The Size of the Imperial Forces
Anyway, I came up with an idea on how to explain the comparative smallness of the Republic Navy and Army in the old historical WEG stuff -- basically, the Republic had a small federal navy and army and relied on calling up planetary defense forces, et al for the bulk of it's forces. The Clone Wars put an end to this, and resulted in a huge expansion of the Republic military to execute the war.
After the war; the program of expansion continued for several different reasons:
1.) Prevent economic depressions on planets from cancellation of wartime contracts
2.) Prevent large masses of unemployed troops+workers from wandering around with no job
3.) Maintain a strong military to prevent reoccurence of Clone War style conflicts again.
4.) Maintain the loyalty of the military.
1 and 2 tie quite nicely to explain the Imperial Senate's continued support:
Imagine how many people are employed in building a single ISD at KDY. Now imagine the effect of cancelling the orders for 500 Block II Star Destroyers.Transcript of Senate Meeting 412F wrote:SENATOR ORGANA: Why are we continuing to fund the Block 7 construction contracts from the war, and have only released about 2% of our forces from active duty? That is quadrillions that could be spent on reconstruction aid.
ADMIRAL ADAMA: Sir, We are continuing partial demobilization; where possible, to avoid flooding planets with large numbers of unemployed personnel. As for the Block 7 contracts; they cover about 719 million PICs in overall economic impact, and cancelling them would according to the Imperial Budgetary Office, cause severe economic depressions in Kuat, Corellia, and Rendilii, among other systems.
[NOTE: I assume PICs are an arbitrary construct of the Republic/Imperial budgetary agency representing the total GDP of a moderate world to be used to avoid the use of "five quadrillion quadrillion quadrillion" in budget meetings]
Finally, even with droids and clones taking up a lot of slots, there's going to be a huge manpower sump in the Republic Armed Forces. If you decide to cut the budget by a few dozen sector groups worth of forces, that's an enormous amount of men; both actually employed in the military, and employed by companies which have support contracts, who will be thrown out of a job onto the street.
3 is because the Public is going to belive that the small pre-war republic military's small size and weaknesses allowed the various regional conflicts to grow until they sparked off the Clone Wars; and that due to some various well publicized incidents of Planetary Defense Forces and System Defense Forces refusing to obey Republic Navy orders during the war; the public perception will be that the PDFs and SDFs are okay for defending their own areas, but are not good as a instrument of policy.
4 is self explanatory. I can imagine CINCNAV being sent into the Emperor's throneroom in Imperial Center and being told that he will get all of the wartime construction contracts fulfilled if he pledges his utter loyalty to the Empire and Emperor; and requires all Naval personnel to take a direct oath of fealty to the Emperor himself.
The Core/Outer Rim Economies
Before the Clone Wars, I'd assume the Core economies were in a mutually beneficial economic arrangement with the Outer Rim economies for mutual development.
Basically, the Core economies are mostly highly developed and have I would assume, very slow, but steady annual growth rates. Meanwhile, the Outer Rim is very undeveloped, and you can have breakneck development and growth rates, meaning you can make a lot of money in supplying the shipping and exports to grow the Outer Rim economies.
So it's not inconceivable that some major megacorportations which have wide political and economic power, like TaggeCo, could have enacted into law through their pet Senators, subsidies and trade barriers that were highly favorable to their very profitable exploitation and development operations in the Outer Rim.
But the Clone Wars ended these subsidies and trade barriers; because essentially, the Core Worlds had to fund their own reconstruction after the war; and so these favorable agreements and arrangements were abruptly terminated; and the money redirected. This helps explain why the Outer Rim is so full of rebels and criminals anyway.
One such economic development aid I imagined was that during the Republic era, there was a trillion upon trillion credit fund for the development of the Outer Rim economies which was funded and paid for by a flat tax on docking fees in the Outer Rim.
During the Clone Wars, this fund was redirected by a popular measure after an attack on Coruscant, into the "Help Coruscanti War Orphans" fund. It was sold as a "brief" measure that would only be in place for a year or two to help fund social programs for those affected by the war -- who wants to argue against something that would help starving orphans?
The Empire still collects that docking tax, except it's now the "Imperial Development Fund", of which the Outer Rim sees $0.00 of.
The Size of the Imperial Forces II
Another growth opportunity for the Imperial Forces is the absorption of the pre-war Planetary and System Defense Forces by Imperial troops. This is mentioned in the EU quite a bit. Basically the Empire is federalizing and incorporating the existing patchwork of Defense Forces, and then filling their numbers with new equipment and personnel. What's left over becomes the "new" Defense Force -- essentially a Coast Guard rescue service.
This serves multiple purposes; it cements loyalty of the forces either via bribes or replacing suspect personnel with loyal cadres; and removes munitions from the hands of possibuly suspect personnel.
For example; lets say that the Chommel Sector Defense Force for most of it's history consisted of 2 km long Rendilii Stardrive dreadnoughts about a thousand years old which were constantly upgraded, plus some smaller newer lighters. Two years after the end of the Clone Wars; teh Empire sweeps in, Federalizes them; and they start to get brand new Imperators, Frigates, et al rather than the patchwork of crap they had before. Course, they lose their independence, but that's the price of getting the shiny new equipment....
Of course, some Sectors or Planetary systems are strong enough to resist this Imperial encroachment and maintain their own forces alongside the Imperial ones. Notable examples are Alderaan and Corellia, where you have the Corellian Defense Forces, which answer to the government of the Corellian State (the member state represented in the Senate), an Imperial Governate side-by-side to the Corellian government, in charge of representing Imperial policy and running Imperial property and agencies at that level. There's also COMPNOR which has it's own Corellian COMPForce.
The Empire's plan was to slowly slide out the traditional government and defense forces and slide in the Imperial equivalents; no more Corellian Bloodstripes or a Corellian Defense Force; just the Imperial Guard, Corellia.
Of course, imposing imperial rule is a lot easier on other planets then on famous "first rank" states like Alderaan and Corellia. You could easily replace the government of a sector which during the Clone Wars, lost 55% of it's industrial base, and saw 85% of it's Defense forces destroyed.
Any surviving old-timers in the Defense Forces would be easily outnumbered by their Imperial counterparts following federalization, and Imperial aid for reconstruction would easily silence any political dissent at the absorption of the government into the Imperial structure.