Guide to the Grand Army (Insider #84)

Hmm, when did a handful of Jedi take on an entire army and didn't get its butt kicked?

Special operations, my a..! Are all the clones now commandos or ARCs?

Small, highly mobile units may be favoured today, but we can see in Iraq how quick a military can reach its limits.

Siege of Saleumici? Battle of Jabiim? Those were battles lasting for weeks, if not months.

And the CIS-leadership must have been truly incompetent to a degree impossible to describe. One has to wonder, how they made it till Duro with Durge's Lance.

 

"Can you cite me a source for Kamino's capacity?"

This is the thing, there is no source, so Kamino could be capable of anything and anyone would accept that they could produce a much larger force. I just really don't see the point of this minamilism. I realise I might be saying this to the wrong people, as I have no idea how much of this was your choice and how much was told to you by LFL...but really, what's gained from this 3 million figure, its not sticking to the presumed Lucas figure from aotc so why not go all out and make it a good sized force?


"3. And...it's Star Wars! Chaps, when you can accept that a bunch of aliens can breed humans to order and grow them to maturity in ten years...that a handful of Jedi can take on armies with magic and a fluorescent light fitting...when you don't worry about the total absence of time dilation when ships move light years between worlds...how can you argue about real numbers?"

Certainly thats important to remember, I mean how could I have loved star wars if I wasnt able to suspend my disbelief at the airfix models blowing each other up, but I like some realism in it, especially in a non visual format where anything is possible.

"Or, you except what people far more knowledgable aobut this than you( Kaaren and Ryan if it must be pointed out to you) tell you. What they wrote down in the GGAR (which I just got today! Once again, from illegal sources that shall remian undisclosed) is canonical fact."

Of course Ill accept it as canon fact, it doesnt mean I have to like it, god knows there have been far far worse things done to the EU, even in the same field (executors bankrupting the Empire and so on), and with Karen the clones would probably still be an incredibly dull 1.2 million mindless drones, but I just feel it was a bad choice, and being able to talk to the people who wrote it gives an oppurtunity to see why. Ill also say I dont see why I should just sit back and agree with everything anyone, even one of the best EU authors, says. You've gotta be impressed with people taking time out to (regularly) converse with a bunch of geeks on the internet, but I'd hope they dont come here hoping for mindless sycophancy and praise, and from what Ive seen that seems very unlikely.

 

on the 3000000 number fight... my opinion:

at first I thought it was too few myself, and the seppies arn´t as bad as the mando and clone lovers want to make them seem, see Hypori, see Durge, see, Mandos of Spar, see Grievous actions. they had many victorious battles as well.

and we have to read the 3Mio+ number carefully.

1) the "+" isn´t there for nothting. it has a meaning, there were more, this was the basics

2) we know from other sources that coruscant as well as other cloning centers in the galaxy were forbidden civilian cloning, staffed with kaminoans and others to clone Jango clones. so 3Mio+ might only be the kamino clones, the core, the best.

3) clone wars were no full scale war at every place always, it was dotted encoutners here and there. a fake war that could end at every time if sidious wished. so no need for full scale war everywhere, he didn´t want to scrap his empire before it rose to power!

4) sidious is wise, so he kept clone numbers low for a reason. occupied planets might be held by local forces, or non-clone forces that he is building up fast with the clone wars as excuse. and the best excuse for recruiting and brain washing the majority is, keeping clone numbers low of course. genius as he is that he did, and so could faster than otherwise possible subdue the population, making them think in imperial ways.

5) clones are good, but if there are enough to protect the galaxy his fake war would make no sense, he cold easily win. so he kept the other clone generations, billions more grown, in check only activating them if dooku goes traitor, or using them for his empire to come, after naming himself emperor.

thoughts?

 

3,000,000 clones.

To ship them all around the galaxy you need not more than 188 Acclamators.

One has to wonder, what the empire needed (at least) 25,000 ISDs for.

And they are infantry, fighter-pilots, intelligence, Homeland-security (see the ROTS:VD)...

Well, i can rub that into the face of the next unfortunate soul, who claims, that the empire is militaristic.

 

During the final five months of the Outer Rim Sieges, it's clear that the Republic's clone armies are getting substantially reinforced and outfitted; enough to outsustain even the billions of battle droids still operational in the galaxy at that point. Some reinforcements were forthcoming from Kamino, but by that time, more were stemming from worlds like Khomm (purely Kaminoan-supervised, per the anti-cloning decree of 14:7:01), Aargau, and Dantooine; despite the, er, "loss" of the Wayland quick-cloning techniques a year or so earlier.

Palpatine didn´t take over by some nationalizing, "eminent domain" decree, he simply allowed them to keep their reproductive and business cloning, building more military clone factories, et cetera. Although these troopers might've been speed-grown, potentially using ARCs as templates for their less-tampered DNA. Clone-madness risk. We know that the Khommites are into cloning far past the Galactic Civil War, which works plausibly with pre-prequel literature -- no mentions of clones being present within the stormtroopers' ranks, although not taking Lucas's own AOTC DVD commentary into account.

At any rate, in either direction, having civilian cloning operations up and running would have the ability to turn the tide in either side's favor during the Clone Wars, which is why Grand Admiral Thrawn's use of the Spaarti cloning cylinders was so bowel-liquifying a thought.

Sidious wasn't concerned about clone-subversion or clone-mutiny in any real shape or form -- remember, his whole aim was to put his indoctrinated troops into POSITION as fast as he possibly could, and with overwhelming numbers. There were multi-millions ready to roll out the moment the hammer dropped at Geonosis, and having the local homegrown system and sector defense forces verily welcoming Republic "assistance" was simply the cherry atop the sundae.

The CIS's only true option was to win, and win early on enough to interdict the Republic's opportunities for strategic troop-deployment past the Colonies and Mid-Rim regions...which, according to Shatterpoint, they had the strength to do, even half a year into the conflict.

Despite this, they sunk billions, probably trillions, of creds into tech R&D, instead of moving posthaste to choke off the Republic's mov

 

Leto, may I purchase the phrase "bowel liquefying"?

I like that.

 

I don't have a question or that much really to say. I just want to tell both authors Karen and Ryan that I really like the article. You both are going up the scale of my favorite authors a whole lot for this article.

Salutes both Karen Traviss and Ryan Kaufman, then runs and hides in the shadows.

 

Indeed. If we count just the number of Stormtroopers assigned to those 25,000 ISDs (each ISD has 9000 STs) we have 225,000,000 Stormtroopers!! And that's just for those garrisoned on ISDs!! Remember that this is in a period of relative peace (compared with the Clone Wars at least).

Yeah, 3 million would be used up right and quick just attending to capitals ships alone, not to mention fighters and the other roles besides combat infantry.

And then to say that 3 million clone troopers are SO good that they took on an army of "quadrillions" of CIS Droids is, frankly, silly. No matter what their skill level was, or how well they sabotaged enemy plants, 3 million is NEVER going to even out to quadrillions. In this case, quantity far outdoes quality. And that's assuming that most Battle Droids are FAR inferior to a Clone Trooper. This has been shown to not be the case, by the films, among other EU sources. It's not as though the droids drop like flies as soon as a squad of clones appears on the scene.

 

I think three million is too little as well.

 

It is too little.

Simply look no further than three months post-Geonosis, in the text of Hard Contact: there are several direct quotes and referents stating that the GAR is "millions strong"...that's simply accounting for the 1.2 million immediately-ready-to-deploy Kaminoan clones in AOTC, along with the "millions" more clones right then undergoing final performance evaluations planetside (per Inside the Worlds of AOTC).

Jump ahead three years, with nearly a dozen major production facilities across the galaxy pumping out troops -- plus likely still more secondary and tertiary ones -- we're looking at tens of millions, fully in situ field-stationed. Labyrinth of Evil likewise mentions a second and third generation of clones delivered to the Republic after Geonosis...potential millions more right there, circa 20 ABG when the first Clone Commanders were getting integrated.

Absolutely. With appropriate royalties, of course, since the phrase is eligible for trademark protection under current federal statute...again, Riyals, please.

 

I guess that I'll cue in to say that the article was absolutely fantastic. The depth of information contained within was amazing and is testament to both Ryan and Karen's knowledge and appreciation of the Clone Army. The little profiles on select clones were great tidbits, and I managed to learn a lot of new info on the Grand Army. This is certainly a great acheivement in EU informational guides. Bravo to you both I say!


I in fact have one complaints, but it is a complaint none the less. The 3,000,000 figure for the entire Grand Army is still way to minimalistic for a galactic-scale war. No matter how skilled the clones are and no matter how the lines shift in war, it is utterly unrealistic to think that a mere 3 million clones could have fought off not quadrillions, but quintillions (reference: ROTS Incredible Cross-Sections) of droid fighters and battledroids. If we take the very conservative estimate of 100,000,000,000,000,000 (100 Quardrillon) battledroids in CIS service and apply the maximalist 200:1 droids to clones ratio to it, we still get 500,000,000,000,000 clones. That's five hundred trillion. Now I understand that this may be an overly maximalist estimate for the GAR, I just wanted to point out how the 200:1 droids:clone ratio does not work as support for a smaller clone army. Because even a GAR 10 million or a 100 million strong is still grossly outnumbered. Don't forget that GAR clones were used as police forces on Coruscant. Do you realize how many clones would be needed simply to effectively police a world with a population in the tens of trillions? It must therefore be assumed that the majority of occupational and non-major military actions were indeed carried out by volunteers from federalized local systems armies. Sorry, but 3,000,000 is still too little for a Galaxy with 1,000,000 inhabited worlds.

 

Thanks Bootleg... that means a lot to both of us.

 

FYI, re: 3 million.

LFL was very clear to us that no fixed number of total clones would or could be assigned.

Therefore, the number 3 million (plus) does not represent the entire fighting force.

 

Okay, then I guess I'm lost. If no number could or would be given for the amount of Clonetroopers, then what is the 3 million figure supposed to signify? Why even have it? What I'm trying to say is that the way it comes across, is that the GAR was just 3 million.

 

The 3 million figure signifies the combined batch amounts created and trained at the Tipoca City, Baran Wu, and Su Des stations.

The way it comes across to me is that there could be other cloning stations working on the GAR contract. And that is exciting!

 

Good point about the Acclamators and ISDs. And those would just be ISDs, not other ships like Executor, assault cruisers, bases, small garrisons, etc. How many troops do Venators carry? How many hundreds or thousands were in the battle at Coruscant?

Those of you who think a clone can take on even dozens of standard battle droids need to watch ROTS again. I seem to recall them struggling with a similar number (to their own forces) of droids immediately after Kenobi's duel with Grievous. And at Kashyyyk.
And in the Clone Wars cartoons, droids were overpowering clones until Kenobi arrived, in the episode with Durge (sp?).

 

Someone mentioned that strategy is involved. Of course it is! That is the advantage of having human clones over droids. But once you secure a planet, you have to *occupy* it. With enough personnel and firepower to fight off an invasion. Otherwise, the enemy, with millions of battle droids to spare, will waltz right back in and take back over! This kind of war would last forever, with absolutely no way for the Loyalists to win.
To win, they have to liberate a planet and securely occupy it. The way the US liberated Iraq, and now have to occupy it. They can't just liberate it, then suddenly move all those troops out to another place of need, like New Orleans. No political debates please.
In order to liberate even a small amount of a *galaxy*, like 1%, would involve millions of troops occupying each planet, lots of vehicles, warships, whatever is needed to repel an invasion force as large as that at Naboo in TPM (a good example, as it is in their capabilities, and wasn't large enough to cause galactic panic). On probably 1,000 planets or more.
Let's look at that invasion force. From the TPM ICS, TF MTTs carry 112 battle droids. Each battleship carries 1500 of these. That is 168,000 standard battledroids per battleship. Even a minimalist EU-first fan has to admit to at least 20 battleships at Naboo. So, that is already over the 3 million mark, at 3,360,000 standard battle droids. This doesn't even count the 1500 vulture droids per battleship (total of 30,000 in the force in question), the droidekas, or the super battledroids.
Keep in mind that this is just one planet.

 

So basically the three million figure is just there to confuse us?

 

If we assume that the war takes place on just 1000 planets (very conservative considering that this is on a galactic scale), and the Republic intends to liberate and occupy them all with 3 million troops, they would leave an average of 3000 troops per planet. Imagine that any one of these planets was attacked by only 20 TF battleships (way fewer than were at Coruscant), each clone trooper would be outnumbered by 1,120 to one of standard battle droids, 10 to one of vulture droids, and an unknown number of droidekas and super battledroids.
Anyone think a ground trooper can beat 10 droid starfighters by himself?
I didn't see one trooper come in and sweep up the area during OWK's duel with Grievous. I saw a whole bunch of them being killed quickly, and the rest struggling to win the battle.

 

I would say so, yes

 

In other words, those of you who think 3,000,000 troops is enough to wage war in Star Wars, have been watching too much Star Trek.
Without air or space support (many times *more* personnel), 3 million clone troopers would have a hard time beating China.
Fact.

 

Actually, a few thousand clones oculd take China. The morale effect of watching bullets blunce of their armor and then having them launch blue rays of screaming death at you and your buddies? Devastating. The giant six-legged death-spitting machines of killyness wouldnt help either I wager...

 

FoM beat me to it.

 

Wager all you want. I know quite a bit about real guns, being a hunter. Bullets would bounce off, but they would also break arms, legs, and necks, knocking the troops on their buttocks. The momentum doesn't simply stop.
You can shoot someone with a rifle, right in the strongest part of his bullet-proof vest, and he is as likely to end up in ICU as the newspaper.

And how do you think they'd defend against missiles, artillery, and tanks?

 

Clone armor is more than just a bullet-proof vest.

And as for artillery- that's what orbital strikes are for.