Thanas wrote:And yes, Ithor was a skirmish. There was a brief capital ship battle which broke up as soon as the allied capital ships figured out how to blow through the Vong defenses, nothing more or less, with minimal ships lost on both sides. Most of the action was groundside and even then it was small in scale.
Sorry, but given what we usually have in the EU, a battle with over 19 capital ships on one side and the other side fielding a dreadnought-comparable ship does top most of the battles of the Thrawn campaign. Or are you saying Sluis Van was also a skirmish?
Compared to the battles in the NJO? God yes. The Vong attacked Courscant with something like 10-30 thousand capital ships and the NR defended it with a fleet in the thousands, hundreds of orbital defense platforms and countless minefields, a running battle that took place over days.
MAJOR battles in the Vong war were a similar sort of scope. The Battle of Fondor comprised several major NR fleets and just as impressive forces on the Vong side of things. The Battle of Borialis when the Vong took the place involved far stronger defensive layouts then Bastion had. One of the preliminary skirmishes before the Courscant attack had something like 1000 NR ships against many times their number of Vong ships. Ebaq-9 just before the Vong hit the IR involved many thousands of ships on both sides at a minimum, probably more. All the major fleet actions in 'The Unifying force' made it look like a picnic.
In comparison, you can find actions on the scale of the Bastion battle all through the NJO books with similar numbers of ships.
Strategically it was a very smart move...if it had worked, knocking out the IR and securing their very exposed rear areas would have been a great idea. The IR clearly was caught off guard.
Yes, because making new enemies when not having conquered the old ones is such a smart thing to do.
The Vong had more then enough forces to roll over the IR any time they wanted, they did not BECAUSE they had more critical things to do. When they DID hit the IR, they hit it at a time when the NR was all but self destructing and after just enough time had passed to have the IR let their guard down. They DID blast the capital to hell, they DID damage the Imperial Navy quite heavily and they DID do it with only a minor amount of resources.
The IR represented an intact Government in their rear areas they had ignored because they didn't want to get involved, but they were a long term strategic risk that they COULD hit NOW and get out of the way, WHILE they had the resources to throw at them. They hadn't defeated the NR sure, but they HAD effectivly shattered their cohesion, letting them free up a lot of their line forces and hit all these nagging 'problems' they hadn't yet solved around the Galaxy.
The IR was one such problem. Not anything like big enough to warrant precious resources when fighting all out against the NR, but a big enough threat in a strategic enough location that when they WERE able to free up ships, they stomped them.
Especially when the Remnant had no intention of attacking.
So? The Vong want to TAKE the whole Galaxy, the IR are nothing more then infidels to be stomped on when they find it most convenient. Leaving them alone for even more time just gives them time to build more ships, more weapons, train more troops and get more and more powerful. Which means if and when the Vong finally take down the NR -and are weakened greatly in the process- the IR can come out firing.
Instead, they hit them when they least expected it...and would have gotten away with it too, if it wasn't for those medaling Skywalkers.
Not to mention as Jacan pointed out in the book, the IR had helped the NR against the Vong by providing the Deep Core routes and there was a good chance Vong spies later told them exactly WHERE the information had come from, making it something of an unfriendly act.
And given the Imperial reaction, they certainly did react more competently than the NR, which is quite a feat considering their limited resources.
The Imperials got their asses KICKED by the Vong. They lost their capital due to a horribly sloppy fleet, they damn near self destructed when the Grand Admiral went MIA for a while, then they just fought a holding action against the fleet which, with the help of the Skywalkers, was actually successful. Then that minor Vong taskforce held up the IR's forces for months as Pelleon chased them all over that part of the Galaxy, then the Empire made a relativly minimal contribution to the war against them.
It was a risk to attack them, certainly. But it was a calculated one that wold have probably paid off except for some bad luck.
