Rogue One Stormtroopers, Shoretroopers, Death Troopers, and Hovertank Pilots (Tank Troopers) in Rogue One

Hmm, they’re too short in The Mandalorian? They’re quite a bit taller than the regular Stormtroopers standing near them, anyway. I was also glad to see/hear that they have the scrambled voice speech and the right sound for their blasters.

 

The B1s can’t take anything more than a basic punch it seems but the Super Battle Droids tend to be depicted as a little more durable.

Rebels appears to corroborate this idea, as an attack is explicitly stated to have caused no fatalities despite the fact that we see troopers taking direct hits. I don’t remember if we ever actually see a downed trooper get up later but they do tend to groan which in a children’s show is a detail I doubt they would add if the implication was they’re dying a slow painful death. Also for the record there is one stormtrooper on Endor who can be seen taking a glancing blow and continuing to fight while apparently unharmed. Now I’m not saying it’s a reliable defense against blaster fire or anything but that’s fairly consistent with body armor in our universe. The invention of chain mail didn’t make swords or arrows obsolete and bulletproof vests don’t stand up very well against military grade firearms but people still bothered to wear them because in the right circumstances they can reduce the severity of an injury or even prevent it altogether, and if you happen find yourself in those circumstances you won’t really care about all the people who have died while wearing the armor, you’ll still be thankful you had it.
TLDR: Armor in Star Wars isn’t worthless. Blasters are just better, and that’s normal.

 

That was kinda the point...These are mercenaries working for washed up warlords for a couple bucks. They were probably given whatever armor was lying around, not custom-fitted.

 

I would say minimally a lil more durable. B2's got too easily destroyed by R2 with the grease/oil and fire light up in ROTS, they easily and quickly melted and disintegrated. And they seemed more dumbed down in that movie from what I remember of them. On The Mandalorian while less comical than ROTS, even Death Watch small arms fire was enough to take the B2's out which is odd since they are supposed to have thicker armor. Star Wars kinda depicted them as just as easily destroyable as B1's from ROTS to TCW.

 

Just off the top of my head I know there’s a scene in TCW where a B2 takes two direct hits without even staggering before another hit or two take it down. It doesn’t seem like much because blasters have a fairly high rate of fire but really if you think about it that’s 300% more damage than we ever see a B1 take. Over the course of however many droids in however many battles I’m sure there were some number of units where the difference between being destroyed in one shot or a handful of them manifested itself in a meaningful way.

 

It’s not odd if you consider that Death Watch may simply have armor-busting blasters. Makes sense for a beskar armor-wearing culture that fought a civil war recently, and has been in-fighting for a long time.

 

Even with all the inconsistencies, the new movies seem to put a lot of work on matching what has been before. Granted in our eyes, it's not good enough and looks lazy in some scenes, but overall it's a learning experience and hopefully Disney learns from this and continues to work with Lucasfilm to get better. The Shoretrooper is my favorite, or I should say the AT-ACT driver is on point. So many to choose from. Heck even the Ground crewman have a sweet uni.

 

This movie has the best stormtrooper designs, hands down, IMO.

 

Out of all the new trooper variations we've gotten in this Disney era the Death Troopers are easily my favorite.

I love their overall design and ever since the original Dark Troopers of old Legends I've come to realize black armor will never not look badass on a stormtrooper. The fact their actually fairly competent for stormtroopers (wiping out a whole elite rebel task force in RO) really solidifies them as one of my favorites. Their indiscernible call signs as well as their ambiguous origins really gives them this mystique that I hope Lucasfilms keeps intact, instead of over explaining what they are.

 

Would Vader be considered a kind of trooper? If you think about it, without the cape, wouldn't he just look like a Death Trooper, but like a variation of a Death Trooper. If you put a capeless Vader next to a group of Death Troopers, you might assume he was the trooper in command, with all his gadgets and whatnot.

Speaking of which, wouldn't Vader's mask be made using a similar design from the Death Troopers? For that matter, I would assume there is one basic design for a trooper helmet that gets modified for the specific kind of trooper it's being designed for.

 

The only real similarities I see between Vader’s and Death Troopers’ armor and helmets is that they’re shiny and black. But they do have very similar belt buckles.

 

We don't focus much on the helmet though because it's just shrouded in this big hulking mass that includes the cape. But seeing Vader with no cape, and no context to refer to with him ever having a cape, I think our immediate assumption would be that he is some kind of trooper. With some dome type modification to his helmet.

 

I like the black armor, it gives the dread feel to the scene. Lucasfilm deciding on expanding the color scheme had to have take some guts as most of the Empire needed to be black and white.

The Death troopers took a few shots to be take down it seems. I still wonder what type of cyborg/hybrid clone or soldier they are.

 

According to Wookieepedia and the RO visual dictionary, they are not cyborgs or clones, but are "enhanced" human conscripts. From Wookieepedia:

'Stormtrooper candidates who excelled at their training were reassigned to the advanced death trooper camp on Scarif. Death troopers were required to meet rigid physical and ideological standards, with height and weight standards that exceeded typical trooper averages. The candidates were also subjected to a battery of physical tests and classified surgical enhancements, making them somewhat "beyond human."'
Here

 

Those Death Troopers were really intimidating.