Editing Stormtrooper (Star Wars) (section)

== Clones? Skill Level? ==
Lucas has waffled on if Stormtroopers are cloned or not. The original films had large groups of uneven height stand next to each other and in his early notes for Expanded Universe material, he stated there were female Stormtroopers at other duty stations. Later on he made edits in the special edition and other re-re-leases, plus a gag in the prequels that the Stromtrooper hitting his head was inherited from Jango, that implied they were. Stormtroopers are also said to be elite soldiers with peerless marksmanship ("[[Meme|Only Imperial Stormtroopers are so precise]]."). Despite this, their poor showing during the Death Star escape (people often forget they were ''intentionally'' letting them get away to track them) and the Battle of Endor (for which there was no excuse) and minimal appearance of "normal" Imperial soldiers (The Holiday Special and SOLO: A Star Wars story are the only places in live action where they're anything but background details) have resulted in the expanded universe and most RPGs showing them as disposable mooks. But the fact is, Stormtroopers remain a separate institution within the Imperial military, kind of like the Waffen-SS or Napoleons Imperial Guard, with their own resources and command structures separated from the rest of it.

[[File:Imperial Army Trooper SW.png|200px|thumb|left|Imperial Army Troopers: slap some Aquillas on them and they'd pass for Guardsmen]]
[[Image:Imperial_Stormtroopers.jpg|thumb|300px|right|Note the substantial height differences in a group that's supposedly a bunch of clones. There's a reason the EU didn't go with the idea that ''all'' Stormtroopers are clones. At least not clones of the same person.]]

The actual rank-and-file in the Imperial military is the aptly named Imperial Army which sees very little representation in any Star Wars media and many writers completely forget about, at least until recently. The brief occasions where the Army is represented in any capacity are the AT-ST pilots in Episode 6 and the poor schmucks slaughtered by the dozens in the awesome-as-heck Battle of Mimban in ''Solo''. Apparently, Army troopers are mainly defensive garrisons and PDF forces, and they're not very willing to carry out the Empire's more ''dubious'' orders (aka most of them that appear on film), which is why they tend not to be featured in the major climactic events shown in most media. But again, most people, fans and writers alike, forget about this detail, and so Stormtroopers are made the primary infantry force in the franchise, even when it doesn't make sense for a supposedly elite force being used to garrison some no-name outpost. And consequentially, often portrayed as the lowly fodder. This was ''eventually'' rectified by establishing that while Vader's personal 501st Legion, the only ones Kenobi was familiar with (besides his own unit from the Clone Wars, the 212 under Cody, and other GAR units who obviously are better than conscript masses due to combat experience), were indeed cloned elites and the only unit to fully retain the Jango Fett template due to them being fanatically loyal, the majority of Stormtroopers in the galaxy are merely recruited humans with much lower standards or cloned from younger, inferior, clone daddies. The Commando Clones were also brought into the 501 and the rest of the Fett clones either retired early due to accelerated aging, defected to Mandalore through Kal Skirata or gave training to others like Cody and then retired after a few years of that. The 501st had their moment of glory at Hoth as the main infantry force accompanying Vader, but even then between the loss of several AT-ATs to Luke, Wedge and the other Rogue Squadron pilots and to the ice breaking under some of the others and the accelerated aging reducing performance, it was a tactical win but a strategic failure as many rebels managed to escape. The 501st Legion Fett clones were then retired in the next year before Endor due to the aging problems with clones and degradation in the original DNA sample, which helps explain their losses there. Thrawn later rebuilt the 501st with elite recruits and this version of the unit continues for more than a century with the best of the best being placed there, transferring from Thrawn to the Imperial Remnant at Bastion and serving until the end of Legends history.

Another phenomena in the expanded universe is attempts to explain the poor accuracy with gear issues. These range from poor vision in helmets to defective components in blasters. These two could be used together, saying that the armor was designed for a very limited size range (a literal bunch of clones) and fit poorly on recruited soldiers. This is especially so when it's outright canon that early generation clone armor was made by non-humans and did indeed impede movement. However, it is also worth pointing out that in the real world, 90% of the shots a soldier takes will miss anyway...while they'll be taking them at things they can generally barely see, at hundreds or thousands of meters, when using [[stubber]]s - so it's up to you whether it's (unintentionally) realistic or just poor cinematography to have them be regularly missing targets ten meters away with blasters.

Another explanation for the change in skill level also explains the shift away from using Army Troopers as the regular infantry force. Army Troopers, compared to Stormtroopers, lacked the political indoctrination of the latter and mostly existed as bodies for a conventional war. As the Galactic Civil War ramped up, it became apparent that not only were Army Troopers unprepared for dealing with civil conflict, but they were also more prone to defection as they were more attached to their home planet than to the Empire. Stormtroopers gradually replaced them to fill in the gap, but this necessarily required a relaxing of standards. Perhaps a decent chunk of stormtroopers we see on screen were former army troopers without the rigorous training of the original stormtroopers, unaccustomed to the new gear and tactics they were expected to use. The increased conflict could have also exposed weaknesses in the Stormtrooper doctrine; troopers lacked the authority to take initiative and had to operate on top-down commands from sometimes incompetent officers, which made it difficult for them to counteract insurgencies and chaotic deployments. Anything by the book, however, and they had control of the battle.

Where Stormtroopers do excel consistently is in fights against equally nameless foes. All RPGs stats and asymmetrical video games show Stormtroopers are flat out better than the typical Rebel soldier, B1 droid or Hutt thug; in the Star Wars Legion wargame, Stormtroopers have below average aim (amusingly, they have the Precise keyword, though for better rerolls), but much better armor than Rebels or B1s; they're only beat by [[Clone Trooper]]s, who are better in every way anyway. Stormtroopers aren't so curbstompingly better that they would win with 2-1 odds without better tactics (which they'd have in narrative but isn't represented mechanically) but they do have better stats. Officially they're just worse than any hero.

If you watch the original Star Wars movie (whether remastered or not), the Stormtroopers whenever fighting non-plot armored people absolutely ''curbstomp''. Like in the first scene of the movie when they go through a single-file door into a heavily defended and narrow corridor and yet slaughter the absolute ''fuck'' out of the Rebels. In fact, the only time we see them faring badly in firefights in the movies is on the Death Star in the first movie (when there was a beacon on the Falcon and so their misses were likely due to orders to let the heroes escape), against Luke on Cloud City in The Empire Strikes Back (he's a freaking Force-sensitive with some training and combat experience, oh and also the son of the literal Chosen One of the setting, so that isn't a fair measurement), and we don't really see anything in Return of the Jedi due to Ewok shenanigans (though [[Skub|some might consider that their lowest point yet]]). When the Millennium Falcon was escaping Tatooine where the troopers were arguably trying to damage the ship's engines and not actively trying to shoot Han Solo. With the Imperial Remnant they show competence fighting at the Yuuzhan Vong War and continue service until the end of the known timeline, even fighting on both sides of the last known war and one company takes part in the last battle known, witnessing the extinction of the Sith.

Within the Disney canon, Rogue One also indicates another factor in which Force Adept Chirrut Imwe walks out of cover (after a Rebel Soldier gets wasted by extra-special Black Stormtroopers (Deathtroopers) for being exposed from cover for a second) and walks through a hail of blaster fire sedately while chanting a mantra to the Force. This indicates that the Force is to some degree actively intervening for force-sensitive individuals by making shots run astray, though even this is not a 100% foolproof solution because as soon as he did what the Force wanted him to do, the Death Troopers hit a fuel tank and the resulting explosion killed him.

Oh, and the underlying insinuation if Leia's statement at the top of the page about Stormtroopers' loyalty was remotely true, then [[Grimdark|the New Republic probably would have had to execute captured Stormtroopers en masse since there was no chance of them reintegrating into a non-Imperial society]]. That probably ''didn't'' happen in current Canon though, as that guidebook is a part of the Legends continuity.

The exact size of the Stormtrooper Corps was not listed, but we do know that in Disney Canon the Galactic Empire had 25,000 Imperial-1 class Star Destroyers in service and these each carried 9,700, so it was probably somewhere to the effect of 242,500,000 Stormtroopers (Legends has even bigger numbers than this).