Author Topic: ODDS in Insider 87 (Controversial Issues Abound)
razzy1319  1862 posts
Registered: Jun '04
24104_Clone Trooper
Date Posted: 4/8/06 9:02am Subject: RE: ODDS in Insider 87 (Controversial Issues Abound)
Paladin307 posted:
Uhh everyone realizes that the Spartans lost that battle, right? How exactly does that help your argument? A much larger force defeated a much smaller force. The clones actually WIN the war.


As a wise bunny always said "You might have won this battle but you havent won the war"

 

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LtNOWIS  2473 posts
Registered: May '05
16494_Clone Assault
Date Posted: 4/8/06 12:35pm Subject: RE: ODDS in Insider 87 (Controversial Issues Abound)
Paladin307 posted:
The clones actually WIN the war.

That's not exactly true. The droids layed down their arms.

 

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Fist_of_Mandalore  2926 posts
Registered: Mar '05
43216_Mandalorian
Date Posted: 4/8/06 12:36pm Subject: RE: ODDS in Insider 87 (Controversial Issues Abound)
LtNOWIS posted:
Paladin307 posted:
The clones actually WIN the war.

That's not exactly true. The droids layed down their arms.

Neither is this exactly true. The Seppies hit the off-switch and then had hteir leadership cut down.

 

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Rogue_Follower  8535 posts
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Date Posted: 4/8/06 2:37pm Subject: RE: ODDS in Insider 87 (Controversial Issues Abound) - Date Edited: 4/8/06 2:39pm (1 edits total) Edited By: Rogue_Follower
Just got Insider 87. Half of you aren't going to like this one bit, due to a bit of retconnage.

Still 3 million clones---on Kamino. However, it does mention that cloning facilities were secretly created on Coruscant itself. Here's the part that people will get angry over: apparently, there are only hundreds of millions of droids. Its blamed on bad intel. Also, its shown that the Seppie droid factories were sabotaged (as mentioned in the GAR article.)

To her credit, Ms. Traviss makes it sound plausible, especially when it is pointed out that if the CIS had quadrillions of droids, then why didn't they use them in the very beginning to take Coruscant?

 

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Valin__Kenobi  1013 posts
Title: Author:
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Registered: Mar '04
48742_General Grievous (63009)
Date Posted: 4/8/06 2:59pm Subject: RE: ODDS in Insider 87 (Controversial Issues Abound) - Date Edited: 4/8/06 3:05pm (2 edits total) Edited By: Valin__Kenobi
^ That's mostly good, I guess. I always thought quintillions of droids was purely asinine, although hundreds of millions is much too low on the opposite extreme. Maybe we can say that's the number of B-1s, and it doesn't include the B-2s and the destroyer droids? [jarjar] Dissen gonna be messy. [/jarjar] *sigh*

 

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dp4m  36462 posts
Registered: Nov '01
13878_Luke Skywalker Dark Empire
Date Posted: 4/8/06 3:27pm Subject: RE: ODDS in Insider 87 (Controversial Issues Abound)
QuentinGeorge posted:
Good god, people aren't using Thermopylae as an example, are they? It's irrelevant for a few reasons:

1) Herodotus greatly exaggerated the strength of the Persians. (i.e., there weren't a million of them)
2) The Persians were invading Greece, not the other way around, whereas most of the Clone Wars engagements was the Republic invading CIS space.
3) The CIS can create new battle droids in what seems like (judging from AOTC) hours, whereas the Persians didn't have that capability with their own soldiers.

The absurd lengths to which people are willing to go to defend this figure is admirable, but not logical.


Quentin -- please understand, I simply don't care about the debate. I'm trying to, y'know, MODERATE consensus.

The reason I bring up Thermopylae is that, at a ratio of 60:1, the Spartans would have essentially held out forever against the Persians due to tactics, battlefield and any number of other factors save for the fact that they were betrayed. I never said that there were "millions," I said that the ratio was 60:1, which could account for a Separatist army of 180,000,000 droids AT THE START of the Clone Wars (e.g. Geonosis).

As to your third point, what we saw was a droid manufacturing facility. How long is the time between shipments of raw material? Certainly you don't think that all droid parts are mined, refined, processed and created on Geonosis for creation of battle droids, do you? What we saw was a droid factory in action; what's the downtime? How many similar facilities did the Separatists have? If you can't answer those questions, you can't really debate from a position of knowledge, only supposition.

Also, please note, that your tone which is condescending and combative leads me to believe that you're either taking this way too personally or you see the futility of your arguments as intracable without canonical proof to back you up.

 

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Master_of_Ossus  457 posts
Registered: Mar '03
17651_ARC Commander
Date Posted: 4/8/06 3:40pm Subject: RE: ODDS in Insider 87 (Controversial Issues Abound) - Date Edited: 4/8/06 3:41pm (1 edits total) Edited By: Master_of_Ossus
To all of the people who support the 3 million number (and especially those using the Battle of Thermopylae as an example):

1. The Spartans lost the Battle, and they wouldn't have even been able to hold the Persian Army if not for a nearly unique geographic coincidence that played into their hands. What comparable geographic or tactical phenomena did the Republic have to simulate such an instance, and why wouldn't the CIS forces simply bypass the clones like the Persians wanted to do the whole time?

2. That battle didn't even approximate the size of the disparity between the opposing forces alleged by the Travessites.

3. You cannot use a battle fought in the ancient period, before ranged arms became the dominant martial weapons to approximate the effects of numerical superiority on a post-firearms war (see Lanchester's Laws). Even using the 1 quadrillion figure for droids (which understates the size of the droid army by a factor of several thousand), and saying that the clones were each as powerful as 3 droids one-v-one, and saying that their tactical superiority gave them a 10 times force multiplier (if you reject the validity of these coefficients, then let me know what you find to be reasonable coefficients so that we can substitute them and see the new result--I promise you that no reasonable coefficients will substantively change the result), Lanchester's Laws still predict that the clone army is only .00000000000007% as powerful as the droid army. Does this not bother you, when arguing that the clones constituted such a powerful force as to have the entire War named after them? How can the public (or even people in real life) believe that Palpatine's machinations would make such a small army of clones into a credible threat to the droids, let alone one what was able to deliver numerous important victories?

4. The Battle of Jabiim involved an entire Corps of clones (38,000 men), with various Jedi support, and the clones were almost completely wiped out by a numerically INFERIOR force of 10,000 droids and an unknown number of separatist militia. According to you, such a force of clones should have been sufficient to fight literally thousands of forces of battle droids that numbered in the 10,000 range, suggesting that the droids were an insignificant part of the Battle. Yet the droids are also the force that the soldiers at Jabiim worried the most about: Jabiim thus seems to support a larger number of clones, rather than the 3,000,000 figure.

5. At Merson, a mere 5:1 numerical inferiority caused the Republic (clone-led) forces to be TPKed. At Parcellus Minor, a mere 10:1 numerical inferiority caused 90% casualties among the clone forces, and required the naval commander on-hand to basically wipe out the surface of the planet to salvage even that force (ie. they would've lost completely without orbital dominance) (DHC Clone Wars Book 5). How do you reconcile the simultaneous importance of even slight numerical superiority in these battles with the spectacular numerical superiority enjoyed by CIS forces, according to your numbers?

6. How do you explain the following quote from Insider 65: Shadowfeed:

Shadowfeed posted:
"The forces on our borders and outlying colonial assets are admittedly facing greater numbers, but with our inexhaustible supply of troops and materiel from the Neimoidian coffer-worlds, Techno Union home foundaries and mighty guild-worlds, its only a matter of time before the republic is overwhelmed."


The quote indicates that the droid army was outnumbered by the clones--a prediction that was made long ago by those proposing larger numbers of clones but which I see no easy way of reconciling with those advocating small numbers.

7. New Essential Guide to Chronology gives the following account of the Battle of Muunilist:

NEGC posted:
San Hill, the arrogant chairman of the InterGalactic Banking Clan, had worked to make his homeworld of Munnilinst an unassailable castle keep. The Republic countered with sheer numbers, sending hundreds of assault ships, each one groaning from the weight of troopers and war machines. Many vessels reached the surface only as smoldering hulks; others found themselves cut off from their drop zones, forced to make landings behind enemy lines.


My, what great tactics the Republic used. The better to sacrifice their army with, my dear?

This was not the surgical strike that people have proposed, and involved 200 Acclamators--more than enough to carry 3,000,000 clones if they were fully loaded (and the quote seems to indicate that they were), so can you really argue that the Battle was fought using the ENTIRE CLONE ARMY, or are you going to propose an alternative explanation? Also note that the Republic lost a considerable number of Acclamators during the Battle.

8. During the Battle of Utapau, Obi-Wan's entire clone force was required to defeat a mere "thousands" of battle droids, along with indigenous forces. Once again, how can this be explained if the clones were so much more powerful than the droids?

 

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Sinrebirth  18923 posts
Title: Sith Emperor of the SWC
Registered: Nov '04
47748_Dath Vectivus
Date Posted: 4/8/06 3:42pm Subject: RE: ODDS in Insider 87 (Controversial Issues Abound)
Well, as retcons go, I've seen better.

But it does work for the Battle of Praesitlyn. 200 ships, million droids.

 

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Thrawn McEwok  13601 posts
Title: TFN EU Staff
Registered: May '00
43231_Chiss Ewok
Date Posted: 4/8/06 4:12pm Subject: RE: ODDS in Insider 87 (Controversial Issues Abound)
Rogue_Follower posted:
Here's the part that people will get angry over: apparently, there are only hundreds of millions of droids.


I'm taking bets on who's going to be first to insist that that must mean "thousands of hundreds of millions"...

But I still wonder if this might not be misinformation in itself, to explain why the GAR hasn't lost yet... mischief

Rogue_Follower posted:
To her credit, Ms. Traviss makes it sound plausible, especially when it is pointed out that if the CIS had quadrillions of droids, then why didn't they use them in the very beginning to take Coruscant?


Word.

... but, like I said, is this a retconn, or more misdirection? thinking tongue

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Super_Battle_Droid  3489 posts
Registered: May '02
7381_Super Battle Droid
Date Posted: 4/8/06 4:18pm Subject: RE: ODDS in Insider 87 (Controversial Issues Abound) - Date Edited: 4/8/06 4:19pm (1 edits total) Edited By: Super_Battle_Droid
Cause that wasn't Sidious plan, his plan was a distraction so Grievous could kidnap him. wink

 

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MercenaryAce  2766 posts
Registered: Aug '05
8117_Y-Wing Pilot
Date Posted: 4/8/06 5:57pm Subject: RE: ODDS in Insider 87 (Controversial Issues Abound)
" How do you explain the following quote from Insider 65: Shadowfeed:


Shadowfeed posted:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"The forces on our borders and outlying colonial assets are admittedly facing greater numbers, but with our inexhaustible supply of troops and materiel from the Neimoidian coffer-worlds, Techno Union home foundaries and mighty guild-worlds, its only a matter of time before the republic is overwhelmed."
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"

Simply Really

1) Prue plain propanganda. Look at the source man, CIS shadow feed.

2)The CIS is more spread out. THe droids are out stomping militias, so generaly when CLones and Droids meet its in around equal numbers.

3) Have you read the post you just posted? Serisously dude-limitless numbers of troops. The article suggests many border CIS worlds were unprotected, which makes sense in the begaining-just because the droids are built doens't mean they are where they need to be.

Nesides, CLones are mentioned no where in that atricle, so it does not suggest the Droids were outnumbered. Which would a be stupid thing to sugest considering how much longer it takes to make a clone than to make a droid, and if the droids were out numbered, then the war would have ended quickly, because most battles feature rediculus kill-lose ratios in favor of the clones and jedi.

 

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Valin__Kenobi  1013 posts
Title: Author:
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48742_General Grievous (63009)
Date Posted: 4/8/06 6:15pm Subject: RE: ODDS in Insider 87 (Controversial Issues Abound) - Date Edited: 4/8/06 6:18pm (1 edits total) Edited By: Valin__Kenobi
Havac posted:
Lord_Hydronium posted:
dp4m posted:
The Battle of Thermopylae is probably the best example of how 3,000,000 could function as a number, at least until the end of the Clone Wars when Grievous began to get desperate...

Why do I even bother? Does the fact that Thermopylae is a million times smaller than the odds we need here mean nothing? Could the Spartans have realistically held off a trillion Persians?


Yes . . . because 1 trillion Persians are not all going to be able to fight them at the same time. You're suggesting that a billion droids or whatever your number is can all take on one clone trooper at once. Real life doesn't work that way; at some point the law of diminishing returns takes over.

I can't beat Jackie Chan in a fight. If there were one billion of me, only what, four of me maybe would be able to fight him at a time without just getting in each other's way. Jackie Chan can take four of me, I'm sure. To inject more realism, most of the billion is scattered around the planet doing other things, and Jackie has the ability to run away from me. Now, it's clearly a silly example, but are you seeing that your situation isn't as cut-and-dried as you present it?


I think Havac's point bears repeating on this page.

Hydro, even assuming the overall war has 3 million clones versus 100 uber-zillion droids (which I don't accept BTW, since both seem equally silly extremes and there's a fair amount of wiggle room for each)--they're not necessarily going to face those odds in each theater. Note that most of the pitched battles we've seen so far have been roughly even matches in terms of numbers.

Just because droids outnumber clones in the galaxy, doesn't mean there'll be 3 billion of them per clone in every engagement. Short of a space bombardment or commando mission, I can think of no plausible situation in which a small number of clones would need to fight your trillion droids at once--it's not logistically possible and is a pretty absurd hypothetical.

P.S.: And Ossus, citing CIS Shadowfeed as a reliable source? Come on now. rolling_eyes

 

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Lord_Hydronium  6273 posts
Title: Literature Gardener
Registered: Jun '02
15597_Vergere
Date Posted: 4/8/06 6:38pm Subject: RE: ODDS in Insider 87 (Controversial Issues Abound) - Date Edited: 4/8/06 6:45pm (2 edits total) Edited By: Lord_Hydronium
MercenaryAce posted:
1) Prue plain propanganda. Look at the source man, CIS shadow feed.

Let me get this straight: Shadowfeed would want to make their opposition seem larger?

You'd think that if the CIS outnumbered their opponents 300 billion to one they'd be emphasizing that, not talking about how they're outnumbered.

Valin__Kenobi posted:
Havac posted:
Yes . . . because 1 trillion Persians are not all going to be able to fight them at the same time. You're suggesting that a billion droids or whatever your number is can all take on one clone trooper at once. Real life doesn't work that way; at some point the law of diminishing returns takes over.

I can't beat Jackie Chan in a fight. If there were one billion of me, only what, four of me maybe would be able to fight him at a time without just getting in each other's way. Jackie Chan can take four of me, I'm sure. To inject more realism, most of the billion is scattered around the planet doing other things, and Jackie has the ability to run away from me. Now, it's clearly a silly example, but are you seeing that your situation isn't as cut-and-dried as you present it?


I think Havac's point bears repeating on this page.

Hydro, even assuming the overall war has 3 million clones versus 100 uber-zillion droids (which I don't accept BTW, since both seem equally silly extremes and there's a fair amount of wiggle room for each)--they're not necessarily going to face those odds in each theater. Note that most of the pitched battles we've seen so far have been roughly even matches in terms of numbers.

Just because droids outnumber clones in the galaxy, doesn't mean there'll be 3 billion of them per clone in every engagement. Short of a space bombardment or commando mission, I can think of no plausible situation in which a small number of clones would need to fight your trillion droids at once--it's not logistically possible and is a pretty absurd hypothetical.

OK, so let's say only a thousand droids can fight at any one time. So those thousand droids go up against the clones and get whooped. Then a thousand more are sent in, and they lose too. Then a thousand more. And so on. But each new detachment sent into the breach is fresh into combat, while the defenders are still the same people, each successive engagement wearing them down bit by bit. And this happens about a million times. So do the defenders not get worn down, then? Are they just that super-awesome that they can fight as many battles as they want in succession and it will never affect them? Does attrition never come into the picture?

As for Traviss' retcon, figures. The alternative is admitting she was wrong, so instead she ignores other people's work.

 

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razzy1319  1862 posts
Registered: Jun '04
24104_Clone Trooper
Date Posted: 4/8/06 7:05pm Subject: RE: ODDS in Insider 87 (Controversial Issues Abound)
Lord_Hydronium posted:

Let me get this straight: Shadowfeed would want to make their opposition seem larger?


You'd think that if the CIS outnumbered their opponents 300 billion to one they'd be emphasizing that, not talking about how they're outnumbered.

It called Playing with people sympathies which was used during WW2 newsreels... Funny how Palpy might have used the same thing using the quintillion numbers

Lord_Hydronium posted:

OK, so let's say only a thousand droids can fight at any one time. So those thousand droids go up against the clones and get whooped. Then a thousand more are sent in, and they lose too. Then a thousand more. And so on. But each new detachment sent into the breach is fresh into combat, while the defenders are still the same people, each successive engagement wearing them down bit by bit. And this happens about a million times. So do the defenders not get worn down, then? Are they just that super-awesome that they can fight as many battles as they want in succession and it will never affect them? Does attrition never come into the picture?



Fact is the troops dont keep on dying, they prevail against those thousand and later on kill ten thousand more, and prevail and kill a hundred thousand more. they get better and better as for droids you partially limited with B1 and B2s.

Plus if Jedi do serve most of the 3 million clones then they have a divine intervention card they draw on fairly often.


Master Ossus: a failure to read the earlier post is one of the key aspects of misunderstanding in this discussions
It isnt wholly about logic.


Me posted:
The whole point of bringing up Thermopylae isnt about 4000 greeks vs 250000 persians, it was about the fact that it was thought to be impossible that such a stand would somehow end up to be a victory whether or not the warriors who sacrifice their lives would be lost and that the persians would come as fast and hard as their futuristic counterparts.

Just a nice little fact, the King's personal choice of troops, The Immortals, had a number of 10000 and if some died would be replaced immediately to give the sense of their "immortality" but to spartans who arent that gullible the immortals represented the fact that they were fighting an force that was as infinite as the droid army.

Was just reading the the clone wars article over at Wookiee and noticed that there were probably just 3-4 major battles during the first year and most of the action during that time was:
1. CIS looking for superweapons
2. Jedi and Special Forces destroying Superweapons
3. A strategic shot at the major Sep Financier
4. If Hypori is indeed the last battle of the first year, then its apt that it might be the biggest of the major battles since Greevy finally shows his gameface.

EDIT: Said it before and will say until everybody knows, By calculations done by those who deem the movies as pure fact, the Droid Foundries of Geonosis should have pumped droids fast enough to geometrically outnumber the 120,000 clones in a matter of hours. Which based on the logic of those against the 3M clones, Geonosis should have been a Rep Loss.

 

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Lord_Hydronium  6273 posts
Title: Literature Gardener
Registered: Jun '02
15597_Vergere
Date Posted: 4/8/06 7:20pm Subject: RE: ODDS in Insider 87 (Controversial Issues Abound)
razzy1319 posted:
It called Playing with people sympathies which was used during WW2 newsreels...

"We outnumber them 300 billion to one" vs. "They outnumber us". That's not called "playing with people's sympathies", it's called "being really stupid". Propaganda is supposed to raise morale.

razzy1319 posted:
Funny how Palpy might have used the same thing using the quintillion numbers

Palpatine wrote ROTS Incredible Cross Sections and Lord of War?

razzy1319 posted:
Fact is the troops dont keep on dying, they prevail against those thousand and later on kill ten thousand more, and prevail and kill a hundred thousand more. they get better and better as for droids you partially limited with B1 and B2s.

And never take a single casualty. Except when they get slaughtered on Jabiim. Or Parcellus Minor. Or Merson. Or Muunilist. But maybe they're just so awesome that they can fight after they're dead! Oh, and they don't ever get exhausted or have supply problems. And the CIS has never heard the word "siege".

razzy1319 posted:
It isnt wholly about logic.

Yeah, I think you've just summed up the pro three million argument.

razzy1319 posted:
EDIT: Said it before and will say until everybody knows, By calculations done by those who deem the movies as pure fact, the Droid Foundries of Geonosis should have pumped droids fast enough to geometrically outnumber the 120,000 clones in a matter of hours. Which based on the logic of those against the 3M clones, Geonosis should have been a Rep Loss.

Not if the Republic targeted those factories at the start of the battle, thus limiting CIS forces to the droids they had on-planet at the time. It's why I've said (though apparently it must appear on other people's computers in a foreign language or something) that yes, tactics can make a difference.

Ah, and I love how those who "deem the movies as pure fact" are portrayed as somehow in the wrong; apparently the canon policy changed while I wasn't looking. T-canon, the works of Traviss, now overrides everything else, including those pesky movies.

 

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