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Warning. Shatterpoint Spoilers.





Goddamn it!

Why do morons keep insisting that a galactic army can number 1.2 million troops?

GL fed us that idiocy, Republic 50 and Inside the Worlds of AOTC failed to reinterprete "units" intelligently, and Stover openly says:

Shatterpoint wrote:The Kaminoan clone troopers are not only the best soldiers we have, they are very nearly our only soldiers. We would use them to train civilian volunteers and law-enforcement personnel in weapons and tactics, but the Separatists have managed to keep nearly all 1.2 million of them fully engaged, rushing from system to system and planet to planet to meet probing attacks from the bewildering variety of war droids that the TechnoUnion, with the financial backing of the Trade Federation, turns out in seemingly unlimited quantities.

And this is almost six fucking months into the war.

Fucktards!

Holy Shit! The clone troopers take up about half of the army. An army of about 2 and a half million troops trying to keep control of a whole galaxy! WTF are these people thinking?

Well, if we wanna go real deep into semantics, "all 1.2 million of them" doesn't neccesarily mean 'them' = single soldier. It could still mean 'them' = the 'unit' of undefined size.

Alas, EU writers (and fuck, GL himself) are retards.

Is anyone suprised by this? There are two definate schools of thought in the EU. One is from the Zahn school of thought, where major battles are fought by dozens of warships involving thousands of troops. There are many examples of this from both the EU and particualrly the movies. The Battle of Endor, the single most important battle in the movies involved less than a hundred ships. Perhaps even less than 50. Hardly cominsurate with the thousands of ships readily available according to the second school of thought.

The second school emphasizes the size of the SW galaxy. It focusses on hundreds of ships, millions of troops, emphasizing how vast this galactic society is.

Unfortunately it is my opinion that GL is of the first school of thought. Mind you in ANH only one Stardestroyer is pursuing the Tantive IV. Surely if we have thousands of SD spread across the galaxy we could have roused more than 1 to chase down the Tantive IV right? Surely the Deathstar would have had an escort protecting it. That recently bothered me when I though more about it, why was the prize battlestation of the EMpire left on tis own, wiothout at least a few stardestroyers as escort. After all what were a handful of stardestroyers for the Empire?

I suggest that GL has NO CONCEPT of the actual scale of his galaxy. He has no idea what sort of military would be needed to police it or even war in it.

Millions of troops in GL's mind are more than enough. A legion of your best troops are more than enough to protect a bunker from a determined rebellion. It takes an entire starfleet of thousands of SD's to find a handful of rebel ships in ROTJ. The fleet assembled with the simgular purpose of extinguishing the rebellion is composed of at most 20 ships (novelization) or 6 if you only accept screen eveidence.

So for the EU faithful out there I think that GL is not on the same page as the rest of you. (Which also means I have to start scaling back some of these battles in the Twilight War )

Not true; he's lacking consistency. He obviously sees planet-wide cities, dozens of mile-long ships just to crush some pitiful rebels. A planet busting station built in months nearly a thousand km across.

Look at TPM--huge battleships larger than the destroyers of the OT--stretch horizon to horizon. Countless senators.

Look at the battle droids. Dozens made per minute. Tens of thousands a day.

I just can't fathom why the hell he said "1.2 million" and "1,000" when "countless billions" (:twisted:) and "a thousand generations" is that much more epic and grand.

In truth--the epic-ness of SW comes from common sense and scientific knowledge, combined with canon SW--at least until this latest GL flub.

Thanks George.

This is a common problem in sci-fi.

B5 had 250K killed in a 'devestating war', with a 'massive assault' consisting of five or six ships, and utterly homogenous fleets comprised entirely of fighters and one or two types of cruisers.

ST had 2000 soldiers being considered enough to hold an entire planet.

SG:SG1 had four or five people rountinely kicking ass on huge space-empires.

Hell, the only recent televised or movied sci-fi in my memory that *didn't* seem to have this problem was 'Firefly', and it was only on half a season.

But WHO in the right mind thinks millions in an army is anywhere near enough on a galactic scale.

Earth's nations can field better than the Grand Army.

Anyone try for a fix?

Darth Garden Gnome wrote:Well, if we wanna go real deep into semantics, "all 1.2 million of them" doesn't neccesarily mean 'them' = single soldier. It could still mean 'them' = the 'unit' of undefined size.

Still the sentence prior to that refers to troopers rather than units, which implies (though admittedly doesn't state outright) that the "them" pronoun refers to troopers specifically rather than a unit.

Alas, EU writers (and fuck, GL himself) are retards.

Sarcasm aside, I don't know if we can hang this one on Stover's head. For all we know, that number might have come down from on-high. Didn't Stackpole mention once that he'd heard about the Super Star Destroyer "8km fallacy" but was stuck with it anyway because it was now official?

I'll admit to a slight bias, though, as I enjoyed Shatterpoint, if nothing else because of the "Star Wars does Apocalypse Now" bit (particularly the points about the difficulties of peacemakers trying to play soldier) and because Stover managed to work oblique references to the word "fuck" into the book twice. Yeah, it's immature for me to be so easily amused by that. So fucking what?

-- Joe Momma

Well, I managed to work the word "fuck" into a lot of the NJO books I've read, but it's not quite the same thing...

Simply as a mobile fire brigade for a front, 1.2 million clone troopers with long range transport and there heavy equipment could provide a fair amount of firepower, especially since the driod armies suck ever so badly. But as the whole force? No fucking way, add many zeros.

The only way this could be rationalized is if we still try to make the 1.2 refer to units, or if this is only in referance to units directly under the control of the Republic, while hundreds of billions more troops are under the command of loyal system forces but are not very mobile for lack of long range military transports.

Sea Skimmer wrote:The only way this could be rationalized is if we still try to make the 1.2 refer to units, or if this is only in referance to units directly under the control of the Republic, while hundreds of billions more troops are under the command of loyal system forces but are not very mobile for lack of long range military transports.

This holds promise.

Inside the Worlds and Republic 50 talk about the 1.2 million like the expeditionary force directly attached to Tipoca City.

Shatterpoint can be shoehorned into 1.2 million units or the 1.2 million troops free for clearing major assaults and such--that is, the only available clones not tied up by something are the 1.2 million expeditionary force, which is the only one w/ promise and thus the one they need when talking about helping to train new civilian forces.

If you think of "the only troops" as the "only troops available" than it becomes possible.

Illuminatus Primus wrote:But WHO in the right mind thinks millions in an army is anywhere near enough on a galactic scale.

Earth's nations can field better than the Grand Army.

Anyone try for a fix?

Maybe they're Texas Rangers?

"You only sent one soldier?"
"Well, you only got one planet, don't ya?"

The Grand Army might be heavily supported by local militia forces. In Shatterpoint, there's mention that many of the Jedi have been sent to raise such local forces. That's what prompted the quote that started the thread, namely that the Clone Troopers would be doing that themselves if the Republic weren't so short of troops that they couldn't spare the clones from the frontlines.

It sounds like the Clone Troopers would be doing Green Beret-style training of the indigenous populations to wage war if the Republic wasn't hurtin' for meat to feed into the Separatist grinder. Which brings us back to the point of the thread -- I'd actually say Stover's pointing out that 1.2 million isn't enough for the Republic, which is why those elite troops are being used as frontline infantry rather than as special support for regular forces and local militia.

-- Joe Momma

Also, I'd like to ask in total and honest ignorance (as I haven't been following any of the EU Clone Wars material other than having read Shatterpoint), how much of the galaxy is actually involved in a shooting war at this time? Is there mass warfare in a lot of places or is it still mostly political/economic? If most of the conflict involves political and economic sanctions and deals trying to vie for the loyalty of various systems with actual combat only breaking out sporadically at places of major importance, then the lower numbers become a bit more understandable.

FWIW, I think the 1.2 million referring to as-yet-undefined units as opposed to individual soldiers would be more realistic, but what little I've seen so far leads me to believe that offcially they mean 1.2 million troopers, as silly as it might be.

-- Joe Momma

Edit: accidentally wrote "billion" instead of "million". Crap, I don't think even that would fix it.

1.2 million isn't even enough to train a galactic army. It's not even close to enough. What were they thinking?

There should be over 1.2 million Generals in the Republic Army.

Illuminatus Primus wrote:There should be over 1.2 million Generals in the Republic Army.

Seriously. 1.2 million doesn't even come close to putting one soldier on every planet, let alone defend the entire Republic.

Are there any good general resources regarding ratios of number of military personnel to general population in RL? I realize this would vary vastly even in a single army depending on circumstances and shifts in doctrine, but any numbers would be of interest, I think.

Similar comparisons of number of officers to enlisted troops and discussion of trends as technology changes might also be illuminating. I assume most of the information is out there, but I'd also guess that some of the posters here could suggest good resources faster than I could research 'em.

-- Joe Momma

Master of Ossus wrote:Seriously. 1.2 million doesn't even come close to putting one soldier on every planet, let alone defend the entire Republic.

That's why I'm wondering how many actual planets are being militarily contested. Does the Republic even have a million planets at this point? There are apparently entire regions of the galaxy where the Republic has no influence such as Tatooine and they apparently didn't even have ships to send in to inspect the Naboo situation during TPM without special senatorial action.

I'm not suggesting that 1.2 million troopers would be enough to cover even a fraction of the Republic, BTW. I'm just trying to find out how large the actual operating theatre is, which might in turn suggest how many troops would be needed.

-- Joe Momma

Joe Momma wrote:Are there any good general resources regarding ratios of number of military personnel to general population in RL? I realize this would vary vastly even in a single army depending on circumstances and shifts in doctrine, but any numbers would be of interest, I think.

Well North Korea has about 3.5% of its population in its active military, while the US has around .6% of its population in its active military.

Stravo wrote:The fleet assembled with the simgular purpose of extinguishing the rebellion is composed of at most 20 ships (novelization) or 6 if you only accept screen eveidence.

You haven't seen ROTJ in a long time? There are easily over 20 ISDs on screen when you see the Falcon leading the fighters towards the Imperial fleet (the shot just before "fighters coming in").

Master of Ossus wrote:

Illuminatus Primus wrote:There should be over 1.2 million Generals in the Republic Army.

Seriously. 1.2 million doesn't even come close to putting one soldier on every planet, let alone defend the entire Republic.

I know, the police force in just a small section of Coruscant (say the SW precinct) should have over 1.2 million on-"street" personnel.

Naboo's paramilitary/guard forces over the planet and all her territories probably should've amounted to 1.2 million.

It is simply rediculous.

Vympel wrote:

Stravo wrote:The fleet assembled with the simgular purpose of extinguishing the rebellion is composed of at most 20 ships (novelization) or 6 if you only accept screen eveidence.

You haven't seen ROTJ in a long time? There are easily over 20 ISDs on screen when you see the Falcon leading the fighters towards the Imperial fleet (the shot just before "fighters coming in").

I forgot to add that I meant in ESB

Stravo wrote:

Vympel wrote:

Stravo wrote:The fleet assembled with the simgular purpose of extinguishing the rebellion is composed of at most 20 ships (novelization) or 6 if you only accept screen eveidence.

You haven't seen ROTJ in a long time? There are easily over 20 ISDs on screen when you see the Falcon leading the fighters towards the Imperial fleet (the shot just before "fighters coming in").

I forgot to add that I meant in ESB

ESB was purely to awe us in grandeur.

Remember the huge takeforever to scroll by Star Destroyer from the opening of ANH?

Well now we have Vader's ship, a black monstrosity with hellish red engines like the tongues of demons with a hangar that dwarfs the same ship which awed us in the last movie.

We have more SDs than every before and they're mere ants before the new grandiose Imperial wonder.

*sigh*

1.2 million MAKES SENSE.

Absurdly low? Yes. That's why it fits.

The Clone wars are suppossed to be absolutly devestating. Horrendus in their level in destruction for a galaxy spanning republic.

Which is why the small number of clones makes sense. The Republic would have to use numerous WMD all ovewr the place to make up the difference in Army sizes. BDZ, orbital strikes, mass drivers, whole planets would need to be lay to waste to wipe out the sheer number of droids. Then, as Mace says in the book, the sector forces and volunteer/conscripted civillians would have to make up the bulk of the Republic military. Famalies destroyed when their loved ones perish and their homes and jobs vanish in the flash of an orbital strike.

We are talking about a civillization which considers entire species being wiped out when their sun goes Nova nothing of importance (Tales of the Bounty Hunters, Boba Fett). You would need to devestate hundreds of thousands of planets, kill trillions of civillians and soldiers, to make them notice at all. And this war is suppossed to be so bad that whole planets lay down all arms because they never want to see anything like that again. Think about all the worlds destroyed in the Galactic civil war between the Empire and the Rebels. Suppossedly that was nothing compared to the havoc wrought by the clone wars.

The republic having a small amout of troops that are used for swift strikes, not a taking and holding action and having to destroy planets wholesale by BDZ, use orbital strikes against trops and civillians, and use bio and chem agents to make up the difference is the only way to explain how so much damage could be done. It fits. It fits with the canon statements of the armie's size, it fits with what we should expect. The number works.

even if you destroy cities, you need to take ground. . .