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Filoni also said that stormtroopers "have to serve."

It was always my assumption that there would be more than enough humans in the galaxy willing to serve that the Empire could get away with an all-volunteer military, but stormtroopers are now conscripts too?

Correct. Taken as children just like the First Order ones in some cases, particularly in another academy, run by General Hux's dad.

NecronLord wrote:Correct. Taken as children.

I thought that was just the First Order stormtroopers.

You wish.

Okay, for some reason I thought you meant young children. Were those cadets actually drafted or does the Empire simply accept teenage cadets?

I always figured it was like a JROTC thing? Taking teenagers from what ever the high school equivalent is or perhaps it is a military high school that kind of thing

There's a young readers' book featuring Zare Leonis that goes into more detail; they're primarily enlisted, in the military however some teens chosen for stormtrooper training are subjected to 'conditioning' apart from the others and cease to be interested in their families; I didn't really read that much of it.

Amusingly it had stasis field umbrellas. And stasis-awnings on the sports field.

All this talk about pilot skill reminds me of that mission in TIE Fighter, where they use the scenario of you "training" some new pilots by clearing a mine field while in an unshielded craft...

About that Lothal stormtrooper cadet academy: we must remember that the people running the academy were incompetent (and executed for it). In new EU, Agent Kallus has noted that for some reason, Lothal stormtroopers are sub-par when compared to other stormtroopers he has had under his command and I wouldn't be surprised if the reason is an obvious lack of capable trainers.

Furthermore, there has been speculation that these academies are also meant to find potential Force-senstivies with a penchant for aggressive thinking and recruit them to the Empire's service as Inquisitors or similar.

Out-of-universe, I find this dumping-down of the Empire to be irksome for the reasons already listed (if you diminish your villains, you also diminish your heroes). While I understand at least some of the reasoning behind it (if stormtroopers would be every bit as capable as clonetroopers, the rag-tag group of outlaws seen in Rebels would all have to be on Cad Bane's level of competence to constantly outmaneuver them, unless they are all Jedi as well), it's still tiresome.

Tiriol wrote:About that Lothal stormtrooper cadet academy: we must remember that the people running the academy were incompetent (and executed for it).

Howevere, the Zare Leonis story (eventually) takes place on another world, where Commandant Hux (the First Order guy's dad) gets promoted for his work and encourages all the same things.

Aresko and Grint are executed by Tarkin for failing to defeat the rebels, not for producing poor quality stormtroopers, though that might be part of the reason they'd not defeated the rebels. Certainly they weren't accused of innovating the failures of the Lothal academy on their own.

When I think of the Imperial Academy, I tend to think of the one depicted in the old 'Star Wars: Empire' series, specifically the one that featured the background story of Biggs Darklighter.

ROUND FOUR: TIE/Ln Starfighter versus V-19 Torrent Starfighter

Winner: V-19 Torrent Starfighter

Reasoning: Due to equality in pilot skill, it comes down to the ships themselves. Both are the same size and roughly the same in terms of profile, meaning laser targeting will be relatively similar. The V-19 has the advantage in shields and being armed with missiles. The victory goes to the V-19.

ROUND FIVE


Harrower-class Battle Cruiser

Specifications

V.S.

Acclamator-class Assault Ship

Specifications

Accy by a country mile. An orbital bombardment gun with kiloton yield is treated as impressive in SWTOR.

Here you go, source: SWTOR quest "Weapons Calibration"

Specialist Zahn - Navy just deployed the next-generation prototype of our top orbital strike weapon. She's a real beauty, let me tell you.
Specialist Zahn - I'm supposed to be overseeing test firing against hard targets in the area, but we're on indefinite standby until conditions improve.
Specialist Zahn - The Exchange is seriously entrenched out here, but they're protecting their strongholds with a wide-area signal jammer.
Specialist Zahn - It means our targeting systems are useless, even the handheld, close-up targeters.
[...]
Specialist Zahn - You with me on this? You could be the first to debut this beauty's ten kiloton wrath.

Wow. Then they're generating 4*10^13 watts. Still 3 times as much as modern humanity, but orders of magnitude less than ever a fighter.

That is also roughly consistent with the orbital bombardment shown in KOTOR. It was likely kiloton level, but not GT level.

I have always just felt that the KOTOR era was less advanced in general. While they still had the trappings of the OT era, in which everyone was using lightsabers and blasters, it just feels slightly less advanced overall. In particular I have always felt the power level was lower, especially with the nature of personal shields used in that era.

Rhadamantus wrote:Wow. Then they're generating 4*10^13 watts. Still 3 times as much as modern humanity, but orders of magnitude less than ever a fighter.

I'm pretty sure that was just one gun. Though I could be wrong.

Also, the fact that they were using it for orbital bombardment with enough precision to have a problem with jamming indicates that this was likely a lower yield weapon anyway, intended for surgical strikes rather than general destruction.

Also, why don't they have the ability to target jammers directly? We certainly do today. Even air to air missiles often have the capability. Though this makes me wonder just how Star Wars jamming works if it cannot be targeted directly.

Always depends on the jammer. Not every jammer blinds your sensors with brutal white noise from an easy to track emitter. Let's take Honorverse's 'Dragon's Teeth', which create a plethora of false targets (something we already can do to an extent). Which one of them do you shoot?
'Home-on-jam' is a useful capacity for AAMs because unlike dedicated ECM birds or ground installations, basic aircraft ECM is usually fairly limited, and even ECM bird still have to be able to fly so there's a limit to how much you can cram into them (and that's assuming airworthiness is the 'only' limiting factor, what if they have to be carrier capable?). With technology thousands of years ahead of ours and a whole city/planet to play with, you have a lot more options.

Rhadamantus wrote:Wow. Then they're generating 4*10^13 watts. Still 3 times as much as modern humanity, but orders of magnitude less than ever a fighter.

Well yes. I was saying it was unimpressive by modern star wars standards, not compared to real life.

I would point out that ICS numbers for Acclamators are no longer canon. However, given the age of the ship and the gap in firepower apparent between the two eras, yes, I'm going to say the Acclamator takes it.

The ICS numbers, as far as I know, were arrived at by scaling down from film calculations; they ought to at least be in the right order of magnitude. Another vote for the Acclamator.

The Romulan Republic wrote:I would point out that ICS numbers for Acclamators are no longer canon.

This is a legends thread. The OP has said that the stats on the legends pages he's linking to are valid.

Fair enough.

Doesn't really change the answer in any case.

Acclamator takes it.

Esquire wrote:The ICS numbers, as far as I know, were arrived at by scaling down from film calculations; they ought to at least be in the right order of magnitude. Another vote for the Acclamator.

Amusingly, IIRC the Acclamator never fires a shot in either of the two films as far as I know...

On topic: Technology, even in a fairly static society like Star Wars, tends to only progress upwards. Regression only really happens if a civilization-ending disaster occurs and the means of production are destroyed. So a 'modern' ship like the Acclamator really should be stronger than a ship that's ~3000 years before its time.

Didn't the Acclimator fire its guns in a Clone Wars episode?

U.P. Cinnabar wrote:Didn't the Acclimator fire its guns in a Clone Wars episode?

Clone Wars was almost entirely Venators for some reason. No idea why. Don't recall seeing many Acclamators, though I think there was one that transported the Zillo Beast.