It did, but then Hobbie Klivian decided to ram the cockpit with his Snowspeeder. Another design flaw: not taking suicide runs into account.MrPeanut said:
Hoth: The Failure of Imperial Military Doctrine
- Thread starter Robert Rath
- Start date
Blizzard Force was an elite unit at Hoth, under the command of the Empire's top field Commander, General Maximilian Veers, who also happens to have the most badass name in the history of anything.Slycne said:
According to Battlefront 2's gameplay, any time you see competent Stormtroopers in the Original films, they are 501st troops. Wiping out the Tantive IV with minimal casualties? 501st. Managing to win the day at Hoth despite numerous setbacks? 501st. Getting their butts kicked by Ewoks but still managing to pull off one handed snap shots that can hit Leia from a mile away? 501st.
The small fleet that Vader brought with him to Hoth was Death Squadron, it was the best of the best in the entire Empire. But the Imperial approach of "backstab your way to the top" meant that officers were constantly competing with each other for more power and fame, which lead to fumbles like Ozzel's screw up or Colonel Starck losing a third of Veers' AT-ATs in an avalanche.
Your theory is pretty good on paper, but I'm not sure I can agree with it in practice. If the books are anything to go by, the division of power goes from the New Republic's good to the Empire versus Rebels neutral to the New Jedi Order good again. Unless you count the single generation in which the Empire was in charge(and that constitutes the period between Luke and Leia's birth to around their early 20s) as evil, then the Force is simply predominantly good. Though I'm not sure what happens after Luke founds the New Jedi Order, so what might actually be happening is a continuous neutral stance where good suddenly bellyflops evil in a futile attempt to stay afloat.Therumancer said:
Anyways, you know what I've always been curious about since KOTOR 1? The notion of gray Jedi, or force users who really don't care at all about sides as long as they aren't being total dicks. It feels like the only logical outcome in the Star Wars universe if they want to end the Good vs Evil struggle is to merge. From the brief time I played SWTOR, the Jedi can be pretty infuriating by practically lobotomizing themselves in order to not fall victim of emotions or something, and the Sith really just want to blow up everything. I can't be the only one that thinks a middle ground is much better than anything else, specially since either side's disregard for a society with multiple trains of thought is half the reason the Star Wars universe non-force users get pulled into war. I don't know, I just feel like force-sensitives in general cause more Bothan orphans than any Grand Moff ever has.
I think I deviated from the topic a little.
Well, a lot of this comes from the so called "Expanded Universe" and for the most part it's not canon. Indeed it's not even the first "future" of the setting, we had a bunch of "young adult" novels written involving titles like "The Glove Of Darth Vader", "Prophets Of The Dark Side", and other titles which were pretty much stepped on before the EU, and then you have the entire Dark Horse comics continuity which was also knocked out of the ball park.sid said:
The thing is that EU writers themselves really don't "get it" or if they do, they tend to want to give the average fan what they want to read. Given that the future of the universe would be pretty grim in terms of "everything sucks, everyone dies, misery reigns for 5,000 years without even the faintest glimmer of hope" there isn't a lot to write about.
The best way to justify the EU if you really have to is to make the arguement that it's unknown how long the period of balance lasts exactly between the cycles of dominance, so it going both ways for a while is going to happen, but it's ultimatly going to end with a reign of darkness, which again, is ultimatly what people don't want to read, which is again probably why Lucas decided to drop things where he did on a relatively high note.
When it gets to concepts like Jedi and Force Users who aren't on one side or the other, the basic answer would be that they are all still tools of The Force, or they wouldn't be able to do anything at all. They ultimatly play out their role in the cycle as assigned, and contribute to things going in one direction or the other whether they want to, or see it, or not. To put things into perspective someone like Jolee from KOTOR is pretty much attached to Revan's crew, where Revan is moving things along as The Force intends, and arguably acting as one of the dominos that is going to end The Sith Empire, whether he lives or dies, that's his destinied role.
The thing is that people still seem to have free will even if they are all playing their role. Force sensitives who have no declared side. "Dark" Jedi doing evil things and using darkside powers for the greater good, Sith acting in the name of love and chaotic compassion, it all goes the same place in the end. Like the Yin Yang symbol I'd guess part of the overall point is that nothing is ever pure good or pure evil, as there is always a "dot" of the other on each side. To put things into perspective the era of good that comes to an end with the movie trilogy, a nearly utopian Republic (or the closest to it that you can have) with no real need for active militaries and just police forces for the occasional pirates and raiders or hwhatever, was bought with Genocides that make Hitler look like a complete pantywaist. Reven and The Exile are both conceptually dealing with some issues about what war made them do when they had to REALLY fight and reconciling that with the light side (and freaking out Jedi who never fought in real wars), at the end of the story though the "Good" Jedi pretty much put every single Sith pureblood to the sword, young, old babies, boom... the entire lineage wiped out of existance. They purify entire worlds to eradicate any trace of Sith taint. They burn books, they destroy libraries, they demolish temples and places of healing, the kill the wounded. When it's over the desendants can't find any real records about these guys because the destruction was so total. Sometimes epic evil has to occur for the greater good. To some extent I believe that it can also be argued that what Vader did in wiping out all the Padawans and little kids in training arguably mirrors what The Jedi did to The Sith, though it doesn't go that far as it's not time for a reign of evil yet. Conceptually at one point lightside force users did pretty much walk through Sith temples and gut all the students who just had the misfortune of being picked up by The Sith for training. Likewise given the bloodlines involved (the race made of the genetic remnants of the actual sith race...) there were doubtlessly Jedi who pretty much went waltzing through maternity wards and sliced up all the babies one crib at a time. Think of any nightmarish genocide example you can think of The Jedi did it... so yeah there is your grey side (since they are
serving the light side), or so called seemingly contridictory "Dark Jedi" right there. The Jedi did some F@cked up things on an epic scale to build a borderline utopia, and arguably The Sith despite their culture of sadism and depravity had their own discoveries and genuinely benevolent wonders as well. Dark origins or occasional light moments... Yinyang so to speak.
He didn't, Imperial command was full of Rebel sympathizers. I recall one EU book where the Death Star's main gunner (who fired the shot at Alderaan) suffered a major crisis on conscious and that his fellow officers all treated him differently. Hence his repeated "stand by's" at Yavin. He didn't want to pull the trigger again and was hoping the Rebels would somehow be able to stop him. Alderaan changed how everyone perceived the Empire, even it's own commanders. They knew the Empire had to be stopped, so they started making "little" mistakes to give the Rebels a chance to stop them.DVS BSTrD said:
Here's something I always wondered: what happened to the regular military when the clones were introduced? I don't remember seeing too many regular soldiers after that point. Did they all lose their jobs? Where they reassigned to some other duty? I always assumed that after order 66 there must have been some sort of split; where the old soldiers remained loyal, not all of them obviously Tarkin is pretty old, to the republic. Many of them would probably have been killed, but some that survived would have become important members of the rebellion. The rebel soldiers however are quite young in general, so I thought maybe the commanders/generals are important veterans who survived. I'm sure the information I'm looking for is somewhere in the Star Wars mythology, but my knowledge doesn't extend far past the trilogies and some old republic games. What happened to the regular Republic Military between the introduction of clones and order 66, and what happened to them afterwards?
As a fan of Star Wars and an avid reader of military and political history, I found this a very fun read. I would like more articles like this please! 
[sub]I do realize that the Imperial Army had to be made giant but mostly impotent for story reasons however.[/sub]
[sub]I do realize that the Imperial Army had to be made giant but mostly impotent for story reasons however.[/sub]
Sun Tzu would have disagreed with this assessment. In 'The Art of War', Sun Tzu places emphasis on a separation between military strategy and governing politics. But that thesis also states that the general is ultimately responsible for military success and that he should even disregard political sovereignty in a bid to secure the victory that policy demands. In that sense Darth Vader is still ultimately responsible despite Emperor Palpatine's political doctrine.
I know it's a bit late for this discussion now, but not necessarily - surrounding an enemy has a TON of strategic merit. I present as an example Hannibal defeating a much larger force of Romans at Cannae:WouldYouKindly said:
This is my favorite episode of this series (with Marathon being a close second), which uses Rome: Total War to illustrate the battles, and is hosted/narrated by the guy who played CPT Spiers in the Band of Brothers TV series.
There's always an exception to the rule. Counting on Roman legions running is never a great idea, after all.Nghtgnt said:
I dunno... Surrounding the enemy went pretty well for the Red Army in Stalingrad.(And correspondingly badly for the German 6th army.)WouldYouKindly said:
Strategic advantage because your enemy can't get supplied. Tactical disadvantage. Decreases enemy morale but makes them desperate. Desperate men can fight above and beyond what is normally possible. You never want to make them think there's no hope of survival. Some might break down, but others will fight to the death. Case in point, Yakov Pavlov spent the better part of the initial stages of Stalingrad completely surrounded, starting with a mere 4 men and eventually ending up with a paltry 25. They had no escape, they weren't allowed to retreat. They killed hundreds of Germans.LtWigglesworth said:
And I'd say that gaining a decisive strategic advantage is better than a nebulous tactical advantage. For every man who fights to the death because he's desperate there are another two or three who wont. Because they have no ammo, are starving, or are so infested with lice and disease that they just give up.WouldYouKindly said:
Plus, by giving an escape route there is always the chance that the retreating force escapes and is still combat effective.
I typically talk tactics, it's what I know better. Tactics are also usually a short term, single encounter kind of thing. While a unit that is allowed to retreat may be combat effective, a unit that is continually pursued or falls into another pincer attack to cut the retreating unit in half is not. I never said let them retreat, I said give them the opportunity to run, but don't let them actually escape, just get them to lose a little bit of cohesion and you can bring down a tough enemy with less losses. There's a strategic example I know of, when the Iraqi Army was retreating during Desert Storm we turned their escape route into a road of death. Granted, they probably would have been obliterated either way, but almost no losses were taken after they decided to retreat. It requires a bit of planing beforehand, but the rewards can be pretty big.LtWigglesworth said:
Causing a loss of cohesion by inducing a rout, while destroying or encircling the enemy on a large scale is a fair idea.WouldYouKindly said:
On the topic of the Iraqi army, their complete destruction is probably less due to the strategic decision to hit them while retreating, and more a result of the fact that the Iraqi army was completely outclassed in terms of equipment, was utterly incompetent and was facing an enemy with complete freedom in the air.