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Main answer? Not give the Empire something they can use for propaganda.

More than likely, I'd imagine them not wanting to be associated with the Separatist forces, making them seem like the "enemies of democracy" towards inner core worlds. Even though they already appear like that, it'd look even worse on their part

Imagine the clankers' reaction seeing Luke as a Jedi? B1, "Wait. Now we're fighting alongside a Jedi?"

It would have been interesting to see Kalani join the Rebel Alliance as he helps formulate tactics and strategies, and lead the Droids salvaged from abandoned CIS factories.

I think the biggest problem would be manufacturing. Rebels were constantly on the run and would have to leave bases at a moments notice

I’ve said this before but I wanted General Kalani to show up in the Rebels finale with a small fleet of Separatist ships and droid fighters to help Ezra defeat Thrawn.

My brother always says that if Droids really wanted to, they could have taken over the whole freaking galaxy.

Despite the numerous factors that made battle droids unappealing for the Rebel Alliance there was one area where battle droids could have made the Alliance's lives much easier without harming their image much: Ship crews. Manpower was a huge issue for the alliance and being able to actually man the chronically undermanned capital ships of the alliance with droids could have made a world of difference. Unfortunately, with the majority of the rebel leadership being core worlders this was unlikely to be ever considered by the Alliance as a viable option.

I love how they brought B1 and other droids back in Jedi Survivor Always liked their dialogue and personality in CW

They did, but seperatist droids weren't the droids they were looking for.

I’ve been thinking about this thing recently, it wouldn’t break the lore or even be all that unusual to see in canon. CIS assets probably WERE used and we just haven’t seen it on screen often. CIS planets and rebel planets probably overlapped a lot. There were also probably CIS vets in the rebel alliance. More extreme rebel partisans would probably not care about the image conflicts with using CIS assets. I thought it would be incredibly cool to see rebel star fighter livery on CIS star fighters. (Y wing paint on hyenas, A wing paint on trifighters etc). Or even battle droids customized by their living compatriots or themselves (poor upkeep and less memory wipes could cause an emergence of personalities like R2 and other “main character” droids)

The Rebel Alliance shouldn't be picky at using Clone Wars-era weapons and equipment from Republic and CIS when fighting the Galactic Empire.

As with most problems in SW land, the simple and true answer of "writing and production limitations" is usually the simple answer.

I think there were hidden droid fleets that the rebels could have used. Didn't they mount a first attack on the Death Star with a LucraHulk ?

When Andor introduced Anto Kreegyr as a former separatist rebel leader, I wondered whether he was going to have a force of ex-separatist droids to make him such a threat to the empire... with Kreegyr's forces having been defeated offscreen, that could still be possible

In my head cannon the Rebel supply ships were all manned and run by former separatist battle droids. I'm thinking there were so few of them left like the clones and those that did join the Rebellion chose to hang up their blasters and preferred doing lots of logistical stuff like supply loading, base building, trench digging etc.

I do have a bit of a head-cannon that Kalani is out there reactivating droid factories and when they come back only to find a "new republic" to fight

I think the real world answer to a droid army in the prequels was for the same reason why the original Battlestar Galactica went with Cylons instead of Armored Lizard People; it’s so the good guys can blast away without bloodshed and body counts and MPAA PG

It seems like an obvious answer to the manpower problems they were having but I imagine there was a lot of anti-droid sentiment after the Clone War. Just look at Mandos prejudice against droids. I imagine thats not uncommon for people caught up in the Clone War

If you want to take into account the new canon books, in the book Thrawn, Night Swan (a criminal that eventually became a proto-rebel leader) used a large number of vulture droids to attack a imperial strike force. Since imperial capital ships hadn’t fought vulture droids for decades, they’d forgotten how to affectively fight them and the vultures did far more damage than you’d expect.

This is great, but it doesn't answer the bigger question. Why didn't the CIS just turn their army back on when they realised they had been double-crossed? And why didn't the Kaminoens - a notoriously xenophobic and mistrustful species - implant a universal override switch for all their clones in the event that they be used against their creators? Did Palpatine even consider either of these possibilities? Or did he just luck out?

Back in the day I used to rage against Lucas for not using something used by the Rebels as the military units for the CIS… because would create a more organic cohesive 6 movie narrative in my young mind… … ah my misspent youth.

I do hope in the Reign of the Empire era with Bad Batch and Andor, we start to see more early rebels working alongside Separatists with Droids etc. They aren't the most effective but I feel like given many early rebel cells would have been former Separatists it makes a lot of sense for many more planets to have them around and discretely donate them to the rebel cause instead of properly disposing of them when the Empire cracked down. Also thematically, having Clone Rebels fighting alongside the Droids and helping to build the foundations of the early Rebellion is fucking awesome. They were both pawns mass produced to serve Palpatine's grand plan so having those pawns that he discarded be the first step in the long domino line of things that leads to his downfall is thematic and karmic as hell.

I think that you forgot one important factor which is that the battle droids were heavily associated with the CIS. The vast majority of the rebels' leadership was on Republic's side during the Clone Wars so they probably had a dislike towards the battle droids. Additionally if the rebels used battle droids, it would be very easy for the Empire to paint the rebels as a continuation of the CIS which would be very difficult for the rebels to gain support in the formerly Republican rich core worlds.

A lot of Separatist Holdouts continued to resist with battle droids after the founding of the Empire and were eventually wiped out. It just wouldn’t make sense for the Rebellion to continue to use battle droids when they’ve shown they were ineffective in the fight against the Empire.

You have to remember that the Rebels were fighting both an ideological battle and a physical one against the Empire. The galaxy had been traumatized by the Clone Wars, and the reason why people loved the Empire so much at first was because they feared the CIS. The Rebels ultimate goal was to show these hardcore believers that their choosing the Empire was wrong, but for the Rebels to simply use battle droids would only make those imperials more devoted. Despite being partially composed of former CIS holdouts, the Rebels had to distance their image from the image of the CIS because they needed the galaxy to view them differently. They weren’t a bunch of Separatists trying to establish their own government, they were a group of idealists trying to restore democracy and freedom to the galaxy.

Battle droids get shafted so damn hard, I acknowledge that it makes less sense for them post clone wars to fight the empire, but I just love seeing them so much. Absolutely my favorite units in all of Star Wars.

I've always wondered why CIS didn't collect battlefield data in real time via tactical droids and change their tactic accordingly. With hyperspace communication, CIS could update droid protocols with new tactical data all across the board. We all know why they ditched control ships but using them as info hubs with droid autonomy would be a game changer. All tactical droids being updated in real time about tactical situation, and passing relevant info to battle droids would be like fighting Skynet or Matrix

The Rebellion turned New Republic did use Droids to fight the Empire later in the books to brilliant effect. Lando Calrissian's Battle Droids were beyond deadly. Several Battle Droids were turned into Nanny's and were protecting the Solo Children growing up along with the Noghri.

In a roleplay I am doing, I actually am gonna use a lot of separatist forces for Early / unorthodox Rebel forces. Though they won't be the clone wars models, they'll have little decorations here and there that'll make them look like Republic battle droids. Distinctive red streaks, B1's have new visors and attachments on their head that makes them look like clones with upgraded programming and hardware that takes advantage of their independence. They'll be big features of Zakhul's rebellion which will be a Republic Holdout constantly under siege. Literally, the only reason they endure is that their chancellor will be a Sith Pure Blood who saw the whole thing coming miles away but Zakhul cos of its history and association with the old Sith Empire prevented them from having the power required to stop Palpatine. In reality, the key issue with Seppie Battle droids is that all of them are excessively limited and made by greedy corpos. Deploying them would require you to revolutionise all of their designs and upgrade their power packs and blasters to match the Blaster strength and range of Imperial blasters.

Hey generation tech, I was wondering why did the basic stormtrooper armor remain unchanged for over a decade while the clone trooper armor underwent upgrades and changes over a span of 3 years?

Astromechs and a few c-3P0 type droids (presumably) seem to be the only droids used by the rebellion and fill purposes that the rebellion needed most, ship maintenance, navigation, and piloting which seemed to be the main areas of confrontation with the empire rather than ground combat.

If we ever get an Empire of War 2, then I would love if it take some pointers from Awakening of the Rebellion and ideas from this vid. I can Imagined that if a player use a Rebel Alliance and fought/found a former CIS systems, then could active a minor event chain where the Rebel Alliance could gain a changes of getting droid units to serve as Defensive Units.

T-1 Tactical Droids that were still operating became part of the Rebel Officer Corps. I wonder how all those years of fighting and calculating turned out in the tactical droid. Hopefully we will see more of them in shows or movies.

Simple: optics, cover, and the destruction of most battle droids and their factories. This didn't mean that battle droids wouldn't be used when available. The bad batch did use battle droids to escape security droids.

Well, Jedi Survivor shows that CIS remnants were used by different groups, we know of Kalani and we can plot a course that they could offer a part to play as we know Kreegyr was a Seppie. The PR image is one thing but the Rebellion wasn't shy to have droids being XO.

Rebels couldn't hold planets or ground to have factories, plus hit and run with massive armies of droids is less effective. and there is the overall thing where lucas wasn't 100% on fleshing out the clone wars in episodes 4-6 so they can't be heavily featured.

I think they used droids mostly in support roles, like medical droids, astromech droids, translators, etc. It is more interesting that why did they not use them for sabotage and recon on a larger scale, like R2D2 was in many cases. Also it is a good question why reprogrammed or freed droids are not used widely (not purpose built, but jury rigged armor and weaponry), like K-2SO, 0-0-0, BT-1, Mister Bones, HK-47, IG droids and so on. Maybe there are fears of them going rouge, but a lot of lost potential there. Also less ethical rebel factions could have used droids on suicide missions willingly or unwillingly, even unknowingly, but typically Star Wars is more epic fantasy, not grimdark, at least on screen.

But if the rebel alliance uses droids to garrison and be emergency back up, or be POGs the rebellion can have a lot of extra manpower that can be used for the stealth missions. Additionally, the droids can act as tripwires, they can have an "all-clear" signal like the one on rishi moon and if a droid gets destroyed, the rebels would know where and when it happened.

I could imagine them using droids that wanted to fight against the empire, maybe being mistreated by them or witnessing their crimes, or being dragged in by their owners, most droids being maybe technical or statistical, but maybe more humanoid droids with better mechanical designs for speed would be gunners or something like those lines, but even then they probably wouldn't make up a heavy amount of their force however with humans being more unpredictable and being more free thinkers.

That episode of Rebels where they battle the old Separatist droids was great. I just finished watching Rebels recently and I absolutely loved it by the end. Initially I was a bit skeptical about it, but the stories, characters, and even the animation really won me over. Now I can’t wait to see what is next for Ezra, Sabine, Hera, Zeb, chop, Thrawn, and all the others in live action! It does suck that we won’t get to see Kannan, and Freddie Prinze Jr. could have reprised his role in live action. He did go out like a hero though.

Lots of great points, a very comprehensive review of not only examples of droid usage during the time of the Rebellion, but also an analysis of their viability and limitations against the Empire and the Rebels' political philosophy 👍

I would like for B1s to occasionally appear as Rebel or NR forces as security or backup for the protags. Just want CIS to be as relevant as the Clones are in the expanded lore.

Thank you so much for the answer! Great video as always!

one more thing the Imperial Military was basically designed to counter CIS tactics like droid swarms

Not related to the topic at hand, but I really dig the background music you’ve used in this video! Thanks for the interesting insights as always! 😊

Using droids to protect critical areas or as a delaying force when fleeing is honestly what I think they are best used as for the Rebels.

EXCELLENT VIDEO ALAN, GOOD POINTS MADE I AGREE WITH YOU ON TO THE NEXT

Imagine if the rebellion Reactivated Droid the factory s and used all the Droid variants and space ships against the empire.

My opinion: I really wish the Rebel Alliance had built their own Death Star or some kind of super weapon to prevent any future empires from taking over the galaxy. If I were a political or rebel officer; I'd advocate for this. It seems like a waste of good information to not have used the Death Star plans for better use. Keep in mind, the empire had two Death Stars. Imagine the death and destruction that would have happened if they both were fully operational. The rebels would have had no chance.

Have you by chance done a video analysis on the use of clones/genetic engineering for an army? I’d love to see it.

I’ve always chalked it up to Palpatine having the CIS be a droid army to make anyone using droids to fight him seem evil like the CIS (really just evil like Grievous)

Another great video!!!

I love these types of videos. Keep them coming.

Animation so smooth in this one good shit man

I really appreciate the fact that your sponsor video is actually really relevant to the your audience. I was going to skip it until I saw the lightsabers. It's refreshing to not see sponsors like NordVPN and World of Tanks.

using droids in a larger military role the empire would've been more serious about wiping out the rebellion

I just kinda figured it was because a) the Empire controlled most of the galaxy's industry and arming the Alliance with ships and blasters took priority, and b) the cost of fielding a sufficiently large droid army would have been too high.

Haven’t even watched the video yet, but I would imagine associating a seemingly benevolent movement based on freedom with a robotic force that put fear in many of the worlds they occupied wouldn’t be good for the cause.

It would have been pretty neat to see some rebels wearing clone trooper armour and using CIS weapons scavenged from old Clone Wars battlefields.

Additional point to look at but what about the BX Commando droids. they would have been highly use in the style of fighting done as the rebellion was getting started. Plus they were designed and built to be able to wear Clone armor which means they could have worn Stormtrooper gear or what ever they could lay hands on. Another point in their favor was that they were better able to adapt to changing situation and even then pair them up with bio handler to add in even more ability to handle shoe dropping moments.

If I were in Star Wars and helping lead the Rebellion I would definitely reactivate any Droid factories and rebuild the separatist army and Navy to combat the Empire and the Providence destroyer had a model that was the same length and size of a Star Destroyer which would be the ideal one to produce

I also think the Rebel Alliance never used battle droids because it would have required setting up factories and production lines. At this point and time, it felt like the Empire was everywhere so the Rebels had to stay mobile instead of being tied down to a single location. We saw Thrawn lay waste to Chopper base in the Rebels series so these factories would have been lousy investments for the alliance.

Adam, I love your videos

Kind of sad you didn’t bring up the Thrawn novel with the battle against vulture droids. But as always, great vid. 🎉🎉❤

I will always rank this as the top lore channel for any series I'm into simply for being willing to admit the truth up front before getting into the post hoc stuff people came up with to cover plot holes. Those ass-covering explanations are often the most fun part of a series, but I appreciate when people are grounded enough to just admit simple reasons like "they weren't planning on it from the beginning and added it later."

I think there was a stigma and fear within the Rebel Alliance of being branded as just an extension of the Separatists, which resulted in the Alliance trying to distance itself from surviving Separatists. Going too far in that direction would have made it easier for the Imperial propaganda machine to play on people's fear from the Clone Wars. It's also wildly unclear in Star Wars continuity just how expensive droids are. "We're cheaper than droids and easier to replace." from Andor is one of the more recent examples of dialogue that seems to suggest that fielding a droids might be harder than it seems.

That would be Awesome!

The last part is especially true. If cyber warfare in our modern battle field can seriously disrupt an army, there is no good outcome for an entire army made of robots.

I always figured it was because the battle droids grew to be a symbol of fear over the course of the clone wars, so using them in your rebel alliance would be the fastest way to get the galaxy to think of you as some separatist hold out terrorists, and give the empire another reason to demonize you in a way that the public will likely agree with

Weren't there any sepretists who continued to fight both the empire and the New Republic?

in truth, i could very EASLY see a rebel faction acquiring a cash of Vulture droids and... modernizing them. upgrading their weapons, their engines, giving them shields... even upgrading the droid brains in them, allowing them to talk to each other, coordinate with each other. Plan tactics, learn and adapt. While expensive and somewhat defeating the purpose of cheap and disposable... They could very easily create mayhem as they float in debris fields, asteroids, planetary rings, launching surprise and hit and run attacks on imperial ships and convoys. They could be left to "hide" waiting for their supply ship to show up to refuel and rearm them and either continue to hide there, or travel with the supply ship to a new system.

They wanted popular support and to make a bunch of heroes that could rally the people against the Empire and lifeless droids don't do that as their goal was always to convince the people to rise up not to themselves defeat the Empire.

I'd say battle droids would be best used as subordinates to the organic rebels. But only specific kinds. Like the ones with shields. This would give the organics something to shelter behind when things got hairy. And they're mobile enough to keep up with foot soldiers. Also bigger units could be used as fire support platforms. Again, under direction of a rebel commander.

Do a video of different types of star wars melee weapons.

allens beard slowly growing back looks almost as good as this lofthouse cookie sitting in front of me

I'd guess because the size of factories theyd need to make the amount of droids to be useful would attract a lot of attention, even if they didnt use B1s. Using old seperatist surplus would make sense especially if the rebellion happened right after empire was declared, but palpy probably would have had that all scrapped by the time of the rebellion

Droids make excellent logistical support units. Drivers who never tire on convoy, security details that are always on watch, and personnel always prepared to sacrifice themselves if necessary.

I think it was mostly an image thing. Every being in the galaxy over the age of 20 remembers the Clone Wars and the endless waves of killer battle droids sweeping through system after system, with the Separatists committing many war crimes and the Rebels wanted no association with the CIS

Writing this before I'll watch this vid I always asked that question and valued every story in which rebels did that. I just really think it'd be a great idea, especially on early days of GCW warfare to loose less people, as well as get some advantage in numbers and even more benefits if we remember about BX droids. Also, it wouldn't be that hard to obtain them. Bilions of deactivated droids lying around the whole galaxy. I doubt it's possible to scrap even half of them even in 10 years. Not to mention all those separatist cells who didn't deactivated their droids. I found it a bit disgusting we don't see them join the rebels only cause authors are afraid to mess up black and white picture "goodies look like that and badies like that" In short: I do like seeing more seppies or at least their equipment being used among rebels cause it's both realistic and somewhat inspiring

The one exception to the cessation of battle droid production was the rogue droid factory Vader and the 501st encountered in Star Wars battle front

I always imagined it was due to manufacturing restraints; droids are only effective when either produced en mass or with variety of models to cover various weaknesses and strengths. Additionally, like any complex machine droids require specialized maintenance which would require dedicated crews, crews which would be taken away from other areas where they're talent is needed.

Still should've totally used them more honestly, especially since it's reasonable to assume that any Sep Holdouts in Disney Canon likely just became Rebels as they did in Legends. Didn't need to get enough of them to become the face of the Rebellion or anything but, it still would've been cool to see more of them and practicality in their situation demands that they used anything they could get their hands on.

In that clone wars episode we see the third droid get shot down but again we see him fine charging to their death

6:54 thanks reference

Soundly stated sir.

I have never wanted to hang out at a Star Wars place as much as I have The Resistor.

I was just thinking this as I was playing jedi survivor!

Hi Allen! Big fan 🖖

I can understand that most of the droids in the Clone Wars could be obsolete. I have trouble believing the Droideka became obsolete. The droid has a couple of flaws, but the amount of punishment the deflector shield can take cannot be ignored. With a squad of soldiers the Droideka can dish out and receive massive damage kind of like a SPARK in X-Com.

Do a video of a list of star wars outer rim jungle planets.

So years ago I ran a TTRPG Edge of the Empire game (think D&D but star wars), and the party cell spent a LOT of time tracking down old CIS war assets and sending them back to the alliance. The way I handled that in the game was that the droids reclaimed were only used for a few, very select, scenarios: 1 - Imperial base assaults, usually as part of the battle plan or diversion to allow the rebels to infiltrate, 2 - Rebel base defense, why have personnel and manpower patrolling an area when you can have several droids and a few sentient overseers checking their work, 3 - Assaults, but only against targets well away from civilian areas (I explained this to the party that non-centrally controlled droids may have their threat responses vary wildly based on the panic of civilians, making them unpredictable or potentially dangerous to civilians). May not have worked for the rebellion as a whole (or even been liked by Rebel leadership), but having thousands of battle droids may have helped (or even been used) in the Mid-Rim retreat, to cover the positions of the withdrawing rebels.

If they had droids Vader would have been tired constantly as he's the only one that could ever defeat those droids. Because the rebellion would have tooken a stormtrooper helmet and see that they couldn't see anything. They would then program the droids to only do headshots.

Might be wrong but I also seem to remember something in the Thrawn book where rebels used buzz droids

First thing I thought of when reading the episode title: Optics. The Separatists were the "bad guys" of the Clone Wars for the average Republic/Imperial citizen, and using their droids would have been a good way to quickly turn public opinion against the Rebel Alliance. When you're fighting a rebellion, public opinion means everything

The "hearts and mind" aspect was probably also very important. The imagery of a rebellion using Separatist droids would create an immediate link to "the bad guys" of the previous war that much of the empire's population lived through, and that would give Palpatine a huge advantage on the propaganda front that I'm not sure the rebellion's leaders would want to just hand over so freely.

In cannon now idk in eu they did entire sections of thr rebel alliance used lucerhulks, and other driod ships and the cargo. So yes b1s, b2s, droidekas and other driods were deployed.

Sustaining using droids would've been tricky for the rebellion early on as they didn't really have many mech or factory worlds that I know of to produce a constantly new supply of droids.

I always assumed that all (or most) of the droid factories were destroyed by the empire