Epic encounters
Epic Encounters is a podcast where we pit some of the most popular characters from different universes against each other in differnt scenarios to see hwo would win. We analyze the characters' strengths and weaknesses, and we discuss how we see the fight going down, round by round. We also consider the characters' personalities and motivations, when we aren't discussing fight we talk about various news from a range of fandoms
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Epic encounters
epic encounters: Clone Troopers vs Helldivers Showdown
Ever wondered who would win in a fantasy face-off between Star Wars' Clone Troopers and the Helldivers from Arrowhead Game Studios' universe? This episode is a must-listen as Matt and I, Braylon, orchestrate an intergalactic chess match for the ages. We strip away the starships and focus purely on the ground game, comparing the elite skills and armaments of these two forces in a speculative 5v5 brawl. You'll get ringside seats to witness genetically modified warriors clash with the most tenacious soldiers of Super Earth, where every round, tactic, and tool is meticulously scored to determine the ultimate champion.
Hold onto your helmet as we dissect whether a DC-15 blaster rifle could outgun a Helldiver's arsenal, or if the Z6 rotary cannon would spin a victory for the clones against the MG94 machine gun's relentless barrage. It's a detailed rundown of the offensive and defensive capabilities that could tip the scales in this fierce contest. Plus, we don't just talk hardware; we examine the emotional core of these soldiers—could a clone's brotherhood be his downfall, or does it make him fight harder? Find out as we scrutinize every detail, from the thickness of their plating to the depth of their resolve.
As the dust settles, we gather the data and crunch the numbers. Who will stand tall when the scores are tallied? Join us for a gripping session of analysis and friendly debate that ends with a decisive verdict. You won't want to miss our wrap-up of this battle royale that pits the best of galactic warfare against the juggernauts of democracy. Tune in for an episode that's part strategy session, part sci-fi showdown, and all-out entertainment.
Good morning or evening listeners, and welcome to another episode of Epic Encounters. I'm your host, braylon, and this is my co-host. Audience member, train conductor, pilot, minecraft enthusiast farmer, street pharmacist and all-around human person.
Speaker 2:Matt, matt, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. So you've got a long list of titles today.
Speaker 2:It's pretty good Bill.
Speaker 1:And for our episode today, we have the clones from the Star Wars universe genetically engineered soldiers made for war on behalf of the Galactic Republic versus the fighters of democracy, the people who will come to your house, kick in your door and give you liberty the Helldivers. So. I hope everyone's got as many American flags as they can and don't mention anything about having oil for at least the rest of the episode. Um, space america yeah, space, space, america. Well, it's literally super yeah yeah, I don't.
Speaker 1:I don't know how more American you can be. I mean, the only thing that they could have done more is call it Super America or Mega America. I'd be okay with Mega. I'd be more okay with Mega America than Super America, it just sounds cooler. Or Omega America.
Speaker 2:I'd like that one a lot more still ridiculous, but you know whatever no, we're alpha america, you come first.
Speaker 1:Okay, all right, let's stop okay with that being said, we should get down into what the episode's gonna be. So we're gonna go over the weapons and equipment of each of the individual teams. It is a 5v5, with each group having a specific set of specialists, their leaders, heavy weapons coordinator, engineer, sniper, and then your standard rifleman, something put inside, the, put alongside there, um, for the fights. It's gonna be a best of, in your mind, best of 1000, just how this fight would go if they were to face off against each other many, many times over and who would win more often than the other, based on their equipment, weapons, their toughness, strategy, armor, what weaknesses each side has, and just kind of breaking down which one would win overall and then why. We think that after we go through the play-by-play and at the end of the entire combat, we'll go over what we scored for everything and why we scored those things that way to kind of back up our choice.
Speaker 1:With that being said, matt, we can get right into it with talking about the. You may talk about whichever one you want to start with, because we can just get into discussion on either one. I guess we can start with the clones. I think that's the one that both of us know pretty well all the information on the individual groups. We wanted to go over just the stuff that we're not including. Yeah, just a couple of things that we think aren't worth adding to the conversation, specifically for the hell, go ahead, go ahead.
Speaker 1:You can go ahead and talk about it if you want yeah, for both of them.
Speaker 2:We are excluding not airdrops, we're excluding, uh, orbit to surface artillery.
Speaker 1:I'll say that, I guess yeah, that that tanks, aerial support, all of the additional factors that you have. So hell divers can't call in their air support. They can't call in assistance from anyone outside of the battle, because it is meant to be one team versus the other in a fight to the death. It can. If the moment you add in other factors, then we have to start comparing way more things in the scope of what we really want to talk about and so just focus.
Speaker 2:It's very hard to measure.
Speaker 1:Yeah, we want to measure one squad versus one squad, not one squad plus their air support, plus any kind of logistics they can throw in. That doesn't help with us deciding which one we want to do.
Speaker 2:Plus the lint in your pocket.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and not. No pocket sand, no lint pockets. What Wait a second? Why the hell am? I even Shut the hell up, Matt. Pocket sand and pocket lint ain't got nothing to do with this.
Speaker 2:Justice lint.
Speaker 1:Alright for anyone unfamiliar, starting with the clones, anyone unfamiliar with the clone troopers they are the main force of the Galactic Republic in Star Wars.
Speaker 1:They're equipped to go around different planets throughout the galaxy and ensure something very similar to democracy, but bring people into the Republic or remove the C cis from those areas.
Speaker 1:The entire group is trained from birth, after they've been cloned, to be a fighting force that is second to none.
Speaker 1:They're trained by bound one of the best bounty hunters of the time period, which would be jango fett, to be effective to fight, and they're based off him genetically to be effective to fight, and they're based off of him genetically to be effective to fight pretty much any enemy. And all of their weapons and equipment and everything else are all made specifically for them, produced specifically for that tactic and that need. So everything, including their equipment, weapons, gear, armor and their support vehicles were all made for them to be interchangeable and work with each other, which is why the clone fighting force in Star Wars is so effective. On to the Helldivers really quickly, just to cover what they can and can't do is the Helldivers are essentially a force of either conscripted or volunteer military forces that all join up together on behalf of Super Earth that are deployed to different planets and various places to secure democracy aka oil yeah, yeah, oil, different planetary resources and so on, playing very hard on that america trope.
Speaker 1:They focus on guerrilla warfare, hit and run and then sometimes overwhelming localized force, and they fight various types of enemies. Whether that be, I think, what is it? The collective? Uh, the? What are the damn bugs called?
Speaker 2:how did I forget the name of these guys? Already they are. Oh man, I've been playing too many bug games. I keep wanting to say tyranids. Yeah, they're not.
Speaker 1:They're not wanting to say Tyranids, they're not Tyranids from Warhammer, that's a whole nother hellscape.
Speaker 2:Terminids.
Speaker 1:Terminids are the bugs in that situation, but yes, they fight against Terminids. Terminids are the bugs in that situation, but yes, they fight against Terminids, terminator-like robots from some planet I can't remember what it is and we'll get into that later but they fight against various different enemies to secure different resources or spread democracy or liberate those resources from enemies that super earth deems problematic another list of enemies is I do know that they do fight cyborgs, which are supposed to be rebels yeah, yeah those are the actions that they they stole the robots planet.
Speaker 2:We don't like space communists here.
Speaker 1:If you're not a human and from Earth, they don't like you. A very straightforward, a very xenophobic view of the galaxy. Fair enough, I guess.
Speaker 2:Scary place out there. Gotta power my ship.
Speaker 1:Yep, scary place out there, gotta power my ship. Yep, scary place out there, gotta power my ship. So, uh, you gotta die so I can get fuel from you. Um, with that being said, I think that kind of covers the bulk of the things we can get into, or at least a brief little intro into things we can get into, or at least a brief little intro into things we can get into. A little bit of the breakdown of how each of the things work, starting with the clone troopers. So we're going to go into the equipment. Each of the clones has their standard armor, which is this plastoid or plastic mixed armor that's sealed on the outside. It has a little undersuit and bodysuit in there that allows them to be in space for limited amounts of time, travel in various atmospheres and battlefields, as well as survive, shrapnel and displace energy weapon attacks though I think we discussed this the armor is and I know it'll come up as a question the armor is decent against ballistics, even though they primarily get shot by energy weapons. The armor is decent against ballistics.
Speaker 2:We'll cover that when we get to it. Yes, and gunfire and so on.
Speaker 1:We'll cover it when we get to the discussion about how we think the battle will go Going over quickly. What clones are equipped with? Weapon wise, we have the DC 15 Blaster.
Speaker 2:I gotta actually slow down a little bit we have the DC-15 blaster, followed up by their RPS-6. Oh wait, yeah, heavy. Oh, in their heavy section we have RPS-6 rocket launcher, followed by oh man, the chaingun is not, is it just called chaingun?
Speaker 1:I think it's the C6, but I'd have to double check on that one. There is a Z6 rotary blaster.
Speaker 2:I see it Yep, yep. And then, following that, we have oh boy, oh, I don't have my other one pulled up.
Speaker 1:I think that's all. I think that's everything. They have that, and then, lastly, they have their thermal detonator and their droid poppers, which are their special weapons, and some other ones that we will discuss further down when we're breaking down the comparison between the two weapons. But that's the standard stuff that we were going over For the democracy corner for democracy. You have a mixture of. Before we even get any further than that, I had to slow down. I'm going a little faster than I really want to and I'm getting a little confused.
Speaker 2:My bad. We can cut this section out and then we can read a little bit about it if we need it to be a little longer.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, it's fine, I'm just moving a little. I'm moving myself a little faster than I think I want to. I'll cut that part out. I do want to keep the pace, but I want to slow down just a little bit, so I'm not going too fast so for the, I think I have the yes, okay.
Speaker 1:For the side of democracy, we have the AR-19 liberator, essentially your fully automatic rifle with all your bells and whistles, scope, stock, everything else, and it's a bullpup rifle. For their heavy weapon, you have the MG-94 machine gun and for their anti-tank weapon you have the RX-1 rail rifle. And then their special weapons are all of the various types of equipment that you can bring. If anyone's played hell divers, you know that there's a massive array of special weapons, special items, grenades, bombs, different types of deployables, etc. That you can bring. So we can't cover every single last one of them, but we can cover a fair bit and go all right here. Here's everything that they could possibly bring, and we won't talk about every single last one indefinitely for no reason, cause that's pointless. All right, with that being said, we can go ahead and set up this, this particular talk about the fight. I don't really have too much to say further. Yeah, we can just continue moving on. I'll cut out any of that extra shit. All right with the next section to talk about is the battle itself or the breakdown of the battle itself. All right, so we're gonna go ahead and get into the battle itself and discussing what.
Speaker 1:What in particular about each of the groups is important. And let's just start with. We'll just talk about their general skill in combat in this situation. Talk about their general skill in combat in this situation. I think I want to start with the clone troopers too. Um, we can. Let's start with just mobility. Um, when we were discussing it, both of them are roughly the same as far as their ability to move around. Neither one has any particular advantage in their natural movement or ability, even granted by their armor or their physicality. No significant differences between the two, significant differences between the two.
Speaker 2:The only thing we found for Clone Troopers was there was mild discomfort for the armor, specifically when sitting down, and then Helldivers have a little bit of a power armor going on there, but nothing major, nothing that we decided would really swing too much.
Speaker 1:Yes. So out of a score of 100 possible points for either one, the Helldiver scored a 28 and the Clone Trooper scored a 25. When it came down to strength, once again very similar. Both of them are as strong as you would expect a human soldier to be. Neither one of them is excessively impressive in that category. They probably can bench press, push, deadlift. Whatever you want to go with for your idea of strength in this situation. Idea of strength in this situation about the same amount, with the hell divers, of course, having some form of power armor, meaning that their standard strength is likely a little bit higher, with hell divers scoring a 28 out of 100 and clones getting a 25 out of 100 then quick disclaimer for everyone else uh, we went with, like your typical human, to be between 10 and 15 for this, and then, like an Olympic athlete, to be around 25, 30 yeah say we.
Speaker 1:We kind of set a standard idea for where we wanted everybody to be at, so that the you know where the standard starts, where the baseline starts. Standard humans are between generally 1 to 10. And then everything above that is slightly above your standard baseline human who isn't out of shape.
Speaker 2:And then also, I guess, another quick disclaimer, if you're not super like, if you kind of disagree, like, oh hey, like someone is like a soldier should be better than an olympic sprinter, for example, or something like that. If you look up like olympic, olympian body types depending on their sport, you will see the dramatic differences in specialization between people's bodies I mean people are going to be yeah, everyone's going to be massively different.
Speaker 1:Like, an Olympian is probably not who I would want to go for. When I'm talking about physical strength, I'd probably want to talk like. I'd probably want to say that, hey, a, a world's strongest man power lifter is probably significantly stronger than an Olympian. Yes, you're right, but they're also huge significantly stronger than an Olympian. Yes, you're right, but they're also huge. You got people up there in the 400-pound range who couldn't run a mile, but they could throw 1,000 pounds around. That's great, but that's not what I'm going to use as my baseline, nor am I going to use. I might use it for where I would label something on a scale, but I'm not going to. I'm not going to use it for an example. I'm going to use olympics. So you can go look at this stuff and you can go look at the. You can go look at comparable skill to that yep uh, next strategy?
Speaker 1:uh, this is. This is where our list gets a little unbalanced. Generally speaking, hell divers have a very guerrilla tactic style breakdown for things. Hell divers are shock and awe tactics, hit and run. We pop into the situation that we need to get to smash this guy out of here and move on, and a lot of times you may leave an area.
Speaker 1:When you're done with your objective, you may dip off to another place or you might die, yeah, or you might die because they sent you on a suicide run, they sent you on a dummy mission, uh, but. And then sometimes there's overwhelming force by just sheer weight of numbers or by their ships and vessels. But that's neither here nor there. In this situation, we consider that their tactic style, while it is effective for their world and for their fights, generally speaking the tactic used is rudimentary and they don't really have any other major tactics that are mentioned. It's just kind of brute force, everything. Then we move over to the clone troopers. Well, I do believe that clones in star wars are a little held back by the fact that they had jedi generals at points who knew nothing about warfare and were very un uneducated in the art of fighting these massive wars across an entire galaxy. The clones themselves had excellent tactics, excellent strategy.
Speaker 1:Once order 66 was given, they were able to take out dozens of thousands of jedi with just their, with just their tactics, and surprise training from additionally, yeah, so they've been trained from birth and, additionally, the higher up on the clone trooper scale you go, the more the skill gets better and better and better. I would say that their current tactic level is very similar to modern day special forces and elite troops that we use, so very much all of the strategies that you would see in the modern day for seal teams, for marines, for rangers, for green berets, for, uh, even your british special forces and so on. So for when we went for gauging the points on their strategy and tactics, uh, hell, divers were given a 15 for being, you know, just essentially very basic, but better than your average person.
Speaker 2:We won't To the clone.
Speaker 1:What was it? Oh, you broke out there. That's my bad. Oh yeah, you're fine. Yeah, but for Helldivers, we went with your average of an average of 15, with clones getting and getting a higher, much, much higher score of 52, because their strategy and and overall tactics were so much better than held average.
Speaker 2:based on what you see, based on the lore, Our justification for that, if anyone needs it, is uh, it's hard to compare like your typical hyped up on democracy human versus the world's greatest bounty hunters clone times five, yeah well, in this case, times an army, but in our specific case, times five yeah.
Speaker 1:So take, take your best street or special forces team today versus your average, uh, your average gun-toting american, and I can, I can almost tell you that you're gonna run into the issue of what is actually you know. Just take your average, like your average soldier or police officer or SWAT team member, and then put them up against your average special forces, your Navy SEALs, your SEAL Team 6 style dude, and there's going to be a massive difference in training, experience, tactical acumen, everything. They're not going to be the same. They might be armed with the same shit. They're not going to be the same. They might be armed with the same shit, but not going to be the same.
Speaker 2:If you play paintball against SEAL Team 6, you're going to have a bad time and a lot of losses.
Speaker 1:That'd be kind of fun though, I won't lie I feel like I've already done that I'll say you could just be like hey, can we play paintball with SEAL Team 6? If they're willing. Hey, can we play paintball with SEAL Team 6? If they're willing. That'd be fun, though 100% I'd pay to do that. It'd be over fast and I wouldn't win, but it'd be fun.
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely I would do it. I would also do it, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:I'd travel and pay to do that. That would be fun. Surprise, that's not a thing. Next, we're moving on to toughness. Matt, you can go ahead and talk about this one. It's not special.
Speaker 2:So toughness, in the left corner of democracy and liberty we have a solid 18. Slightly above human or slightly above average human. We decided to go with that because, well, you do have some training and you are prepared to go to war and die for democracy and apparently jump out of a spaceship and land. So you know it takes take something to do that. So we went with just a little bit above average. So we went with 18 for that. And then also yeah good.
Speaker 1:Wait one second. We're making sure it it's reconnecting. It probably already recorded it because it does it on both sides, but it says trying to reconnect.
Speaker 2:Interesting.
Speaker 1:Okay, you can hear me though right now, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, you sound fine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can just carry on, I'm done. It says that, but it's being weird, I don't care.
Speaker 2:Okay, carry on, I'm done, done. It says that, but it's being weird, I don't care, okay. And then, in the right corner of the republic, see what I did there right for republic, left for liberty. Easy, it's like it wrote itself. We also have another solid 18 because, although they are engineered genetically and clones of one of the greatest well, the greatest bounty hunter of his time in star wars he is, I mean, they're still relatively normal and feel pain the same way, and they all yeah, they're all still human.
Speaker 1:So we went with an even 18 on both sides, just above the average yeah, nothing special for either one of them that would make us go, uh hey, this one is significantly better than the. Now moving on to armor, and for armor, this was one of those ones that, uh, this is another one that was very close for both of them. While we gave the hell divers a uptick in their strength and mobility because of their armor in particular which because, yes, their armor does make them better when it came down to their armor's actual survivability, the armor doesn't really speak much about how reliable it is. It is good against light, against small arms, fire and shrapnel and so on, but without any of the customization that is added by individualization or so on by individual helldivers. The armor itself is pretty lackluster, more relying on you not getting hit, which most armor does, but it can't take a beating. It isn't meant to take a beating.
Speaker 1:The Clone Trooper armor, while very similar to the Helldiver armor in the fact that it's meant to take care of light arms and so on, it has a little bit more survivability overall. It's meant to deflect off energy attacks and small arms. It's meant to deflect off energy attacks and small arms. It's very effective against ballistics, which is one of the things we were going to come back to A large part of the reason in Star Wars why they don't use ballistics anymore is armor got good. Armor got good. It's good enough to deal with ballistics. Probably your standard 5.56 from the modern day wouldn't be good enough to penetrate clone armor. It's just going to be generally pretty effective against your average everyday ballistic weapon and it also allows them short travel in space. It's completely sealed it. It offers a lot of different advantages that the hell diver armor. Despite the fact that it gives a bonus in strength, the clone armor is just a little bit more protective.
Speaker 2:Quick question. More of a joke. So if we put up a clone trooper versus a brute, would it be cracking a cold boy open?
Speaker 1:That's fucked up, that's probably what would happen yeah. Cracking probably what would happen, yeah, cracking open a clone one.
Speaker 2:Oh man, I had to. It was an easy joke.
Speaker 1:Even though it would be Now, clones would do pretty poorly against a brute. Both of these would do pretty poorly. Yeah, yeah good, clones would do pretty poorly against a brute, just like both of these would do pretty poorly.
Speaker 1:Um, yeah, one of the yeah good, oh yeah say as far as ballistics go you can. You can see quite a few of the star wars comics where ballistics even small shrapnel fragmentation grenades, stuff like that, aren't super effective against clones and some of the ballistic style weapons that are used at various points aren't very effective. And I know that in modern canon clone trooper armor and stormtrooper armor is generally pretty bad. But that's just modern canon, because as far as legends and, uh, various lore goes, the armor is pretty effective against pretty much all blunt force, trauma and ballistics. It's just not great against energy shots and even then most blaster rifles with only one shot wouldn't kill a clone. In fact it generally only knocks them out cold Because the armor is meant to disperse heat and disperse direct damage. Generally speaking, the armor is pretty effective in comparison Weaknesses I'm actually going to let you take that away, man.
Speaker 2:For weaknesses, we went with emotional attachment. We gave a minus five to clones for this one. I'm actually going to let you take that away, man, okay. So for weaknesses, we went with emotional attachment. We gave a minus 5 to clones for this one. The reason being is they're all clones and they're all raised together in the same place, on Kamino, and trained together throughout their entire short, sad lives. Alright, that's me okay.
Speaker 2:I got dark about that I couldn't help myself, oh man, but yeah, because of the emotional attachment, we figured that, like when one of their comrades goes down, it would affect them in battle, at least to a minor degree. So we gave a minus 5 penalty for that, and then for weaknesses, as far as hell divers go, and the sweet sweet side of justice, liberty and democracy. We have a minus 10 for undisciplined, because jumping out of a spaceship with your american flag and a gun and a bald eagle and landing on your knees is not the greatest military tactic and on top of that isn't a great military tactic?
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah, oh, man, also, like in terms of training, there's just not a whole lot of discipline there. Not saying that they didn't get any training. They obviously know how to load their gun and probably take care of their gun it's their gun so I would at least hope that they have that much going on. Plus, you know, they knew how to jump out of the spaceship. So they're doing pretty good for themselves so far. But we went with the minus 10 for undisciplined because they're just not gonna be trained from birth yeah, so it's.
Speaker 1:It's not the same level of discipline. And once again it goes back to that strategy thing. If your strategy is guerrilla tactics and you don't even have a standardization for your uh, soldiers, you're gonna have a lot of, you're gonna have a lot of variation amongst the effectiveness of each individual troop, rather than a squad that all has uniformity and all works together as a unit. You're going to have a bunch of randomness. And that's kind of the thing for hell divers in general, which, going on to x factors, we'll start immediately with the hell divers thing and that is one of their X factors, which is their customization and individuality. They're not a uniform army of everyone being exactly the same.
Speaker 1:They are a more I almost want to say militia style, like a civilian militia of sorts. Want to say militia style, like a civilian militia of sorts. They're essentially a private military, private military that is state owned by the world. I don't know that's a weird way to put it, but hell divers in particular are this militia that has various customization and can be changed, instead of the rigid stability of the clone army.
Speaker 1:And for the clones X factor it is the fact that they are emotionally attached to the people that they were born with and trained with, because brotherhood and being bred for war essentially makes them a very effective unit. They can cover each other's weaknesses. They know what failures the other ones might have and then what strengths the other ones have, which is why you get units like the bad batch that are, even though they're defective clones or defective arc troopers whichever one they are they're insane. They're insanely effective, much like many other small units of clones that are hyper effective for what they are and clones happen to be that way in general. That's just their, that's just their standard way of going about things standard way of going about things.
Speaker 2:A good example of that is if you say that or if a clone says that they're going to cover your back and you're part of that squad, you know that they mean it and don't have doubt for it yeah, you already know that guy.
Speaker 1:It's. It's the guy that you were you shared a bunk bed with for the past your entire life yeah, your entire life.
Speaker 2:You already know that this guy can do what he says he's going to do, because you know him already another thing that I should add to this that's already not in our notes is uh, they all have the same size clothing and everything is built specifically for one person, because everyone is that one person. I mean, yeah, that is true that they all can, they all are used to everything working for each other.
Speaker 1:Which person I mean? Yeah, that is true that they all can, they all are used to everything working for each other, which is, I mean, the modularity of everything is really good I mean I'm not sure if that really is worth mentioning, the max factor, but it is kind of cool, I guess I guess we just throw it in there as we move on to weapons, because I guess that's where it starts to matter.
Speaker 1:Um, let's start with the primary weapons. We're just going to give the scores on these ones instead of just talking about them. Dc-15 versus the AR-19 Liberator Clone. Dc-15 got a score of 30 and the Helld 15 got a score of 30 and the hell divers got a score of 15.
Speaker 1:And the main reason for that is the clone trooper blaster is modular. It can do a bunch of things. It can change its power output. It has insane range, has no bullet drop. It's ammo capacity can be any, is variable, but they have a standard 500 rounds per magazine without needing to change it. Their magazines are light. The changing magazines is easy, they're interchangeable between everyone's guns and the blaster itself is light. It's collapsible, it can fit in tight spot.
Speaker 1:It's just a better gun overall and it has a higher damage output because essentially one blaster shot might be the end of the fight in reality everything between your front and back yeah, and the blaster is at its highest setting is just powerful enough to, as we see, with like droids and stuff, just punch through the droid in a single shot, as compared to A AR 15 or 19. In this case it's going to have, I think that it's based off of 7.26 or 7.25, whichever one ammunition, which means, which means it's not punching through the armor. That's specifically good against small to medium arms. As far as ballistics go, armor to armor and weapon to weapon, the DC-15 is just better.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:Next is the clones CZ or just Z6 versus the MG94 machine gun.
Speaker 2:So for these we went with both. Actually, I'm not too sure about that. Is the chain gun standard?
Speaker 1:Not the chain one. The CZ or the Z6 is essentially a standard weapon, A standard heavy weapon. Versus the MG94, and that's the heavy, so the clone's got a 15 in this category.
Speaker 2:And the Helldiver's got a 25.
Speaker 1:Yes, and that is primarily because the the Helld hell divers machine gun is just more effective. It has a lot less issues, it isn't unwieldy, it can still be fired on the move, it has a decent ammo capacity and range and then if you could imagine taking that coin and then flipping it and landing in the lake.
Speaker 2:That's where the clone's gun is yeah, it's, it's, it's.
Speaker 1:It's just kind of bad it. It has a decent rate of fire, but not anywhere. Not the same as the mg94s. It's slower. It's. It's not significantly slower. Um, it's not significantly slower, but overall it's not significantly slower. It's not significantly slower, but overall it's slower. It has the issue of being an overly cumbersome heavy changing ammunition or reloading takes several minutes and normally requires clones to just leave the battlefield to do so or have heavy cover while they do so.
Speaker 2:You did hear that correctly. Several minutes.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a straight up sit down and change this out and hope nobody shoots you in the face during that time period.
Speaker 2:Might as well listen to Audible.
Speaker 1:Put it on an audiobook or a YouTube video or listen to this. Or you can listen to a podcast while you change out the ammo for the weapon. It takes too long. It's just an ineffective and cumbersome weapon that limits the mobility of the clone significantly and I would say that overall it's probably not other than covering its niche.
Speaker 2:It's not better than the standard dc-15 so the summary of this is the clone's chain gun is as effective as their lifeline yeah.
Speaker 1:Next is their anti-tank weapons for each of them uh, for the hell divers. While there are a lot of different ones, we decided to go with probably the best one, which is the RX-1 Railgun Stupidly powerful, incredibly good at taking out heavy targets, can punch through most light cover and pretty much all armor types. It's incredibly effective on that part, and for the clones, it is the what weapon. I know it's incredibly effective on that part, and for the clones, it is the what weapon.
Speaker 1:I know it's one of the rocket launchers rps6 rocket launcher standard all right, and the clones for the rps got a 40 to the hell's 30 for the railgun. And the main reason for that is the Rocky Launcher has six shots, it has homing, it has incendiary rounds, it has high explosive rounds, it can be fired indirectly and from cover. It links up to clones helmets. They're lightweight, the things aren't really big. They're no bigger than an RPG seven and they're actually smaller than that and they're they're particularly used for small vehicle, small vehicle, scout vehicles or infantry. It's, the weapon is just particularly well suited for this engagement and it's their standard rocket launcher.
Speaker 2:What they don't have in the chaingun, they do have in the rocket launcher. Sorry, God.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, no, absolutely, because the chaingun is kind of a fail, the Z6 is a fail, but at least the rocket launcher makes up for that. And then some. While the rail rifle is good and while we could use any of the other heavy weapons, we just thought the rail rifle particularly fit the label of a heavy weapon for tanks and vehicles very well. And while, yes, if we put tanks in here, the weapon would probably score much, much higher for this situation, in a situation where both of them are shooting at each other, the railgun gets to ignore cover, while the other weapon fires over buildings around corners and is lightweight. Just as a caveat, because we thought about it before, it was well, why not use the rocket launcher for the Helldivers?
Speaker 1:The reason is their rocket launcher is huge, it requires a backpack, it's massive, it's not easy to carry around. It's massive, it's not easy to carry around, it's cumbersome, it's primarily used against vehicles and has no particular way of targeting anything that's small or not massively thermal. It just wasn't an effective weapon. In that sense. It would be outdone by the clones rocket launcher and many of their other weapons. They give them a heavy machine gun. Same deal it's heavy, it's big, it's not going to do the job. Essentially it would. All of them would be outclassed, and at least the rail rifle is the closest one to being both effective against infantry and heavy targets, if it were to apply.
Speaker 2:And rule of cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and rule of cool. We did think about giving a number to all of the other different versions of the weapons, but we just skipped that. Lastly, special items, and we're not really going to break down these individually because there's a lot on both sides, but we gave the hell divers a 50 compared to the clone troopers 25, and it's almost entirely because the hell divers just have a greater list of special weapons that aren't limited to a specific type of unit, while clone troopers they do have lots of special gear, probably far exceeding that of the hell divers. A lot of their very special gear is locked to being specific types of clone troopers, special squads, special unit designations or types of clones, and that locks them out of a lot of their special gear, while for the hell divers it's take whatever the fuck you want.
Speaker 1:They want to take a shield, take a shield. You want to take a weird grenade, take a grenade. You want to take a detonating cord or a detonation satchel or a or trip mines, or so they take them all. And that's kind of the big, the big differentiation here that allows hell divers to have so many different weapon types and so many different gear loadouts that clones can't exactly keep up with that level of variation. Uh, that's, that tends to end our score here. Uh, quick caveat before we give out our final answer, and I know I think I said it earlier we didn't bring any of the other vehicles. We were going to add tanks, we're going to add the mechs or any of that other stuff. The reason why we left most of those out is we wanted to compare squad versus squad, not everything else, not tanks, and we thought that as soon as you added in the tanks or any of the vehicles, the battle quickly shifted in the clones favor far faster, because let's be real.
Speaker 2:What is democracy going to do against the fucking Star Destroyer?
Speaker 1:the difference in vehicles and Star Wars focus on having, especially for the Clone Wars era, having very effective vehicles is it throws it in their favor. So so fast that we didn't have a comparison. I didn't want to compare the mech to, I didn't want to compare the mech to the saber tank. I didn't want to watch. It's like hey, do you want to watch a guy inside of a big metal box get cooked alive like you threw a can of beans in a microwave? Yeah, I didn't think so, and so we skipped that one. But moving on to the final score, it is clone troopers 247 to hell divers 218. While x factors may have shifted the score in either one's direction, overall I think we can agree that clones would win this battle at least enough times to say that they win on average yeah, I would say 60 is where I would go for this because, no matter the terrain, I think clones generally will win just better weapons for various terrain.
Speaker 1:They can do close quarters, fighting in buildings they can do, especially in any kind of situation where there's long-range engagements. The DC-15 can just shoot so much faster and so much further.
Speaker 2:Man, I've been playing too much Baldur's Gate. I was like, what do you mean?
Speaker 1:No, not a DC-15. Save, that's not a. It's not a thing. Yes, you have been playing too much balder's gate uh, it's a dc 12 yeah, it's a dc 12, dc, dc 15. Save for them to uh, it's a save or suck moment either that. Either dodged or get sucked wait pause. I don't think I meant save it or get sucked. That's not what I meant, anyway close or win most times in this situation and that's just kind of how it is um speaking of train, though good speaking of train, uh, we did also talk about that.
Speaker 2:Because of guerrilla warfare tactics, we did decide that it would probably swing much more towards the hell divers. Oh, I don't know about much more, but it would definitely swing towards the hell divers in terms of, like favorable environment if we moved it to a more urban environment just because there's more to hide and cover behind, as well as move around and just do guerrilla warfare.
Speaker 1:Yeah, they can definitely take advantage of their slight speed advantage and their slight strength advantage in really close corners and, of course, the close quarters negates a lot of the clone troopers advantages from their blasters being greater range and greater ammunition, because it's close quarters. With all of that being said, clone troopers take the win and, with that being said, thank you for joining us for this episode of epic encounters and, with that being said, thank you for joining us for this episode of Epic Encounters. If you feel like supporting the channel, you can either subscribe to the channel for any of our extra content, like additional episodes, behind the scenes stuff, and also to suggest different episodes coming up that are not ones that we have listed or intend to do, to suggest different episodes coming up that are not ones that we have listed or intend to do. And if you just want to support the channel, you can support us on Ko-Fi or any of the other support links that are in there. They'll all be on the page, on the podcast page. Have at it. See you later guys.
Speaker 2:Peace.
