How could the military operation in the final mission of "Antwerp" been handled differently (better)?
(Note: This is not meant to be a critique of Mjn or his mission design...I really enjoyed this campaign. This thread is meant to be in the vein of threads where Command's mistakes in FS1/FS2 have been discussed and how things could have been handled tactically/strategically better.)
The HOL Sahr shipyard was obviously a major target for the GTA/PVN so I understand they would want to attack it at some point. However, it seemed like they were almost in a rush to do so. Should they have waited to attack Sahr until more HOL groups in the system could be destroyed? IIRC, either the first mission debriefing or second mission briefing in "Antwerp" said that not all the raids against HOL fleets (like you did in the first mission of "Antwerp") were successful.
Also, as for the attack on Sahr itself:
-I can sort of understand why the combined GTA/PVN force would want to go around most of the minefield and attack through the opening...but didn't they realize that that would be going into a choke point/bottleneck where the HOL could focus fire on the attackers? They also seemed to have no escape path planned if things went wrong.
-Maybe they should have tried whittling down the minefield (use Phoenix missiles...of course that's assuming the mines' damage range didn't outrange Phoenix missiles). The allies would have lost the element of surprise, but they pretty much stated the HOL knew they were coming anyway. Also, by trying to go around the minefield that gave the HOL time to get their defenses ready anyways. If they could have opened another hole in the minefield, that might have allowed them to engage the HOL in open space and not be boxed in if the allies had to make an escape (at the least it might have allowed the Intrepid to launch escape pods). There could also be the chance that the HOL (instead of waiting for the allies to come into their engagement range) might have tried to come out to stop the destruction of the minefield and slightly weakened the defenses around Sahr.
In short, is there any way the allies (GTA/PVN) could have made a successful attack on Sahr or was the whole thing doomed from the start?
Secondly, is it possible the allies could have decided to cut losses and abandon the attack earlier and saved the Intrepid/Admiral Po?