posted
Why did the IF have to send a human fleet to fight every bugger fleet? Why couldn't they have just sent the ships to the home world?
So far i've come up with one explanation The IF wasn't sure if they were really a hive centered culture with the queen controlling everything so they thought they had to kill them all
i know if they just had one battle it would make the story so much worse but i was just thinking about it
any other explanations for destroying the every fleet?
Posts: 74 | Registered: Mar 2005
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posted
they didn't fight every bugger fleet, they were destroying outposts on their way to the homeworld.
Posts: 484 | Registered: Jan 2005
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There are multiple hive queens, one to a planet. But they couldn't know that. As far as the IF knew, they had more than one hive queen on EVERY world. So they sent fleets, not against fleets, but against planets, to subdue and destroy. What they found was that there were NO hive queens on ANY worlds - the hive queens had put almost all their eggs in one basket, betting that the humans, by dispersing their forces among the worlds, would not be able to get through their overwhelmingly superior force at the one world where all the hive queens had gathered. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Posts: 2005 | Registered: Jul 1999
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This is sort of off subject, but I wonder if the seperate hive queens got along very well. Becuase of the hive mind nature of the buggers, the hive queen didn't seem to be used to working with individual-minded species such as humans. For example, she made promises that she didn't keep and it seemed that she did this because she didn't have experience with negotiating.
Posts: 18 | Registered: Jul 2005
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it says that the queens used to fight but then one of them turned peaceful and killed off all of her daughters who didn't want peace. i think all the queens were connected too so they didn't have to make promises they couldn't keep because they all knew what they were capable of
Posts: 48 | Registered: Jul 2005
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posted
Actually, with a hive mind they arent really individuals in the sense that we identify them, and the whole point of the story(what I got out of it at least) if you read the sequals was that the whole conflict was due to a misunderstanding due to culture/racial differences and the lack of ability to communicate between the buggers and the humans.
Posts: 42 | Registered: Aug 2005
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quote:Originally posted by Orson Scott Card: the hive queens had put almost all their eggs in one basket, betting that the humans, by dispersing their forces among the worlds, would not be able to get through their overwhelmingly superior force at the one world where all the hive queens had gathered. It seemed like a good idea at the time.
Wow, I'm going to have to re-read it now. I thought during the first attack the buggers didn't realize that each human was an independant life form, and they regarded the idea of killing a ship full of us as no worse that striking an opponant and hurting, but not killing them. And it was a kind of understanding in their warfare that one doesn't kill a queen, only soldiers, and that is why the fleet hesitated when Ender brought the full on attack on the home planet. It took them a moment to fathom that he was actually attacking the queen herself. I never understood it was overconfidence in force of numbers.
Posts: 14 | Registered: Aug 2005
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LivingFiction: humans DID kill the queen that came with the second bugger fleet, remember? So they knew humans were ready to do everything. Their fleet didn't really hesitate when Ender attacked the homeworld. The numerouse ships were just too much to control - IIRC - and anyway, they thought they had Ender's few ships trapped between their ships and the atmosphere. As soon as they realized Ender's ships were going to destroy the planet, they threw everything at them. But it's like trying to catch a fly with a tank. (edit: many more ships, but not enough precision) And they almost did it, too, but for a little bit of luck.
Posts: 4519 | Registered: Sep 2003
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I could be wrong but weren't the oldest and slowest ships and fleets sent first,to the bugger home world,and then when newer fleets of ships were assembled they were launched at the next furthest bugger worlds and so on? All this to have all fleets striking at close to the same time as possible.With the buggers spread out over as much space as they were, a single strike at the home world wouldn't do much, as there were queens on other worlds and we wanted to wipe them out without having to worry about retaliations later.One thing always bothered me though,how did we know where these other worlds were in the first place?
Posts: 24 | Registered: Sep 2005
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posted
Thats probably another reason to fight all the bugger worlds. We didnt know intitially whicvh was the bugger home world or where all the worlds were so we just had to fight it out at every world we came too.
Posts: 832 | Registered: Jan 2005
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posted
That's right, I had forgotten that Corwin. But I do remember the explaination being given to Ender. Yeah, I'll just have to read it again for the umpteenth time.
Posts: 14 | Registered: Aug 2005
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posted
They knew where the bugger worlds were because of the philotic rays that they were able to follow because a philotic ray can never break. I'd guess that they knew which world was the homeworld because of the number of rays linking to that planet.
Posts: 74 | Registered: Mar 2005
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I don't think they knew that much about philotic physics, they just knew that the ansible was a perfect comm device, and reverse engineered it from the buggers.
Posts: 883 | Registered: Aug 2005
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