Donovan Morningfire said:

Yes there was a ton of that in WEG. They got the early pencil sketches of stuff that made it in the movie (just slightly different) and decided it needed to be new stuff. Thus we get such things as the Victory Star Destroyer versus the Imperial Star Destroyer we see in the movies and the Z-95 Headhunter from the X-wing (I could be wrong on this one?). It isn't a bad thing in my opinion. We have Swoop Bikes in Star Wars, not just Speeder Bikes, because of early drafts of the Return of the Jedi scout speeder bike.

Donovan Morningfire said:

Yes there was a ton of that in WEG. They got the early pencil sketches of stuff that made it in the movie (just slightly different) and decided it needed to be new stuff. Thus we get such things as the Victory Star Destroyer versus the Imperial Star Destroyer we see in the movies and the Z-95 Headhunter from the X-wing (I could be wrong on this one?). It isn't a bad thing in my opinion. We have Swoop Bikes in Star Wars, not just Speeder Bikes, because of early drafts of the Return of the Jedi scout speeder bike.

I had posted this in another thread, but on the subjects of Stormtroopers being clones.  I consider this to be completely true in my games.  Well, at least from a certain point of view.

Here's how I work it in my games.

The original Stormtrooper legions, were the remnants of the grand army of the republic - all clones of Jango Fett.  Due to Fett's death, the genetic material was lost so now new clones could be created - this leaves the Empire with a ever dwindling supply of elite shock troopers. 

The Empire could search for a replacement donor, but In my mind they came up with a better solution.  The stormtroopers still end up being 'clones' of a sort.

Enter the Carida Academy - A place where officers have trained for a long time - the perfect place to start building the Stormtrooper legions.  So, the empire not wanting to deal with growing an army set up shop on Carida and started a new project.  They take promising students - those with the skills, physical capabilites that are the highest, and start brainwashing them.  This 'exam' creates the fanatically loyal soldiers that Stormtroopers signify.  The Empire has perfected this technique, so it is very subtle - so very little chance of it being found out.  The advantages is that the best students at Carida have the training and still maintain their independance, except where the Empire is concerned.  The disadvantage is those who have strong wills, the 'cloning' process doesn't take hold and more than a few (Han Solo, Kyle Katarn) have resisted this process.

To me this makes the stormtroopers more fearsome - as they are regular, albeit highly trained individuals, that have their own motivations, hopes and dreams - but deep in the back of their mind, these are secondary to the 'loyalty' to the emperor due to a subtle and very effective and insidious indoctrination process.

Regarding they "well why didn't they just keep using Jango's DNA since they had it on file?" question regarding "Stormtroopers as clones" school of thought.

You ever make a photocopy of a photocopy?  And with each successive photocopy, the quality of the image degrades, right?

Well, consider also that the Kaminoians had kept Jango Fett around long after creating the intial batch of Clone Troopers.  If all they needed was just a one-time sample of genetic material, then frankly they could have taken the sample and sent Jango on his way.  But what if for each batch, they needed a fresh genetic sample to ensure the ensuing Clone Troopers were up to genetic snuff?  It'd explain why Jango pretty much made Kamino his base of operations for ten years.  Maybe for a while the Kaminoains could get by, possibly even having a reserve of genetic samples to work from to create new batches of Clone Troopers.  But given the seemingly high mortality rate we see in the Grand Army of the Republic, they'd need to create more clones and in a hurry.  Running short on Jango samples, they decide to try using the info from a 1st generation copy, probably an ARC Trooper as they've been pegged as "pretty much raw Jango" and had the least amount of genetic tampering (pretty much just the increased aging).  But the results were… less than satisfactory, particularly if the Kaminoians were the perfectionists that the EU paints them out to be.

Plus, you've got young, healthy, hardy Imperial males wanting to volunteer to join the "elite Stormtrooper Corps."  What better way to solve your problem of dwindling and rapidly aging reserves than with physically fit specimens that want to sign up?  Most military commanders will tell you that a soldier who is there fighting by choice is far more effective in the field than a conscript with no choice in the matter that doesn't want to be there.  And if some of these freebirth recruits end up being the really stellar specimens, then you also solve the issue of new genetic templates that are both fresh and could at least merit a favorable comparison to Jango's.

Sturn said:

On the carbine/rifle classification: WEG game used the term carbine to refer to an older class of weapon, rather than it necessarily being an intermediary between sub-machine guns and rifles. Mechanically they worked just like rifles, except for the fact that they found it much harder to hit at long range. Higher tech weapons were meant to make them more accurate at longer range.

Apparently George Lucas always wanted Storm Troopers to be Clones. However, I have always preferred the Thrawn presentation (and in fact the Thrawn Trilogy is the only canon material aside from the original trilogy in my current Star Wars campaign). The Clones were something the Republic fought against (in my case, the ease of producing readily trained armies meant that warlords sprung up all over the galaxy and the Republic tried to restore order). This meant that the force the Stormtroopers developed out of were very expressly not going to be clones, as they were meant to be a symbol of the war against the clones.

I think the current official stance is that after the Clone Wars the Stormtroopers started accepting non-Clones and started cloning from different stock. This is to explain why apparent clones are different heights in the original trilogy.

borithan said:

You're right, my mistake. It became a repeater during d20 Star Wars, was a grenade launcher before that. Wookiepedia has it as a repeater also. Usually Wookieepedia tries to give reasons for all of the contradictions throughout EU, but apparently they couldn't find one for this one and left it as it's most recent incarnation.

Episode IV originally never showed the T21 or DLT19 firing. So Lucas' original intent of whether they were both repeaters or the T21 was a grenade/ion/repeater weapon can't be garnered from movie canon. The Episode IV remake however does show a blast coming from the T21 during the Mellinium Falcon escape scene in Mos Eisley. It isn't autofire (could have been firing single shot for some reason) and the blast coming from it looks identical (it's red) from what is coming from the E-11's. If you use this short scene as the holy grail (and don't consider that the new graphics guys possibly didn't worry about what weapon was firing what), then the T21 has to be a blaster and not an ion or grenade weapon. In my personal Star Wars universe, it was just cooler and made more sense to have E-11's, heavier DTL19's that were capable of autofire (bipods and all), and a T21 with a fat ion barrel for anti-vehicle and anti-droid use.

Another issue with the weapon is we see a Stormtrooper leader (an officer?) carrying the T21 when they stop Luke and Ben looking for the droids. While the officer could choose to carry any weapon he wanted, officers and NCO's from my Army days tended to never carry the large, support weapons. It would have made more sense for the officer to be carrying an E-11 then the largest damn weapon the Stormtroopers carry. He would have made Private THX1138 carry that thing. The only arguments I could come up with was he was a Rambo-leadfronmthefront-badass that just wanted the largest weapon possible. Or, it was an ion weapon, he saw the speeder and droids which matched the description he was given, and grabbed the ion gun ready to blast them if they tried to run….until he realized they weren't the droids they were looking for.

Honestly, I think the Rebels need more PR work these days than the Empire.

If the Stormtroopers are the Waffen SS, all shiny jackboots, goose stepping and Hitler Salutes, then the Rebels are the LRDG - beards, scruffy clothing, individualism and dune buggies festooned with machine guns.

In essence, 

Rebels:-

Imperials:-

Dude, please don't start doing this again. I'm assuming you are AluminumWolf returned or just channeling his old behavior somehow. :)

Looking at ErikB's registry date and AluminumWolf's last posts before banning adds some evidence to my speculation. AluminumWolf gets banned it appears for posting pictures constantly in threads, most being pics of soldiers, Nazis, etc (seems familiar). Less then 2 weeks later ErikB registers. Now we see the posts above. Please don't ruin threads with this behavior (again, if you are AluminumWolf).

Sturn said:

Awwwww DANG!

I was joking in my previous post! I don't want it to be true!!!

Also, I'm torn because I want to praise the quote from Madine…

-WJL

Well, for what it is worth, if you want to be a Solder in the Star Wars universe, you don't want to be a brainwashed Stormtrooper with a higher skill in armour polishing and ideaological purity than fieldcraft. You want to be a free thinking Rebel Commando with a Tactical Beard.

He's baaaaaaccck!

mouthymerc said:

Well, if it is AluminumWolf under a new handle and he's back to his old antics (including the ones that got him booted last time), then maybe said antics will finally get this forum an active moderator, or at least one that's listed rather than the "Without Moderator" tag.

Donovan Morningfire said:

Didn't think much of it till Sturn mentioned it and I was reminded of his posts in the Jedi thread. I think it may have been Sturn who called him the new AluminumWolf in that thread. But I think the reality is that it is the old AluminumWolf. Honestly, though, most of his posts just made me chuckle.