The Official Clone Wars patched continuity thread!

In response to the "Guide to the Grand Army" thread's disappearance, which once every ten posts actually talked about the subject rather than ripping into someone (just kidding), I'd like to offer this thread as an alternative for discussion of the Clone Wars military conflict.

It's fundamentally similar to the inconsistencies thread in that the basic premise is built upon an acknowledgment that there's something seriously screwy with the numbers given versus the portrayal. With this in mind, the Talking Heads of this forum (myself included) are invited to discuss the information presented by various sources with the commentary on whether or not they believe it fits in with their vision of the Clone Wars.

In difference to the Moderators, I think we should all acknowledge from the beginning that if discussion ever gets nasty then this topic will probably be declared permanently off limits. To that end, please remember that this thread acknowledges that there are a lot of ways to view the Clone Wars size and composition.

 

My view of the Clone Wars as presented in the various media-tie ins goes with this interpretation of the conflict.

The Republic Military

The Grand Army of the Republic: The duel Jedi/Clone force of the Republic that waged an aggressive campaign of guerilla warfare, harrying, and sabotage against the far greater Seperatist military forces for the early years in the war. The initial Grand army consisting of the 9,000 Jedi Generals and their 3,000,000 cohorts before more Grand Armies were created using the Coruscant cloning facilities and Kamino tech. The implications are other facilities were also created.

We have no idea how soon these Grand Armies were created or how soon flash pumping was introduced to seperate The Kamino troopers (who were trained directly) from the clones educated by memory device.

The Judicial Forces: Something about 1600 Dreadnoughts and 3600 smaller vessels form another group that is probably only barely able to defend the Core Worlds and insufficient for the early years of the war.

Nationalized World Fleets: Essentially fleets of planets like Rendilli, Kuati, and other groups that are probably nearly as large as the Trade Federation Security Forces and thus equal to opposing the initial campaign even if they are used to working together.

Partisans: The largest force of Republic recruits that are essentially people who serve their own nation's government before allying with the national government without joining it. We saw some of them on Jaabim and in the Freedom's Sons.

Republic Recruits: Something that gradually grows as offices start churning them out over the next three years.

The Seperatist Military

The Droid Army: General Grevious Private Army of Droids that consisted of some two hundred million battle droids that was produced on Geonosis. The Droid Army starts off by invading world after world under Servance Tann's commands but gradually starts merely reinforcing existing structures like in Hard Contact and on Jaabim. Grevious also works on making small factories on a multitude of worlds to prevent the Republic from carving up his losses too badly.

The Corporate Mercenary Armies: The Security forces of the Inner Council of the Confederacy that are a treacherous and cowardly bunch to be sure.

Confederacy Partisans: Much like the Republic, essentially loyal to governments that just chose a side that was different than the Republic.

Confederacy Recruits: No doubt they existed as well.

Looking at how these armies shape up, they don't actually seem all that mismatched to me.

 

I think it's important to also realize that the Clone Wars erupted in a way that Darth Sidious was not in direct control of. Essentially, when armed hostilities broke out, the whole thing blew up in the same way that World War One's Europe did.

Haruun Kal is one example of how things get muddied as essentially there is existing strife on the planet that has nothing to do with the Clone Wars. The choice of the Balawai to ally with the Seperatists was enough to make the Korunnai want to ally with the Republic to kill them. This is despite the fact that the planet has no importance to the galaxy as a whole. Nevertheless, the Republic and Confederacy give weapons along with free license for both sides to slaughter one another.

Jaabim is another classic case where essentially part of the government wants to secede and the other part of the government certainly does not. It's a simple issue of Civil War that's made all the worse by pressures from the outside to resort to violence in order to resolve the matter.

We see the Jaabim pattern repeated on Mon Calamari, Brentaal, Ando, and Force knows how many other worlds.

Then there's planets like Dantooine, Nelvaan, Honghor, and Qiilura where the Clone Wars finds itself coming down to the planets despite the utter apolitical nature of the inhabitants. The war simply comes to the planet because that's where the battle was going on at that time.

Honestly, the strangest thing is that it seems the genuinely LOYALIST worlds on both sides are the really rare ones. Places like Kamino, Coruscant, Megeddo, and Salecumi.

This is how the Clone Wars largely came to touch every planet in the galaxy despite the fact that the initial numbers of genuine sides were less than impressive.

 

Charles - Do you have any sort of number on the "Recruits" section of the Republic? Is it significant? Are you talking about an actual organized group or are we looking at various non planetary government affiliated local militias/vigilante groups?

I have to wonder, when Coruscant (or other highly populated planets) got invaded did the Gun toting underworld types get angry and take up arms to drive the droid invaders away, or did the average scum not really care about the conflict?

Carnage

 

I don't think we have any hard and fast data on the size of the Old Republic recruits but its important to remember that the system military that were subsumed into the ranks of the Republic military were eventually transformed into members of the Imperial Armed Forces. Palpatine's Stalinist purges of the officer corps after the end of the Clone Wars eliminated any of them that would have lingering sentiments towards either the Republic, Jedi, or their original homeworlds/corporate employers.

The primary people that the Old Republic is going to be recruiting is going to be people with experience in the fields that the Republic needs to begin with rather than doing what our army does and sending them through the Academy. Thus, the majority of recruits are going to be sent through boot camp and then deployed on the front lines. A lot of the officers of this time are inexperienced, overpromoted, or Mustangs. However, it sets the stage for the Empire.

I think that we can probably imagine how many people the Empire actually recruited into the Imperial military during the time by using the typical Sector Army as a basic guide for numbers. While the Empire certainly expanded its fleet size drastically, it seems to be working with a very mobile army model and small scale deployment that is likely a leftover from the Clone Wars days.

The Army is more interested in getting top quality officers and equipment at this point rather than drastically increasing its manpower size. My take on the matter at least.

At this point, I don't think we've had that much in the way of a Stalingrad "people get out their guns and join in" set of street to street fighting. In general, it seems the regular army handled that sort of matter. It seems that it was more on less urban worlds that people willingly banded together in militias to hunt down the Seperatist/Republic presence.

 

People keep referring to the various Kuati super ships around just before the Clone Wars began (Mandator, Procurator, etc.), sold to various wealthy & powerful sectors. I would think that this would have to imply that for the top sectors there had to have been a significant sectorial Navy - obviously they didn't have all-clone crews for vessels around before the Clone Wars began, right?
The problem is that to form them into an army in the OR days would've been problematic at best. A sector would hardly let their own military forces go off to some far-flung battlefield when their own sector might be attacked at any time. The clonetroopers, having no ties below the level of the Galactic Republic itself, were the perfect mobile army.

 

I think the nationalization and mobilization of Loyalist Sector militaries was one of the reasons for the Emergency Powers of President Palpatine. His first act as Dictator (in the Roman sense) was to consolidate all the private militaries in the Galactic Republic into a single Armed Forces that, essentially, none of the Senators had any say in opposing.

This is, on the surface, quite reasonable and yet you can tell that it would have been viciously debated had not it been for Palpatine's emergency powers.

 

In the statements about the Clone Wars touching every world I guess worlds that are more backwater than Jabiim where the people faught amongst each other with very limited aid from either side could make the "3 Million Clones" make a lot more sense. If the Republic had not gone to Jabiim at all, and the loyalist faction had been larger and more able to hold out I could still see Dooku bolstering the Seperatist defense with say....100 of those odd looking battle droids. On a planet with a small habitable region the population count could stay low enough for even 100 droids or Clones to make a huge difference.

But why would either the Republic or CIS even bother with this hypothetical world that was sparsely inhabited, had little strategic value, and wasn't very rich in cash or resources? Do you think the Clone Wars was sort of a pissing contest? Say 50 or so worlds were truly important and hotly contested. Was how each side was viewed highly dependent on sheer numbers of worlds? Would a week of war where the Seps could claim taking 50 mostly worthless planets away from the Republic have been a major victory in the eyes of the general galactic populace?

Carnage

 

Don't make me ban everyone in this thread either, okay? Fair warning ahead of time for all...

 

Qiilura is an example of a typical "world that's even more worthless than Jaabim." There, the Seperatists held the world in the same manner that France is holding a huge portion of Antarctica. They had a single Mandalorian mercenary and about twelve guys 'garrisoning' the planet. I imagine that the military presence there is solely to actually mark it as being controlled by the Confederacy in some manner.

It's interesting to note that the conflict DID suddenly make a huge difference to the populous as the oppressed Native Species was recruited by the Republic to pretty much overthrow the Trade Federation's commerce interests on the planet as much as the military goal of destroying the bioweapons lab that the Republic Commandoes destroyed.

Essentially, the Jedi came in and turned the entire planet upside down in a 'hot war' while leaving overnight after wiping out the planet's neglible population of soldiery. A hot war that's still going on as of Triple Zero.

I think that Palpatine made it very clear that the strategic goals of the Republic was to secure as many planets as possible under martial law while Dooku's goal was simultaneously to conquer as many worlds as possible. While this military strategy doesn't make much sense (because neither leader is actually interested in his stated goals), it is DEFENSIBLE stragedy based upon the idea of defending worlds of the Republic or 'liberating worlds from Republic tyranny.'

The 10,000 "inner worlds" of the Confederacy are their main basis of operations but General Grevious and Operation: Durge's Lance results in a huge number of planets being conquered that causes worlds like those of the Sephi to turn their back on the Republic. The Confederacy legitimately requires lots of planets to set up droid factories on in order to supply them with new troops.

Provided you can get a steady access to scrap metal, electronics, or just easy access to a trade route for ships to deliver parts to assemble before picking up freshly completed battle droids then you can turn even isolated native planets into resources for the Confederacy. There's implications that this was a Confederacy strategy too in order to make it harder for the CIS to be dislodged ("Odds" shows one example of this at work).

I've made mention that Grevious' strategy seems more terrorist than military leader. He hits, runs, hides and spreads out his forces less so he can hold worlds but make it Hell for people to try to root out all of his efforts.

 

Uhhh, I don't get it...

I'm not heatedly arguing with Charles or anything. I'm mostly agreeing with him while asking him his opinion on a few things...

Carnage

 

I think twas a "numbers" warning.

 

I don't think it was directed at either of you - or anyone else in particular, for that matter. It was probably just a general warning to not let this thread end up like the Grand Armies one did...

 

Exactly. And with that, carry on...

 

Don't fool yourself.

 

But....teh....clone numberzzz......naaaaaarghh!

 

You forgot the Antarian Rangers!

 

Yes, we know that the "Jedi Auxillary" also fought at the side of the Jedi Knighthood. It seems quite likely that it had far larger numbers than the actual Jedi Knights themselves but it is unlikely that they were an 'army' either due to the fact they were described as thin to begin with. Still, we could probably see a significant contribution from them.

It's also noteworthy that there was another Pro-Jedi mercenary group mentioned in Wanted by Cracken but I'm sorry to say I don't remember its name. That organization however fought with them in the Clone Wars.

If Freedom's Warriors also fought with the Jedi then its possible that there was a number of seperate "knighthoods" and groups that the organization called upon to help whether the Seperatists down.

Old favors and all that.

 

The difference between the Guide to the Grand Army of the Republic and Patched Continuity thread is mostly the recognition that there's something screwy with interpretation and we don't have as much information as we probably should on the Clone Wars processing (with also the implications there's contradictory sources that some people like over the other)

So you can bring up numbers, just anybody who responds should remember that they may be operating from different information. Any arguing should be done from the information that you're working from.

I always have stuck by the belief that this is probably how Clone Wars historians felt when Palpatine classified then erased most of the data of the wars. They had no idea who did what,where, and how. Like Stalin, any history that Palpatine gave is of dubious authenticity.

I also think its interesting to note that the Clone Wars is a very Pre-Nuremburg set of war. The Cestus Deception goes out of its way to point out that Palpatine's administration is interested in primarily destroying Seperatist infrastructure as opposed to actually engaging the soldiers on the ground. Basically, meaning Palpatine is fully willing to wipe a city off the map if he figures it'll keep battledroids out of the Seperatist hands.

We also see the constant targeting of factories by Clone Commandoes (The Pengalan Tradeoff, Odds, and Star Wars Republic 67) as an interpretation of this kind of war despite the fact that Palpatine obviously is fine with slaughtering every single person that gets in the way of his breaking the Seperatist war machine.

Dooku's battle tactics are just as ruthless and a whole lot less restrained by Jedi on the field as we see with his attempts to use bioweapons, nanites, the Dark Reaper, and so on.

It's a very dirty and high causalty kind of war it seems rather than a precision one.

 

Pendarran Warriors.

 

Thanks.

Honestly, I think a bigger thing to worry about in the Clone Wars isn't the number of troopers in the war. The numbers of troopers in the conflict is almost irrelevant I think. I think the real question that matters in the war is the number of ships to a large extent. We know how important air support is in a conflict like this but with ships covering both the role of the Navy and Air Force, that's going to be the decisive business there.

I think Muunilinst actually displays a big issue of how war fundamentally changes in the future. Holding ground is fundamentally irrelevant when you can move to an enemies capital pretty much instantaneously.

Really, the limit of the importance of troops seemed based more on TRANSPORTS than it does on clones.

 

I myself have my own personal opinion that the numbers all add up but they all add up at different times and different places in the Clone Wars.

The Grand Army of the Republic, for lack of a better term, I see as essentially the "Army of Light" in the manner of Lord Hoth's forces. It's essentially the Army that's under the direct control of the Jedi Knighthood. 9000 officers for 3 million or so troops is about right there.

It's essentially an army of Commandoes despite everything it tries. I think that the original Kamino grown force of clones remains the heart of the Clone Forces around the Jedi until Order 66. However, increasingly that amounts to an elite force as the new stuff occurs.

On the other hand, Palpatine and Dooku are fully expanding the forces of the military as much as possible during this time. I don't know if we've seen anything resembling conscription yet from the enemy but there's definitely vast numbers of strategic reserves being created during this time.

According to Captain Pellaeon, clones needed a full year to be grown in order to stay sane and that means only Two Generations of clones created that remained sane for a significant length of time. However, if Joruus C'boath is any indication, its possibly not until the Empire's early years that any symptoms manifested themselves.

If we bring in the Tree Lizards as a factor, the Clone Wars could produce clone troopers via flash pumping at 20 days.

That would mean from the Cartaro incident to the end of the Clone Wars that TWENTY-EIGHT generations of clones could have been produced.

However, this number is irrelevant because we don't know how many Clone Tanks the Republic could/did/would produce. One suspects by the simple fact Kamino is producing them though that the Republic upgraded their technology, which might take only a few months if they were inclined to do so.

Perhaps also impacting the entire planet.

(of course, Kamino also ends up Scoured but that would only affect the last generation or so due to the fact that it happened in Revenge of the Sith's general vicinity)

Am I just confusing the issue?