KT's Military Credentials And The VS Debate

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Socar
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Post by Socar » Thu Jan 03, 2008 9:26 pm

Lonestar wrote:
Praeothmin wrote:But the problem with the clone numbers being so low also comes directly from the Movie canon, when in AotC Obi-Wan is told that 1.2 million clones are ready, and another million or so are on the way.
That's a big negative, Ghost Rider. The Kaminoan tells Obi-wan that 1.2 million units are ready. A fine distinction, but an important one. While that could mean 1.2 million clones, given the scale of the conflict it could be 1.2 million companies, battalions, regiments, or divisions.
If I remember correctly, the first reference to units being individual clones comes from the AotC novelization (written by R .A. Salvatore). Still G-canon unfortunately, but I suppose if you could make a case that the movie showed that units is more than 1 person then it would override it.

In the movie, one of the clone troopers tells Windu that he has "5 special commando units" awaiting his orders, and it looked like a lot more than 5 clones standing there.

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Post by Lonestar » Thu Jan 03, 2008 9:33 pm

Socar wrote:
If I remember correctly, the first reference to units being individual clones comes from the AotC novelization (written by R .A. Salvatore). Still G-canon unfortunately, but I suppose if you could make a case that the movie showed that units is more than 1 person then it would override it.
It's possible...it's been awhile since I read the novelization(I think it was at the library on the base where my "A" school was).
In the movie, one of the clone troopers tells Windu that he has "5 special commando units" awaiting his orders, and it looked like a lot more than 5 clones standing there.
Indeed. Certainly the clones didn't define each other as units.

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Post by Praeothmin » Thu Jan 03, 2008 9:51 pm

Lonestar wrote:That's a big negative, Ghost Rider. The Kaminoan tells Obi-wan that 1.2 million units are ready. A fine distinction, but an important one. While that could mean 1.2 million clones, given the scale of the conflict it could be 1.2 million companies, battalions, regiments, or divisions.
I guess you're right.
And it can be taken both ways too.
Obi-Wan and Lamma-Su were talking about clones, so it could be that they were thinking of clones when the word unit was used.
But then again, they were talking about an army, so they could have been talking about companies, battalions, regiments or divisions.

But does that change much of anything?
How many in a Battalion? A company? A regiment? a Division?

According to Wikipedia:
A division is a large military unit or formation usually consisting of around ten to twenty thousand soldiers.
In most armies, a division is composed of several regiments or brigades, and in turn several divisions make up a corps.
So the division seems to be the biggest unit.
So, lets say Lamma-Su meant division, and let's say we have divisions of 20 000 clones.
1 200 000 units times 20 000 clones, means 24 billion clones, which would be much better.
So I think from now I'll consider units as divisions... :)

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Post by Mr. Oragahn » Thu Jan 03, 2008 10:14 pm

The trouble is that one's units are different from another.

Can you picture parking 24 billion clones on Kamino's cities?

For me, it'd look like a bit cramped.

I'm not too fond of the 1 unit = 1 clone, but 1 U = 20,000 clones is an equally bizarre extreme.

The novelization makes things clearly weird, but the clones's could have their own defintion of unit, different than the Kaminoan. Incidentally, it could include war machines and less troops.

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Post by Lonestar » Thu Jan 03, 2008 10:30 pm

Jedi Master Spock wrote: Well, the cliched "trained from birth" warrior culture, at least. There's nothing supposedly biologically superior about the Mandalorians, so far as I can tell; they're stock humans.
The "Real" Mandalorians are, the clones have had their genetic make up fiddled with.
I think it's actually good to see clones grasping for some kind of "real" culture to make their own. Not so certain on the specifics. IMO, she gets too wrapped up in limited third person.
Like I said, Clone Commandos and ARC Troopers almost would have to have their own separate subculture. Instead of a new one though, we get a warmed over "Mandalorian" one...and they act as if they are the Mandalorians of the KOTOR era. Hence, lazy writing.
Franchise authors who are next to unknown outside of the franchise don't. Not with their editors, not if they want to keep a career going.
Not with their editors, no. I speculate that she may have learned when and how to shut her trap to the person who pays her bills based upon her military experience.

I think it's apt to what she's describing - a series of scattered local conflicts, like the Falklands, each small, each brief, each involving a small amount of casualties on the global scale.
Except, they aren't small brief conflicts. Remember, most of her writing is with Commandos, so by necessity the stories are going to cover small unit "worms eye" view. And the Falklands had the most widespread naval combat since WW2, with the RN backed logistically by NATO.
Which is particularly problematic given that Cato Neimoidia was captured using three Republic attack cruisers, according to the official story of events. (Neimoidia itself was hit a little earlier by a Republic ground force; Cato Neimoidia was where the Separatists' strong point was within the Neimoidian systems.)
Not to belabor the obvious, but taking locations is easy(After all, Baghdad fell to one US Army Division and one USMC MEU), keeping a grip on it is what's hard.
I agree this is terribly problematic, but this problem didn't start with Traviss; the problem started when Lucas had 200,000 clones with a million more on the way in AOTC, and continued when Obi-Wan Kenobi said he could take three worlds like Utapau with two clone brigades.
(1)AOTC didn't mention clones, they mentioned "Units", which, to be blunt, could mean anything from a solitary clone to a division(or Corps, or Army). As has already been mentioned, there were references to "special commando units" which consisted of, well, more than the number of clones standing around.
(2)Once upon a time a Division(especially during the Mexican war) was defined as a couple thousand men. I find it entire within the realm of possibility that Brigade sizes for such a conflict are also larger than 21st Century Western Army organization.
Utapau has a population of close to a hundred million. Two clone brigades - in other words, something like 10,000 troops in the landing bays of an attack cruiser - are supposed to be enough to capture planets occupied by around 300 million people. That's not 50:1; that's 30,000:1, a ratio which roughly fits the actual battle of Cato Neimoidia as described in the EU.
(1)We return to the whole "conquest not occupation" conundrum these instances pose.
(2)The Utapauans rose up against the Confederacy when the GAR started to land.
(3)There was more than one Venator star destroyer taking part in the invasion.
(4)The majority of the forces probably landed around Obi-Wan, not planetwide. After all, he just saw the Confederate leadership all in one place!

It's hard to find anything close in history. The Spanish conquests in the New World or the rise of the Mongolian Empire are as close as you'll get, but even then, you tend to be at least an order of magnitude short. This didn't start with Karen Traviss; this, like the utterly bizarre behavior of lasers, is all over the Star Wars universe.

Are we supposed to say that it's completely unrealistic, or that Star Wars populations are stricken by remarkably complete apathy? Or too afraid of thousands dying in collateral damage when "precision" orbital strikes target centers of resistance?

It may be more realistic than hearing engine noise in space, but it's pretty clear this is what Lucas and company have decided is sufficient to wage the Clone Wars. Not trillions or quadrillions, but mere millions.
Evidence in both AOTC and ROTS imply that there are more than 3 million clones, unless we are to believe that the entirety of the GAR has been scooped up and ordered to man the guns while the entire Republic fleet is localized over Coruscant. And I have a suspicion that that would still produce numbers much higher than "3 million"(assuming, you know, that the number hasn't been worn down by years of fighting).

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Post by WolfRitter » Fri Jan 04, 2008 10:56 am

Jedi Master Spock wrote:Which is particularly problematic given that Cato Neimoidia was captured using three Republic attack cruisers, according to the official story of events. (Neimoidia itself was hit a little earlier by a Republic ground force; Cato Neimoidia was where the Separatists' strong point was within the Neimoidian systems.)
Cato Neimoidia isn't the home world/capital of the Neimoidian's, that distinction goes to Neimoidia. Cato, Deko, and Koru Neimoidia were major colonies.

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Post by Jedi Master Spock » Fri Jan 04, 2008 7:24 pm

WolfRitter wrote:
Jedi Master Spock wrote:Which is particularly problematic given that Cato Neimoidia was captured using three Republic attack cruisers, according to the official story of events. (Neimoidia itself was hit a little earlier by a Republic ground force; Cato Neimoidia was where the Separatists' strong point was within the Neimoidian systems.)
Cato Neimoidia isn't the home world/capital of the Neimoidian's, that distinction goes to Neimoidia. Cato, Deko, and Koru Neimoidia were major colonies.
Cato Neimoidia has been settled for a very long time. It's one of the "purse worlds," the major centers of wealth, and was where Nute Gunray holed up with a CIS battle group; it also put up as much fight as any of the Neimoidian worlds, and in and of itself was described as a key member planet of the CIS. It is therefore a good example of an enemy "core" world.

As I mentioned, Neimoidia itself was hit earlier (apparently with ease), immediately followed by Deku, Koru, and then Cato Neimoidia, the last three definitely by Anakin and Obi-Wan's task force.

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Mr. Oragahn
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Post by Mr. Oragahn » Fri Jan 04, 2008 11:37 pm

In a context such as Star Wars, and with visibly, according to the film and the book, so small armies, why couldn't occupation be achieved by the control of core political centers, a garrison of thousands of men, with ships capable of atmospheric and space superiority, and the hand of god ready to strike from above, in orbit?

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