What purpose does a Rebel base serve?

So throughout the OT we've seen two fairly important Rebel bases that the Empire seems to consistently feel the urge to smash with Death Stars and Super Star Destroyers. Why are these bases so important? If you're running a galactic resistance to a government, why concentrate all your leaders and personel at once point? The only real military asset that the bases seemed to possess were the X-wings and Y-wings that were stationed there, and apparently the 30-so starfighters at Yavin probably didn't even represent a major portion of their entire military. Neither Hoth nor Yavin had any shipyards of any sort and couldn't be used to service large capital ships. The fact that it took a probe droid to find Echo Base means that the operation there was miniscule enough that even spies couldn't infiltrate it. So why then do these locations matter?

 

I'm sure there were more than one...as I don't remember seeing all the high ranking Rebel leaders on Hoth. However, if you are trying to destroy the leaders of a rebellion, you blast whatever you can find.

It appears that the Empires recon was not giving them much - Yavin was found by using a homing beacon on the Falcon, Hoth was found by Vader using the Force after sending a probe droid there and Endor...the Emperor figured out a way to get hte rebellion to come to him.

But, since the rebellion was secret and their resources limited, any hard strikes to their supply line and existing forces would be a good one. Also, the fact that there were people defecting from the Empire and joining the rebels all the time, totally wiping out a rebel stronghold would give them a psychological edge, making those who thought about joining the rebellion think twice.

 

A small band of rebels is better served if they can unite.

 

For Yavin-

In the opening crawl for ANH, it states 'Rebel spaceships striking from a hidden base'. The Empire was after that base.

For Hoth, it was mostly about Vader looking for Luke.

Endor speaks for itself.

 

Yep..

 

Rebel bases serve as a central co-ordination points for mainly military operations but mainly as a gathering point for Rebel Forces. Keep in the mind, the Rebel Alliance Fleet is very small to start and so a base like Yavin was needed to lauch starfighter missions. Hoth housed mainly the very vulnerable transport fleet and ground troops. By the time of Endor, the Rebellion has gained much support and their fleet is much bigger allowing operations to be run from there rather than a ground base.

With the exception of Princess Leia, the political wing of the Alliance weren't located at the bases but were always on the move. Mon Mothma spent most of her time onboard the Alliance command ship captained by Admiral Drayson. As did much of the Alliance High Command.

If you want to delve further into EU, there were many Rebel bases. Though smaller than Yavin and Endor, they served as base of operations.

 

Quite right. The military wing of a rebel/terrorist/freedom (call it as you like) force needs a base of operation, coordination and meeting. Furthermore, the Empire would like to eliminate such a base not only for tactical purposes but for psychological also, wich are even more important in a ideological conflict as every civil war is.

 

The rebel bases with their staffs intact were big enough to plan offensives, but temporary enough to flee quickly. There was also the band of wandering frigates that Luke and Leia joined at the end of ESB. They would have been on the move a lot.

 

I've always wondered something about the base on Yavin.

They knew the Death Star was coming.
They knew how long it was going to take to get there.
They knew it was a long shot that the reactor shaft trick would work.

Why in the hell did they just sit there and wait for it? They had enough time to have a briefing, fuel up all the X-Wings, throw some coin at Han... why weren't they sticking Leia, Dadonna and the rest on the first shuttle out?

Made for good movie drama, though.

 

In order to coordinate a large scale attack, the ships would all need to be fueled/armed etc. This would be too large of a task to do at a commercial installation. Also, Imperial spies would be able to flush out and identify large numbers of fighters refueling in one area.

Having a base of operations also lends credibility to the cause, rather than it just being a scattered and disorganized band of raiders striking sporadically at the enemy.

A base also allows the rebels to share resources. If they were just a bunch of ships flying around in space, they would probably not have had an extra fighter to give to a new pilot like Luke.

It also provides a place to train pilots.

As a historical fact, all successful revolutionary groups, terrorists etc had a base.

 

For the first time, the Rebels knew exactly WHEN and WHERE the DS would be, AND have the DS plans, which revealed a way to destroy it. If the rebels had escaped, the DS would probally leave as well to a hidden sector until the plans are retrived again, then the rebels will have no chance to destroy the DS and MORE systems will suffer the same fate as Alderaan.

What the Rebels did was brave and heroic. They used their base as bait to lure the DS to a place where they could attack it and hopefully destroy. If they had escaped, the DS would leave.

 

Mon Mothma makes a comment about the Empire being spread across the galaxy in a vein effort to engage them. This means there is certainly more than one Rebel base. Mon Mothma was not at Yavin, and not at Hoth. One base would not have mattered had it been whiped out. Hence Palpatine's plan using the second DS as a trap. Had they lost at Endor, the Rebels would probably not have much of a future left, or at the very least need many years to regroup and rebuild. It would have been a situation of diminishing returns since the Empire would be growing in the number o war machines as well.

 

I believe "Al Qaeda" means "The Base". Whether literal or figurative, the maintenance of a central, unified fortress represents a type of stability suggestive of eventual victory. Its destruction, conversely, represents the weakness of the movement represented by the base.

 

You are right, but that's not what I was talking about. AFTER the fighters launched to go out and meet the DEATH STAR, or before, or during, why didn't they evacuate the base?

 

And go where? The Death Star's tracking systems would have picked up the launch of the ships and would have sent more fighters to deal with them.

Plus the rebels essentially poured all their resources into destroying the Death Star...there wouldnt have been enough time to evacuate everyone before the Death Star got there, the transports would have had no escorts since the fighters would have been busy attacking the DS which also means they couldnt evacuate before the fighters launched since the fighters were needed for the battle and couldnt escort the transports.

Its also possible that there werent enough ships at the time to put everybody on. Yavin IV seemed to be a permanent base and given the Rebellions lack of resources its possible that once you landed on Yavin, you would be there for days or weeks until another transport arrived. Once word got out that the Death Star was coming to destroy the base they could have contacted the rebel fleet to come and evacuate them but given that the Death Star was on its way, it would have been a bad move to have the fleet arrive at that time.

All the rebels could really do was wait for the DS and hope that they could destroy it.

 

As I said, if the rebels evaucated the base, the Empire would have no reason to destroy it, so the DS would probally immediately jump into hyerspace, and then they will never know where the DS is, it could destroy planet after planet until they fund them again. As Princess Leia in a cut scene:

"Hiding is uselss now. With the Death Star, the Empire will continue destroying planets until they find us. We have no alternative but to process this information (DS plans in R2) and use it while there's still time."

 

Well the thing is if there were so many bases throughout the span of the war, then what makes Yavin so significant? And why does Vader insist that Luke is somehow located at this one base they just discovered if they knew there were millions of bases all over? Starfighters should be able to launch from capital ships, which are far less vulnerable than a planetary base, and also extend their range far beyond a base in the middle of nowhere.

As for destroying the Death Star, it didn't have to happen over Yavin. One, the thing isn't that hard to find. Two, it has to spend a good amount of time in the system it's in before it can vaporize a planet, so you can mount an attack with a good chance of success. Three, Tarkin is too proud to run, especially with a planet killing superlaser at his fingertips. Four, I think the chances of failing the attack and getting blown away far outweighed the risk of having other planets being destroyed. Five, I think we're getting off topic =P

 

Man, I'm surprised that this is even a topic of discussion, much less debate, but here goes since I'm bored. Unfortunately some of this explanation takes into account (though in a very minor way) some instances that served the Rebellion that were explained in the EU, namely aquiring the X-Wing starfighters. Yavin was needed because at the time, the mainstay of the rebel fleet (which was only just starting to pick up units at the time of the battle of Yavin) needed a staging area. They did not have at that time any type of capital ship capable of carrying a significant number of fighters, being that what ships they did have at the time was more concerned with the transport of personnel and resources. If you think to the Empire Strikes Back during the evacuation of Hoth, there were no significant capital ships where the fighters could launch from, let alone deter the Imperial Fleet blockading the planet, and as we saw they had to rely on the ion cannon to punch holes in the blockade. As for needing Yavin, it just happened to be the best location to get a good part of the Alliance Starfighter Corps ready for the sorties that would inevitable be coming up once all the starfighters were combat ready. The rebels didn't have any ships that could have facilitated any work towards acquiring a functioning fleet... A planet would have those resources.

 

I think the bottom line is that even the tough Rebel alliance could live for years and years without setting foot on solid ground. Living life in a temporary barracks is still better than living out of a spaceship. Of course, living out of a spaceship would work if they had to, but I am not sure that pre-RoTJ they had ships large enough to carry a significant number of X-Wings/Y-Wings. This REALLY presents a problem in that your fighter pilots would have to fly around in small cockpits for very lengthy periods of time. The Alliance would have gone stir crazy without small bases to rest and plan.

Also, talking face to face with someone is safer than Comm traffic. If the imperials were monitoring comm frequencies in many space sectors.....they could pick up on short range transmissions within the fleet. They could locate the on the run alliance and destroy them.

Carnage