Random Star Wars Thoughts

[Darth Justicar]

Hmm, I'd have to figure trauma resulting from "industrial accidents" is still a concern.  But I do agree completely that disease is something that would have to be taken into account.  I figure if the First Order is at least somewhat restricted on manpower (though not as much as the Resistance, of course), pragmatism is going to demand doing what they can to make sure their people stay in peak condition.

Point for the funny pic.

(BTW, I assumed the crew quarters were not all in one section of the ship, though it's probably better not to have them near certain features like the engines reactor core. )

[ithekro]

I can't tell if you're being silly, or honestly have no grasp of these numbers. Even working at full capacity, the Kamino couldn't produce a BILLION clones in 100 years. It took them 10 years just to produce the first 200k.

I'll break this down for you. From the dawn of human existence, if you added up every single person that ever was, you still wouldn't reach 1 trillion.

For the quintillions of droids, it is right out of the novels and General Grievous.  He wasn't even boasting, just stating his own thoughts about defeating the Republic.  This is all types of droids though.

For the Clones, a Trillion was the highest estimate I've seen based on number of planets involved in the war and the need to have functional Galactic wide army to fight across potentially a million planets.  The lowest number I saw was 3,000,000 clones formed into 10 System Armies.  Possibly in addition to the starting Clone Army of 1,200,000 units ready or about ready at the beginning of the Clone Wars.  Also depends on if the word "units" is one clone trooper, or a units of clone troopers (squads, companies, legions and so on).

Though the Trillion figure might not be just clones.  This could also include the Jedi, System Forces of various Republic Worlds, Republic allied Resistance Forces on Separatist held world, and the non-clone members of the Republic military (volunteers or draftees) as we saw the Republic's officer corps that became the Imperial officers taking over from the Jedi were not Clones.

Things are on such a massive scale in Star Wars we sometimes can't use our logic to define what should be happening.  Galactic scale conflicts means tens of thousands of star systems to maybe a million systems in conflict.  What looks like a huge number of troops and starships to us is next to nothing because in order to have troops covering all those bases and systems, just in case the enemy shows up, even if you only have a few ships and a few thousand clones per planet, is still upwards of billions of soldiers and a million ship, just to cover your bases.  And that's before you put together your offensive fleets and armies.  An Army would need to be large enough to take a planet, and while that might not be in terms of the mid-20th Century, were a million or more soldier would be expected to be needed for a major invasion of a single powerful nation (not even a whole planet), you would still need a lot of Clones to pull off a realistic invasion.  Or at least one that didn't involve blowing up everything from orbit, and decimating the world's population.

10,000 Jedi (of which up to 2,000 or so are known to be leading troopers).  With generally one or two leading any given Legion of Troopers (about 10,000 clones)  If one assumes this is a Master and Padawan team, that makes the low end 1,000 Legions, or 10,000,000 Clones.  Following the Jedi's rules, there should not be more Padawans than Jedi Knights at one time, as a Knight or Master can only have one apprentice, and not all have one.  Now there might be several Padawans that have no master as theirs was killed, and are still serving as Commanders in the Army.

[Darth Logos]

For the quintillions of droids, it is right out of the novels and General Grievous.  He wasn't even boasting, just stating his own thoughts about defeating the Republic.  This is all types of droids though.

For the Clones, a Trillion was the highest estimate I've seen based on number of planets involved in the war and the need to have functional Galactic wide army to fight across potentially a million planets.  The lowest number I saw was 3,000,000 clones formed into 10 System Armies.  Possibly in addition to the starting Clone Army of 1,200,000 units ready or about ready at the beginning of the Clone Wars.  Also depends on if the word "units" is one clone trooper, or a units of clone troopers (squads, companies, legions and so on).

Though the Trillion figure might not be just clones.  This could also include the Jedi, System Forces of various Republic Worlds, Republic allied Resistance Forces on Separatist held world, and the non-clone members of the Republic military (volunteers or draftees) as we saw the Republic's officer corps that became the Imperial officers taking over from the Jedi were not Clones.

Things are on such a massive scale in Star Wars we sometimes can't use our logic to define what should be happening.  Galactic scale conflicts means tens of thousands of star systems to maybe a million systems in conflict.  What looks like a huge number of troops and starships to us is next to nothing because in order to have troops covering all those bases and systems, just in case the enemy shows up, even if you only have a few ships and a few thousand clones per planet, is still upwards of billions of soldiers and a million ship, just to cover your bases.  And that's before you put together your offensive fleets and armies.  An Army would need to be large enough to take a planet, and while that might not be in terms of the mid-20th Century, were a million or more soldier would be expected to be needed for a major invasion of a single powerful nation (not even a whole planet), you would still need a lot of Clones to pull off a realistic invasion.  Or at least one that didn't involve blowing up everything from orbit, and decimating the world's population.

10,000 Jedi (of which up to 2,000 or so are known to be leading troopers).  With generally one or two leading any given Legion of Troopers (about 10,000 clones)  If one assumes this is a Master and Padawan team, that makes the low end 1,000 Legions, or 10,000,000 Clones.  Following the Jedi's rules, there should not be more Padawans than Jedi Knights at one time, as a Knight or Master can only have one apprentice, and not all have one.  Now there might be several Padawans that have no master as theirs was killed, and are still serving as Commanders in the Army.

I'm beginning to realize that less your estimates, and more your source data is to blame for this confusion. I know the SW universe does things on a stupid huge scale, and I love it. But whoever came up with those numbers simply has no concept of how astronomically large they are. To put Trillion into perspective, it is estimated that the average adult human is composed of roughly 1 trillion cells. Quintillion is 1 million times that, and looks something like this: 1,000,000,000,000,000,000. Even the Droid factories would be hard pressed to produce a billion units. And even if they could, they certainly couldn't have reached 2 bill.

To be fair, the SW universe has hundreds of planets capable of sustaining life, most of which is humanoid with the intelligence to match. And probably populations of humanoids similar to Earth's. So I don't think trillions is an unlikely range for galactic population numbers. Now the Clones probably numbered somewhere in the millions, not trillions. I don't think 2,000,000 clones is an unreasonable guess, considering that first 200K was basically the guinea pig batch. They likely got way better at it, and after getting the operation officially funded by the Republic, opened many more facilities(this has been confirmed canon by the CW cartoon), so the rate they were pumping clones would dramatically increase. Especially considering the numbers Palpatine would have needed in the early days of the Empire, he likely had facilities and batches being created that no one else knew about.

It is easy for me to conceive that a galactic population could reach trillions, considering that there are millions of star systems. But even cloning, it is exceptionally difficult to imagine producing 1 trillion clones in the span of...what...20 years, also considering the average clone took at least 9 years to fully mature. A few hundred million I can believe, and that is still a smell inducing number of troops in an army, even spread across a galaxy.

[Gilbert]

I had a thought about the light whip. What if it's not a beam of plasma coming out an emitter but something more like Mickey Rourke in Iron Man (2?)
A colored electric current or plasma traveling along a rope of armorweave or cortosis?

I wonder if we could make one out of EL wire

[Darth Logos]

I had a thought about the light whip. What if it's not a beam of plasma coming out an emitter but something more like Mickey Rourke in Iron Man (2?)
A colored electric current or plasma traveling along a rope of armorweave or cortosis?

I wonder if we could make one out of EL wire

Then it wouldn't be a "light" whip, it would be an electro-whip. I took a SW survey not to long ago, and one question was "What do you dislike the most about the EU?"

Do you know what I said? 

[Gilbert]

Then it wouldn't be a "light" whip, it would be an electro-whip. I took a SW survey not to long ago, and one question was "What do you dislike the most about the EU?"

Do you know what I said? 

The sad realization you could not have a light whip? XD

[Darth Logos]

The sad realization you could not have a light whip? XD

No, just the light whip. It is an abomination of fictional science. The physics of a light saber, over time, have been well conceived. There are some designs that I have found questionable, but for the most the concept is sound. But the whip just breaks all applicable rules of that technology. I hate it.

[ThreadJack]

Surprisingly, the diagram only indicates one "medbay" and fails to show it spanning multiple decks as I would expect it to, or really ANY indication of the true size it would have to be.  At the least, I would expect there to be satellite "emergency" or "trauma crews"--the equivalent of first responders--stationed at various locations around the ship to ensure quick stabilization and transport to a central facility.  And it also doesn't point out commissaries or "food courts" of the size one would expect, and I'd actually wager it's more than just two Wal-Mart supercenter sized grocery stores, when I think of what all is contained within the two towns I'm thinking of from my area.  While for the most part the Incredible Cross-Sections book is AWESOME, there are definitely some logistical issues that I think any mission support group and medical group commander would have some serious words with the authors about.

I suppose one other question one would have to ask about access to things aboard the ship is what kind of "rapid transit" exists.  It would have to be something more efficient than, say, Star Trek turbolifts.  As far as length, the Finalizer's about 1.8 miles from stem to stern, and if I had to eyeball it, I'd guess about .75 miles across at its widest point.  Where the majority of the square mileage is coming from is from having MANY decks.

BTW, I had to give you a point earlier because it's evident you have familiarity with tactics/strategy as well as logistics.  I forget, do you have military experience?  It kind of seems like it.

Yeah, I've read a few of those types of books, and they typically tend to gloss over some glaring flaws in their own logistics and such.

And I do not have any military experience, I'm just a massive history buff, particularly American Civil War era, but also many others I fancy. I've learned a lot about tactics over the years, particularly Napoleonic tactics(what was used in the ACW).

Fun fact: The M4 Sherman battle tank was named after Union General William Tecumseh Sherman.

[Darth Justicar]

Yeah, I've read a few of those types of books, and they typically tend to gloss over some glaring flaws in their own logistics and such.

It's usually not such a big deal with smaller ships and structures, but when you get into supermassive stuff like a Star Destroyer, that's where it's really easy for people to forget exactly what kind of infrastructure is really required.

And I do not have any military experience, I'm just a massive history buff, particularly American Civil War era, but also many others I fancy. I've learned a lot about tactics over the years, particularly Napoleonic tactics(what was used in the ACW).

I'm also pretty interested in history though my knowledge tends to be more in the WWII-forward era.  I am also an Air Force brat, so I grew up around a lot of military-related stuff and still tend to use a lot of military/aviation language.   I considered serving but I suspect I wouldn't be allowed with my back as it is, so that didn't happen.

[ThreadJack]

It's usually not such a big deal with smaller ships and structures, but when you get into supermassive stuff like a Star Destroyer, that's where it's really easy for people to forget exactly what kind of infrastructure is really required.

I'm also pretty interested in history though my knowledge tends to be more in the WWII-forward era.  I am also an Air Force brat, so I grew up around a lot of military-related stuff and still tend to use a lot of military/aviation language.   I considered serving but I suspect I wouldn't be allowed with my back as it is, so that didn't happen.

Yeah, they're really great when it comes to the smaller stuff.

I wasn't allowed in due to my ADHD. Probably for the best, as my personality is NOT suited to military service. I'll just have to stick to CW reenacting.

[Darth Justicar]

Yeah, the diagram of Ren's command shuttle is really awesome, especially when you find out just how much tough, high-tech equipment it's really packing.  And that shuttle is just an all-around AMAZING design.  That ship is a freaking BEAST.

Huh...I didn't know ADHD keeps one out of the service.  Didn't stop my dad; then again he (like me) doesn't take anything for it.

[ThreadJack]

Yeah, the diagram of Ren's command shuttle is really awesome, especially when you find out just how much tough, high-tech equipment it's really packing.  And that shuttle is just an all-around AMAZING design.  That ship is a freaking BEAST.

Huh...I didn't know ADHD keeps one out of the service.  Didn't stop my dad; then again he (like me) doesn't take anything for it.

It depends on the severity and whether or not you were medicated. I'm a severe case, and was medicated when I was younger, therefore no go.

[ithekro]

Stupidly huge is a trait from putting science behind science fiction when dealing with the ramifications of a semi-unified Galaxy scale population and wars.  The Galactic Empire, prior to the disbanding of the Senate, supposedly has 69 million systems that meet their requirements for representation, and 1.75 million member worlds (these would be the various species homeworlds with billions of being each I would think).  The population of these nearly 70 million systems the Empire is responsible for was something over 100 quadrillion beings.   It is estimated that there are 1 billion inhabited star systems, with another 6 billion or so that could be inhabitable.  Out of approximately 400 billion star.

How  less than 100 quadrillion being uses or produce over a quintillion droids in unknown, but if automation is a high priority, it could be reasonable to have many more droids than sentient beings.  At least prior to the Clone Wars, were their might be a massive anti-Droid movement almost equal to the anti-Jedi sentiments over the war.  More so against droids since the Jedi at least had a reputation as keepers of the peace.

[ThreadJack]

BB-8 is my boyfriend.

[Vivectius]

No, just the light whip. It is an abomination of fictional science. The physics of a light saber, over time, have been well conceived. There are some designs that I have found questionable, but for the most the concept is sound. But the whip just breaks all applicable rules of that technology. I hate it.

And yet you want one (from the forum colors thread):

I've actually never seen Hot Pink as a main color. I initially had it for the FoC to BH when I got my Emerald Mantis, but it has since been lost. I've been thinking about getting an MLS in HP for a light whip.