Guide to the Grand Army (Insider #84)

A relevance you obviously DON'T want to admit:

The little fact, that there are inconsistencies within the EU NOT because of newer sources having a larger scope, but because older sources got it all wrong.

No, what I am suggesting is, that Kamino produced a lot more clones than three million. A lot more.

Yeah, that is why they are an "ubiquitus sight on Republic worlds" (ROTS:VD) and we have clone-troopers on "every corner of Coruscant" (LoE). Not to mention, that they're equal to a battle-droid on a one-to-one-level (AotC-novel). On the level of squads and larger units they're superior.

You also have to consider the following: a recruit would fight for his homeworld, not for some new empire, he wouldn't turn against his commanding Generals (the Jedi) and he would make a bad occupation-soldier. Aside from that a recruit would have friends and family and now imagine, what might happen to Palpatine's super-majority, if there are enough of the electorate to force their senators to make peace with the CIS by allowing them to have the OuterRim.

Which is why new clones were grown AFTER Order 66. Aside from being the fighting-force of the CloneWars the Clone-Army was also intended to be the occupation-force of the then new empire.

[sarcasm]Sure. That is why the novel of AotC claims, that they are equal to battle-droids or why 5:1 are bad odds in GalacticBattlegrounds.[/sarcasm]

Or flesh-against-yunk-war. Or droid-war. Or Second-unification-war. You're making a claim without any kind of substance.

You are right, that a recruit wouldn't directly cost the state much. However a recruit as a member of socie

 

Yeah, that is why they are an "ubiquitus sight on Republic worlds" (ROTS:VD) and we have clone-troopers on "every corner of Coruscant" (LoE). Not to mention, that they're equal to a battle-droid on a one-to-one-level (AotC-novel). On the level of squads and larger units they're superior.

and my response is that's silly. As numerous as Stormtroopers in the Empire towards the end of the war? Certainly, but it took a great deal of pumping out to make that many and they had to supplement them with recruits. Even then, Stormtroopers were the heart and soul of the Imperial military but not even close to being the majority of it. Where do these hypothetical clone troopers go exactly when the war is over? Fantasyland or do you assume that the Empire graciously allowed the theoretical TRILLIONS of troopers you're implying existed to retire?

Those statements you use smack of hyperbole and audience participation. The idea that the Clonetroopers are on a one to one basis with the droids is only relevant at Geonosis too. They are also only matched against contradictory sources so they're not definitive at all. They're also vastly outnumbered by newer sources.

Frankly, economically speaking, the care that goes into a volunteer military is also probably better for the economy as well. What you're describing is something that the Empire doesn't have to do. Not every military is a wellfare state. A blanket conscription with combat pay certainly works without having to worry about their family or mental health.

Given in 3 years, Palpatine will be dictator and rule through fear, he's not exactly caring about popularity at this point.

 

Uh, Charles?

Do you see the irony?

Fact is, the Clone Wars are described as being big. They're described as "cataclysmic", a series of attacks that are crumbling the Republic, and engulfing every planet. And the other fact is that in almost every single battle we've seen, with maybe a handful of exceptions, clones are by far the main fighting force.

It's not ignoring canon to say either of those things. It is ignoring it to reject them as "silly" or "hyperbole", to indeed throw out the entire established scope of the war, to fit a figure from three sources.

Your objection seems to be that you don't like big numbers. That's fine, but please refer to your own statements about establishing canon as something else because it's not what you prefer.

 

Please, explain it to me. Cause, I'm willing to talk about those and sort of do actually. I gave explanations and they were smacked away.

So please, by all means explain to me how its ironic to talk about point of view fiction when everyone excepts that at face value and uses it to ignore every other piece of evidence.

Cause, I'd love to be proven wrong. I'm listening.

The battles we've seen are also always single cities, small battle groups, and guerrilla warfare. The Vietnam war touched the lives of every American but I didn't expect there to be Stalingrad street to street fighting on every street just because that's what it's called.

So please, I welcome explaining the following.

* Why the 3 million number is erroneous for numbers we've SEEN ON THE SCREEN or factually been used. No first person POV either.

* Why the widespread battles can't be battles we haven't seen fought by non-clones (Praelstlyn is a major conflict fought by non-clones for the majority and Haruul Kal had no clones whatsoever as the battle)

* Why everyone CARES whether these battles are fought by the Clones since all the major ones were.

* Why can't all the clones we've seen be simply the same clones moving about the galaxy?

 

True, Sinrebirth.

Palpatine's secret cloning facility is mentioned frequently by Odds.

And you're right that there isn't quintillions of battle droids as by that fiction.

Also that there's more clones than the 3 million.

edit: And yes, Hydronium is right that was a bit hypocrtical of me.

 

Maybe if people say it enough, it'll become true.

I couldn't find that quote in the book. But I did find mentions of "millions of soldiers" and "their armor ... smeared with the mud of a hundred worlds."

That's only from Bail Organa's POV. It's doubtful he had time to travel outside the Senate District. Also, it's not really stated that they're all clones.

I don't buy this. First of all, we know for a fact that both the Republic and the Empire had a ton of recruitment and conscription. Any further debate is purely academic.

You could get plenty of people who feel loyalty to the Galactic government, or the Republic's ideals, or are simply in it for the money. They wouldn't turn against the Jedi, but that of course is why all the Jedi were assigned clones instead of recruits or conscripts. And how would a recruit be any worse at occupation than a clone?

I don't think the Senate was in any position to challenge Palpatine.

Which is why he recruited prodigious amounts of people right after the war ended, and had the Imperial Army. As you stated, clones do things that other people won't. That's part of the reason why they continue to be used after the war. But the bulk of the Imperial Military was non-clone.

So do clones, for that matter. As well as housing and food. Since it wasn't a total war, pulling resources from the private sector wouldn't be a big deal.

 

New information to add to the debate (well, actually, very old information). The WEG RPG scenario Riders of the Maelstrom (1989) mentions "the average of 1.5 million troops per sector" under the Empire (p. 28) - though this is mentioned in the context of two sectors which have 3.6 million troops each, more than twice the average.

Assuming a thousand sectors, that gives a total of around 1.5 billion troops in the Imperial Army after around twenty years of relentless military expansion...

Or to put it another way, Imperial Army recruitment levels over the period of the New Order are slightly less than 10% of the rate of emigration to Byss.





- The Imperial Ewok

 

I've seen the quote, and it's been discussed on Wookiepedia. The argument that it's just Bail and he's just talking about the Senate District is pure nonsense, sorry.

Faceless, blaster-wielding soldiers on the shuttle landing platforms, in the plazas, arrayed in front of banks, hotels, theaters, wherever beings gathered or mingled. Scanning the crowds, stopping anyone who fit the current possible terrorist profile, conducting searches of individuals, belongings, residences. Not on a whim, because the cloned troopers didn't operate like that. They answered merely to their training, and the duties they performed were for the good of the Republic.

One heard rumors about antiwar demonstrations being put down by force; of disappearances and seizures of private property. Proof of such abuses of power rarely surfaced, and was quickly discredited.

The omnipresence of the soldiers seemed to bother Bail more than it did his few friends on Coruscant or his peers in the Senate. He had tried to attribute his agitation to the fact that he hailed from pacific Alderaan, but that explained only some of it. What bothered him most was the ease with which the majority of Coruscanti had acclimated to the changes.

Yes it is. See above.

As noted many times before- you couldn't shove all 3 million of this Pathetic I mean Grand Army of the Republic on Coruscan and expect them to be "omnipresent". As an average Coruscanti, you'd be lucky to ever see one. I mean ever ever.

 

Meh, I recognize there has been contradictory information.

Frankly, I like the 3 million simply because I think it's a ridiculous idea that the Clone Wars are only being fought by clones and Jedi instead of the entire galaxies' citizenry.

 

The same WEG, that gave the tiny, unimportant Elrood-sector a full sector-army? The same WEG, that gave us "thousands of sector-groups"?

On the second page, right side down.

It is already true. Millions of clone-divisions according to ItW:AotC and regiments of clones on every planet of the Republic (ROTS-novel).

ROTS: "The chancellor can't control thousands of worlds without an intact senate." Not to mention, that it took twenty years until Palpatine finally got rid of it.

I think it was the TJoIF, that said, that the stormtroopers outnumbered conventional Army AND Navy. And thanks to Pax Empirica we know, that 40% of the stormtroopers are cloned from a single donator with other clones being around.

 

The same WEG, that gave the tiny, unimportant Elrood-sector a full sector-army? The same WEG, that gave us "thousands of sector-groups"?

Yeah, I myself go with pretty huge Imperial armies.

Though I do tend to think that the Empire lightly garrisoned most worlds (only 2000 soldiers on most planets like Bakura) while other planets like Derilyn are full scale military Hellholes.

 

Leland has properly explained the ITW:AOTC quote here.


As for the Labyrinth Of Evil quote, a force "percieved" as omnipresent only in places "wherever beings gathered or mingled" or unable to fully secure an area where they are supposedly ubiquitous isnt omnipresent.

 

Specifically...

Also, in ITW: AotC it mentions the Grand Army of the Republic consisting of 'millions of divisions' of clones -

Can you be more specific as to where in the book "millions of divisions" comes from? My guess is that the figure is being misread. "The first batch of clone divisions are ready for deployment; millions more are undergoing intensive performance evaluation." They're talking about millions of clones, not millions of divisions.

 

How many stormtroopers were in a garrison? Like 400?

That means that there's less than half a billion Stormtroopers assigned to garrison duty at a rate of 1 garrison per planet.

 

I believe, Charlemagne, that it's 800 stormtroopers to a base *checks*

Yes, wookieepedia and the Guide to the Star Wars Universe cite 800. So that's about 800 million stormtroopers assigned for garrison duty if every single Imperial member world has a garrison.

 

Thanks, didn't have my Imperial sourcebook.

 

No, Leland hasn't done that at all as that is clearly not:
A) What the author intended
B) Not worded or grammatically correct, thus it's an erroneous reinterpretation.

 

Don't argue canon with Leland Chee. You can't win.

 

Besides the Stormtrooper Corps, there is the Imperial Army, to help the garrison needs. And many ships carried pre-fabricated garrisons which could be dropped onto a planet lacking one or a critical location

 

Yeah, yeah, I've read the passage too. In the first paragraph it's stated that soldiers are "on the shuttle landing platforms, in the plazas, arrayed in front of banks, hotels, theaters, wherever beings gathered or mingled." But that still must be within a specific geographic area -- otherwise it would mean that there are troopers "wherever beings gather or mingle" in the entire galaxy. It doesn't explicitly state anywhere that it's throughout the entire planet. And while it does state that the "cloned troopers didn't operate like that," it does not say that all of the soldiers were clones. If I really wanted to play semantics, I could point to the second definition of "cloned."

Ah, but it doesn't say that they were a "ubiquitus sight on Republic worlds." It says "the clone trooper has become a ubiquitous presence on embattled worlds thorughout the galaxy." So that only refers to worlds that are actively being fought over. And it doesn't say "every embattled world" either. So it merely means that they're a very common sight on some worlds that are being fought over or actively fortified.

RotS novel has already been addressed, and like Razzy said, the ItW quote has been discounted by Leland Chee. More on that below.

I think it was the TJoIF, that said, that the stormtroopers outnumbered conventional Army AND Navy. And thanks to Pax Empirica we know, that 40% of the stormtroopers are cloned from a single donator with other clones being around.

[/quote]
What the heck is TJoIF? I wouldn't want to speculate on it without seeing the source material myself, but I will say that there was more to the military than just the Army, Navy, and Stormtrooper Cor

 

Man, if we had to discount every typo or misconstructed sentence in a Star Wars source, we'd have no canon at all...