrain which would have been very difficult for an AT AT to cover. In any case, the use of a spearhead force in advance of the main body is the strategically prudent move to make.
One group (Much larger than what Veers brought in) could have been tasked with taking out the shield generator, another group tasked with taking out the Ion Cannon, a third group could have been tasked with locating and caving in the hangar entrances. Furthermore, Multiple groups could have been taked with the same objectives, yet come from completely different directions, forcing the already overwhelmed defenders to split their efforts. The (now) larger groups of walkers could also have been arrayed so they could now defend each other and cover the weaker spots. Instead, Veers needlessly looses 2/5 of his attack force, when he had a much larger group to work with. There was nobody left to attack after the rebel base was taken, so their was no need to hold a reserve force.
Losing two walkers is not losing 2/5ths of your entire force. The total body of Veers' spearhead batallion included considerably more personnel than the crews of two AT-ATs and you discounted the scout walkers entirely.
As to point three, any Borg mission into the past would not have prevented the founding of the Federation. Even if they assimilate Earth in one timeline, that affects nothing which occurred in the history of the home universe.
Which matters little to the Borg (which includes the queen) who did the traveling. (And your point is completely unsupported by the events of the film where the crew of the Enterprise E saw the outcome of the the Borgs time travel, but where shielded from the efects, because they were in the ships wake.) Bad science notwithstanding, according to the plot of the film, it would have made a difference, ergo, it was tactical stupidity for them to wastefully send a ship in (for them) present day, when they just could've pulled a fast one and did it in the past. Remember, this was tactical stupidity, not scientific stupidity.
Which is irrelevant to the situation at hand. If the objective is to prevent the Federation from being formed to oppose the Borg in the present, interfering in a parallel timeline does nothing whatsoever to alter that outcome. The
Enterprise crew had little choice in the matter because they were dragged into the alternate timeline themselves and their only escape from a Borg universe was to proceed all the way through the time warp to 2061. Their subsequent intervention countering the Borg intervention was part of the pattern of events which unfolded into the creation of a Federation universe —their own.
