Today we put everyone's favorite
parasitic extra-galactic life-form (the flood) against the Confederacy of Independent Systems.
Which faction will win? Find out on today's episode of star wars Galactic
Versus.
(Theme music plays)
Hey guys this is Eckhart'sLadder, hello and welcome to another episode of Star Wars Galactic
Versus. This is something that you guys have been asking me to do for a very long time
Every time i take suggestions for galactic vs. episodes
the CIS vs. the flood is always the number one
suggestion and I won't lie, this wouldn't have been my number one episode of choice, but i'm still more than happy to do it for you guys. In
this scenario as i mentioned earlier the flood from the Halo series will go head-to-head with the Confederacy of Independent Systems
However, in this scenario the confederacy will have won the Clone Wars and now have direct control over the entire Star Wars
galaxy. They've thus ramped their production of clones up, and clones are now operating as
Stormtroopers would for the Empire with droid star fighters operating as Tie Fighters would etc etc.
Before we actually go into deciding who wins the matchup let's take a brief look at each
faction. I've talked time and time again about the Flood on this channel, if i were to guess i'd say that they're the enemy or
the faction that probably appears most in these galactic vs.
episodes.
Still i will give a brief
description of the species here,if you want to learn more just go back and watch one of my previous galactic vs.
episodes, the flood are ancient devastating parasitic extra-galactic threat from the Halo universe.
The power of the Flood varies wildly depending on the extent of their
Infestation, and these infestations come in various stages which are also linked to the development of the flood group consciousness.
For example, in the early stages of a flood threat the greatest danger to an individual is having your body
hijacked by flood spores. The Flood grow by accumulating body mass, basically by taking over the bodies of sentient beings.
However when the Flood take over a body, they do not only gain the body itself but also its memories and
intelligence. Because the Flood share a group mind and group consciousness this means that as the infestation spreads the flood as a whole
become much more sophisticated and much much more intelligent.
Typically as the flood
propagates they will create Proto-Graveminds then Graveminds and then Keyminds.These entities which are grown in succession but require a very
high amount of body mass are able to further coordinate the Flood and represent an extraordinary amount of intelligence and
tactical ability. We'll talk more about the flood and their war with the Forerunner as we get to the actual
matchup, but the key to know now is that the Flood are not simple zombies, they're extraordinarily deadly, they propagate very quickly, and the group consciousness that all flood share is probably the most dangerous
aspect of the species especially when you have Graveminds and Keyminds
coordinating the species as a whole. Let's now talk about the Confederacy of Independent
Systems and remember in this scenario we're assuming and pretending that the confederacy won the Clone Wars
let's say that Palpatine was accidentally killed during the battle of Corucant after the Republic cruisers fired on the Invisible-Hand
After a few more years the Separatists were able to eventually outlast the Republic.
Mostly through sheer production of Battle Droids and the dwindling Jedi numbers. The Confederacy has selected Raxus as its home planet and now
administers affairs throughout the galaxy using primarily Battle Droids and other forms of droids to fill all police, military, and administrative positions.
The Confederacy used hundreds, if not thousands of variants of Battle Droids, far too many for me to even scratch the surface of in today's video.
From Tactical Droids to basic Battle Droids to Destroyer Droids(Droideka). Anything that could or needed to be done on a battlefield was done by droids.
Vehicles used by the Confederacy were also mechanized either,they had a droid brain within them as did the vulture droids, or they were controlled by a droid as you see with the MTT's
or various other ground units. The Separatists were able to create very powerful weapons and even at times created super weapons.
On the low end we have something like the Seismic Tank, on the high end we have weapons capable of destroying
planets and then ships like the Malevolence with their Ion Cannons. One of the greatest strengths for the
Separatists, besides for just the power of their weapons, is how quickly
they could pump them out. The Confederacy, which at the height of its power, was limited to only a few
tens of thousands of planets was able to take on the Republic, which had over a million. And through a war of attrition
and just through sheer numbers with their Battle Droids, they were actually gaining some ground during the Clone Wars.
The Confederacy is not only a government structure but it's also propped up by huge mega corporations. These corporations have
tremendous production capability and they're able to create starships, droids, capital ships, weapons,
and basically anything else. I want to move away a bit from just looking at the facts of each one of these factions and start doing some analysis.
So let's move in now to the actual matchup.
The greatest weakness of the Confederacy here is certainly not their droid army, i mean against a very young Flood threat the droids
would be very effective because they don't present potential hosts, i mean even the Forerunners used things like Sentinels to try to stop early flood infestations.
Still while the Confederacy's military is comprised pretty much solely of droids the,
Confederacy is much more than a military,it's also a government. If the Confederacy won the Clone Wars,
this government would be responsible for protecting an entire galaxy with trillions and trillions of beings
These are all potential flood hosts so the weakness for the star wars universe in the scenario is how many
hosts there are, and how easily a flood infestation could spread. This was the exact same thing when the
Galactic Empire tried to fight the Flood. By far the most difficult aspect of the process is trying to contain the
Infestation. So let's say a flood spore somehow
lands on some Confederate world somewhere,what happens? Well in my mind the Confederacy would be a much more hands-off, less
authoritarian government than the Galactic Empire was. I mean they initially seceded from the republic because they were a bit too hands-on and the
taxation was excessive, so i imagine the Separatists would allow individual systems and planets to have a high degree of autonomy.
At this point we start seeing the problems when the Star Wars universe deals with a Flood infection the first is that hyperspace travel is
extremely common extremely fast and
extremely easy. For the infection to spread, all it would need to do is attach itself to a passenger going on a spaceship
to another planet. Due to the variety of smugglers,
criminals, commercial travelers, military travelers and everything else the flood will be able to propagate
extremely quickly. Even in the times of the Empire the Outer Rim planets and even the Mid Rim planets were not under tight rule, i mean
people could visit planets at will and
Under the Confederacy i would expect these rules to be even more relaxed. In my opinion the Separatists won't notice the Flood
Infection and they won't expect it until it's already offworld. There are so many planets in the Star Wars universe,
the likelihood of noticing something going wrong on a single one of them is extremely
low. The likelihood of being able to respond directly before the flood manages to propagate is
even lower. So now you have Flood colonies of various sizes some worlds probably have a few infected persons,
some may have dozens, a few worlds by now may be totally lost, and this is where almost
every faction that faces the flood fails. Because of the rate of Flood
reproduction and the way that they accumulate intelligence it's almost impossible to beat an enemy of this size.
As recognized by the Shipmaster in Halo 3:"One single Flood spore can destroy a species."
I don't think the Confederacy will be able to do that because of the nature of the Star Wars universe and its size,
which will lead to them trying to use the droid army to stop the flood at its full power
Don't get me wrong the Confederacy of Independent Systems had a very powerful army, but they're just not up for this task
The fact that battle droids alone are not susceptible to flood infection won't be enough
to win this war. I mean we know the Forerunner relied on sentinels and other constructs which were totally
artificial and they relied on them in the trillions ,but it still wasn't enough to stop the infection. That's just because of the sheer amount of civilian populations that the flood now has access to.
Also in my mind the Artificial Intelligence of the Star Wars universe is not up to par when compared with the Artificial Intelligence
used by the Forerunner. So the Separatists will have a very difficult time
mobilizing and reacting to the various Flood threats which are now presenting themselves
across the galaxy also as further beings are consumed the flood is gaining more
intelligence itself and perhaps by now has consumed someone who knows the
locations of the Battle Droid factories or, if it still exists, where the master shutoff switch is. It's also possible that has the Flood growing in sophistication
they, will be able to corrupt the battle droids themselves as they did with Mendicant Bias
who was a Forerunner AI before defecting to the Flood.
All in all battle droids are fine and maybe even good for fighting a localized Flood
Infestation however due to the nature of the Star Wars universe there's no
way that the Confederacy will be able to respond to this threat before it reaches other planets. At that point the CIS is just
hilariously outmatched by the flood. The Forerunner, who technologically dwarfed any faction in the star wars universe,
Were unable to do so. What chance that the Separatists now have,
assuming the initial flood infection starts on a planet connected to the rest of the galaxy which for the sake of this scenario i think
is necessary, the Separatists just don't stand a chance. I give this matchup to the Flood and i think they win ten times out of ten and
that's why i was a bit reluctant about doing this video. But i know you guys really wanted it and i hope you enjoyed.
Let me know down in the comments what you thought. If you agree with my analysis, if you disagree and of course any future
matchups that you'd like to see. Also make sure you join the Discord where you can vote on future
matchups and help decide which videos get made. Follow me on Twitter where you can listen to my inane ramblings about Star Wars and other
science fiction and if you really like the channel
consider donating on patreon, where you can support the channel on a monthly basis. Anyway thank you so much for watching guys as always
this has been Eckhart'sLadder, may the force be with you.