The Size of the Droid Army "Retconned"

Mange · Post by **Mange** » 2006-04-09 01:21pm

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

Adrian Laguna · Post by **Adrian Laguna** » 2006-04-09 01:42pm

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".

Hawkwings · Post by **Hawkwings** » 2006-04-09 01:54pm

I wonder how mere "hundreds of millions" of droids could nearly defeat the republic?

Adrian Laguna · Post by **Adrian Laguna** » 2006-04-09 01:55pm

I wonder how hundreds of millions of droids would be capable of holding more than a few planets.

Cao Cao · Post by **Cao Cao** » 2006-04-09 01:58pm

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: "...."

Master of Ossus · Post by **Master of Ossus** » 2006-04-09 02:00pm

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.

Hawkwings · Post by **Hawkwings** » 2006-04-09 02:02pm

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?

white_rabbit · Post by **white_rabbit** » 2006-04-09 02:22pm

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.

Adrian Laguna · Post by **Adrian Laguna** » 2006-04-09 02:30pm

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.

Noble Ire · Post by **Noble Ire** » 2006-04-09 02:47pm

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.

VT-16 · Post by **VT-16** » 2006-04-09 03:05pm

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.

Grand Admiral Thrawn · Post by **Grand Admiral Thrawn** » 2006-04-09 03:11pm

Perhaps it will next be revealed Dooku isn't made up of trillions of cells, but instead is a microbe in a petri dish.

Cao Cao · Post by **Cao Cao** » 2006-04-09 03:20pm

Also, Tarkin's reference to the million systems of the Empire was an error due to bad intelligence!

Post by **NecronLord** » 2006-04-09 03:59pm

The Republic Senate is Bad Intelligence. There are only 3 planets in the Republic, Alderann, Naboo, and Coruscant.

nightmare · Post by **nightmare** » 2006-04-09 04:26pm

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*

Cao Cao · Post by **Cao Cao** » 2006-04-09 04:33pm

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!

Mange · Post by **Mange** » 2006-04-09 04:44pm

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?

Cao Cao · Post by **Cao Cao** » 2006-04-09 04:51pm

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!

nightmare · Post by **nightmare** » 2006-04-09 04:53pm

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.

Luzifer's right hand · Post by **Luzifer's right hand** » 2006-04-09 05:13pm

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

Grand Admiral Thrawn · Post by **Grand Admiral Thrawn** » 2006-04-09 05:21pm

Forget ground troops, the CIS would have trouble crew all its ships ("millions" according to the ROTS ICS) with a few hundred million droids.

The Original Nex · Post by **The Original Nex** » 2006-04-09 05:23pm

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.

Cao Cao · Post by **Cao Cao** » 2006-04-09 05:27pm

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.

Lazarus · Post by **Lazarus** » 2006-04-09 05:37pm

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'?

Jim Raynor · Post by **Jim Raynor** » 2006-04-09 05:42pm

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.