Dragon1 said:
A matter of minutes! There were two whole missions between when the Vesuvius and St. Helens began fighting in the Talos system and when they crossed into Sol.
The Intrepid departed the Ella system crossing the superbase and the forces dispatched to deal with her (rather light actually, a frigate, a destroyer and a cruiser plus two or three squadrons of Hellcats and some Longbows). Did someone at Confed forget von Klausewitz's concentration of force maxim, or did they purposely set it up where each capital ship attacked independently. Also, even after, the Ella station would have been tracking the Intrepid and sent information ahead to Confed HQ.
Firstly, the Vesuvius mission sequence (in the game) was pretty short - the Intrepid attacked out of nowhere right outside the Sol system jump point. This mission ended very quickly (for once, there's no autopilot in the mission, so the three-four minute mission is real-time). Blair landed. A a few minutes onboard, then another short mission, ending in the Vesuvius' jump. The Intrepid and St. Helens jump through to the other side, where Blair launches almost immediately, and takes the Vesuvius out, again taking only three or four minutes. That's the end of it. And remember, when you're working out the time Sol-based forces had to assist the Vesuvius, those three-four minutes are it - they could not assist them while they were still on the other side of the jump point.
It's also worth noting that there's just no point criticising Confed strategy based on the game missions. The reason why each of the three capships attacked separately is simply because the mission had to be finishable
. Oh, and about the Ella-HQ communications - notice that the Vesuvius, right in the next system from Ella, apparently had no idea that the Intrepid was out there. Funny thing... suppose you're at Confed HQ. Somebody tells you that an enemy carrier is heading for Talos. You've got a supercarrier in Talos. Doesn't your course of action seem clear enough? So ask yourself, then - why is it that Tolwyn was
not told about the Intrepid?
(finally, about the book version - yes, the battle there took longer than a few minutes; however, IIRC the location of the battle in the book was remote enough to make reinforcements pretty difficult, so at the end of the day it all amounts to the same thing)