Text 12092, 46 rader
Skriven 2007-02-12 06:20:47 av Jeffrey MacHott (15533.babylon5)
  Kommentar till text 12090 av rec.arts.sf.tv.babylon5.moderated (15531.babylon5)
Ärende: Re: Military tactics in sci-fi?
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Vorlonagent wrote:
> "Jeffrey MacHott" <Raguleader@netzero.net> wrote in message 
> news:91pzh.183470$Oc2.151140@fe07.news.easynews.com...
>> We don't see TOO much of the dialogue on his bridge during the fight at 
>> B5, since that show was primarily being run by Captain Sheridan, with 
>> Captain Hoshi and Major Ryan mainly acting to support and protect B5. 
>> Also, Ryan made some rather unconventional tactical decisions, such as 
>> taking his ship as close as possible to an enemy warship during a fight 
>> (which we pretty much never see capital ships do on B5, they tend to stand 
>> off at a moderate distance and hammer away at eachother, with smaller 
>> ships like the White Stars or Sunhawks making the close-in attacks at high 
>> speed.)
> 
> We have no baseline for what "normal" EarthForce tactics are.  Most (if not 
> all) of the combats we see in B5 are extremely unique situations.  You're 
> assuming that Sheridan conducted Into the Fire as a routine EarthForce 
> operation even though there wasn't an EarthForce unit larger than a Star 
> Fury in the fight.  Sheridan could have had other reasons for sending the 
> fighters and medium-class ships in first, such as the telepaths distributed 
> among the capital ships.

Well, we have seen that smaller ships, if nothing else, are 
traditionally excellent for drawing fire so bigger ships can do their 
thing.  Witness the Narn Starcruisers fighting the Shadows in season 2 
vs. the G'Tok pounding Battlecrab after Battlecrab while White Stars 
keep them busy.  Say what you will about single-ship combat 
effectiveness, the Narns know how to build a sledgehammer.

Pretty much every Earthforce fight we've seen has involved the capital 
ships firing at each other from ten paces, rather than going for 
broadsides or close engagements.  Sometimes this works more or less 
(Severed Dreams, A Voice in the Wilderness), sometimes it 
catastrophically doesn't (most of the Earth Minbari War, where the 
Minbari proved to be much better suited to that tactic, Sheridan's 
rebellion, where the primary combatants were agile, heavily armed small 
ships that swarmed the Destroyers), but the Earthforce destroyers in 
general tend to lack the kind of agility they'd need for a maneuvering 
fight, though we HAVE seen Omega destroyers haul ass when motivated (A 
Call To Arms)

-- 
--Jeffrey MacHott

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