Posted: 2005-05-21 10:28pm
Going by ROTS and what little I've seen of The Clone Wars and read, the GAR, specifically the Clone Troopers are largely shock troops. They fight the most important battles with the most expensive and powerful toys while local militias bare the brunt of defending their own worlds.
The outer rim sieges are described in the ROTS ICS as a very large scale event involving huge numbers of ships. It also hints at the CIS' overall strategy, basically trying to turn as many planets as they possibly can into Geonosis style factory worlds crawling with droids and other war machines using self perpetuating factories. If they do this on inhabited planets they can effectively hold the civilian populace hostage, using them as living shields against base delta zero bombardment. This forces the Republic to blockade every fortress world they find in order to deny the Seperatists the mammoth armies being spawned by the factories until the Republic can amass the troops and war machines necessary to conquer the fortress worlds.
The siege tactic would weaken the Seperatists' ability to deploy massive numbers of droids down to more manageable levels for the Republic and the Clone Troopers. The droids the Seperatists can move would, like the Clone Troopers, have to be used sparingly. Basically we don't see or hear of huge battles involving millions of Clones and billions of droids because both the CIS and Republic are spread so thinly trying to bottle each other's key worlds and forces up and strangle them through blockades, it doesn't leave much left for battles of epic proportions. This would also go a long way towards the CIS under Grievous adopting more brutal shock tactics to try and break the Republic's will to fight as well as start being able to mass larger and more powerful fleets rather than loosing them sieging and trying to break sieges.
The outer rim sieges are described in the ROTS ICS as a very large scale event involving huge numbers of ships. It also hints at the CIS' overall strategy, basically trying to turn as many planets as they possibly can into Geonosis style factory worlds crawling with droids and other war machines using self perpetuating factories. If they do this on inhabited planets they can effectively hold the civilian populace hostage, using them as living shields against base delta zero bombardment. This forces the Republic to blockade every fortress world they find in order to deny the Seperatists the mammoth armies being spawned by the factories until the Republic can amass the troops and war machines necessary to conquer the fortress worlds.
The siege tactic would weaken the Seperatists' ability to deploy massive numbers of droids down to more manageable levels for the Republic and the Clone Troopers. The droids the Seperatists can move would, like the Clone Troopers, have to be used sparingly. Basically we don't see or hear of huge battles involving millions of Clones and billions of droids because both the CIS and Republic are spread so thinly trying to bottle each other's key worlds and forces up and strangle them through blockades, it doesn't leave much left for battles of epic proportions. This would also go a long way towards the CIS under Grievous adopting more brutal shock tactics to try and break the Republic's will to fight as well as start being able to mass larger and more powerful fleets rather than loosing them sieging and trying to break sieges.