Post
by Mith » Thu Jul 03, 2008 10:03 pm
Again, I point to the fact that most of the planets would fend for themselves, and both sides would be basically looking to take major tactical planets and systems, rather than a bunch of planets that weren't important. For the most part, that means that the vast majority of the Outer Rim is worthless as far as holding territory, save for perhaps a few planets.
If each planet itself was able to hold its own weight with soldiers, and the Clone Troopers were just there to add competence and power, then that would explain why there were so few clone troopers. They were the elites that earned the entire name for the war. They're basically the space marines of Star Wars.
Now that said, the fact is that the Republic didn't have a ton of planets, or at least as many as some would care for us to believe. In the senate, we see only about 780 pods, and each one seems to hold represenatives from two different planets, putting us at about 1,560 planets. Even if we assume a thousand pods, and four on average (totaly absurd numbers on the last part), that's still only 4,000 worlds that belong to the republic.
So, we have about 1,500 to 2,000 worlds in all likelyhood, and no more than 5,000 worlds, each ranging from lowly populated, to heavily populated. Even if we assume that there's a billion people per planet (absurd of course), that's only two thousand billion people, although this could easily become two hundred thousand billion people. All of which are easily dominated, and have little grasp of military tactics, even those that are supposed to be.
So rather, it isn't a big surprise that we get such a number like three million clones during the war, and assuming fifty per ship, that would give us about 60,000 starships, although I would likely put it about a hundred per starship, which seems to be more within reason for elite troopers arriving to bolster the defenses of a world. That gives us about 30,000 capital ships, with likely another 70,000 ships with the scout, patrol, cruiser, and transport configuration.
I would expect that the CIS is the one with the larger army, due to the fact that all the major trade companies were joining it, possibly pusing their troop numbers in the high millions, although their fleet didn't seem any more impressive, possibly 30,000 - 60,000 starships, and likely most of these ships were weaker than their Republic counterparts, since CIS ships weren't meant for war originally, just bullying defenseless planets and warding off pirate ships.
The Dominion War on the other hand, had seven million Cardassian losses, and I can only imagine what the Jem'Hadar took in that war, not to mention Federation/Romulan/Klingon forces. Furthermore, the ST powers had all updated ships, which were hardened by near constant outside threats.
