PT Is the number of Clones too low?

HAN
The entire starfleet couldn’t
destroy the whole planet. It’d
take a thousand ships with more
fire power than I’ve…

DODONNA
The battle station is heavily
shielded and carries a firepower
greater than half the star fleet.

Seems like the starfleet is less than a thousand fleet. Of course the EU and reference materials will try to make everything at least somewhat plausible...

 

All galactic organizations like the Old Republic, Revan's Sith Empire, Galactic Empire, Confederacy of Independant Systems and New Republic, all including local military like planetary defenses and judicial forces, have star fleets made up by hundreds of thousands or even millions of combat vessels, transports and support ships. Also their ground forces number hundreds of billions, maybe trillions of soldiers.

In most cases, a planetary invasion on a full member world of the Republic or Empire/Earth-like planet/celestial body with 1,000,000,000+ inhabitants requires dozens or hundreds of thousands ground troops.

 

If it was true, the Empire wouldn't need a superweapon. They'd just send a thousand ships to any rebellious planet.

 

A standard fleet for planetary invasion contained six Imperial Stardestroyers and several dozens of other combat vessels and troop transports.

And yes, the Empire didn't need the Death Star for battle, it was designed to spread fear through it's pure existence. It can blow up entire planets in few minutes what starships cannot do. Besides, Palpatine was a tyrannical megalomaniac, he doesn't care what it neccessary and what just a strange sort of "fun" for galactic emperors.

The Jainatopolitan Empire is able control a quarter of it's planet (~4,000,000 billion inhabitans/ 3 billion square kilometers planet surface of; 22% land, 88% water) with ~100,000,000 million warriors in army, navy, air force and space force. The sea navy for example numbers over 100 battleships and battlecruisers, ~100 carriers, 500 cruisers, >1000 destroyers, >1000 frigates, hundreds of patrol, torpedo and canon boats and submarines, thousands of transports and many ships more.

 

Except that even entire starfleet can't destroy the whole planet. However, if the Empire had thousands of starships, they could send a thousand and it would actually be safer since they're less likely to be blown up at once by one X-wing

Even if Dodonna is referring to the weapons other than the superlaser, that still doesn't make million ships plausible.

Lucas didn't really think that through in ANH - that movie is kind of small scale.

 

Thousands? Some dozens of ships are able to make a planet uninhabitable for generations by orbital bombardement. Darth Malak had min. 13 ships over Taris (I assume some dozens at all, too) which he used to "wipe this pathetic planet from the face of the galaxy".

It was just a figure of speech/cool sounding phrase, not to be taken literally.

Star Wars is no artifically constructed world, this fictional universe (Skyriver galaxy) evolved over the time through various writers. But now, the Essential Atlas gives us one billion inhabited planets in the galaxy, 500 milllion of them in the known galaxy, of which 70 million have enough people living on it to get Imperial representation and 1.7 million are considered full member worlds.

To control all this star systems and a galaxy, millions of ships are a must-have.You can't be everywhere with just two thousands. With millions of planets to draw ressources from, building those ships shouldn't be very difficult. The USA are able to build and substain ~300 sea combat vessels and 3,700 war planes by spending two billion dollar each day on the military, why shouldn't a full member/core world with a billion people living on it and many other celestial bodies to draw ressources from be able to have a dozen space combat ships (not including transports and support vessels)?

Back to topic: Three million clones are ridiculous. I rely on threating one unit as one battalion, which puts the number at 1.8 billion clonetroopers, no matter what Lucas has claimed. Lucas talks a lot when the day is long, he also once said there will be no new Star Wars movies. Beside clonetroopers, billions of regular troopers (local military and judicial forces) fought on the Republic's side, too. The Confederacy has used not only droids in th war, but billion s of regular troopers too. The clones and droids were just the armies under direct command of galactic organizations (Repulic and Confederacy), members of them had own fighting forces.

Troop transport is the biggest problem with an interstellar war, because starships are the only way to move troops between planets. The Imperial Army numbered 10+ trillion troopers, but wasn't able to use all of them through lack of enough transport ships. With so many celestial objects to mine/get ressources from, quintillions of tax paying people, hundreds/thousands of shipyards (more can be build if needed) and if necessary billions of workers in those shipyards, the Galactic Republic during various periods, Darth Revan's Sith Empire, The Great Galactic War Sith Empire and the New Republic must be able to build and substain enough transports to support 100+ billion troopers at all.

 

I think that Ruusan Reformations were intended exactly for that, because the numbers are really ridiculous. Because the galaxy was demilitarized and there haven't been a big full scale conflict since the destruction of the Brotherhood of Darkness, in a way not having big armies like in the time of Great Hyperspace War, Revan's Sith Empire (Jedi Civil War) or The Great Gallactic War is reasonable. Anyway, only three millions is really ridiculous. Ok, The Republic didn't had an army but with millions of planets there it wouldn't have been that difficult to recruit some billions of soldiers. Hell, even the Coruscant alone could have recruited a billion of soldiers. But the problem is that we have seen only the Clones fighting which should mean that there was no army, only The Clone Army. Anyway, I read somewhere that there were other Clones fighting (the Spaarti Clones aka most of the stormtroopers though this definitely is not in the prequel trilogy) and I like to think that there were billions of other soldiers fighting too, but the clones were more elite troops (we know that Jango was very powerful) so we have seen only the Clones fighting because they accompanied The Jedi in the most difficult mission and the movies played the part around the Jedi. That's the explanation I have given to myself.

On another note, Padme with about 20 personal guards recapturing the palace in Naboo was ridiculous too. It was a war for the most important palace in a planet, how it is defended by only 50 droids. By that logic, let's go and capture the White House.

 

I just found an interesting reference. Apparently, the Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith novel describes the Sector Governance Decree as assigning a regiment of Clone Troopers to every world in the Republic, along with a planetary governor. Even if that's only the 1.7 million full member worlds, that's billions of clone troopers by the end of the war.

 

About the number of clones and about the amount of soldiers in the republic in AotC.

Based on what is said in AotC it seems that the republic has not got any soldiers at all.
Mace says that if the seps break away then there won't be enough Jedi to protect the republic.
There are what, 10 000 Jedi at most, could that number have any hope of stopping an invasion of say 2-3 million soldiers?
Not really and Mace says pretty much this. But if the republic has local forces numbering in the billions why did he not mention them?
Same thing with Dooku, he says that with their new army they can overwhelm the Jedi and make the republic do whatever they want. Again ZERO mention of local fleets or planetary forces. The Jedi are powerfull to be sure but as the movie shows, when faced with large numbers, the Jedi loose. If the republic have one billions soldiers and 10 000 Jedi defending it, the one billion soldiers are a bit more important than the 10 000 Jedi.
Lastly, when Yoda shows up with 200 000 soldiers, the TF are totally suprised that the republic could gather up such a large army in such short time. They even call it "a HUGE army." If the republic has one billion soldiers and millions of ships, then gathering up 200 000 soldiers and 10-15 ships would be no problem.

Lastly, Kamino is one planet, could one planet really produce 1-2 billion clones in under ten years? That would be almost like doubling the planetary population in a short time.

Are the numbers too low? I would say yes but what is in the films support thses low numbers so they stand. I view it as Lucas not really thinking things through what war on a galatic scale would mean. Same with the strange focus on foot soldiers when superiour ships would be far more important.

Bye for now.
Old Stoneface

 

Well, on the industrial capacity of Kamino-we don't know what it is. We do see that there's another city in AOTC-it's off in the distance a few times during the Kamino sequence. Plus we see that there's generations of clones all the way down to newborns that won't be fully matured for another decade during Kenobi's tour. Assuming that a million clones is one generation given that Lama Su correlates the 200,000 with the 1 million, that should correlate roughly to ten million clones of varying ages on just the city Obi-Wan visits. We don't know if Kamino is working solely on the Republic's army, and we don't know if there's literally just two cities on all of Kamino. The lack of a firm number of existing Kaminoan cities and whether or not they were all working on the clone army are the limiting factors on getting a good estimate. You can infer things like there being lots more than just a few million by the end of the war from the line in the ROTS about each regional governor having a regiment of clones, but a rock-solid number isn't very feasible, IMO.

 

I think the full phrase in the radio drama was "A thousand ships with a lot more firepower than has ever existed"

So- a thousand ships- each significantly more powerful than the most powerful existing ship- is quite compatible with several thousand "ordinary" ships.

 

While EU materials describes Planetary Security Forces, the Judicial Starfleet, and organizations like the Kuati Sector Fleet, the fact that these were local organizations limits the effective defense they could provide. The Kuati Sector Forces had battlecruisers and dreadnoughts, but Republic law mandated that they be equipped with limited hyperdrives so they could not feasibly leave the Kuat Sector to fight Seperatist invasion forces elsewhere. In fact, we see an onscreen example of what was likely to happen on certain worlds in the Phantom Menace, with the Trade Federation versus the Royal Naboo Security Forces. They could likely overwhelm world after world, with the armed forces of neighboring systems not being able to do much more than sit around waiting for their turn until the Republic decided to give in to the Separatist's demands.

That's why the Grand Army of the Republic was necessary. With their Acclamator-class assault ships they could travel across the galaxy, responding to Separatist threats. However, the small size of the army as described in certain sources makes that equation break down. While the droid army is supposed to outnumber the clones, it only takes one Lucrehulk-class ship to hold a force that exceeds one of the ten Systems Armies that comprised the GAR. There were sixty Lucrehulk-class core ships at Geonosis alone. If that were the extent of the Separatist Droid Army, that wouldn't be too bad, since the clones killed twenty B1s for every clone killed (and later even more thanks to sabotage), but the Seperatists kept building millions more and used other, superior droid models as well, so it only stands to reason that the GAR also had to expand to continue to resist them.

 

Wait, the republic has got loads of warships but they all have such weak engines that they can't leave their own system?
That sounds idiotic. That would be like the US airforce put so little fuel in their fighter planes and bombers so that they can't fly for more than five minutes. Or that the US army have all their soldiers tie their shoelaces together so that they can't walk but have to sit and wait for the enemy.
What about the TF warships? The TF was a part of the republic at the time of TPM and they could move their big ships around so why didn't this law apply to them?
For that matter, why was the TF worried that the Senate could find out about their invasion? With such a crippled opponent, the TF could simply attack planets with impunity and the Senate could do nothing.
It also raises the question why Padme wanted to speak to the senate, if the senate can't do anything because the republic ships are so useless then why bother?
This law would also mean that each system would have to make their own warships. Because any ship made in another system can't leave that system. So they can't have big shipyards that service many systems because the ships have such limited range.
Or do they build the ships with normal engines, drive them to their destination and then take out the normal engine and put a weak one back in?
In all this sounds very impratical.

Bye for now.
Blackboard Monitor.

 

It's only the big ships that can't travel far- smaller ships can just fine.

The Trade Federation are a merchant organization- however, they've converted transport ships to carry guns- as well as loading them up with droid starfighters.

 

Actually it'd be more like Texas being allowed to build it's own militia, but only being allowed to build warships with certain limited capabilities. The limited hyperdrives were only used on the extremely large ships anyway, which were only found in a few sectors like the Kuat sector, known for it's shipyards. Smaller ships like were found in most sectors had no such restrictions. The Republic downsized it's military during the Ruusan Reformation, so local defense forces were created to pick up the slack, but they had limitations placed on them. The Trade Federation was allowed to have armed ships by special dispensation. At the time of TPM they actually started building larger warships than they were allowed, but still didn't represent the galaxy threatening armada they built for the Separatists ten years later.

 

1 unit = 1 clone

at least thats how it works with our military

 

I was not aware any real world army used cloned soldiers.

A "unit" in military parlance is actually often used for groups of soldiers. A squad is a unit, a platoon is a unit, etc.

The Essential Guide to Warfare confirms the GAR was eventually larger than the 3 million figure, which was the initial order of clones.

 

The problem I see here is the One unit equals one clone thing.

In the real world, a unit in military terms could mean anything from a squadron to a entire division of troops. The Unit in the GAR should have been confirmed to be at least Battalion sized. I mean, look at the way clones are being blown up, shot at, or otherwise decimated in the cartoons/comics/video games/movies ( And yes I understand they may exaggerate numbers, so be it..) If you honestly believe that 3,200,000 clones could have survived 3 years of that, you must be joking..

 

Counting the clones on an individual basis makes no sense if they're using WW1 style human wave tactics like they did in Geonosis. You'll want to keep track of numbers by the formation since an individual trooper isn't important enough to matter.

The 1 unit=1 clone thing would also only make sense if the clone's were either intended to either work like a mechanized army using modern tactics or they're supposed to be shock troopers backed up by non-clone infantry like marines. Neither are true, the GAR seems to use clones for everything including supply and logistics. Which is a crazy misuse of resources and a giant scam on the part of Kamino.

You don't need to grow and flash a person so they can lift a box or fly supply ships back and forth. There must be thousands of poor schlubs in the galaxy that can use some work, or y'know, droids.

 

Always wondered...why are they using WWI/WWII combat tactics? There's far better tactics out there than to land troops and run at each other guns ablazing and killing thousands..

 

Well, I guess it makes sense in the grand scheme of Sidious's plan. He wants to corrupt the Jedi and eventually slaughter them all so he engineers the war to be a slaughterhouse that would put Verdun to shame. Exposing the Jedi to the emotional feedback of thousands dying by the moment and surrounding them to enough blasters to ensure they could be taken down when the time came.

But it makes no sense for the Jedi to conduct a war like that; even if they have no clue about warfare and tactics Jedi ain't supposed to be throwing away lives like that.

Simply answer? Lucas didn't want to spend time crafting another action setpiece so he just decided to throw CGI armies at eachother.