Legends Lore Notes
The Kamino Uprising
On her way to Tipoca City, Leia recalls hearing the news of an insurrection among the Kaminoan cloning engineers. After the war, seeking to secure the vital cloning facilities that were responsible for providing the Empire with the clones that helped to secure Emperor Palpatine's rise to ultimate power, Imperial control was firmly established upon Kamino through force of arms. Although Kamino would continue to grow more stormtroopers for the Empire, a small group of Kaminoans grew resentful of the Empire's treatment of Kamino as a virtual military police state. In response to the Imperial presence on their world, the Kaminoans launched a covert rebellion against the Empire by discreetly breeding a new army of clones, all based on the genetic template of Jango Fett. Unlike the first Clone army that had been bred for the Republic, the newest generation of clones were engineered with absolute loyalty to Kamino.
Over the next decade after the conclusion of the Clone Wars, in the year of 12 BBY, the Anti-Imperial Clone troopers were grown and trained to eventually liberate Kamino from Imperial rule. Garbed in Phase I armor and composed entirely of Jet troopers, the Anti-Imperial clones were augmented with a series of ARC troopers, as well as a few LAAT gunships. Approximately twenty years after creating the first generation of clones based on the Fett template, the Anti-troopers were fully grown, armed, and evidently prepared to fight against their Imperial brothers.
Around the same time, however, the Empire discovered Kamino's clandestine operation and responded by sending an elite detachment of the 501st Legion to Kamino in order to destroy the Kaminoan rebellion and restore Imperial rule to its cloning centers. The 501st's main target was Kamino's capital, the Tipoca City Cloning Facility, by then occupied by the Kaminoan rebels and their Anti-troopers. Boba Fett, also a clone of the long-dead Jango Fett, was hired to serve as the 501st's mission commander during the re-taking of Kamino, due to his extensive knowledge of the inner layout and workings of Tipoca City. To prevent any chances of encouraging other insurrections throughout the galaxy, the mission to Kamino was completely off the record.
The e'tire battle was virtually lost to the Anti-troopers from the start. Despite their advanced training, the younger Fett clones were outmatched by their older and more experienced Imperial brothers, none of whom held any reservations about gunning down their fellow clones. Aside from possessing many veteran troopers from the Clone Wars and superior firepower, the 501st Legion was greatly assisted by Boba Fett: the bounty hunter commanded his forces on site and led the stormtroopers into Tipoca City, killing the Anti-troopers wherever they encountered them.
This event became known as the Kamino Uprising. Unwilling to risk losing what remained of Jango Fett's blood, the main source for producing the Fett clones, one of the 501st's primary objectives was to capture a container that held a sample of Fett's DNA. After storming Tipoca City and retrieving the container, the 501st brought their progenitor's blood sample to a landing platform an Imperial shuttle awaited them. From there, the shuttle took Fett's DNA off planet to safety while the 501st fought on against their rebel brethren. After gaining further ground from outside the city, the 501st went on to fulfill its next primary objective—destroying the Kaminoan life support systems in order to kill all of the rebel clones that had not yet been decanted, thus preventing the Kaminoans from raising more Anti-troopers against the Empire in the future. Despite being protected by a numerous elite ARC troopers, the rebel clones failed to prevent the 501st from killing the undeveloped clones within the facility.
Although the stormtroopers of the 501st Legion proved their loyalty to the Galactic Empire once again, the circumstances surrounding the battle convinced Emperor Palpatine that a clone army, composed entirely of clones based on one genetic source, was too susceptible to corruption. From that point on, it was decided that new clone stormtroopers would be created from various templates; the Empire even resorted to enlisting regular Humans into the Stormtrooper Corps. Though the 501st Legion remained composed purely of Jango Fett's progeny for the time being, the rest of the Imperial Army became increasingly diverse through an ever-growing pool of enlisted troopers and alternative source clones.
However, apart from the Disney Canon, the Empire did not destroy Tipoca City. Despite the 'Clone Revolt', the cloning facilities on Kamino were still used by the Empire for various cloning programs, such as producing the clones of the deceased Galen Marek, Darth Vader's fallen apprentice.
The Kamino Uprising first appeared in the 2005 LucasArts video game Star Wars: Battlefront II as the fourth mission in the Empire section of the "Rise of the Empire" campaign.
The Timeline of the Clone Troopers
Since I have just told you the Legends version of why the Empire replaced clones with regular Humans, I will give you a short timeline of major events for the Jango Fett clones serving the Empire. One of the main plotlines of Star Wars: The Bad Batch is about the Empire getting rid of the clones due to producing them was expensive and the war came to an end. Not to mention that they immediately got the iconic stormtrooper armor we all know. What I do not like is that in the Disney Canon the Empire immediately replaced the clones with regular recruits shortly after the war. So, let's begin:
19 BBY:
Clone troopers receive the signal from Supreme Chancellor to execute Order 66. All of the Jedi are declared traitors to the Republic and must be terminated. Only 2% of the Jedi Order managed to survive the Jedi Purge, some going into hiding, some joining rebel factions, and some joining the Empire and becoming its first inquisitors. With the formation of the Galactic Empire, the clone army was reorganized into the Stormtrooper Corps, with the clone troopers being referred to as 'stormtroopers' while still wearing the Phase II clone trooper armor.
During the galaxy's transition from democracy to despotism, the stormtroopers retained the Phase II battle armor they customized with unit colors and markings during the Clone Wars. But the alterations that the New Order introduced soon affected the Empire's shock troopers, particularly their armor and weapons. Around the same year, the Empire brought an end to the Republic tradition of unit markings and armor customization. Stormtroopers restored their clone armor to a blank white condition, thus emphasizing the Empire's preference for uniformity and obedience in contrast to individuality and creativity.
19 - 17 BBY:
Despite the end of the Clone Wars, the fighting did not end in the galaxy. Shortly after the war, the Empire began its first major military campaign known as the Reconquest of the Rim. Most of the fighting happened in the Outer Rim, which the Republic lost control of during the Clone Wars. Various Republic worlds either joined the Separatists or were occupied by Separatist forces. Despite being left on their own without the Battle droid army that was shut down by Darth Vader on Mustaphar after slaughtering the Separatist leadership, the local Separatists continued to resist, sometimes they were even assisted by Jedi that have survived Order 66. Also, another main objection of this campaign was to deal with numerous drug cartels, pirate gangs and slavers that have been using their opportunity during the war, such as the Zygerrian Slave Empire. In fact, the campaign against the Zygerrian Empire was Admiral Yularen's last campaign before joining the ISB.
14 BBY:
The clones replace their Phase II armor with the new Stormtrooper armor. Though to be honest, I like the Phase II.
12 BBY:
The Kamino Uprising occurs. The stormtroopers of the 501st Legion led by Boba Fett easily defeated the rebels. However, this incident convinced Emperor Palpatine to commission the creation of new clones from different templates and the recruitment of birth-born soldiers to fill the ranks of the Stormtrooper Corps. He also did this because he believed that the non-birth-born troopers were too susceptible to corruption and believed that a more diverse group of soldiers would solve this issue. Although the Jango Fett template would still be used, none of the Fett clones, especially the members of the 501st who defeated the rebel clones, would ever get used to the increasing diversity in the army ranks that they once filled as a whole. As a result, the clones within the Stormtrooper Corps became referred to as 'Clone stormtroopers.'