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.
(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).