CT The Stormtroopers are NOT bad shooters...

I meant that I think Son of a Bith was joking.

 

Sorry, I misread your post.

 

They are terrible shots

 

I guarantee I was joking lol

 

I always just figured they couldn't hit the "good guys" because the Force was with the good guys.

 

Yea the Force was causing them to miss.

 

I like the idea that they were specifically told not to kill the escapees but to let them get to their ship and flee so the Falcon would lead the Death Star straight to the Rebel's doorstep. I'll stick with that, anyway the stormtroopers can't be that bad shots, they steamed in and wiped out the crew of the Tantive in mere moments!!

 

Stormtroopers were awesome in ANH, then slowly just became background cannon fodder. They raided a Rebel cruiser and took down lots of the crew. Sandcrawler, the Lars, and not to mention the banter. The Stormtroopers communicated quite a bit and were essentially the talkative types as found in THX-1138.

TESB? They really didn't do much. The Hoth battle was about the walkers, Bespin was guard duty and where we see multiple shots at Chewie miss before he dodges, and so on. ROTJ? Well they had the uppe rhand until the army of teddy bears took them down.

 

In AOTC, stormtroopers kick butt, in ROTS they kick butt except with Yoda and Obi-Wan, in ANH they kicked butt except with Luke, Han, Leia, Chewie, in TESB they kicked butt on Hoth, in ROTJ, they kicked butt until the Ewokes handed them their butts. (My opinion is clonetroopers and stormtroopers are one in the same, so please don't try to "correct" me about it).

 

In fairness, they did pretty well when they faced unnamed opponents, especially the rebel troopers on the Tantive in the beginning of ANH. After that point, though, when we see them miss it's usually when they're shooting at named heroes (Han, Luke, Leia, Chewie, etc.) who kind of have to survive per the plot. For better or worse, it's even referred to as "the stormtrooper effect".

 

I've argued before that the way that stormtroopers have been made out to be the apex of bad marksmanship in fiction is really unfair. Their inability to hit main characters is just standard "plot armor", no different than in literally any other action movie. Yet for some reason, they're seen as exceptionally bad shots.

 

I think in the Death Star escape the fact that they were "allowed to escape" does indeed cover it. If the troopers killed them then they wouldn't lead Vader/Tarkin to the Rebel base, hence the troopers would have orders not to kill them.

Leaving that aside (as I say, I think it covers the issue) garrison/internal security duty (as on the Death Star) would be assigned to less capable troopers, whereas Darth Vader's personal assault unit would (like the grenadier companies of musket battalions) be made up of the most capable soldiers.

 

They shoot just fine when they aim properly and aren't ordered to let the rebels escape so they can track them.

 

"Plot armour" I like it. I used to describe it as their force ability do bend the lasers away from them (ignore the issues of physics).

 

I like the 'weapons are crap' theory. The Empire is focused in mass-producing soldiers, and aren't concerned about quality. Why would the spend the extra dough on a good gun which is just going in the hands of a cannon fodder soldier?

 

The Stormtroopers weren't cannon fodder though, they were the Empire's elite line troops. Sort of like the British Foot Guards. They'd have got the best of everything, and got anything they needed before the Imperial Army did.

 

Yeah, and I don't think cannon fodder would be given full body armor and helmets, either. It would be cheaper and simpler to just give them regular clothes. I know their armor couldn't withstand all direct hits, but it did help. Part of the reason for the armor and helmets was surely for the visual aspect... the scary and anonymous look of them would be a more imposing sight for anyone facing the Empire. But the cost associated with suiting them up like that, plus the cost of their training, seems to be more than what would be provided for true cannon fodder.

 

What's the non-EU position on the clone/not-clone status of the OT stormtroopers?

 

I believe people have pointed out that the stormtroopers seen in ANH vary noticably in size- suggesting that they're not all clones, or not all clones of the same person.

There was a magazine article back in the 70s which was the first source to mention stormtrooper clones. The info may have been copied from a Lucas interview- other articles from the same magazine (Star Wars Poster Monthly) were- like the one that explained how Vader got his injuries.

 

That's RIGHT! I've seen a scan of something from the ANH era that stated they were clones.

In my personal version of star wars, they are clones. Why would they stop manufacturing them?

 

I think after an uprising on Kamino they started getting cautious about using the Kamino clones.

EU tends to give the proportion (during ANH era) as roughly 1/3 clones, 2/3 normal humans.

 

Well they cannot be be Jango Fett clones from the Grand Army of the Republic that's for sure. The clones were grown 10 years before the outbreak of the clone wars which places their beginnings around 32 BBY and they age twice as fast so by the Battle of Yavin they'd be 64 which is far too old to be a soldier. The Thrawn trilogy seems to suggest they were not clones because Thrawn suddenly finds the cloning cylinders and the New Republic gets all worried. Still the Thrawn trilogy is no longer a reliable source because it's from before the PT and therefore Zhan had no idea about the PT and Jango and the CIS etc. The official position I think is that it was a mix of new Fett clones, clones of different templates, conscripts and volunteers.

Is the Imperial Army actually canon though? It's suggested that the Imperial Army made up the bulk of the Imperial Infantry with the Stormtroopers being the elite best of the best as you said but I'm not sure that's how they were originally intended to be seen because (correct me if I'm wrong) we never actually see or even hear about the Imperial Army in the films. We only see Stormtroopers and this suggests to me that the Stormtrooper Corps was the infantry force (and canon fodder) of the Empire.

 

What about the various soldiers we see in grey-green? Like the AT-ST crews?

 

Sure, the original clones aged fast and would be to old by the time the Battle of Yavin came around. But they're manufactured. They could make new ones ad infinitum.

I do remember the Thrawn cloning cylinders. As much as I like that trilogy, I was looking for a non-EU explaination.[/quote]

 

Thing is "non-EU" is the films and... that's it. Everything else is an Expansion of the filmic Universe. Even pronouncements by Lucas.

So, if the films don't answer your question, only the EU can.