Why Empire lost the war - stormtrooper aim

[Picard]

http://www.cracked.com/article_18858_th ... ience.html

[Praeothmin]

Funny, but untrue for some parts.
They say Stormtroopers became accurate when shooting down the Rebels aboard the Tantive IV.
Did they watch the movie?
They needed half a dozen shots per Rebel, people wearing a black uniform, kneeling in a white corridor, in order to hit them...
Yeah, real accurate... :)

[User1627]

Funny, but untrue for some parts.
They say Stormtroopers became accurate when shooting down the Rebels aboard the Tantive IV.
Did they watch the movie?
They needed half a dozen shots per Rebel, people wearing a black uniform, kneeling in a white corridor, in order to hit them...
Yeah, real accurate... :)

Well, they do say opposites attact...so I sincerely hope you meet somebody who is attractive, honest, intelligent, and cultured.

[User1626]

Funny, but untrue for some parts.
They say Stormtroopers became accurate when shooting down the Rebels aboard the Tantive IV.
Did they watch the movie?
They needed half a dozen shots per Rebel, people wearing a black uniform, kneeling in a white corridor, in order to hit them...
Yeah, real accurate... :)

Don't forget "from 10 feet away."
But there is such a thing as suppression-fire, you know, since the rebels were shooting back. Meanwhile they stunned Leah with one shot, and she was also shooting back. Also don't forget that they didn't hit C3PO or R2D2, since obviously they wouldn't have orders to shoot droids; and both of them walked right through the line of fire.
We also don't see them missing when someone isn't shooting back, like with the Jawa-transport Ben said "only stormtroopers are so precise."
And when Luke was escaping from the Death Star, remember they were only pretending to stop him, so they were missing on purpose. if they were that lousy, they would have hit him on accident with at least one of those shots; it would be impossible to miss Han, Luke, Leah, Chewbacca, C3PO and R2D2, unless they were really good shots and really trying to miss.
So is there any good examples of stormtroopers missing in a decent battle? Certainly not in AotC, but those are the cloned troopers, which presumably were all dead by the time of ANH due to growth-acceleration (in RotS they aged 20 years in about three). Jango Fett was certainly a crack shot, and his clones would have the same hand-eye coordination and eyesight.

[Praeothmin]

Missing when you are hiding because of that "supression fire" is normal, missing when you don't care about the supression fire and you are advancing straight on in the corridor is not...
You see the target, you aim, and you fire...

As for the droids, they were crossing a firezone, I'm pretty sure the ST's orders were not "shoot at the Rebels, but don't shoot the droids"...
If they weren't hit, it's most likely due to "droid Karma" then because the ST's didn't have orders to shoot them...

And when Luke was escaping from the Death Star, remember they were only pretending to stop him, so they were missing on purpose. if they were that lousy, they would have hit him on accident with at least one of those shots; it would be impossible to miss Han, Luke, Leah, Chewbacca, C3PO and R2D2, unless they were really good shots and really trying to miss.

The Death Star escape, to be successful in following Luke and Co to the Rebel base, didn't require that they all made it out, even unscathed.
If they truly were that good, they would have been able to injure Luke when they were less than 10 feet away, shooting under a door, with no one shooting back...
The impression Vader and tarkin gave me was not that they gave the Stormtroopers specific orders not to hit the heroes, but rather that Vader and Tarkin only sent a small force of soldiers to capture them when, as we saw with Han's pursuit, there were so many more ST's available, who could have been deployed in corridors to stop the heroes from escaping...
They would have placed so many more STs arouns the Falcon as well, but they didn't, so while they did indeed act as if they wanted to stop the heroes from escaping, they didn't use as many STs as they could have so maximize their chances of escape...

So is there any good examples of stormtroopers missing in a decent battle?

Endor...
Unless you're going to tell us that the STs had orders not to hit little teddy bears once the all out battle had begun?

[Picard]

Thing is that I hate "X is incompetent" argument. Only times I used "Imperials are incompetent" was as counterargument to "Feds are incompetent".

[Praeothmin]

Thing is that I hate "X is incompetent" argument. Only times I used "Imperials are incompetent" was as counterargument to "Feds are incompetent".

Well, I hate that argument, except when it's true, I use it... :)

[Admiral Breetai]

[

Well, I hate that argument, except when it's true, I use it... :)

I prefer our side of vs debate term for such things PIS/CIS

hell if you want i can link you to the definition I think it fits more then "competence" and "incompetence"

[Lucky]

[

Well, I hate that argument, except when it's true, I use it... :)

I prefer our side of vs debate term for such things PIS/CIS

hell if you want i can link you to the definition I think it fits more then "competence" and "incompetence"

It's not PIS/CIS if it happens every time, and for every character. It's kind of like how they had to come up with a real reason the jaffa could not seeming aim. The only time I recall anyone in Star Wars being able to aim well is if they have a sniper blaster, or during order 66. Even Named characters with force powers miss a lot.

[Praeothmin]

What I find the most funny is when Warsies say Phasers are aiming nightmares, that blasters are way better because they are like modern pistols and rifles, and yet Redshirts hit more often, in less shots, than Stormtroopers...
And mooks are usually killed or stunned in 1 shot, compared to at least 4-5 shots to hit 1 Rebel on the Tantive IV, and named characters 2 or 3 shots when they get hit, compared to what, 20 - 30 shots to hit main characters in SW?

Even better, give me some Enterprise MACOs any day for a mission, before Clones, Stormtroopers or Redshirts...

[User1632]

Missing when you are hiding because of that "supression fire" is normal, missing when you don't care about the supression fire and you are advancing straight on in the corridor is not...
You see the target, you aim, and you fire...

And they did. You're simply counting the suppression-fire as "missing."

As for the droids, they were crossing a firezone, I'm pretty sure the ST's orders were not "shoot at the Rebels, but don't shoot the droids"...

No, but it's common practice not to shoot things other than your target.

And when Luke was escaping from the Death Star, remember they were only pretending to stop him, so they were missing on purpose. if they were that lousy, they would have hit him on accident with at least one of those shots; it would be impossible to miss Han, Luke, Leah, Chewbacca, C3PO and R2D2, unless they were really good shots and really trying to miss.

The Death Star escape, to be successful in following Luke and Co to the Rebel base, didn't require that they all made it out, even unscathed.

And they didn't; Obi-wan was expendible.

If they truly were that good, they would have been able to injure Luke when they were less than 10 feet away, shooting under a door, with no one shooting back...

That's a bad chance to take, if you want them to escape.
The Falcon did take a few hits from the TIE-fighters, if that makes you happy.

The impression Vader and tarkin gave me was not that they gave the Stormtroopers specific orders not to hit the heroes, but rather that Vader and Tarkin only sent a small force of soldiers to capture them when, as we saw with Han's pursuit, there were so many more ST's available, who could have been deployed in corridors to stop the heroes from escaping...They would have placed so many more STs arouns the Falcon as well, but they didn't, so while they did indeed act as if they wanted to stop the heroes from escaping, they didn't use as many STs as they could have so maximize their chances of escape...

Ok, so you're saying they wanted to risk the plan not working, with Leah possibly getting hit or killed. You're just wrong.

So is there any good examples of stormtroopers missing in a decent battle?

Endor...
Unless you're going to tell us that the STs had orders not to hit little teddy bears once the all out battle had begun?

Well of course they don't shoot well when ambushed; meanwhile shooting a teddy-bear is just plain wrong.

[User1632]

What I find the most funny is when Warsies say Phasers are aiming nightmares, that blasters are way better because they are like modern pistols and rifles, and yet Redshirts hit more often, in less shots, than Stormtroopers...
And mooks are usually killed or stunned in 1 shot, compared to at least 4-5 shots to hit 1 Rebel on the Tantive IV, and named characters 2 or 3 shots when they get hit, compared to what, 20 - 30 shots to hit main characters in SW?

Even better, give me some Enterprise MACOs any day for a mission, before Clones, Stormtroopers or Redshirts...

What's funny is that they ignore the fact that Stormtroopers's blasters are rifles, while we usually see phasers used when the crew is armed with hand-phasers. But when we do see phaser-rifles used, it's a different story entirely; in the Bajoran civil strife, for example, Sisko's phaser has a TV-screen with his target's face close-up on it from long range for a kill-shot on the Bajoran leader: he only needs to pull the trigger. Same when they're defending the station from Klingons, fighting alongside or against the Jem H'dar etc., we don't see them miss very often.

[Lucky]

What I find the most funny is when Warsies say Phasers are aiming nightmares, that blasters are way better because they are like modern pistols and rifles, and yet Redshirts hit more often, in less shots, than Stormtroopers...
And mooks are usually killed or stunned in 1 shot, compared to at least 4-5 shots to hit 1 Rebel on the Tantive IV, and named characters 2 or 3 shots when they get hit, compared to what, 20 - 30 shots to hit main characters in SW?

Even better, give me some Enterprise MACOs any day for a mission, before Clones, Stormtroopers or Redshirts...

What's funny is that they ignore the fact that Stormtroopers's blasters are rifles, while we usually see phasers used when the crew is armed with hand-phasers. But when we do see phaser-rifles used, it's a different story entirely; in the Bajoran civil strife, for example, Sisko's phaser has a TV-screen with his target's face close-up on it from long range for a kill-shot on the Bajoran leader: he only needs to pull the trigger. Same when they're defending the station from Klingons, fighting alongside or against the Jem H'dar etc., we don't see them miss very often.

I'm not sure an E-11 is a rifle since the prop was made from a submachinegun?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sterling_submachine_gun

[User1632]

You know what I mean: i.e. a "phaser rifle" vs. a hand-phaser.
As for hand-blasters, remember that Greedo misses Han from 3 feet away when he "fires first;" and he had his blaster pointed right at Han the whole time; it's not like he was dodging Han's fire like when phasers miss. Obi-wan also says that blasters are "random and clumsy," to the point that even a lightsaber is a better weapon; so that says everything right there. Why else would Jango Fett use a saber-dart instead of a blaster, except that blasters are less accurate?
When shooting the assassin-droid on Coruscant, Zam Wessel uses some sort of special long blaster rifle that has an infra-red scope which automatically locks onto the target, but still it ends up shooting the droid instead of Obi-wan. I don't know whether she was doing that on purpose, but a phaser definitely wouldn't have missed like that; and even if it hit the droid, the effects of a phaser would have zapped Obi-wan as well as the droid out of existence.