Talk:Grand Army of the Republic/Legends

The Clone Trooper Legions and Battallions and the Specialized Clone Troopers were the predecessors of the Specialized Stormtroopers. -- Eddyward Telerionus 14:12, 10 Aug 2005 (UTC)
 * So...?? We all know that the clone troopers became the stormtroopers after the fall of the Republic. What was the point of that, Eddy? Cmdr. J. Nebulax 16:31, 10 Aug 2005 (UTC)

The Specialized Clone Troopers were assigned to special duties and each type of Specialized Clone trooper wore armor that distinguish one type of Specialized Clone Trooper from another, but ironically a Phase II Clone trooper armor's color markings indicates legion affiliation (whereas in the early Clone Wars, the Phase I armor's color markings indicates a rank). After the fall of the Republic, when the Clone troopers were transformed into the Stormtroopers, the Empire abandoned the use of armor with color markings that indicate rank or legion affiliation. -- Eddyward Telerionus 23:20, 10 Aug 2005 (UTC)
 * Again, I ask. So...??? I don't see the point of why you're posting this information WHICH WE ALREADY KNOW. So why bother posting this? I thought that the discussion pages were for discussing the article, not putting up information which we knew, even before you posted this. Cmdr. J. Nebulax 00:24, 11 Aug 2005 (UTC)

I'm posting this information because the Clone Troopers were divided into specialized units and color-marked legions. -- Eddyward Telerionus 22:08, 11 Aug 2005 (UTC)
 * Ok, what did I miss? -- Riffsyphon1024 22:20, 11 Aug 2005 (UTC)

Eddy, WE ALREADY KNEW THAT. We knew long before you posted that that the clone troopers were divided up like that. Cmdr. J. Nebulax 22:58, 11 Aug 2005 (UTC)

"Though the clone troopers fought for the Republic during the Clone Wars, the army was turned against the loyalists and the Jedi when the Galactic Empire was formed at the war's end." Turned against loyalists? I don't think so... Only against the Jedi.
 * Actually, that statement is true. At the beginning of the Jedi Purge, Palpatine began to compile a list of possible traitorious senators that thought the Galactic Republic should not have been changed into the Galactic Empire. That is stated in the Episode III Visual Dictionary. Cmdr. J. Nebulax 19:25, 31 Aug 2005 (UTC)

Just something to add: The numbers about the Order of Battle are wrong. If a Squad contains 9 Troopers and a Sergeant there are 10 Clones. 4*10 = 40 not 36(which would let the Troopers without a Sergeant). I think this makes all the numbers wrong. I will correct that, if I have enough time tomorrow --84.173.244.19 20:21, 5 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Well, let's make sure we have the right numbers from the Insider 84 article before going and changing it. Admiral J. Nebulax (talk) [[Image:Implogo.jpg|20px]] 20:24, 5 April 2006 (UTC)

Clone Marshal Commander
I hadn't heard this title before. What is its source? --SparqMan 00:01, 25 Sep 2005 (UTC)

Insider 84: Guide to GAR --24.247.124.158 00:20, 25 Sep 2005 (UTC)
 * Yes. It seems that someone will need to find some information on the Clone Marshal Commander and create a page for it. We know that this clone trooper is more important than the senior clone commander. Cmdr. J. Nebulax 01:27, 25 Sep 2005 (UTC)

Specializations Image
Why was it removed? it was perfect for that part... razzy1319
 * It was too big. Maybe if you could make it smaller, then you could put it up again. Cmdr. J. Nebulax 21:32, 1 Nov 2005 (UTC)
 * if it was a big file size then I would agree but it fit perfectly between the division lines.
 * If you would have previewed it, you would have seen that it stretched out that section. Cmdr. J. Nebulax 21:58, 1 Nov 2005 (UTC)
 * I did preview it. it fit perfectly. what's your screen resolution?
 * It doesn't matter. Its location in the article made a gap between two bullets. That's why I removed it. Cmdr. J. Nebulax 22:12, 1 Nov 2005 (UTC)
 * Dont know what page your looking at but it looks perfect.
 * Now it looks much better. Cmdr. J. Nebulax 00:35, 2 Nov 2005 (UTC)

Specializations
It contains information the Clone trooper article doesnt... pls revert. --Razzy1319 05:15, 17 Jan 2006 (UTC)
 * Anything that wasn't in Clone trooper was moved over. --SparqMan 05:32, 17 Jan 2006 (UTC)
 * eh, dont see cuyvaldar, planetary militias, and etc in the clone trooper article ---Razzy1319 05:37, 17 Jan 2006 (UTC)

Republic Navy in GAR Article?
In case you don't know, the Grand Army and the Republic Navy are two seperate entities. This article should be about the Army, and the Republic Navy article should be about the Republic Navy. Bottom line: there's more about the Navy in this article than the Army. --AdmThrawn 21:16, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Agreed. I removed some unneeded stuff. Admiral J. Nebulax 22:41, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
 * Thanks. All that starfighter stuff belongs somewhere else. --AdmThrawn 22:46, 18 January 2006 (UTC)
 * I wasn't exactly sure to keep it in from the beginning, either. Admiral J. Nebulax 23:56, 18 January 2006 (UTC)

Numbers
Quote:"The account of the Battle of Muunilinst in the New Essential Chronology says that the Republic landing involved "hundreds of assault ships, each one groaning from the weight of troopers and war machines"; the figure of 3.2 million is arrived at if this phrase is extrapolated to mean around two hundred Acclamator-class assault ships, each carrying its full capacity of 16,000 clones."
 * Couldn't some of the Acclamators have been Acclamator II-class assault ship, which presumably carry fewer troops? -LtNOWIS 02:09, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Acclamator IIs presumably wouldn't have been available then, since they were eventual modifications of Mk Is. Also no Clone Wars source has ever shown a Mk II, which after all are mentioned in only one EU source. Plus the quote implies that all ships were transports; why would a ship not designed to hold anything be included in a definition of a "groaning" carrier fleet? Kuralyov 03:11, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
 * That was me by the way. I thought I was logged in. We don't really how long after the Mk I they were introduced, or what version whether any given Acclamator-class in the EU is. When someone calls a ship an Acclamator, it could be either. Nor do we know how many troops the Mk II carried. But those are valid points. -LtNOWIS 05:19, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Debate

 * Unlike the fleet-related debates for the OT and later eras, I don't particularly care about this Grand Army "problem." And now I know how the uninvolved parties must feel about the debates I follow/participate in. It's kriffing hilarious to watch. http://media.ign.com/boardfaces/18.gif -- Darth Culator 12:57, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
 * And you know what else would be funny? If some of you guys went and edited Grand Army of the Republic on Uncyclopedia. -- Darth Culator 13:15, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
 * If you liked it so far, you're gonna love this:

Traviss:

"It's not a daft figure, though: everyone assumes that the war was fought on every planet all the time for three years solid.

''It wasn't. It was small scale, very mobile, spread out and bushfire as much as anything - to keep the Jedi busy and scattered. Palps wasn't stupid.''

'Folks think WWI or WWII. Wrong style of war for this.'"

And someone's comment:

"Did I miss something? "Small scale"? Doesn't she realize that George Lucas is one of those "folks"? Traviss has made it clear that she won't discuss this further, so I guess there's no idea pushing it further."

Gold. Comedy gold. 8D VT-16 18:37, 11 April 2006 (UTC) Making this more objective would be excellent. You get the feeling only one viewpoint(maximalist) is presented here.(FoM, the "Fandalorian"...sure...)``
 * We need to make the numbers section more NPOV and encyclopedic. It should be like the Creationism articles on Wikipedia, where both sides of the issue are evenly presented. I mean, this article really shouldn't have an exclamation point...-LtNOWIS 19:06, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
 * I agree. Admiral J. Nebulax (talk) [[Image:Implogo.jpg|20px]] 19:29, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

I agree it should be more objective, but don't delete entire parts of text that don't support your view. The NEGC and Lord of War references keep on disappearing during these edits, and they're a key part to the debate. Jast17

Wont happen again. Though, since whatever edits I make will invariably disappear before long, I do ask someone to possibly create a section for the lower numbers (3 million cloens and the like) and a section for higher numbers (3 million clone divios and what not) and present the arguemnts for both sides in a fair manner in these sections. -FoM
 * I see some "interesting" edits have been removed once again, before I had time to complain to the admins. Wasn't that fortunate? I also see some people have an issue with the Clone Wars being a galactic-scale conflict, which is a shame, as this recent "re-imagining" of events as a series of small spec ops with little consequence for the galaxy as a whole, is an unfortunate development, with little regard for the previous four years of CW literature. Low troop-numbers or not, I've never seen any previous author obsess this much with low-scale CW events, as if they constituted the CW as a whole.


 * As for "different" troop-numbers, I refer once again to the previous four years of literature (as well as, god forbid we forget, the actual movies). Many battles are shown with large-scale confrontations, that easily eclipse "a few thousand troops". And the fact remains that clones were set to operate everything in the military, from tanks to fighters to capital ships (and, no, you can not fight a ground battle and a space battle with the same clone doing different tasks at the same time, i.e pilot a fighter, man ship-guns and pound the ground). This has all been stated time and time again, and the sheer number of ships are too many to account for only three million clones. In the battle of Coruscant alone, there are thousands of ships (as stated by the ILM animators), with primarily all-clone crews, and with plenty of clones already fighting on the surface, it easily eclipses 3 million. Plus, the Outer Rim Sieges are on-going at the same time!


 * There's a time when people need to know where to jump off. The author in dispute has gone way past that line by now, and I'd appreciate it if people would now settle down or distance themselves from her, until this thing cools off.
 * It's really pathetic, now. I'm not saying that to be snarky, and I don't find this debate particularly funny, either (in contrast to my previous remark above :P). Now it's just down-right sad.


 * PS. (I didn't invent the word "fandalorian" but I have seen it be used by Ms. Traviss and fans of her work, so both sides have used it, IIRC). VT-16 21:34, 11 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Wow, it seems like a lot has occured since I last wrote something here... Anyway, from what VT-16 said: "if people would now settle down or distance themselves from her, until this thing cools off". Let's just do what VT-16 suggested here. Admiral J. Nebulax (talk) [[Image:Implogo.jpg|20px]] 22:04, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

But still, it is a debate, and what Karen says is canon, just as much as Lord of War and NGEC and ITW etc. are. I realise both sides have valid reasons and all the more reason to show them. And even though it conflicts with these earlier sources (and perhaps because it conflicts) we should at least try to show why people might support her instead of the others. Seeing as how there is no definitive answer (hence the term debate) until it is retconned to something everyone is happy with (somehow unlikely methinks...) we should represnt both viewpoints, not just one. -FoM
 * Yes, but in a way that doesn't say "This side is right, and this side is wrong". Admiral J. Nebulax (talk) [[Image:Implogo.jpg|20px]] 23:13, 11 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, thats the general idea behind NPOV...
 * That's a very strange definition of NPOV, since one side in this case is at the disadvantage of having to justify numbers that go with an ideology. Namely, that the Clone Wars were not, as shown in most previous sources, a big galaxy-wide series of battles, but were in fact a series of special operations performed by a tiny group of "elite troops". (Even though they already have three distinct groups of spec ops soldiers to do that: Clone Commandos, ARC troopers, Null ARC troopers)
 * Even authors using the 1.2 million clones in all, didn't treat the conflict like that, so this is a very recent invention by seemingly one specific author.
 * And there's the statement from Ryan Kaufman (co-author of the Insider 84 article that began this recent mess) where he says, quite clearly, that LFL did not want any total number for the Clone Army at all, and none would be affixed to cover the entire army.
 * This is quite understandable, as they are thinking of story potential and a modicum of continuity (i.e, if a big army gets sent to a specific planet in a new story, yet this would be supercede the "3 million clones" number due to other big battles being waged in other stories taking place at the same time, then this would limit the number of stories that could be told in the same time-frame. And I can't see why LFL would want that, so this policy makes business-sense.)
 * Even the biggest numbers given in canonical sources so far is "a million divisions at the start of the war, with milions more undergoing final evaluations". That fits in more with the "fantasy" or "myth-like" part of SW, as it doesn't give any final numbers to the Clone Army, only a rough estimate at the beginning of the war, with potential for great expansion as the conflict intensifies. It appeals both to "techies" like me, as well as to people who usually go "it's just fiction!" in these debates. A nice, big fantasy-number for a fantasy-story. "3 million clones", a fraction of WWII's Wehrmacht forces, who, as we all know, didn't even conquer or hold one continent, doesn't make any sort of sense, unless each trooper was magical. ;) VT-16 10:02, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Rewritten the discussion, aiming for NPOV. Perhaps we should go through it here in the discussion page, and fix on structure and phrasing that everyone finds acceptable, rather than editing over and again? --McEwok 16:00, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Now that's a good idea. Admiral J. Nebulax (talk) [[Image:Implogo.jpg|20px]] 19:19, 12 April 2006 (UTC)

Should it worry you that you agree with me, Nebulax?

Well... VT-16 has reverted my rewrite, and made some further tweaks of his own: so... starting with his current version, here's the major points I think are problematic. Once we've fixed on what the article should include, we can discuss the structure and phrasing.


 * Additionally, most stories made since AOTC have shown hundreds of battles, many of which with massive losses for the clones, thereby negating any argument that they represented a "small, elite, special operations force" compared with regular battle droids.

Since the GAR fights in some open battles, the phrase "small, elite, special operations force" isn't perhaps the best to use to describe them? Fair enough - I agree! I assume the phrase is from Karen Traviss, and I'd be interested to know the exact context of the line...

... but I'm not quite sure what this particular point has to do with the question of the size of the GAR.

Speaking for myself I certainly don't doubt that there were major battles throughout the Clone Wars with hundreds of thousands of clones deployed together in planetary assaults and sieges. I'm pretty sure that a number of battles of this sort are part of canon. But - and here's the fundamental point - it's entirely possible for a GAR of three million to fight in "hundreds of battles" and suffer "massive losses".

How big is a "big" battle? What proof is there that more than a few thousand clones fought at most "major battles" in the Clone Wars? Has anyone taken a detailed look at the battle-by-battle evidence yet? In discusisons I've seen, opponents of "three million" figure tend to cite just two pieces of evidence for large formations... so we'll come onto those next...
 * The largest figure given for the Grand Army so far, was a million clone divisions, which were being prepared at the start of the war, and with additional millions more undergoing evaluation.

I'm not aware of a direct reference to a million divisions at the start of the war - just to "clone divisions" plus "millions more"; and shouldn't the text acknowledge the fact that some fans think the "millions more" means millions of clones, with nothing more than a little sloppy grammar?
 * the account of the Battle of Muunilinst in the New Essential Chronology...

Well... all VT's numbers here are extrapolated from a single reference to "hundreds of assault ships"; the interpretation he presents as fact is contentious extrapolation, and while that interpretation itself should certainly be mentioned, so should the opposing view: the current text is a partisan argument representing one side of the debate. There is no compelling reason why "assault ships" must mean specifically Acclamator-class; nor any reason why all the Acclamators (even if they exist) must be fully loaded with 16,000 clones each. More seriously, I'm perplexed as to how 3.2 million clones can have fought at Muunilinst when multiple sources (the NEC itself among them) say that only 1.2 million were available for front-line operations in the first months of the war?
 * These 3 million troops would also be divided among ship-operators and ground troops, like the battle droids, as they were stated as being used to fill all kinds of different roles in both the army and the navy.

I'm curious as to where this comes from. The figure of three million clones corresponds to the nominal strength of the GAR according to its order-of-battle, something I pointed out in the version of the article he reverted; this also has the effect of rendering the question of "massive losses for the clones" irrelevant for the three million figure: it is the muster strength of the GAR, not the total number of clones!

Of course, this leaves the issues of droid numbers and relative scale compared to real-world combat: I agree that these should be mentioned - in fact, I'd insist on it! - but I also think that to present these as categorical reasons for discounting a GAR of three million is to misrepresent both the canon evidence and the range of fan POVs: in other words, the article as it currently stands is far from NPOV.

Come on, everyone: let's get this article fixed and beautiful! --McEwok 19:43, 12 April 2006 (UTC)