The Battle of Hoth: Vader the Invader 111
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."
Re:Shield (Score:2, Interesting)
Exactly this.
The shield prevented orbital bombardment, which is an automatic loss condition given the rebels cannot repel the empire fleet at Hoth. (I'd guess not enough time to recall their entire fleet from other locations)
Their strategy at Hoth looked to be simply to buy enough time against a ground invasion so their ships could leave the atmosphere and jump to hyperspace. (Presumably this is easy enough to do while being covered by the ion canon)
The Rebels seemed to know all this in advance, had planned ahead, and executed their escape plan almost calmly. They didn't even seems surprised when the empire eventually did find them.
Vader's motivations don't seem questionable either, because being a Jedi knight himself, he probably thinks the fate of the rebel fleet/base is completely inconsequential compared to the capture/conversion of Luke and Leia (and company). Which is why he goes in himself.
Here's the real explanation. (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Too much valuable intel (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Helmuth von Moltke the Elder said it first (Score:4, Interesting)
very true. people can armchair quarterback real historical battles, let alone fictional ones in a setting where magic exists.
this is why i find the endor holocaust [theforce.net] a little more interesting.