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Simon_Jester wrote:

Eleventh Century Remnant wrote:I reckon that Veers pushed his men and machines to their limits climbing a mountain on their way to the battlefield, in some cases clearly beyond their limits, because he wanted to demonstrate the capacity of the hardware. He had associated himself and his career with them, and wanted to show them off- so he deliberately took the hard option, with a composite force that was partly snowtrooper and partly drawn form an armour school unit. I agree that it was a strategic victory, and that it was worth the price- but I don't think he tried very hard to minimise that price.

Also possible. Chalk it up to a combination of showing off and political pressure, I guess.

Transbot9 wrote:On another note (referring back to an earlier post), why would a separate legion be necessary for desert/snow/etc troopers? I see no reason why an ISD couldn't just carry the necessary load out to equip stormtroopers for most environments. Maybe a specialized legion of EVO troopers (far more specialized equipment) would make sense (sure, they are introduced in Force Unleashed for game play reasons, but the fluff reason for their existence seems practical enough) for the really nasty environments, but I suspect that they would be assigned only to sectors where such hazards were prevalent.

At a guess: the snowtrooper/sandtrooper/blahtrooper legions are normally divided up into battalion sized units as you describe, but maintain a unified chain of command and administrative structure. That way, if for some reason you need to invade an ice planet, you can just say "Pull together the units of the 4323rd Snowtrooper Legion from the Whozit Sector" instead of saying "I want a scratch force assembled from the snowtrooper battalions of the 239th through 257th Legions."

In terms of the number of boots on the ground, that doesn't make much difference, but it does mean that the 4323rd will have a preexisting chain of command and staff (insofar as stormtroopers have those things), rather than having to nail together such a system ad hoc. That gives you the advantage of a large unit with specialist training, equipment, and experience, without the drawback of having to assemble a new chain of command for all ranks above major every time you need large numbers of specialist troops in one place.

I imagine there could pure specialized legions for such an event. But communication, supply and support is such that I don't see why you couldn't use battalions from 5 separate legions. You would just have to drop a command element on to the planet to take charge.

Also, by their nature, artic worlds are sparely populated, at least Hoth is. Would there really be a need for a unit larger than a battalion?

I have always thought of hyperspace travel in terms of 5 or 10 hours for something close, a few days for a destination of moderate distance, a week for traveling to the next sector, a month for going halfway across the galaxy. How do you guys perceive it?

NoogDeNoog wrote:I have always thought of hyperspace travel in terms of 5 or 10 hours for something close, a few days for a destination of moderate distance, a week for traveling to the next sector, a month for going halfway across the galaxy. How do you guys perceive it?

Hours from the ass end of the nowhere to the Core Worlds as per the movies. Next.

NoogDeNoog wrote:I imagine there could pure specialized legions for such an event. But communication, supply and support is such that I don't see why you couldn't use battalions from 5 separate legions. You would just have to drop a command element on to the planet to take charge.

In theory two identically laid out units might be able to slot into the same type of oob and operate at a good level of efficiency, and the Imperial Stormtroopers might be professional and uniformly organized enough to do it, but I'd wager there'd be a lot of individual unit variations that make that it a nightmare in practice, when the component units are gathered rapidly. Even worse if the staff/C&C element has never worked with them before, or isn't used to operating at brigade strength.

NoogDeNoog wrote:Also, by their nature, artic worlds are sparely populated, at least Hoth is. Would there really be a need for a unit larger than a battalion?

The imperial forces might do counterinsugency as their daily routine, but it doesn't mean they're not geared for large-scale conventional warfare. The Rebel HQ element at Hoth might be tiny, but that doesn't mean battalions are enough if a major enemy digs in on an arctic planet and tries to turn it into CIS-style fortress world. The common independently deployable unit is the battlegroup/legion, and it makes sense to concentrate them given SW transit times.

Also, I will stand by my point about problems with training, logistics, and dilution of skills being not worth the splitting up of units, especially highly specialized ones like the extreme-environment stormtroopers.

@what fractal wrote:

I have to agree. From my understanding of the movies, books, comics, and sourcebooks the Imperial war machine was constantly in need of more men, ships, and money. Hence why they had conscription in some cases. I think that in order to understand the organization of the stormtroopers you have to look at the way in which they were suppose to be deployed according to their transit vessels. The Imperial Army did not exist during the Clone Wars. It was added afterward when Palpatine needed a stronger military presence on many different worlds. The clone armies provided the strong nucleus for that, but were divided against them when they became stormtroopers. Seeing as they had a clearly defined organization as the clone armies, it seems strange that they would change what already works.

Clone Army ORBAT
* Grand Army—10 systems armies, a total of over 3,000,000 units
* Systems Army—2 Sector Armies (294,912 troops) led by a High Jedi General.
* Sector Army—4 corps (147,456 troops) led by a Senior Jedi General.
* Corps—4 legions (36,864 troops) led by a clone marshal commander and a Jedi General.
* Legion/Brigade—4 regiments (9,216 troops) led by a senior clone commander and a Jedi General.
* Regiment—4 battalions (2,304 troops) led by a clone trooper commander, clone regimental commander
* Battalion—4 companies (576 troops) led by a major.
* Company—4 platoons (144 troops) led by a captain.
* Platoon—4 squads (36 troops) led by a lieutenant.
* Squad—9 soldiers led by a sergeant.

According to different sources, before the ISD was in full use and production, the main mode of transport at the end of the Clone Wars for the armies of the Republic were Venator-class SDs; their compliment of troops able to be on board was 2,000 officially, with enough cargo space that I am sure that they could have fitted in another 300+ troopers to fill out an entire clone regiment.

Seeing as how this means that for entire legion/division of clones/stormtroopers to be deployed you would need at least four Venators, it seems rather understandable then that when the Imperial-class SD came into use, they saw to it that the single ship could carry a full legion/brigade.

In addition to fractal's point about training, logistics, and dilution of skills; by combining the units into full divisions and serving aboard vessels together, they would compress everything and therefore alleviate a lot of stress on the Imperial supply lines. As well as meaning that it required fewer vessels for a larger deployment of shock troops. Not to mention that a single ISD was considered to be a naval battle line in it of itself, and was therefore capable of dealing with most rebel forces by itself with little or no escort. (excepting for larger fleet battles where multiple capitol ships are present)

NoogDeNoog wrote:Also, by their nature, artic worlds are sparely populated, at least Hoth is. Would there really be a need for a unit larger than a battalion?

You might need to occupy many installations spread out actoss the planet, requiring a great many battalion-strength operations. Or you might be dealing with a species native to an ice world, one that is present in millions if not billions. Even if the absolute population density is peanuts compared to most inhabited worlds, that's still a lot more terrain and population than you could hope to hold down with a battalion.

Batman wrote:

NoogDeNoog wrote:I have always thought of hyperspace travel in terms of 5 or 10 hours for something close, a few days for a destination of moderate distance, a week for traveling to the next sector, a month for going halfway across the galaxy. How do you guys perceive it?

Hours from the ass end of the nowhere to the Core Worlds as per the movies. Next.

...Although there are some implied weird points and a certain amount of wiggle room. How long did it take Han Solo to fly from Tatooine to Alderaan, for instance? It could have been hours, but it could also have been days, as implied by the fact that Obi-Wan had time to give Luke at least some trivial instruction in the Force. Moreover, when Obi-Wan died, Luke didn't act like someone who had just seen a short-term acquaintance killed; it's a little hard for me to believe that they'd known each other for less than, say, a week. Even that's pushing it.

The minimum time for galaxy-sized hyperspace jumps is still on the order of hours, absolutely, but I'm not sure all hyperspace jumps are that brief. It may be a navigation issue: well-charted hyperspace routes can be taken faster than poorly charted ones, with backwater planets being off the well known routes.

Abacus wrote: Seeing as they had a clearly defined organization as the clone armies, it seems strange that they would change what already works.

Clone Army ORBAT
* Grand Army—10 systems armies, a total of over 3,000,000 units
* Systems Army—2 Sector Armies (294,912 troops) led by a High Jedi General.
* Sector Army—4 corps (147,456 troops) led by a Senior Jedi General.
* Corps—4 legions (36,864 troops) led by a clone marshal commander and a Jedi General.
* Legion/Brigade—4 regiments (9,216 troops) led by a senior clone commander and a Jedi General.
* Regiment—4 battalions (2,304 troops) led by a clone trooper commander, clone regimental commander
* Battalion—4 companies (576 troops) led by a major.
* Company—4 platoons (144 troops) led by a captain.
* Platoon—4 squads (36 troops) led by a lieutenant.
* Squad—9 soldiers led by a sergeant.

OB's are changed all the time, just look at our own armed forces or any other countries. Also, that clone OB is horrible, all they did is multiply everything by 4. They even forgot to add the officers into the total number.

This is just a nitpick from Simon_Jester's last post, and its something I could be wrong about, but I was always under the impression that Luke had known Kenobi, if only as a passing aquaintance, for quite some time before the events of the movie.

NoogDeNoog wrote:

Abacus wrote: Seeing as they had a clearly defined organization as the clone armies, it seems strange that they would change what already works.

Clone Army ORBAT
* Grand Army—10 systems armies, a total of over 3,000,000 units
* Systems Army—2 Sector Armies (294,912 troops) led by a High Jedi General.
* Sector Army—4 corps (147,456 troops) led by a Senior Jedi General.
* Corps—4 legions (36,864 troops) led by a clone marshal commander and a Jedi General.
* Legion/Brigade—4 regiments (9,216 troops) led by a senior clone commander and a Jedi General.
* Regiment—4 battalions (2,304 troops) led by a clone trooper commander, clone regimental commander
* Battalion—4 companies (576 troops) led by a major.
* Company—4 platoons (144 troops) led by a captain.
* Platoon—4 squads (36 troops) led by a lieutenant.
* Squad—9 soldiers led by a sergeant.

OB's are changed all the time, just look at our own armed forces or any other countries. Also, that clone OB is horrible, all they did is multiply everything by 4. They even forgot to add the officers into the total number.

I'm well aware of that fact, being ex-military myself. (The old days of infantry, armored, etc, divisions is long gone; pretty soon the US Army is going to be nothing but CA units, no greater than brigade strength; which actually matches well with our current deployments and area of operations.) But that just means that this particular ORBAT is the basis for the Imperial Army's ORBAT, and they don't change that much in RL either except in extreme cases of emergency or short-term basis (like the German WWII devised kampfgruppe, which were CA units deployed for a specific mission and afterwards disbanded). To think that they would change the stormtrooper ORBAT on a level as high as Battalion would be fairly extreme, even if just for reforms. If, as I postulate, that this is the basis for the Stormtrooper Corp's ORBAT then it should remain the same up to the level of Legion/Brigade. Most ORBAT changes take place on the strategic deployment level, rather than the tactical level where you have smaller formations.