Guide to the Grand Army (Insider #84)

Aye!

TURN UNTHREAD! TURN UNTHREAD!

(It's WEIRD seeing Traviss' name around here again)

 

Also, don't forget the Navy. At Duro, the Separatists sent their First and Third Fleets to clear away one VicStar, three Dreadnaughts and seven Acclamator-class assault ship, plus four Golan battlestations...

The Republic responded with a squadron of Jedi Delta-7s and a wing of V-19s, which didn't work, but does suggest that the effectiveness proper missile-armed snubfighters might already have been recognized...

As to when the Republic has to go on the offensive...

Snubfighters against the TFBBs, to clear the way for the Dreadnaught Cruisers to attack the droid army positions?

Three-dimensional asymmetrical warfare....?

- The Imperial Ewok

 

There were more than just 3 million.

The GGAR itself mentions that clones were produced continuously throughout the war, with 3 million being the figure for those that became active in the months just after Geonosis. Additionally, we know that other cloning facilities were set up on Coruscant (and most likely on other planets, as well.)

However, no matter what the size of the GAR, there are problems. If the clones number in the millions, its too small, and its success and existance requires a lot of explanation, especially when compared to the enormous droid army. See: this entire thread. But if its a large army, say in the trillions range, other problems appear. Kaminoan clones take ~10 years to mature, meaning that there must be waves "in production" at all times in order to fill quota. I doubt that Kamino has the resources or the infrastructure to support such large numbers of beings, let alone train them all. The native population numbers about 1 billion, and automation and seafood can only go so far.

 

Is it possible that the clone armys are bolsteres by conscricpts and dradtees from Republic member worlds. They might not always fight along side the clone troopers but they could be used for holding a battlefield/planet...etc when the major fighting ends. The Regular clone troops would be sent to more important battles.

I agree that 3 million is WAY to short a number for an effective fighting force in the galaxy. But I don't think that trillions is too big a number either. Something most have been done to speed up the cloning process and I am sure that new batches of troops were produced/grown every year leading up to the clone wars. Batches that were produced 10 years ago would be read the first year of the fighting; batches produced the second year of the cloning process would be ready during thr second year of the war....etc. so on and so on.

The GAR could be the special forces equiviant. We see in the Republic commando books that there are tens of thousands of REPUBLIC COMMANDOS and not just a couple dozen guys galloping acroos the galaxy from one hot spot to another. Or maybe I should just stop pulling answers out of my ***!

 

There's always the other cloning industries, like Spaarti and Arkanian Micro, just to name a few. Both are just mentioned in passing, though, and it's not positive how much they contributed to the Republic's military, if they even did at all in any significant quantities.

 

If there was one massive army cloned and kept secret from the Republic, who's to say there isn't more out there?

And that they aren't waiting to be revealed to the public as the war either drags on or the Empire comes down. I can imagine the Jedi being murdered and suddenly Imp troopships coming out of hyperspace all over the galaxy in lightning strikes as millions to billions of secret forces overtake worlds.

Of course, that doesn't address the concerns of those who feel the number is still too small to have fought the original war, so we're back to square one.

 

I tried explaining it on numerous occasions and frankly am just giving up at this point. Suspension of disbelief is something that either happens or doesn't happen at all. There's only 8,000 Jedi by AOTC and according to Karrin Traviss' figures, each of those Jedi Generals commands roughly six hundred clones.

Now I can imagine a war like that. The Cestus Deception, Jaabim (where only a few thousand clones died and it's suddenly the worst disaster of all time), and books like the Republic Commando series treat that as about accurate. The Jedi are running around the galaxy with their clone back up of a few squadrons doing their best to harry people left and right. Republic Commando the game is about one squadron screwing the Confederacy left and right.

The problem is that this kind of war is essentially one where the Jedi Knights and Republic aren't fighting mano-a-mano against a vast army but instead fighting against a vastly superior force. It also is fantasy physics where three hundred Spartans are able to hold off a force of a million Persians.

 

Clones can be put in suspended animation once they are trained (this might refer to the "readying"-part of the army) and the process of maturing a clone can be speed up considerably (in fact, I think there is a source that claims, that the ten-year-maturing claimed by Lama Su is only true for CCs and ARCs, while the ordinary grunts are grown a lot quicker).

 

True. I actually like that idea---the Kaminoans don't have to keep feeding them, they just have to put them in stasis until needed. We already knew they did that to the ARCs, so the same principle could logically be extended to other clones.

Also, its possible that some of the other types of clones mentioned early in the Empire (the "GeNodes" from Pax Empirica) could be quick-grown versions of Kaminoan clones.

 

Isn't it also possible to question the size of the droid army, though. We could interpret the figures as propaganda, or a misunderstanding of a number counted in base three, or something?

Also, as I've said before, an individual B1 battledroid isn't realy good for much at all. Those things can only be used en masse, and without much subtlety or sophistication...

I don't see why it's a real problem, though. The real numbers could simply have been classified from the outset.

The figure of three million depends on what the clones believe, which is largely what they've been told; then there's A Guide to the Grand Army of the Republic, which is an "in-universe" composition, and the intelligence discovered in "Odds", which may have been manipulated, and which may be designed to incriminate the Jedi Council in the eyes of the Army...

On the other hand, though, I really don't see an insurmountable problem with a small Grand Army. Large numbers of troops would only be needed if large surface armies have any meaningful role on a Galactic level; but any size of surface army is pretty much powerless against a capital ship in orbit, and a commando team to blow up the planetary shield-generators for it.

A single Carrack-class cruiser can probably take out the largest surface army in the GFFA. That may even be why they packed those big guns into that little hull...

Larger ground armies are only really needed, IMHO, for peacekeeping garrisons, or for extended campaigns against local forces who can't be pinned down and bombarded by capital ships - neither of which is a priority for the Republic in the Clone Wars....

The Alliance to Restore the Republic, incidentally, has a "federal" field army of approximately ten divisions of troops, mostly used as commandos, agumented by local sector-based militaries...

And you thought three million was bad. That's probably less than a hundred thousand ground troops serving in the "Grand Army" role...



- The Imperial Ewok

 

I wouldn't call Muunilist minor. There are at least 20 Acclamators delivering troops to ONE city on that planet alone in the cartoon and hundreds according to the NEC. We also know, that the GR tried to use the clones as recruiteers and trainers for local uprisings, but that only worked on FOUR worlds AFAIK. Cestus Deception also mentions a billion clones getting the blessings of a single Chaplain.

Not to forget, that at the height of the OuterRim-sieges Palpatine is able to send regiments of clones to every world of the GR as protection for his new governours.

 

Well if that's canon then there's a lot more clones introduced at some point and the entire thread's point is moot.

 

I don't know the Cestus Deception quote, but the rest of it is all based on disputed interpretation:

At Muunilinst, there's no guarantee that we can trust the Clone Wars cartoon to confirm that there are really 20 ships; even if we could, there's no way to say that they're full of troops (I could point to the Fearless, with just one company of infantry assigned), and even if that was the case, twenty legions, approximately one Sector Army, might concievably be available as a single unit for a single assault like this.

But there's no reason to assume that the "hundreds of assault ships" descibed in The New Essential Chronology are Acclamator-class; even if they were, Voren Na'al, writing 50 years later, could be being accurate again.

You have to love the guy, really - but he's human, too...

And the idea that in RotS, Palpatine sends a regiment to every planet, is based on an inflexibly literal interpretation of an emotion-driven discussion among a group of people (Padme, Mon Mothma, Bail Organa), who're incapable of speaking in anything except liberal rhetoric.

That's even before we get to the fact that the reality of the Sector Governance Decree was to apoint a handful of Moffs....

Anyway...

- The Imperial Ewok

 

"Might" is a key word, I'd say.

Elsewhere in the book, it supports the 1.2 million number.

 

Absolutely. I assume this is Glorii Profus speaking, and that the "ritual" isn't exclusive to him, but something every Mentop provides...

(... and Wookieepedia suggests that there's one assigned to every "cohort", a 1,000-man unit which looks like a grouping of two battalions - any chance of a quote on this?)

It might be possible to argue that approximately a million clones had already died by this point, but more loosely, I think it's a tolerable interpretation that approximately a million have seen action at this point.

Aye, it does. Whose POV are these two scenes, out of interest?

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Oh whew,

I was worried I'd blown all my credentials right then and there.

Frankly, my take on the matter isn't that there needs to be a VAST clone army. It's that we either need to lessen the scope of the war or we need to increase the purpose of the non-clone forces a great deal. Star Wars is a minimalist setting no matter how you attempt to slice it.

The Death Star was a huge victory for the Alliance despite the fact that it should be a drop in the bucket for the Empire's military spending, 9,000 Jedi are enough to be the galaxy's defenders despite the fact that there's a million worlds, and that tiny flotilla of ships (comparatively) is enough to serve as the combined forces for a galaxy wide rebellion.

I for one don't mind the "Gureilla War" Republic since it makes the Clones more important to not be the standard rank and file infantry that people expect them to be. It also makes their relationship to the Jedi more intimate that they've been fighting an 'annoying action' against the Seperatists for 3 and a half years. If there's billions of clones then Order 66 doesn't really make much of a difference.

On the other hand, such an action results in Stormtroopers/Clonetroopers being raised to being the Elite of the Republic's military in a way that's just under the Jedi Knighthood. The majority of the garrisoning, policing action, and the like are going to be handled by regular Republic troopers that we never see even if the war is not the scope that some of us have been lead to believe.

Every one of those clone troopers needs to be constantly busting heads everywhere for the numbers to even remotely work and even then, they're only going to constantly foul up the Seperatists works.

 

It is indeed Glorii Profus speaking. He is a mentop, but mentops aren't stated to be attatched to specific units. Also, I couldn't find a numerical definition of "cohort" in the book.

I think on the Odds thread I said "Where does a clone trooper march, if not to his death?" On one level that's just semantics, but on another it reflects the mindset of the clone troopers, as expressed by that chapter. Whenever they shipped out, they were well aware that death was on the horizon.

Nate and Obi-Wan, respectively.

 

Well, that's the whole point of the argument though.

Frankly, I could swing either way, but the movies seem to support a minimalist viewpoint, but it is a whole GALAXY we're talking about here.

Thus, I can understand where the other side comes from.

It seems the louder this argument gets though, the less defined the creatives involved in SW seem to want to make such things as numbers, ship designs, etc.

I think there's an unfortunate backlash of; "Well, okay, screw it if you can't play nice we're not giving you stats anymore".

There certainly has been a lessening of info from the LFL offices and people like Sue and Leland, and I wonder if it's a direct result of some of these canon arguments.

However, I don't think that we should just flatly disregard the maximalist viewpoint (and apologies to anyone offended by terms they feel may not fit them) because they're just as much fans as we are, only they're arguing from a different vantage point.

There is less contention when we discuss something as nebulous as the force, I think, than when we discuss something as grounded as numbers. I think it's a disservice to dismiss out of hand the work that many fans have done to show the case for larger numbers, even if it isn't canon per se, because I think much of their work is on very solid ground as well.

The problem comes when the clash becomes absolute and we argue for one true way, and the larger issue is that we're not the ones who decide that, and I fear that LFL higher ups or creatives may look in on some of these arguments and think; "Well, hell, I'm not going to even MENTION a ship in my book because these people will tear me apart".

The discussion has at least moved onto a milder track, although at this point I don't know what knew information is to be gained or argued until something is added to canon.

 

It's not so much the Maximalists are wrong, its just that the scope of Star Wars has expanded tremendously as fandom has come up with more and more additions.

What really is the difference between the Star Wars movies as we know them if the original Empire had been 100, 1000, or even 10,000 settled worlds versus the Million we know they have now?

 

I think you've hit the nail on the head here. Every time (or nearly so) someone from LFL has come out with a viewpoint, they get ripped apart. I would have to say, if I was one of those in charge of this stuff, like Leland or Sue, I would stop sharing also, because even when something is stated as a fact from the 'horse's mouth,' it's disregarded and treated as just someone 'making things up to fit their view.' What with trying to keep tabs on a multi-million dollar portion of a multi-billion dollar business, I don't think I'd want to add 'trying to please all the people all the time' to my resumé either.

The next source for new information, as far as I'm aware, will likely be the new RepCom book in August (July 29th, actually). I'm already planning to try and avoid threads that I already know are coming, ripping the work. I'm sure if I'm missing something that's coming out before then, someone will point it out to be pretty quickly...

 

Well, despite the claims of the minimalists, we have been told that the upcoming Clone Wars 3d series will show us large and epic battles. That, together what we know about the GFFA and the Clone Wars from the EU will set the record straight once and for all.

 

Of course, I for one would like to see the Big and Epic Battles not treated like they're fought entirely by Clones.

Oddly, its the strangest thing that the Minimalists and Maximalists have these weird quirks too.

Maximalists want everything fought by Clones and Minimalists want it to be a gureilla war.

 

You can't lessen the scope of the war, since it was in "every system, every planet, every city, every household" and you can't increase the purpose of the non-clone forces, because then the point of the clone-army would have been moot.

No, it wasn't. Which is show by the fact, that the Empire build a much larger one (without effecting the galactic economy) and the fact, that it cost the equivalent of "a score of sectorgroups".

Aside from that the Jedi aren't the defenders of the galaxy. "If it comes to war you should know, that there aren't enough Jedi. We're protectors of the peace, not soldiers." Mace Windu in AotC. And a large argument for the Military Creation Act was, that the Jedi were too low in number for their job.

Why? Darth Bane and Darth Sidious were only one person and see what difference they made.

Once again, WHY would the Republic need a clone-army at all, if it already can get enough troops from its existing non-clone-militaries for garrison and police-action?

And whose to blame for this? The people who know, why a three-million army no matter how good can't fight a galaxy-wide war or the editors at LFL, who allowed the nonsense of three million clones to invest official material?

And here you are wrong. The scope of Star Wars had NOT expanded with more and more additions. It was a GALACTIC Empire since the opening-trailer of ANH in 1977.

This battlestation will be the final link, that forges the million systems of the Empire together.

This quote is directly from ANH. One MILLION worlds from the oldest available source. The same source, that gave us a moon-sized battlestation, which was able to produce enough energy to blast a planet large enough to be habitable in tiny pieces. The same source, that gave us ships,

 

Yeah, who cares? What possible relevance has a quote have to the point? The point being that the movies would be the same if there were only a couple of thousand worlds colonized in the galaxy.

Here's another point since all of your objections are based on a theme

I'm sorry, but you're actually suggesting that a single world provided enough clones to garrison and police every world in the galaxy? Does anyone smell smoked bota in this discussion forum? Never, EVER EVER have I seen any indication that the Clones would be the sole force of the Republic and that's just silly.

The Clones are an ELITE force and the Chancellor would have to be the DUMBEST man on the planet to think he was going to have an easier time cloning troopers to send out to fight than recruiting them. You have a million worlds to draw from and you're telling me that none of them has the stones to fight?

The Clones exist for one purpose only since Darth Sidious could recruit plenty of regular troopers at any point (and did in the GALACTIC EMPIRE's forces). They existed to be absolutely loyal and kill the Jedi Knights when the time came for Order 66. Their cover role is to be an elite fighting force that can do what no normal trooper or commando can since they are trained in combat and only combat for ten years.

It's not a question of NUMBERS. The Republic could probably get enough troopers from Coruscant alone and hand them blaster rifles to fight the Seperatists. God knows they would have any real trouble against the standard battle droids. The Clones are an elite force that's ready and able to do much more damage than a standard trooper can.

If the Clones hadn't been there then they'd be called the Jedi Wars since the Jedi were handling it. Not because the Jedi were the ground troopers.

Let me do some number crunching. Clone tanks require the Cloning facility, clone masters, outfitting, 1-5 years to create in EVERY EU source. Recruits? An equal or lesser time in boot camp and handing them the equipment.

People want to use military realism. What is the justification?

It all boils down to a logical fallacy. 3 million troopers and some Jedi inflict a hell of a devastating casualties on the Seperatists while the grunt fighting is done by recruits. Simple, easy, fun fix like calling the European theatre "Patton's war."

However, your premise says that you don't LIKE this solution and are angry that the clones are much more numerous.

Too much bad blood has been passed over this issue but I wish we could take a step back and say "I would PREFER a clone wars like this" and "I would prefer a Clone War like X" than attempting to establish canon as something else. Canon is what it is and often contradictory.

Why did people allow it to become personal?