SECRETS OF THE CLONE WARS: 2 Hour Lore Compilation

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something special today a compilation of some of my favorite videos all about the Clone Wars now I've went through and removed all this sponsored segments or extraneous bits so this is pure content and I've also included timestamps down in the description if you want to skip ahead to a certain section anyway let's roll the intro foreign [Music] the build up to the Clone Wars is in my opinion one of the most interesting parts of Star Wars Legends especially looking at how both sides got their massive militaries militaries large enough of course to span a war across the entire galaxy the logistics of creating a military ready to fight from day one a Geonosis were extra difficult given the fact that the rusan reformations in Star Wars Legends at least seriously prohibited shipbuilding and the size of Warships in today's video we'll discuss how the CIS managed to build tens of thousands of Warships without attracting the ire of the Republic so one interesting aspect of the CIS is that although the actual political side of the Confederacy was made up of tens of thousands of star systems the military was largely provided for by trade unions corporations and business conglomerates and really it seems like a few of these shipbuilders seem to provide the backbone of the separatist Navy especially early on in the war that's why sometimes you hear the munificent for example referred to as instead the banking Clan frigate these major entities through advantages they held in production or Supply were uniquely placed to build ships in secret so let's talk about that one of the most famous separatist ships during the Clone Wars was of course the lucra Hulk the massive Trade Federation Battleship the backstory of how these vessels were prepared for war was really fascinating so the Trade Federation was using Luke or hulks far before the Clone Wars as simple Transportation vessels that's how they were so large but managed not to get caught under ruson regulations sure they were large heavily armored and had a fast hyperdrive but originally at least they didn't have weapons on them nor did they even carry star Fighters however the Plagueis novel shows how the CIS essentially took their ready-made Fleet of powerful vessels and converted them into warships without anybody really noticing the immediately pre-clone Wars Republic was seen as largely corrupt Toothless and incompetent that's not only how Palpatine got elected but also something the Trade Federation honed in on they used the insecurity in shipping lanes alongside Republic failures in recent conflicts to appeal to the Senate who allowed them to not only put light weapons on their warships but also to carry weaponized Droid starfighters now after the invasion of Naboo the Trade Federation was supposed to disband their Fleet but they didn't really probably because Palpatine was the head honcho for the Republic at that point and could make things like that go away Anyway by the time of the Clone Wars not only did they have a massive Fleet of powerful and fast vessels but one that had already begun being upgraded with full weapons as the Clone Wars progressed not only were more ships in the fleet fitted for combat but existing ships underwent refits to become even more powerful so when it came to the Trade Federation they essentially transformed what had been a legitimate and viable shipping business into well a massive problem for the Republic that's just one vessel within the fleet though I think my favorite in terms of lore has to be the bank and Clan frigate have you ever noticed the full name of the banking plan it's the intergalactic banking clan that implies that they had business not only within the Star Wars Galaxy but also outside now there's some lore stating that they had small outposts in companion galaxies but the essential guide to Warfare actually adds something even more interesting this is a direct quote the banking Clan owned a number of space stations outside of the galactic disk that housed secret vaults Communications facilities and meeting spaces in the run-up to the Clone Wars many of those extra Galactic stations were refitted as shipyards and staffed by workers toiling and lonely Exile above the bright wheel of the Galaxy those shipyards and others on GBC Affiliated worlds such as gory turned out tens of thousands of banking Clan forgets for Dooku's cause I've always loved the idea of hidden shipyards in the unknown regions or even extra Galactic space and it makes even more sense in the lead-up to the Clone Wars and it also parallels the build up for the Republic Fleet and really the Republic military in general which was being literally grown on kamino outside of the Galaxy and assembled in Hidden shipyards like the one at rothana the Luker Hawk which we just mentioned had roles beyond that of Simply a large capital ship it could obviously move supplies house Droid armies and more the banking Clan frigate or the munificent also had functions beyond that of Simply a warship it was designed of course to move material but also had some of the most advanced sensors and communication equipment in the entire galaxy this really helped the CIS on a logistical front help them communicate effectively in battle and according again to the essential guide to Warfare even played a part in broadcasting a steady stream of propaganda to Republic worlds while also disrupting Republic Communications and sensors pretty smart how they built this ship with multiple functions in mind then pumped out tens of thousands of them the essential guide to Warfare also has an interesting profile on the Commerce Guild Destroyer which you may know as the requisite according to the text it wasn't something like the munificent or the Luker Hulk which was either built in advanced or converted from existing ships rather the requisite had the benefit of being extremely simple to produce and I mean that makes sense if you look at the vessel it's essentially a simple superstructure a very large Cannon and some extra guns it had the benefit of being operated mostly by droids and automated systems so you could skip on many of the essentials that would be required for Organics the material sure was prepped in advance but really recusing started being produced as the Clone Wars broke out again as the essential guide to Warfare says the Commerce Guild didn't have a massive military infrastructure and had the materials which were actually then put together by the Techno Union to produce a fairly effective vessel I think it's really interesting how the CIS used the benefit of different corporations together the assets of one Corporation being put to use by the production facilities of another Corporation this was likely the case in a lot of the cis's ships and starfighters the factories the forages the mining the shipyards they were already there simply converted very quickly as the first vessels were able to contend with the first vessels of the Republic and of course once the war was in full swing the CIS was in a good position to out produce the republic or at least keep up with competition as their droids and tacticians were being out fought by the Republic super weapons like the subjugator were uniquely built while other ships like the Providence were also created during the war but still kept that CIS Ingenuity the Providence for example was heavily modular and could be customized depending on its needs other pre-war commercial CIS vessels would have too been upgraded for wartime use and just general I think the way that the CIS militarized in were able to fight a Galaxy spanning war against a dominant government is very interesting so at the Battle of ryloth some quick thinking between Anakin and Ahsoka allowed the Republic to break through the ryloth blockade just in time as things were getting really desperate for the twilex and Republic forces on the surface that being said Anakin strategies in this battle could be described as not very cash money to put it lightly and if we were looking at this battle through the real world rules of War well Anakin would have committed a very serious War crime now hold on to all of those typing away angrily yes I know the Star Wars Universe does not have to abide by the real rules of war that we use here on planet Earth it's not like the Republic ratified the Geneva Convention or anything like that but that notwithstanding most of these rules and certainly the rule we'll be talking about in today's video have a very logical basis that you would think would be upheld in the Star Wars universe so let's look at the facts the Confederacy of independent systems managed to secure a successful blockade of the planet of ryloth anchored by a lucra Hulk class carrier the Republic tries but fails to break the blockade through conventional means is sent retreating with their tail between their legs and returns having devised a very very sneaky strategy Anakin Skywalker in a heavily damaged venator-class Cruiser offers to surrender to the separatists in exchange for safe passage of Aid to the Twilights on the surface below Anakin offers not only his ship but all the crew aboard and himself the Confederacy seems to agree they do not fire on the ship as it's approaching but the Republic would jump in a reinforcement star destroyer and Anakin would set the venator on a collision course with the lucra Hulk the venator in actuality being completely empty and him ejecting at the last minute to safety at that point Ahsoka using a mark Sable is able to break the blockade and the Republic is able to travel to the planet below so what's the war crime here well in the real world we would call that a false surrender or more generally a perfidy which is a violation of good faith between parties with the offering party intending to take advantage of an enemy who weakens themselves in order to comply with the good faith agreement perfidy is outward in the Geneva Convention with prohibitions against false surrender being found in article 37 subsection 1A although it's not really important the key elements of the offense under the Geneva Convention include inviting the confidence of an adversary leading him to believe that he is entitled to or obliged to Accord protection under the rules of international law applicable in her armed conflict with the intent to betray that confidence and this includes with an intent to negotiate under a flag of truce or of surrender but perfidia has been considered by far more than just the Geneva Convention but also has been at times ignored throughout the history of Warfare let's look at what Anakin does specifically why it would violate the rules that we have in our real world and why even without formal rules perhaps in the Star Wars Universe it's still problematic alright so essentially Anakin is relying on the good faith of the Confederacy of independent systems Fleet to not fire on a surrendered Enemy by not firing the Confederacy puts itself in a weakened position as the venator is able to approach the flagship which would otherwise not be possible just because of the overwhelming Firepower by the separatists then of course Anakin breaks that confidence and takes advantage of the weakened position of the separatist Flagship to Ram it with his venator after that Ahsoka compounds things by breaking the blockade with her ship and her starfighters so if full surrender it's pretty obvious why this would violate rules in reality but why is it still a problem in the Star Wars Universe well rules of War don't exist just for fun they exist to govern how opposing sides operate during battle end when waging a war They don't serve necessarily to make things Fair they serve to establish basic standards to help keep War I guess as civilized as possible so in this specific situation when Anakin gives a false surrender not only does he take advantage of the Confederacy in this specific battle but he also changes the standards for what's acceptable from now on the Confederacy will know what the Republic is willing to do and they may be much much more brutal when dealing with real surrenders which is part of the problem yes it is a tactical Victory here for the Republic but generally it contributes to the overall brutality of the war which is similar why pretending to be a medic or dressing as the Red Cross is also prohibited if someone's going to pretend to be the Red Cross or a war reporter or whatever neutral party and they fire on an enemy well that will lead to lots of civilians or at least non-combatants being killed and what Anakin does here is problematic for another reason one that I pointed out in the facts when negotiating Anakin says specifically that he will surrender in return for the Republic being allowed to deliver Aid to the civilians on ryloth now not only has Anakin thrown out into future Republic surrenders but now the Confederacy is also going to be concerned that the Republic is not offering in good faith when it comes to the welfare of civilians or that civilians could be somehow weaponized which is well not very good for civilians but practically if the Confederacy thinks that the Republic is going to start weaponizing civilians or surrenders well maybe they start shooting every clone pow or they start wiping out any civilian centers or Aid or Medics that don't have a tactical purpose there's also a fairness principle and it's just not fair to kill beings who who are trying to do the right thing and accept surrender now one defense could be well this was a CIS ship there were just battle droids well we don't know that there could have been some organic beings aboard we know that there was at least one who managed to escape but there's everything we talked about that's setting the precedent for what's acceptable it's the fact that the separatists could now do this to the Republic and of course it devalues surrender of course this wasn't the only false surrender of the Clone Wars we see Obi-Wan pretend to surrender to the Confederacy Anakin has a false surrender in season 7 but it's also far far from the only what we would on Earth consider a war crime in the Clone Wars as well and that's to say nothing about death stars and super lasers forced experimentation and everything else really nasty that happens in the Star Wars Universe it's been a while since we've done any sort of verses on this channel to be honest that's largely because I was pretty burnt out with ship comparisons but I do want to return to the subject so first of all if you guys guys have any matchups you'd like to see make sure to leave them down below but also today we'll be putting two of the most famous Star Wars capital ship classes head to head as the venator of the Republic takes on the confederacy's Providence Cruiser however we won't be looking purely at which one of these two ships would win in a head-to-head fight but rather which one was the better Clone Wars era capital ship before we do that though we need to determine some of the factors that make something an effective Mainline vessel first of all given that they will be taking up a large portion of your Fleet any Cruiser should be able to respond to different types of situations whether it's defending a planet leading an offensive working alone or with an escort Fleet basically the ship should be at least somewhat usable in most Mission profiles I think it should also be efficient well-designed and overall just capable but with that being said let's first take a closer look at the Providence class the Providence came in two different variants a large version and a small version however we'll be sticking with the standard 1088 meter long Destroyer the Providence had an impressive 14 quad turbo lasers making it one of the most offensively minded Capital ships created during the Clone Wars alongside that were a pair of heavy ion cannons 34 dual laser cannons and 12-point defense cannons for taking down starfighters and during the Battle of Coruscant we also see that at least some providences were armed with broadside flat cannons add to that a sophisticated missile launch system and you've got a nicely well-rounded Cruiser talking about weapon placements the point defense systems of the Providence were well situated across the entirety of the ship providing fairly good coverage while turbo lasers were split between flank and forward-facing guns defensively from a structural standpoint the Providence had less obvious weaknesses when compared with the Star Destroyer although it does have the tower near the rear of the ship the bridge itself was situated near the ship's bulk and was fairly well detected the destruction of the so-called Wizards Tower would not be fatal to the operation of the ship because of the way the ship sort of tapers out near the back and the placement of the guns the Providence was also effective at fighting enemies directly in front of it or at its broadsides another really positive aspect of the ship was its modularity on the extreme end we saw what the Rebel Alliance did with an old Providence completely changing it and making the rebel one the Invisible Hand also opted for more hanger space while the standard Providence would have instead had extra reactors I think having your Mainline vessel be easily customizable is a very nice benefit to the Navy you can have a fleet of three providences one having extra turbo lasers another outfitted for carrying and a third with high-tech sensory equipment however all providences were known for having a very thick Hull especially compared to other separatist ships that being said it's hard to straight up compare the durability with the venator the venator did however have recorded better straight line acceleration than the Providence however I think it likely that the separatist ship was more maneuverable finally we have fighter carrying the Invisible Hand was outfitted with hundreds of starfighters while the standard ship would have likely had significantly less and those are the basics but let's now move on to the Republic and their venator I think the most obvious downside of the venator was that especially when compared with modern Star Destroyers it was significantly underarmed for its size it had only eight heavy turbo lasers alongside a pair of medium gun and 52 Point defense turrets while the point Defense number especially seems impressive the Providence spouts a similar number of anti-starfighter cannons while bringing a lot more offensive Firepower to Bear now that being said those eight cannons on either side of the bridge superstructure would have been extremely powerful but they just can't stand up to the providence's vast array of varied weapons given the heavy carrying Focus I think they probably could have scaled back the anti-fighter system somewhat and given the ship a few more turbo lasers however it gets worse The Guns of the venator are very poorly placed the eight sets of Turbo lasers are as I said unsurprisingly positioned on each side of the bridge superstructure this isn't so bad and it's pretty common among Star Destroyers however it does mean that in certain situations their rear most batteries may not be able to fire but hey that's also true with the Providence the larger issue is that the medium turbo lasers and even most of the laser cannons are actually placed along the ship's Rim this is really problematic especially from a point defense perspective and we see that on some occasions venetors can't even sufficiently protect against Fighters flying directly towards them this is bad because one of the ship's weak points is its dorsal hanger Bay even the incredible cross-sections guide calls this a major design flaw and I would agree and it comes back to the hangar Bay itself because the doors need to slide out the surface of the venator is mostly flat this might be okay if the trade-off for more starfighters is worth it and I think that's what we should talk about next the combination of a dorsal and ventral Hangar Bay along with the venator's incredible carrying capacity with room for over 400 starfighters allows for the quick launching of overwhelming Starfighter power however I honestly believe that much of this space would have gone to waste I don't think the average venator was carrying anywhere near 400 Fighters I'll come back to that in a second but while the capacity does offer some advantages in the rare case that the ship is filled to the brim I honestly don't think it justifies the burdensome loss of Firepower or structural Integrity sure you might be able to fill one venator with that many fighters however if it's your Mainline Cruiser there's no way you'll be able to stalk that many starfighters this means means that your fleet-wide carrying capacity vastly outweighs the available resources and you've just got empty space I think the venator of the Republic would have been much more well served if it perhaps halved the hangar space and either minimize the size of the dorsal hangers or just remove them all together it would have been nice if like the Providence the venator was heavily configurable but instead the Republic more or less just used the victory in that role I also think it's important to note that the Starship of the Galaxy guide specifically recognizes that with anywhere near a full complement of Fighters the venator was seriously limited this was due to a lack of cargo space which would have been needed for parts to repair or replace Fighters so fully loaded venetors had to stick near friendly worlds and were typically relegated to the core that's a real shame because one of the venator's best aspects is its very fast class 1 hyperdrive having each one of your ships faster than the enemy and the Providence had only a 1.5 always gives the Republic a slight Advantage when preparing for the offensive the hyperdrive speed was likely brought on not only by Advanced Drive technology but also the venator's exceptional power generation which I'd like to end the discussion by talking about so the venator was known for being able to bring a lot of power to bear and thus it most likely had a very strong Shield these numbers are hard to quantify but especially in conjunction with the thick Hull the Republic Cruiser could take quite the beating however as I alluded to it's hard to quantify the advantage over the Providence if we look at the Incredible cross-sections Book which I have admitted I believe is often worth taking with a heavy grain of salt the venator at Max capability can process a lot more fuel through its primary power generator than the Providence taking these numbers on their face unless there's some serious difference in efficiency that means that the venator can for Spirits at least output three or four times as much power but there's two things that detract from this first of all I haven't seen anything that would lead me to believe that this sort of difference in strength was near normal also most importantly we see that the venator has a single main generator and then secondary reactors on its wings the Providence on the other hand has several main reactors so where does this bring us well the venator probably had a stronger Shield which worked well with its role as a carrier but which one is the better Frontline Mainline capital ship I think it's clearly the Providence it's modular heavily customizable it has more weapons and more realistic Starfighter complement and in my opinion it has less obvious design flaws and I didn't even mention the venator's Towering Bridge which just asks to be shot overall though I do think the venator also worked really effectively but it would have been nice if the ship was either more heavily geared towards anti-capitalship Warfare or if it was used primarily just as a carrier that being said I think it's interesting that the venator probably would have made a fairly effective CIS capital ship the Confederacy had mostly weak vessels so something smaller than a lucra Hulk which could transport vast amounts of fire while taking damage I think would have been quite nice for their navies the diamond class cruiser which actually appears at the Battle of Geonosis and you might be saying well I didn't spot anything at the Battle of Geonosis at least capital ship wise other than some lucra Hulks and some of those hard cell transports and that's because the diamond is very very difficult to spot when I was re-watching it today I only saw it during the battle once just briefly at a scene in the very background this is kind of weird because we actually do get some overhead shots of the battle and even some tactical Maps but we don't see the diamond class cruiser there but whatever regardless it definitely is there it's a unique ship and it was probably intended at one point to be more numerous on the battle but I just think really visually it's not not very distinctive or very interesting to look at which is probably why it's limited to just appearing in one spot the best information about the ship becomes in issue 116 of Star Wars fact file where it's called the Commerce Guild Cruiser I'll read a brief excerpt from the article that discusses it because I think he gives a really good introduction to the ship the Commerce Guild Cruiser was the Guild's contribution to the Starship fleets of the Confederacy of independent systems which was the official title for the other ones eclectic mix of separatist groups during the Clone Wars although the word Cruiser usually denotes a fast and well-armed ship the Commerce Guild vessels were only lightly armed for defensive purposes rather than being used for direct raiding or Starship combat they were more like weapon Delivery Systems and transports like many of the Confederacy ships the Commerce Guild Cruisers had been built with trade in mind but was easily converted for use in the war so sort of like the Luker Hulk the Commerce Guild Destroyer or the diamond was essentially a transport pre-war but was refitted for direct combat unlike something like the hard cell transports or the Luker Hulk The Diamond was made for a very very quick delivery and takeoff so generally in combat if this weren't a fleet you'd probably keep it in the middle and have it very protected otherwise you could use the diamond for some light anti-star fighter duties however what's really interesting about the ship is how it works with other Commerce Guild products especially their line of spider droids in battle and this is even in Space the diamond would sometimes launch thousands of droids which would then attack on mass sometimes even making their way inside of the ship and attacking as a sort of on-the-fly boarding team and the droids are really its main offensive weapon which is certainly unique for a Star Wars capital ship it also seems like rather than just simply launching the Droids that sometimes they would fire at an enemy from on board the ship itself which sort of reminds me of how Anakin used the SP ha in Legends as sort of an onboard heavy weapon for the venator that being said in a conventional battle these things weren't the best they were very fast they were pretty well armored but just generally they could be beaten by most Republic Capital ships however where you really do not want to see the diamond is on the battlefield itself on the ground because if that thing is approaching a landing Zone it probably means that you're about to get very very close to literally thousands of spider droids the diamond was also very small at 120 meters long so it's pretty clear where the ship was meant to fit into the CIS Arsenal and I think it is very helpful to a variety of transport and Landing vessels considering the separatist use of lucra Hulk's Trade Federation Landers hard sells and more and that is what happens when you make a group of Corporations who are essentially retooling pre-war vessels there will definitely be some crossover but that's not necessarily A Bad Thing the CIS also made the requisite class which is is of course the long spindly ship you can see at the Battle of Coruscant speaking at the Battle of Coruscant one thing that's really interesting about the diamond is you can actually see one of those ships in the Star Tours ride for the Battle of Coruscant now as some of you guys pointed out when I discussed this earlier this Battle of Coruscant is perhaps a different one than the one at the end of the Clone Wars It's perhaps with the Rebels versus the Empire I guess however with that being said it was very clearly at least designed to be the battle from episode 3 and I find it interesting that the diamond itself actually features the model is actually really high quality as well so I wonder if at one point ilm intended that ship to participate it makes sense given the fact they had already worked on the model since episode 2. what in the Republic the caminoans or the Jedi themselves make force sensitive or Jedi clones now obviously we do have some examples of four sensitive clones in Star Wars if you're a book reader the most famous one is probably jorus sabayanth if you like video games there is a of course the whole Starkiller Fiasco the Star Wars sequel Trilogy has some stuff with Palpatine creating clone bodies which is Spirit inherits whatever's also going on with snoke but these examples especially the first two serve more as exceptions and also illustrate some of the major difficulties when it comes to making Force sensitive clones and I mean there has to be some major issue because if you think about it a clone army made up of four sensitive clones would probably be unstoppable alright so the very short answer for why were Jedi clones not made is that generally the force seemed to somehow interfere with the cloning process however I think that's obvious and the more interesting question is why well on a sort of philosophical level if you're talking about Star Wars there's the idea of the living force and the cosmic Force the cosmic Force generally guiding the universe the cosmic force is somehow said to have a will of its own and it seems like force powerful being things may actually be tools for some greater plan so it's very possible that the force intervenes to stop its will from being subverted by those who have been created through artificial means we do actually see something similar the force pushing back against the actions of living beings arguably with the birth of Anakin Skywalker after Force experimentation by Plagueis and Palpatine so that's one way to look at it in one possible option but there are others the thrawn trilogy heavily deals with the idea of four sensitive clones because one of the main antagonists joris savayath is a clone of the former Jedi Master Jorah sabayoth and what's more he's insane it seems like according to the thrawn trilogy that where successful Force sensitive clones are created that they are prone to extreme mental instability and not only that are not typically viable we get a little quote from Princess Leia about this in the last command she says the following it's the force she told him it was so obvious so utterly obvious and yet she'd missed it completely don't you see when you make an exact duplicate of a sentient being there's a natural resonance or something set up through the force between that duplicate and the original that's what warps the mind of a clone that's been grown too fast and although she is talking there about ordinary clones and how the force touches all beings presumably the effect is even greater for those who are Force sensitive interestingly the Clones created in the thrawn trilogy are through the sparti process which is actually completely different than the process used by the Kami noans nonetheless the caminoans too believed that four sensitives could not be reliably or safely cloned due to some strange interaction with the force and I mean that makes sense we do see some of the difficulties associated with both the caminoan process and the earlier mentions priority process in the Force Unleashed 2 with the Starkiller clones I think biologically too there's also the question of whether copying someone's DNA also copies their midichlorians in the the other aspects that make someone powerful in the force that being said of course there are exceptions as I mentioned there's the Galen Merit clone or the Luke clone but while these are successes to varying degrees their success is on a small scale and they all take a lot of time and a lot of trial and error to work I also believe that if these processes were scaled up in an attempt to make a force-sensitive army that the difficulties would actually increase by an order of magnitude to the point of impossibility or if not impossibility at least futility this is because of a concept that Darth Bane talks about in his Trilogy of novels and that's the idea that the force is not an endless supply of power now arguably we do see exceptions to this in for example the Jedi Knight series of games but Bane believes that the Sith order has allowed themselves to become less powerful by spreading out the dark side among hundreds or thousands of Sith instead of having it be concentrated in one or two individuals now I'm not sure if that's exactly exactly right but I do wonder if the force is less like a big truck and more like a series of tubes in that it only has room to empower so many especially when all of the recipients of those powers are based on the same sort of genetic sequence so sort of to summarize I think there are several reasons why the cloning of four sensitive beings was very difficult but it was that's the key point I think most of the reasons can be tied either to the metaphysical nature of the force itself how the force interacts with the cloning procedure or perhaps just the efficacy of cloning those with increasing Madness and perhaps diminishing returns and force Powers today we'll be covering a time period which I think is underrepresented on YouTube but I find incredibly interesting and that's the pre-clone Wars republic era to be frank part of the reason this time period is so fun to look at is because of the excellent novel Plagueis which in my opinion is one of the top three EU books of all time now Plagueis is so good largely because it takes puzzle pieces which had been set up throughout Star Wars history and puts them together in a really interesting way the book makes connections that serve to make the individual pieces of lore all that better and one good example of this is Trade Federation battleships or at First Trade Federation Freighters so if you're familiar with Legends you probably know that the Thousand or so years before the clone wars were a relatively stable and peaceful era and this was achieved at least in part because of the ruson reformations the rusan reformations placed limits on the Republic military decentralizing the government's main defensive forces and instead moving the onus to individual systems and planets however other regulations also limited the size of Warships with any of the big ships that existed during the era like the kawadi mandator being heavily heavily Limited in terms of Firepower and also hyperdrive speed so that means before the Clone Wars The Republic itself wasn't heavily militarized and limitations were placed on the military of star systems now while it is true that sometimes the rusan reformations were skirted or even ignored they generally prevented the creation of any large Invasion armadas that takes us to the Trade Federation which in the decades prior to their invasion of Naboo had Consolidated enough power within the Galaxy to actually have a seat on the Senate they were the perfect faction to create the backbone of a military which would existentially threaten the Republic let me explain although it was impossible to create large Capital ships without facing Republic scrutiny the Trade Federation engaged heavily in well trade so it was not surprising when they created a fleet of several thousand lucra Hulk class Freighters glucrohawk was interesting it was at its creation not armed but also a massive platform where weapons could be added it had an incredible amount of cargo space and a relatively fast class II hyperdrive the Trade Federation was likely the dominant non-republic economic superpower in the entire galaxy it had abused the Republic's formation of tax-free trade zones and had aggressively expanded over about a century to secure an enormous amount of political power however those who ran the Trade Federation didn't want to be simply a superpower they wanted to be the superpower even surpassing the Republic this ideal would be later manipulated by Palpatine however with the Stark hyperspace War which sawtrade Federation vessels attacked by Raiders their Ambitions became even more aggressive and a plan was created to overthrow the Republic part of this was the formation of a secret droid army but another part was the creation of a powerful navy which is the topic of today's video so with a fleet of lucra Hulk Freighters created the Trade Federation used the injury uprising of 33 BBY as the first step to militarization they did this by preying on angst surrounding the rusan Reformation specifically the fact that without a centralized Defense Force the new Republic practically could not respond as quickly to certain threats here's a quote from Plagueis should the Trade Federation be expected to absorb the losses it has sustained because of pirate attacks the Republic refuses to create a military to police those sectors while at the same time prohibiting us from protecting our cargos with defensive weapons or Droid soldiers later Palpatine reveals that the Republic will grant the Trade Federation the ability to arm their ship with both turbo lasers and droids starfighters so by this point the Trade Federation has essentially skirted the rusan Reformation by creating a fast hyperspace capable ship with strong armor and shielding which is now carrying Fighters and given turbo lasers the capability of these ships as well as their secret droid army was obviously seen during the invasion of Naboo but this was only step one although later the Trade Federation was ordered to disband their Freighters they simply removed the cores and heavily militarized both the central portion and the Ring of the lucra Hulk battleships while seeming to comply with orders by the time the actual Clone Wars itself was initiated although these refits had only begun the CIS still had a huge Fleet of gigantic Capital ships with the war now fully underway and the legalities of the rusan Reformation now thrown out the window the Trade Federation could then just upgrade their ships in plain sight but the key is they had all of their pieces ready to build upon when the time was right the Republic on the other hand had to scramble trying to bring old mandator class dreadnoughts up to date while thankfully also relying on a secretly constructed Fleet of venators and other Capital ships the lukerhulk is genius because it allowed the CIS to militarize against a faction which had been in power for thousands of years and they did so under its very nose the lucra Hulk remained one of the most powerful Clone Wars era Capital ships throughout the entire conflict and to be honest it gave the CIS a nice Advantage they were perfect for blockading planets leading fleets or basically doing whatever else also worth noting is that the Luker Hulk was basically perfect for their military Doctrine the Trade Federation and the CIS generally obviously relied on battle droids and mass-produced Droid fighter guess what the Luker Hulk has a crapload of cargo space so that's another way that you can quickly bring your vessels up to military spec The Arc 170 or the regressive reconnaissance 170 was of course a republic Starfighter made famous during the Clone Wars it was an in-com product and unsurprisingly based on the wings it was according to the Revenge of the Sith cross-section a cousin to the z95 and thus a predecessor to the Galaxy's most famous and perhaps effective Starfighter the X-Wing the arc-170 was armed to the teeth it had two very powerful forward-facing Blaster cannons which the cross section also notes were much more powerful than the typical ship-based laser Cannons of that era it also had a proton torpedo launcher and quite interestingly a pair of manned rear-facing laser cannons these guns alongside the ship's powerful Shields helped increase survivability especially where the thing was larger and slower than 95 percent of other starfighters on the battlefield at this point point the arc-170 was a fairly complex craft to fly it required not only a pilot but also a co-pilot and a gunner who managed the rear-facing Cannons I guess that suggests that the Cannons were probably fire linked but I wouldn't doubt that the Gunner could also take control of each one individually just wouldn't be very practical In the Heat of battle unless we're talking about a Jedi the arc-170 did also use an Astromech droid alongside a hyperdrive which we'll come back to in just a second you likely won't be surprised to hear that because of the ship's heavy Armament and effective shielding it was usually used as a heavy assault fighter useful for attacking Capital ships with its Torpedoes and Laser cannons but also fending off other starfighters probably a bit more mobile than something like a y-wing what you may not know but you probably should if you think about the name is that the arc 170 the aggressive reconnaissance 170 was very frequently utilized for long range missions the ship could carry several days worth of supplies it had Advanced sensors built into its nose not unlike the X-Wing so it would often be relied upon in a scouting role or in cases when a ship would attack maybe Behind Enemy Lines away from reinforcements wherever this is something that the Rebel Alliance would do with ships like the y-wing basically if you can't support your starfighters with a capital ship you get in there do as much damage as possible try to survive then hyperspace jump away arguably because of the Clone Wars nature these hit and fate attacks were a little less successful but that was definitely some of the action that the arc 170 would have seen alongside more traditional battles like we see with Coruscant that's a lot of the good let's talk about the bad and I covered one of the major things already The Arc 170 was slow and unwieldy both the Clone Wars and the Galactic Civil War saw fast starfighters like the Thai Interceptor in the a-wing Dominate in dog fights so these things were definitely a bit of a Sitting Duck not unlike again the y-wing or especially the tie bomber one other issue though with The Arc 170 is the cost in both replacement technology and more importantly Personnel The Arc 170 needed three pilots and an Astromech droid if you lose your ship you are losing a lot in terms of personnel everything that comes with them training equipment and more and the Sega Edition Starship of the Galaxy guide also notes specifically that these ships even when they managed to survive were very resource intensive and required a lot of repairs and regular maintenance so why did the arc 170 fail and I would call the ship a failure it did do some things effectively but the SAG Edition notes that it didn't see wide production numbers even during the Clone Wars at least compared to other Republic era Fighters and the Empire chose to drop the ship when the new era was founded in favor of other vessels when it comes to the Clone Wars I think the Republic frankly just preferred other designs Sometimes using two star fighters of different class to Make Up For What the arc 170 could offer for example although the arc 170 is somewhat unique in the Republic's Navy has a heavy assault Fighter the y-wing does a lot that the arc one 70 does while also being less expensive and less crew intensive the y-wing carries more Ordnance it's also slow with a decent shield and even has the Gunner the downside is that the y-wing was less of a dog fighter but the Republic didn't really field the y-wing alone it was usually protected by one of their many Interceptor types which they did make in numbers so essentially instead of having one ship that's pretty good at bombing an okay at dog fighting they've got dedicated bombers and dedicated interceptors and that seemed to work well for them seems like Republic Starfighter manufacturing is also pretty heavily standardized so it's not like the alliance where they'd be conducting hit and run attacks and using whatever they had it just seems that the Republic chose the effectiveness of the two ships combined versus the arc-170 again it's not like these ships saw no production but the Sega Edition Starship guide specifically mentions that they were produced in much smaller numbers than the other ships that takes us to the Imperial era and there were a few things that led to the arc-170s downfall in that time period for one the Empire moved generally to light carrier-based Fighters the arc-170 was frequently carrier-based but it also did have that hyperdrive very few Imperial vessels had a hyperdrive almost all of them were connected to a mother ship and the heavy long-range fighter simply didn't fit very well with an imperial doctrine that being said there were Imperial variants of the arc-170 they were just even less common than what we saw during the Clone Wars The Empire also preferred light cheap Fighters and again the arc 170 had a noted High personnel and maintenance cost so it doesn't really fit in especially where the Empire gets a lot of their Firepower from their Capital ships with starfighters seeming somewhat like an afterthought even the Rebellion didn't use arc-170s very frequently for one there was a better successorship the X-Wing it's a little less heavy a little less protected than the arc-170 but it's very mobile it's got those heavy proton torpedo launchers which is really what you need when taking down Capital ships anyway and it was a much better dog fight especially where the y-wing and the b-wing did still exist to inflict casualties on Capital ships yeah I see the X-Wing as being better for the rebel alliance in the arc 170 in almost every aspect not only practically when it comes to missions but again returning to the Saga Edition Starship of the Galaxy guide that explains that even though some of the ships were liberated and used by the Rebel Alliance most were mothballed or scrapped simply because the rebels lacked the flight Crews and repair Bays necessary to keep the older ships ready for combat and that makes total sense you're dedicating three Pilots to one ship yes you're gaining rear-facing Gunners but the rebels often chose not to even man their y-wing Gunners because of personnel issues a co-pilot is just a lot the rebel lines also relied again on Hit and Run attacks but they were also very fast about it they got in they got out the arc-170 just doesn't offer the same thing that the X-Wing does was the ship useless though no definitely not as I mentioned I think think it worked pretty well in its specific Niche and if creative I think the Rebel Alliance probably could have found some interesting uses the Republic did have Scout variants of the y-wing so I don't think the arc-170 was really needed for that but I do think hit and run attacks Behind Enemy Lines should have been the bread and butter of this ship high value targets where you can justify the three individuals plus an Astromech droid needed for the ship and where you want something that can stand on its own without having to dedicate more ships to protect it whether because of Manpower reasons or because of stealth I think it's also a pretty interesting candidate for a planetary assault ship and unsurprisingly it does have a cousin the ptb 625 very similar to The Arc but much larger and an airspeeder with a Bombay I think VR could have been even better in this role because it can launch go through hyperspace attack Targets on the ground then leave maybe they should have made a variant where the proton torpedo launch bay was swapped out for a Bombay and I can see that being very useful but in my opinion that's why the arc 170 was somewhat of a failure for a Starfighter despite itself I mean it's a cool design I think it does a lot of things pretty interestingly But ultimately it was overshadowed by other starfighters of its era and certainly after so the scorpeneck annihilator Droid originated in concept art from Attack of the Clones the art book says specifically that the annihilator Droid was envisioned as a Next Generation battle droid its appearance hearkened back not only to scorpions hence the name but also the destroyer droid from episode 1 and we can see that there's very little variation except perhaps in size from what the annihilator Droid looked like in concept art to its on-screen and originally on page appearance I say originally on page because until the book of Boba Fett the annihilator droid never appeared on screen I actually thought it had appeared in the Clone Wars but it actually wasn't even Canon until now I was surprised honestly because it's such an interesting design and one that's very popular in Star Wars fandom as well but let's take an actual look at the Droid specifications and its lore the scorpeneck annihilator was created by the collacoid creation Nest this was unsurprisingly the same faction which designed and produced the droidica in fact were the Clone Wars one of the annihilator's most prominent roles was actually the defense of californ and its Droid foundries as the colloquoids were pumping out new Droid variants for the CIS during the war the annihilator was actually somewhat of a departure from the destroyer droid the Destroyer was seen somewhat as an almost underling Droid model the Ika in droitica refers to the word for drone in the colloquoid language as we see in The Phantom Menace individual Destroyer droids didn't even have their own intelligence matrixes the annihilator however was a large independently operating Droid which could dominate the battlefield through its incredible deadliness but also Independence and intelligence another difference between the destroyer and the annihilator was the fact that the annihilator was initially at least kept secret serving again largely in a planetary defense role upon initially discovering the annihilator Droid one ARC Trooper who had been a part of a strike on Call of 4 is quoted as saying in the new essential guide to droids we don't know what it was Sir but it took out three platoons we can't let the collacoids get these things off Planet let's talk about specifications and the annihilator Droid is very upfront about what it's packing we see that it has double laser cannons on each arm these most likely have variable fire modes for quick bursts or more powerful single shots however these are primarily anti-vehicle units and although the large guns are technically rapid fire they're not ideal for fighting off infantry often large tanks or Walkers will have smaller anti-personnel lasers somewhere on their body I think the scorpeneck's lack of those is a mistake because of its height and lack of speed and Mobility at least compared to a trooper it is somewhat vulnerable to infantry that being said the CIS could easily make up for this by pairing it with battle droids or other light Vehicles interestingly the Annihilator did have a very unique method of protecting its allies we see in the book of Boba Fett that it has a very powerful shield and that's accurate as well to Star Wars Legends the annihilator had both a particle and a ray shield so it had full protection while the shield was up against energy and projectile weapons it was able to Fire To The Shield through what the new essential guide to droids called a unique polarization signature anyway in the midst of battle Annihilator droids would often be deployed alongside destroyers the Destroyers would sit within the shield of the annihilator and also within their own Shields so they would have an exceptional level of protection while also making up for some of the annihilator's weak spots The Shield was perhaps one of the strongest ever mounted on a Droid which led partially to the annihilator's extreme cost which we'll talk about in a moment but also its Effectiveness the annihilator saw limited use throughout the Clone Wars but where it was deployed the CIS almost always saw a victory we've talked about the Battle of cola 4. their Annihilator droids were able to defend end against four platoons of clones that's a full company's worth 144 Troopers while eliminating over three quarters of them according to the new essential guide to droids annihilators turned the tide at the battles of Palani and foremost and just generally through their extreme power and Effectiveness were very difficult for the Republic to handle disrupting their battle plans according to that same Source a single Annihilator could destroy a dozen attes and generally the only way the Republic could be successful is through the committing of an unacceptable number of heavy unit and again that's a direct quote meaning that the mere presence of one of these things on the battlefield disrupted Republic operations unfortunately the annihilator was prohibitively expensive to build the annihilator really has three or four key components which itself were probably multiple times more expensive than other advanced battle droids the annihilator's eye which unsurprisingly is also a weak spot and extremely susceptible to damage contains a variety of advanced sensors which which were actually particularly effective against organic beings the eye was based off a sensory organ by the way of the colloquoids The Shield generator as well would have been very very expensive most likely Starfighter quality or above but what's really impressive is that the Droid was even able to power the shield and the weapons at the same time you see those things that almost look like belts running behind the weapons of the annihilator Droid those are plasma feed lines providing energy for the continual fire that the weapon is capable of so presumably the generator is somewhere maybe behind the eye it's obviously very miniaturized speaking to the quality of the tech at play here anyway because of the cost Annihilator droids were never produced in mass quantities there were about a hundred stationed on Cola 4 for defensive purposes with other units rarely being sent off to the front lines Palpatine himself was seemingly impressed by the annihilator Droid because at the end of the Clone Wars and through the use of the shutdown switch deactivated Annihilator droids were taken by the Imperial Department of military research for study and according to the new essential guide to droids again many found their way to Palpatine's private Citadel on the Deep core world of bis that last sentence is particularly interesting to me because it implies that Annihilator droids may have somewhat influenced the technology fielded by the dark Empire which was the faction in Star Wars legends that emerged when Palpatine was reborn I actually think that makes total sense the dark Empire relied heavily on mechanized infantry and automated armor the X1 Viper like the annihilator relied on an extremely potent shield and was also King of the battlefield seen as nearly indestructible the shadow Droid as well I think has some obvious visual similarities to the scorpeneck although in real world terms that is definitely a coincidence either way Palpatine did make an obvious shift away from manned heavy armor like the atat to not only mechanized infantry and armor but autonomous droid-based armor as well well in my opinion the outer rim sieges have got to be one of the least well understood and under discussed aspects of the Clone Wars especially given the fact that the sieges play a prominent role in both the Clone Wars TV show and especially Revenge of the Sith when discussing the outer rim Siege just a lot of people will say well it was the last campaign of the Clone Wars and sort of leave it at that and while that is definitely true there's a lot more to the outer rim sieges that really hints at the future of the Galaxy in which I think is really worth discussing the best source I've found so far which discusses the outer rim sieges is unsurprisingly the essential guide to Warfare the section on the Outer Rim C just really highlights how terrifying it would have been as a citizen of the Republic first of all the CIS was somewhat of an unknown entity although the military buildup of the Republic especially by the late Clone Wars actually made it the more powerful faction the CIS was just different of course they were led by the terrifying General Grievous who was designed to seem like a scary brute a Fall Guy for the Confederacy but there was also the fact that the CIS had strange Droid armies they were attacking across the Galaxy they were launching Terror attacks even on prominent worlds like Coruscant and they were just seen as being very very difficult to stamp down part of the reason for this was because they used battle droids some sources actually suggest that the Confederacy purposefully limited their production of battle droids as to not completely overwhelm the Republican whether that's true or not I'm not certain but what is true is that there was the very real fear that hidden separatist facilities could be anywhere pumping out droids ready to strike at systems the Republic was also much larger than the Confederacy which led to a situation very much like that between the Empire and the Rebellion although the Republic was significantly powerful they also had a lot more targets that the CIS could strike at as the essential guide to Warfare explains the third year of the Clone Wars set up the conditions that would lead to the outer rim sieges separatist forces were largely driven out of the core and Inner Space and instead were made to fortify in the outer rim while this indicated that the Clone Wars was moving in the Republic's favor it also put Republic strategists in a difficult position do they push against the weakened but fortified CIS forces in the outer rim knowing that the CIS will be able to counter-attack against vulnerable Republic worlds or should the Republic Shore up its defenses but then also give the cas time to rebuild and get new factories up and running as we'll get to in a bit it's probably no accident that the war came to this point I think it was very clearly designed this way by Palpatine but again as Jason took out the Warfare explains the Republic ended up largely doing both its military grew to the size where where it could aggressively pursue the CIS in the outer rim while also making an effort to defend its own territory and this is where the true horror of the outer rim sieges comes in first of all the outer rim sieges were made up of six Republic campaigns dubbed again according to the essential guide to Warfare megiddo Sereno Felucia siskin yogdul and prey sitlin now these theaters of War weren't simply the planets after which they were named rather under each campaign the Republic was trying to push back and eliminate Cas forces in the given area this is where we saw some of the most violent action of the Clone Wars including on heavily civilian worlds like on kashyyk and mygido at this point both the CIS and the Republic were desperate to secure victories and these planets each held major strategic significance whether because of their position in Space the presence of CIS factories or whatever else so the fighting here was absolutely brutal and the Republic was also making deep incursions into CIS space we also know that planetary forces and regiments were being used by the Republic to help press their advantage and overwhelm the CIS in all theaters of War another element of the brutality came from how the cas would have counter-attacked I already mentioned that the Republic was worried that extending too aggressively into CIS space would leave their own planets vulnerable and although we don't get a whole lot of detail about how the CIS counter-attacked it's almost certain that they did especially where small Droid squads could do a lot if able to run relatively free on a planet we also know that the CIS made open attacks against the Republic one of these was the Battle of a Nazis in Star Wars Canon now I actually do have a bit of an issue with this in axes and Star Wars Legends was always a planet in the Deep core Star Wars Canon changed it in the Clone Wars so that a naxis was an outer rim Planet presumably because they needed it to be a part of the outer rim sieges however that was totally unnecessary as again we've been talking about throughout this video the outer rim sieges was a republic effort against CIS space and having the CIS counter-attack in the core deep core makes a lot of sense especially given the fact that we know what came next the Battle of Coruscant the Battle of Coruscant occurred during the outer rim sieges when republic ships were largely far away from the core for this reason the CIS had for a time at least a free shot at the world and were able to kidnap Palpatine before returning forces stopped their Retreat I don't think the CIS had too many other attacks that were this level of Daring but they were definitely hitting worlds to try to pull the Republic forces off and based on what sounds like a relatively ruthless onslaught of the Republic for months on end it seems like they were probably willing to accept some losses in favor of stomping the CIS out and ending the war that's just kind of of the dark reality of the choices the Republic had to make engineering the outer room sieges however was also genius on Palpatine's part for two reasons really first of all we have the Jedi the odor MC just took an already weakened Jedi Order and spread them across the galaxy far from Coruscant even Jedi Masters like Yoda as we see in Revenge of the Sith were forced into duty and were not able to be on corusant as Palpatine was doing Sith things it also made the eventual execution of Order 66 just that much easier but the Real Genius in this is somewhat of a personal theory of mine came from the fact that Palpatine purposely moved the war into a position where the Republic really had no other option but to continue to militarize that's one thing we see throughout the Clone Wars TV show Palpatine always wants a larger military he always wants more ships this came to a point of arguably no return when we get to the Yoda Rim sieges I'll just read this from the essential God to Warfare the Republic was in a grim trap it could defend its World against separatist Terror and incursions given the core CIS territories time to crank out new warships and Droid armies or it could try to reclaim those territories while leaving Republic worlds vulnerable in the public perception I just want to say note the key words there public perception this puzzle was never solved Instead The Republic outgrew it with its massive military buildup and coordination of existing forces finally allowing it to pursue both goals and begin to grind down the separatist War Machine and grind down is a good way to put it the other Rim sieges were bloody they were long and they saw civilians brought to the Forefront of the Clone Wars alright so we're talking about features that star warships should have employed more frequently and this video will actually be focused mostly on one main feature that is the idea of a super heavy Cannon there are a few ships in Star Wars which have won or sometimes two main guns which are limited in some capacity but which can inflict a lot of damage in battle of the dreadnoughts for example we gave our Eclipse class not only at Super laser but a super heavy turbo laser that's the sort of thing I'm talking about here I think the best and my favorite example of this is from a somewhat surprising Source the munificent class frigate if you take a look at this cross section here you can see that much of the munificent prow is made up by a pair of extremely heavy very large turbo laser cannons these are obviously very very powerful but also limited this is what the cross section itself says powerful forward Laser cannon is slow to maneuver but deadly to larger warships there's a nice bit of symmetry here as the requisite the cas Destroyer also has a large turbo Laser cannon you can imagine that the requisite and the munificent are probably sacrificing power to other cannons in order to mount and be able to fire these ones but these probably are very long range they would do exceptional damage and just generally the most important thing is they make the ship more interesting I mean the cross which is known to be an exaggeration says two huge turbo laser cannons can melt an ice Moon measuring a thousand kilometers in diameter or pierce the shields of a 10 kilometer wide grade 3 Battle station do I believe that fits with the rest of the lore not really but the main point is although the munificent itself isn't a wholly impressive vessel these cannons cannot be scoffed at when it comes to an out of universe perspective this is neat because you know what the Maleficent can do but also how it's vulnerable You're sort of given expectations for how the ship can act how it should be deployed all of those things like from an in-universe point of view you'd probably want the munificent within a larger battle group probably in the middle of a formation but to the rear so it can fire off its massive guns but not take fire itself as it is a somewhat lighter vessel compared to something like the Providence and when you have enough ships with weird Quirk from out of universe perspective battles just get more interesting compare that with what we usually get whether in the Battle of Endor or even the Battle of Coruscant which yes featured munificence in those battles there's really no difference between a mon Gallimore Cruiser or an Imperial Star Destroyer they're basically just ships might as well be circular which give off fire if used properly the cannon gives a lot of depth possibilities not only for out of universe as I'm mentioning but again also in Universe tactics so the Magnificent requisite are both I think good examples and my favorite example of this idea of heavy cannons but do see something on a much smaller scale with the Star Destroyer especially the Imperial 2. this isn't really represented in the films but the Imperial 2 class Star Destroyer has very large gun batteries on either side of the superstructure the octuple barbette Cannons as they're called and these would represent a lot of the star destroyer's Firepower again not really used in the lore but we do see a cool example from this fan made TIE fighter short film by Oda King which I'll link down below where once these guns come into play the battle is pretty much over I don't think these really represent what I'm talking about though but it is sort of an interesting look at it on a smaller scale the fan made Pelt asked by Corey loses and his team is probably the best example of a ship built around a single heavy Cannon this is essentially the shift sniper ship in most of its lethality actually comes from this super long Mega Mazer somewhat similarly in Legends the kildabe class Battleship has a pair of mass drivers which can outrange in significantly out damage its other weapons and even something like the Anakin solo which was a modified Star Destroyer had what were called upgraded long-range turbo lasers which just gave it so much more versatility in battle not every ship needs to be the keldabai or even the munificent but within fleets I think it'd be more interesting if Star Wars did throw in specialized long-range ships ships built around single heavy cannons or double heavy cannons I think both from within universe and without it makes formations and battles more interesting and it's just a cool thing to do this idea is I think somewhat distinct from super weapon ships things like the eclipse or the malevolence which are built around a single super weapon I don't really like super weapon ships very much because you get something like the zeisten or the Conqueror which just seemed Goofy and seems out of line with the strength of ships in the rest of the universe perhaps a closer comparison would however be something like a Torpedoes figure which is heavily specialized in the torpedo spheres case for breaking through planetary Shields and thus has unique and specialized weaponry and we're actually talking about one key detail that you can see in the movie that points to the depth of Palpatine's plans and his evil and how quickly the Republic was reorganized into the of recap I'm sure you guys have seen the movie but it's important to get some context by the time of Revenge of the Sith the Galaxy is in full-blown Total War the Republic is desperately hunting down the leaders of the CIS in an effort to end the Clone Wars in one Fell Swoop the Republic as led by the Jedi are fighting the outer rim sieges and as we find Midway through the movie have tracked General Grievous and other members of the separatist Council to the planet udapow now despite the CIS presence on udapow udapow itself was not a Confederate planet and had remained neutral throughout the entire lore now admittedly some of that information does come outside of the movie but it's pretty clear when you watch the film then the separatists are not there with the consent of the udapow government udapow as a planet by the way is inhabited primarily by two separate species the powans and the utai the guy that Obi-Wan talks to is a paiwan anyway through cooperation with the planetary government Obi-Wan is able to to confront General Grievous land Republic troops engaged the CIS and ultimately secure a major strategic Victory with not only the death of General Grievous but a routing of separatist forces then of course we could order 66 the Jedi Purge begins across the Galaxy and we see clones turn on their Jedi comrades killing the vast majority of the Jedi Order where does that leave udupau well you'd think with the planet civilians having rebelled against the CIS that the Republic would probably just leave and move on to secure a new objective maybe even give something and thanks well let's watch the movie because that's not what happens Revenge of the Sith is filled with little details I've done a video on many of the background ships that you won't notice unless you're paying a lot of attention but in one of those scenes featuring a mysterious background ship one where Obi-Wan is trying to escape the planet after his presumed death we see Republic clone troopers affecting Mass arrests to to every native being on udapow now admittedly only every native being in the shot but this isn't arresting a few criminals this is massed arrests of the civilians on the planet again after they had just helped route separatist forces and almost end the war keep in mind too this is before Palpatine is formally declared Emperor so the order 66 Powers weren't just to purge the Jedi but generally transferred total power to Palpatine and we can see that even without the the legal power making him Emperor he was going to assert dominance on the Galaxy perhaps if the Senate were against him through the sheer might of the Clone Army which was fully under his singular control and I just really like this scene it's one of the reasons why I love this movie so much it's just a shot of what's going and instead of just having the clone troopers stand around George Lucas and the team behind the movie showed that yeah if switch was flipped these guys are no longer the Clones who fought alongside the Republic and who helped Liberate the planet these are stormtroopers now this is a manifestation of Palpatine's ultimate goal the force which was initially created as an army or at least Justified as an army is now being used as a police force to keep people in line I mean we get a more clear shot of this with the scene featuring Bale slightly earlier on in the movie but I mean you can justify that as the Clones trying to cover up what they're doing here I don't think that's the case the Clones are just subjugating the planet because they can it could be a part of a greater Order 66 cover-up I guess but Palpatine wasn't really trying to cover up order 66. he was very clear that he ordered clones to attack Jedi based on some supposed attack against the state this also was not the only place in the Galaxy that this happened in Star Wars Legends at least we don't know all the details for Canon the Empire immediately conquered kashik after defeating the Droid forces on the planet we know know in Star Wars Canon as well that after the siege of Mandalore the newly minted Empire occupied the planet and presumably this is what happened throughout the outer rim and anywhere else that the Republic was fighting Order 66 is launched and suddenly the Clone forces begin conquering territory for the newly formed Empire making their job easier of course is the fact that the local populations have been run down because of the Clone Wars and now the droid army is being taken offline so Palpatine conquered a load of planets using what were military Troopers but had rapidly become a sort of police and subjugation Force this was really genius and again what's crazy is that the Mad lad didn't even wait until the Declaration of the empire for most of this and he had justification not real justification but political justification he could simply say that he was securing the planet to help protect against chaos or the Jedi saboteurs or whatever else was needed to ensure gold Galactic stability that still brings us to the question of why though why would Palpatine do this well there are a few reasons some of which I alluded to earlier I think being able to clamp down on some of the important planets in the outer rim which would naturally be more likely to be battlefields helps Palpatine and helps secure the Empire against early Rebellion I mean if you've got a planet subjugated you can also build military bases you can do whatever you want and the local governments will not be able to resist they'll be under your eye the entire time we also see that aliens especially like Wookies were frequently drafted into slavery or experimented on or whatever else and just generally the Empire aggressively pursued all territory available to them so it makes sense that when given the opportunity Palpatine would lay the hammer down on these planets which thought they were a part of the Republic which was supposed to be protecting them anyway I thought it was a little interesting detail how the Clones immediately transformed into Stormtroopers and I think that's something interesting we might see explore in the a bad batch at least I hope it's something we see explorers in the bad batch we see it a bit in Star Wars the Clone Wars season 7 where Commander Cody for example basically changes personalities immediately the searching for Yoda scenes on kashik as well can certainly be read as the Clones immediately starting to slaughter the wookies when talking about the pre-clone wars military of the government I explained that the rusan Reformation generally decentralized power moving it away from the Republic itself to the member states for those who missed the video I'll touch on that again in just a second but we also discussed how the Republic was a voluntary Confederation unlike with the Empire membership 2 or legal control by the Republic was not mandatory and the planets only joined the government if they chose to voluntarily so that led to the very reasonable question from many of you well if that's the case why was the CIS not allowed to just legally leave the Republic and that's the question we'll be covering today so I want to look at this from a legal and a policy angle first and then at the end I'll briefly talk about Palpatine and his manipulations because of course that heavily changed how the Republic responded to the threat but back to the rusan Reformation as I explained in a prior video one thousand years before the Battle of Yavin the Republic moved much of its power to its member states that came with less responsibility and for example the Republic totally demilitarized requiring planets instead to furnish their own Defense Forces despite the fact that anti-russan Reformation elements were growing within the Republic they were still fairly hands-off when it came to the politics of an individual system by the time of the Clone Wars with the Republic's extremely stripped-down military serving only as peacekeepers or in extreme emergencies this makes the Republic's response to the CIS attempting to secede on its face pretty questionable however I think the Republic's decision can be understood if we look at the nuances is and a policy of constitutional law so one of the things that makes this question so difficult to actually answer is because it's never been officially answered within the lore and we've never seen the actual text of the galactic Constitution nonetheless we can make some general assumptions we know that the constitution included Provisions for joining I.E you have to meet certain qualifications to voluntarily join the Republic there's also most likely Provisions for division of power I.E as a planet you're responsible for this you have the right to make law about this however the Republic is responsible for this and can make these other laws alongside that I think it's fairly likely that there was also some sort of provision outlining the basics for secession for example in speaking extremely basically although Canada's provinces voluntarily unified under a federal framework the Canadian Supreme Court has said that the Constitution prohibits unilateral secession by any of the provinces basically the acting government of Quebec although at times they would have liked to can't just get up and leave however the court has also said that although unilateral secession is not possible the federal government would have to recognize it where the province itself had a secession referendum passed by at least the majority of the population and you see Provisions like this whether the rules are actually laid out specifically or not in a variety of Institutions and governments so this was almost certainly the case with the Republic and there were many reasons from a policy perspective why the Republic would not want the CIS member states to secede from the government first we have sunk resources I.E the Republic has most likely already established bases and courts and other assets on the planets secondly there's the difficulty of actually disentangling from a transgalactic government third large portions of the Galaxy leaving and forming their own government also represents a serious threat to the sovereignty of the Republic and I mean that not only because of the potential for a large-scale war but also because of the possibility of bleeding planets now if the Republic truly was a voluntary cooperation between planets perhaps that wouldn't be seen as a negative but at this point the Republic was an institution and had stood for tens of thousands of years on a neutral note it was corrupt and perhaps worthy of rebuilding by this point but it had also guaranteed a measure of stability likely most important for this era however was the economic impacts of secession with the Galaxy splintering every Lost Planet results in a smaller attack space for the Republic what's more transgalactic trade is made much more difficult if multiple states with different rules inhabit the same galaxy the Republic would also lose its ability to tax trade routes in certain systems which we know was not only a large portion of their revenue but it already contentious issue by the time of the invasion of Naboo a final factor I think worth touching on is the fact that the CIS despite obviously occupying a variety of Worlds was largely controlled by Mega corporations we know that Mega corporations had been gaining power since the rusan Reformation with the diminished influence of the Republic by the time of The Phantom Menace many corporations already have their own senators and one can make the argument that the CIS did not actually represent the will of the people when seceding from the government but was rather a business maneuver by the corporations propping up the regime the Republic was even itself under the heavy influence of the banks and other Commerce bodies so there's a real fear of this ever increasing influence within the Galaxy and that's probably one of the reasons why Palpatine was able to so easily nationalize the banks a sort of secondary Point here is that the Republic was not only an economic and Military partnership between planets but also a way to spread civilization and Society hence padme's surprise when finding out that slavery was still practiced on Tatooine there's no guarantee and there's perhaps the suggestion otherwise that the CIS would maintain these rights for the Republic citizens although on a counter note the Republic wasn't necessarily doing a good job either but to summarize we have a decaying Republic already struggling under its size and unhappiness from its constituents dealing with the crisis that for various reasons can them economically threaten their sovereignty and perhaps even destabilize the Galaxy on a grand Scale based on that the anti-unilateral secession provision which I imagine must have been in the Constitution would have been evoked and thus resistance against the CIS was formed some have argued that well the CIS actually was seceding peacefully before the Battle of Geonosis but we know the Republic was refusing to acknowledge the separatist Union as a proper State one other reason for why the separatists couldn't legally secede is the fact that they're leaving was not peaceful not only were they building a droid army but they openly attacked the Jedi and a republic Senator on Geonosis now obviously that's totally because of Palpatine's machinations but even without his influence by the height of the Clone Wars besides four a few Senators there didn't seem to be a large drive for peace indicating to me at least that a diplomatic solution to the crisis resulting in the two governments was never likely even the Jedi did not push for Palpatine to give up his extraordinary powers to sue for peace when the separatist Army would still exist but only after the defeat of Grievous where their loss seemed guaranteed clone troopers a very interesting breed created to fight the greatest War seen in a millennia and eventually turned into the secret police and enforcers of a corrupt Empire unlike Star Wars canon in Legends clone troopers actually served within the ranks of the Imperial Stormtrooper Corps for quite a while not only in fact the original batches of Camino clones but other clones created both using the caminoan method and other cloning procedures so given the fact that the Clones were incredibly successful during the Clone War and that the empire was really a direct continuation of the Republic at least that's what Palpatine wanted people to think why did clones actually become Stormtroopers and even with the name change why did they fully abandon not only their armor but also their weapons that is what we'll be talking about during today's video and there's a couple of reasons for this let's first talk about philosophical although there are practical considerations as well the Empire and the Republic and their Associated militaries were very very different the Republic almost seemed like it was struggling with the fact that it was using clone soldiers clones were told to customize their armor they were allowed to take names swad and Jedi camaraderie was encouraged and really clones became more unique and well sociable than many of the Jedi that they were fighting alongside I mean look look at Captain Rex he presumably dyed his hair I doubt it was naturally blonde because well I guess he wanted to same with his armor when other clones moved to phase 2 Armor Rex sort of made his own phase 1.5 the empire was very very different armor customization was just not a thing you were given armor and you ward end of discussion rank differences were signified by pauldron colors Stormtroopers referred to themselves by a designation and just generally the Empire strove to create an army of uniformed faceless Troopers Wallace of individuality wasn't an accent or it wasn't something some middle manager decided might be a cool idea to try out for a few years rather it was in line with the general principles outlined in the Tarkin Doctrine which governed much of the Empire's military strategy which was all about making your enemy feel overwhelmed by the Empire's forces the empire was supposed to be an unassailable infinitely large and Grand entity so when you go across across the Galaxy and you see these Stormtroopers everywhere looking the exact same with the same armor and weapons well the Empire does feel pretty damn big and there's actually an interesting story about this in the new Canon compendium from a certain point of view so that explains some aspects of why clone armor changed but if all they are worried about was individuality the Empire could have just mandated stock Phase 2 Armor or phase 3 armor whatever they created for all clones as well as any new recruits however they didn't and I think there are practical reasons why they did so first of all the Clone Wars was really an exceptional event in Galactic history like I mentioned earlier there had been peace for over a thousand years the Confederacy of independent systems was only able to get so powerful through the manipulation of Galactic events by powerful individuals as well as centuries of cronyism and Corruption which had allowed banking Clans trade unions and other Commerce entities to grow extraordinarily large and Powerful the empire didn't anticipate fighting another galaxy spanning War certainly not one where they'd be pushed back by Massive armies the Lake of the Republic was the empire was far more worried about occupying territory and oppressing rebellion and dealing with the many small threats often from their own citizens which you know sort of crop up if you're a fascist regime I think the differing realities between the Empire and the Republic helped to explain away a lot of the change in equipment and armor on one hand specialized environmental units within the Imperial Navy are probably even more advanced and prepared for their environment than those of the Clone armies and I would guess this is because the Empire wasn't only fighting on Ice planets but they were often setting up bases and staying there for an indefinite period generally though the average Stormtrooper was arguably less specialized most Stormtroopers would have had the exact same armor one which would allow them to tackle a variety of situations that they might encounter when police sing or occupying a planet again they're not usually fighting large-scale Wars or at least they're not expected to but who knows exactly what they'll have to do on some random planet in the outer rim on any given day so given the presumed lesser combat role of a stormtrooper their armor tended to focus more on technology like Communications stormtrooper armor had built-in life-form sensors it had an advanced internal system monitored by a center in the helmet it had various devices which could help filter out and pick up sound and Communications and of course much more the armor also had increased survival mechanisms for dangers not related to combat or at least not direct combat the Stormtroopers lenses protected them from flashes they could tactically coordinate over long distances stormtrooper armor unlike clone armor could actually be sealed to a vacuum and was complete with a small oxygen supply helmet rebreathers Extra Protection from explode Illusions and more that being said as explained by the new essential guide to technology the stormtrooper armor is simultaneously more advanced and less formidable than its Clone Trooper predecessor so we've talked about the more advanced the other part of the equation comes from the fact that stormtrooper armor just did not protect as well from Blaster blows and physical attacks in my mind that was a conscious decision to have Stormtroopers prepared to face the dangers that they're likely to prepare Stormtroopers will be shot at but probably not as frequently as clone troopers and it's probably worth sacrificing some of that extra armor to give them Environmental Protections given the fact that Stormtroopers are going to be everywhere across the Galaxy in outposts all the time on very dangerous worlds however that's just only part of the equation the Stormtroopers also got an entirely new Blaster the E11 moving on from the various blasters used by the Clone Army especially the dc-15a and s so in a video I did a couple of years ago I ranked the various blasters used by the Star Wars factions and I actually gave the empires E11 the number one ranking so I guess from that perspective that alone may be reason to justify switching I mean every once in a while you are just going to get technological upgrades and it's worth changing your equipment out then but I think the E11 also reflects this new use for clone troopers instead of having two distinct weapons a short range dc-15s and the longer range dc15a the Empire instead employs the E11 which as stated by the essential guide to Warfare and many other sources had an extendable stock which allowed for greater accuracy in Long Range combat the book doesn't really give any other details about the E11 though the new essential guide to technology sort of Echoes its Point by saying the E11 can be wielded with one hand for Close Quarters combat and during long range combat the stock can be fully extended and placed against the wielder's shoulder for increased stability and accuracy that Source also mentions that the E11 has an advanced computer enhanced scope which helps compensate for difficult situations including smoke and Haze which you might expect to find during Urban combat or other situations that Stormtroopers would likely be in one episode that really caught my attention was episode 10 of season 3 which is called Heroes on both sides the main theme of this episode is escalating the war it's great because we get to see lots of what makes the Clone Wars truly a phenomenal series personally I love the time we spend on Coruscant I like seeing how the Senate works but this episode is also fairly unique because we also get a look at the separatist Parliament and more than that the common folk within the Confederacy of independent systems at this point the Republic is facing what feels like an Unstoppable Droid horde practically if the war is to continue the Republic will need to buy more troops but the government is in a very very poor position financially so the only option seems to be to deregulate the banks basically allowing the Republic to take a colossal loan which of course has crazy high interest rates as an effort to prolong this Padme Amidala meets with separatist Senator Mina bontari which leads to some mutual understanding to both parties and perhaps a chance of Peace negotiations however both Count Dooku and the major corporations that not only work within the CIS but also stand to gain from the banking D regulations including the intergalactic banking Clan obviously don't want any sort of Peace So they come up with a plan to attack Coruscant basically to fear monger and help support pro-war funding and their plan is actually phenomenally successful and is really the focus of today's video what they do basically is smuggle in a group of disguised cleaning droids which move into the Senate District pass clone guards get close to sensitive areas transform into these absolute killing machines than when any opposition is wiped out turn themselves into a bomb and self-destruct causing massive Devastation in this case a major generator on Coruscant is actually destroyed which has the effect of taking power out two at the very least a large chunk of Coruscant So the plan is successful the banks are deregulated the war is further escalated and basically everyone involved on the separatist side even those pretending to be neutral like the banking Clan profit massively the thing is despite this immense success we never see this Droid model used again there are other cases where droids go undercover say as clone troopers but this is unique in that it takes advantage of the separatist's greatest asset the fact that they have corporations which produce many of the Droids that could be found across the Galaxy or at the very least they have the facilities available to make extremely sophisticated copies droids are incredibly abundant in the Star Wars Galaxy and legends actually talks about that in the thrawn trilogy when they're looking for a spy in the Imperial Palace they're abundant and they go almost totally unnoticed even a Navy's most advanced Flagship would have Mouse droids the Republic Senate would have cleaning and protocol droids so why didn't the separatists use more tactics like this and we don't even have to get Advanced why didn't they make more demolition droids then launch a massive attack across the Galaxy I mean you could get one of these Droids into key locations across the Galaxy I mean we saw it get into a critical power generator I'm sure you could have got a couple of those sweeper droids into say the Senate itself start loading them up into venator class Star Destroyers have them on planets in different Republic outposts maybe leave one on kamino as you're attacking as a second option I don't know but the thing is he even on Coruscant which probably has some of the tightest Security in all the Galaxy these demolition droids even managed to get past a clone checkpoint the unfortunate thing for the CIS is that once they play their hand it becomes much less successful in the future so I think the best plan would have been a massive crippling attack which occurred simultaneously get as many of those droids as you can into Republicans have them be unassuming cleaners and when possible have them all blow up major critical damage to the Republic maybe you take out a bunch of their Navy if they make their way onto Star Destroyers maybe you can kill Jedi today we are talking about some of the most advanced combat units in Galactic history the Clone Commando in specifically just how awesome clone Commando armor is because clone commandos really are their own unique thing within the galactic Republic's military there's nothing like them yeah there are other elite units within the military like arc troopers for example example but I don't think there was any better outfitted military unit during the Clone Wars that's actually why in my headcanon clone commandos are deadlier than arc troopers now I don't think the lore necessarily holds that up and they kind of just serve different roles with arc troopers playing a larger role in standard military engagements alongside ordinary clones and clone commandos often being used for more delicate Special Forces missions all of that notwithstanding I do think it's interesting to look at just how much money the Republic would have put in Clone Commando armor called in Star Wars Legends katarn armor and how dominant that would have made them on the battlefield alright so we one of the basics of the Clone Commando they operated more as special forces units they had a high degree of creativity they were a little less rigid than standard clones but how does that reflect it in their armor well as I mentioned clone commandos were outfitted with unique katarn armor there were several different variants but they all had several key features first of all guitar and armor is meant to make clone commandos very very survivable unlike standard issue clone armor which is a little bit surprising Commando armor could actually be sealed to a vacuum and the armor itself was also more durable but those are really only small differences when compared with the game changer of the katarn armor a personal deflector shield now personal deflector Shields are extraordinarily rare for humanoid beings within the Star Wars Universe you sometimes see them operated by droids but it's just not very common why is that well generally we know that it's very hard to miniaturize Shield technology in the Star Wars universe and that's sort of in line with how things are generally when Star Wars technology things are capable of a great deal of power generation but they're not often very miniaturized and in the case of shields as I've discussed in Prior videos personal shielding also generally tended to Output a lot of radiation and and probably more importantly was very very expensive to produce with only some minimal return and the radiation thing is pretty important that's why we see droids more frequently outfitted with shields because they don't have organic parts that radiation can affect but obviously clone Commando armor somehow managed to both store a large power pack within the suit perhaps near the backpack and also somehow mitigated the effects of radiation we also hear in the case of other energy Shields stories of Shield emitters or power generators exploding but as far as my knowledge goes that's never been the case with clone Commando armor that bit of Technology alone the shield and the power generator probably made katarn armor more expensive than standard clone armor or even Arc trooper armor but I mean there are real benefits because the deflector Shields would have protected quite well against blasters they could be recharged but they also protected against solid projectiles indicating that the armor had both a ray shield and a particle Shield which is very very impressive and I mean this makes sense your clone Commando groups have to be very survivable and they have to be able to shrug off a blaster because frequently they'll be operating for long periods of time Behind Enemy Lines where they're at massive numbers disadvantages so we've got shielding what else makes the Clone Commander armor great the guitar and armor well there's a lot generally katarn armor was packed with state-of-the-art electronics and computer systems and I mean that's no surprise if you just look at the armor itself you can tell that it's much more advanced technologically compared to standard clone trooper armor clones Had State of the art HUD systems which could link up with their guns they could easily communicate through that Hut as well with their team members and were even able to boost this communication to the greater Republic military through some Hardware within their helmet most clone Commando armor was also heavily customizable so as we see in the Clone Commando video games Squad members with Niche and specific purposes could build a Loadout effective for their specific Mission this was facilitated by the large backpack that most katarn armor came with or could be added to where a clone could store extra ammunition or Med packs or even better Communications equipment additional explosives and more most clones also seem to come equipped with lock braking equipment space for grenades and of course the unique melee weapon within their gauntlets the guitar armor had all of this extra technology and equipment and armor but was seemingly not any more difficult to move in than standard clone armor and may have even had some benefits when compared to a phase one complementing the adaptable and survivable armor of the Clone Commando was the dc-17m rifle the dc-17m was incredibly versatile and was meant to be the only weapon that a Commando would need to accomplish any Mission objective without having to resupply the 17m was essentially just a weapon platform for several different guns which were probably stored within a clone commando's backpack specifically the 17m had a sniper rifle mode a grenade launcher mode and a standard combat Rifle mode with most likely more permutations available with specialized parts so the dc17m like Commando armor served to make clone commandos arguably the greatest soldiers available to The Republic now again it's hard to compare them with some of the other Advanced Trooper types like the arcs because they served a really unique role clone commandos were not fighting on the front lines with thousands or tens of thousands of other clones at their side they were often taking part in very covert Advanced missions where they would work in a small Squad against overwhelming numbers and fours this armor and its Extra Protection and capabilities allowed clone commandos to be successful against even overwhelming odds what I've discussed today is just a sort of brief introduction into the basics of Clone Commando armor because the Troopers were used in a variety of situations their combat Loadout could be even further heavily customized like I don't doubt that clone commandos were frequently equipped with jet packs or maybe additional oxygen so they could survive even longer in vacuum or stealth packages so they could turn maybe completely invisible again these were very expensive Troopers for the Republic and arguably the only Troopers of the Republic really went out of their way to make survivable yesterday I picked up the new audiobook release of shatter point for those who don't know Shadow point is a novel from the perspective of Mace Windu set during the early years of the Clone Wars it's very dark and very interesting we learn about Mace Windu shatter point which is basically a unique Force ability which allows him to see how reality is connected and the fissures that can cause things and situations from the human body to the Clone Wars to fall apart at this point we're just a few months out from the Battle of Geonosis Mace Windu is still feeling very guilty about not killing koduku when he had the moment because in hindsight he saw that as a chance to end the war before it really began we get some interesting Insight from Wendy about the early months of the Clone Wars and specifically why the Republic despite having much much more territory and influence was not able to quickly and decisively end the war with a quick Invasion against separatist space and that's even with the full Clone Army and new recruits and ships being taken from other planets at all times so he lists several factors Each of which I'm going to explain and detail the first is that the Confederacy was prepared for war and this one is obvious Palpatine designed the Clone Wars so the Republic would be forced to militarize in an emergency situation where the Confederacy on the other hand had to come off as a powerful adversarian thus had spent a lot of time secretly upgrading their Capital ships turning their lucra hulks into battleships producing secretive armies of War droids and after after the Battle of Geonosis they were ready for all-out war the Republic were not only surprised by this war because they weren't expecting it from the Confederacy they weren't expecting War period sorry for the baby noises the Republic had seen at this point A Thousand Years of Peace it had become ingrained as sort of a central part of their everyday life even the Jedi were caught unaware because their ability to see the future began to diminish as the Sith made the re-emergence known after the events of The Phantom Menace alright so as I said the first big factor was the surprise next is the control of separatist space and this was some really interesting and intelligent tactics from the point of view of the CIS the CIS had a core of Worlds within which were many of their important resources for example the book describes secret shipyards hidden in separatist space pumping out geonosian Dreadnought there were a limited number of hyperspace Lanes in the CIS territory which is true of really anywhere throughout the Galaxy and the separate artists defended these Lanes very very heavily with Droid star Fighters and other picket ships now despite the fact that we don't really see this in the movies the expanded universe describes hyperspace as a much more arduous long and difficult process for example hyperspace travel would frequently require periods of jumping out of hyperspace reorienting your ship and re-engaging hyperspace in order to follow the somewhat complex hyperspace Lanes which dictate travel across the Galaxy so the separatists kept these very highly defended with small mobile fleets especially Droid starfighters then they had larger ships in reserve which could come and back up any of the smaller fleets should they so require however this strategy only worked because the separatists were also fighting a strong offensive game which is the third point the fact that the CIS had already marshaled a fleet gave them a massive Advantage after the Battle of Geonosis there were a few months where the Republic did not have a proper response force and in that time separatist fleets spread across the Galaxy while the core of the separatist space was still well protected and this is why the defensive strategy works as the Republic built up their military forces it is true that they could have penetrated separatist space but it would have required all at War and a major allocation of resources so many resources in fact that it would have left Republic worlds vulnerable to not only The marauding Fleets but also in a case where the Republic manages to break through the separatist line the station defensive fleets fleeing their systems so just to sort of summarize these points together because the separatists had a mobile offensive Fleet so to sort of summarize this the CIS early on had a huge Advantage they were prepared for war and by the time the Republic was able to Marshal their own fleets and incursion into separate of space would have required so many resources that it would have left other parts of the Republic vulnerable and that was the space situation the Republic was also offering early on from not having enough clone troopers clones are often forced to the front lines the most important battles leaving other planets to fend for themselves without a proper militia sometimes and ordinary soldiers struggled against the variety and numbers of CIS battle droids clone numbers in Star Wars Legends also just make no sense at the beginning of the war there was said to be less than 2 million clones there are 2 million active and reserved soldiers in the U.S military alone so the early Blitzkrieg of the CIS allowed them to capture a lot of territory while the scant Republic resources were being moved around only to the most important planets after that you had planets being lost through negotiation and nutrition and a loss of faith in the Republic and that's where the early difficulties of the Clone Wars began and why the war would end up becoming very convoluted and bloody today however I want to talk about the battle in a different light and frame it and how it really was sent actually a terrorist attack an attack meant to fundamentally change the psyche of the galactic core and the Galaxy citizens before I read a couple of excerpts I want to remind you guys of coruscant's status yeah we see during the Clone Wars that there had been a few terrorist attacks on the planet but Coruscant was seen as largely unassailable by most of the Galaxy's citizens Coruscant was the center of economic military and governmental power within the Galaxy and was really representation of The Haves in the galaxy versus the have-nots of the outer rim the separatists plus Coruscant was at the heart of the Republic literally it was surrounded on basically all sides either by the Deep core or by well-entrenched Republic systems so to say that the attack on Coruscant was surprising would be putting it very very likely Not only was an attack on chorus on extremely devastating because of the mass of Civilian population but because of the backdrop itself and here's a quote from the the Revenge of the Sith novelization everyone knows that more Jedi are killed or captured every day that the Grand Army of the Republic has been pushed out of system after system but this a strike at the very heart of the Republic an invasion of Coruscant itself how can this happen it's a nightmare and no one can wake up it then goes on to talk about how there's a brief moment where people think that the Republic has won as the separatists start to retreat from the planet's surface only for and I quote news reports to trickle in only rumors at first that the attack wasn't an invasion at all that the separatists weren't trying to take the planet that this was a lightning raid on the Senate itself the nightmare gets worse the Supreme Chancellor is missing Palpatine of Naboo the most admired man in the Galaxy whose unmatched political skills have held the Republic together whose personal integrity and courage proof that the separatist propaganda of corruption in the Senate is nothing but lies whose charismatic leadership gives the whole Republic the will to go on Palpatine is more than respected he is loved beings across the Galaxy watch and shudder and pray that they may wake up from this awful dream because they know what they're watching live on the hollownet is the death of the Republic so yeah the attack on Coruscant was more than just a battle it was a symbol of the separatist threat and the vulnerability and perhaps structural issues of the Republic so an event like this what does it do well three things really I'd say two that are important and one that is very important first of all it makes Palpatine who is already loved and appreciated in the Galaxy even more Beloved the Galaxy realized how close it came to losing him or at least so they thought and it just further cements his legendary status second it continues to generate the fear of aliens and Droids that Palpatine has been pushing especially through General Grievous and finally this is the most important one it shows that well the Republic is not safe the Jedi even on their Capital Planet are unable to protect the chancellor The Fleets of the Republic even aren't able to do enough one example of how this benefits Palpatine well he declared is martial law on Coruscant after the attack by the CIS and although I don't think we have this laid out specifically I'm going to wager that that martial law continued forever Revenge of the Sith only takes place over a few days and I'd be willing to bet that Palpatine kept things locked down until the fake Jedi coup and then indefinitely afterwards as the empire was formed Palpatine also used the event as an excuse for further militarization he says to win to immediately after the battle and the novelization that it's a sign that the war is about to get far worse events like this and of course the Jedi Purge would serve as an excuse to further militarize the Republic and later the Empire resulting in massive new capital ship production and then later of course the formation of an authoritarian regime and it just continues Palpatine also used the increasing state of emergency to formally place the Jedi Council under the control of the office of the Supreme Chancellor which was actually an edit of the Republic's Constitution itself so quite a big deal all right so I think we've got the basic ideas we know how Palpatine and the future Empire and even the Republic in the late stages of the war gained from the attack on Coruscant at least from an evil point of view plus I mean there is the small fact not small at all that Palpatine used the opportunity to clear out his current Apprentice Dooku and further turn Anakin down the dark side but that's probably a topic for another video I don't think you guys would be surprised to learn that Palpatine played very heavily into the invasion of course not only was Palpatine the Puppet Master for both the CIS and the Republic but he actually furnished secret hyperspace roots to the heart of the Republic through the Deep core it's kind of funny there's a Reddit thread the other day bringing up where I got this information from and I couldn't remember I knew it was from somewhere I thought it was from either the essential Atlas or the essential guide to Warfare but those actually just point out the fact that there are secret hyperspace Lanes between Coruscant and through the Deep core but it was actually as someone pointed out Labyrinth of evil which makes the Palpatine connection explicit the fact that Sidious fed hyperspace lanes that only a few people in the Republic knew of and that made Coruscant vulnerable to an outside attack to the CIS so Palpatine basically sets corus on top for an incredibly traumatic attack which will sort of change in a very serious way the fundamental nature of Galactic society and sort of the overall psyche then he uses that to his own advantage to further militarize the Republic to clamp down on the Jedi a little bit more to set himself up as more of a hero character and of course what do we get well you guys know where it goes from here both the Rebel Alliance and the Confederacy of independent systems occupied a similar role within the Galaxy opposing the dominant Galactic government of their era the primary difference was that the CIS was created and manipulated by Palpatine and was thus largely discarded at the end of the war however although the separatist movement was artificially created there were still many who were unhappy with the Republic and thus continued with the secessionist cause after the formation of the Empire most separatists Splinter and holdout groups were dealt with during the reconquest of the outer rim as an example marathavaru who refused to recognize the nationalization of the Trade Federation was defeated by an imperial task force Tarkin dodana screed and you learned LED campaigns against Pirates and separatist remnants alike including the remaining parts of Grievous personal forces however while this was happening many of the former enemies of the separatists the senators of the Republic also opposed new Imperial rule although Rebel groups had been resisting the New Order since its establishment the actual Alliance was not established until two BBY with the signing of the corellian treaty the main goal of the treaty besides creating a structure for the alliance was the unification of enemy is to the Empire and existing Rebellion cells however another one of mon mothma's goals was to show that the empire was an illegitimate state in that the Republic had to be properly restored for that reason she preferred to avoid appearing like a second separatist faction which would make the Empire seem like a legitimate government Bell Iblis another one of the alliance Founders wasn't as concerned about this and believed that remaining separatist forces should be integrated into the alliance itself so long as they didn't commit war crimes during the Clone Wars bail Organa the third and final signatory somewhat sided with mothma and saw that the inclusion of separatists would be antithetical to an organization with the goal of restoring the Republic the three founders and thus the alliance itself came to a compromise former separatists could formally join the growing Rebel Alliance so long as they promised to submit to the leadership of mon mothma had not committed any war crimes and formally disavowed their their past many chose to do so including horn ambogene and the brics Freedom Fighters While others were unable or unwilling to join the growing faction however even when the two sides couldn't formally join as one separatists and rebel cells typically still worked together as really they were sharing a mutual goal now all of this information is Legends but we do see something similar in Canon with characters like Cassian Andor who would served the Confederacy before joining the alliance and on that note in Legends 2 it's quite likely that there were many within the CIS whether civilians or military officials who didn't formally oppose the empire under the CIS Banner after the end of the Clone Wars and just joined the alliance whenever they got the chance however there's not a lot of information about those people and we can just assume that generally they had to follow the same rules as separatist holdouts on a different note sometimes separatists help the alliance Without Really meaning to there were several Droid armies across the Galaxy which for whatever reason did not respond to the master shutdown code from Mustafar generally these forces would attack anyone who approached them Imperial or Rebel alike one of the largest pockets of active droids was on Geonosis and they showed almost no discretion with who they attacked back to Canon now Rebels shows us one of these groups however the alliance and even Captain Rex was able to convince the droids to join forces though only for one battle finally I'd like to take a quick look at military assets everything from droids to starfighters to Capital ships we know the Empire nationalized the corporations and elements of the Confederacy of independent systems and thus claimed any droids they wanted many were just destroyed some were sent off to Secret locations others actually entered battle however some things slipped through their fingers and the alliance secured many CIS Capital ships the first attack on the Death Star was led by the fortressa a lucra Hulk Battleship other examples in include Rebel 1 a modified provenance destroyer and the other munificent Providence and other CIS ships that made up much of the non-mon-calamari Cruisers in the alliance Navy it's totally unclear whether these ships came with a Droid crew whether they were bought found discovered or otherwise gifted to the alliance but we do know they saw action it's been said that the alliance also used some of the tanks and perhaps even larger battle droids of the CIS but unfortunately for them it seems like they were unable to secure any major Droid armies or foundries so the beginning of Jedi Fallen order gives us an interesting scenario it shows us damaged or perhaps even destroyed Republic technology being essentially smelted down or sometimes even thrown away presumably to help with the creation of the new Imperial War Machine and a lot of Star Wars is actually about what happens with military technology after the war is over not only do we have the Empire having to deal with the tools of the Republic but we have the new Republican Legends and Canon using Imperial Star Destroyers in various different ways we have the Rebel Alliance using basically anything that they get their hands on and just generally the Star Wars Universe feels very lived in and like everything has been passed on through multiple Generations but in Star Wars Legends especially what did The Empire do with these ships equipment and items of the Confederacy and the Republic that they were covered after the war especially the stuff that wasn't broken that's what we'll be talking about today and I think some of you might actually be a little surprised just how much the Empire actually did use old technology especially because we mostly see Star Destroyers and sometimes other ships on the front lines but that represents only a very small portion of the Empire's assets in a very small look at what's actually going on in the Galaxy for my money the most interesting and unique use of CIS republic ships in the Imperial era can be found in the essential guide to Warfare which has a section on the various Imperial academies where which sprouted up after the fall of the Republic unsurprisingly there are a variety of very elite schools within the Imperial Academy system one of the top Navy academies was the Press belt school graduates from there might be lucky enough to secure a spot in one of the Empire's Elite flight schools the central guide to Warfare explains that these weren't typically fixed locations rather most were based on Capital ships including Star Destroyers venators and even a handful of captured lucra Hulks and let me just say a lucrhook is basically the perfect option for a flight school it moves but not particularly quickly it houses lots of starfighters it's large enough for basically everything you need for an Academy for lodging for teaching areas and much of the systems are probably automated so you don't need a large crew besides for those actually in the academy itself the book continues by saying that the most prestigious of the Imperial flight schools was the vencer Flight Academy which was housed on the venator class Star Destroyer of the same name vendor 2 is a pretty good option I mean it's a large carrier not really needed for the front lines so you might as well use it for that purpose to my knowledge that's basically it for the use of Imperial lucra hulks at least the rebel lines of course did have their ship the fortressa which was destroyed by the Death Star and other Luker Hawks would have made their way into private hands especially to corporations in the outer rim but more likely in their original role as a very large freighter just generally unlike with some Republic technology the Empire didn't really Embrace CIS Capital ships and I would guess this is largely due to how the CIS was portrayed they were villainized during the Clone Wars they were seen as aggressors and had many war crimes attributed to them whether fairly or not then after the war they were also seen as Rebels there were CIS holdouts in the outer rim which the Empire had to sort of Route out and after afterwards CIS rebellions remained somewhat active and many CIS Capital ships also made their way into Rebel hands we see this for example with Rebel one which was actually the flagship of the Revel Navy for a Time some CIS ships also undoubtedly made their way into the hands of Imperial moths and just high-ranking people usually used for private militias or defense leads and we'll come back to that idea in a moment because it is relevant for Republic technology as well however before we do we have to go back and talk a little bit about how The Empire used Republic Tech because it is different than the CIS the Empire emerged from the Republic there wasn't that same connotation as there was with using CIS technology and we do actually see that Republic technology did continue to see some action albeit much less within the Imperial military late Republic technology was still used very widely I mean a good example of this would be the victory star destroyer and even the Imperial Star Destroyer was introduced at the very end of the War those became Mainstays of the Imperial Navy however even older Capital ships like venators or even acclimators continue to see action it's a very very large Galaxy so not every planet needs an imperial class Star Destroyer sometimes a venator will work just fine or even an acclimator the acclimator especially I think could have had a very good Second Life as a very heavy troop Lander I think it would have fit in the Empire very very well but that's not really what happened however other ships which I think were less distinctly Republic like the Carrick were pretty much just as prominent within the Navies of the Empire the main reason you don't really make this connection or why sometimes you don't see this connection is just practically because most of the Imperial era lore was written far before the prequels I think Star Wars Rebels did a good job of kind of harmonizing that showing things like the architans getting a second life albeit with some modifications moving away from Capital ships and into other forms of tech for just a sec second this trend pretty much holds the Empire wasn't really using a whole lot of CIS equipment they weren't even really using the trillions of deactivated battle droids across the Galaxy again I think this was mostly an Imaging issue and the fact that Palpatine wanted organic beings directly under his command similarly we don't really see tanks or anything brought over into the Empire but we do see some ideas make their way into imperial special weapons projects most notably I think the Dark Trooper then later the shadow droids which were both cyborg enhanced Weaponry Republic technology and troopers on the other hand is a little bit different and legends clones remained a part of the Stormtrooper core pretty much throughout the Galactic Civil War and not only that but clones were continually produced using sometimes other cloning methods and also other clone templates often just based on the emergence of very successful Imperial military personnel I think largely because of the Tarkin Doctrine the Empire totally redesigned find their ground military we see the emergence of 8080s for example but things like the Juggernaut and the ATT would have continued to see some limited action and funny enough the Juggernaut actually gets a name dropped several times in Star Wars Legends including during the invasion of Luke's Jedi praxium before the release of the prequels because it was originally designed for The Empire Strikes Back so that worked out quite nicely so the other thing I wanted to talk about regarding Capital ships specifically was the wave Republic technology especially made its way into the hands of wealthy Imperials who would sometimes make up their own little militias or fleets the best example of this would be the fleet of the restored empire under the command of Enix deviant which we see in Crimson Empire 3 uses a load of Republic era Technology Way after the battle of Endor another more well-known example is probably the ma a regular Fleet which was commanded by Admiral dala she basically collected whichever ship she could find and that Fleet had venitors and acclimators albeit with some upgrades besides for that we just have the vessels that entered service and never really left things like Dreadnought class heavy Cruisers or as I mentioned carricks or even Victory Star Destroyers some of those would go on to serve into the new Republic and even Beyond with the galactic Alliance other fleets like the katana Fleet were sought after by Grand Admiral thrawn despite being Republic era technology many people aren't familiar with the Dark Trooper project I mean how could you not dark troopers were terrifying tools of War meant to create the Ultimate Storm Trooper however what you might not know is that the Dark Trooper project has a very very interesting origin story as you probably know or could guess when the Republic turned into the Empire The Strain on the new Imperial military was incredibly great on one hand it's true the Empire wasn't fighting an open War across the Galaxy like their public was during the Clone Wars however the empire was also now taking a much more active role in policing and suppressing systems unlike the Republic which had a sort of voluntary membership at least in theory we saw how that turned out with the Clone Wars The Empire claimed sovereignty over the entire galaxy and dispatched forces on mass in order to assert control the military was now not only fighting but also actively suppressing militants and shutting down rebellions and operating in a bunch of new and Incredibly complex ways that really strained the Empire's military this was made worse by the fact that the empire was no longer securing clones from kamino and the Republic did not have a fully established military Recruitment and training system which the Empire could co-opt also when it came to leadership specifically a lot of the Empire's greatest troops were clones specifically early kamino clone these clones however were aging very quickly but the Empire had a solution for their deteriorating physical condition let's turn now to The Saga edition of the Force Unleashed campaign guide which tells us the majority of what we know about phase zero of the Dark Trooper program as I mentioned dealing with a lack of men the Empire began and I quote a gruesome program that kept Veterans of the clone wars in the fight at least for a little while a secret project codenamed Dark Trooper phase zero involved taking aging clones and replacing their limbs and many internal organs with cybernetic emplacements phase zero of the Dark Trooper program was of course administered by then Lieutenant raw mock later General mock who would of course continue and as a general would lead the entire program the technology used much of what went into the design and function of Darth Vader's suit with the idea essentially being to give these clones a new Avatar the emperor wanted the use of their skills memories and knowledge but did not want them to be useless because of their older bodies ultimately though phase zero would be more of a test bed for what would come later rather than a true attempt to supplement the ranks with cyborg clones clones were abducted Into the Dark Trooper project with cybernetics forced upon them this was of course incredibly mentally disturbing many clones and I quote saw themselves as human Abominations and though some were effective in battle many clones also just killed themselves one thing I also want to point out is that it's particularly cruel to do this to clone trooper specifically because they've been taught and indoctrinated that droids are the enemy and of course during the Clone Wars the cyborg General Grievous is treated as basically the manifestation of Pure Evil according to the essential guide to Warfare mock attributed the well mixed results to the phase Zero Dark Trooper program to a weakness in the Clones as a a biological host later Dark Trooper projects would instead be based on Droids but would also sometimes function as exoskeletons rather than of course being parts of living organic beings head phase zero of the Dark Trooper project seen more positive results it's very possible that the Empire would have done something similar with the Clones who were cybernetically enhanced I think it's possible that eventually Palpatine would have removed all free will from phase zero clones and that may have actually been the case already with their only real mental state being whatever helps them in the middle of battle their experience as clones interestingly enough this is not the only example of the emperor trying to take the brains of his valued servants and put them into a more protected place of course we have Darth Vader as the obvious example but one that's been

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Published: Thu Aug 17 2023