This REBELs show basically cemented that the clone army and the seperatist droid in the galactic area are on the same side and enemies of the empire.

Unless there were a lot of Droid commanders that countermanded the shut-down order, that's not going to mean much. Kalani and a handful of battle droids hardly qualifies as adding the Droid Army to the Rebellion.

The only way I can see it being feasible is if there are droid armies that were put into storage after being shut down instead of being scrapped, and Kalani reactivates those forces.

There is no Clone Army any more. There are three survivors that weren't rolled into the Stormtrooper Corps. As for the Droid Army, understanding the state of it now requires understanding the state of it back in the Clone Wars.

The Empire doesn't use a Clone Army or a Droid Army, they recruit and train soldiers rather than manufacturing them. The same is true of every state that follows.

Why?

The answer is that neither a droid army nor a clone army are the most effective means of creating soldiers.

The soldiers of a Clone Army are conditioned and trained since birth and given their similarity it's very easy to design training regimens that suit them all. Given how deeply they understand each other they also have very strong unit cohesion. When Rex says the GAR was one of the finest armies in galactic history he had a point.

A Clone Army however is phenomenally expensive and it takes ten years to get new soldiers. The time and resources that go into creating it could create a vastly larger army of recruited soldiers in a few months rather than ten years. While the Clone Troopers are individually probably the best soldiers in Star Wars one standard clone trooper doesn't equal twenty Stormtroopers.

The reason the Republic builds a Clone Army is because it can be manufactured in secret: a conventional military buildup would not go unnoticed by the separatist movement. The Empire has no such need for secrecy and does not continue to make clones after the Kaminoan soldiers run out. It's been solidly established that Stormtroopers aren't the equal of Clone Troopers but the Empire has far, far more of them and can replace them much more quickly.

But if the Empire values numbers why not use a droid army? While there's probably an argument made for droid soldiers being a symbol of CIS atrocities (hence the even worse treatment of droids in the Imperial era) a droid army isn't practical either. Droid soldiers are the opposite philosophy to clone soldiers: they can be manufactured at an incredible rate and come fully trained but they also have critical, exploitable flaws.

The most practical way of building war droids is to build large numbers of cheap ones: you press the advantage of it. If you're building a much smaller number of droids that are the equal of a highly trained biological soldier you might as well train the biological soldier: you'll get similar or better results for a lower expenditure. There's a reason the CIS doesn't mass produce the commando droids in lieu of B1s and B2s. Battle droids may individually be very poor soldiers but they can be produced in such overwhelming numbers that it's not a problem. A Clone Trooper may be the equal of a hundred battle droids but the CIS simply manufactures 200.

This is why the CIS thought their ultimate victory was inevitable: as long as their industry held they would eventually defeat the Republic by attrition.

The droid army only worked because the galaxy hadn't known war on this scale for centuries: a droid army this large was a new threat. The Republic adapted technologically to exploit the weaknesses in the droid army: relatively early in the war they'd already developed EMP "droid popper" grenades that could take out squads of them at once and as the war went on they got better and better at exploiting the droid army's flaws such as their lack of creativity and adaptability. You know how after a while you get used to a video game's AI and learn to exploit its flaws? The same is true of the droid army. Much like horse cavalry the dominance of the droid army was eroded by technological advancements it fundamentally couldn't deal with. This was hammered home when taking CIS high command allowed the total shutdown of the entire Separatist military machine.

It's possible to get old CIS gear including their war machines back online and many groups of pirates probably did. The galaxy is still littered with abandoned CIS equipment. There are probably pockets of droid army resistance that failed to shut down and don't know the war is over. However, they don't pose a threat to the Empire because the Empire knows how to fight them. They have superior soldiers, superior technology and now they even have superior numbers. Even if the entire remaining Droid Army came back online the Empire would probably win fairly easily.

If Kalani joined the Rebels then the best he could contribute is himself. Even then, he'd be of limited use: he's a Clone Wars era battle simulator with Clone Wars era information: he's accustomed to commanding battle droids. Whatever he's gone off to do it'll be something he thinks improves the Rebellion's chances.

You keep saying that only Rex, Wolffe, and Gregor escaped without the biochip, but we have no proof of that. A better thing to say would be, "So far, only 3 Clones we know of have escaped the Stormtrooper Corps".

If you watched the Clone Wars series, they show who trains them. The Republic hired mercenaries to train the clones. They trained them right on kamino. Shak ti was the jedi incharge of training clone training.

The Republic didn't hire anyone: they didn't know about the Clone Army before the war started. That's why the Kaminoans got mercenaries, Mandalorians, ex-Judicials and the like in: they needed people who could disappear to Kamino for ten years without being missed. The Jedi don't get involved with Kamino until after the start of the war.

Which is why the clones have Mandalorian honour markings (see Rex's helmet in the last episode), they more or less follow the Mandalorian code as that is who trained them.

This REBELs show basically cemented that the clone army and the seperatist droid in the galactic area are on the same side and enemies of the empire.

Unless there were a lot of Droid commanders that countermanded the shut-down order, that's not going to mean much. Kalani and a handful of battle droids hardly qualifies as adding the Droid Army to the Rebellion.

The only way I can see it being feasible is if there are droid armies that were put into storage after being shut down instead of being scrapped, and Kalani reactivates those forces.

There is no Clone Army any more. There are three survivors that weren't rolled into the Stormtrooper Corps. As for the Droid Army, understanding the state of it now requires understanding the state of it back in the Clone Wars.

The Empire doesn't use a Clone Army or a Droid Army, they recruit and train soldiers rather than manufacturing them. The same is true of every state that follows.

Why?

The answer is that neither a droid army nor a clone army are the most effective means of creating soldiers.

The soldiers of a Clone Army are conditioned and trained since birth and given their similarity it's very easy to design training regimens that suit them all. Given how deeply they understand each other they also have very strong unit cohesion. When Rex says the GAR was one of the finest armies in galactic history he had a point.

A Clone Army however is phenomenally expensive and it takes ten years to get new soldiers. The time and resources that go into creating it could create a vastly larger army of recruited soldiers in a few months rather than ten years. While the Clone Troopers are individually probably the best soldiers in Star Wars one standard clone trooper doesn't equal twenty Stormtroopers.

The reason the Republic builds a Clone Army is because it can be manufactured in secret: a conventional military buildup would not go unnoticed by the separatist movement. The Empire has no such need for secrecy and does not continue to make clones after the Kaminoan soldiers run out. It's been solidly established that Stormtroopers aren't the equal of Clone Troopers but the Empire has far, far more of them and can replace them much more quickly.

But if the Empire values numbers why not use a droid army? While there's probably an argument made for droid soldiers being a symbol of CIS atrocities (hence the even worse treatment of droids in the Imperial era) a droid army isn't practical either. Droid soldiers are the opposite philosophy to clone soldiers: they can be manufactured at an incredible rate and come fully trained but they also have critical, exploitable flaws.

The most practical way of building war droids is to build large numbers of cheap ones: you press the advantage of it. If you're building a much smaller number of droids that are the equal of a highly trained biological soldier you might as well train the biological soldier: you'll get similar or better results for a lower expenditure. There's a reason the CIS doesn't mass produce the commando droids in lieu of B1s and B2s. Battle droids may individually be very poor soldiers but they can be produced in such overwhelming numbers that it's not a problem. A Clone Trooper may be the equal of a hundred battle droids but the CIS simply manufactures 200.

This is why the CIS thought their ultimate victory was inevitable: as long as their industry held they would eventually defeat the Republic by attrition.

The droid army only worked because the galaxy hadn't known war on this scale for centuries: a droid army this large was a new threat. The Republic adapted technologically to exploit the weaknesses in the droid army: relatively early in the war they'd already developed EMP "droid popper" grenades that could take out squads of them at once and as the war went on they got better and better at exploiting the droid army's flaws such as their lack of creativity and adaptability. You know how after a while you get used to a video game's AI and learn to exploit its flaws? The same is true of the droid army. Much like horse cavalry the dominance of the droid army was eroded by technological advancements it fundamentally couldn't deal with. This was hammered home when taking CIS high command allowed the total shutdown of the entire Separatist military machine.

It's possible to get old CIS gear including their war machines back online and many groups of pirates probably did. The galaxy is still littered with abandoned CIS equipment. There are probably pockets of droid army resistance that failed to shut down and don't know the war is over. However, they don't pose a threat to the Empire because the Empire knows how to fight them. They have superior soldiers, superior technology and now they even have superior numbers. Even if the entire remaining Droid Army came back online the Empire would probably win fairly easily.

If Kalani joined the Rebels then the best he could contribute is himself. Even then, he'd be of limited use: he's a Clone Wars era battle simulator with Clone Wars era information: he's accustomed to commanding battle droids. Whatever he's gone off to do it'll be something he thinks improves the Rebellion's chances.

You are presenting a lot of speculations regarding clone armies and droid armies as they were facts, but with no reference to any source? STAR WARS is a fictional world, and while your speculations could be plausable to some extent. The fact is, we do not know the cost of building and operating a clone army in comparison to a standard imperial army. Same with the droid-army. It is also not true that the droids are inferior to human/clone soldiers, as Qui Gon and Obi Wan are no match fro Droidekas (Destroyer droids) as we see in SW1.

I feel the main reason they don't use droids, is the Empire is more or less a continuation of the Republic, yes it may now be a dictatorship, but that change came about by stealth, the Senate still exists but has no real power. I can't see a previously Republic Army being happy having droids introduced. It was far easier to bring in new recruits on the change over (and a lot of previous military and naval personnel during the war discovered they were now locked into the military and couldn't leave. There is a wonderful Vader speech where he informs them of this in Republic.)

You keep saying that only Rex, Wolffe, and Gregor escaped without the biochip, but we have no proof of that. A better thing to say would be, "So far, only 3 Clones we know of have escaped the Stormtrooper Corps".

Sure, they could retcon in some more down the line if they wanted to and they probably will eventually. Look how the number of Order 66 survivors steadily grew in the old canon as authors kept wanting new Jedi survivors. Depends how strict the Story Group is.

But think about it for a moment. The clone's loyalty had to be ensured: they had to betray and execute the Jedi commanders they'd bonded in battle with for three years. For a clone to remove their chip and disobey Order 66 they'd have to have a reason to distrust the Republic they were raised since birth to be absolutely loyal to, to somehow know about the chip and to somehow know its true purpose (unknown to all except the highest ranking Kaminoans and the Sith). Rex only knows about it because of what happened with Fives, Wolffe and Gregor are with him.

So yes, there could be more. There probably are a few. Not many, because as soon as the Republic finds out you know you're eliminated. Filoni said that not immediately obeying Order 66 made you as much of an enemy as the Jedi, hence those three being in hiding.

Of those three, only Rex joined the Rebellion. Even then I'm fairly sure that was due to his bond with Ahsoka. The other two stayed on that desert world with no interest in joining another war even after being directly attacked by the Empire. If there are other survivors the same is likely to be true of most of them. Given the information about the chip comes from Rex he probably has his reasons not for pointing the Rebels in the direction of any other GAR deserters that may still be around.

Even if a few scattered fragments remain, the Clone Army and Droid Army are both no more.

I would also like to mention that the empire is acutally kind of smart in this episode. They way they intercept the transmission, see that it is repeditive, and reason it is a distress signal. I liked that part.

As a former MCH from SWG, I now want a Blerg. Also, now I randomly miss my Humbaba

Thrawn had plot armor against Ezra using force powers on him. Repaid by not nuking them from orbit as they escaped.

Chopper + Explosives = YES!

And Chopper seems to have gotten over his Y-Wing thing. He'll be a real astromech yet!

Kanan and Cham getting along at the table with Hera. Season finale is gonna be a wedding!

Didn't get much history out of that trinket they were going after.. I was expecting a tapestry of some sort.

Couldn't be tapestries. It'd be too close.

Two rebels infiltrate the ancient castle of an evil empire art-collector posing as guests, and ask to view the Tapestries. They then get captured, find a secret command post in the basement, and exit lighting the entire place on fire. Stop me if you've heard this one.

"If you are a scout-trooper then I am Micky Mouse! "

Okay I don't recall. Any more hints? Naw just tell me

Any help with the reference?

It's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, same as the gif. Indy and his girl show up at Castle Grunwald to save his dad from some Nazis; she turns coat, they get trapped, they escape by accidentally burning the castle down. They initially try to gain access to the castle by making up a cocamamy story about Indy being a Lord who likes tapestries; the guard doesn't buy it.

I thought you were joking the first time you asked for hints because the movie referenced was the same one in the gif.

I feel the main reason they don't use droids, is the Empire is more or less a continuation of the Republic, yes it may now be a dictatorship, but that change came about by stealth, the Senate still exists but has no real power. I can't see a previously Republic Army being happy having droids introduced. It was far easier to bring in new recruits on the change over (and a lot of previous military and naval personnel during the war discovered they were now locked into the military and couldn't leave. There is a wonderful Vader speech where he informs them of this in Republic.)

You are presenting a lot of speculations regarding clone armies and droid armies as they were facts, but with no reference to any source? STAR WARS is a fictional world, and while your speculations could be plausable to some extent. The fact is, we do not know the cost of building and operating a clone army in comparison to a standard imperial army. Same with the droid-army. It is also not true that the droids are inferior to human/clone soldiers, as Qui Gon and Obi Wan are no match fro Droidekas (Destroyer droids) as we see in SW1.

I'd say deduction rather than speculation but in essence you're correct: the conclusions I draw from the information we have can be incorrect: I assume everyone acts rationally unless otherwise stated and draw conclusions based on that. Canon may later rule that the Empire/Republic/Confederacy are simply idiots but until then I go with what makes sense. I usually phrase such posts that the deductive rather than fact recall approach is clear although rereading it I've failed to do that this time.

On the matter of clones, we know it takes ten years to make them: that alone puts them at a severe disadvantage compared to a conventional army. In terms of cost we have the backstory of the Kaminoans: they're financially motivated. Episode II is your source for that.

On the matter of droids I believe I already answered this. Droidekas are indeed incredibly powerful combat units. So why bother making B1s at all? Why not produce droidekas alone?

The answer? Expense. A droideka is a very powerful war machine but it's also established to be a very expensive war machine: you could produce them instead of B1s but you'd end up with far fewer. The Droid Army therefore plays to its strengths: you can make droids that outperform human soldiers but not for an equal or lower cost, else who'd use human soldiers? Hence the bulk of the droid army consists of B1s and B2s: they're the most cost effective unit available: much less effective than a droideka but you get far more of them.

The Separatist mantra for army-building holds well in many games and shows, including X-Wing.

Many of the best lists you can make are not two or three specialist ships, but a pile of cheap, durable ships. Ever fought a TIE swarm before? They just evade, evade, evade as they chip the heath off your fighters one shield point at a time. You destroy one, two; so what? Only the synergy TIEs (Howlrunner) matter.

In the recent episode all it took to "kill" two Jedi and a Clone commander were 50 or so B-1s and four Droidekas. All of whom came off an assembly line.

In Starcraft the Zerg build up a decent industrial base, and then overwhelm the enemy with cheap troops.

You don't fight one B-1, or one TIE, or one Zergling; you fight the swarm.

It might take awhile to get the 'new' Phantom... but other than the chopped dorsal wing, shortened hull (probably) and Sabines' paint-job, I sure hope the rebels install a weapon. I assume it wont be as gnarly as the big ol' guns on Snowball 1 the first attack shuttle.

Wookieepedia says that model shuttle sometimes equipped three laser cannons, so it's got the potential. I can't see the Ghost crew not giving it some kind of armament.

I think it's worth pointing out that there's no reason for a Clone army to especially expensive and difficult to maintain in quantity.

The trouble is that you need to anticipate the number of troops you need a decade in advance. Which is difficult. We also know that during the Clone Wars, the Republic was ordering more Clones by the tens of thousands, meaning that even seven to ten years into Palpatine's reign that there would be Clonetroopers coming online.

By comparison, what the First Order replaced the old Stormtrooper Corps is ridiculously expensive. When you use Clones with accelerated growth, you only have to feed them for ten years. You only need to make one size of armor, all the blasters can have stocks with identical lengths of pull, &c., everything is cheaper, because it can all be exactly the same.

The First Order's Stormtrooper Corps is raised by the First Order from birth. That means 16-20 years of needing to take care of children with varying nutritional needs, varying growth rates, and varying learning speeds. It also means that you need to make everything in a variety of sizes to fit the tallest Stormtroopers to the shortest Stormtroopers. But you need to anticipate your troop strength requirements virtually 20 years in advance: That's basically trying to foresee in 1996 how many troops we'd need in 2016. Which is not merely difficult but virtually impossible.

The benefit of the Imperial Stormtrooper Corps, of course, is that it can be grown very rapidly. It can easily be demobilized when the need for troops no longer exists and new troopers can readily be recruited with the rather simpler requirement of determining how many troops you need in a relatively short time period, say three to six months, in the future.

A droid army, of course, doesn't need to be fed. It can be mass produced when you need them and put in storage when you don't. And nobody but the bean-counters will care if you lose a million droids taking or holding some obscure world in the Outer Rim.

So the ideal Star Wars army (I think) would probably look like the Sith Empire's army in The Old Republic : A mixture of droids, a mass conscription force (like the Imperial Stormtrooper Corps), and an elite corps of Clonetroopers or First Order Stormtrooper-like volunteers. All led/advised by Force sensitives, of course. Probably squads of droids commanded by individual conscripts/militia, companies of these mixed units being commanded by conscript/militia officers, specialized strike teams made up of commando droid-types lead by professional, full-time military types, with professional command and staff officers leading the whole bloody thing, assisted by command & staff trained Jedi/Sith advisors and further supplemented with special operations capable commando droids and troopers led by special operations trained Jedi/Sith.

Indeed.

(With lighsaber knives for utility. And personal shields. And goodness I'm back in the "I'll command a Stormtrooper Unit" thread. )

So anyway, I watched the Rebels Recon. They said that Ezra was born the same day as the end of the clone wars. Same day as order 66. I know born and conceived aren't nessisarily equivalent and it's unlikely that he absorbed any power from it or somesuch but, all those dead Jedi, all that excess "Force" floating around, and him a being force-sensitive - I have to wonder if he might have been affected by it.

Also Fen Rau might be a good guy soon. The Empire really knows how to make friends don't they.

As a former MCH from SWG, I now want a Blerg. Also, now I randomly miss my Humbaba

Thrawn had plot armor against Ezra using force powers on him. Repaid by not nuking them from orbit as they escaped.

Chopper + Explosives = YES!

And Chopper seems to have gotten over his Y-Wing thing. He'll be a real astromech yet!

Kanan and Cham getting along at the table with Hera. Season finale is gonna be a wedding!

Didn't get much history out of that trinket they were going after.. I was expecting a tapestry of some sort.

Couldn't be tapestries. It'd be too close.

Two rebels infiltrate the ancient castle of an evil empire art-collector posing as guests, and ask to view the Tapestries. They then get captured, find a secret command post in the basement, and exit lighting the entire place on fire. Stop me if you've heard this one.

"If you are a scout-trooper then I am Micky Mouse! "

Okay I don't recall. Any more hints? Naw just tell me

Any help with the reference?

It's Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, same as the gif. Indy and his girl show up at Castle Grunwald to save his dad from some Nazis; she turns coat, they get trapped, they escape by accidentally burning the castle down. They initially try to gain access to the castle by making up a cocamamy story about Indy being a Lord who likes tapestries; the guard doesn't buy it.

I thought you were joking the first time you asked for hints because the movie referenced was the same one in the gif.

I feel the main reason they don't use droids, is the Empire is more or less a continuation of the Republic, yes it may now be a dictatorship, but that change came about by stealth, the Senate still exists but has no real power. I can't see a previously Republic Army being happy having droids introduced. It was far easier to bring in new recruits on the change over (and a lot of previous military and naval personnel during the war discovered they were now locked into the military and couldn't leave. There is a wonderful Vader speech where he informs them of this in Republic.)

We talked long and hard about this in a thread long ago. It was so long ago that I had to dredge it up when the "On Stormtroopers" thread popped up in off-topic.

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/232108-on-stormtroopers/

If you scroll down till you see gifs you can read the detailed version of what I arrived at theory-wise. The TLDR version is this:

The Separatists and Republic made the first real armies that had been needed for a long time; each mass-produced, each according to their philosophies. The Seps used a mixture of cheap and expensive droids, the cheap ones to hold areas and provide a mass of fire, the expensive ones to kill Jedi, snipe clones, take positions etc. The Republic used a more conventional army of clones; individually better than the cheap droids, inferior to the expensive ones - mid range cost per unit, but with a longish production time. This is in addition to the armies of aliens and PDFs of the member worlds of the Separatists and the Republic - the natives did most of the defending and a good bit of the attacking too. Genosians, Twi'leks, Wookies, Rodians, regular Humans, and all manner of aliens fought in the clone wars alongside the clones and droids.

Skip to the Empire.

The Empire owns everything. They do not wage war, they enforce occupations. They have learned a valuable lesson; one that could not be enforced in the clone wars where planets were strategic resources. That lesson is this:

From Dune.

- "The power to destroy a thing is the absolute control over it."

The offensive arm of the Empire is the fleet. They have so many worlds, if one rebels it is cheaper and easier to bomb it into submission rather than invade and control it: there are more worlds where that one came from. Thus the Empire does not need troops like the clones and droids, they need MPs. Thugs. Enforcers. And they need billions of them.

The Republic and Separatist worlds were mostly self-governing; only in cases like Kashyyyk or Geonosis, where the native populace needed to be subjugated were policing actions necessary. The Empire needs to police every single plane t that doesn't agree with them; so they need troopers to do it. Not well-trained ones, not expensive ones, not even survivable ones; just ones that can bully with a blaster - and lots of them.

Would you like to know more?

https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/232108-on-stormtroopers/

I find that must certainly hold true in the Outer rim and the far reaches of the Empire and would explain the poor soldiers we saw in the first season of Rebels. I feel however the Imperials must have a mainstay of well trained, motivated soldiers who volunteered to fight. Conscripts historically in the real world never fought nearly as well as motivated volunteers. Sure you can hold territory that isnt necessarily hostile with any grunt but you also must be prepared for war. For instance the stormtroopers shown in the OT were elite troops.

Maybe that's what Rebels is missing. We need to see occupied worlds with well meaning people who are patriotically blinded in their support of the empire. We need an Imperial commander who is like Rommel, a decent human being who had a blindspot and helped support an evil regime.

Even watching Valkyrie and reading about it, the conspirators wanted to eliminate the Nazis but did so to save their own country, they still believed in Germany. We need Imperials who believe in the Empire who aren't horrible conniving monsters but are not willing to defect to the rebels either.

Also Fen Rau might be a good guy soon. The Empire really knows how to make friends don't they.

Maybe he'll train phoenix squadron so they can actually live more than 10 seconds into battle.

I think it's worth pointing out that there's no reason for a Clone army to especially expensive and difficult to maintain in quantity.

The trouble is that you need to anticipate the number of troops you need a decade in advance. Which is difficult. We also know that during the Clone Wars, the Republic was ordering more Clones by the tens of thousands, meaning that even seven to ten years into Palpatine's reign that there would be Clonetroopers coming online.

By comparison, what the First Order replaced the old Stormtrooper Corps is ridiculously expensive. When you use Clones with accelerated growth, you only have to feed them for ten years. You only need to make one size of armor, all the blasters can have stocks with identical lengths of pull, &c., everything is cheaper, because it can all be exactly the same.

I use the same logic you apply to the First Order's forces to justify the expense of the clones: ten years of feeding and housing them plus the cost of the cloning technology and the genetic modification. Relative to a conventional army you simply mobilise when needed they don't come cheap.

I think it's worth pointing out that there's no reason for a Clone army to especially expensive and difficult to maintain in quantity.

The trouble is that you need to anticipate the number of troops you need a decade in advance. Which is difficult. We also know that during the Clone Wars, the Republic was ordering more Clones by the tens of thousands, meaning that even seven to ten years into Palpatine's reign that there would be Clonetroopers coming online.

By comparison, what the First Order replaced the old Stormtrooper Corps is ridiculously expensive. When you use Clones with accelerated growth, you only have to feed them for ten years. You only need to make one size of armor, all the blasters can have stocks with identical lengths of pull, &c., everything is cheaper, because it can all be exactly the same.

I use the same logic you apply to the First Order's forces to justify the expense of the clones: ten years of feeding and housing them plus the cost of the cloning technology and the genetic modification. Relative to a conventional army you simply mobilise when needed they don't come cheap.

I said that. But Clones are not the least efficient way of raising an army in the galaxy, as the First Order found a way.

I was always somewhat surprised that the GAR didn't include larger numbers of conscripts or volunteers (in old EU, they did, but not many). You'd think that they would, given the overwhelming numbers of CIS battle droids.

Likely the quality of the Clonetroopers combined with Jedi leadership - knowing exactly where and when to deploy their troops to have the greatest impact - is the only thing that kept the Republic from completely collapsing to the CIS.

Of course, the real benefit of having Clones fight droids is that you can throw huge sums of money away fighting huge battles, taking enormous losses and the galaxy at large is numbed to the process, seeing no real benefit to fighting the war, and thus making them happy to see it come to an end, particularly as the costs of the war begin to severely dig into the Republic's infrastructure and support networks.

I said that. But Clones are not the least efficient way of raising an army in the galaxy, as the First Order found a way.

One of the reasons the Clone Army was produced in the first place was to produce an army in secret. Given the First Order is also secretly building up their military in violation of their treaties with the New Republic they have time in plentitude. Given that time isn't an object the goal is maximum quality.

Hux insists his father's methods produce better soldiers than cloning would: that the First Order method produces the best from scratch infantry possible. The First Order no doubt augments its military where needed with conscripts though.

Likely the quality of the Clonetroopers combined with Jedi leadership - knowing exactly where and when to deploy their troops to have the greatest impact - is the only thing that kept the Republic from completely collapsing to the CIS.

Initially. Given the prevalance of anti-droid weaponary in the late Clone Wars and the limited use of war droids afterwards I believe the CIS would have lost eventually because of its reliance on droid soldiers: the Republic's anti-droid technology continued to improve whereas anti-clone technology is somewhat less feasible.

I doubt it. The only reason the CIS wasn't decimating the Republic was because Sideous always held them back, having a leader killed off or giving information to the Republic.

In fact in the old EU, which has the far superior lead up to Revenge of the Sith, Grievous kidnapping Palpatine I believe was actually not apart of the plan. Grievous was so effective a leader and general, before the clone wars series ruined him, he became a genuine threat.

I doubt it. The only reason the CIS wasn't decimating the Republic was because Sideous always held them back, having a leader killed off or giving information to the Republic.

In fact in the old EU, which has the far superior lead up to Revenge of the Sith, Grievous kidnapping Palpatine I believe was actually not apart of the plan. Grievous was so effective a leader and general, before the clone wars series ruined him, he became a genuine threat.

In the 2003 cartoon, Grievous is a boss.

I doubt it. The only reason the CIS wasn't decimating the Republic was because Sideous always held them back, having a leader killed off or giving information to the Republic.

In fact in the old EU, which has the far superior lead up to Revenge of the Sith, Grievous kidnapping Palpatine I believe was actually not apart of the plan. Grievous was so effective a leader and general, before the clone wars series ruined him, he became a genuine threat.

In the 2003 cartoon, Grievous is a boss.

As was Windu. It's a shame that animated series is forgotten. ARC heavy gunners looked mental!

I tried hard not to get into spoilers this week. A few might be peaking through though.

The Last Battle - http://superdstuff.com/star-wars-rebels-the-last-battle/

Looking forward to seeing what more of you made of it.

I doubt it. The only reason the CIS wasn't decimating the Republic was because Sideous always held them back, having a leader killed off or giving information to the Republic.

In fact in the old EU, which has the far superior lead up to Revenge of the Sith, Grievous kidnapping Palpatine I believe was actually not apart of the plan. Grievous was so effective a leader and general, before the clone wars series ruined him, he became a genuine threat.

In the 2003 cartoon, Grievous is a boss.

As was Windu. It's a shame that animated series is forgotten. ARC heavy gunners looked mental!

being also a fan of Samuri Jack, made by the same people, I definatly liked it. Anakin was weird, but the rest, pretty great.

I find that must certainly hold true in the Outer rim and the far reaches of the Empire and would explain the poor soldiers we saw in the first season of Rebels. I feel however the Imperials must have a mainstay of well trained, motivated soldiers who volunteered to fight. Conscripts historically in the real world never fought nearly as well as motivated volunteers. Sure you can hold territory that isnt necessarily hostile with any grunt but you also must be prepared for war. For instance the stormtroopers shown in the OT were elite troops.

Maybe that's what Rebels is missing. We need to see occupied worlds with well meaning people who are patriotically blinded in their support of the empire. We need an Imperial commander who is like Rommel, a decent human being who had a blindspot and helped support an evil regime.

Even watching Valkyrie and reading about it, the conspirators wanted to eliminate the Nazis but did so to save their own country, they still believed in Germany. We need Imperials who believe in the Empire who aren't horrible conniving monsters but are not willing to defect to the rebels either.

We do see a few of them; Lt Chiron, Minister Tua, etc. They tend to meet the same fates as their historical counterparts - either they die trying to change the Empire from the outside, or they continue to work for it, but in a more benevolent manner than their comrades.

And as I explained before the Empire does not prepare for war because there is no force that can wage real war with it. The Rebels don't have a planet, all their bases are hidden, they are fighting a guerrilla action. There is no planet, kingdom, city, or smaller republic that can duke it out in a stand-up fight with the Empire - they'll just blast your fleet out of the sky, bomb the planet, and send in stormtroopers and vehicles to mop-up or bury the remaining resistance. The Rebels have to build up a force on the move because even the Ghost can't duke it out with a star destroyer.

The Empire does have a few special forces that they use when legions of conscripts won't work - I think we'll be seeing death troopers and dark troopers soon enough, in addition to Imperial Mandolorians.

(Edit. Also, as I said before, the Stormtroopers live much longer than clones, can be recruited in droves from the billions of existing humans, and are much more effective independently than regular B-1 battle droids.)

I doubt it. The only reason the CIS wasn't decimating the Republic was because Sideous always held them back, having a leader killed off or giving information to the Republic.

In fact in the old EU, which has the far superior lead up to Revenge of the Sith, Grievous kidnapping Palpatine I believe was actually not apart of the plan. Grievous was so effective a leader and general, before the clone wars series ruined him, he became a genuine threat.

In the old EU it was the plan. The old EU also had Sidious covertly assist the CIS repeatedly, with one notable example being giving them the full set of Republic starfighter schematics for the buzz droids.

The CIS is at breaking point as of RotS in the old EU. It had a good run in the second year of the war but by the third it's been pushed to its Outer Rim holdouts.

I watched The Last Battle again and realized something when Rex was talking about his programing and how it was broken in a very few Clone Troopers. I think it was a nod to the Season 2 Clone Wars episode The Deserter. In that episode Rex is wounded by a Commando Droid sniper team and is left with a family whos father is a Clone that deserted the GAR after the First Battle of Geonosis. It's one of my favorite episodes of the series and puts a different light on the Clones.