Stormtroopers: Elite Force or Totally loyal morons???

Praeothmin · Post by **Praeothmin** » Fri Jun 29, 2007 1:54 pm

I've always been amazed at debates involving Stormtroopers.

Pro-Wars debaters always tell us without losing a beat that the Stormtroopers are only bad "against main characters, but they're highly efficient against anybody else. In fact, before Chewbacca stole the AT-ST, they were actually winning at Endor."
This always makes me wonder if we saw the same movies, or if from now on I should consider little teddy bears and kneeling rebel soldiers as "main characters".

Case in point:
In SW: ANH, when they are boarding the "Tantive IV", they are having trouble hitting rebel soldiers who are kneeling in the middle of a white-walled corridor while being black-clad.

They are having problems against the Ewoks in RotJ, losing every physical engagements to those little furry critters, despite the fact that they are no stronger then humans, are swinging their weapons weakly, and the Stormtroopers are wearing armor that is supposed to be impervious to physical attacks. That from a legion of the Emperor's best troops.

So, to answer my question above, I would state that the only thing that validates the Stormtroopers to an Empire run by a paranoid maniac, is their absolute loyalty.

What do you guys think?

CrippledVulture · Post by **CrippledVulture** » Fri Jun 29, 2007 3:27 pm

I think I may have mentioned this before, but it is my belief that although it is indicated in the films that Stormtroopers are the clones from the Clone Wars with slightly different armor, there is considerable evidence to the contrary.

I fully admit that I hate the idea of Stormtroopers as clones. Naturally I do not present this as evidence, but I believe in taking a critical approach to such matters and so I'll just put that out there. I liked Stormtroopers being regular guys from backwater planets.

This may sound a bit off-topic, but the main piece of evidence is central to Praeothmin's post. One of the coolest parts about the prequels was watching the brutal efficiency of the clone soldiers. They displayed a level of tactical superiority, skill, and courage that is not seen in Stormtroopers. Are we supposed to believe that the same army that schooled the killer robots of the Separatists somehow got beat by a handful of outer rim hicks and teddy bears? Come on.

Empires are in the business of keeping people busy. The Clone Wars indicated that the Republic did not have a standing army because the command structure went from the Chancellor and Senate to Jedi to Clones. There were no normal human or alien commanders, middle management or techies. Just Clones. In the original series, however, the Empire has tons of people who serve in their command structure and are not clones.

That's why I'll never buy it.

sonofccn · Post by **sonofccn** » Fri Jun 29, 2007 6:53 pm

Praeothmin wrote:Pro-Wars debaters always tell us without losing a beat that the Stormtroopers are only bad "against main characters, but they're highly efficient against anybody else. In fact, before Chewbacca stole the AT-ST, they were actually winning at Endor."
This always makes me wonder if we saw the same movies, or if from now on I should consider little teddy bears and kneeling rebel soldiers as "main characters".

Via the movie I can say without a doubt the Stormies were not wining on Endor before Chewbacca stole an AT-ST. They scored only a single observed kill and that was by an AT-ST IIRC not thier stormtroopers.

Inshort Stormtroopers do not appear to be elite troops at all. I would guess thier trained to obey orders at all costs. So thier good for simple duty, guarding, shooting loudmouth prisoners, walking forward and shooting but against any real halfway decent military these guys would be curbstomped even with thier more advanced weapontry.

Crippled Vulture wrote:This may sound a bit off-topic, but the main piece of evidence is central to Praeothmin's post. One of the coolest parts about the prequels was watching the brutal efficiency of the clone soldiers. They displayed a level of tactical superiority, skill, and courage that is not seen in Stormtroopers.

I think the main reason behind this is a differnce of purpuse. The Clonetroopers were built/grown/cloned for the express purpuse of fighting in a galatic civil war.

Compare that to Stormtroopers who had no external enemy to fight and only a bunch of rag-tag rebels who only achived a major victory after twenty years of trying. Thier duties mainly seem to consist of guarding starships and stations and keeping the locals inline on Imperial worlds Stormtroopers don't really seem like soldiers, more like security officers or alteast Military Police.

SailorSaturn13 · Post by **SailorSaturn13** » Sun Jul 01, 2007 7:59 am

There is a third possibility: they are BAD clones.

Clones from AOTC and ROTS were made from very good genetic material (Fett), and by the b best cloning specialists - Kaminoans. The idea was to have soldiers that can beat the Jedi. But after Empire creation, Palpatine would most likely kill or banish Kaminoans as non-humans and Fett was unavailable. So either they are recruits or, quite possible, clones made from some scum persons by some half-educated scientists, as human planets forbade cloning before.

Kazeite · Post by **Kazeite** » Sun Jul 01, 2007 10:27 am

"Bad clone! Baad clone! Sit!" :D

I thought that stormtroopers in ANH and beyond weren't clones. As seen in classic trilogy, they have different heights, they move differently... Basically, even if we assume that there are several templates, the sheer number of them means that the whole clone problems becomes moot.

CrippledVulture · Post by **CrippledVulture** » Sun Jul 01, 2007 4:04 pm

The use of a different person for the clones, a shoddy technique, or perhaps the degrading of the original genetic material are the only real explanations for me. While I agree that the Empire's soldiers in the original trilogy are used in different ways, I just don't see that as an excuse for them falling so far. From a well-oiled killing machine to total idiots.

Here's the question: Would the clones have retreated from "Han's charge" in ANH? I don't think so.

watchdog · Post by **watchdog** » Mon Jul 16, 2007 5:17 pm

A couple of books released shortly after RotS claim that the Empire opened their cloning up to all sorts of soldiers (supposedly the elites of course) so as to not have all their clone troops based off of only one source (who would all share the same weakness). The EU also suggests that in later years they began conscription and may have turned to conscription alone in later years (maybe after building two death stars the emperor could no longer aford all those damn clones :D)
Palpatine himself claims that it is a legion of his best troops down on Endor, if he wasn't simply boasting then that is just sad. Luke himself points out to Palps that his overconfidence is his weakness and he was right; The troops did not post any real guards or apparently have any kind of patrols anywhere near the bunker, they had no surveilance cameras ouside the bunker, they had no pre-planned firing positions or wire around their perimiter. When my battalion goes out for a field training exercise, while everyone else is setting up their equipment, we have people surrounding the entire site with constantina wire, usually three strands on top of one another. We have one entrance point with posted armed guards at all hour as well as roving guards patrolling the perimiter. In the event of an attack we all have pre-planned positions that we take to defend the perimiter, when we return to the motor pool, all pieces of equipment down to our tents must be accounted for and placed in a secure place. All vehicles must be locked up while not in use inside of our locked motor pool in the middle of Ft. Huachuca, and we're only the signal corps.

TheRedFear · Post by **TheRedFear** » Sun Aug 12, 2007 9:32 pm

CrippledVulture wrote:I think I may have mentioned this before, but it is my belief that although it is indicated in the films that Stormtroopers are the clones from the Clone Wars with slightly different armor, there is considerable evidence to the contrary.

I fully admit that I hate the idea of Stormtroopers as clones. Naturally I do not present this as evidence, but I believe in taking a critical approach to such matters and so I'll just put that out there. I liked Stormtroopers being regular guys from backwater planets.

This may sound a bit off-topic, but the main piece of evidence is central to Praeothmin's post. One of the coolest parts about the prequels was watching the brutal efficiency of the clone soldiers. They displayed a level of tactical superiority, skill, and courage that is not seen in Stormtroopers. Are we supposed to believe that the same army that schooled the killer robots of the Separatists somehow got beat by a handful of outer rim hicks and teddy bears? Come on.

Empires are in the business of keeping people busy. The Clone Wars indicated that the Republic did not have a standing army because the command structure went from the Chancellor and Senate to Jedi to Clones. There were no normal human or alien commanders, middle management or techies. Just Clones. In the original series, however, the Empire has tons of people who serve in their command structure and are not clones.

That's why I'll never buy it.

I agree with you basically. My personal opinion, is that by the time of the original trilogy, most of the Clones had died out(whether in engagements, or of old age), and while some still remain, most of the Stromtrooper's ranks are taken from normal human(or humanoid) stock. Perhaps a few Elite regiments like the 501st(though it's really hard to think of them as elite after the what the Ewoks put them through) or the Crimson guys are still Clones, but I'd say the majority of troopers are just normal recruits now.