Author Topic: ODDS in Insider 87 (Controversial Issues Abound)
Lord_Hydronium  6273 posts
Title: Literature Gardener
Registered: Jun '02
15597_Vergere
Date Posted: 4/5/06 10:24pm Subject: RE: ODDS in Insider 87 (Controversial Issues Abound)
Thrawn McEwok posted:
People don't always follow the rules precisely, even in 'correct' prose; and context always plays a role in defining meaning - which is what I mean by language being flexible. Can you insist on a punctiliously grammatical interpretation if a less rigid one produces better sense when compared with other relevant statements?

Oh, OK, so I guess we can make up whatever we want. Well, people don't always type precisely, therefore the 3,000,000 mention was a typo. Hey, that was easy! Or since language is flexible, we can redefine "million" to mean "trillion", unless you're one of those people who insists on using the precise and real definition of words.

Out of curiosity, why are you so intent on retconning to fit the lower number, given that you have to twist or reinterpret almost every other reference to fit, as well as make up a bunch of "well, it might be.." statements? I've already given three separate ways you can reinterpret the smaller number so as not to entirely invalidate it.

Thrawn McEwok posted:
Consider this sentence:

The first batch of conscript divisions are ready for deployment; millions more are undergoing intensive performance evaluation.

Gramatically, the subject of "millions" might be "divisions"; common sense requires us to - at the least! - consider the possibility that the subject is actually "conscripts"...

Wrong. Syntax is not a "let's pretend" game - English is structured a specific way, and no matter how much you want to, you can not simply make up new rules of a language to fit your interpretation. That sentence is no different from the original - "conscript" is an adjective, and "more" as an indefinite pronoun can only take a noun antecedent. End of story.

Or maybe Star Wars is really surrealism or not written in English. In that case, "millions" can refer to whatever you want it to. Maybe it means millions of Kaminoans! Or Jedi! Or horses! Heck, language is flexible, let's make up whatever we want!

 

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razzy1319  1862 posts
Registered: Jun '04
24104_Clone Trooper
Date Posted: 4/5/06 10:59pm Subject: RE: ODDS in Insider 87 (Controversial Issues Abound)
LtNOWIS posted:
Anyways, do we know if 3 million clones was actually Traviss's idea, or whether she just had to work it into canon? I'm still against the number, but I've really gotten used to it.



LFL said no concrete numbers. So, right now the 3 million is to be considered precursory number to a whatever LFL has in the future. People blame Traviss and Kaufman for "lack of research" into the article, even after they had stated that LFL didnt let them pin down the right one.

Saxton's stuff aside though Shatterpoint says 3 million before the article, Ive heard of other sources stating the 3 million before the article but forgot where it came from(somebody stated it in the old thread specially made for the 3M discussion). And depending on your POV the comics and the cartoons support low scale land battles with a minimum of 32,000 maximum of 200,000 clones on the ground which was probably based on Saxton's numbers for the battle for geonosis. dancing

My view of it though. 3 million is the first years numbers without conscription. After that the numbers become exponential. As for droid numbers, almost opposite thing, quintillions are the wars entire output for droids. In the first year, both numbers are balanced. After the first year, both exponentially increase with the droid number more so but with the Rep's industries consolidated into a gigantic war machine and recruitment so high up their @$$$$ that the numbers kinda balance. Nobody likes it but its fairly logical. to me anyway. grin


Maybe I should bring up the political thing Karen Traviss is talking about in the political threads... They might know what current issue is to be paralleled in explaining controlling both sides of the war even when one is only one side. whistling

 

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Ender_Sai  28400 posts
Title: Manager Emeritus
Registered: Feb '01
44324_Kyle Katarn
Date Posted: 4/5/06 11:01pm Subject: RE: ODDS in Insider 87 (Controversial Issues Abound)
DarthBoba posted:
Excellence posted:

What was the issue again?



hear hear. There's more important things to think about, like how characters go to the bathroom on the Falcon.


But the only concept of tactical warfare I have is from playing Commander and Conquer, so I can't possibly see how 3,000,000 could work! If I added eighteen zeroes, it might satisfy my shortcomings on that front but until then, how am I to cope? sad

rolling_eyes This is why I don't care about the clone wars, Chuck.

E_S

 

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razzy1319  1862 posts
Registered: Jun '04
24104_Clone Trooper
Date Posted: 4/5/06 11:05pm Subject: RE: ODDS in Insider 87 (Controversial Issues Abound) - Date Edited: 4/5/06 11:06pm (2 edits total) Edited By: razzy1319
Ender_Sai posted:

But the only concept of tactical warfare I have is from playing Commander and Conquer, so I can't possibly see how 3,000,000 could work! If I added eighteen zeroes, it might satisfy my shortcomings on that front but until then, how am I to cope? sad

rolling_eyes This is why I don't care about the clone wars, Chuck.

E_S


3 million tanyas and 10,000 yuris? grin

Edit: Sorry to the Anti-Fandos and Fandos, Mandos/Clones arent as good as Tanya... laugh

 

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Lord_Hydronium  6273 posts
Title: Literature Gardener
Registered: Jun '02
15597_Vergere
Date Posted: 4/5/06 11:35pm Subject: RE: ODDS in Insider 87 (Controversial Issues Abound) - Date Edited: 4/5/06 11:42pm (1 edits total) Edited By: Lord_Hydronium
More fun stuff gathered from SD.net. I'll start with my favorites.

From Insider 65 CIS Shadowfeed (that is, the news organization that would want to make the clone army look worse):
Dooku 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 might guild-worlds, its only a matter of time before the republic is overwhelmed.

Dooku himself says that they're outnumbered. Hmmm... Wait, someone says, it says "the forces on our borders", so that doesn't count all the droids. So apparently, out of a quintillion battle droids he apparently deployed less than three million to the front. That's three trillionths of the entire droid army.

The NEC, on the battle of Muunilist:
New Essential Chronology 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.

The Republic doesn't use a small strategic force, it overwhelms the CIS forces "with sheer numbers". A capital world of one of the CIS founders, no less, and the Republic has enough troops dedicated to one battle to overwhelm them. And a good chunk of the forces didn't make it, which is an awfully large casualty rate for a three million clone army that's supposed to last the entire war.

Speaking of casualty rates: Traviss puts one clone trooper as worth 200 battle droids (I recall reading that this too is a contradiction of other sources, but unfortunately I don't recall which; maybe someone can help me here). OK, so her 3 million clone army is worth 600 million droids. Well, given that the droid army is 1.7 billion times bigger than that is a bit of a problem. But back to casualty rates. So for three million clones to even think about being more than a fly in the windshield, they'd need some pretty low casualty rates. Less than, say, the entire force at Merson being wiped out (Republic 64), 90% of the force at Parcellus Minor (Republic 61), and almost all of the Jabiim forces (which I'm told was a Corps, that is, 39,000 troops). Seriously, those three battles alone would have decimated the GAR.

Garrisons are fun to look at too; LOE has 500,000 troopers dispatched from Coruscant's own garrison, which is reflected upon as being half of the total garrison. So that's a third of the entire GAR not fighting, assuming no other important world is garrisoned.

Ender_Sai posted:
But the only concept of tactical warfare I have is from playing Commander and Conquer, so I can't possibly see how 3,000,000 could work!

Of course, tactics, why didn't we think of that? Being outnumbered by 300 billion to one doesn't matter if you have good tactics!

Oh, math is hard, and the concept of "quintillion" is just too darn big for me to wrap my head around, so let's just say a wizard did it.

razzy1319 posted:
LFL said no concrete numbers. So, right now the 3 million is to be considered precursory number to a whatever LFL has in the future. People blame Traviss and Kaufman for "lack of research" into the article, even after they had stated that LFL didnt let them pin down the right one.

So why did they write any concrete numbers? In fact, it would have been very easy to just say "countless soldiers" and avoid the whole thing.

 

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razzy1319  1862 posts
Registered: Jun '04
24104_Clone Trooper
Date Posted: 4/5/06 11:46pm Subject: RE: ODDS in Insider 87 (Controversial Issues Abound) - Date Edited: 4/5/06 11:47pm (1 edits total) Edited By: razzy1319
Lord_Hydronium posted:

razzy1319 posted:
LFL said no concrete numbers. So, right now the 3 million is to be considered precursory number to a whatever LFL has in the future. People blame Traviss and Kaufman for "lack of research" into the article, even after they had stated that LFL didnt let them pin down the right one.

So why did they write any concrete numbers? In fact, it would have been very easy to just say "countless soldiers" and avoid the whole thing.


First look at my post above, I did already conceed that conscription was a key and that after the first year there was an exponential increase in clones. grin

She didnt give us concrete numbers, she gave us an example of how many troopers were in a squad, battalion, a sector army, and so on and so forth. even 3 mil wasnt finalized since it had a + on it.

By any chance do you know when Palpy took control of planetary defense forces? probably in one of the Holonet News Articles?

 

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000  4729 posts
Registered: Oct '05
41423_Stormtrooper
Date Posted: 4/5/06 11:54pm Subject: RE: ODDS in Insider 87 (Controversial Issues Abound) - Date Edited: 4/5/06 11:58pm (1 edits total) Edited By: 000
Good examples, Hydronium. I'll add these numbers to that:

Three million clones could be carried in 188 Acclamators. So... the entire Grand Army plus a few thousand assaulted Muunilist-- and that's assuming the crews aren't clones. According to multiple sources-- including Triple Zero-- at least a year into the war Acclamators are still crewed and commanded by clones. That means if the entire Army was devoted to crewing Acclamators, the maxiumum fleet size is a mere 4,200 some odd ships. And those are empty. The clone fleet assaulting Muunilist could only have been 180 or so strong with clone crews.

Razzy: Shatterpoint actually advocated a mere 1.2 million clones for the army. I can forgive Stover for this, though, because a) Shatterpoint was one of the first pieces of Clone Wars EU, and had little to draw on, b) Shatterpoint took a sensible approach to that ridiculous number and tried to explain the Clone War as a quasi-Cold War with Clones barely supplementing native forces, and c) when changes were made he went with them rather than stick with the tiny number. Revenge of the Sith very much supports a clone number in the high billions/low trillions, at least indirectly.

EDIT: Traviss did give us very concrete numbers-- the "plus" after the 3,000,000 refers only to the ten thousand commandos and other misc. special ops troopers. Her OOB didn't allow the slightest bit of leeway, especially as she specified that the Grand Army was composed of ten "Systems Armies" (which are inexplicably bigger than Sector Armies) each led by a Jedi Council member. There's only one Jedi Council.

Really, there's no way to retcon, work around, or fix Traviss's number. She wrote herself into a hole, and tossing it out is the only way it can be resolved.

 

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razzy1319  1862 posts
Registered: Jun '04
24104_Clone Trooper
Date Posted: 4/6/06 12:08am Subject: RE: ODDS in Insider 87 (Controversial Issues Abound)
Crap

Sorry for the expletive but I swear I've said it with most of my posts regarding this issue that I consider 3 million to be the first year and that by the time of ROTS I would agree that 3 million would be to low. Maybe I should put it in bold letters...there grin

About Muunilist, I know you guys are gonna hate me for this, but what is there to say that there were only 50 acclamators in the "hundreds of acclamtors" that were burdened by clones. Because if we take into account that clones were indeed used as cannon fodder(tip of the sword for Fandos) then the clones would be sent in first in a quasi suicidal attack which is what we exactly see in the cartoon. grin laugh

 

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Lord_Hydronium  6273 posts
Title: Literature Gardener
Registered: Jun '02
15597_Vergere
Date Posted: 4/6/06 12:08am Subject: RE: ODDS in Insider 87 (Controversial Issues Abound)
000 posted:
Really, there's no way to retcon, work around, or fix Traviss's number. She wrote herself into a hole, and tossing it out is the only way it can be resolved.

I rather like my "The 'Grand Army' is a tiny subset that's the elite of the elite/that's given all the publicity/that was specifically trained in Tipoca under Jango's supervision/that's under the direct command of the Council/that serves as a specialized strike force" explanation. In other words, the entire GAR is the size it ought to be, but a small detachment of that known as the Grand Army has some special significance, be it in their quality or just in that the cameras always focus on them. We'll just say that the rest were ignored in the article.

 

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Sinrebirth  18923 posts
Title: Sith Emperor of the SWC
Registered: Nov '04
47748_Dath Vectivus
Date Posted: 4/6/06 12:09am Subject: RE: ODDS in Insider 87 (Controversial Issues Abound)
Hydronium, yes, the NEC says hundreds of Acclmators were dedicated. No, it did not say the entire Clone Army went in those ships. Just General Kenobi's force, spread between numerous ships. Not counting Coruscants garrison, Master Windu's forces, all the other Generals of the Republic.

Hell, the fleet that went to Praesitlyn has a little as 50 clone troopers to a Battlecruiser Some Acclamators were undoubtedly empty of ground forces.

And, even the Clone Wars cartoons, with their exagerrated numbers, didn't show us hundreds of Acclamators. More like 12, at Muunilinst.

So, no, Muunilinst didn't involve 3 million clone troopers. Point of fact, they didn't have 3 million clones. 1200000, yes. 8000 lost at Geonosis.

*shrugs*

 

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razzy1319  1862 posts
Registered: Jun '04
24104_Clone Trooper
Date Posted: 4/6/06 12:11am Subject: RE: ODDS in Insider 87 (Controversial Issues Abound)
Lord_Hydronium posted:
000 posted:
Really, there's no way to retcon, work around, or fix Traviss's number. She wrote herself into a hole, and tossing it out is the only way it can be resolved.

I rather like my "The 'Grand Army' is a tiny subset that's the elite of the elite/that's given all the publicity/that was specifically trained in Tipoca under Jango's supervision/that's under the direct command of the Council/that serves as a specialized strike force" explanation. In other words, the entire GAR is the size it ought to be, but a small detachment of that known as the Grand Army has some special significance, be it in their quality or just in that the cameras always focus on them. We'll just say that the rest were ignored in the article.


Thats cool too. Request permission to add it too my notes. grin praying

 

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000  4729 posts
Registered: Oct '05
41423_Stormtrooper
Date Posted: 4/6/06 12:18am Subject: RE: ODDS in Insider 87 (Controversial Issues Abound) - Date Edited: 4/6/06 12:25am (3 edits total) Edited By: 000
Razzy, I'm just clarifying Stover's analysis of the subject and Traviss's article's numbers. 3,000,000 is far too low for even the first year, though, but at least you admit that by war's end it had to be more.

Hydronium, I actually like that line of thinking. Having the GGAR's "Grand Army" the personal troops of the Council and their favorites is a great idea, especially since there are another 8,000+ Jedi off camera who apparently don't have the cozy relationship with the council that Kenobi, Vos, et al seem to have. Fantastic idea, in fact, but I doubt we'll get that kind of fix.

Sinerebirth: The NEC says that the hundreds of Accys were "each one groaning from the weight of troopers and war machines." So no, none of them were empty. (Granted, I'm the last to trust unequivocally the NEC's word on stuff, but even Voren would have to have been having a brain fart to make an error like that. Plus, it's not contradicted anywhere else, so...)

 

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QuentinGeorge  4759 posts
Registered: Dec '03
48582_Kaan (60609)
Date Posted: 4/6/06 12:24am Subject: RE: ODDS in Insider 87 (Controversial Issues Abound)
It is of interesting to note that no one here defending the "3 million" absurdity would agree with it had, say, a random poster said it....

 

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Sinrebirth  18923 posts
Title: Sith Emperor of the SWC
Registered: Nov '04
47748_Dath Vectivus
Date Posted: 4/6/06 12:34am Subject: RE: ODDS in Insider 87 (Controversial Issues Abound)
QuentinGeorge posted:
It is of interesting to note that no one here defending the "3 million" absurdity would agree with it had, say, a random poster said it....


Um, Quentin, thats a fact. Because, you know, its a random poster!?!

If the guys up above accept Karen Traviss's answers, I'm fine with it. We just have to work these facts into continuity.

True enough, 000, but that could be more machines than troops, more troops than machines, fighters galore, or gunships galore, and so on. Which, as the episode attests, we have Acclmators filled with fighters, hundreds of the things. And then Acclamators filled with Larti's.

So shrug. Its not an accurate source, really.

 

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razzy1319  1862 posts
Registered: Jun '04
24104_Clone Trooper
Date Posted: 4/6/06 12:35am Subject: RE: ODDS in Insider 87 (Controversial Issues Abound)
Sinrebirth posted:
QuentinGeorge posted:
It is of interesting to note that no one here defending the "3 million" absurdity would agree with it had, say, a random poster said it....


Um, Quentin, thats a fact. Because, you know, its a random poster!?!

If the guys up above accept Karen Traviss's answers, I'm fine with it. We just have to work these facts into continuity.

True enough, 000, but that could be more machines than troops, more troops than machines, fighters galore, or gunships galore, and so on. Which, as the episode attests, we have Acclmators filled with fighters, hundreds of the things. And then Acclamators filled with Larti's.

So shrug. Its not an accurate source, really.


And conscripts!!!! grin

 

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