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Imperial Army

Posted: 2009-02-14 10:13pm
by Typhonis 1
Is their an Imperial armuy in Star Wars or is he Stormtrooper corps the Imperial army? I`m basing this on SW2 and 3 where no Army was shown other than the clone troopers.

Re: Imperial Army

Posted: 2009-02-14 10:25pm
by Karmic Knight
Why would you use ATOC and ROTS to determine the Imperial force structure?

To answer the question, according to wookkieepedia (grain of salt and all that), yes, the Imperial Army exists. General Tagge being the foremost example of a non-clone officer in the Imperial Army.

As for evidence of their existence, I believe an army, not stormtrooper corps, lieutenant is bribed in Dark Force Rising, but I would have to check to be sure.

Re: Imperial Army

Posted: 2009-02-14 11:05pm
by Ghost Rider
The Imperial Sourcebook as well as a couple points in SW novel do indicate an Imperial Army with a seperate apparatus for the Stormtrooper corps.

Re: Imperial Army

Posted: 2009-02-15 04:59am
by lord Martiya
According to Wookiepedia, the Imperial Army exists and we saw it in the movies as the crew of the walkers. According to the article, the Army operates all of the artillery, the air support and the armour (the Stormtroopers Corps apparently has no vehicles, or at least they're not listed in the STORMTROOPER and the STORMTROOPERS CORPS articles on Wookiepedia), and its infantry units are normally used as garrisons, while in combat they were substitued or augmented with Stormtroopers.
In the Legacy Era, the Army included the Stormtroopers as elite infantry
WOOKIEPEDIA ARTICLE ON THE IMPERIAL ARMY

Re: Imperial Army

Posted: 2009-02-15 11:15am
by Darth Hoth
Not only does the Imperial Army exist, it is the chief ground combat branch; the Stormtroopers are a small elite corps used for the toughest assignments only. They are also known as the Imperial Marines.

(Or at least, this is how it is supposed to be; EU hacks have mostly ignored the Army and replaced it with Stormies. It is seen in WEG sourcebooks, Zahn's stories, some comics, and not often at all elsewhere.)

Re: Imperial Army

Posted: 2009-02-15 01:55pm
by Illuminatus Primus
Ironically, a literal interpretation of Lucas/EU PrequelRot would suggest WEG was dead-on from the start: with a puny force of clones as Jedi housecarls whether they are playing commando, scout, general, or admiral; the facts of the scale require a professional non-clone, non-Jedi-led armed forces. Therefore the Imperial Army and Navy on paper from WEG is presaged by Prequel minimalism combined with sound reasoning. Apparently the clones were simply renamed stormtroopers and without the Jedi for them to follow around anymore were simply attached to the Army and Navy proper, with them taking direct control of the formerly clone-crewed and operated naval and army assets assigned to the Jedi.

Re: Imperial Army

Posted: 2009-02-15 02:12pm
by Drooling Iguana
Are the outfits we normally consider "stormtrooper armour" actually exclusive to stormtroopers? If they were just standard Imperial battle-armour then we might have seen Imperial Army troops countless times during the movies and simply not known it since they weren't identified as such.

Re: Imperial Army

Posted: 2009-02-15 02:21pm
by Darth Hoth
In the EU, no; we are shown in several sources (most prominent are probably Star Wars: X-wing: The Bacta War and various Marvel Comics issues) that Stormtrooper equipment can be seconded to less competent personnel, literally down to planetary militia. So I suppose, some of the encounters might be Army in such battle gear, but that is not what the vast majority of stories would suggest.

Re: Imperial Army

Posted: 2009-02-15 03:58pm
by RogueIce
Well, according to the WEG illustration I've seen on what Army troops look like, the armor was based upon what General Veers wears in TESB and what the AT-ST crew wears in ROTJ. So based on that, we did see the Army in the films. I can't recall if there were any similarly attired troops on the ground during the forest battle on Endor (IIRC the closest to that were the Naval troopers).

EDIT: As mentioned above, Zahn makes a distinction as well. The aformentioned incident in Dark Force Rising described what was, basically, an Army platoon, with stormtroopers being a small but apparently noteworthy part. Additionally in Heir to the Empire when Thrawn leaves a stormtrooper detachment on Myrkr, Pellaeon reacts with some surprise that he'd leave stormtroopers behind, lending credence to their status as a special, elite force.

Re: Imperial Army

Posted: 2009-02-16 09:54pm
by Darth Raptor
During the (Deep) Coreward withdrawal immediately after Endor, a lot of local Imperial leaders started equipping Army infantry with stormtrooper armor to keep up appearances while the genuine articles became increasingly rare (and almost exclusively serving under the Empire proper in the Core and the real Empire in the Deep Core). Before then, Army and Marine infantry were supposedly more visually delineated, with the former looking, as noted above, like Veers and the AT-ST crewmen from the movies.