The Size of the Droid Army "Retconned"

Stark · Post by **Stark** » 2006-04-28 10:23pm

Yeah. When you realise that these troops were NOT governor bodyguards, but tools of control for Palpatine, it's clear that there would have been the regiment on every capitol world, following every governor, watching his residences etc. Especially after Order 66 (if people found out how it was given) who would argue with the thousands of clones there to 'protect' you?

IceHawk-181 · Post by **IceHawk-181** » 2006-04-28 10:44pm

I wonder how this will be challenged by the minimalist factions...

It would appear I have been arguing from a slightly incorrect premise.
I had thought my personal recollection of Tarkin’s braggadocio in A New Hope was correct, it was not.

I shall repeat these two quotes yet again, as they are of prime importance to a clear Canon statement of a larger Clone Army.

Bail leaned forward. His eyes were hard as chips of stone.
“Palpatine no longer has to worry about controlling the Senate. By placing his own lackeys as governors over every planet in the Republic, he controls our systems directly.” (pg 204, ROTS Hardcover Edition)

“You may not know that the new governors are arriving with full regiments of clone troops…what they call security forces.” – Senator Chi Eekway at a meeting in Senator Padme’s Living Room. (pg 237, ROTS Hardcover Edition)

These two statements make a few things clear, in the first that Palpatine has appointed Governors to oversee every planet in the Republic, second that those Governors would appear to have system-level authority, and thirdly that the Senate was unaware that the Governors brought with them each a full Regiment of Clone Soldiers.

Perpend, Bail is speaking in the present tense, the Governors have already been deployed and are actively arriving in their systems, as per Senator’s Ewkway’s statements.

These quotations are somewhat ambiguous, as we cannot clearly define the number of systems in the Galactic Republic. Shatterpoint apparently mentioned 1.2 million planets in the Republic even after, as Lucas wrote in the Prologue, “Dooku was able to persuade thousands of star systems to secede from the Republic”. Combined with the “50 million colonies” attributed to the Empire from other sources, we are left with something of a quandary.

System Governors each command a Regiment of Clones as they assume Palptine’s new policy of establishing local, “security-forces.”

The question I encountered here was, how many systems were there?

The answer comes from Grand Moff Tarkin.
“This station is the final link in a new-forged Imperial chain which will bind the million systems of the galactic Empire together once and for all.” (ANH, pg 101)

We have, now, direct quotes from the Movie Novelizations establishing….

1) Governors now preside over every planet, and by extension system, in the Republic.
2) Governors are arriving, unbeknownst to most Senators, at their posts with full Clone Regiments.
3) There are one million systems in the Galactic Empire, and by extension the Galactic Republic.

The Order of Battle for the Grand Army of the Republic establishes a Regiment as 2,304 Clone Soldiers.

Therein lies, at minimum some 2,304,000,000 Clones being deployed to garrison every system in the Republic/Empire.

I wonder if Karen thinks her Retconn covers this?

It's hard to read on two of the template types and thus an annoyance. Changed back to regular. ~GR

Fire Fly · Post by **Fire Fly** » 2006-04-28 10:50pm

Just to get a better idea for comparison, what was the size of an Imperial army regiment?

IceHawk-181 · Post by **IceHawk-181** » 2006-04-28 10:57pm

I am actually not sure about that part of the Imperial Army's OOB, all I have is this...

Sector Army (2 Systems Armies) – 774,576 Soldiers
System Army (8 Corps) – 387,288 Soldiers
Army (4 Corps) – 193,644 Soldiers
Corps (5 Battlegroups) – 48,411 Soldiers
Battlegroup – 9,682 Soldiers

Fire Fly · Post by **Fire Fly** » 2006-04-28 10:58pm

Well, since I don't have the Imperial Sourcebook on hand, I refered to wookieepdiea (for what its worth) and it mentions that Imperial regiments had 2500 combat troops and 1500 support personnel. Seems pretty consistent with the GAR order of battle [for a regiment]. I think its safe to assume these regiments were merely the governor's personal escorts.

EDIT: insterted bracketted entry, in light of Imperial army OOB.

IceHawk-181 · Post by **IceHawk-181** » 2006-04-28 11:01pm

Well, here is an augmented Imperial Army (According to Domus....)

Sector Army (4 Systems Armies) – 11,153,664 Soldiers

System Army (4 Armies) – 2,788,416 Soldiers

Army (8 Corps) – 697,104 Soldiers

Corp (9 Battlegroups) – 87,138 Soldiers

Battlegroup – 9,682 Soldiers

Notice the disparity in both figures for a GAR "army" and an Imperial "army".

The Republic, even in the Clone Wars, was pitifull.

Fire Fly · Post by **Fire Fly** » 2006-04-28 11:05pm

Pathetic. The 3 million clone army is only able to take on a standard Imperial systems army.

Adrian Laguna · Post by **Adrian Laguna** » 2006-04-28 11:09pm

The Original Nex wrote:It seems like this new mod over there has gone edit and delete happy. Perhaps the mod-buttons have gotten to his head?

Like I said: get paranoid, take screenshots.

IceHawk-181 wrote:-snip horrid coloring-

Gah! Wrong color, WRONG COLOR. MY EYES, OH MY POOR, POOR EYES!!!!

Seriously, that color does not go well with the forum's default color scheme. Hard to read.

IceHawk-181 · Post by **IceHawk-181** » 2006-04-28 11:19pm

Well I liked the blue! humph......

Yeah, a single augmented Imperial Army could spank the entire GAR. Kind of why I like the Pre-Clone material of the EU. The older authors and source books had some idea about scale.

Post by **Surlethe** » 2006-04-29 12:15am

VT-16 wrote:Note, the dots of clones extend into the far background.

If you're using the AotC scene to argue, there are at least 28,000 clones in that scene -- at least 1% of the entire Grand Army of the Republic for the duration of the Clone Wars was present at one place in the capital. This should strike the reader as absurd, given the planetary scale.

Mange · Post by **Mange** » 2006-04-29 02:09am

Master of Ossus wrote:
Mange the Swede wrote:Yeah, Cloak of Deception states that Palpatine was senator of Naboo as well as 32 other inhabited planets.

EDIT: I checked CoD and it was actually 36 other planets. My mistake.
Posted. Thanks, Mange.

I had completely forgotten it, but the same novel also states that Senator Horox Ryyder represented "thousands of worlds" in the Raioballo sector.

Post by **Vympel** » 2006-04-29 02:42am

GUYS!

The 3,000,000 sound off thread is GOOGLE CACHED.

I suggest everyone fucking grab a copy. Now.

Post by **Vympel** » 2006-04-29 02:43am

Link to the google cache

Link

Someone host it!

EDIT: ah crap, how do we get into the individual pages?

Post by **Surlethe** » 2006-04-29 02:46am

Vympel wrote:GUYS!

The 3,000,000 sound off thread is GOOGLE CACHED.

I suggest everyone fucking grab a copy. Now.

I've got the first page, and I can have it up on geocities for download in a matter of moments, I think.

Post by **Vympel** » 2006-04-29 02:48am

All three would be preferable- Can people remember phrases from posts on the second and third pages to plug into google?

Mange · Post by **Mange** » 2006-04-29 02:48am

Vympel wrote:Link to the google cache

Link

Someone host it!

EDIT: ah crap, how do we get into the individual pages?

Do a Google search for >>Community Sound Off Thread: 3 million clones<<. I've managed to save the first page at least.

EDIT: Surlethe beat me to it.

EDIT 2: I've had no luck with the two remaining pages.

Post by **Surlethe** » 2006-04-29 02:51am

Here -- zipped file.

EDIT: fucking tags.

The Dark · Post by **The Dark** » 2006-04-29 02:51am

Dp4m wrote:Also -- what's a regiment? (To me a regiment is 108, a battalion is 36, a company is 12 and a lance is 4).

Y'know, some people actually ask veterans about this stuff when they need to pull numbers out their ass. I was talking online to an acquaintance who's retired (can't recall Army or Marines at the moment - it's 2:37AM, give me a break) and he basically broke it down thus as the "theoretical" units:

Corps: 65,536 personnel
Division: 16,384
Brigade: 4,096
Battalion: 1,024
Company: 256
Platoon: 32
Troop: 16
Squad: 8
Fireteam: 4

Now, i'm fairly certain this dates back to the Vietnam-era army, but the general levels hold. A regiment consists of at least two battalions, so the smallest infantry regiment on paper would be 2,048 soldiers, or nearly twenty times the size of a BattleTech armored regiment.

Connor MacLeod · Post by **Connor MacLeod** » 2006-04-29 02:52am

scale of the Empire:

SW RPG, 2nd edition revised, page 6 wrote: "Before you can adventure in the galaxy, you better know something about it. First off, its big - the Empire rules billions of worlds. Me, I've never seen a billion of anything, and you haven't either."

Shadows of the Empire Sourcebook, page 74 wrote: The civilization of the Galactic Empire spans billions of stars, from Coruscant - the heart of the Empire - to remote Outer Rim worlds like Tatooine and Gall."

Fire Fly · Post by **Fire Fly** » 2006-04-29 03:55am

Was there a reason for the mods to even delete the thread? Too many people speaking out against the 3 million number?

Mange · Post by **Mange** » 2006-04-29 03:29pm

Here we have Dark Moose again (from the OS forum Ask Karen thread):

Ms. Traviss did not set that number [the three million]. This is a classic mistake people keep making over and over

and over...

and over...

and over again. Don't feel bad, but do feel corrected.

Source: +http://forums.starwars.com/thread.jspa? ... start=1395 (Beware, there are talifans in there now.

)

What about:

Karen Traviss wrote:So there you have it, folks. Whatever figure we opted for would have been wrong in the real world at one end of the equation or the other. Ryan and I settled for middle ground with the numbers we had to work with, and even as someone who's worked in the defence world, I could live with it in context.

Source: +http://blogs.starwars.com/karentraviss/28/comments (Note: Of course, the other arguments she puts forward in this blog entry about Kamino are, as we know from AOTC:ItW, completely wrong.)

Ryan Kaufman wrote:LFL was very clear to us that no fixed number of total clones would or could be assigned.

Source: +http://boards.theforce.net/literature/b ... 603019/p10

Traviss described how she and Kaufman decided on the numbers and Kaufman states that LFL said "no fixed numbers", so just who gave them the number?

Lord Poe · Post by **Lord Poe** » 2006-04-29 03:35pm

Watch this thread for major spin-doctoring, folks:

+http://forums.starwars.com/thread.jspa? ... &#14695890

VT-16 · Post by **VT-16** » 2006-04-29 03:50pm

at least 28,000 clones in that scene

Heh, if those clones were in the same kind of formation (I know some weren't), then I counted several tens of thousands in one of those rows. Alone.

Probably several 100, 000 in that one parade.

Archon · Post by **Archon** » 2006-04-29 04:08pm

VT-16 wrote:
at least 28,000 clones in that scene
Heh, if those clones were in the same kind of formation (I know some weren't), then I counted several tens of thousands in one of those rows. Alone.

Probably several 100, 000 in that one parade.

Which would fit in closely with the number of Acclamators sighted.

IceHawk-181 · Post by **IceHawk-181** » 2006-04-29 05:30pm

Well, I’m basically done arguing the point for a while.

I am just going to throw quotes at them now, as we have plenty.

Whats a Governor? Dunno…lets ask the Imperial Source Book
What’s a System? Dunno…lets ask the Imperial Source Books.
What’s a Regiment? Dunno…lets ask the GAR OOB.
How many Clones on a Venator? Dunno…lets ask ROTS.

This is almost to easy…