Ever notice that "elite" Imperial units generally tend to suck?

No, seriously. The Imperial stormtroopers are supposed to be the elite of the Imperial ground forces, but they only occasionally act as such (especially in The Empire Strikes Back and anything written by Michael Stackpole). They have a distinct propensity for running blindly down corridors and getting shot repeatedly in the former, and repeatebly prove to be incapable of outfighting inferior numbers of fighter pilots in the latter. Even with the element of surprise.

Then there's Palpatine's entire legion of his best troops. Let me preface this critique by giving them the benefit of the doubt because they were surrounded by tens of thousands of Ewoks that they had no reason to suspect were at all warlike (they were "numerous and belligerent, sir," to borrow a phrase). But even so, they proved to be more intent on chasing glorified Teddy bears around than actually defending the deflector shield bunker, which was their mission. Also, I've no idea how they could've lost to the Ewoks with AT-AT walkers lurking about...

And it's not just stormtroopers that prove to be occasionally inept, mind you. The elite Death Squadron (Darth Vader's fleet of Star Destroyers) managed to make a mockery of the Imperial Starfleet several times in just one movie. Admiral Ozzel parks the entire fleet just outside Hoth's orbit, utterly sacrificing the element of surprise ("Admiral Ozzel has brought the fleet out of lightspeed too close to the system."). This after blatantly ignoring the only lead as to the location of the Alliance's base that they'd yet had ("There are so many uncharted settlements. It could be smugglers--"). Then, the fleet's CommScan collective CommScan officers fail to notive an ion cannon the size of a small mountain ("CommScan has detected a shield over a section of a planet in the Hoth system..."). Good job, guys. After that, we're treated to a trio of Star Destroyers blindly flying into each other whilst forgetting that space is three dimensional ("Take evasive action!"). Then there's Death Squadron's apparent inability to figure out that asteroids can be destroyed with blaster cannon rather than deflector shields, costing them an Imperial-class Star Destroyer ("Considering the damage we've sustained, they must have been destroyed."). Then there's the Avenger chasing a known armed freightor without her shields up ("They're moving to attack position! Shields up!"), her captain openly discussing classified technology ("No ship that small has a cloaking device.") in front of the crew. Then there's the fact that the Avenger's aft sensor crews apparetly didn't notice the Falcon literally grabbing onto the hull ("Captain Needa, they no longer appear on our scopes."). The coup de grace is simply that nobody in the entire Death Squadron notices a YT-1300 freightor clamped onto the back of one of their ships ("Don't worry sir, we'll find them.").

That's not even delving into the numerous textual incidents in which supposedly elite units have proven to be demonstrably less competent than their more mundane counterparts. Ever notice that almost every single Super Star Destroyer is killed--at least in part--by criminal negligence even though Star Destroyer crews are supposed to be the elite of the Imperial Navy?

It makes one wonder if the term 'elite' has some other meaning in the Star Wars universe. Borleias had a pretty good suggestion along those lines, anyway.

 

Brett: Golden Ewok?!!

- The Imperial Ewok

 

Its because everyone wants to make the Empire look bad. Simple explanation. And Stackpole has a rather unhealthy love for the members of Rogue Squadron.

 

Hee. Very well written and making a good point.

I think the problem with Star Wars is that it already has its own elite class - the heroes. Since it's based on the archetypical figures of mythology, the "good guys" come out as larger than life. To create villains worthy of their ackwnoledge, you have to go big - guys like nigh infallible Grand Admiral Thrawn or the neverending hordes of the Vong. Since stormtroopers are part of that "minion" class, they get thrown aside as worthless.

It's like any other fantasy movie. Unless you're one of the Big Bads, if you serve evil, you're likely canon fodder for the hero. And like the above poster said, nobody wants to make the villains look good. That's something I appreciated with the PT - the Jedi got their booties handed to them more than a few times by non-Force sensitives, showing us that the heroes' forces weren't insurmountable.

 

T McE:

Another Golden Ewok?, eh? Score!


Anywho, yeah. I just sort of came to realize that most all units that are explicitly stated as being elite wind up appearing to be the least competent. Heck, only Tim Zahn has even attempted to make Star Destroyers, TIE fighters, and stormtroopers effective in combat outside of the NJO. In many ways, the movies themselves are the worst offenders. Elite stormtrooper legion with heavy armor support < numerous and belligerent Teddy bears. Death Squadron < Millenium Falcon. Executor < very slow ramships. There are a couple of similar things in Episode III as well, but I think the trend is obvious enough without going to spoiler-city (regardless of how minute the spoiler is).

If/when I can get clearance to borrow Borleias' idea, I'll throw that up for discussion.

F_o_M:

Very true. When a squad of stomtrooper commados can't kill Rogue Squadron at night, while everybody's sleeping, with the element of surprise, there's a problem. And don't even get me started on Wraith Squadron, because that's just a whole other mess I don't want to get in to.

Chaotic Serenity:

Very interesting input, and--I think--very in-keeping with George Lucas' whole vision of a modern day myth. Mr. Lucas didn't want a science fiction work, he wanted a new legendary fantasy to be told again in the manner of the Aurthurian works and the like, so your input makes a great degree of sense in that context.

I hadn't thought to look at it that way before, thanks.

 

sadly if the bad guys were better than the heros, the movies would be quite short. Ozzel was just an idiot, and the stormtroopers? Its too bad they get painted so bad. Although in some cases I'm sure Vader didn't want the heros dead. Though even then they did a piss poor job of doing anything.

The worst part I think is that heros are introduced, and to keep them in the spotlight they have to survive increasingly insane situations. And the bad guys take the brunt of this and look idiotic. Rogue Squadron at least took some losses. BUt otherwise, heros are kept around no matter what. Luke, cant kill him, Gods on his side there. Wedge, everyone loves Wedge. Lando, come ooooooonnnn, its Lando.

But then they wouldnt be heros if they were killed 2 adventures in. As even as that would make the score. There just arent enough stories of competant Imperials, or bad guys in particular. Baron Fel, Veers, Thrawn, Kir Kanos are the only ones that really come to mind.

 

Very true. That has always annoyed me. The Empire comics have begun to change that. TPB 3 the Imperial Perspective shows 2 stories of very competant stormtroopers and one Lt. Sunber.

The 501st has been getting some good showing. In SQ and Fool's Bargain they are extremely competant. And from the trailer it looks like they will be the same in RotS.

 

Yeah there's this one stormtrooper in Empire #23 I think that was pretty competent.

 

Man, he was cool.

 

Stormtroopers have an excuse. They are clones.

The kaminoans could have ran out of Jango Juice, and had to clone a clone. That would increase genetic decay, and the Stormies would be worse for the wear.

 

But not all stormtroopers are clones, remember.

Another thing to remember is that not all stormtroopers appear totally useless. The detatchment from the Devastator absolutely routed the Alliance defenders abord the Tantive IV, even if one of them got downed by the blaster equivilent of a .22 target pistol. And to their credit, the unusually-clad members of Blizzard Force made mincemeat out of the Alliance's defenders on Hoth.

It's just that when X unit is stated to have been elite in the Star Wars universe, it almost always serves as a warning sign of near incompetence.

 

Lol good point seems the way to survive in Star Wars is to be in an understated elite group, though to be fair to the Death Squadron nearly hitting each other I dont think even in 3D space a SD can pull it's nose up 'vertical' quicker then it can turn on it's horizontal axis (however how they didn't realise that even if they all caught Falcon their trajectories came dangerously close anyway is another matter).

 

The thing about the Death Squadron Star Destroyers ramming into each other is hilarious to me because there was apparently a total lack of communication between the ships--and I guess nobody important on any of the three mile-long battleships noticed that they were all just sort of Forrest Gumping their way into a potentially catastrauphic situation.

 

Yeah you would think some radar operator would bring attention to the fact that three large ships are heading for a small area and that maybe this isn't the best of ideas.

 

Hey, Death Squadron's CommScan abilities appear to be abysmal anyway. I guess this is par for the course.

"Hey, what's that big sphere down there with the barrel sticking out of it?"

 

"I want proof, not lolly-pops!"

Stormtroopers are never as powerful as they are made out to be. Even Storm Commandos don't seem that tough. And then there's the TIEs. Defender, Hunter, Phantom, Avenger, Advanced, whatever, the Rebels always get the better of them. Except for in TIE Fighter, which is one of the reasons I love that game.

 

"Errrrrm, a native monument?"
"Emperor's Holy Undergarments, Batman! The monument is shooting at us!"
"Ooooooooo, pretty li-OMG!!!!!!It burns!!!!!!!!!!!"
"*Crunching noise*Helmsman! Did we just hit something?"
"*Looks out viewport to see burning wreckage of ImpStar they just plowed through. Then shuts blinds* Uh, no sir, of course not"
"Jolly good then."

 

well there was that one stormtrooper who hit Leia with the stun shot in A New Hope, man he must have been one of the greatest stormtroopers ever of the tome, he actually hit his target, Princess Leia no less. Man if he had been at Endor, he might have been able to turn the tide and save the Empire. Or was tahta him who got leia in the hand?

 

Going by the movies, Stormtroopers are truly elite.

They blast through TantiveIV, they defeat the rebels at Hoth and when they seemed to perform badly they have been ordered to let the rebels escapse (DeathStar1, Bespin).

The only major screw-up seems to be Endor, where they are defeated by a combination of circumstances:

1) their own overconfidance
2) bad intelligence (they were told the Ewoks were harmless)
3) bad troop-deployment - we never see more than a company fighting in the area around the rear-entry of the shield-bunker, so the majority of troops had to be somewhere else

Despite that and only being armed with their carabines they nearly defeated a numerically vastly superior enemy, who was a lot smaller, had natural camouflage and knew the territory a lot better, than them. Only with Chewbacca entering that AT-ST is the battle turned around.

The shield-complex was also totally safe until Han bluffed his way in - with a claim, that was completely reasonable for the young officer inside the bunker, the fact, that the rebels and their native allies had been defeated.

As for their performance in the Post-Endor-EU keep in mind, that the origin of Stormtroopers is secret and that the empire suffers considerable man-power-shortages after Palpatine's "death". If the majority of Stormtroopers consists of clones and the cloning-faclities are located within the deep core, we know why.

The imperial fractions outside the deep core might have tried to compensate for this by putting ordinary soldiers into the white armour (Lando Calrissian also hints at something like this in NJOarkTide).



Why should DeathSquadron know about the Ion-Cannon on Hoth. There was a shield there, strong enough to withstand every kind of bombardement. Don't you guys think it possible, that such a powerful shield would screw up the sensors of the Imperials, too?

Han Solo and the Falcon being piggy-backed by the Avenger - hello, ever heard of such a thing as blind spot?

 

I thihnk the Empire hjust had an overinflated opinionof its troops. Probably kept spending most of the miltary budget on the oversized superweapons and not investing in some decent training. Of course, then you've got the fact that most of the best and brightest the Empire had also defected. So you've got people who know your tactics, and are very good to begin with.

And as far as the Ewoks owning the Empire's best, I wonder how good there are if this group didn't bother to wear camo gear (let's wear white armor that makes it hard to move and impossible to see in the middle of a forest!) and lay out proper defensive positions to protect against an enemy attack. What, no E-Web emplacements, automated turrents to defend the bunker, traps, mines, etc? Empire's best my foot. Gimme a squad of Ewoks, Wes Janson, and Chewbacca, give them a few weeks to train, and they could've taken over the DS2.

 

Really, Clone/Stormtroopers are quite good. As was mentioned earlier, the only film defeat of theirs we have seen so far was on Endor; and that can be chalked up to a number of reasons.

 

Han, Leia, and Luke have rare genetic configurations in which their bodies produce specific pheremones that cause people to lose control of their hand-eye coordination, depth perception, short-term memories, motor skills, mental capacity, and bladders, depending upon the situation.

That last part doesn't come up in the movies too often, though.

 

In that case the stormtroopers in their tight-sealed NBC-suits should be perfectely safe.

 

No more Kamino Combat Education....

No more Jedi-led battles or strategies....

Inept Imperial instruction....

 

FTeik:

I've never heard of the Millenium Falcon's escape from Cloud City being allowed... From whence does this information come?

That said (asked?), the defeat at Endor is explicable, but still fairly difficult to excuse. The officer leading the 'reinforcements' out of the back of the bunker--or any one of the stormtroopers--could've just radioed back into the bunker to say something along the lines of "it's a trap!"


And again, AT-AT walker.


That said, stormtroopers aren't the worst offenders in the movies--you're darned right about that. So far, Death Squadron far and away takes the cake, although the senior leadership at Endor in the fleet battle is fairly suspect in a couple of respects as well.

As for the Death Squadron, I see no reason for the Imperials to have not noticed the Planet Defender. Even if the theater shields have previously unknown or implied sensor jamming techniques, an ISD obviously has simple telescopic capabilities.