Im trying to decide if this is an oddity a flaw or both.
In Ender's game the buggers sent a queen to colonize earth. This leads to the conclusion that when the buggers start a new planet they start it with a queen. The Speaker trilogy backs this up immensily.
Why then in Ender's Game where all the queens on the home planet? This is horrible military strategy.
Posted by Neon cricket (Member # 9729) on :
Well as I see it all of the battles on the way to the home planet pushed them back and by the time they got pushed back to the home world they had massive numbers to defend it. by that time they thought they had us figured out. If they had known that humans were capable of self sacrifice then they would not have let them come in, all of the previous battles told the buggers we like the escape route.
Posted by DDDaysh (Member # 9499) on :
I agree with Orange, I always thought it was a bad strategy that made almost no sense, but people aren't always logical, and neither are buggers. Maybe they didn't want to risk ANY queens, had them retreat.
Neon, your explanation is flawed. The battles with the buggers lasted only a few months, at most... they couldn't be "retreating" or "pulling back" because there wasn't enough time for travel.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
I always assumed it was a plot hole. I've seen some explinations here on HR, but I can't remember what any of them were, and none of them made as much sense as the idea that it was an oversight of a human author.
Posted by jasoncc (Member # 9760) on :
The way that I see it is that they would've had to have the most defences on their home world. i think that the buggers would've come up with the same conclusion as Bean did in Ender's Shadow, that it is impossible to defend a planet without unlimited forces. but they had to do it since the humans were coming and they could only choose one planet to defend, so of course they chose their home planet, and gathered as many forces as possible. they would need all of the queens to contro all the individual buggers that they had swarming around the planet.
Posted by mr_porteiro_head (Member # 4644) on :
Why would all the queens need to be there? They are able to control their fighters perfectly well over interstellar distances.
Posted by TommySama (Member # 9669) on :
"In Ender's game the buggers sent a queen to colonize earth. This leads to the conclusion that when the buggers start a new planet they start it with a queen. The Speaker trilogy backs this up immensily.
Why then in Ender's Game where all the queens on the home planet? This is horrible military strategy."
I remember this being answered in the book (or at least one of the sequals.) They retreated to the one planet that was furthest from Earth and best protected. They didn't believe the Humans would turn their weapons on a planet. This is especially true if they suspected they could not hold the planets, as than their queens would be in jeapardy.