Clone Troopers

[likealeafonthewind]

 Cross-posted from my tumblr.

A summary from my latest venture onto Wookieepedia, because I’ve been watching some of the clone-centric CW episodes with @themikeymonster and had Questions about the clones. 

Italicized information is from Legends, regular font is from canon. 

More musing and headcanons under the cut. Please feel free to chime in. This is making my head hurt.

Null-class Advanced Recon Commandos

• Prototypes
  
• Designation: N- or Null-
  
• Total produced: 12 (but 6 died early on)
  
• Deemed a failure by Kaminoans; adopted by Mandalorian mercenary Kal Skirata
  
• Named after Mandalorian warriors
  

Alpha-class Advanced Recon Commando (ARC) troopers

• Designation: A- or Alpha-
  
• Unaltered independent minds - only some of them decided to obey Order 66, the rest sided with the Jedi
• Total number produced: 100
  
• Personally trained by Jango Fett, who ordered them to kill all the younger clones if Kamino ever fell to the Separatists
  
• Known trooper:
  • Alpha-17

Clone trooper commanders

• Designation: CC-
• Bred for leadership roles, with extra capacity for autonomy, tactical thinking, and coordination
• Trained with ARC skills
• Led regiments of 2,304 troopers
  
• Some known troopers:
  • CC-2224 - Cody
  • CC-3636 - Wolffe
  • CC-5052 - Bly

Clone Commandos or Republic Commandos

• Designation: RC-
  
• Bred with more independence than standard clone troopers
• Trained to be more lethal and efficient than average clone soldier by Mandalorian drill sergeants
• Worked in squads of 4, carried out covert infiltration, sabotage, demolition, and assassination
• A few refused to comply with Order 66
• Known troopers:
  
  • CC-5576-39 - Gregor
  • Foxtrot Group - attached to the 212th; led by Gregor
  • Clone Force 99 - genetically altered to be super soldiers; worked with Cody; named in honor of 99
  • RC-1138 - Boss; leader of Delta Squad

Clone trooper captain

• Commanded companies of 144 troopers
  
• Bred as battlefield officers and special mission operatives
  
• Known troopers:
  
  • CT-7567 - Rex

Clone Lieutenant

• Designation: CL-
  
• Commanded platoons of 36 troopers
  
• Known troopers:
  
  • CL-9632 - Trap

Clone Sergeant

• Designation: CT-
• Commanded squads of 9 troopers
  
• Known troopers:
  
  • Appo - later promoted to clone commander

Rank-and-file clone troopers

• Designation: CT-
  

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From what I’ve been able to gather, rank-and-file clone troopers can also be promoted to higher classes, which probably explains all the variations in the clone number designations. Some clones were meant to serve in those higher level positions so were given the appropriate designations at birth and others worked their way up, and kept their CT- designations in their new roles. Also, ARC trooper training could be offered to any of the clones, such as Fives (CT-27-5555) and Echo (CT-21-0408)

The variations of numbering within a squad, I have no idea about. For example, Domino Squad were clearly being raised and trained together, right??? Should they not have all been from the same batch? But the designations are CT-782 (Hevy), CT-00-2010 (Droidbait), CT-21-0408 (Echo), CT-4040 (Cutup) and CT-27-5555 (Fives). Why do some of them have the extra 2 digits in front of the last 4 but others don’t? Why does Hevy only have a 3 digit designation? By the time of their training, the cloning process has been going on long enough that I would have expected the Kaminoans to have figured out a numbering system that made sense.

[Headcanon Time]

Maybe they’re not from the same batch? Maybe after they’re born, they start moving through classes and training at their own rates and get put into squads based on where they’re at in their training?

So maybe the designations for the standard troopers started at CT-0001 and went up to CT-9999 (and you know how sometimes you can drop the leading 0s in scientific notation? Maybe the clones drop the leading 0s in their designations because it’s implied that it’s there). This probably means that 99 was actually CT-0099 and either he was an isolated case of a imperfect cloning or the first 100 clone troopers were not created well and never deployed.

After the Kaminoans got to CT-9999, instead of extending the numbers out forever, they decided to break up the numbers into sub-groups so that it’s easier to remember (like how we break up phone number and SSN into smaller groupings of digits). So they started back at 00 with CT-00-0001 and went up to CT-00-9999, then CT-01-0001 through CT-01-9999 and so on. That gives them a numbering system potentially up to CT-99-9999 which should give them almost 1 million clones give or take a couple hundred but that’s not what the GAR has so....??? 

Obviously, this doesn’t account for the specialized command clones, who get different letter designations and aren’t produced at such high numbers, though how Gregor got his extra 2-digit designation (and it’s attached to the end of his 4-digit one instead of at the front!!! WTF).