I just saw the episode where the senate was voting on whether to purchase a new batch of clones. This purchase was approved. Since it takes 10 years for them to mature and be combat-ready, what was the senate thinking? Did they expect the war to last for over a decade? Did they not realize that they would need another source of reinforcements well before that time period? I know Legends has the second form of cloning that produced inferior clone troopers at much accelerated rates, but I'm still not sure how this was supposed to be managed.

Also, if Dooku left the Jedi shortly after the Battle of Naboo, he would have had to jump on board with the Sith plan almost immediately if he was the guy that subverted Sifo-Dyas and selected Jango Fett. The timing seems way too tight to make any sense.

I just saw that episode the other day myself and this hadn't even occurred to me. The Kaminoians might have already been producing clones in advance that had like a year or so to go at the most to cover potential purchases like this one, especially since it was the Kaminoian senator who offered the number in the first place. It would explain the senator's rather strong push to get the Republic to buy them since they wouldn't have made the offer if they couldn't handle the production and it would be a massive loss for the Kaminoians if they couldn't get the clones sold. The Kaminoians are shown constantly producing and training clones even when Obi-Wan first stumbled upon them. The Banking Clan and the other Separatist senators that were in the Republic senate (seriously, how did these guys manage to avoid being outed as Separatists, were the Bothans on vacation the whole war?) were just looking to profit off of it as well as possibly winning the war without firing a shot by bankrupting the Republic.

I'm guessing either Sidious set things up long before Dooku left the Jedi or Dooku was secretly working for Sidious for some time before he officially left the Jedi.

21 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

Since it takes 10 years for them to mature and be combat-ready, what was the senate thinking? Did they expect the war to last for over a decade?

The US invaded Afghanistan in 2001 and is still fighting there. Wars can drag out for a decade or two, sure.

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Did they not realize that they would need another source of reinforcements well before that time period?

Does the episode state that this would be the one and only source of reinforcements? That no others are being pursued or considered?

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Also, if Dooku left the Jedi shortly after the Battle of Naboo, he would have had to jump on board with the Sith plan almost immediately if he was the guy that subverted Sifo-Dyas and selected Jango Fett. The timing seems way too tight to make any sense.

Who says he wasn't Sith while still part of the Order?

12 minutes ago, immortalfrieza said:

The Kaminoians are shown constantly producing and training clones even when Obi-Wan first stumbled upon them.

Yeah, we see child clones in Attack of the Clones, which implies the existence of fresh clone troopers that will be ready for battle in the near future.

20 minutes ago, Stan Fresh said:

Does the episode state that this would be the one and only source of reinforcements? That no others are being pursued or considered?

Not exactly, but one of the most bizarre things about the Clone Wars is that there is no attempt to replace the clone soldiers with conscripts or mercs or any other source. In fact, aside from planets having their own occasional militia or resistance forces that aren't ever enough to matter much the war is fought almost entirely by clone soldiers and Jedi on the Republic end and droids and their commanders like General Grievous on the other.

You would think it would be much faster and cheaper with about the same effectiveness give or take to recruit people from various planets throughout and put them through boot camp than it would be to keep making clones but either you'd be wrong for some reason we're not privy to or Sidious was pretty damned good at making sure that only clone soldiers were available despite how unrealistic that would be so his plan would work. Realistically the Republic should have started conscripting and training hundreds of thousands of people from across the Republic not long after the war started.

5 minutes ago, immortalfrieza said:

Realistically the Republic should have started conscripting and training hundreds of thousands of people from across the Republic not long after the war started.

The Republic government is shown time and again to be corrupt and horribly ineffective, though. Between that, the lack of a military culture, and the war being "out there" for most Republic citizens I can see conscription not getting any traction with politicians and the public.

7 minutes ago, Stan Fresh said:

The Republic government is shown time and again to be corrupt and horribly ineffective, though. Between that, the lack of a military culture, and the war being "out there" for most Republic citizens I can see conscription not getting any traction with politicians and the public.

Maybe not the core worlds, but the mid rim and especially outer rim planets get attacked by the Separatists regularly, the Republic would have no trouble getting people from those worlds to fight for them. Then there's of course the whole issue of volunteers which would be flocking in to fight in the war before conscription would even be an issue that muddles things up further.

1 minute ago, immortalfrieza said:

Maybe not the core worlds, but the mid rim and especially outer rim planets get attacked by the Separatists regularly, the Republic would have no trouble getting people from those worlds to fight for them.

But if clones are a choice, many people would rather send them off to die. Plus the clones are genetically ideal for combat, and better trained than most conscripts/recruits would be. Another advantage to clones is that they are identical. No need to supply different sizes of armor/uniforms, different types of rations, or how to deploy varied aliens to unique environments (don't want to send the mon cal to tattooine).

Also, the jedi liked using clones. The identical nature of them made them easier to enhance with the force through Battle Meditation and similar powers.

And as far as not using mercenaries, the Republic was worried about loyalty, and mercs can generally be bought.

Also, with Palpatine in charge, he could make sure the clones were at the top of everyone's mind. He had all the pre-programmed orders after all.

8 minutes ago, immortalfrieza said:

the Republic would have no trouble getting people from those worlds to fight for them.

I think you're overestimating how willing people are to leave everything behind and go die on some foreign ball of rock and mud.

There's a reason states build up wartime sentiment through propaganda and why the economically disadvantaged are over-represented among soldiers.

16 minutes ago, Stan Fresh said:

I think you're overestimating how willing people are to leave everything behind and go die on some foreign ball of rock and mud.

There's a reason states build up wartime sentiment through propaganda and why the economically disadvantaged are over-represented among soldiers.

I think you're vastly underestimating just how large the Republic is. Even after the Separatists took plenty of worlds from it the Republic has planets numbering in the area of 1 million, Coruscant alone has a population in the range of 1 to 3 trillion at the time of the Clone Wars. Even if the whole of the Republic had just that, we lowballed the population, and .0001% of all the people in the Republic volunteered or were conscripted that's 100,000,000 soldiers, less if we take out the children, disabled, and elderly from the equation but it wouldn't be enough to make a difference. The number of clones in the war aren't really defined, but at least 1.2 million were there in the initial start of the war and another 1.8 million were added at the very least over the course of the war, meaning that the recruits available would outnumber the number of clones by a factor of 30, if we compare the actual population of the entirety of the Republic the number of possible recruits gets just plain ridiculous.

1 hour ago, Stan Fresh said:

Who says he wasn't Sith while still part of the Order?

Unless something has changed, he left the Order sometime shortly after the Battle of Naboo and the death of QGJ. Until that battle, Sidious had Maul and there was no indication that he was grooming Dooku until after Maul was gone. There is a very narrow window of time there which indicates that Dooku went from disgruntled Jedi to Sith Lord almost overnight...which isn't much different from Anakin/Vader I guess.

1 hour ago, immortalfrieza said:

Not exactly, but one of the most bizarre things about the Clone Wars is that there is no attempt to replace the clone soldiers with conscripts or mercs or any other source. In fact, aside from planets having their own occasional militia or resistance forces that aren't ever enough to matter much the war is fought almost entirely by clone soldiers and Jedi on the Republic end and droids and their commanders like General Grievous on the other.

You would think it would be much faster and cheaper with about the same effectiveness give or take to recruit people from various planets throughout and put them through boot camp than it would be to keep making clones but either you'd be wrong for some reason we're not privy to or Sidious was pretty damned good at making sure that only clone soldiers were available despite how unrealistic that would be so his plan would work. Realistically the Republic should have started conscripting and training hundreds of thousands of people from across the Republic not long after the war started.

The Essential Guide to Warfare (Legends) indicates that the vast majority of the combatants in the Clone Wars were neither Clone Troopers nor battle droids. Those planetary militias and mercenaries were the main combatants but the Clone and droid fights occurred at the focal points where the cameras were.

38 minutes ago, immortalfrieza said:

I think you're vastly underestimating just how large the Republic is. Even after the Separatists took plenty of worlds from it the Republic has planets numbering in the area of 1 million, Coruscant alone has a population in the range of 1 to 3 trillion at the time of the Clone Wars. Even if the whole of the Republic had just that, we lowballed the population, and .0001% of all the people in the Republic volunteered or were conscripted that's 100,000,000 soldiers, less if we take out the children, disabled, and elderly from the equation but it wouldn't be enough to make a difference. The number of clones in the war aren't really defined, but at least 1.2 million were there in the initial start of the war and another 1.8 million were added at the very least over the course of the war, meaning that the recruits available would outnumber the number of clones by a factor of 30, if we compare the actual population of the entirety of the Republic the number of possible recruits gets just plain ridiculous.

You can't put real(istic) numbers on SW. The battles we see, with their numbers of soldiers and starships, simply are not consistent with the size of the Republic. The whole house of cards falls down the minute you start doing what you're doing here.

19 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

Until that battle, Sidious had Maul and there was no indication that he was grooming Dooku until after Maul was gone.

Sidious is a duplicitous mofo who was grooming Anakin while he had Dooku.

I would guess that there are quadrillions of clones at least.

9 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

I just saw the episode where the senate was voting on whether to purchase a new batch of clones. This purchase was approved. Since it takes 10 years for them to mature and be combat-ready, what was the senate thinking?

Probably that there was no end in sight and even if they did "win" the very nature of a Confederacy would allow factions, planets, and sectors to continue fighting for years.

I mean, without Sidious/Big Palpy killing off, arraigning the killing, and/or assassinating key leaders in a matter of a few days, as well as doing a lot more no doubt, the war could have gone on for centuries...

So, hedge bets, buy the army, and cancel the order if the war ends on account of O66.

9 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

Did they not realize that they would need another source of reinforcements well before that time period?

I think they'd already ordered those... I mean EPII has .... Llama Sue...Mary Sue... the creepy Kamino woman, saying they had X units ready and more on the way. And you see young clones still in gestation and training in both EPII and TCW. So the original Sifodias order could have been for hundreds of thousands even millions of clones to be delivered overtime.

Honestly the fact that Palpy got elected, declared the formation of an army, and immediately pulled that fully equipped army out of his bung hole should have been a massive red flag.

9 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

Also, if Dooku left the Jedi shortly after the Battle of Naboo, he would have had to jump on board with the Sith plan almost immediately if he was the guy that subverted Sifo-Dyas and selected Jango Fett. The timing seems way too tight to make any sense.

He took care if it the same way Yoda mobilized and entire surprise army and took it to Naboo all in an afternoon.

What? Never heard of "force run?"

8 hours ago, Stan Fresh said:

Sidious is a duplicitous mofo who was grooming Anakin while he had Dooku.

Well the rule of two means that your apprentice is groomed to try and defeat you. If they fail, then you need someone to replace them soon.

1 hour ago, Ghostofman said:

He took care if it the same way Yoda mobilized and entire surprise army and took it to Naboo all in an afternoon.

When I'm running games of Star Wars, I try to extend the time span so that things don't seem so rushed. Hyperspace travel is the most obvious example, as I go with the classic RPG travel times where it takes a few days to a couple of weeks to get around the galaxy rather than near-instant Coruscant-to-Rim jaunts. When I play with the time, things like this ripple out.

Just because there are 10^23 beings in the Republic doesn't mean that you'd be able to field a military numbering 10^8 . A lot of them have gone generations without any members even being in a planetary militia. And then there's the fact that by this point, the Republic is a bloated, ineffectual monument to corruption and graft, and it's citizens aren't all blind. They're seeing that every day. How many are going to volunteer to get their guts shot out so that fat Twi'lek senator can safely get fatter and stuff more Other People's Money into his pockets?

In regards to raising, recruiting and training armies, the clones are a vastly more effective way of doing business, only preceded by building droids.

As far as 'recruiting' goes, lots of countries have compulsory service, plenty of 'democratic' ones. In fact a number of European countries that have done away with conscription are brining it back. Between news of what happened to other race's worlds, money, and conscription, it's not that hard to 'recruit', but the clones, just grow them cradle to graduation to grave, with no infrastructure needed for recruiting or transporting, etc, way easier.

In regards to time frames and the specific episode in the Clone Wars, I don't think they were aiming for laying out credible time lines or numbers of resources or logistics, I think they were probably just trying to use some more elevated concepts in their story telling beyond just 'lets get the bad guys'.

10 hours ago, HappyDaze said:

Until that battle, Sidious had Maul and there was no indication that he was grooming Dooku until after Maul was gone.

Not true. Sifo Dyas was on the council before being kicked off (...for being right...), and later Dooku had him murdered. Which means Sidious was busy putting it all in motion long before the Naboo events, regardless of Maul being his apprentice. The idea that Dooku left only the minute he became corrupted, or he made some instantaneous switch, doesn't make much sense.

12 hours ago, Stan Fresh said:

Between that, the lack of a military culture, and the war being "out there" for most Republic citizens I can see conscription not getting any traction with politicians and the public.

There is that, plenty of episodes reference the fact that "if more worlds stood up for themselves we wouldn't be in this mess". I'm sure part of that general level of decadence can be laid at the feet of the Jedi, who had solved every problem for so long, everybody assumed they'd fix this one too (and got upset when they didn't).

But we do also see more local involvement, such as Onderon, and there's no reason to assume that wasn't the case more widely. They even discuss in the council whether or not a success on Onderon can be replicated elsewhere...one has to assume they had some "elsewheres" in mind that could be leveraged.

Anyway, I think some fans take far too much far too literally. Each of these episodes or arcs is an exploration of a single facet of the situation, using language that rarely strays from the situation-of-the-moment, and there isn't time in a 22 minute show, or even an 88 minute 4-part arc, to upload the entire state of the SW galaxy into your brain while the title and war reel run. At some point you have to make common sense assumptions and not nit-pick the minutia.

45 minutes ago, whafrog said:

Not true. Sifo Dyas was on the council before being kicked off (...for being right...), and later Dooku had him murdered. Which means Sidious was busy putting it all in motion long before the Naboo events, regardless of Maul being his apprentice. The idea that Dooku left only the minute he became corrupted, or he made some instantaneous switch, doesn't make much sense.

But it was Dooku, not Sifo-Dyas that selected and enlisted Jango Fett to be the prime clone, and this occurred post-BoN. This must have been done very soon after the BoN if the clones were to be combat-ready in 10 years.

Why was it necessarily post-Battle of Naboo that Jango was selected? I don't recall.

1 hour ago, whafrog said:

Not true. Sifo Dyas was on the council before being kicked off (...for being right...), and later Dooku had him murdered. Which means Sidious was busy putting it all in motion long before the Naboo events, regardless of Maul being his apprentice. The idea that Dooku left only the minute he became corrupted, or he made some instantaneous switch, doesn't make much sense.

There is that, plenty of episodes reference the fact that "if more worlds stood up for themselves we wouldn't be in this mess". I'm sure part of that general level of decadence can be laid at the feet of the Jedi, who had solved every problem for so long, everybody assumed they'd fix this one too (and got upset when they didn't).

But we do also see more local involvement, such as Onderon, and there's no reason to assume that wasn't the case more widely. They even discuss in the council whether or not a success on Onderon can be replicated elsewhere...one has to assume they had some "elsewheres" in mind that could be leveraged.

Anyway, I think some fans take far too much far too literally. Each of these episodes or arcs is an exploration of a single facet of the situation, using language that rarely strays from the situation-of-the-moment, and there isn't time in a 22 minute show, or even an 88 minute 4-part arc, to upload the entire state of the SW galaxy into your brain while the title and war reel run. At some point you have to make common sense assumptions and not nit-pick the minutia.

Whose to say the emperor didn't send Maul after Obi Wan n Qui Gon fully expecting him to be crossed off to make room for Dooku.

In regards to recruiting how many cantinas with how many desperate PC groups are there? 1st world suburban thinking might find recruitment a daunting task given 1st world values, but when you look at military service and Nepal for instance where 25,000 show up annually to test for 200ish positions in the Ghurkhas, not every culture views military service the same way on Earth, pretty sure other planets will vary more.

38 minutes ago, 2P51 said:

Whose to say the emperor didn't send Maul after Obi Wan n Qui Gon fully expecting him to be crossed off to make room for Dooku.

That too...except...who is this "emperor" you are referring to? He wasn't even chancellor yet.