Would be correct except for a faulty assumption, namely that the UEF doesn't have something that's up to stopping a concentrated destroyer assault.
Putting multiple destroyers in the same place would get them all killed by UEF bombers and artillery. Meanwhile the vital positions that said destroyers should have been covering would be lost too, probably including the all-important node.
Perhaps. On the other hand, as I will demonstrate below, they are at that risk all the time; in an offensive situation it can best be minimized.
Dividing up allows them to avoid that kind of nightmare scenario. If they hold ships back then the UEF can't just throw all its forces into one be-all-end-all battle. Nor can the UEF make an end-run for a war-winning blow.
On the contrary; holding them back exposes them to greater risk because some number of their subordinate ships and hence some amount of their support has been removed from them. Subspace transit allows a level of uncertainity, no matter how brief, about the destroyer's location. Commiting it offensively and winning protects it better because then, there being nothing left to defend, the natural thing will be to concede the field.
The end-run point is valid, but irrevelant; under no circumstances would I suggest underdefending the node anyways.
Though I would also note that the node allows instant reinforcement of itself. Short-term deployment into Sol by major GTVA forces for at least a few weeks at a time is entirely possible, something you seem to be dismissing out of hand.
When you have such a major tactical advantage but an overall logistical disadvantage (due to the node bottleneck) you have no reason to gamble on high-risk-high-reward deployments. Nor any reason to put your destroyers in harm's way at all when corvettes can get the job done.
But what you're posisting as a tactical disadvantage is, well, not. The Shivans have set about proving this numerous times in both games.
Kind of surprises me because it contradicts stuff we've both talked about in the past. If the enemy divides and you concentrate, you might achieve great success at a single objective but lose multiple other targets that the enemy was able to hit.
But there is a faulty logic at work here.
The GTVA has only one target worth defending in Sol, the Way Out. As noted above, defense of this can be handled by short-term deployments from Delta Serpentis. They have minimal defensive requirements allowing them to adopt a nearly-Shivan all-offense way of fighting.
Thus, subspace speed chess in the early portions of the war. The GTVA has only three destroyer groups in Sol and so is badly outnumbered, but the UEF has far more targets to cover and is badly offensively hobbled. So you get a string of deployments and counter-deployments and retreats on both sides. In the long run the GTVA manages to gradually degrade its objectives as the UEF sensor net breaks down (think a subspace version of SOSUS).
But this just reinforces the need for tactical concentration. In addition to offering better protection for your assets by allowing mutual support, it also offers two other classic advantages.
The use of minimal force will cause disproportionate casualities. Using overwhelming force will minimize your casualities. This ties directly into the second reason, time.
Casualities are a direct function of exposure time. By applying massive force to an operation you can complete it quickly and move on, resulting in minimal exposure of your force to danger. From this one can expand to a true manuver warfare concept or simply withdraw again. This course further recommends itself because it exaggerates the GTVA's advantages using beam-armed warships, which are better suited to rapid engagement conclusion.
The GTVA has been given a unique chance to adopt the Shivan way of war, to take a true manuver warfare stance that still forces the enemy to defend everything, but also that will all but insure superiority at the point of contact wherever they go.
In biology we analyze predator behavior with a set of mathematical tools, and a predator with a strong position will never take extreme risks. Putting more than one destroyer into a fight - or heck, any destroyer at all - is a big gamble.
Conversely, in a major offensive operation, leaving the destroyer behind is a greater gamble. The simple reason for this is blindingly obvious: if you do that you've given the enemy a tailor-made opportunity to force you to break off and defend the destroyer. (I would direct you to a mission I've tested for proof of concept of this very fact.) By commiting it to offensive action, you not only preserve the integrity of your offensive, you make it easier to safeguard the destroyer because your other ships can support it directly and it can in turn support them.
The other reason is fairly simple. The UEF do not force the GTVA to admit the more cautious route because they're not the Shivans. The greatest handicap of fighting the Shivans (which was brutally demonstrated in FS2) is that the most basic intelligence on them, their order of battle, is completely unobtainable. Without that, no capablities. Without capablities, one is reduced to guessing about intentions, which is no way to fight a war. But the GTVA should be able to easily assemble this kind of knowledge on the UEF. This certainity would in and of itself utterly transform the tactics of the war.
