Star Wars 2014

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^ or since it was possibly meant to be staged to look like sand people, the troopers made those shots point blank.

licowboy74

Ok, just saw preliminary sets for 2014. I am not that impressed. Seems they were going in the right direction with the quality of the designs and sets and have taken a step backwards now to almost early 2000 levels. The guns from what i can see harken back to the old types that have light translucent blue dots on them. i mean come on! and the "spring loaded firing missle"? didnt they get away from that a few yrs ago and for the better? not that happy with this decision. going to be a cheap lego season for me i think.

LegoFanTexas

cheshirecat said:

You do realise it's just a made up story right? ;)

Wha...???

No, that's not true, that's impossible!!!!

Nooooooooo!

LegoFanTexas

prof1515 said:

Where in the original trilogy are any that don't suck?

How about when Vader's 501st stormed the Tantive IV above Tatooine?

Vader's 501st remained pure Kamino clones, even as the rest of the Imperial Army fell in quality as they introduced inferior clones and normal recruits.

On the Death Star, it is true that he had some of his 501st with him, but as shown in the novels, most of them were off the station at the time, which is why the Stormtroopers there were generally useless, they were mostly Spaarti clones, pretty armor, fancy rifles, but generally useless.

They were mostly used to stand around and scare everyone, how else do you think teddy bears defeated them?

Had Endor (or the Death Star) been protected by the 501st, it would have been a very different outcome.

When going to war, do you want 5 lions, or 500 sheep?

LegoFanTexas

binaryeye said:

"And these blast points. Too accurate for Sand People. Only Imperial Stormtroopers are so precise."

They don't suck when it moves the plot along. :)

That was Vader's 501st clones aboard the Devastator.

legomatt

LegoFanTexas said:

When going to war, do you want 5 lions, or 500 sheep?

Depends on the situation. If we're crossing a series of minefields under heavy machine-gun fire, i'll take the 500 sheep as my vanguard. :o)

LegoFanTexas

:) True, but if you can ONLY have 500 sheep, what good do they do you once you cross the field?

Personally I'll take a pair of Jedi with lightsabers in such a situation. :)

prof1515

LegoFanTexas said:

prof1515 said:

Where in the original trilogy are any that don't suck?

How about when Vader's 501st stormed the Tantive IV above Tatooine?

They couldn't manage to kill but a couple of rebels and none hit either droid as they passed through the crossfire despite the obvious attempt to do so (they hit the bulkhead as the droids made it to safety).

LegoFanTexas said:

...how else do you think teddy bears defeated them?

Had Endor (or the Death Star) been protected by the 501st, it would have been a very different outcome.

And yet the Emperor said some of his "best" troops were waiting to ambush the rebels on Endor. In other words, the ones that got beat up by teddy bears were some of the "best" that the Empire had to offer. The worst were off getting their ass kicked just trying to don their armor.

Pitfall69

rancorbait said:

I'm surprised @Pitfall69 hasn't said anything about the French yet ;-)

This isn't the conversation I'm looking for...move along...move along.

pteric

Thanks Lego for giving my wallet a break!

91stlegotrooper

How to tell a good stormtrooper from a bad one. If it got killed by Ewok, he bad. Managed to kill a few Ewoks and got killed by a rebel, good stormtrooper. Also, look at the snowtroopers on Hoth. They kicked rebel butt. So this proves there are some stormtroopers that can actually fight well.

CapnRex101

When you see incompetence like this on show, it says it all really concerning Clone Troopers and Stormtroopers:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1WGq__Eg30

LegoFanTexas

91stlegotrooper said:

How to tell a good stormtrooper from a bad one. If it got killed by Ewok, he bad. Managed to kill a few Ewoks and got killed by a rebel, good stormtrooper. Also, look at the snowtroopers on Hoth. They kicked rebel butt. So this proves there are some stormtroopers that can actually fight well.

The troopers on Hoth were Vader's 501st, thus they were proper clones.

The problem the Empire had was they just never had enough of them, most of the clones were no better than the Battle Droids they replaced, and inferior in many ways, because the Battle Droids could be backed up by Super Battle Droids and Droidekas. The cheap clones had no such backup.

Shpadoinkle

To be fair, Palpatine's grasp on who his "best troops" were could have easily been shaky. Great leaders are often undone by leaning too heavily upon a broken leg.

CapnRex101

The number of Clones left in the Imperial army towards the Battle of Endor must have been dwindling due to the growth acceleration. There are 42 years between the creation of the first Clones and the Battle of Endor, so the oldest Clone Troopers would have been far too old to fight by that time.

The production of Clone Troopers stopped following the Kamino uprising in 12 BBY and therefore the absolute youngest a Clone could have been by the Battle of Endor in 4 ABY would have been aged 32 (physically). Relying on that however, one presumes that the closing down of the Kaminoan cloning facilities in 12 BBY resulted in the Clones who had only just been created, and were younger than those who fought against the Empire, being allowed to live, which I doubt they were.

Therefore I cannot imagine that any Clone Trooper by the time of the Battle of Endor could have been physically aged any less than perhaps 50 years old. I seem to recall that Clone Troopers had been forced into tasks such as training Stormtrooper recruits by this time anyway.

prof1515

So would they have been that much more effective and in use a couple years earlier at the Battle of Hoth?

91stlegotrooper

Watch the battle. They destroyed the rebel garrison there. They had to have some effectiveness.

91stlegotrooper

CapnRex101 said:

When you see incompetence like this on show, it says it all really concerning Clone Troopers and Stormtroopers:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1WGq__Eg30

Like father, like son.

prof1515

91stlegotrooper said:

Watch the battle. They destroyed the rebel garrison there. They had to have some effectiveness.

That doesn't answer my question. Plus, we never see a single stormtrooper hit anything by virtue of their own aim. We see computer targeting systems used which hit with precision but we never actually see a stormtrooper (or snowtrooper, same difference) actually hit anything by virtue of their own aim. They get some shots off at the Falcon which seem to have no effect, then get mowed down by an apparently automated system (which makes one wonder why battle droid were also bad shots).

CapnRex101

^ I think the best answer (although it is completely unsatisfactory) is that the saga would not be as good if the Stormtroopers had shot R2-D2 and C-3PO to pieces on the Tantive IV.

LegoFanTexas

Shpadoinkle said:

To be fair, Palpatine's grasp on who his "best troops" were could have easily been shaky. Great leaders are often undone by leaning too heavily upon a broken leg.

And it could well have just been a boast, not backed up by reality.

The Empire often went for form over function.

Look at how impressive a Star Destroyer looks, yet they actually aren't all that useful as warships. The pair of Death Stars are indeed impressive, until both are blown up.

Billions of Stormtroopers were cloned by the Battle of Endor, but most were form over function, being nearly useless in real combat. Most of them were used to just scare everyone into compliance with a few actual good ones to make everyone think they were all that effective.

LegoFanTexas

prof1515 said:

So would they have been that much more effective and in use a couple years earlier at the Battle of Hoth?

The Stormtroopers at the Battle of Hoth have little relation to the Stormtroopers at the Battle of Endor.

By the time of Hoth, there were perhaps fewer than 1 million old GAR clones left, most of them were in the 501st under the command of Darth Vader.

The rest were of much lesser quality, as you have seen many times.

By the time of Endor, there may have been few, if any, GAR clones left, due to their 2x aging, they would all have been rather old by that point and be put back into training duties more than front line combat.

The failure to produce proper clones after the Uprising on Kamino is one of the causes of the downfall of the Empire.

LegoFanTexas

CapnRex101 said:

^ I think the best answer (although it is completely unsatisfactory) is that the saga would not be as good if the Stormtroopers had shot R2-D2 and C-3PO to pieces on the Tantive IV.

It is also quite possible that the Stormtroopers didn't consider the droids targets, we see many times when they don't shoot at droids, considering them to be more equipment than "people".

Most droids in Star Wars actually are equipment, R2-D2 and C-3PO are rather unique in their memories and behavior compared to most droids.

LegoFanTexas

prof1515 said:

Plus, we never see a single stormtrooper hit anything by virtue of their own aim.

During the Battle of Endor, a Stormtrooper gets a nice shot off and hits R2-D2, stopping him from opening the blast door to the shield generator.

If you go only by the movies, you're correct, by and large the stormtroopers don't seem to be all that useful.

Looking at the clone troopers in the prequals, they seem to be a completely different breed than the stormtroopers in the first three movies.

The truth? The movies were made 2 decades apart and the scripts reflect that, they are also telling a story and allowing for some plot holes and errors. You are correct, the battle droids should have been FAR more effective than they were, but this is a fantasy universe and somehow in that universe, slicing computers is easy and computers are dumb. Just how it is written. :)

-----------

Take it a step further, why did Luke and Han have to manually shoot at the TIE Fighters in the first movie when leaving the Death Star? Computers could do that job MUCH better. Heck, we have such computers today, much less in a world with hyperdrives.

The reason? It makes good storytelling and fun movie moments. :)

Rast

CapnRex101 said:

The number of Clones left in the Imperial army towards the Battle of Endor must have been dwindling due to the growth acceleration. There are 42 years between the creation of the first Clones and the Battle of Endor, so the oldest Clone Troopers would have been far too old to fight by that time.

I always had it in mind clone troopers, just stooped growing, like peter pan lol.Does that make Boba Fett 42 in ROTJ?

CapnRex101

@LegoFanTexas - True, although even if they had not been aiming at the droids, a stray blaster bolt would most likely have hit them. It has to make a good story of course.

LegoFanTexas

^ Of course, it is all about the story...

According to the EU, the first Death Star had 7,000 TIE Fighters onboard when the Battle of Yavin took place.

They didn't take off and fly out of arrogance, the only TIE Fighters in the air were those directly controlled by Darth Vader, who sensed the danger.

The truth? 3 squadrons of rebel fighters, 2 of X-Wings and 1 of Y-Wings, a total of 36 fighters, went up against a battle station armed with 7,000 fighters.

In real life it wouldn't be a contest, but that doesn't make for a good movie, does it? :) Of course, such a battle station would never travel alone, it would have dozens of Star Destroyers protecting it along with hundreds of smaller ships, but in 1977 George Lucas didn't have the budget for that. :)

LegoFanTexas

Rast said:

I always had it in mind clone troopers, just stooped growing, like peter pan lol.Does that make Boba Fett 42 in ROTJ?

No, they grow at 2x normal rate, an effect of the Kamino cloning process.

They will die much sooner than normal men.

Boba Fett is an unaltered clone, growing at normal speed, so he was much younger than 42 in ROTJ.

pvancil27

LegoFanTexas said:

Rast said:

I always had it in mind clone troopers, just stooped growing, like peter pan lol.Does that make Boba Fett 42 in ROTJ?

No, they grow at 2x normal rate, an effect of the Kamino cloning process.

They will die much sooner than normal men.

Boba Fett is an unaltered clone, growing at normal speed, so he was much younger than 42 in ROTJ.

32 BBY is when the clones were started, So during the Battle of Yavin, the Oldest Clones would have been 64 and youngest around 18 if you assume they kept kids post uprising, if not you are talking the youngest being 36-40ish. It was that time they started using the spatari clones heavily as well as mass recruitment. I can't remember where it was I saw it but it was supposedly generally accepted that by the time Yavin rolled about All officers where non clones and >75% of Stormies were human recruits, with that number being closer to 95% by Endor.

So if we assume Boba was in the first batch, he would be 36 during the Jabba's palace events. So younger then 42, but close.

prof1515

LegoFanTexas said:

prof1515 said:

Plus, we never see a single stormtrooper hit anything by virtue of their own aim.

During the Battle of Endor, a Stormtrooper gets a nice shot off and hits R2-D2, stopping him from opening the blast door to the shield generator.

I was referring to the "effectiveness" of stormtroopers at the Battle of Hoth when I said we never saw them hit anything of their own aim.

There is an explosion near the droids just as they successfully navigate the crossfire which suggests someone was aiming for them (a stormtrooper obviously) and failed to hit.

Of course, the reason that they fail to hit anything is very much the needs of the story. Like you said with the Death Star, it would have just been over if they'd launched more fighters. But that's my point. All of the retconning, EU crap and fanboi rationalizations don't lend an ounce to explaining or justifying or circumventing the fact that what happens in the movies doesn't support the depiction of stormtroopers as anything but inept clowns in plastic (which doesn't appear to protect against blasters or against tiny Ewok clubs and arrows either) armor.

prof1515

prof1515 said:

LegoFanTexas said:

prof1515 said:

Plus, we never see a single stormtrooper hit anything by virtue of their own aim.

During the Battle of Endor, a Stormtrooper gets a nice shot off and hits R2-D2, stopping him from opening the blast door to the shield generator.

I was referring to the "effectiveness" of stormtroopers at the Battle of Hoth when I said we never saw them hit anything of their own aim.

There is an explosion near the droids just as they successfully navigate the crossfire which suggests someone was aiming for them (a stormtrooper obviously) and failed to hit.

Of course, the reason that they fail to hit anything is very much the needs of the story. Like you said with the Death Star, it would have just been over if they'd launched more fighters. But that's my point. All of the retconning, EU crap and fanboi rationalizations don't lend an ounce to explaining or justifying or circumventing the fact that what happens in the movies doesn't support the depiction of stormtroopers as anything but inept clowns in plastic (which doesn't appear to protect against blasters or against tiny Ewok clubs and arrows either) armor. In fact, the only thing that stormtrooper armor appears to protect them from is a concussion from banging their head on a door and we're not even sure about that!

y2josh

I know I've often railed against the notion that 'teddy bears defeated the Empire' (but only because there's absolutely no evidence in the film or novel to support such an absurd claim), but are we really writing pages on pages of justification as to why stormtroopers are ineffective? I realize Zahn wrote in an explanation, but that seemed as stupid as explaining the Force via midichlorians or the Reapers via Exposition the Starchild. If the stormtroopers were even moderately competent... that would have made for a pretty short film.

Also... consider the following:

In Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship manages to defeat an army of 100+ goblins and a cave troll without suffering a single loss.

In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones single-handedly kills an entire convoy of Nazis.

In Star Trek, the only people the bad guys ever managed to kill were the one-off extras (or characters played by a departing Denise Crosby).

In The X-Files, there was an entire legion of conspirators, a super-powered alien bounty hunter and swarms of weaponized honey bees that could never manage to kill Mulder, in spite of numerous attempts to do so.

Point being... it's a pretty common trope in action-ish series that the main characters, more often than not, live to fight another day. And, typically, when you DO kill off a main character, it's not Joe Stormtrooper that kills him or her. So it just seems odd that this thread has diverged into a justification for why stormtroopers are terrible shots.

CapnRex101

The plot point is actually known as 'Stormtrooper Syndrome' in theatre. That being a main character's invulnerability to a numerically superior foe, no matter how many or how powerful they have been portrayed previously, they never quite bring their 'A game' to a fight with a protagonist :o)

LegoFanTexas

^ All completely true... :)

pvancil27

CapnRex101 said:

The plot point is actually known as 'Stormtrooper Syndrome' in theatre. That being a main character's invulnerability to a numerically superior foe, no matter how many or how powerful they have been portrayed previously, they never quite bring their 'A game' to a fight with a protagonist :o)

There was a paper written a few years ago about the concept of Hero's luck to, that extended to real life basically stating that Heros gain their status partly from skill and partly from luck.

That paper also introduced me to Simo Häyhä who might be one of the most bad ass humans to ever live.

kwkw

y2josh said:

I know I've often railed against the notion that 'teddy bears defeated the Empire' (but only because there's absolutely no evidence in the film or novel to support such an absurd claim), but are we really writing pages on pages of justification as to why stormtroopers are ineffective? I realize Zahn wrote in an explanation, but that seemed as stupid as explaining the Force via midichlorians or the Reapers via Exposition the Starchild. If the stormtroopers were even moderately competent... that would have made for a pretty short film.

Also... consider the following:

In Lord of the Rings, the Fellowship manages to defeat an army of 100+ goblins and a cave troll without suffering a single loss.

In Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones single-handedly kills an entire convoy of Nazis.

In Star Trek, the only people the bad guys ever managed to kill were the one-off extras (or characters played by a departing Denise Crosby).

In The X-Files, there was an entire legion of conspirators, a super-powered alien bounty hunter and swarms of weaponized honey bees that could never manage to kill Mulder, in spite of numerous attempts to do so.

Point being... it's a pretty common trope in action-ish series that the main characters, more often than not, live to fight another day. And, typically, when you DO kill off a main character, it's not Joe Stormtrooper that kills him or her. So it just seems odd that this thread has diverged into a justification for why stormtroopers are terrible shots.

Game of Thrones :)

Shpadoinkle

Yes, I was just thinking that the people in this thread need to start reading Game of Thrones. Heroes and villains? What are those? Everyone is a gray knight.

legomatt

Look, as we all know, the Stormtroopers are the 'Bad Guys', just like any machine-gun toting drug baron on the A-Team, or uzi-laden commandos in any Schwarzy film. They're not allowed to hit. :o)

Their sole purpose is to get shot, and make the good guys look good, and a situation look 'dangerous'.

Needless to say, in reality, if any real person came under intense fire from even the lousiest shots (any world war or ancient battle featuring massed bows), that person would be struck dead in a hail of fire.
Elite warriors are good, but overwhelming numbers... they overwhelm.

AGINCOURT! ;o)

I would take overwhelming numbers packing rapid-firing multi-lasers every time if I had an entire galaxy to police. A hand-picked team of supermen would be next to useless... unless it's the movies... Fortunately Star wars is the movies. So in this instance supermen wins, and impossible odds are beaten 9 out of 10 times ;oP.

Take the Avengers film...it's a good job that alien 'invasion' didn't sweep the entire planet with an 'army' which it had been preparing for ages, but instead confined itself to a slow trickle of handfuls of soldiers within a single city district... the only way the avengers would have any chance of holding them off...

Movies. They're Funny.

hantot

^ That's all well and good, but don't tell me the odds :-)

Basta

I assume all this talk about Clones & Storm Troopers and how they do what they do is based on the books, not actually from George Lucus himself?

y2josh said:

Also... consider the following:

In Star Trek, the only people the bad guys ever managed to kill were the one-off extras (or characters played by a departing Denise Crosby).

Always loved watching some random get summoned to "The Away Team" in Next Gen, you new straight away that they weren't coming back.

hoyatables

^ Yes, this was all fascinating. I used to be a huge SW EU fan but that stopped around the prequels - couldn't keep up and the quality of the books/comics dropped off. Only stuff I kept up with was Zahn's books and they were too few and far between for me to retain the plot points. I had just assumed that all of the clones died off by the time ANH rolled around and they were replaced with human recruits. Not surprised that someone came up for an explanation as to what happened to Kamino (otherwise the Imps had an unlimited supply of soldiers).

Basta

I have never read a Starwars book, so I only know what I know from the 6 movies.

I suppose my question is, are the Zahn books and the like official? Will the back stories for any releivent new movies use these books as a reference?

RomanticWarrior

Keep in mind that this is the Winter wave. The Summer wave always has the sets that blow away us. Still hoping that the Invisible Hand shows up in Summer 2014 for RotS as one of the $120 sets.

Out of these Winter sets, I'll pass on everything except the DS Battle Pack. I've been waiting for the gunner minifigs!

LegoFanTexas

Basta said:

I have never read a Starwars book, so I only know what I know from the 6 movies.

I suppose my question is, are the Zahn books and the like official? Will the back stories for any releivent new movies use these books as a reference?

You missed some good reading if you're a SW fan, the first three Zahn books are actually very good and would make amazing movies if they would just do those as the next three films.

But they won't. :)

They are semi-official (canon is the proper term). Lucasfilm actually had a dedicated team to keep the stories straight, they run from the day after ROTJ to more than 50 decades later, across over 100 books, and if you read them all (I've read about half) you'll find the stories are amazingly consistent. Sure, a few little error show up here and there, but overall the EU books that happen after ROTJ are meant to form a complete narrative and be readable as all actually happening together.

Compare this to the Star Trek books which do not at all happen "together" to form a story.

The prior poster is correct, the EU books started to fall apart around the time of the prequels, but from 1993 to 1999, there is a ton of great material in there.

LegoFanTexas

legomatt said:

Needless to say, in reality, if any real person came under intense fire from even the lousiest shots (any world war or ancient battle featuring massed bows), that person would be struck dead in a hail of fire.
Elite warriors are good, but overwhelming numbers... they overwhelm.

I actually enjoyed The Last Samurai for just this reason.

For most of the movie, the Samurai proved why they were so elite... right up until someone thought to bring gatling guns to the battle. No matter how elite, when 6 gatling guns are firing at you, there is just nowhere to run, nowhere to go, you'll fall in a hail of fire.

Which they do... it is an honest way to end it...

jasor

^ The inclusion of the Royal Guards in the battle pack with just squirshels the aftermarket for the existing ones. I've wanted a couple Royal Guards for a while, but I wasnt willing to part $$ for them. Pretty happy about that one.

I'm excited about the Kashyyyk battle pack, as well.

91stlegotrooper

legomatt said:

Needless to say, in reality, if any real person came under intense fire from even the lousiest shots (any world war or ancient battle featuring massed bows), that person would be struck dead in a hail of fire.
Elite warriors are good, but overwhelming numbers... they overwhelm.

Did we all forget the stand of the 300? 300 Spartans held off a Persian army for several days (both in a movie and in real life a long time ago).

TheLoneTensor

French aircraft carriers...

The first time I watched Crimson Tide and the reporter that bookended the movie I was like "France has aircraft carriers??!?!?"

CapnRex101

^ Actually, it was more like 300 Spartans plus some 6500 Peltasts and light-armed troops. Furthermore, one could argue that the Persians did very well to win that victory and it was actually a tactical triumph for them as they were held at a choke point. 300 men is easily enough to hold the valley in which the battle of Thermopylae took place so the fact the Persians were able to overcome them is impressive.

prof1515

LegoFanTexas said:

They are semi-official (canon is the proper term). Lucasfilm actually had a dedicated team to keep the stories straight, they run from the day after ROTJ to more than 50 decades later, across over 100 books, and if you read them all (I've read about half) you'll find the stories are amazingly consistent. Sure, a few little error show up here and there, but overall the EU books that happen after ROTJ are meant to form a complete narrative and be readable as all actually happening together.

You haven't read enough of them to realize that they're not consistent. However, the biggest problem with EU material, even before the prequels, was a lack of originality (though Zahn's work doesn't really fall into this categorty) and overall quality. Some become so downright horrible that they're unreadable (is that why you've only read half?) and focused on such uninteresting characters and recycled plots that reading one almost suffices for reading them all.

Looking at a description of Star Wars EU "canon" is a lot like looking at pre-Copernican explanations for the movement of the stars. There's a lot of jury-rigged explanations for how incongruent aspects fit together or the "level of canon" (I'm not making that term up, I've seen it described that way) of inconsistencies. The simple reality is that Star Wars "canon" includes a lot of stuff that it shouldn't. In fact, the usual reason for defining canon is to eliminate, rather than create, inconsistencies and contradictions by excluding excessive and contradictory material. Including it, of course, is better for business since it makes it necessary to understanding the "big picture" even if in the end it makes the big picture extremely fuzzy instead of fulfilling the purpose of canon, ie. clarifying it.

LegoFanTexas said:

Compare this to the Star Trek books which do not at all happen "together" to form a story.

Only one Star Trek novel is considered canon (because it was written by Voyager co-creator Jeri Taylor to wrap up the series). The rest have no claim of canon whatsoever.