I liked the early episode (the first?) of Deep Space 9 when Cardassians are threatening the station. They fire all their photon torpedoes as a warning shot, to make the Cardassians think the station is heavily armed when it isn't.

The Ewoks didn't do too badly really. It was a fair mix of success and failure on both sides. On the one hand there were Ewoks on gliders being shot out of the sky (and it is heavily implied he was then stepped on by an AT-ST walker), blasted by Imperial AT-STs (one definitely was killed on screen) and having some of their attacks fail entirely (like trying to bring down an AT-ST by using a trip rope: it just pulled them all along behind it). On the other hand, it was the Ewoks who destroyed two of the AT-STs (releasing a pile of logs to trip one over, and using two logs swinging from trees to crush the cabin of another), and they did catch a few Stormtroopers using slings, trip wires, and sticks. It is arguable, however, that the tide of battle turned when Chewbacca successfully captured one of the AT-STs and used it to blow up another then blast the stormtroopers into retreat.

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"The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common: They don't alter their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views." The Doctor, Doctor Who: The Face of Evil.

Two tactics I quite liked (though nowhere near as imaginative as some others here) came from a couple of Star Trek novels. One was The Return by Wiliam Shatner, in which a Defiant class starship does a suicide run at a Romulan Warbird, only to cloak at the last second. The Romulans are confused, until it drops its cloak and reveals itself in between the double hulled main body of the Warbird, where it can't be shot at. It then puts extra power to its shields and does a roll, effectively gutting the Warbird.

The other was Invasion: First Strike. A Klingon ship and the Enterprise are both attacking a huge Fury vessel, which has no shields but has armour plated segments. In the final battle the Enterprise never fired a shot, instead using its tractor beam to wrench the armour up so the Klingons could shoot at the exposed body of the ship itself.

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"The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common: They don't alter their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views." The Doctor, Doctor Who: The Face of Evil.

A favorite of mine came from Steve Perry's novel The Man Who Never Missed. One man takes on a repressive government not by killing its soldiers but shooting them with a shocktox agent. The gov't is forced to take care of its paralyzed soldiers till the effect wears off.

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"just because you're a genius doesn't make you a smart guy"

Thrawn was too much of a "Know-it-all" for my taste.

Now for ST II:
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quote:
That's another reason why The Wrath of Khan is the greatest Star Trek has to offer. It's the *ONLY* time they ever acknowledge that space has three dimensions. The scene where the Enterprise ascends behind the Reliant is one of the most awesome moments in theatrical space combat.
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At the same time, they still ascend nicely aligned. Using three dimensions would allow them to fire from below or above, keeping the Enterprise perpendicular to the Reliant. But well, "greatest Star Trek" ...

There is a ST novel (Doctor's Orders) though where they use a simple probe, moving at .50c to hit an enemy ship

I agree with this general overview of the battle for the shield generator, it's just that the battle as depicted, was totally rediculous. First of all, the Emperor's Elite Stormtroopers(he called them, a Legion of his "finest troops") were totally incompetent. Weren't these the same guys who fought so well in the Clone Wars? They couldn't aim very well and their protective armor seemed to be vulnurable to arrows and rocks. In the first Ewok attack, arrows and rocks brought down many Stormtroopers. Then they broke ranks and chased the Ewoks into the forest instead of massing their troops around the shield generator. They also had at least one big AT-AT walker(it was shown in the scene when Luke turned himself in to Vader) and several At-St's at their disposal. The AT-AT was never shown as taking part in the battle and it's incredible that the "Elite" troopers would send their AT-ST's into a heavily wooded area, instead of forming a perimeter around the generator.

The easy way that Chewbacca managed to capture that AT-ST was also pretty amazing - the "Elite" troopers saw an Ewok making fun of them thru the window, then decided to open the hatch and go out and get him!

I would rather have seen a nice battle for the shield generator; involving a decent sized Rebel force, who at least had similar advanced weapons, to take the shield generator from the Imperials. The fleets fighting above Endor were also mismatched, as the Imperials had more powerful ships and outnumbered the Rebel fleet ten to one. The Rebel fleet was caught between the active Deathstar(which did destroy at least two Rebel capital ships) and the fleet of stardestroyers, but it didn't matter as victory for the Rebels was assured.

The most awful military space battle tactic ever was running away from the Death Star when they realised it was operational. It has one big weapon, and it's fixed, so it must have a very narrow firing window. Why not scatter the fleet around the Death Star and keep out of the way of its weapon? Surely the rebel ships can move faster than the Death Star can rotate? At the same time, they could then use the bulk of the Death Star to shield them from the Star Destroyers for a time.

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"The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common: They don't alter their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views." The Doctor, Doctor Who: The Face of Evil.

The death star was as far as I understood also a troop carrier; it had a lot of smaller craft that could cause quite a lot of trouble even if the star destroyers and the death star itself couldn't.

But hey, it's a space opera. Galaxy Quest had cleverer tactics than all the grand moffs together, and they were actors.

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[Foot mouth in put]
Si tacuisses, philosophus mansisses.

Yeah, the three dimensional space bit is still daftly ignored, most notably when the viewscreen clears just long enough for Kirk and crew to realise they are heading straight for the Reliant. Kirk orders an evasive move that turns the Enterprise broadside on, presenting almost the largest possible target for the Reliant's phasers, which do indeed hit it.

Even with all the CGI battles in later series of Star Trek, it still seems mostly 2D. The only scene that really springs to mind as being a truly 3D approach to a battle is when the future Enterprise decloaks in All Good Things... and blasts the two Klingon cruisers from directly underneath, passing through at 90 degrees to the plane of the Klingon vessels.

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"The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common: They don't alter their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views." The Doctor, Doctor Who: The Face of Evil.

Oh yes, I meant to mention the ship dragging the magnetic mines in that movie....

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"The very powerful and the very stupid have one thing in common: They don't alter their views to fit the facts, they alter the facts to fit their views." The Doctor, Doctor Who: The Face of Evil.

I've read, but I can't confirm, that the Mighty Victory of the Ewoks was originally conceived by Lucas to be the Mighty Victory of the Wookies. Lucas had a grand idea of exploring the theme of Stone-Age Primitives Defeats Modern Technology (a romantic notion albeit rarely occurring in our world). However, when plotting out Ep. 4, Lucas had no idea that the franchise would be as successful as it was, so he couldn't count on the bank roll to make Ep 6.

So with the prospect of not being able to introduce Wookies at all, Lucas decided to move Chewie as a main character up into Ep 4, give him some technical skills (since it wouldn't make sense for Han Solo to adopt a primitive animal to be a co-pilot of a temperamental ship) and hope for the best. Had Lucas known that SW would be a success (again, this may be just scuttlebutt) then the copilot would have been some other character altogether, and the last Death Star would have been assembled over the forest moon of Kashyyyk, only to be defeated by the locals. It would have resembled what we saw during Ep. 3. At least then you have the superior size and strength of the Wookies to enhance their primitive technology.

Instead, we got Attack of the Teddy Bears to appeal to the Sesame Street demographic.

Again, it's just what I heard.

Yeah, hiding behind the other side of Deathstar would have at least bought the Rebels more time. The tactic of taking on the fleet of stardestroyers at point blanc range was not very good, considering that they would be severely outgunned and outnumbered. Even Admiral Akbar commented that they would not last long against the stardestroyers. Also, there was no guarentee that the shield would ever be deactivated. The shield should have remained operational, the Rebel fleet destroyed, and Luke Skywalker should have joined his father - to rule the galaxy, father and son!!

Interesting. Yep, something like the battle in Ep. 3 would have been much better. The Wookies were much more advanced than the Ewoks.

Actually, the big question about the space battle in Return of the Jedi is why the Rebels brought along their bigger ships at all? Fighters were used to destroy the second Death Star just like the first, and the fighters have their own hyperdrives, so why did Ackbar and his buddies bother to come along in their bigger ships?

And when did the Ewoks get the time to build log falls and swinging log traps and catapults to take on the Imperial AT-STs? Didn't they just barely decide to fight them the night before? And wasn't the use of the back door a spur-of-the moment idea, and didn't Wicket run off to get the Ewok army only after they saw that their Rebel friends were about to be captured?

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"You miss 100% of the shots you don't take" - Wayne Gretzky

Replicative fading, if I may be permitted to cross franchises.

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SeanF

"Ask to understand, but don't challenge unless you have the knowledge."--NEOWatcher

The contents of this post are ©2008 by SeanF and may not be copied or retransmitted in any form without the express written consent of SeanF

In Asimov's "Foundation" humans had flown and fought in space for one hundred thousand years, and they STILL use two-dimensional tactics! And it's not an oversight on Asimov's part -- when Bel Riose wins a major battle by utilizing third dimension, the losing side accuses him of cheating. IOW, Asimov clearly thought of the matter, just his conclusion is flatly incredible.

I think Asimov always regarded vast majority of human beings as collectivist, tradition-bound, and unwilling to experiment. (Socially experiment, that is.) Which is not surprising for a Russian Jew who grew up in Brooklyn during Great Depression. There are few rugged individualists in immigrant tenements, and even fewer during Depression.

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

I don't remember that (just my bad memory). Which battle?

I remember Riose talking to Ducem Barr (or was it Lathan Devers?) about the Previous Inclosure maneuver, which from context was obviously an englobement of the Terminus system.

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The Devil offered me power. I told him I preferred aperture.

It was not a battle against Foundation -- it happened earlier.

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.