Wolf Dog said:
Good points Haesslich. I disagree two of them. There was no need for concern of the Kilrathi fleet bypassing Tolywyn and going right for Earth. That would be too far out of character for Thrakath. I also think a minefield capable of delaying, but not damaging, the Kilrathi fleet would have still been a good tactic as, up til Sol, they were essentially fighting a delaying action. I can understant this not being feasible though for time and/or resource contraints.
I can rationalize reasons for not defending the jump point at all, it just seems weird that the idea isn't even mentioned when it is one of the few possibilities to gain a tactical advantage. Even if you aren't going to do it, you think you might still toss the idea around a bit, unless it was an obviously bad idea. The lack of the Lexington would have been discouraging and its possible, although we haven't seen such a limited vessel in WC that I can recall, that some or many of the civilian craft wouldn't have been capable of making it to the jump point.
You've forgotten something - Thrakath hating Tolwyn was something personal, and even when Tolwyn retreated to Earth, Thrakath STILL took the time to nuke the human colony in the system he was in before going after Tolwyn. Which would mean that he could just send the cruisers after Earth while his Hakagas went off and killed the human fleet at the jump point. This is the main reason they fell back on Earth, IIRC - they couldn't mount an effective defense of the area given the forces they had, so interdicted the area between Earth and the nearest jump point to Earth. Mine fields have been used in other games and in the novels... but I doubt they had time for that here, or the ships to do it with.
Basically, at this point, they had maybe a day or three to get the final defense organized, and no more than a week from when the fleet was mobilized to jump out to Warsaw to meet the Kilrathi till when the Kilrathi hit Earth orbit and launched their antimatter strike. Minefields are used in the games and the novels... but I don't believe they had time here to do that, given that all their efforts were put into mobilizing the carriers available to them, and stuffing every ship they could with pilots. Even the civvie pilots were mobilized to fill their own craft... and paid the price for it.
Static defenses aren't really useful in the context of jump-point defense; either they deny the area to everyone, such as the case of putting a whole LOT of asteroids in an area and are also prohibitively expensive to move a few million rocks into that region so a ship couldn't help but materialize in one, or else they can be fairly easily bypassed or defused (such as minefields). They may not even slow an enemy fleet down all that much, especially since the Hakagas and I suspect the larger Kilrathi dreadnoughts could shrug off even antimatter torpedo strikes. WC seems to take the view that they can be used to slow down an enemy slightly, but that warning systems are the best defense.
