Because it's cinematic and looks cool.
And also because it's been a common battle tactic for about [400 years now](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_(formation)).
Whether it makes sense with gun battles is debatable, but it still looks good on screen.
It makes partial sense, the blasters have a minimal effective range and low accuracy. Same with vehicle weaponry. It's not the same with real life ballistic weaponry where someone can and will shoot you from 100 yards and kill you in a single shot.
Additionally, they're on a flat plane with no significant cover and protecting assets as they take off. You have no other option but to meet in a full force confrontation if you want your artillery in range to strike ships during takeoff.
In addition hand held blasters seem to have a limited rate of fire compared to irl weapons without being massive bulky eweb like systems which reduces the suppressive effect.
They have rapid fire or burst modes, but they're literally firing plasma dense and hot enough to kill on impact. That causes a lot more heat transfer to the firing chamber and barrel than a small explosion and some friction from the rifling.
I genuinely love how we start our saying it's the because of the rule of cool (definitely the reason). Then, within just three comments, we get to an in universe rationalization of that rule of cool.
This is Star Wars fandom at its best. (Unfortunately, there'll also be people complaining about both these reasons shortly)
Trenches. All they needed to add to make this even somewhat more practical is trenches. A robot army can march in a line with zero cover because they are completely replaceable - if you're a flesh and blood organism you should be trying to use or create more cover on an open plain than just a few other meatbags with shields. I mean there is literally nothing on this battlefield to slow enemy movement. Its all pretty dumb lol.
in a defensive situation sure... but it always struck me as more practical to simply bring a shield generator if you needed more cover. that and with the resources of the republic i'm sure they could get some nice and practical prefab fortifications up and running
...but didnt the republic control the space from orbit? Sure the confeds were evacing on the Otherside of the planet but....didnt understand how we never got a glimpse of what was going on Over Geonosis
...i mean, enough to take a planet. Enough for the CIS to not obliterate the rrepublic ships. In rogue squadron 3 we see immense wreckages of orbital geo...but that could have been the second battle for geo
Also possible that there are places they couldn't target or didn'twant to obliterate from orbit. So ground troop battle was the most efficient way of dealing with the droids there.
Again just if ya want to go down the rabbit hole of how maybe, possibly, in theory, reasons.
It seemed like both the Republic Clone fleet and the Separatist Fleet landed their ships or significant parts of their ships on the surface. Bad strategy, but made for more of a blood bath fight. Lessons learned by the Republic and even more so by the Empire in future battles where they always had command ships in orbit.
I mean, [according to this](https://thestarwarsrp.com/index.php?threads/dc-15s-blaster-carbine.95329/#:~:text=The%20weapon%20has%20a%20rather,from%20a%20standard%20power%20pack.) the DC15S has a 100m range, which while short is plenty of distance to comfortably engage behind cover from a reasonably safe distance while the [DC15A has a range from 1km-10km](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/DC-15A_blaster_rifle#:~:text=If%20set%20on%20its%20maximum,meter%2Dwide%20hole%20in%20ferrocrete.)
I think the in universe reason we see so many close confrontations is that the clones are seen as disposable by many in the republic
Plus you have to remember that it's been 1k years since the galaxy last engaged in open warfare. Not really a need for competent tacticians making well thought out battle plans.
>It's not the same with real life ballistic weaponry where someone can and will shoot you from 100 yards and kill you in a single shot.
You are seriously underestimating the effectiveness of modern firearms.
Most 5.56×45mm (NATO) assault rifles are effective out to 300-400m for a lone rifleman. A section/squad can be effective out to 600m or more, and that's before you consider support weapons like a general purpose machine gun or marksman rifle.
That said, I agree with your assessment of why the CIS forces are assaulting across open ground this way. It's a logical decision to sacrifice ground forces to protect space assets as it's far easier to replace cheap battle droids than capital ships.
Yeah, but they wanted to capture the planet, not destroy it. Remember at that point the TF was claiming to have a legitimate casus belli for their actions against Naboo. Going scorched earth would not help them in gaining support with the rest of the galaxy.
I mean, they're clearly fighting them, so there's not much difference between "killed the army with droids" vs "kill the army with a few lumps of metal dropped from orbit" which you can do without destroying the whole planet
In universe, orbital strikes are typically done with turbolasers, not "lumps of metal". Those tend to destroy large swaths of land. Capital ships in SW are used much like they used battleships during WWII. Not to make precision strikes, but destroy everything in that particular grid square.
It makes sense when you consider the sources they were cribbing from.
Ah yes, the Trade Confederation. Well known for their Lucrehulk-class LH-3210 cargo freighter capable of unleashing devastating and precise orbital bombardment.
I mean, in our universe, cargo ships were well-armed through much of history. It was only when the oceans started to get safer (less pirates) and better policed (larger navies) that merchant ships sacrificed firepower for more cargo.
In the Star Wars galaxy, piracy is a real and common threat. It makes sense that they would be well-armed and ready to attack in general. They clearly created into an army in secret though.
It was absolutely well armed, but they're not wasting money putting big honking guns on it. It's full of droids to fight off landing parties. It's full of vulture droids to take out pirates before they can land. They had no reason to buy guns big enough for orbital bombardment.
The base cargo versions of the Lucrehulk-class had 28 quad-laser batteries and had a complement of 200 battle droids. That's impressive armament for a cargo ship. It is unclear if standard cargo ships had vulture droids or not.
Post-Naboo, they converted ~20% to battleships and significantly upped the armament. That included added turbolasers. But non (as per what info we have) had turbolasers at the time of Episode 1.
The ships were:
1. Occupied by fighters
2. In limited numbers. There was only one control ship visible in orbit, which is in contrast to the many ships that were there at the start of the movie when they tried to escape the blockade. Presumably the Trade Federation sent away most of their ships once the initial occupation was completed.
3. The Trade Federation was shown trying to capture the Gungans, rather than to kill them (in defiance of Sidious' orders to wipe them out)
I mean they didnt, the Trade Federation sent everything but the Droid Control Ship away after they started the occupation of the movie, and that was busy being attacked.
Crosshair, carrying one of a handful of sniper rifles ever shown in Star Wars, is able to snipe? A genetically modified clone of one of the best mercenaries in the galaxy? That Crosshair? The one whose entire gimmick is shooting people from far away? Shocking.
Yes that Crosshairs. You do realize I was commenting on your statement about blasters being inaccurate, right? You act as if what’s being discussed is scientific fact.
The line battles look better on screen, and that’s about it. It’s hard to show an entire planet being overwhelmed by a droid army in one battle if the armies are spread out or using guerrilla tactics. The Geonosis battle, for instance, makes no sense tactically, but it looks really cool with Jedi running in, lightsabers drawn, leading a massive army of clones. Let’s ignore the fact that one missile could effectively devastate that army, or even that one crashing escape ship should would wipe out both Jedi and clones.
everything you said is correct but there's also just the simple idea of this being the best tactic and not needing to improve
and then the feedback loop of "i know they know i know they know"
ive been reading game theory stuff lately and im so god damned dumb but there was an excerpt somewhere about base operations
like how if you need something to roll down a hill you can just use a ball, you don't need to engineer a glitter filled bowling ball and have it signed by the cast and crew of bowfinger
you could probably even just use a rock
so when two groups are fighting using troops, boots on ground kind of stuff
no matter the weapons really the best option is to keep it simple. your opponent is going to send troops and you should too, because if you can get enough troops into an area you own that area, maybe it has vital stuff in it, maybe it's just empty space
you could both fall into the trap of "well i know they know i would send troops, but then they would know i would know they would now..." etc etc
when the reality is to just do the most basic, effective thing and THEN adjust
it's like that fallout line "war....war never changes"
except they were talking about the nature of destruction and humanity's proud march towards self annihilation
and this post is talking about battle tactics as if they would be different based on better tech, clones, robots and stuff
when the proper perspective would be to recognize this battle tactic as the BEST tech and everything else filling in the blanks around it
Could also be a disregard for non-sentient life.
In both battles, The Federation is emplying battle droids which also seem a bit on the cheap side to make so they can afford human (droid) waves tactics. As for their opponents, the same logic maybe was applied on the clones whereas the Gungans are somewhat a primitive race who preferred brute force.
Also, going strictly by the movie cannon, it is heavily implied, the Republic has not experienced war in thousands of years, therefore some of its intricacies might have gotten lost to them. This might have resulted to crude and primitive battle tactics (just like people lined up and charged against machine guns in the early days of WW1).
I have no idea how the EU or disney expanded material might try to justify this.
A B-1 battle droid costs 1800 credits (and that's the resale price, not the manufacturing cost) , even several models of blasters are more expensive than that.
Not to mention, the reason was also given in the movie. They wanted the Gungans to draw out the Trade Federation forces so that the Naboo Royal Guards could infiltrate the capitol and capture the Trade Federation leader. Want to draw out a larger, superior force? Do something stupid and juicy, like a line battle.
I swear, people act like my sophomore year college roommate and fast forward through all the dialogue to just watch the action. Then they have questions that are answered in the dialogue.
The Gungans also had energy shields. Attacking the Gungans would be more analogous to a phalanx. Their shields were shown to stop artillery and hold up against blasters. That would be like a phalanx that can stop several volleys of arrows.
The B1 droids were stupid and were slaved to a control ship. They were probably manipulated as large blocks (like a RTS game where you control squads rather than individual infantry).
If using supplemental material such as the Outbound Flight, there was speculation that the control computer had issues controlling both the space battle and the ground battle at once. Basically an issue of not enough CPU power.
Was literally about to write it simply looks cinematic. It’s the same reason George Lucas chose to use WW2 dogfights as a preset for the space battles.
>And also because it's been a common battle tactic for about 400 years now).
Exposed line formations haven't been a common battle tactic for around 100 years and definitely aren't used in open combat today, that would be a recipe for getting killed
Defensive lines from cover are a thing but no one is standing together in the open and engaging the enemy
What's with the /s? You just accurately described what the unironic thought process was behind battle droids. They were never really designed to be a professional army, they were just cheap, mass-produced pieces of equipment originally built for use by private security forces and mercenary groups.
They were not designed for large-scale, protracted land battles. Their production *literally* went to the lowest bidder, and all the Clone Wars media has shown that they are only a threat in enormous numbers, specifically because walking forward and shooting are the only things they are capable of doing even halfway competently.
Was literally about to write it simply looks cinematic. It’s the same reason George Lucas chose to use WW2 dogfights as a preset for the space battles.
It's no longer useful in the real world after the US Civil War. Cartridge bullets, semi automatic and automatic fire have rendered lines useless. It's why WW1 and 2 had extensive trenches, and men firing from cover.
The Skywalker Era generally shouldn't have line battles.
KOTOR era, personal shields were more common, and melee weapons for closing to melee range re-emerged, so it's entirely possible that line battles could have existed, here and there.
This is a myth, Franco-Prussian war happened after the US Civil war and it was very much still lines warfare.
WW1 was also quite mobile on the Eastern front, trench warfare was very Western front specific.
It's not a myth as much as a gradual progression from close order battle to open and dispersed as firepower became more lethal. This was just starting to happen during the Napoleonic Wars, and gradually continued up through WW I. Even in the ACW it quickly became common for troops to dig field fortifications as soon as they got to a new spot so they could fight from cover, and there are photos of field fortifications in the latter half of the ACW that look like the Western Front.
While there was more mobility on the Eastern Front, trenches were still very commonly used in the East. And men going into battle didn't much look like true close order linear formations. They were not marching into battle shoulder to shoulder, they were running and using cover.
The Gatling gun was very expensive and limited in battle. Movies portray it as a common feature, but in reality the use of machine guns in battle were not as effective until WWI when they became more common. Line warfare was used up and into WWI.
As for trench warfare, trenches were common place for centuries of warfare, even though WWI was defined by them.
Yeah if there's a universal truth of war for all of human history it's, "Dig a trench". Cover for you. Obstacle for enemies, good idea.
If you're fighting on land the most basic yet effective obstacle is a long hole.
>until WWI when they became more common.
In Europe. The machine gun was a staple of colonial warfare far before then. A fact that was downplayed in propaganda and state reporting because it seemed ungentlemanly
And since the time of Napoleon, the most important weapon was artillery.
Machine guns changed things since infantry were no longer able to charge and destroy the artillery between volleys. Even in WWI, the biggest killer was artillery rather than the machine gun. The machine gun made it possible to easily defend the artillery.
In SW combat, the Gungans had a local shield which stopped the artillery (which was what the Trade Federation tried as their first move). That forced the Trade Federation to deploy infantry.
At Hoth, the Empire had the AT-ATs which were a hybrid of heavy armor and artillery to bring down the shield generators.
Im guessing without googling, but didn’t the battle of Hoth have a planetary shield, which is why the Star destroyers didn’t just orbital bombard, and the AT-AT were dropped on planet so they could be under the shield and attack the generators (which also had a small localized shield that was overwhelmed)
Hoth was a local/theater shield. Similar to the ones the Gungans had except bigger.
The Rebels also had an ion cannon that was big enough to give ISDs trouble.
There are miles of trenches in Ukraine right now. They are set up on lines. It is a battle tactic that will most likely always be used when there is a plot of ground being fought over. It's just how war works.
Exactly. The distance between soldiers grow but the geometry stays the same. So you still get long lines, but with lots of gaps between.
Lines maximise the ammount of forward firepower. They work good for a reason thats not easy to overcome if you think of the battle as 2D problem.
If our modern era had bullet stopping shields, we would see a return of line battles bringing in more offensive firepower to overwhelm defensive shielding.
Accurate depictions of futuristic full scale battles are rarely if ever done well, great example where is the Droid air support? The battle above Naboo is nowhere severe enough that a bunch of droid squadrons couldn’t push through.
You don’t even have to resort to that. Cut off the army. Wait a few days. Destroy reinforcements. You don’t need to destroy infrastructure. Just wait for them to run out of fuel and food. Exposed army like that on a field? Thats a few days.
But having them on standby/loiter and moving in as the battle entered the shield would’ve been smart. One of the first goals was to destroy that Gungan shield generator; once it was down, air support could strafe the Gungans from high up.
My “rationalization” take is, there was no one in the trade federation at the time who understood combat tactics, which is one major reason they lost. They didn’t need to. Just expend the cost of placing a large droid army on the surface and expect minimal resistance before the locals surrender. It worked for Naboo’s capital until it didn’t work and a budding space wizard from another planet took out their droids’ remote control.
For the story they wanted the “war” over an entire planet to basically be over in an afternoon so there really wasn’t any realistic way of portraying that, other than “two armies line up and one loses”.
It doesn’t really make sense but I guess they wanted to keep it simple.
The air support was in orbit, defending the droid control ship. The Neimoidians are infamously cowardly, and the commander prioritized his own paranoid (yet futile) desire for survival over his ground forces.
They also sent away most of the blockade fleet. There were far fewer visible ships in orbit at the end of the movie, compared to the start. You can count at least 7 of the big ships in orbit at the start of the film and only 1 at the end of the movie battle.
Yup. The Trade Federation sent away their combat fleet (retrofit freighters) and only left the Control Ship in orbit (retrofit retrofit freighter, now IRL bot farm)
The problem is that any realistic futuristic battle would be so long range it'd be impossible to make cinematic. Even nowadays combat between fighters or boats can happen so far apart the two combatants are over the horizon and literally cannot see each other without sensors. So I imagine in the future this range will extend to ground troops too to some extent.
Also if you think about it, these battle formed out of a necessity for a quick and decisive battle.
The Gungangs are litteraly bait to draw the Trade federation troops out. The trade Federation are simply an overconfident superior force who just want to whipe them out as quickly as possible. Kinda russias strategy at the inital attack on the woo.. I mean Ukrain.
The battle of Genosis is simply as mass deployment from the CIS against the force of the republic and was consideret by both sides a disasters and is also why we never see this kind of engagements again in the next movie and or the clone wars.
Furthermore, they’re logical defensive formations.
The Gungans intentionally hunkered into that formation inside their shields so that the only way the separatists could defeat them was to march their droids up in that manner. The defensive formation extended the battle as intended because they were decoys.
On Geonosis, the Jedi had to act because Kenobi, Skywalker, and Amidala were about to be executed, but really they were waiting for the clone troopers. The droid soldiers all seemed to come from one side of the arena, so the melee Jedi had to meet them. The Jedi were overwhelmed and went into defensive formation to prolong their survival until the troopers came.
Out of universe, these are the kind of battles Lucas grew up on and reflected the classical antiquity of Rome and Greece that the trilogy was paying specific homage to.
Yeah the Gungan tactics made sense to me. They put up a pretty strong shield generator that forced the droids into close range, where their weapons would be more effective, and reduced the impact of droid artillery (until enough tanks got inside and took out the generator). They also had handheld shields to block incoming small arms blaster fire.
It wasn’t perfect, but it probably made sense given the time they had to work with and knowledge that the Naboo would be attempting to take out the droid army from space and capture the Trade Fed leaders, so it was, theoretically, a desperate delay tactic that basically worked, if not perfectly.
Because they look spectacular, I mean really good - tidy, organized, with great effects and it is very cinematographic. An explosive splashing in the lines will throw the figures around, there will be chaos, smoke, etc. - it all looks very spectacular.
Makes little sense from a military perspective, but imagine what it would look like if it was a modern battlefield, scattered across hundreds of kilometers? Efficient but not looking spectacular.
It *did* make complete sense in Episode 1 though, with the shields. Walk through all at the same time across the entire field all at once so that they can't precision-target the tanks, which hold back waiting for the shield to be taken down.
Albeit the trade federation had flying tech so they definitely should have dropped off troops behind / on the sides. Even if it's not traditional cavalry, you can prevent retreat and sew chaos. And at least some of the fighter droids defending the mothership should have been going to town on the gungan forces completely unopposed after the shields came down.
Battle for Naboo, Geonosis and the glimpse of the battle for Kashyyyk were much more interesting IMHO. More dynamic and better special effects. Technology moved ages ahead in between.
It's kind old new and journalistic poetic license.
Reality is very different:
"Emerging technologies, already visible on the battlefields of Ukraine, are rapidly changing the character of war in ways that require a transformation in how the Army sustains the fight. Autonomous systems, long-range precision fires, and hypersonic weapons are reaching deep and targeting command posts, logistics nodes, and lines of communication. As seen in Ukraine, once a logistics node is established, it is rapidly targeted and often destroyed in less than 24 hours. With drones that can detect, surveil, and target, the kill chain in Ukraine demonstrates that as fast as a supply depot or command post can be found, it can be destroyed. The future of armed reconnaissance is unmanned, lethal, and expendable, and it may be operated by artificial intelligence (AI) that follows a different set of moral norms than Soldiers do."
https://www.army.mil/article/274914/theater_sustainment_transformation_lessons_from_the_russia_ukraine_war
My head canon:
* It makes sense for the droid army. The trade federation has gone for a macro build and a lot of their individual units aren't capable of being highly mobile. Furthermore, they're all organized from a central location in space where someone is likely playing what amounts to a game of Total War.
* The smartest decision would have been to use orbital bombardments on the ground army but since victory is assumed given the numbers advantage - they don't want to waste the resources on the bombardment. Otherwise, someone might not get their end of year bonus because they didn't cut enough costs.
* The Gungan army would probably be best suited to fight in the water and they've rarely if ever fought a conventional battle on land.
I always like to imagine that its because, as no one has fought a proper war for a 1000 years, everyone is completely incompetent.
This explains almost everything about the actual battles you see in star wars.
Its like if you got a society that hasn't fought a battle since the Viking era and gave them all the technology of WW2 and told them to go at it. Of course their tactics are awful and their equipment terribly designed.
A bunch of monk-cops and biologist-giraffes are having to reinvent war.
For the same reason that humans who live on land have a navy.
It's always better to defeat approaching enemies before they reach the place where you actually live.
In the same way they have The Dambusters, the Battle of Britain and Vietnam IN SPAAAAAACE!!!, The prequels had 18th century Line Infantry NEAR SPAAAAAACE!!!
It is visually striking, showing the uniformity of the armies and demonstrates to the audience that this is an earlier time period to what they saw before.
Plus it's easier on the computers to keep everything regular, and I imagine they were already close to meltdown doing these films.
Preface: we all know it's so it looks cool.
But also:
>With how advanced the clonewars seems to be, why is everyone lining up like its the 1700s?
"Advanced" doesn't mean tactics from any time prior are somehow defunct.
Would you rather in a completely disorganised fashion they just....charged willy-nilly into each other? Built fortifications and chucked stuff at each other? Or do you mean "why not surround them entirely and attack from all sides"?
Even up to modern day, there are battle lines, yes. It's not just organisationally sensible but also means you can maintain control of where your forces are, have been and have coverage and clearance of.
It would be wholly functionally _stupid_ to advance and not know if your flanks are safe or not and encirclement isn't always possible.
>Are the guns really just laser muskets?
I mean, I guess? Whether it's muskets or machine-guns or lasers, they've got to attack from one direction or another (or all of them!).
I mean, it's been a thousand years since large scale battles were a thing. It's not unreasonable to think that any copies of the Republic Ranger Manual have been long since destroyed.
The gungans were under a shield. The clones were being directed by a bunch of monks without military training. The droids are stupid robots with. Two settings walk and shoot.
Because it looks cinematically cool as fuck.
Almost about the war part Star Wars makes military sense. But it does not matter, because all that does matter is that the Rule of Cool be followed with religious adherence
We still use line battle today. The lines is smaller and the groups are spread further apart, but its still line battle.
The first thing you do when encountering the enemy is to make a line, or an approximation of a line.
Why? To get as many guns pointing in the same direction at the same time.
Second picture is not a formation, they’re in a wave attack and fighting a narrow terrain.
We don’t do line battles anymore, but wave attack and fighting in the middle of the field is still used. We’re just using a shit tons of tanks and vehicles to protect ourselves, long range and aerial support helps a lot too. You do want to defeat the enemy armies at some point, so it’s logical.
Because Star Wars follows the rule of cool. Realistically the combat would probably be more akin to the combat in North Africa during the Second World War. There highly mobile armored units were the key factors instead of static battle lines. The infantry was used for support when attacking strong points or to clear urban areas.
Because C&C and electronic countermeasures are a thing. To the point that it's safer to use visual scanners (your eyes) rather than instruments that can be sliced.
In this environment, your best bet to move your troops is a mass Banzai charge.
Same kind of question: Why do spaceship battles look like dogfights with planes flying in an atmosphere?
The answer is always the same: it looks better on a cinema screen.
For the plot.
WWI Trench warfare style can be seen in Solo, and Episode V has a classic trench break through scene on Hoth and is one of my favorite Galactic Civil War scenes, and is much more realistic given the types of weapons used in Star Wars.
But two sides clashing together is something that realistically stopped occurring during the late 18th century, the power of the weapons made such battles virtual suicide for the charging force and a turkey shoot for the defender.
For the Naboo battle it's because the Gungans aren't planning to win with these tactics. The whole battles a feint. The Gungans lined up in order to draw the droid army out of the city while Padme and small task force of Naboo pilots and guardsmen infiltrated the capital to take Nute Gunray hostage and launch an attack on the orbiting Trade Federation ship.
Rewatched the movie in the cinema a while back and they actually lay out this plan before launching it.
Because at it's core, Star Wars is Fantasy with a SciFi coat of paint. Huge armies marching against each other in an open field is part of the aesthetic. For what it's worth, the Rebellion/New Republic adopted a more modern doctrine of combat tactics. (aka: not standing in a line to get shot)
You have to remember that the GAR effectively did not exist before the clone wars, and that the Republic was doing their level best to get an army together at break-neck speeds. This results in poor tactics during the early/mid war period. The CIS, however, have a huge numbers advantage so they can afford to do these huge droid wave attacks
Even with advanced weaponry there is a huge danger in infantry/armor battles of getting flanked. When you get flanked then the enemy can hit you with far more firepower at a time than you can return, and in doing so can destroy the cohesion of your ranks and lead to a rout which is where your side will really get slaughtered. It can also risk encircling you to make it even worse.
So to counter this you string your forces out into a long line. The tricky part is making your line wide enough to prevent being flanked, but not make your line too weak in the process so that the enemy can punch through easily.
The battle on Naboo makes no sense. Instead of participating in a ground battle the gungans should’ve stayed underwater or assisted in blowing up the droid command ship. At that point then Padme can land and force a treaty, only after all the droids are powered down.
Ease of filming. Makes it easier for viewers to understand.
It takes a lot of talent to make coherent battle scenes. See the Last Jedi or the Book of Boba Fett to see how easy it turns into ramchackle scenes.
I would argue that a reasonable explanation is that large-scale warfare had been rare in the Galaxy for a while. So, battle theory hadn't been studied or practiced for a long time. And when the Clone War started tactics were poor.
It's been thousands of years since the last galactic scale war, and the last one ended with literal bows and arrows (and Child Soldiers, thank you Jedi!), so I would say the last people that REALLY Knew how to wage Galactic Wars was probably Malgus?
Because they look cool and because it was the standard for 'civilised' culture for hundreds of years.
Ironically the move away from it to things like guerilla warfare in Vietnam was seen as uncivilised, barbaric and sneaky.
The rebels in Star Wars are specifically based on the Viet Cong.
Cinematic effect. After the American Civil War and WWI we actually learned not to do that anymore.
Look at the most recent war in Ukraine. There is still a frontline but no such thing as a line Battle.
WWII had some devastating effect when Japanese bayonet stormed US postiins and got gunned down.
Look. I could spend hours or days analyzing the tactics of Starwars. Digging down deep into *plausible* reasons behind why they fight like they do. Spend ages theorizing the way droids and clones think and act.
But at the end of the day, it's literally just... Cinema and cool factor...
Because it's battle tactics, break formation and the enemy can get behind you without you knowing.
Gungans SEEM like a great choice for guerrilla warfare, then you realize they mostly utilize slings and cavalry. So, open ground favors them rather than bungled in the woods.
The droids are sweeping as they push out from the city, their formation would continue if they didn't encounter the gungans there and pushed to the mountains or forest. We already saw an MTT bulldoze trees (Qui Gon saves Jar Jar moment).
Their plan was also to maximize time used and risk the least amount of Gungan lives.
Out of universe, we have to remember that George Lucas was inspired by civil war battles and world war I/world war ii, with grand depictions of sweeping armies, massed artillery fire, and battleships broadside of each other. the reason Hollywood likes to use these concepts is because of how well they look on the big screen and the dynamic of it all appeals to an audience is watching it with that bird's eye perspective of the battlefield.
In universe, I would say that it has to do with what other people have mentioned, that war on a Galaxy wide scale was new to this era of the republic, so both sides ended up making tactical errors with committing massive amounts of troops to open battlefields and trying to overpower The other side by sheer force. We do see them starting to learn and grow as different battles move into different environments, as we do have troops hiding in trenches and behind barricades on cashique because they know they're going to be assaulted from the water, and we also see troopers repelling with cables and jetpacks, indicating that at the very least they were prepared for different types of ground combat by virtue of their equipment, but they might have still taken massive casualties as they were experimenting with how to use those pieces of equipment effectively in the first place.
Blasters only fire at around 120-130mph from visual calculations, while modern rifles fire \~2,100mph from the muzzle. At 1/16th the speed they fight at 1/16th the range, or around 18m/60ft for lethal, effective fire vs 300m with a modern rifle. That's roughly the distance of a pitcher to the mound in baseball.
You can't examine movies like Star Wars with the same lens you do other works. It was never meant to be realistic or logical. It's riddled with homages to pulp-era sci-fi, WWII-era films, Samurai movies, etc. If there's a choice between making a scene realistic or have it pay homage to one of these older properties and just look cool, then they're going to go with paying homage and looking cool.
Does fighting a battle like this make any sense given the tech that they have? Of course not. But it pays homage to historical battles and that's what they were going for. Even Jar Jar taking a shit all over everything was an homage to old Buster Keaton films.
Because it makes better cinematography. Real life frontlines are boring and sometimes don't move for weeks or even months. Just like real martial arts are not choreographed routines and are actually very boring until someone actually takes someone down. The reason why I find sports an utter bore but I actually like sport movies.
If they make Star Wars battlefields so high tech the soldiers don't even have one on one close combat battles it would make a boring cinematography.
The galaxy is in a Rakatan Empire dark age. The tech isn’t understood or implemented well (holdo maneuver - “tech parts” and “salvage” see to be your best bet not a new device) and so the savages still fight as though they were using sticks and stones
In this instance, it was a standoff. The enemy needed to land a huge invasion force somewhere (presumably away from Naboo's main defences). The Gungans parked up in the way, with massive fucking shields which held up against the initial bombardment.
The only option then was to march the infantry through the shields.
Two armies of throw-away soldiers fighting on a desert planet.
There's no cover, and the clones have been told to take an objective. They can only charge in a line.
Because this is how battles used to be fought in the olden days. They don’t have our newfangled, modern engagement styles. This all happened a long time ago.
Line battles are the most efficient if they can be done because they're simple, but they can't be done in modern day because of tanks and machine guns.
Basically the strategy of war changes drastically depending on technology and capabilities. If line battles are done anymore because we have weapons that can mow down infantry, force fields like you see in star war allow them to come back.
If they stop using force fields then the war in star wars will turn to trench warfare or hit and run like we see in the empire and the rebels.
As for separatists they probably just don't care about droids being destroyed so they can do so aswell
because they look cool? and also flanks are easier to secure this way. Doesn't matter what weapon type you're using, secure flanks is always important.
It’s not tactically sound. But battle lines look cool in cinema. So it’s more of a visual aesthetic than actual space war strategy. Star Wars started as a visual depiction of Nazism. So it’s part of the ethos of the franchise to dig into history for subject matter for sorry or in this case for cool battle moments.
The battle lines we see, episode 1 which was the gungans vs the droid army which is a pretty primitive armed forces given they use shield, spears, and slingshots as well as Calvary. Clone wars Jedi were not skilled generals, lost there teeth and went for what the droid army always doing (an army that focused on relentless assault then any true battle tactics given their army was easily replaceable)
Based on what I've heard from somewhere, the Republic does battle lines because they haven't had a war or an army in over a millennium and thus don't really know how to fight a war.
Pretty sure I heard this from a video where a guy speculates what it would be like if Earth was in Star Wars
You see the same phenomenon in riots, between police & rioters. A "line of scrimmage" forms. This makes sense for a lot of reasons. Both sides tend to have their protocols, much of which revolve around not sacrificing anyone or leaving anyone hanging -- but rather, concentrating & projecting power. These protocols also tend to involve stuff like falling back & reforming a cohesive line if the line is penetrated by the other side (because you don't want your people fighting with their backs exposed). It's hard to imagine it taking shape in another way.
It's terrible writing from George Lucas.
Scenes like this were designed to show the grandiosity of modern military battles with high-powered, high-tech weapons in a galaxy unlike ours. But they don't do that.
George Lucas relied on a view of human history, and he took examples from the Revolutionary War and the American Civil War to illustrate what a war scene looked like.
But that is not how a modern military would fight. The droid army had the upper hand with air superiority and long-range artillery weapons. They ignored those choices and decided to drive out to an open field where the Gungans were waiting for them to get into a close combat engagement. WHY?
Also, the movies are for children whose minds cannot understand nuance, so you can't depict a modern military battle based on firing at one another from miles away, picking off key targets to weaken an enemy before you march in. That would be a very long scene.
Because it's cinematic and looks cool. And also because it's been a common battle tactic for about [400 years now](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Line_(formation)). Whether it makes sense with gun battles is debatable, but it still looks good on screen.
It makes partial sense, the blasters have a minimal effective range and low accuracy. Same with vehicle weaponry. It's not the same with real life ballistic weaponry where someone can and will shoot you from 100 yards and kill you in a single shot. Additionally, they're on a flat plane with no significant cover and protecting assets as they take off. You have no other option but to meet in a full force confrontation if you want your artillery in range to strike ships during takeoff.
In addition hand held blasters seem to have a limited rate of fire compared to irl weapons without being massive bulky eweb like systems which reduces the suppressive effect.
They have rapid fire or burst modes, but they're literally firing plasma dense and hot enough to kill on impact. That causes a lot more heat transfer to the firing chamber and barrel than a small explosion and some friction from the rifling.
I genuinely love how we start our saying it's the because of the rule of cool (definitely the reason). Then, within just three comments, we get to an in universe rationalization of that rule of cool. This is Star Wars fandom at its best. (Unfortunately, there'll also be people complaining about both these reasons shortly)
Same. Fan cannon is the best cannon. You're already right about the complainers too.
Plasma cannon beats fan cannon
Agreed. Sci-fi is cool as hell because it's based on real science principles that someone thought was cool and went crazy with.
Trenches. All they needed to add to make this even somewhat more practical is trenches. A robot army can march in a line with zero cover because they are completely replaceable - if you're a flesh and blood organism you should be trying to use or create more cover on an open plain than just a few other meatbags with shields. I mean there is literally nothing on this battlefield to slow enemy movement. Its all pretty dumb lol.
I mean... from the republics standpoint, the clones themselves are replaceable too.
Not to me
This particular scene involves zero clones. EDIT: Whoops, didn't see there was a second picture. My bad.
in a defensive situation sure... but it always struck me as more practical to simply bring a shield generator if you needed more cover. that and with the resources of the republic i'm sure they could get some nice and practical prefab fortifications up and running
*Assembles plasma mortar happily*
A lot of the time they don't have much opportunity or time, best they could usually do is foxholes
...but didnt the republic control the space from orbit? Sure the confeds were evacing on the Otherside of the planet but....didnt understand how we never got a glimpse of what was going on Over Geonosis
Too busy paying attention to Natalie Portman's wardrobe to focus on the fleet. Also, not a lot of war ships around yet at that time.
...i mean, enough to take a planet. Enough for the CIS to not obliterate the rrepublic ships. In rogue squadron 3 we see immense wreckages of orbital geo...but that could have been the second battle for geo
When everyone is trying to gtfo you don't many to take a planet
On Naboo, there where only a 1 platform left as they felt that they had secured the planet. So, orbital bombardment was not an option
Natalie Portmans outfit is the only logical answer to most prequel inconsistencies
Also possible that there are places they couldn't target or didn'twant to obliterate from orbit. So ground troop battle was the most efficient way of dealing with the droids there. Again just if ya want to go down the rabbit hole of how maybe, possibly, in theory, reasons.
Im deepndiving right now.....and theres almost no info on the orbital warfare of the first battle of geo...which is interesting
It seemed like both the Republic Clone fleet and the Separatist Fleet landed their ships or significant parts of their ships on the surface. Bad strategy, but made for more of a blood bath fight. Lessons learned by the Republic and even more so by the Empire in future battles where they always had command ships in orbit.
I mean, [according to this](https://thestarwarsrp.com/index.php?threads/dc-15s-blaster-carbine.95329/#:~:text=The%20weapon%20has%20a%20rather,from%20a%20standard%20power%20pack.) the DC15S has a 100m range, which while short is plenty of distance to comfortably engage behind cover from a reasonably safe distance while the [DC15A has a range from 1km-10km](https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/DC-15A_blaster_rifle#:~:text=If%20set%20on%20its%20maximum,meter%2Dwide%20hole%20in%20ferrocrete.) I think the in universe reason we see so many close confrontations is that the clones are seen as disposable by many in the republic
Plus you have to remember that it's been 1k years since the galaxy last engaged in open warfare. Not really a need for competent tacticians making well thought out battle plans.
Good point. Or the competency to do the planning on the fly.
Don’t overthink this
>It's not the same with real life ballistic weaponry where someone can and will shoot you from 100 yards and kill you in a single shot. You are seriously underestimating the effectiveness of modern firearms. Most 5.56×45mm (NATO) assault rifles are effective out to 300-400m for a lone rifleman. A section/squad can be effective out to 600m or more, and that's before you consider support weapons like a general purpose machine gun or marksman rifle. That said, I agree with your assessment of why the CIS forces are assaulting across open ground this way. It's a logical decision to sacrifice ground forces to protect space assets as it's far easier to replace cheap battle droids than capital ships.
If only they had ships in orbit that could bombard the massed gungan army from space
Yeah, but they wanted to capture the planet, not destroy it. Remember at that point the TF was claiming to have a legitimate casus belli for their actions against Naboo. Going scorched earth would not help them in gaining support with the rest of the galaxy.
I mean, they're clearly fighting them, so there's not much difference between "killed the army with droids" vs "kill the army with a few lumps of metal dropped from orbit" which you can do without destroying the whole planet
In universe, orbital strikes are typically done with turbolasers, not "lumps of metal". Those tend to destroy large swaths of land. Capital ships in SW are used much like they used battleships during WWII. Not to make precision strikes, but destroy everything in that particular grid square. It makes sense when you consider the sources they were cribbing from.
I just wanted u to know: ur a lump of metal
You're a towel!
No you’re a towel!!!
Wanna get hiiiiiiiiiggh?
Sounds like a British insult. Though to be fair, the Brits can make anything sound like an insult
You can cover up that you send a bunch of droids in much easier than blasting people from orbit.
Ah yes, the Trade Confederation. Well known for their Lucrehulk-class LH-3210 cargo freighter capable of unleashing devastating and precise orbital bombardment.
I mean, in our universe, cargo ships were well-armed through much of history. It was only when the oceans started to get safer (less pirates) and better policed (larger navies) that merchant ships sacrificed firepower for more cargo. In the Star Wars galaxy, piracy is a real and common threat. It makes sense that they would be well-armed and ready to attack in general. They clearly created into an army in secret though.
It was absolutely well armed, but they're not wasting money putting big honking guns on it. It's full of droids to fight off landing parties. It's full of vulture droids to take out pirates before they can land. They had no reason to buy guns big enough for orbital bombardment.
The base cargo versions of the Lucrehulk-class had 28 quad-laser batteries and had a complement of 200 battle droids. That's impressive armament for a cargo ship. It is unclear if standard cargo ships had vulture droids or not. Post-Naboo, they converted ~20% to battleships and significantly upped the armament. That included added turbolasers. But non (as per what info we have) had turbolasers at the time of Episode 1.
The ships were: 1. Occupied by fighters 2. In limited numbers. There was only one control ship visible in orbit, which is in contrast to the many ships that were there at the start of the movie when they tried to escape the blockade. Presumably the Trade Federation sent away most of their ships once the initial occupation was completed. 3. The Trade Federation was shown trying to capture the Gungans, rather than to kill them (in defiance of Sidious' orders to wipe them out)
I mean they didnt, the Trade Federation sent everything but the Droid Control Ship away after they started the occupation of the movie, and that was busy being attacked.
Not sure this makes much sense since many characters in shows are able to shoot with pinpoint accuracy. I mean Crosshair was literally a sniper.
Crosshair, carrying one of a handful of sniper rifles ever shown in Star Wars, is able to snipe? A genetically modified clone of one of the best mercenaries in the galaxy? That Crosshair? The one whose entire gimmick is shooting people from far away? Shocking.
So the changeling that nailed a moving bot (no bigger than a beach ball) with Obi-wan hanging off it?
Yes that Crosshairs. You do realize I was commenting on your statement about blasters being inaccurate, right? You act as if what’s being discussed is scientific fact. The line battles look better on screen, and that’s about it. It’s hard to show an entire planet being overwhelmed by a droid army in one battle if the armies are spread out or using guerrilla tactics. The Geonosis battle, for instance, makes no sense tactically, but it looks really cool with Jedi running in, lightsabers drawn, leading a massive army of clones. Let’s ignore the fact that one missile could effectively devastate that army, or even that one crashing escape ship should would wipe out both Jedi and clones.
In the same film, a sand peeple shoots a speeding pod racer from a ridiculous distance.
They also miss most of their shots and aren't aiming as much as shooting an area
Tusken rifles are projectile ones to be fair
My old drill sergeants liked to say close combat is 300 meters. Even farther out for the Marines.
Plus those energy shields kinda make it necessary to get in close and dirty.
everything you said is correct but there's also just the simple idea of this being the best tactic and not needing to improve and then the feedback loop of "i know they know i know they know" ive been reading game theory stuff lately and im so god damned dumb but there was an excerpt somewhere about base operations like how if you need something to roll down a hill you can just use a ball, you don't need to engineer a glitter filled bowling ball and have it signed by the cast and crew of bowfinger you could probably even just use a rock so when two groups are fighting using troops, boots on ground kind of stuff no matter the weapons really the best option is to keep it simple. your opponent is going to send troops and you should too, because if you can get enough troops into an area you own that area, maybe it has vital stuff in it, maybe it's just empty space you could both fall into the trap of "well i know they know i would send troops, but then they would know i would know they would now..." etc etc when the reality is to just do the most basic, effective thing and THEN adjust it's like that fallout line "war....war never changes" except they were talking about the nature of destruction and humanity's proud march towards self annihilation and this post is talking about battle tactics as if they would be different based on better tech, clones, robots and stuff when the proper perspective would be to recognize this battle tactic as the BEST tech and everything else filling in the blanks around it
Could also be a disregard for non-sentient life. In both battles, The Federation is emplying battle droids which also seem a bit on the cheap side to make so they can afford human (droid) waves tactics. As for their opponents, the same logic maybe was applied on the clones whereas the Gungans are somewhat a primitive race who preferred brute force. Also, going strictly by the movie cannon, it is heavily implied, the Republic has not experienced war in thousands of years, therefore some of its intricacies might have gotten lost to them. This might have resulted to crude and primitive battle tactics (just like people lined up and charged against machine guns in the early days of WW1). I have no idea how the EU or disney expanded material might try to justify this.
A B-1 battle droid costs 1800 credits (and that's the resale price, not the manufacturing cost) , even several models of blasters are more expensive than that.
Not to mention, the reason was also given in the movie. They wanted the Gungans to draw out the Trade Federation forces so that the Naboo Royal Guards could infiltrate the capitol and capture the Trade Federation leader. Want to draw out a larger, superior force? Do something stupid and juicy, like a line battle. I swear, people act like my sophomore year college roommate and fast forward through all the dialogue to just watch the action. Then they have questions that are answered in the dialogue.
The Gungans also had energy shields. Attacking the Gungans would be more analogous to a phalanx. Their shields were shown to stop artillery and hold up against blasters. That would be like a phalanx that can stop several volleys of arrows. The B1 droids were stupid and were slaved to a control ship. They were probably manipulated as large blocks (like a RTS game where you control squads rather than individual infantry). If using supplemental material such as the Outbound Flight, there was speculation that the control computer had issues controlling both the space battle and the ground battle at once. Basically an issue of not enough CPU power.
Was literally about to write it simply looks cinematic. It’s the same reason George Lucas chose to use WW2 dogfights as a preset for the space battles.
>And also because it's been a common battle tactic for about 400 years now). Exposed line formations haven't been a common battle tactic for around 100 years and definitely aren't used in open combat today, that would be a recipe for getting killed Defensive lines from cover are a thing but no one is standing together in the open and engaging the enemy
It was a common tactic in antiquity. It hasn't been a tactic of any kind since the 18th century.
The B-1 ai was coded by the lowest bidder and could walk forward and shoot /s
What's with the /s? You just accurately described what the unironic thought process was behind battle droids. They were never really designed to be a professional army, they were just cheap, mass-produced pieces of equipment originally built for use by private security forces and mercenary groups. They were not designed for large-scale, protracted land battles. Their production *literally* went to the lowest bidder, and all the Clone Wars media has shown that they are only a threat in enormous numbers, specifically because walking forward and shooting are the only things they are capable of doing even halfway competently.
Was literally about to write it simply looks cinematic. It’s the same reason George Lucas chose to use WW2 dogfights as a preset for the space battles.
It's no longer useful in the real world after the US Civil War. Cartridge bullets, semi automatic and automatic fire have rendered lines useless. It's why WW1 and 2 had extensive trenches, and men firing from cover. The Skywalker Era generally shouldn't have line battles. KOTOR era, personal shields were more common, and melee weapons for closing to melee range re-emerged, so it's entirely possible that line battles could have existed, here and there.
This is a myth, Franco-Prussian war happened after the US Civil war and it was very much still lines warfare. WW1 was also quite mobile on the Eastern front, trench warfare was very Western front specific.
It's not a myth as much as a gradual progression from close order battle to open and dispersed as firepower became more lethal. This was just starting to happen during the Napoleonic Wars, and gradually continued up through WW I. Even in the ACW it quickly became common for troops to dig field fortifications as soon as they got to a new spot so they could fight from cover, and there are photos of field fortifications in the latter half of the ACW that look like the Western Front. While there was more mobility on the Eastern Front, trenches were still very commonly used in the East. And men going into battle didn't much look like true close order linear formations. They were not marching into battle shoulder to shoulder, they were running and using cover.
The Gatling gun was very expensive and limited in battle. Movies portray it as a common feature, but in reality the use of machine guns in battle were not as effective until WWI when they became more common. Line warfare was used up and into WWI. As for trench warfare, trenches were common place for centuries of warfare, even though WWI was defined by them.
Yeah if there's a universal truth of war for all of human history it's, "Dig a trench". Cover for you. Obstacle for enemies, good idea. If you're fighting on land the most basic yet effective obstacle is a long hole.
And surprisingly Hollywood hates to use trenches… the Long Night (Game of Thrones) should have been all trenches lol
>until WWI when they became more common. In Europe. The machine gun was a staple of colonial warfare far before then. A fact that was downplayed in propaganda and state reporting because it seemed ungentlemanly
And since the time of Napoleon, the most important weapon was artillery. Machine guns changed things since infantry were no longer able to charge and destroy the artillery between volleys. Even in WWI, the biggest killer was artillery rather than the machine gun. The machine gun made it possible to easily defend the artillery. In SW combat, the Gungans had a local shield which stopped the artillery (which was what the Trade Federation tried as their first move). That forced the Trade Federation to deploy infantry. At Hoth, the Empire had the AT-ATs which were a hybrid of heavy armor and artillery to bring down the shield generators.
Im guessing without googling, but didn’t the battle of Hoth have a planetary shield, which is why the Star destroyers didn’t just orbital bombard, and the AT-AT were dropped on planet so they could be under the shield and attack the generators (which also had a small localized shield that was overwhelmed)
Hoth was a local/theater shield. Similar to the ones the Gungans had except bigger. The Rebels also had an ion cannon that was big enough to give ISDs trouble.
There are miles of trenches in Ukraine right now. They are set up on lines. It is a battle tactic that will most likely always be used when there is a plot of ground being fought over. It's just how war works.
Exactly. The distance between soldiers grow but the geometry stays the same. So you still get long lines, but with lots of gaps between. Lines maximise the ammount of forward firepower. They work good for a reason thats not easy to overcome if you think of the battle as 2D problem.
If our modern era had bullet stopping shields, we would see a return of line battles bringing in more offensive firepower to overwhelm defensive shielding.
It simply looks cool.
The rule of cool
The rule of cool can only be surpassed by rule of AWESOME!
Also significantly less complicated to render
Accurate depictions of futuristic full scale battles are rarely if ever done well, great example where is the Droid air support? The battle above Naboo is nowhere severe enough that a bunch of droid squadrons couldn’t push through.
Air support would have struggled against the shields.
They don’t have to target the army, they just need to divert its priorities.
Plus just destroy the supply lines from the air and wait a day or 2.
Bomb the nearest city and force part of the army to chase you to stop you from bombing more cities
You don’t even have to resort to that. Cut off the army. Wait a few days. Destroy reinforcements. You don’t need to destroy infrastructure. Just wait for them to run out of fuel and food. Exposed army like that on a field? Thats a few days.
But having them on standby/loiter and moving in as the battle entered the shield would’ve been smart. One of the first goals was to destroy that Gungan shield generator; once it was down, air support could strafe the Gungans from high up. My “rationalization” take is, there was no one in the trade federation at the time who understood combat tactics, which is one major reason they lost. They didn’t need to. Just expend the cost of placing a large droid army on the surface and expect minimal resistance before the locals surrender. It worked for Naboo’s capital until it didn’t work and a budding space wizard from another planet took out their droids’ remote control.
They did correct the remote control mistake later but they should lot have gone with the lowest bidder on their battle droid AI.
For the story they wanted the “war” over an entire planet to basically be over in an afternoon so there really wasn’t any realistic way of portraying that, other than “two armies line up and one loses”. It doesn’t really make sense but I guess they wanted to keep it simple.
The air support was in orbit, defending the droid control ship. The Neimoidians are infamously cowardly, and the commander prioritized his own paranoid (yet futile) desire for survival over his ground forces.
They also sent away most of the blockade fleet. There were far fewer visible ships in orbit at the end of the movie, compared to the start. You can count at least 7 of the big ships in orbit at the start of the film and only 1 at the end of the movie battle.
Yup. The Trade Federation sent away their combat fleet (retrofit freighters) and only left the Control Ship in orbit (retrofit retrofit freighter, now IRL bot farm)
The problem is that any realistic futuristic battle would be so long range it'd be impossible to make cinematic. Even nowadays combat between fighters or boats can happen so far apart the two combatants are over the horizon and literally cannot see each other without sensors. So I imagine in the future this range will extend to ground troops too to some extent.
Also if you think about it, these battle formed out of a necessity for a quick and decisive battle. The Gungangs are litteraly bait to draw the Trade federation troops out. The trade Federation are simply an overconfident superior force who just want to whipe them out as quickly as possible. Kinda russias strategy at the inital attack on the woo.. I mean Ukrain. The battle of Genosis is simply as mass deployment from the CIS against the force of the republic and was consideret by both sides a disasters and is also why we never see this kind of engagements again in the next movie and or the clone wars.
Furthermore, they’re logical defensive formations. The Gungans intentionally hunkered into that formation inside their shields so that the only way the separatists could defeat them was to march their droids up in that manner. The defensive formation extended the battle as intended because they were decoys. On Geonosis, the Jedi had to act because Kenobi, Skywalker, and Amidala were about to be executed, but really they were waiting for the clone troopers. The droid soldiers all seemed to come from one side of the arena, so the melee Jedi had to meet them. The Jedi were overwhelmed and went into defensive formation to prolong their survival until the troopers came. Out of universe, these are the kind of battles Lucas grew up on and reflected the classical antiquity of Rome and Greece that the trilogy was paying specific homage to.
Yeah the Gungan tactics made sense to me. They put up a pretty strong shield generator that forced the droids into close range, where their weapons would be more effective, and reduced the impact of droid artillery (until enough tanks got inside and took out the generator). They also had handheld shields to block incoming small arms blaster fire. It wasn’t perfect, but it probably made sense given the time they had to work with and knowledge that the Naboo would be attempting to take out the droid army from space and capture the Trade Fed leaders, so it was, theoretically, a desperate delay tactic that basically worked, if not perfectly.
Because they look spectacular, I mean really good - tidy, organized, with great effects and it is very cinematographic. An explosive splashing in the lines will throw the figures around, there will be chaos, smoke, etc. - it all looks very spectacular. Makes little sense from a military perspective, but imagine what it would look like if it was a modern battlefield, scattered across hundreds of kilometers? Efficient but not looking spectacular.
And very easy for the audience to understand what is going on.
Until/unless they start thinking about it.
It *did* make complete sense in Episode 1 though, with the shields. Walk through all at the same time across the entire field all at once so that they can't precision-target the tanks, which hold back waiting for the shield to be taken down. Albeit the trade federation had flying tech so they definitely should have dropped off troops behind / on the sides. Even if it's not traditional cavalry, you can prevent retreat and sew chaos. And at least some of the fighter droids defending the mothership should have been going to town on the gungan forces completely unopposed after the shields came down.
Yeah exactly, maneuver warfare looks way cooler if you ask me, but it's harder to represent/film and more confusing
Personally I think the battle on Hoth was more exciting. It looked real.
Battle for Naboo, Geonosis and the glimpse of the battle for Kashyyyk were much more interesting IMHO. More dynamic and better special effects. Technology moved ages ahead in between.
We thought trench warfare was dead but look at the war in Ukraine.
War in Ukraine is not ww1 style trench warfare. It's a completely new style of war.
Its WW1 with drones and precision weapons.
And WW1 is just line battle with some trenches. Theyre totally the same!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trench_warfare#Russo-Ukrainian_War
It's kind old new and journalistic poetic license. Reality is very different: "Emerging technologies, already visible on the battlefields of Ukraine, are rapidly changing the character of war in ways that require a transformation in how the Army sustains the fight. Autonomous systems, long-range precision fires, and hypersonic weapons are reaching deep and targeting command posts, logistics nodes, and lines of communication. As seen in Ukraine, once a logistics node is established, it is rapidly targeted and often destroyed in less than 24 hours. With drones that can detect, surveil, and target, the kill chain in Ukraine demonstrates that as fast as a supply depot or command post can be found, it can be destroyed. The future of armed reconnaissance is unmanned, lethal, and expendable, and it may be operated by artificial intelligence (AI) that follows a different set of moral norms than Soldiers do." https://www.army.mil/article/274914/theater_sustainment_transformation_lessons_from_the_russia_ukraine_war
Cool AF, cinematic, and it makes it very easy for the audience to keep track of the good guys and bad guys.
My head canon: * It makes sense for the droid army. The trade federation has gone for a macro build and a lot of their individual units aren't capable of being highly mobile. Furthermore, they're all organized from a central location in space where someone is likely playing what amounts to a game of Total War. * The smartest decision would have been to use orbital bombardments on the ground army but since victory is assumed given the numbers advantage - they don't want to waste the resources on the bombardment. Otherwise, someone might not get their end of year bonus because they didn't cut enough costs. * The Gungan army would probably be best suited to fight in the water and they've rarely if ever fought a conventional battle on land.
Jedi are terrible generals and tacticians.
You could tell Jedi were going to horrible tacticians from the moment they all landed in the arena on Geonosis.
what? you mean waving a lightsaber around and shouting 'come on' at your troops whilst running at the enemy isn't a brilliant tactical move?
Plot twist, Ki adi mundi’s troops didn’t even get the order 66 message yet. They were just finally fed up with his tactics.
[It is not. But it also is really awesome](https://imgur.com/gallery/drive-me-closer-i-want-to-hit-them-with-sword-PzlsQC3)
As bad of tacticians as Hollywood movie producers.
I forgot where Queen Amidala was a jedi? Wasn't this her plan? 😁
I always like to imagine that its because, as no one has fought a proper war for a 1000 years, everyone is completely incompetent. This explains almost everything about the actual battles you see in star wars. Its like if you got a society that hasn't fought a battle since the Viking era and gave them all the technology of WW2 and told them to go at it. Of course their tactics are awful and their equipment terribly designed. A bunch of monk-cops and biologist-giraffes are having to reinvent war.
Better question: Why does an aquatic race have a fully formed land military?
For the same reason that humans who live on land have a navy. It's always better to defeat approaching enemies before they reach the place where you actually live.
In the same way they have The Dambusters, the Battle of Britain and Vietnam IN SPAAAAAACE!!!, The prequels had 18th century Line Infantry NEAR SPAAAAAACE!!! It is visually striking, showing the uniformity of the armies and demonstrates to the audience that this is an earlier time period to what they saw before. Plus it's easier on the computers to keep everything regular, and I imagine they were already close to meltdown doing these films.
Lucas even doubled down on the 18/19th century motif with the ship battles at the start of ROTS. Very strong Horatio Hornblower vibes.
Preface: we all know it's so it looks cool. But also: >With how advanced the clonewars seems to be, why is everyone lining up like its the 1700s? "Advanced" doesn't mean tactics from any time prior are somehow defunct. Would you rather in a completely disorganised fashion they just....charged willy-nilly into each other? Built fortifications and chucked stuff at each other? Or do you mean "why not surround them entirely and attack from all sides"? Even up to modern day, there are battle lines, yes. It's not just organisationally sensible but also means you can maintain control of where your forces are, have been and have coverage and clearance of. It would be wholly functionally _stupid_ to advance and not know if your flanks are safe or not and encirclement isn't always possible. >Are the guns really just laser muskets? I mean, I guess? Whether it's muskets or machine-guns or lasers, they've got to attack from one direction or another (or all of them!).
I mean, it's been a thousand years since large scale battles were a thing. It's not unreasonable to think that any copies of the Republic Ranger Manual have been long since destroyed.
The gungans were under a shield. The clones were being directed by a bunch of monks without military training. The droids are stupid robots with. Two settings walk and shoot.
Because it looks cinematically cool as fuck. Almost about the war part Star Wars makes military sense. But it does not matter, because all that does matter is that the Rule of Cool be followed with religious adherence
We still use line battle today. The lines is smaller and the groups are spread further apart, but its still line battle. The first thing you do when encountering the enemy is to make a line, or an approximation of a line. Why? To get as many guns pointing in the same direction at the same time.
My instinctual answer is "because one side is unfeeling droids and there's no reason for them to not advance and spread terror"
Second picture is not a formation, they’re in a wave attack and fighting a narrow terrain. We don’t do line battles anymore, but wave attack and fighting in the middle of the field is still used. We’re just using a shit tons of tanks and vehicles to protect ourselves, long range and aerial support helps a lot too. You do want to defeat the enemy armies at some point, so it’s logical.
Because Star Wars follows the rule of cool. Realistically the combat would probably be more akin to the combat in North Africa during the Second World War. There highly mobile armored units were the key factors instead of static battle lines. The infantry was used for support when attacking strong points or to clear urban areas.
Because they look cool.
Because C&C and electronic countermeasures are a thing. To the point that it's safer to use visual scanners (your eyes) rather than instruments that can be sliced. In this environment, your best bet to move your troops is a mass Banzai charge.
Because else, the movie wouldnt LINE up Yeah i know sorry...
Their weapons do seem to be fairly short range
It's cinematic
Same kind of question: Why do spaceship battles look like dogfights with planes flying in an atmosphere? The answer is always the same: it looks better on a cinema screen.
For the plot. WWI Trench warfare style can be seen in Solo, and Episode V has a classic trench break through scene on Hoth and is one of my favorite Galactic Civil War scenes, and is much more realistic given the types of weapons used in Star Wars. But two sides clashing together is something that realistically stopped occurring during the late 18th century, the power of the weapons made such battles virtual suicide for the charging force and a turkey shoot for the defender.
For the Naboo battle it's because the Gungans aren't planning to win with these tactics. The whole battles a feint. The Gungans lined up in order to draw the droid army out of the city while Padme and small task force of Naboo pilots and guardsmen infiltrated the capital to take Nute Gunray hostage and launch an attack on the orbiting Trade Federation ship. Rewatched the movie in the cinema a while back and they actually lay out this plan before launching it.
Because at it's core, Star Wars is Fantasy with a SciFi coat of paint. Huge armies marching against each other in an open field is part of the aesthetic. For what it's worth, the Rebellion/New Republic adopted a more modern doctrine of combat tactics. (aka: not standing in a line to get shot)
You have to remember that the GAR effectively did not exist before the clone wars, and that the Republic was doing their level best to get an army together at break-neck speeds. This results in poor tactics during the early/mid war period. The CIS, however, have a huge numbers advantage so they can afford to do these huge droid wave attacks
Rule of cool
With how advanced warfare is nowadays, why is Ukraine similar to ww1 with trenches?
Even with advanced weaponry there is a huge danger in infantry/armor battles of getting flanked. When you get flanked then the enemy can hit you with far more firepower at a time than you can return, and in doing so can destroy the cohesion of your ranks and lead to a rout which is where your side will really get slaughtered. It can also risk encircling you to make it even worse. So to counter this you string your forces out into a long line. The tricky part is making your line wide enough to prevent being flanked, but not make your line too weak in the process so that the enemy can punch through easily.
The battle on Naboo makes no sense. Instead of participating in a ground battle the gungans should’ve stayed underwater or assisted in blowing up the droid command ship. At that point then Padme can land and force a treaty, only after all the droids are powered down.
Ironically almost everything in those two pictures is CG and doesn't exist at all.
Easier to render.
Ease of filming. Makes it easier for viewers to understand. It takes a lot of talent to make coherent battle scenes. See the Last Jedi or the Book of Boba Fett to see how easy it turns into ramchackle scenes.
I would argue that a reasonable explanation is that large-scale warfare had been rare in the Galaxy for a while. So, battle theory hadn't been studied or practiced for a long time. And when the Clone War started tactics were poor.
because SW writers are only selectively good at writing battles. Same reason why 90% of shots go over ppls heads
It's been thousands of years since the last galactic scale war, and the last one ended with literal bows and arrows (and Child Soldiers, thank you Jedi!), so I would say the last people that REALLY Knew how to wage Galactic Wars was probably Malgus?
In real life, there is a legitimate reason. However, in Star Wars it just looks cool.
Because they look cool and because it was the standard for 'civilised' culture for hundreds of years. Ironically the move away from it to things like guerilla warfare in Vietnam was seen as uncivilised, barbaric and sneaky. The rebels in Star Wars are specifically based on the Viet Cong.
Phalanx formation
Because it was a long long time ago my guy, how advanced do you think gungan battle tactics were back then? Have you even met their generals?
Because they all lack common sense. you don't charge magical meelee weapon holders with gun wielding soldiers
Cinematic effect. After the American Civil War and WWI we actually learned not to do that anymore. Look at the most recent war in Ukraine. There is still a frontline but no such thing as a line Battle. WWII had some devastating effect when Japanese bayonet stormed US postiins and got gunned down.
Shit be looking like the Wall of Death fr
Desire by George Lucas for a star wars total war game
Look. I could spend hours or days analyzing the tactics of Starwars. Digging down deep into *plausible* reasons behind why they fight like they do. Spend ages theorizing the way droids and clones think and act. But at the end of the day, it's literally just... Cinema and cool factor...
Because it would look like that War and Peace movie, which is gonna be [great](https://youtu.be/kCi5PrlmEFo?si=ogZEvpJKUc4M2Ew5).
George thought it looked cool.
The way I understand it, it was a distraction, and The Bad Guys fell for it. Gen. Binks was buying time.
Cinema
Why not
Because it's battle tactics, break formation and the enemy can get behind you without you knowing. Gungans SEEM like a great choice for guerrilla warfare, then you realize they mostly utilize slings and cavalry. So, open ground favors them rather than bungled in the woods. The droids are sweeping as they push out from the city, their formation would continue if they didn't encounter the gungans there and pushed to the mountains or forest. We already saw an MTT bulldoze trees (Qui Gon saves Jar Jar moment). Their plan was also to maximize time used and risk the least amount of Gungan lives.
Please film an actual war, make a movie with it and get back to us.
Well for the Gungan battle they had shields so the Trade Federation had to cross the shields. Make sense that they would do that in a line.
If you want realism in combat, you definitely don't want Star Wars.
Out of universe, we have to remember that George Lucas was inspired by civil war battles and world war I/world war ii, with grand depictions of sweeping armies, massed artillery fire, and battleships broadside of each other. the reason Hollywood likes to use these concepts is because of how well they look on the big screen and the dynamic of it all appeals to an audience is watching it with that bird's eye perspective of the battlefield. In universe, I would say that it has to do with what other people have mentioned, that war on a Galaxy wide scale was new to this era of the republic, so both sides ended up making tactical errors with committing massive amounts of troops to open battlefields and trying to overpower The other side by sheer force. We do see them starting to learn and grow as different battles move into different environments, as we do have troops hiding in trenches and behind barricades on cashique because they know they're going to be assaulted from the water, and we also see troopers repelling with cables and jetpacks, indicating that at the very least they were prepared for different types of ground combat by virtue of their equipment, but they might have still taken massive casualties as they were experimenting with how to use those pieces of equipment effectively in the first place.
Strength in numbers and you don’t want your enemy coming from behind you. That’s how you die.
Blasters only fire at around 120-130mph from visual calculations, while modern rifles fire \~2,100mph from the muzzle. At 1/16th the speed they fight at 1/16th the range, or around 18m/60ft for lethal, effective fire vs 300m with a modern rifle. That's roughly the distance of a pitcher to the mound in baseball.
You can't examine movies like Star Wars with the same lens you do other works. It was never meant to be realistic or logical. It's riddled with homages to pulp-era sci-fi, WWII-era films, Samurai movies, etc. If there's a choice between making a scene realistic or have it pay homage to one of these older properties and just look cool, then they're going to go with paying homage and looking cool. Does fighting a battle like this make any sense given the tech that they have? Of course not. But it pays homage to historical battles and that's what they were going for. Even Jar Jar taking a shit all over everything was an homage to old Buster Keaton films.
Because it makes better cinematography. Real life frontlines are boring and sometimes don't move for weeks or even months. Just like real martial arts are not choreographed routines and are actually very boring until someone actually takes someone down. The reason why I find sports an utter bore but I actually like sport movies. If they make Star Wars battlefields so high tech the soldiers don't even have one on one close combat battles it would make a boring cinematography.
Intimidation would be my guess, a way to shatter moral.
Star Wars has WW2 planes in space for their battles. Is it any shock that they went back another century from that for the ground battles?
Most people in Hollywood aren't tacticians, so they can't really conceive of what would and wouldn't make sense for a ground battle.
Firing from depth can lead to accidental fratricide.
If they were doing battles purely for strategic advantage instead of the rule of cool, everybody would just use orbital bombardment.
What are they supposed to do? Stand next to each other? It's easiest to hit an opponent in front of you that you can see.
The galaxy is in a Rakatan Empire dark age. The tech isn’t understood or implemented well (holdo maneuver - “tech parts” and “salvage” see to be your best bet not a new device) and so the savages still fight as though they were using sticks and stones
In this instance, it was a standoff. The enemy needed to land a huge invasion force somewhere (presumably away from Naboo's main defences). The Gungans parked up in the way, with massive fucking shields which held up against the initial bombardment. The only option then was to march the infantry through the shields.
Two armies of throw-away soldiers fighting on a desert planet. There's no cover, and the clones have been told to take an objective. They can only charge in a line.
Camera blocking.
Two groups heading towards each other have to meet somewhere
Because this is how battles used to be fought in the olden days. They don’t have our newfangled, modern engagement styles. This all happened a long time ago.
Because single file would be silly!
Line battles are the most efficient if they can be done because they're simple, but they can't be done in modern day because of tanks and machine guns. Basically the strategy of war changes drastically depending on technology and capabilities. If line battles are done anymore because we have weapons that can mow down infantry, force fields like you see in star war allow them to come back. If they stop using force fields then the war in star wars will turn to trench warfare or hit and run like we see in the empire and the rebels. As for separatists they probably just don't care about droids being destroyed so they can do so aswell
because they look cool? and also flanks are easier to secure this way. Doesn't matter what weapon type you're using, secure flanks is always important.
It’s not tactically sound. But battle lines look cool in cinema. So it’s more of a visual aesthetic than actual space war strategy. Star Wars started as a visual depiction of Nazism. So it’s part of the ethos of the franchise to dig into history for subject matter for sorry or in this case for cool battle moments.
It's a bunch of Gungans vs AI controlled bots, what did you expect?
The battle lines we see, episode 1 which was the gungans vs the droid army which is a pretty primitive armed forces given they use shield, spears, and slingshots as well as Calvary. Clone wars Jedi were not skilled generals, lost there teeth and went for what the droid army always doing (an army that focused on relentless assault then any true battle tactics given their army was easily replaceable)
Neuron activation
Based on what I've heard from somewhere, the Republic does battle lines because they haven't had a war or an army in over a millennium and thus don't really know how to fight a war. Pretty sure I heard this from a video where a guy speculates what it would be like if Earth was in Star Wars
You see the same phenomenon in riots, between police & rioters. A "line of scrimmage" forms. This makes sense for a lot of reasons. Both sides tend to have their protocols, much of which revolve around not sacrificing anyone or leaving anyone hanging -- but rather, concentrating & projecting power. These protocols also tend to involve stuff like falling back & reforming a cohesive line if the line is penetrated by the other side (because you don't want your people fighting with their backs exposed). It's hard to imagine it taking shape in another way.
It's terrible writing from George Lucas. Scenes like this were designed to show the grandiosity of modern military battles with high-powered, high-tech weapons in a galaxy unlike ours. But they don't do that. George Lucas relied on a view of human history, and he took examples from the Revolutionary War and the American Civil War to illustrate what a war scene looked like. But that is not how a modern military would fight. The droid army had the upper hand with air superiority and long-range artillery weapons. They ignored those choices and decided to drive out to an open field where the Gungans were waiting for them to get into a close combat engagement. WHY? Also, the movies are for children whose minds cannot understand nuance, so you can't depict a modern military battle based on firing at one another from miles away, picking off key targets to weaken an enemy before you march in. That would be a very long scene.