Shepard Quest Mk VII, Age of Revy (ME/MCU)
- Thread starter tri2
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INB4 that's more expensive than buying the planet we just bought
I thought about it but ultimately decided my reasoning from earlier still applies. We only purchase Amaranthine this quarter and the existing precedent is that we vote to move to a(n inhabited) system then in the next quarter we can start building there. Furthermore we don't really have any details on how the corporate world system works mechanically so there isn't much point in getting ahead of ourselves before we get that, plus more details in general on Amaranthine, in the post-purchase update. Then there is the issue of basically all Paragon Industries attention is focused on the war with the only stuff going on outside that is building up our existing systems.
Finally there is the question of what level of infrastructure and build up is required. Every planet we've worked on until now has been inhabited with an existing planetary resource base to draw upon. Amaranthine is not only completely uninhabited (aside from any pirates that may or may not be set up there) so is the Fortuna system it is located in. Even the sector it is in, Horse Head Nebula, is basically uninhabited with only Noveria and the secret Cerberus HQ space station holding any life in the entire sector. In short we are going to have to ship in everything we don't produce on site. So I expect setting up our facilities there will be difficult and expensive.
Depending upon how things play out next quarter I think we'll likely see the first real full scale utilization of our massive array of Shipyards and quite possibly our first Heavy Cruiser design. We've got 46 Frigate bays free (216 total, 15 for the Hanar (30 in their Shipyards), 155 for the Alliance (finishing our order), leaves 46 unused) so we can pump out a significant starter fleet of cargo hauler Frigates per quarter. Which we can supplement with some Heavy Cruiser designs, both Light and Heavy Cruisers take 2 quarters vs. Frigates 1 quarter, when they finish construction. And we'll probably need that shipping given literally everything will need to be shipped in until we can get mines, factories, and arcologies up and operational to begin generating in system resources.
Question, what about asteroid mining? Isn't that meant to be so much better than terrestrial mining?
On the other hand, if we're going to have to bootstrap an industrial base from only what we can ship in, that's going to take time. Shouldn't we get started ASAP?
@tri2: Can we start construction in Amaranthine this turn? Will there be any special expenses, delays, or projects to account for the fact we're bootstrapping?
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- U.S.
nope, because of various things, also don't forget you are not actually solely limited to your own transport capabilities and stuff.
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- U.S.
essentially nothing but time, you rich.
- Location
- Leeds
Its like people biggest complaint about Revy is that she isn't Elon Musk enough.
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- United states
@tri2 Just how rich is Revy compared to every other rich person in the galaxy?
Fortuna doesn't have an asteroid belt. On top of this it is unclear what the laws are about the rest of the system given that we only own the one planet not the entire system. Fortunately Amaranthine is canonically called out for having large deposits of heavy metals and rare elements both in the UNC Valuable Minerals quest and in the planet's description so local mining operations should be pretty good once we get the habitability, and thus safety, up a bit.
True however our own transport capabilities are going to be significantly better then what we can buy on the open market. A bulk cargo hauler is going to be slow and expensive since Eezo requirements scale with both mass and degree of lightening meaning high masses or high speeds become very expensive.
For example if we design a massive automated bulk cargo hauler of Dreadnought size with nothing but cargo holds and the cheapest standard non-PI technology it still comes to 200+ billion credits despite only going 1LY/day due to its weak Eezo core and cheap ion engines. This is a problem because the Horsehead Nebula's only Mass Relay is in the Pax system which is shown to be a fair way away from Fortuna. A more optimized design can get to 4LY/day for not much higher cost (still in the 200 billion credit range) but that is still fairly slow by our standards.
For comparison we can design and build a cheap Frigate, with decent shields and armor for increased survivability and hyper-modularity to swap between cargo and people, for 315 million and ~676 Prodction. 46 of those won't come close to the massive cargo capacities of the Dreadnought (46x11,200=515,200m^3 vs. 5,734,400m^3) but at 36LY/day vs. 4 will completely roughly nine trips in the time it takes the Dreadnought to complete one which almost makes up for the cargo shortfall. Plus it represents an internal fleet we can continue using for more transportation which is something we wanted anyway.
We'll probably make use of commerical shipping for the first quarter, or two, of our expansion but after that I expect we should be able to have our own fleet of transports that will vastly outperform what could be reasonably purchased.
Would it be worth our new Taurian friend's time to ask him to redesign how cargo hauling is done throughout Citadel space over a quarter or two? It doesn't have the glamor of a Dreadnought but it gives him experience working with our toys at that scale and a half a year delay in Dreadkilly-Boom-Maker design gives us six more months to pull man-eating rabbits out of our hats for new toys to include.
What would the SA Navy want in their Big Dark Energy Ships? Should we poll the customer to see what they're interested in? I presume that affordability per unit is less important due to treaties limiting how many the SA can have.
How would networking ME shields together on a naval scale work? Basically take the guardian angel systems from an infantry scale and put it towards a naval scale, where packs of frigates can cluster together and emulate being as tough as a cruiser or outdated Dread?
Also, what is the largest ship class that could land on a planet's surface and lift again under reasonable circumstances? Asking for mobile army base reasons.
What would the SA Navy want in their Big Dark Energy Ships? Should we poll the customer to see what they're interested in? I presume that affordability per unit is less important due to treaties limiting how many the SA can have.
How would networking ME shields together on a naval scale work? Basically take the guardian angel systems from an infantry scale and put it towards a naval scale, where packs of frigates can cluster together and emulate being as tough as a cruiser or outdated Dread?
Also, what is the largest ship class that could land on a planet's surface and lift again under reasonable circumstances? Asking for mobile army base reasons.
Vista
(Verified anomalous street lamp)
- Location
- appears to be in a containment cell
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Frigate
So what would it take to improve that? "Help, Shepard is dropping a cruiser onto a surface and expecting it to survive AA and interception, then act as a foreward firebase for all those accursed Legionaries!" etc?
Vista
(Verified anomalous street lamp)
- Location
- appears to be in a containment cell
- Pronouns
- They/Them
higher structural integrity, Better engines, better anti grav,
Paragon Security
From Private Security to Private Army
From Private Security to Private Army
Premise:
This post is about putting forth a proposal for how in the wake of the Citadel-Batarian War and the demobilization of the Systems Alliance Military we can begin a significant upscaling of Paragon Security (ParSec) operations to better meet our needs going forwards. Everything discussed here is stuff that is likely several quarters away and is as generalized as possible to improve flexibility. That being said the core idea here is to design a framework for ParSec operations, and only a framework since rigid adherence isn't desirable given the complexity of paramilitary operations and the actual skill and experience our employees have, that can be used to base our expansion plans upon.
The overall goal for this proposal is to take ParSec from a mish-mash of troops and equipment thrown together in "whatever we can spare/afford" to a four battalion strong force representing around 40,000 soldiers. The reason for aiming for four units is that provides us with three front line units that can be deployed in layers (active, reserve, and rest/maintenance) for 24/7 operation, dispersed to multiple goals (three different locations), or concentrated for a decisive battle along with a fourth unit existing as a mixture of training cadre, reserve force, and general leave/vacation unit that would represent our forces not in a state to be rapidly and readily deployed to various actions.
One of the things I will be keeping track of during all this is the total personnel count at each level of the framework. This is because in stealing an idea from the real life army; just like there every soldier is a rifleman regardless of their job here every employee, regardless of job, is a Centurion and equipped with an Elite Centurion suit.
Proposed Framework:
Fireteam: 3
The most basic unit in this framework would be a three person fireteam equipped with Power Armor (PA) such as our Elite Centurions. There are many possible sizes for such a unit but I chose three mainly because this is ultimately a Mass Effect fanwork and throughout the games you work in a three person unit on every mission.
Squad: 8
A squad consists of a pair of fireteams along side their command officer and vehicle operator. They would be attached to an Infantry Fighting Vehicle (IFV) like the Tiger IFV granting the unit enhanced mobility, protection, and communications stemming from a larger platform. Most likely the vehicle operator and command officer would remain with the IFV while the fireteams deploy forwards as this would allow the vehicle operator to continue providing assistance via the onboard weaponry and the command officer to retain greater perspective over the local battlefield but conditions on the field may result in alternate arrangements.
Platoon: 64
This is the point at which the unit organization begins to become more complicated. Each platoon would consist of six squads along with an escort unit. The escort unit would consist of four Heavy Combat Vehicles (HCVs) such as our Hammerhead Medium Tank (Hammerhead). Using the Hammerhead as a standard our HCVs would likely be each crewed with 4 soldiers (Driver, Gunner, Drone Controller, Commander) even if they have room for additional passengers since troop transport is the role of the IFVs.
Company: 900
The company is the point at which space based units become involved in the framework. Each company, consisting of ten Platoons, would be assigned to one Quadriga Troop Transport (QTT). With the new framework we can finally match troop and vehicles numbers far better with a quick modification to the existing QTTs consisting of swapping the Primary Payload to Cargo Hold (7,000m^3 / 70m^3 per Tiger/Hammerhead = 100 Vehicles == 60 IFV + 40 HCV == 10 Platoons) and the Secondary Payload to Bulk People Transport (750 > 64 x 10). I don't believe we have crew numbers for our QTTs but given the Zumwalt-class Destroyer is a modern highly automated destroyer, of similiar size to our Frigates, and is crewed by 175 people I figure that is a reasonable count here but I'll bump it up to 260 to make the total number easier to work with and because that gives a decent pool of maintenance technicians for all the PAs, IFVs, HCVs, and attached drones.
The QTT assigned to each company wouldn't exist just as a simple transport from location to location. They would likely operate as secure maintenance facilities, unit command center, and possibly even provide close in support via their drone complement and shields like the Dragonlady did back during the Battle of Anhur.
Battalion: 14,000
Battalions are the point at which getting our troops to their destination starts mattering more then their actual ground deployments which is why the focus is more on the aerospace units that make up this.
At their core each Battalion would consist of six companies represented by their six QTTs. These size QTTs would be escorted by four Pyndas. On top of this however I am proposing a new combat spacecraft; a light cruiser sized carrier. With a Cargo Hold Primary Payload, Hospital Unit Secondary Payload, and Low Gigawatt Lasers as a Tertiary Payload for self defense each carrier would be capable of transporting at most 42 Gladius sized fighters, and 4,000 hospital beds.
Four of such carriers would have enough space to fit 168 fighters but I would almost halve that down to a total of 96 fighters which frees up a significant amount of space for supplies both for the fighters and the battalion as a whole. Four carriers would also mean carrying 16,000 hospital beds which will easily cover all of the battalions personnel. In terms of crew size these carriers are probably sized similarly to modern supercarriers so a crew in the two thousand range seems about right given the increases in automation.
For the fighter deployment I figure the formation to aim for would be a base unit of pairs (a fighter and their wingman) which would operate in flights of four fighters. Each Pynda would have a flight attached as support while the six QTTs would collectively have two more flights attached to them for a total of thirty two fighters. The remaining sixty four fighters would be split into two to allow for a full three shifts of thirty two; one active shift, one reserve shift, and one maintenance/repair/rest shift.
Overall Breakdown:
4 x Battalion (14,000): 56,000 personnel
4 x Light Cruiser Carrier (2,000): 8,000 personnel
24 x Aerospace Fighter
4 x Pynda Escort (150): 600 personnel
6 x Company (900): 5,400 personnel
1 x Quadriga Troop Transport (260): 260 personnel
10 x Platoon (64): 640 personnel
4 x Heavy Combat Vehicle (4): 16 personnel
6 x Squad (8): 48 personnel
1 x Infantry Fighting Vehicle (2): personnel
2 x Fireteam (3): 6 Personnel
Totals:
16 x Light Cruiser Carrier
16 x Pynda Escorts
24 x Quadriga Troop Transport
384 x Aerospace Fighter
960 x Heavy Combat Vehicles
1,440 x Infantry Fighting Vehicles
56,000 x Elite Centurion Power Armor
56,000 personnel (11,520 front-line soldiers + 44,480 support soldiers)
Cost Estimates:
The Light Cruiser Carrier design proposed (albeit using Cargo Holds rather then a dedicated Hanger payload since that doesn't exist yet) would cost 139,628,000,000cr and 436,337.5 Production. So a full sixteen of them would come in at ~2.2 trillion credits and ~7.0 million Production.
Pyndas are easy since we'd initially be using our existing Lite Laser Pyndas for 19.7 billion credits and 61,177.8 Production and we've already got five so the extra eleven would cost ~217 billion credits and 672,955.8 Production. The new QTT variant costs 16.4 billion credits and 51,290 Production while retrofitting our existing six should only cost 200 million credits and 625 Production.
Assuming we go for Gladius-D for our Aerospace Fighters 384 new fighters, the sixty we currently have are the older -C models, should cost ~99.8 billion credits and 356,736 Production. Using Hammerheads for our Heavy Combat Vehicles would mean building another 700 at a cost of ~47.3 billion credits and 280,000 Production. Our venerable Tiger IFVs probably need a Block Upgrade by now but using their existing design puts building the 1,389 needed to bring things up to par should be 11.1 billion credits and 37,503 Production. Elite Centurion Power Armor is the cheapest item on the list at just 6.5 million credits and 15 Production per unit but also the largest at 56,000 units for a notable 364 billion credits and 840,000 Production.
So all told building ParSec up in the method described above would cost ~3.5 trillion credits and 10.8 million Production. With the majority (2.2 trillion credits and 7.0 million Production) coming from those Light Cruiser Carriers, which just goes to show how expensive larger ships are in. Although that expense could probably be mitigated by dividing it over the two quarters required for Cruiser construction.
This would also massively balloon out ParSec's operational expenses. Currently it is ~15 billion in maintenance and ~1.7 billion in personnel per quarter. Under the proposed system that would go up to ~140 billion in maintenance and ~10.5 billion in personnel per quarter. 150 billion credits per quarter would be a noteworthy expense, especially if we bundled all this into one division then started adding more divisions, but absolutely something we can already handle let alone when we're actually ready to perform this transition. The "problem", as much as that is a concern, would be that ParSec would absolutely struggle to actually fund itself and be dependent upon PI funding to actually remain operational. Which isn't that big a concern given it is really just a way for Revy to exert her will upon the universe rather then a profit generating venture.
Political Considerations:
Yes this would make ParSec a serious force on the political scale. However I doubt it would be that much of a problem due to the problem of scale. For all that this represents a significant concentration of force the Alliance military should easily measure in the millions and while not quite as well equipped as ParSec they do have large amounts of PI technology, something that only accelerated with the war, and so could quite easily crush ParSec if we stepped too far out of line.
We would be inviting political shenanigans however as ParSec, at private army scale, would be capable of acting on the political level, more then we already did at Anhur. So contracts from the Systems Alliance, and potentially other governments, to do things they cannot be publicly seen to be doing would be likely. Yes everyone would "know" we were likely working on behalf of the Alliance but having things happen at hands length can be very useful to governments at times.
If humanity ends up getting a Spectre in the wake of the Citadel-Batarian war I could easily see ParSec being requested to provide muscle for dealing with larger scale issues. Especially given we specialize in speed with PI ships been thrice as fast as the competition.
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- Leeds
Important problem with raising ParSec that much is we need to explain why we feel we need that.
And most aren't going to buy that we're just as all in about protecting against the Extinguishers as the Hanar are.
And most aren't going to buy that we're just as all in about protecting against the Extinguishers as the Hanar are.
1) The Systems Alliance Army is likely to be undergoing some downsizing post-war due to both a more stable situation (no threat of the Baterian Hegemony) and having gone on a mass recruitment campaign to build up the numbers for this war. So we'd be seen as helping veterans remain employed by those who like us and taking advantage of the war ending to scoop up experienced recruits by those who don't.
2) It seems like forever again because it was IRL but Mindoir was invaded just a year ago. A conflict in which Revy was almost killed. Feeling like we need a large standing paramilitary to defend against that or aggressively go out and prevent it is a reasonable outcome of that. That this was the second invasion in less then five years only reinforces that argument.
3) The shattered Baterian Hegemony post-war is going to be rife with insurgents, pirates launching raids both internally and externally, and just general strife. All perfect opportunities for a mercenary group to earn a profit assisting in the post-war efforts to secure the location. ParSec is actually quite well suited for that given our various less than lethal (and even outright non-lethal) weaponry and immense defensive capabilities letting our people take risks to safely secure/restrain threats (without killing them) that other troops wouldn't be capable of.
4) In terms of raw numbers groups like the Blue Suns and Eclipse are likely larger then the proposed ParSec expansions. Odds are they probably even have more ships then this. We just have better and larger ships and that is only because ParSec is backed by Paragon Industries which is poised to become one of the galaxy's largest shipbuilders in the coming years and produces the galaxy's most advanced ships for unreasonably cheap prices.
5) ParSec has proven to be an amazing tool for demonstrating the effectiveness of PI technology in battlefield conditions to potential buyers (mainly the Systems Alliance). So expanding it to allow for further demonstrations of our future technologies actually justifies this whole project as a fancy marketing scheme. After all we're making 10 trillion credits per year from LLP sales and while that will drop off sooner or later (depends upon how many Pyndas the Alliance Navy wants) a good part of what made them so attractive to the navy was seeing the LLP in action with ParSec.
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- Leeds
Feels that whatever the peace deal the SA comes out with should have some kind of deal to handle most of these.
1) Maybe. But why is Revy hiring soldiers is the question I asked. Those same people could be hired into Civilian roles, project build all the earth factories and such. When a proper military is undergoing downsizing why is a private army growing? Besides, SA is probably going to want to keep it up to make a push for a council position.
2) Who would be left to feasibly invade Mindoir, Geth aren't the spooky boogie man yet, SA peace deal will involve demilitarisation probably and decommissioning of ships that could be used to raid. The SA no longer has to worry as much about conflict with peer powers and can spend more of their effort on hunting down pirates and the like.
3) Hiring out Par Sec contracts in the middle of conflicted enemy territory sounds like we're asking to people to try and steal examples of our tech.
4) I don't care? Is "Revy needs a private army incase she gets into war with other mercanary companies" really going to convince anyone?
5) See previous point about the income disparity, I don't think people are actually buying our tech because of the tiny Par Sec displays, which as you note is smaller than actually other major mercenary groups. And besides SA is doing a better demonstration of what our tech can do than we could fund with Par Sec.
1) Maybe. But why is Revy hiring soldiers is the question I asked. Those same people could be hired into Civilian roles, project build all the earth factories and such. When a proper military is undergoing downsizing why is a private army growing? Besides, SA is probably going to want to keep it up to make a push for a council position.
2) Who would be left to feasibly invade Mindoir, Geth aren't the spooky boogie man yet, SA peace deal will involve demilitarisation probably and decommissioning of ships that could be used to raid. The SA no longer has to worry as much about conflict with peer powers and can spend more of their effort on hunting down pirates and the like.
3) Hiring out Par Sec contracts in the middle of conflicted enemy territory sounds like we're asking to people to try and steal examples of our tech.
4) I don't care? Is "Revy needs a private army incase she gets into war with other mercanary companies" really going to convince anyone?
5) See previous point about the income disparity, I don't think people are actually buying our tech because of the tiny Par Sec displays, which as you note is smaller than actually other major mercenary groups. And besides SA is doing a better demonstration of what our tech can do than we could fund with Par Sec.
lbmaian
a thirsty squirrel
I like the overall approach. A couple comments though.
1) Don't think there should be a set number of battalions we should aim for. We should just start off producing a battalion,
edit: and expanding as needed
2) Where do our new mechs slot in here? Would they count as a "heavy combat vehicle"?
3) The light cruiser carrier concept is interesting. 4000 hospital beds is overkill though. If it's just an artifact of how the ship design spreadsheet works, I'd rather have multiple light cruisers variants just like we do with the QTT. We could have a hospital ship variant so that we only need a single such ship in a battalion, with the other light cruisers being more dedicated carriers (or perhaps a cruiser mass accelerator module).
4) This proposed battalion fleet is somewhat analogous to the modern day carrier group, just with multiple light carriers instead of a supercarrier. But it's clear it's not a battlegroup. It's good enough for small-scale fights, and should be able to outrun anything it can't handle. For anything that can counter fighters and armored enough to withstand the Pynda, we'd probably need a heavy cruiser. Still, this is good enough for escorting the QTTs around.
5) I don't remember the Gladius Type-D being designed or spec'd out yet - I thought we were still on the Type-C. What's in the new type?
6) Yeah, the Tiger IFV is in need of an upgrade, at least for our own uses. It's fine as-is for the SA army and colonial defense, but we're restricted by the storage space of the QTT, where the Hammerhead is always a better option than the Tiger.
Hmm, would it be possible to apply the Jack/Hammerhead's origami space compression engineering into new version of the Tiger? IIRC the Hammerhead is ~5x the mass of the Tiger yet takes up the same amount of space. Ideally, we'd be able to store 5x as many Tigers as Hammerheads.
Perhaps even the Gladius could be folded up too? Though with the need for rapid fighter deployment, it probably wouldn't benefit as much, since they'd have to be expanded to normal size for combat readiness anyway. Still, fighters face the most attrition, so having multiple compacted spares couldn't hurt.
For reference:
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IRL there is an estimated 27 Million troops world wide. Given Space, I'd increase that an order of magnitude, and then a few fold more for War and Skill Chips making training far far easier. So they very possibly could have a force numbering I'm the billions.
Just some quick replies since I don't have much time:
2) Yeah that is more or less where I imagined them going. The plan was for this to be as equipment agnostic as possible. Instead focusing on general roles/themes where we'd plug the most appropriate technology. If our (likely Biotic) Mechs proved superior to the Hammerhead, or a combination of the two worked better then either independent, then we could swap that in.
3) It is a limitation of the current design sheet. My plan is to generate another revision before we implement any sort of overhaul to ParSec. My current idea is that the three payload levels works fine at Frigate scale but as you get laser vessels they tend to become more multi-role and it doesn't work as well. I'm thinking of having so each size step (Frigate -> Light Cruiser -> Heavy Cruiser -> Dreadnought) has an extra payload slot to allow for that.
4) The way I think of this is as a true space era combined arms group. We have the infantry for providing core ground combat, the HCVs for anti-armor and general fire support, the QTTs for transport and close in support, the Pyndas and Gladius for securing aerospace superiority, and the Carriers for providing local secure logistical support. If we were looking at engaging in serious navel combat I'd recommend using an entirely different combat paradigm but a force focused around, or even well suited to, fleet battles would get people faaar more nervous and concerned then a force intended for ground combat. There are plenty of heavily armed mercenary groups; only Omega as a collective are capable of engaging in fleet combat.
5) Honestly I don't recall; it was added to the spreadsheet a long time ago with ??? involved and I don't recall where it came from so no clue what advantages it has over the -C. Only that it was more expensive so presumably more better.
6) Yeah when I was first designing the sheet I hadn't checked the Hammerhead's spec sheet, that only came towards the end, so I didn't realize it had equal transport capability as a Tiger IFV. There is literally no reason not to use a Hammerhead instead of a Tiger right now except for cost.
Revy, canonically born in 2154, is almost certainly part of the very start of the colonization baby boom. Humanity will probably see some impressive population growth over the next hundred years, especially since Revy will have invented and released both Eternal Youth and Resurrection in that timeframe, but right now we are still quite constrained.
That said I did make an estimation years ago pegging the number at around 12 million active duty and (depending upon how long that 3% enlistment rate has held for) possibly hundreds of millions of veterans. Many of which would have likely reenlisted for the war effort especially since they likely got prioritized for Peak Human treatments that would have let even older (to a degree) veterans serve like they were years younger.
1) It wasn't so much a set number of battalions as me thinking "what is the minimum needed so we can form a proper army force?" and given how the design process went I figured four of the described battalions worked best. If there was a need we could totally keep expanding although I'd probably recommend doing so by dubbing the four battalion layout a division and assembling new complete divisions rather then adding more battalions into the layout.
2) Yeah that is more or less where I imagined them going. The plan was for this to be as equipment agnostic as possible. Instead focusing on general roles/themes where we'd plug the most appropriate technology. If our (likely Biotic) Mechs proved superior to the Hammerhead, or a combination of the two worked better then either independent, then we could swap that in.
3) It is a limitation of the current design sheet. My plan is to generate another revision before we implement any sort of overhaul to ParSec. My current idea is that the three payload levels works fine at Frigate scale but as you get laser vessels they tend to become more multi-role and it doesn't work as well. I'm thinking of having so each size step (Frigate -> Light Cruiser -> Heavy Cruiser -> Dreadnought) has an extra payload slot to allow for that.
4) The way I think of this is as a true space era combined arms group. We have the infantry for providing core ground combat, the HCVs for anti-armor and general fire support, the QTTs for transport and close in support, the Pyndas and Gladius for securing aerospace superiority, and the Carriers for providing local secure logistical support. If we were looking at engaging in serious navel combat I'd recommend using an entirely different combat paradigm but a force focused around, or even well suited to, fleet battles would get people faaar more nervous and concerned then a force intended for ground combat. There are plenty of heavily armed mercenary groups; only Omega as a collective are capable of engaging in fleet combat.
5) Honestly I don't recall; it was added to the spreadsheet a long time ago with ??? involved and I don't recall where it came from so no clue what advantages it has over the -C. Only that it was more expensive so presumably more better.
6) Yeah when I was first designing the sheet I hadn't checked the Hammerhead's spec sheet, that only came towards the end, so I didn't realize it had equal transport capability as a Tiger IFV. There is literally no reason not to use a Hammerhead instead of a Tiger right now except for cost.
Nowhere near in the billions. At this point in time humanity is only at ~13 billion the majority of which (~11 billion) are on Earth. Current IRL projections are the humanity might very well top out at ~11 billion by 2100 with some estimates putting us as not even reaching that high. Given that humanity only discovered Mass Effect in 2148, the Charon Relay in 2149, and first settled an new colony in 2152 there just hasn't been enough time for any real major expansion outside of Sol.
Revy, canonically born in 2154, is almost certainly part of the very start of the colonization baby boom. Humanity will probably see some impressive population growth over the next hundred years, especially since Revy will have invented and released both Eternal Youth and Resurrection in that timeframe, but right now we are still quite constrained.
That said I did make an estimation years ago pegging the number at around 12 million active duty and (depending upon how long that 3% enlistment rate has held for) possibly hundreds of millions of veterans. Many of which would have likely reenlisted for the war effort especially since they likely got prioritized for Peak Human treatments that would have let even older (to a degree) veterans serve like they were years younger.