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I haven't come across any sort of downtime for Imperial starship crews or Stormtroopers; has anyone else? In fact, the information I've found almost seems to imply that they get little if any down time away from their duties.

What about on board the ship? I would presume there would be facilities for crew entertainment given the, apparently, long cruises they go on, but I've not seen anything in this regards. Again, anyone else?

The Spartan wrote:I haven't come across any sort of downtime for Imperial starship crews or Stormtroopers; has anyone else? In fact, the information I've found almost seems to imply that they get little if any down time away from their duties.

What about on board the ship? I would presume there would be facilities for crew entertainment given the, apparently, long cruises they go on, but I've not seen anything in this regards. Again, anyone else?

"Dark Force Rising" shows TIE pilots during downtime playing cards.

Stormtroopers are almost certainly different from the servicemen and women of the other branches. When you love your job, you never work a day in your life. That said, they're still human and probably had downtime if not actual off-duty hours. I doubt they had shore leave though. If they mingled with the general civilian population, they did it so seamlessly that nobody noticed.

Darth Raptor wrote:Stormtroopers are almost certainly different from the servicemen and women of the other branches. When you love your job, you never work a day in your life. That said, they're still human and probably had downtime if not actual off-duty hours. I doubt they had shore leave though. If they mingled with the general civilian population, they did it so seamlessly that nobody noticed.

Republic Commando novels show shore leave for clones in the GAR. Take that as you will.

The OT Inside the Worlds mentioned Stormtroopers having secret shockball leagues - they played in the ventilation shafts of ships and space stations.

I imagine it varied by legion and vocational specialization. Older troopers with jobs that encouraged them to think creatively were probably closer to actual people than bioroids. How the Army and Navy units liaised with them probably influenced their behavior as well. I don't buy for a minute that they were meat droids to a man. Just flawlessly professional.

If you have clones who need lots of shore time and recreation...you're doing it wrong or wasting your fucking time and cash.

I can tell you from the point of view of being a active duty soldier, and as a fiction writer, trying to convey my experiences of a soldier's down-time activity to print, and I have found that it is amazingly dull. Or, at least, it is dull to read about.

Drinking, carousing, whoring, and doing Jackass-like stunts for the amusement of your drunken buddies is fun only if you're the one actually doing it. Writing about it, and reading about it, is dull.

Illuminatus Primus wrote:If you have clones who need lots of shore time and recreation...you're doing it wrong or wasting your fucking time and cash.

I'd beg to differ-- the benefit you get from clones is that, as actual organic beings, they can "think creatively" and are more "dynamic" than droids. The price you pay for that, besides the actual money, is knowing that they need relaxing and unwinding time; time to blow off steam and think and dream.

Soldiers that train and drill and drill and train and fight and train and drill and fight and train are going to get burned out and lose their edge, and be combat ineffective.

In a few of the Empire comics, they do show the Stormies having down time, and few are obviously out drinking and trying to impress a woman. So they do enjoy themselves and more then likely use their station as dickwaving.

Though I agree with Coyote's point, it's boring fluff to write about.

Coyote wrote:

Illuminatus Primus wrote:If you have clones who need lots of shore time and recreation...you're doing it wrong or wasting your fucking time and cash.

I'd beg to differ-- the benefit you get from clones is that, as actual organic beings, they can "think creatively" and are more "dynamic" than droids. The price you pay for that, besides the actual money, is knowing that they need relaxing and unwinding time; time to blow off steam and think and dream.

Soldiers that train and drill and drill and train and fight and train and drill and fight and train are going to get burned out and lose their edge, and be combat ineffective.

Then why clone?

Illuminatus Primus wrote:

Coyote wrote:

Illuminatus Primus wrote:If you have clones who need lots of shore time and recreation...you're doing it wrong or wasting your fucking time and cash.

I'd beg to differ-- the benefit you get from clones is that, as actual organic beings, they can "think creatively" and are more "dynamic" than droids. The price you pay for that, besides the actual money, is knowing that they need relaxing and unwinding time; time to blow off steam and think and dream.

Soldiers that train and drill and drill and train and fight and train and drill and fight and train are going to get burned out and lose their edge, and be combat ineffective.

Then why clone?

Loyalty reasons and having secret orders like order 66?

Illuminatus Primus wrote:

Coyote wrote:

Illuminatus Primus wrote:If you have clones who need lots of shore time and recreation...you're doing it wrong or wasting your fucking time and cash.

I'd beg to differ-- the benefit you get from clones is that, as actual organic beings, they can "think creatively" and are more "dynamic" than droids. The price you pay for that, besides the actual money, is knowing that they need relaxing and unwinding time; time to blow off steam and think and dream.

Soldiers that train and drill and drill and train and fight and train and drill and fight and train are going to get burned out and lose their edge, and be combat ineffective.

Then why clone?

what thanas said and at least before the clone wars there was the security/secretcy issue too, recruitment programs at scale needed for the clone army (btw I don't agree with the 3000000 troopers count) aren't so easy to hide especially when consider that due to standards needed for the troopers they would alot of wash outs.

using clones also means you don't have to recruit from the populace, meaning that somebody's sons/daughters/moms/dads don't have to die in some war. AFter all, clones are considered little more than meat droids, so the deaths of a clone will matter very little to civilians.

Plus clones can be more precisely engineered/monitored/trained/conditioned/brainwashed to suit whatever purposes are wished. We know the Clones were both genetically engineered (physically and mentally) for superior capabilities as well as the training/conditioning.

IIRC in one of the old cross sections of the Imperator it has an area labeled as rec facilities and the article (I think it's in the Tech Manual) mentions something about arcades, shopping area's etc.

Coyote wrote:Drinking, carousing, whoring, and doing Jackass-like stunts for the amusement of your drunken buddies is fun only if you're the one actually doing it. Writing about it, and reading about it, is dull.

Ah, good point. That's not something I had thought about.

It makes sense now that I hear it, though.

Quite possibly, it's also a lot easier to use vat-grown flash-educated clones to, oh, open fire on a crowd of protesters with blasters set on "kill" than to get more normally-raised humans to do so; most American soldiers (I hope!) would hesitate at opening fire on even rioters, much less relatively peaceful demonstrators. And using droids to do the same thing would result in a serious backlash after the Clone Wars.

To clone troopers, however, everyone who isn't a clone is "not us," and we've had plenty of examples in Earth history of how easy it is to commit atrocities against people who are "different."

Why clone? Remember, at least in Star Wars, clones can "think creatively" and are more versatile and flexible than Droids. I'd suppose that Clones would be better at using judgement in shoot/no-shoot type situations, situations dealing with civilians on the battlefield, etc. But again, I'm guessing.

The Spartan wrote:What about on board the ship? I would presume there would be facilities for crew entertainment given the, apparently, long cruises they go on, but I've not seen anything in this regards.

The interior of a star destroyer is largely unexplored. There's no reason to assume there aren't moral/welfare/recreation facilities on the larger starships.

Palantas wrote:

The Spartan wrote:What about on board the ship? I would presume there would be facilities for crew entertainment given the, apparently, long cruises they go on, but I've not seen anything in this regards.

The interior of a star destroyer is largely unexplored. There's no reason to assume there aren't moral/welfare/recreation facilities on the larger starships.

Or even a smaller one. There is no reason that every Star Wars Ship wouldn't have our equivelant of a Pool Hall/Rec Lounge as part of the Crew quarters.

Isolder74 wrote:Or even a smaller one. There is no reason that every Star Wars Ship wouldn't have our equivelant of a Pool Hall/Rec
Lounge as part of the Crew quarters.

True. The Millennium Falcon had a room with a...chess table. Han Solo's a nerd.

Palantas wrote:

Isolder74 wrote:Or even a smaller one. There is no reason that every Star Wars Ship wouldn't have our equivelant of a Pool Hall/Rec
Lounge as part of the Crew quarters.

True. The Millennium Falcon had a room with a...chess table. Han Solo's a nerd.

The graphics card kind of sucked though.

Palantas wrote:

Isolder74 wrote:Or even a smaller one. There is no reason that every Star Wars Ship wouldn't have our equivelant of a Pool Hall/Rec
Lounge as part of the Crew quarters.

True. The Millennium Falcon had a room with a...chess table. Han Solo's a nerd.

He also had a Jedi-training laser-ball for some reason.

Drooling Iguana wrote:

Palantas wrote:

Isolder74 wrote:Or even a smaller one. There is no reason that every Star Wars Ship wouldn't have our equivelant of a Pool Hall/Rec
Lounge as part of the Crew quarters.

True. The Millennium Falcon had a room with a...chess table. Han Solo's a nerd.

He also had a Jedi-training laser-ball for some reason.

That was target remote. Non jedi can play target practice

Isolder74 wrote:That was target remote. Non jedi can play target practice

I suppose so. Seems that little fucker'd be hard as hell to hit.

Palantas wrote:

Isolder74 wrote:That was target remote. Non jedi can play target practice

I suppose so. Seems that little fucker'd be hard as hell to hit.

I think that was sort of the point of the device.