CT The Stormtroopers are NOT bad shooters...

But they're not infantry are they. They're tankers. Maybe those guys are called the Imperial Army. I don't know. But MrCynical seemed to suggest that the Imperial army are a separate and primary infantry force and this doesn't tally with the films as far as I can see.

 

Then the way I see it, there's absolutely no reason to think that the Emperor stopped producing clones to support his army.

 

This I'm afraid. Still we can try and work at it logically. The Empire was interested in cheap, mass produced stuff as can be seen in their Tie Fighters which have no hyperdrive and shields. So what's cheaper? Conscripts/volunteers or clones? I think the cheaper option would be the correct one and I reckon the cheapest option is the former. Think about it. A clone has to be grown and nurtured for 10 years. Conscripts can be ready in just six weeks if you rush the training. The elite units would be volunteers and they would have a longer training but that's still got to be cheaper and easier than growing clones in my opinion.

 

The EU approach was that while he never stopped producing clones, he started recruiting volunteers between RoTS and ANH, and they became a significant portion.

 

This sounds reasonable - a combination of what I was saying and Lord Chazza just stated.

 

Based on the fact that - so far as I can tell - the stormtroopers in the newer OT editions haven't been dubbed over with Morrison's voice, I strongly doubt that the current line is "all stormtroopers are clones".

 

And even if some are clones, there may be other templates.

 

In AOTC we see several batches of clones in production. We see half grown clones that would not be battle ready until 2 years after ROTS and the end of the clone wars. We also see infant batches that would not be ready until 7 years after the clone wars ended. We also don't know if they stopped making clones or kept pumping them out though the OT. Also the wording in AOTC is growth acceleration, not age acceleration, two very different things. I infer that clones only grow up twice as fast, but age at a normal rate, it just makes much more sense. My opinion is that they are all clones.


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The head bumping Stormtrooper is a Jango clone since he inheirited that trait from him, despite not having Jango's voice.

In TPM, the battle droids had individual voices, so maybe clones can too.

 

The stormtroopers are actually a bunch of alcoholics, and they're always hung over when they have to shoot the rebels.

 

...You seriously think there's only one clumsy person in the GFFA?

 

Lucas stated he had Jango bump his head in AOTC as a joke and to show that the stormtroopers inherited that trait from him. Therefore, from Lucas himself, that stormtrooper is a Jango clone. Whatever Lucas says holds more water than whatever the EU says.

 

Those guys are terrible shots....

 

Hey they've got built in sunglasses in their helmets and a lot if the shooting is in dark space

 

Do we even hear that guy's voice?

 

It doesn't tally with the films - though the films don't have anything called a 'Stormtrooper Corps' either so the entire argument is moot without the EU. In Choices of One (though I'm hesitant to cite it since it has a pretty big canon-conflict with ESB) a reference is made by an Imperial officer to "troopers and stormtroopers", implying that the two are different.

 

What is that "big canon conflict"? Most times I've seen that claim, it's been something minor that can easily be justified.

 

In the books it is claimed that the Stormtroopers are not the main force of the Empire but a small elite force that works alongside the main infantry force of the Empire which are called the Imperial Army. This is all fine except for the fact that we never actually see any Imperial Army soldiers. The usage of Stormtroopers in the films doesn't make sense if they're supposed to be an elite force. The searching and checkpoint duty that the Stormtroopers perform on Tatooine is not something you would have your SAS or Rangers do. That's something for the regular infantry to do. Likewise the guard duty on the Death Star is not something you would have elite soldiers do. The EU is wrong about Stormtroopers. They're not an elite force they're just the Empire's regular infantry.

 

We see some on Endor- it's isn't just the tankers.

 

We're talking about an infantry force here. None of those guys were infantry. You had a few officer types and some people in the ATST's. The only infantry guys on Endor were Stormtroopers/Scout Troopers.

 

This is what Wookiepedia has to say on the matter: http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Imperial_Army

 

This pretty much sums it up.

 

And that mentions Imperial Army infantry.

As to whether the movies "contradict" it- that's a different question, but a case can be made that when Obi-Wan said "Only Imperial stormtroopers are so precise" he was therefore implying that there exist military personnel that are not so precise.

The first source to actually give background on the stormtroopers:

1978
STAR WARS: OFFICIAL POSTER MONTHLY #4
Published January 1978 by Galaxy Publications. Text writers Jon Trux, John May, Anthony Fredrickson.

http://www.theforce.net/image_popup/image_popup_global.asp?Image=timetales/misc/arcana/post4-03.jpg

 

A volunteer force would be significantly cheaper than manufacturing clones, and it would be much more efficient for mass-producing a military. surely, the entire galaxy can produce more bodies than the clone Factories of Kamino. I think it's safe to say that volunteers/conscripts would also be more efficient as far training elite force would go, because you can put all or most of your resources towards their actual training, rather than towards their ten year growth from infancy to adulthood, the resources ont he actual cloning equipment, and THEN their training. It would be far more cost effective to spend the majority of resources on the actual training of the soldiers.

I think the "Clone Wars" should have been a war fought against cloners, with clones invading the Republic, and the Empire being formed because the Old Republic couldn't conscript a force large enough because of rights/legislature or whatever, and then Palpatine showed up and was like "I'll save you all! Vote for me, vote for safety and order (tyranny)!"

 

Luke sees a woman using a lightsaber to block blaster bolts far more efficiently than he can, and also using the Force to throw a weapon to him (it's Mara Jade, but Luke doesn't know that). Yet in ESB and ROTJ when Yoda and Obi-Wan are calling him the last of the Jedi, he doesn't mention this.

Anyway, I've found a better EU source for the Imperial Army being a separate institution to the Stormtrooper Corps: The Last Command (which I'm re-reading at the moment and came across the quotes below).