Could the Fulminatrix have pierced the Raddus's shields?

[ray245]

Uh, excuse me, the clone troopers were all Mandalorian super soldiers who could each personally take on millions of combat droids and win. Duh.

The odds might not have mattered so much if the droids you are talking about includes all the droids in supporting tasks, and for policing duties. So the actual number of combat droids at the frontline might be much smaller than people think.

The Clone army can be explained as the number of active frontline clone troopers.

The number disparity is still problematic, but we can make it look a little bit more sensible.

[The Romulan Republic]

Also, the Clones were likely mostly offensive troops, while defense was mainly handled by local planetary defense forces/security forces/militia, with the clones only showing up to reinforce the most critical and threatened systems.

[chimericoncogene]

The Clone army can be explained as the number of active frontline clone troopers.

The number disparity is still problematic, but we can make it look a little bit more sensible.

Eh. My favorite interpretation has always been a million legions or so (each legion being between a battalion and an army group - my guess is Corps scale, because the 501st had at least two divisions in it as per TCW; and Anakin's a bit of a Rommel - so Corps command at most). A million legions sounds about right for galactic scale.

A single planet could easily consume millions of frontline troops. If the Soviets needed six million men to dominate Europe and Northern Asia, and Star Wars is conducted WWII-style, well...

Even if your clones are all frontline infantry (which does not appear to be the case, what with clones on Venator bridges everywhere), a million people is barely enough to police the Senate district on Coruscant. I'd peg the Senate Commandoes alone as having a few hundred thousand people. There is literally no point having clones when you can recruit a billion-trillion volunteers from Coruscant alone.

[Patroklos]

This seems more like a quality over quantity thing, with the Jedi and clones being sort a few hundred clones each. This matches everything we see on screen movie wise.

Uh, excuse me, the clone troopers were all Mandalorian super soldiers who could each personally take on millions of combat droids and win. Duh.

I screwed that up. What I meant to say was "with the Jedi and clones being worth a few hundred DROIDS each."

The Clone army can be explained as the number of active frontline clone troopers.

The number disparity is still problematic, but we can make it look a little bit more sensible.

Eh. My favorite interpretation has always been a million legions or so (each legion being between a battalion and an army group - my guess is Corps scale, because the 501st had at least two divisions in it as per TCW; and Anakin's a bit of a Rommel - so Corps command at most). A million legions sounds about right for galactic scale.

A single planet could easily consume millions of frontline troops. If the Soviets needed six million men to dominate Europe and Northern Asia, and Star Wars is conducted WWII-style, well...

Even if your clones are all frontline infantry (which does not appear to be the case, what with clones on Venator bridges everywhere), a million people is barely enough to police the Senate district on Coruscant. I'd peg the Senate Commandoes alone as having a few hundred thousand people. There is literally no point having clones when you can recruit a billion-trillion volunteers from Coruscant alone.

Could they though? Many say nobody asked about the clone army's origins because they need a solution right there and then. That only goes so far, because we also know the clones take a long time to make and we never see a gradual inclusion of major non-clone troops backfill as the Republic has time to train them and the clones are taking casualties.

On the whole, the lack of non-clone soldiers or even major contingents of member fleets and militias represented could mean the Republic didn't have any real support anywhere. Not enough for members to put their resources on the line or average Joe Shmoe to run to the recruiting kiosk and sign up. Slave soldiers might be the only thing the Republic had as a mater of organic support rather than expediency. Or it could be an expression of decadence and civic decline.

[chimericoncogene]

Could they though? Many say nobody asked about the clone army's origins because they need a solution right there and then. That only goes so far, because we also know the clones take a long time to make and we never see a gradual inclusion of major non-clone troops backfill as the Republic has time to train them and the clones are taking casualties.

On the whole, the lack of non-clone soldiers or even major contingents of member fleets and militias represented could mean the Republic didn't have any real support anywhere. Not enough for members to put their resources on the line or average Joe Shmoe to run to the recruiting kiosk and sign up. Slave soldiers might be the only thing the Republic had as a mater of organic support rather than expediency. Or it could be an expression of decadence and civic decline.

Well, Palps had enough support to get elected Emperor. Even if one in a thousand people signed up for the pay alone, that's still a billion-trillion people. That's a smaller military, proportionately, than the Chinese or the USA.

Also, people signed up for the Imperial Army and Stormtrooper Corps later on, didn't they?

It's highly unlikely that the Republic lacked real support. Palps and Co had been drumming up that support to push for centralizing measures and increased authority for a decade all the way to the Military Creation Act; increased Republic "national conciousness" was probably a casus belli for the Seps, who did not like how things were shaping up.

[Gandalf]

Perhaps during the Clone Wars people were just happy to see a purpose made slave race fight the war against the other purpose made slaves. Then the post CW military is more about being a sink for excess labour and resources, so it's a switch to a volunteer force.

[chimericoncogene]

Perhaps during the Clone Wars people were just happy to see a purpose made slave race fight the war against the other purpose made slaves. Then the post CW military is more about being a sink for excess labour and resources, so it's a switch to a volunteer force.

Yeah, but that's not particularly fun, and runs counter to Palpatine's scheme to use Republic nationalism, inflamed by the fires of war, to justify repression, economic controls under a war production board, a massive military machine, centralization of power in his own hands, and eventually his reorganization of the Republic into the first Galactic Empire. If people didn't care about the war, his plan wouldn't have incorporated it. The war served many purposes, not just the elimination of the Jedi.

The best way to justify repression is a war. In World War II, the United States put hundreds of thousands of people in concentration camps, restructured its entire economy, and forced ten million men and nearly women nurses into the military. World War II built the modern military-industrial complex, the US intelligence community, the US nuclear weapons laboratory system, US programs for funding science and technology, export controls on technology, and large chunks of the US Army's institutional DNA. Wars change nations, and Palpatine exploited that to the hilt. He wasn't a Hitler. He was an evil version of FDR*.

*I have nothing against FDR; he was a great wartime leader. Palps is what FDR would be if he were evil, and had space magic.

[Gandalf]

People can care about a war and not participate a lot.

Think of the War of Terror. People loved to put those ribbons on their cars, and fight with the 101st fighting keyboarders, but US armed forces still had trouble with recruiting.

[chimericoncogene]

People can care about a war and not participate a lot.

Think of the War of Terror. People loved to put those ribbons on their cars, and fight with the 101st fighting keyboarders, but US armed forces still had trouble with recruiting.

Volunteer numbers skyrocketed immediately after 9/11; the US military did not get much larger, but recruitment standards became laxer through the troop surge in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Regardless of how war shy most of your society is, there will tend to be people willing to volunteer. Especially in a universe fillled to overflowing with con men, smugglers, bounty hunters, mercs, and stout hearted down on your luck characters. 0.5% of Americans are currently volunteered for military service. And Star Wars is filled with Cro Magnons with similar tribal psyches.

Sure, it's not strictly necessary for Star Wars; but then again, most of this interpretation discussion is not about strictly necessary elements. The bigger the war, the more fervent the nationalism. And when your war gets big enough... tens of trillions of recruits are useful for military operations, especially when your clone forces are limited to a trillion or so men.

It also explains more or less exactly where the Imperial war machine comes from, and fits thematically with the great-power large conventional war of the Clone Wars, as distinct from the counterinsurgency of the OT era.

[Patroklos]

Tell me a modern war on the relative scale of the Galactic Civil War that did not require conscription by the major participants. There are never enough volunteers for peer competition warfare.

In the case of the Republic, there were not enough volunteers of conscripts that their presence was ever noticed. There is a selection bias in that we see what we see from a particular set of characters. But we have a lot of them by now as well as general sourcebooks and they still don't appear.

[chimericoncogene]

There are never enough volunteers for peer competition warfare.

In the case of the Republic, there were not enough volunteers of conscripts that their presence was ever noticed. There is a selection bias in that we see what we see from a particular set of characters. But we have a lot of them by now as well as general sourcebooks and they still don't appear.

Well, when the Core is overflowing with quadrillion-person city planets and the relatively underpopulated Outer Rim has a droid army of quadrillions... well, 0.1% of the population drinking the Kool Aid will do it.

Volunteers were in Legends (clones and Jedi were the tip of the spear, volunteers handled the rest), and local militias and planetary defense forces appear throughout TCW and the movies (Pauans and Geonosians and Umbarans).

Volunteer officers are also prominent in TCW.

The fact that nonclone regular Republic forces don't appear more frequently in stories is a writer's creativity issue rather than a setting thing.

The sheer social weirdness that would have to ensue to create recruitment rates lower than one in a few thousand are to me sociologically impossible in a major war. Even the most weaksauce recruiting effort and pacifistic society would be able to draw that kind of turnout. Nobody fighting for the tribe is not human, and the Republic was loved by the Core Worlds or their elites enough to make war to defend it, and they would have set the tone for large chunks of the population.