Umpty-seventh Rehash of Clones Or Not: What do you think?

[Illuminatus Primus]

We all have heard rumors of redubbing, we've heard about the AOTC commentary, and we know about GL's comments. You know about the original '70's magazine article, you know about Zahn's novels, you know about the rest of the EU.

Now give your imput. Not neccessarily a debate thread, but whatever. Vote and state your opinion and why. Remember, not neccessarily a debate thread.

Remember this is not neccessarily an EU or canon thread, but general.

[Stravo]

GL has spoken. They are clones. It makes sense to me.

[Vympel]

I gotta go with George Lucas. It's his story.

[Ghost Rider]

GL says clones...they're clones.

I may not agree with it...but then again he is the highest authority for SW.

[RedImperator]

GL says Greedo shot first, too.

[Ghost Rider]

Yeah but as most of us would agree we may not like it, but that's how he wants to play it...it's his ball and court.

[Vympel]

GL says Greedo shot first, too.

He did. We don't like it, it's stupid, but he did.

[Illuminatus Primus]

I did some calcs by Marina's fleet numbers.

2,153,000 Heavy Destroyers after Yavin. 10,000 Stormies per SD.

21,530,000,000 Stormtroopers aboard the Star Destroyers alone.

That's twenty one billion, five hundred thirty million stormtroopers. Each will take ten years to produce.

2,000,000 Golan-III platforms are roughly equivalent to a Star Destroyer but I'll be conservative and give them 5,000 Stormies instead of ISD's 10,000.

10,000,000,000 stormtroopers. Ten billion alone.

51,000,000 Defense Stations of various types. These things are easily km in size. I'll give them 1,000 stormies each.

51,000,000,000. Fifty-one billion stormtroopers.

19,043,200 Heavy Frigates and Light Destroyers (450-1,000 m). I'll give them each 1,000 stormtroopers even though the Victory alone caries 2,000 +.

19,043,200,000. Nineteen billion stormtroopers.

5,000 Medium-Light Cruisers (1,600-5000 m) I'll say on average these have 20,000 stormies despite massively more volume then an ISD.

100,000,000 One hundred million stormtroopers.

5,000 ships larger then 5000 m. I'll be conservative even though some of these are packing 250,000 plus troops like the Executor. 50,000 apiece.

250,000,000. Two fifty million.

276,395,200 Smaller than 450 m ships.

I'll give these each 400 stormtroopers.

110,558,080,000. One hundred ten billion stormtroopers.

Final tally:
21,530,000,000
10,000,000,000
51,000,000,000
19,043,200,000
100,000,000
250,000,000
110,558,080,000

212,481,280,000 Stormtroopers. Two hundred twelve billion, four-hundred eighty one million, two hundred thousand stormtroopers. That's by conservative calculations. Each take ten years to make if they are all clones. This is conservative, doesn't take into consideration crewing the Death Star, the likely ships not included in the already conservative ship count, and doesn't take into consideration AT ALL the invasion forces aboard large fleet carriers for subdueing whole worlds. Doesn't take into account ANY of ground occupation forces, or ANY of the garrisons AT ALL. I could say that there could easily be two to three times as many Stormtroopers then listed above and still be conservative, after all, is our entire Marine Corps always on ships everywhere? This also assumed no losses to the stormtrooper ranks whatsoever in 20 years.

Here comes the punch: the WEG Sourcebooks are set immediately after Yavin. They doubled their naval forces, remember? See the 212 billion number above? The Empire now needs at least to double it in three and a half years. With ten-year-a-clone factories? I don't think so.

I'm not saying that the stormtroopers are even significantly volunteers. But I'm saying they can't all be clones. I think that even all the movie stormies might be clones, which would make sense--stormies aboard the Executor and Vader's personal SD, the Death Star's stormtroopers, and the "best legion" of troops on Endor's surface...those are all elite forces....but I can't see how they could all be clones. With the technology that sources say they used they couldn't have done it. I just don't see.

But I guess I don't have a choice.

[Exonerate]

Sooner or later, you're going to run out of clones unless you make new ones.

[Robert Treder]

I'd be willing to bet that the stormies are a mix of Jango clones, other clones, and volunteers.
IP is correct in pointing out that GL's statement is not irreconcilable with this idea. Even if all the troopers we see in the movies are clones, there's still room for a bunch of them to be volunteers.

The question I have is this: why would OT-era stormies have Jango's accent? Accents aren't hereditary...
I guess the Empire could use Jango's voice when harvesting their clones, but it seems kind of silly to me. I'd think that the clones would get different accents depending on where they were trained.

[Illuminatus Primus]

That's true about the accents. Brain bug-age there.

And personally I wouldn't use Jango for the clones anyway. There's bound to be diverse Republic soldier heroes from the Clone War to use for the various branches and infantry roles and for simple diversity.

[Robert Treder]

The story that went along with the Galactic Battlegrounds strategy guide had some interesting things about stormtrooper clones. I'll try to dig it out.

From what I can remember, there was a unit of mixed volunteers/clones, but the clones acted very differently from the way Jango's clones are depicted as acting. In the GB guide, the clones didn't even know they were clones. Compare this to Jango's clones, as depicted in the story of SW Insider #65, who knew they were clones and were curious about what normal people were like. It should be noted, however, that the clones in SWI #65 were specially bred to be even more independant than normal Jango clones.

[Peregrin Toker]

Some of them might be clones, but I don't believe that the majority of stormtroopers are clones. That's simply too costly. It would be much cheaper to recruit orphaned children and expose them to intensive indoctrination.

However, it's possible that the Empire kept ordering cloned Stormtroopers just to keep Kamino's planetary economy running. (and, by the way, the could order them from non-Kaminoan sources)

[Crazy_Vasey]

Stormies are clones, normal troops aren't. What's all the fuss about?

[Boba Fett]

Yeah but as most of us would agree we may not like it, but that's how he wants to play it...it's his ball and court.

Sadly...a better "player" would listen to the fans much more...

On the other hand I totally share Ghost Rider's opinion.

[Knife]

Yeah but as most of us would agree we may not like it, but that's how he wants to play it...it's his ball and court.

Sadly...a better "player" would listen to the fans much more...

On the other hand I totally share Ghost Rider's opinion.

Yes and no. If he listened to the fans and did what they expected we would end up with a god awful piece of shit movie.

As for the Stormtroopers, clones. The size of the stormtrooper force would be small in comparison to the Navy's personel so I don't see its large (realitive) size a deterrent to being clones. They are shock troops and therefore expendable, so having them as clones makes sence. I don't think they are all Jango clones, rather new "templetes" are recruited form the regular Army and a limited series of clones are made form him. The "templete" is choosen for loyalty and ability to do his job, what ever that might be. The clones are then made and put into service with the stormtroopers according to the traits that their templete was choosen for. If the "templete" is a exellent NCO, then the clones made from him are put into service as NCO's, ect, ect......

[Illuminatus Primus]

They're an occupation force. They're more like the all-elite secret police to come raining down on your revolting world rather then a shock troop force. If they were a shock troop force I doubt they'd be assigned to EVERY SD. Furthermore the Imperial Sourcebook hints there actually might be more stormtroopers than army troops. They're really multi-purpose elite forces. They're not shock troops. The Grand Army of the Republic, with its measely 1.2 million divisions, is definitely a spec-ops and shock troop force. But there's no need for that in the enemyless Galactic Empire. They're really an omnipresent occupation force ensuring that the local remains subordinate to the central government.

[Illuminatus Primus]

There's little doubt that there are clone stormtroopers. However, all known evidence of the apparati used to make the clones makes it impossible for them to double their ranks w/ the military doubling from ANH to ESB as shown above in my post. They needed twice as many in three and a half years. I don't see how that's possible if they're exclusively clones.

[Crazy_Vasey]

Can't see why it would be that difficult. Just stick up more cloning tanks and turn up the growth acceleration.

[Illuminatus Primus]

If you accelerate the rate by a factor of 5.174 from the normal human growth cycle (minimum neccessary for fully grown clones in 3.5 years), you'll get troops which will be 40 in seven years after deployment. Accelerate the life cycle = more rapidly aging. Claiming that they can infinitely compress the life-cycle is a no-limits fallacy, and concluding the aging affects of (2x) observed on clones in the movies suddenly stopped when they turned 20 in biological years is a baseless conclusion w/ no evidence.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Realistically you'd have to compress the life cycle to the point where the clones would be useless to you in 4-5 years due to aging in order to produce clones at a reasonable pace during the arms build-up. AND that's assuming that because they can double the aging process they can multiply it by a factor of 5 and a half + (no-limits again).

[Stravo]

You know, we always brag about the vast imdustrial potential of the GE and its ability to field thousands of SD's so why can't they simply dedicate whole worlds to cloning. You set up some facilities, the growth factor probably increases over time so that by the ANH era they can probably grow a clone in a much shorter time than AOTC era.

Why is it so hard to accept that a society with the vast resources bragged about by the more rabid warsies CAN'T field a clone army of billions???

[Crazy_Vasey]

Thrawn seemed to have no problems churning out god only knows how many clones with a small clone wars era cloning plant hidden away on some outer rim backwater. I can't see why the Emperor himself couldn't do much, much better with the far greater resources available to him.

[Illuminatus Primus]

You know, we always brag about the vast imdustrial potential of the GE and its ability to field thousands of SD's so why can't they simply dedicate whole worlds to cloning.

Where? As long as it doesn't contradict canon outright, official is still true. So that means that cloning was officially banned, and all of the facilities had to be secret. Where would they possibly have so many? So large that no one would find them? Thrawn would be stuck with a sad paltry collection of momentos in a backwater world--so where were these worlds so well hidden?

You set up some facilities, the growth factor probably increases over time so that by the ANH era they can probably grow a clone in a much shorter time than AOTC era.

Wrong. The ONLY sources on probable stormtrooper cloning apparati is the old Bantha Tracks magazine article, which at best depicts AOTC-style clones, and at worst clones which have normal life cyles (ie. 20 years for a clone is 20 years for a normal person). There's no evidence other then that on stormtrooper cloning and ZERO suggestion of hyper-fast cloning technology. Simply put, there's no cloning technology that could realistically fullfill the rapid military buildup in the Empire from ANH to AOTC.

Why is it so hard to accept that a society with the vast resources bragged about by the more rabid warsies CAN'T field a clone army of billions???

If you'd actually read what I posted, the issue is with the speed of known cloning techniques, which is at best known to be able to reach 2 x normal human life cycles. For Kaminoan-type cloning to fullfill the Empire's order for stormtroopers between ANH and ESB, you'd have to grow them so they'd mature perhaps 10 x faster. In which case they're useless in 4 years when they turn 40 and up.

Thrawn seemed to have no problems churning out god only knows how many clones with a small clone wars era cloning plant hidden away on some outer rim backwater. I can't see why the Emperor himself couldn't do much, much better with the far greater resources available to him.

He at most churned out a several hundred thousand clones for "clone scare" tactics against the NR. This was Palpatine's personal storehouse of Spaarti cloning technology and it was obviously not in use and only had several tens of thousands of cylinders max. Not enough for their demands. There were only a couple thousand cylinders there. And Spaarti technology could not make clones in a couple days until Thrawn's innovations came into play. That is, no one knew how to get around clone madness. According to AOTC and the early magazine article, you're dealing with Kaminoan style clones.

[Illuminatus Primus]

You set up some facilities, the growth factor probably increases over time so that by the ANH era they can probably grow a clone in a much shorter time than AOTC era.

Oh and one more thing. Have we forgotten the oft cited and known conclusion the the galactic civilization has achieved basically technological standstill? Enormously strategic advances in production through improved technology on that scale isn't going to be happening in a civilization of technological stasis. Not to mention you have no evidence.