Post by Darth Kairos on May 15, 2016 1:17:48 GMT
"The Dark Lord is correct, Lord Reaver," Ares pressed. "The Imperial Remnant are no less veterans than Antilles' taskforce was - how many of them fought against us in Snowfall? The Remnant never had to downscale its military to the drastic degree the Alliance did; many of its crews will have been there since the Yuuzhan Vong War. And I cannot stress this enough - this is not some Outer Rim militia, this is the Imperial Starfleet. Their entire strategic doctrine was built around large scale fleet combat and overwhelming firepower, and there is a very good reason the Imperials are famed for their strict discipline. Every non-officer in the fleet could have been recruited yesterday, and it wouldn't make a difference, because their officers know how to keep them in line. How many Imperial mutinies have you heard of? How many instances of the crews disobeying orders to flee a battle? Conversely, how many times did Imperial ships fight to the death for the honour of some overinflated Warlord or Admiral?"
"Space is three-dimensional, I remind you, but even if we do successfully block off all avenues of retreat for their fleet at Vjun, what then? They will not surrender until their fleet has been, in the literal sense of the word, decimated - and what cost will the decimation of a fleet of Star Destroyers bring to our fleet? And what will that gain us? We'll lose a great chunk of a fleet in a time we'll need it most, in return for a lessened number of damaged vessels with crews that will need to be processed and deported. No, we need to hold them until you can secure Mandalorian space and arrive with the Xendor. Then we must allow them to retreat to conserve our forces. It will conserve theirs, yes, but they can weather losses better than we can right now anway. We don't need decisive victories on the battlefield, we need to bulwark their initial offensive to gain us time to find a long-term solution."
"Space is three-dimensional, I remind you, but even if we do successfully block off all avenues of retreat for their fleet at Vjun, what then? They will not surrender until their fleet has been, in the literal sense of the word, decimated - and what cost will the decimation of a fleet of Star Destroyers bring to our fleet? And what will that gain us? We'll lose a great chunk of a fleet in a time we'll need it most, in return for a lessened number of damaged vessels with crews that will need to be processed and deported. No, we need to hold them until you can secure Mandalorian space and arrive with the Xendor. Then we must allow them to retreat to conserve our forces. It will conserve theirs, yes, but they can weather losses better than we can right now anway. We don't need decisive victories on the battlefield, we need to bulwark their initial offensive to gain us time to find a long-term solution."