Databank Mudtroopers entry

So, there's the answer.

The Imperial Army does/did exist, but is/was phased out in favor of Stormtroopers.

And that covers a lot of ground.

See an Army trooper? He's with a unit that hasn't been phased out yet.

Why have them when Stormtroopers seem to do the same job? The Empire agrees, it's just a slow process.

Need them for your campaign? It's canon.

Don't want them in your campaign? Also technically canon.

Those guys Driving the AT-ST? Imperial Army. The infantry was phased out, not other units.

I'm okay with this explanation.

And let the debates.... begin!

49 minutes ago, kaosoe said:

I'm okay with this explanation.

Totally fine with me as well. Let's people have it both ways.

.....and a chapter of Star Wars debate is closed with an actual good explanation.

Their appearance also helps with them being phased out/into Stormtroopers. Their gear is a mix of what we've called Imperial Army along with some Stormtrooper influences.

So if Han wouldn't have ran into Beckett, would he have eventually found himself transitioned into a Stormtrooper or AT-ST unit?

Nope! lol. I feel that the Imperial army should be what is used most of the time and Stormtroopers are basically like SS or something. Stormtroopers are used to police the population, do the real dirty work, and make a show of the Empire's might. I feel the bulk of the military ground forces would look like what we saw in Solo. This would make the Stormtroopers more personally indoctrinated in perpetuating the crimes of the Empire than say the average Imperial Soldier, because the really oppressive work is done by the Stormtrooper corps. Imperial soldiers are basically grunts doing what they think they should for their government, but they are not fanatics to the degree of the armored troops.

It's a fine middle ground.

I'm pleasantly surprised that Disney went to those lengths — in this day and age it'd be easier for general audiences to be shown only Stormtroopers.

This is awesome and I appreciate this. My PC's have little contact with Imperials usually but will have to be mindful of this in the future.

Actually makes a lot of sense when you consider that Earth has upwards of 10 million people in some sort of military uniform. I'll forgo all that math and assume the Imperial military has well over a Billion, of which infantry would be a large part. Definitely would take years to transition a force that massive, especially when talking about equipment acquisition, distribution, retraining. No small undertaking, by any means.

I won't argue that its now canon, but for my games, Stormtroopers will remain marines, heavy infantry, and special operations.

I like having non-stormtrooper soldiers out there.

That basically jives with what I've assumed for years. Stormtroopers are the foot soldiers. Imperial Army are the vehicle drivers and artillery specialists. That doesn't mean Imperial Army aren't soldiers, they're just not infantry specialized.

I'd assume there's some sort of "every stormtrooper is a rifleman" adage in the Imperial military. They're good at shooting things - just not our heroes - and bullying the locals.

On 6/10/2018 at 9:32 PM, Archlyte said:

This would make the Stormtroopers more culpable in the crimes of the Empire than say the average Imperial Soldier, because the really oppressive work is done by the Stormtrooper corps. Imperial soldiers are basically grunts doing what they think they should for their government, but they are not fanatics to the degree of the armored troops.

Yeeah... no. I dislike it immensly as it smacks of the "we were only following orders" defense and the myth that only special political units were the ones that committed war crimes (during ww2 primarily, since you brought up the SS). If you propogate a policy that dehumanizes the enemy (rebel scum!) it will start permeating every branch of your military (and to some point civilian society) until your troops are going My Lai left and right.

So no, if the Empire is going the war crime route the lowly troopers of the army are going with them.

In my opinion. Which is not humble in the least on this topic.

2 hours ago, penpenpen said:

Yeeah... no. I dislike it immensly as it smacks of the "we were only following orders" defense and the myth that only special political units were the ones that committed war crimes (during ww2 primarily, since you brought up the SS). If you propogate a policy that dehumanizes the enemy (rebel scum!) it will start permeating every branch of your military (and to some point civilian society) until your troops are going My Lai left and right.

So no, if the Empire is going the war crime route the lowly troopers of the army are going with them.

In my opinion. Which is not humble in the least on this topic.

And that is absolutely right and shows me that I wrote that imprecisely because I used the word culpable, which was just stupid of me because I know better. What I really feel is that those lower echelon units are less indoctrinated, not less culpable. Serve an evil cause and you go down with the lot of them. Thanks for speaking up about that Pen

3 hours ago, Archlyte said:

And that is absolutely right and shows me that I wrote that imprecisely because I used the word culpable, which was just stupid of me because I know better. What I really feel is that those lower echelon units are less indoctrinated, not less culpable. Serve an evil cause and you go down with the lot of them. Thanks for speaking up about that Pen

That actually makes me wonder if that was the reason the Imperial Army infantry started becoming phased out - that the higher-ups believed the Imperial Army to be more likely to have Rebel sympathizers. Early on, of course, when the Republic was transitioning into the Empire, you probably had a lot of enlisted personnel (I assume the Grand Army of the Republic wasn't all clones) for whom the new order was not quite what they had signed up for. I'm not sure how long that situation would have lasted, of course... but even decades later in general I could imagine the Stormtroopers were the ones who signed up because they really believed in the Imperial Order, and the Imperial Army was full of guys who'd signed up for the benefits... or for the peace and stability that the Empire was not exactly delivering...

According to Wookiepedia:

Quote

The original forces of the Imperial Army were comprised of the clone troopers of the Grand Army of the Republic and local planetary defense forces .

So that would certainly explain why they'd be more likely to have rebel sympathisers, their original loyalties were to their homeworlds. Hence the change - remodelling all these piecemeal local forces with shabby gear and divided loyalties into the Stormtrooper Corps, based on the clones.

On 6/13/2018 at 11:27 AM, Talkie Toaster said:

According to Wookiepedia:

So that would certainly explain why they'd be more likely to have rebel sympathisers, their original loyalties were to their homeworlds. Hence the change - remodelling all these piecemeal local forces with shabby gear and divided loyalties into the Stormtrooper Corps, based on the clones.

To me, this means that during the early years of the Empire, the Stormtrooper corps was made up of surviving Clone Troopers while the Imperial Army was made up of the remaining Grand Army of the Republic and Planetary defense forces.

The Empire gradually phased out Clone Troopers from the Stormtrooper corps and at the same time phased out most of the infantry in the Imperial Army and turned it into a mostly supportive role while expanding the Stormtrooper corps to handle almost all infantry duties.

Most likely, they'd start with the most unstable systems and the last systems to be completely converted would be the most stable and imperial supporting ones. Heck, some most likely never completely converted, like Coruscant, where there were local militia forces that largely did police duties.

12 hours ago, OddballE8 said:

To me, this means that during the early years of the Empire, the Stormtrooper corps was made up of surviving Clone Troopers while the Imperial Army was made up of the remaining Grand Army of the Republic and Planetary defense forces.

The Empire gradually phased out Clone Troopers from the Stormtrooper corps and at the same time phased out most of the infantry in the Imperial Army and turned it into a mostly supportive role while expanding the Stormtrooper corps to handle almost all infantry duties.

Most likely, they'd start with the most unstable systems and the last systems to be completely converted would be the most stable and imperial supporting ones. Heck, some most likely never completely converted, like Coruscant, where there were local militia forces that largely did police duties.

I watched the movie again last night and I noticed some stormtrooper type helms (like the ones in Rogue One with the Forehead Visor or in the Corellia) in the mix but the guys wearing them seemed to be acting like MPs or well SS. I like the idea of not having Stormtroopers everywhere, but still having them as the symbol of the Empire's presence. People tend to think about the most severe version of something to give the face to a whole. I can see most people being actually oppressed by dudes with gray armor, but the guys in white armor with the skull-like helmets are what is generally brought up.

I think those that appeared to have stormtrooper like helmets in the mix, were because that's what the helmet, with goggles down, and breather apparatus on, approximate, but I could be wrong.

7 hours ago, Demon4x4 said:

I think those that appeared to have stormtrooper like helmets in the mix, were because that's what the helmet, with goggles down, and breather apparatus on, approximate, but I could be wrong.

Yeah and it's so fast I really couldn't say either. Plus I loved the movie but the darkness and often shaky camera work was a bit bad. It kind of gave me a headache. I hope the Blu-Ray looks different

I have always maintained and will continue to maintain within the RPG that the Stormtrooper Corps is an elite arm of the Imperial Military while the bulk of the Imperial Army and Navy is made up mostly of ordinary troopers who wear grey chest armor and helmets like the mudtroopers and AT-ST pilots (or black uniforms and helmets in the case of Imperial Navy Troopers). Think Nazi Germany’s Waffen-SS vs the Wehrmacht. One is a fanatical, paramilitary force of true-believers while the other is made up of average citizens who are just “putting in time/earning some coin” or where pressed into service. Solo was the first Movie/Show to depict a concept that was established by the WEG RPG back in the very beginning.

On a side note, I loved the bit with the Imperial officer shouting patriotic slogans at the troops. Closest we have come to seeing a COMPNOR commissar on screen

12 hours ago, Otakuon said:

Think Nazi Germany’s Waffen-SS vs the Wehrmacht. One is a fanatical, paramilitary force of true-believers while the other is made up of average citizens who are just “putting in time/earning some coin” or where pressed into service.

This is not correct. Germany's regular army was fully engaged with the "work" of genocide, not as an occasional aberration but as a systemic part of its conquest and occupation, particularly of the East.

Which isn't a bad parallel to the imperial army, I suppose; the stormtroopers might be "worse", but the regular soldiers will happily murder everyone in your sleepy backwater town as a matter of routine policy.

Sorry, I am not talking about the Holocaust and who was responsible or not responsible for it. That is outside the scope of this discussion. I am simply making a general comparison. The Waffen-SS (as opposed to the Allgemeine SS) was the military arm of fhe Nazi Political Party that participated dirececty in combat operations alongside the traditional German Military uniformed forces (aka Wehrmacht) and specifically the German Army (aka Heer). Initially all SS personnel had to meet certain standards (first and formost be a member of the NSDAP and be of Aryan descent) but these rules were relaxed over the course of the war. So, in GENERAL terms, the relationship of the Stormtrooper corps to the the rest of the Imperial Army in Star Wars can be seen as similar to the way the German Millitary functioned during WW2.

I can understand that people could be worried about glorifying the Nazi stuff but merely referencing it seems to me a bit like not saying Voldemort's name. The bad guys in Star Wars are indeed called Stormtroopers. To me one of the cool things about the IP is the way it relates to a fairy tale more than a news report about violence in the real world. While I do think it makes sense to have some explanation of the breakdown of the evil army, the morality to me is always going to be a sidelined thing in a fictional reality in which the objective existence of good and evil is apparent. You can have these moral questions like where you have a bad guy fighting for a good cause in Saw Gerrera, or a Stormtrooper who decides he won't be doing any more killing, but I think the main storylines are gong to be about that struggle between good and evil. Characters who have the luxury to not be defined by that conflict can worry about a stolen pack of gum.

"the line between good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts."

-Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

The only thing I'll say about WWII and the german military is that people need to read the book Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning.

On 6/18/2018 at 5:32 PM, OddballE8 said:

The only thing I'll say about WWII and the german military is that people need to read the book Ordinary Men by Christopher Browning.

I think I wrote a paper on that book back in school. I second the recommendation, strongly.

Anyone notice that the gun on that AT-DT is a perfect copy of a Flak36 88mm cannon? I love the sneaky WWII nods. We could kick off a whole topic on this.