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[Rolan7]

That is indeed a nonsensical argument, though I could see an argument that they're more like oppressive imperialist/"keep all other species third class citizens" kind of imperialists rather than the "exterminate all other species" kind of imperialist.

Oh for sure.  I even kinda headcanon that many stormtroopers are nonhuman, yet the officers are all human as we see in the movies.  Even in the EU, which he loves to cite, alien officers are rare exceptions and subject to a lot of bias.  How the heck does he love Thrawn so much yet come away with the idea that the Empire is egalitarian, ugh.  (Starting to think he was just screwing with me)

There's really no logistical reason for the Empire to only use humans in its military, agreed.  The explanation that I've heard was that it was just easier and cheaper to film everything that way in a New Hope, so they stuck with it and later on came up with the emperor being speciest as an explanation.

It kind of works, even if it really doesn't make a ton of sense for Palpatine to make the empire so speciest.  That doesn't make the Empire stronger or give him more power, though maybe having hatred for non humans gives him something to channel for the dark side.  The empire doesn't seem to really ham up internal division and paint aliens as some "other" to give its citizens a designated target, since the Rebellion already fills that role anyway, and aliens are definitely citizens of the Empire.

The Empire does seem to overtax the less-human border worlds and use them as an excuse for their war machine, I think.

[Grim Portent]

The Empire did practice racial segregation in some places, as well as slavery, and the pro-human anti-alien policies were used to drum up popularity in the wealthy core worlds which are mostly human.

Coruscant had segregation, aliens were not usually permitted into the upper areas of the city-planet. Part of Leia's backstory involves her intervening with an incident of police brutality on a wealthy alien (I think a Quarren, but I might be misremembering) trying to go to the upper levels of Coruscant. Many alien races were enslaved in large quantities by the empire, while humans were usually only enslaved if they came from the empire's outskirts or were criminals.

The seeds for this were set in the Clone Wars, much of the leadership of the CIS were aliens. The Trade Federation, the Techno-Union, the Geonosians, so on and so forth, were all alien dominated groups or governments*. This made it easy to drum up anti-alien bigotry at the same time as anti-droid bigotry, both of which served Palpatine's purposes of consolidating power into the wealthy human dominated core worlds.

Many races that were pro-jedi and anti-Palpatine found themselves discredited, politically marginalised and oppressed. The Wookies are a prime example, with the empire enslaving them en masse and promoting a stereotype of them as brutish primitives.

Palpatine himself probably wasn't speciest, he had friends and advisors who were aliens, but he used speciesm as a tool to help shape the narrative of the empire and cement his position.


*There were human dominated planets in the CIS, but they, along with most of the CIS's actual planetary governments were kept in the dark and sidelined by the Confederate war council which was almost entirely aliens lead by Dooku.

[scriver]

That is indeed a nonsensical argument, though I could see an argument that they're more like oppressive imperialist/"keep all other species third class citizens" kind of imperialists rather than the "exterminate all other species" kind of imperialist.

Oh for sure.  I even kinda headcanon that many stormtroopers are nonhuman, yet the officers are all human as we see in the movies.  Even in the EU, which he loves to cite, alien officers are rare exceptions and subject to a lot of bias.  How the heck does he love Thrawn so much yet come away with the idea that the Empire is egalitarian, ugh.  (Starting to think he was just screwing with me)

Kinda like the British empire and colonial troops -- I like that idea. Don't ask don't tell what's behind the helmet

Also yeah for Thrawn isn't that pretty much the entire main dramatic thing about the character?

[Dunamisdeos]

Ninja'd, but posting

IIRC there were a minority example of non-human recruits. Consider Thrawn, as mentioned. The Empire was so human-supremacist that these recruits/officers would have been at an understandable minimum.

The Empire is merit-based for it's first class citizens. It is not an egalitarian society, it is a society that uses slavery and a military-enforced class system to provide it's first class citizens with egalitarian opportunities. It's like saying apartheid was egalitarian because all the white people were equal and happy. That's not how that works.

Also, it does make a kind of sense for Palpatine as a Sith to be speciest. The Sith Empire was often portrayed as specist. He would probably want to perpetuate this in his own empire. Racism isn't a logical or practical position in real life. It's all about control and ego, and that fits Palpatine well.

[Starver]

The best bit about Stormtrooper armour that is clearly shown in the films:

• It is reactive armour, and
• It has inadvertently been mass-produced inside-out.

Proof: Blaster hits a rebel character clad in no more armour thwlan a leather jerkin, they get a bad burn/scorch, often survivable even if it knocks them down. Similar type of blaster hits a Stormtrooper, it explodes and he's as dead as a beamed-down Redshirt.

(You'd think they'd catch that in QC.)

[Egan_BW]

Maybe it's just plastic or whatever's absolutely cheapest for the sake of them all looking uniform. When a plasma bolt strikes it, it just shatters and sends superheated shrapnel into the trooper's body. The empire knows this and uses it anyways, for aforementioned reasons of everybody looking uniform.

[Grim Portent]

In the old EU there was an explanation that stormtroopers were knocked unconsious by hits to their head and torso rather than killed because of how the armour absorbed the shot. The idea was that rather than being left awake and trying to fight wounded they'd be knocked out and be able to be collected and given medical care when the Imperials won the battle. I think it was supposed to explain why the stormtroopers on the Death Star were so willing to let themselves take potshots from Han and Luke, among other things.

It was kind of stupid considering there were armours that made characters basically immune to blasters, but a lot of Star Wars was/is pretty stupid a lot of the time anyway.

[Dunamisdeos]

Yeah in the EU everyone has functionally-immune-to-blaster armor by like.... I dunno, the 5th book chronologically?

In one they get stuck in an active biological waste incinerator and then shot, and they survive that. Also the horse guy falcon-punches a guy into a wall so hard his neck explodes.

[scriver]

Maybe it's just plastic or whatever's absolutely cheapest for the sake of them all looking uniform. When a plasma bolt strikes it, it just shatters and sends superheated shrapnel into the trooper's body. The empire knows this and uses it anyways, for aforementioned reasons of everybody looking uniform.

The empire was secretly controlled by movie producers!

[ChairmanPoo]

The techno union

https://youtu.be/PW4OIHDsWsM

[Urist McScoopbeard]

Yeah in the EU everyone has functionally-immune-to-blaster armor by like.... I dunno, the 5th book chronologically?

In one they get stuck in an active biological waste incinerator and then shot, and they survive that. Also the horse guy falcon-punches a guy into a wall so hard his neck explodes.

Lol, I forgot that guy existed. What a King.

[Putnam]

why do people always go on about space bombs like those weren't in pre-disney darling battlefront 2, among other things, not to mention that star wars space fighting physics have literally always been completely wacky

[Teneb]

why do people always go on about space bombs like those weren't in pre-disney darling battlefront 2, among other things, not to mention that star wars space fighting physics have literally always been completely wacky

Because new thing bad, old thing good!

I have a big beef with the very last movie, but it sure ain't cuz it's new. (I don't want to start some flame war by saying why, so keeping it vague.)


Star Wars is dumb and that is why I love it, tbf.

[MrRoboto75]

TBH the space! battles in battlefront 2 were a neat gimmick but I didn't play them all that much.  Seemed like boarding the enemy ship was the most effective yet boring tactic.

[Teneb]

TBH the space! battles in battlefront 2 were a neat gimmick but I didn't play them all that much.  Seemed like boarding the enemy ship was the most effective yet boring tactic.

As someone who speedruns the game because I clearly am made of good decisions, it is considered by the community (tiny as it is) the worst part of the game.

It's neat, but it's even more unfair than the rest of an already unfair game.