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The Size of the Droid Army "Retconned"
Posted: 2006-04-09 01:21pm
by Mange
According to a poster on the TFN forums, the retconn that was promised by Traviss in Insider #87 is this:
* the three million figure for the GAR is for clones produced on Kamino only, secret facilities were also constructed on Coruscant.
* due to bad intelligence, the Republic overestimated the size of the droid army. It was made up of "hundreds of millions" of droids.
Link: +
http://boards.theforce.net/literature/b ... 3566376/p7
Posted: 2006-04-09 01:42pm
by Adrian Laguna
Bad intelligence? BAD INTELLIGENCE!!?? What the flying fuck? This is like saying that the US overestimated China's army. It's not 5 million men, the PLA is just five drunks with military uniforms and Ak-47s. All because of "bad intelligence".
Posted: 2006-04-09 01:54pm
by Hawkwings
I wonder how mere "hundreds of millions" of droids could nearly defeat the republic?
Posted: 2006-04-09 01:55pm
by Adrian Laguna
I wonder how hundreds of millions of droids would be capable of holding more than a few planets.
Posted: 2006-04-09 01:58pm
by Cao Cao
Adrian Laguna wrote:I wonder how hundreds of millions of droids would be capable of holding more than a few planets.
Bad intelligence!!!1
Single droid on planet: "WE'LL NEVER GET AWAY WITH THIS."
Drunk moron: "*hic!* Yesh.. millionsh of droidsh.. on one planet alone.. serioshly.."
Republic sector commander: "The drunk can't be lying! RETREAT!!!"
Single droid on planet: "...."
Posted: 2006-04-09 02:00pm
by Master of Ossus
Since the Republic used over 3,000,000 clones in the Battle of Muunilist alone, and since each clone is allegedly worth 200 droids over the course of 6 months, it seems that the forces at the Battle of Muunilist single-handedly took on virtually the entire droid army. Nice job, Karen, yet again you demonstrate your unbelievable powers of stupidity.
Yet another Travissite travesty.
Posted: 2006-04-09 02:02pm
by Hawkwings
seriously, I'm tired of this whole "OMG! A billion is a big number! That's too many, we have to make it smaller, to make it more 'realistic' and 'believable'! Yep, a billion's too many! Let's just make an army big enough to put one soldier and each of our planets and be done with it! Yep! No matter that we have thousands of planets worth of materials and manpower! A billion's too big!"
Are people afraid of big numbers or something?
Posted: 2006-04-09 02:22pm
by white_rabbit
Are people afraid of big numbers or something?
Pretty much,
plus its very difficult for apparently most people to comprehend the scale, which is why SD.neters for example were impressed, but not surprised by "quintillions of droids" and "millions of starships" But most other boards reacted like Ms Traviss has done.
Posted: 2006-04-09 02:30pm
by Adrian Laguna
I'm starting to see parallels to the difference between fundies and moderate/liberal Christians. Observe:
Junghalli wrote:Really, I can't understand these nimrods. If the universe is older, bigger, and more complex than the Bible says doesn't that just mean greater glory to God? They should be happy about it. Really, which one seems more impressive to you, a God who created the universe in six days six thousand years ago or a God who created the universe over a period of more than ten billion years and probably still considers it an ongoing project?
Our Earth is just one planet of one star out of a galaxy that contains 200 billion stars and is only one of hundreds of billions of galaxies. The entirety of recorded human history is a blink of an eye compared to the timescales of the universe. If anything this really makes me appreciate the awesome scale and grandeur of God's works. It's a humbling lesson in how great He is. But no, these creationist dumbfucks scream, my God is a little God and I want him to stay that way! They're just small-minded people who don't want to come to grips with the idea of a big universe.
Enphasis mine, when I think about people going apeshit over big numbers in Star Wars, it reminds me of that.
Posted: 2006-04-09 02:47pm
by Noble Ire
That's it, fuck Karen Traviss. I'm through trying to hold out any hope for her. She's just as bad as McEwok and his gibbering brood of minimalistic shits. I simply don't understand these people.
Posted: 2006-04-09 03:05pm
by VT-16
And she's been bitching about people with "an agenda towards her" writing on the Wookiepedia (about "Fandalorians" and stuff like that).
Then there's the remarks she made on the OS blogs which boiled down to "I didn't know about the ITW:AOTC clone-figure, but since other authors also fucked up, I'm not to blame".
She's excusing poor research and continuity by saying "I'm not the only one who fucked up!!11" and following her own personal agenda where the CW were nothing more than a series of spec-ops. Going from singular commando missions to treating the entire war like that. Yet another fine credit to the EU's name.
Posted: 2006-04-09 03:11pm
by Grand Admiral Thrawn
Perhaps it will next be revealed Dooku isn't made up of trillions of cells, but instead is a microbe in a petri dish.
Posted: 2006-04-09 03:20pm
by Cao Cao
Also, Tarkin's reference to the million systems of the Empire was an error due to bad intelligence!
Posted: 2006-04-09 03:59pm
by NecronLord
The Republic Senate is Bad Intelligence. There are only 3 planets in the Republic, Alderann, Naboo, and Coruscant.
Posted: 2006-04-09 04:26pm
by nightmare
Even the Trade Federation blockade at Naboo could hold over a billion battledroids by the simple estimate of 10,000 TFBs x 139,000 droids, not counting Vultures which actually can hold ground too. AATs and MTTs not included, either.
Nice work, fixing a big mistake by making an even bigger one so the first one isn't noticed anymore. *sarcasm dripping*
Posted: 2006-04-09 04:33pm
by Cao Cao
nightmare wrote:Even the Trade Federation blockade at Naboo could hold over a billion battledroids by the simple estimate of 10,000 TFBs x 139,000 droids, not counting Vultures which actually can hold ground too. AATs and MTTs not included, either.
Nice work, fixing a big mistake by making an even bigger one so the first one isn't noticed anymore. *sarcasm dripping*
And this doesn't even count the Techno Union's droids, or that in one Geonosian factory we see battle droids being mass-produced at a very fast rate.
Or maybe what we see is bad intelligence too! I know, those Trade Federation battleships in Episode I are all holograms!
Posted: 2006-04-09 04:44pm
by Mange
Master of Ossus wrote:Since the Republic used over 3,000,000 clones in the Battle of Muunilist alone
Interesting. Is there a source for this?
Posted: 2006-04-09 04:51pm
by Cao Cao
Oh hey here's more figures that would make the downsizers cry.
Recusant-class light destroyer
Carries up to 40,000 battle droids
Munificent-class star frigate
Carries up to 150,000 battle droids
Providence-class carrier/destroyer
Carries up to 1.5 million battle droids
Source: Episode III ICS.
We only see.. what.. thousands of the first two in Episode III?
And we know there's another Providence class in the CIS, possibly more!
Posted: 2006-04-09 04:53pm
by nightmare
Cao Cao wrote:And this doesn't even count the Techno Union's droids, or that in one Geonosian factory we see battle droids being mass-produced at a very fast rate.
Or maybe what we see is bad intelligence too! I know, those Trade Federation battleships in Episode I are all holograms!
Probably, along with the entire battle of Coruscant. 1000 Venators x 6,912 clonetroopers; almost 7 million just there, gunners not included. Niiice.
EDIT: Since Karen Traviss invented the degrading and misdirected word "Talifan" and it continues to spread among the barely literate, I'm going to name her continuously and stubbornly repeated failings a "Tavissty". As in, yet another travissty.
Posted: 2006-04-09 05:13pm
by Luzifer's right hand
Cao Cao wrote:Oh hey here's more figures that would make the downsizers cry.
Recusant-class light destroyer
Carries up to 40,000 battle droids
Munificent-class star frigate
Carries up to 150,000 battle droids
Providence-class carrier/destroyer
Carries up to 1.5 million battle droids
Source: Episode III ICS.
We only see.. what.. thousands of the first two in Episode III?
And we know there's another Providence class in the CIS, possibly more!
Obviously all fleets of both sides were at Coruscant.
Also the ships can carry
up to 40k, 150k and 1,500k battle droids, certainly this was a design mistake and they carried only a handful most of the time.
J/K
Posted: 2006-04-09 05:21pm
by Grand Admiral Thrawn
Forget ground troops, the CIS would have trouble crew all its ships ("millions" according to the ROTS ICS) with a few hundred million droids.
Posted: 2006-04-09 05:23pm
by The Original Nex
How can the Republic have made such a massive overestimation of the droid forces when General Grievous also seems to be under the impression that he has quintillion of droids (as seen in Abel Pena's short story in last month's Insider).
This "retconn" is immediately overridden by the ICS anyhow.
Posted: 2006-04-09 05:27pm
by Cao Cao
Grand Admiral Thrawn wrote:Forget ground troops, the CIS would have trouble crew all its ships ("millions" according to the ROTS ICS) with a few hundred million droids.
Well not crew exactly, according to the ICS a Providence-class such as the
Invisible Hand is largely automated, only requiring a crew of 600.
The figures are for deactivated cargo, for planetary invasions I'd guess.
Of course if the CIS didn't have the resources to fill these ships to capacity they wouldn't need a carrier as large as a Providence to begin with.
EDIT: Also these figures possibly do not include the gunners, or the on-board compliments of Vultures and Tri-Fighters, all droids too.
Posted: 2006-04-09 05:37pm
by Lazarus
How do people like this get into the top echelons of EU writing? Don't they have to sign a contract saying 'I promise not to fuck up George Lucas's creation by twisting it to my own personal idea of what Star Wars should be like'?
Posted: 2006-04-09 05:42pm
by Jim Raynor
Oh joy, we've finally gotten Traviss' "much anticipated" retcon.
Hey, we have to give it to her, at least this time she's striving for
self consistency. While each trooper was worth hundreds of droids before, they would still have been swarmed to hell by the quadrillions of droids at the Confederacy's disposal. Now, the CIS army has been reduced to a more sensible hundreds of millions to match.
She really did a great job upping the size of the GAR. Now, 3 million is just what Kamino produced. There was a second secret facility on Coruscant. What does that add up to, 6 million?
I'm going over to TF.net to see how the EU anti-wankers are responding to this. They probably love it.