Heroes of Humanity Review

[keir451]

Okay folks, I recently received my copy of the long awaited/dreaded Heroes of Humanity sourcebook and quite honestly I am actually rather satisfied with it. The only part I don't agree with from a logical standpoint is the idea that the Coalition is strapped for resources. I accept that Kevin felt it was "right" for his story and that it adds a sense of urgency to the Coalition's decisions, I just don't believe it.
Anyway, back the rest of the book; I really enjoyed the "fluff"/stories he inserted, I loved the artwork and especially the new O.C.C.s as well as the section on "AT" or "Advanced Training" that allows a player to possibly breathe new life into old characters. The further description and definition of the weaknesses of some of the demons was also very interesting and can add a extra level of interaction for PCs fighting this new, "Great Evil". The CS is again portraying themselves as the Heroic Underdog in this fight and their treatment of D-Bees, especially those in the Burbs, has gone from minimal tolerance to effectively Zero tolerance, while the soldiers in the field are, yet again, forced to consider the fact that not all D-Bees fall into such a neat and easily category, and that for many D-Bees the only home they've ever known is this one.
I honestly look forward to using this book (with a few tweaks to suit myself) in my future games.

[glitterboy2098]

i find it funny tthat the longest running and biggest complaint about how the CS has been presented is "there is no way they have that many resources!" and "where the heck are they getting the resources to build all this [expletive]"

and now that it has been revealed that the detractors are right, that the CS doesn't have infinite resources, that they've been pulling a massive shell game to hide that fact, putting up a calm front to keep their lack of reserves hidden..

and the response from the detractors is "yeah i don't believe it"


of course, no one believed it with the soviet union either until it shattered in the mid 1980's. it went from a seemingly super-powerful invulnerable entity to 15 fragmented states in the span of only a couple years. but that only happened because they reached the end of their economic and infrastructural rope a decade before, and couldn't back off from the image they were projecting to fix anything. (they were too afraid during the cold that backing down on anything would be taken as a sign of weakness.. which would to only undermine their internal social controls, but also was feared would give their enemies an opening to exploit) so they didn't try to fix the problem till it was way too late.

nazi Germany did it too in WW2.. prior to the war they used every trick they had to make themselves seem stronger than they actually were.. and asthe war concluded they were using every trick they could to try and hide how bad they were loosing from their own troops and people. which included a lot of effort in developing new "wonder weapons" to try and turn the tide.. cutting edge tanks, jet fighters, rockets, etc. too little too late, but fodder for their propaganda ministry to convince their people they could still win. right up to the point the russians marched on berlin..

[The Beast]

i find it funny tthat the longest running and biggest complaint about how the CS has been presented is "there is no way they have that many resources!" and "where the heck are they getting the resources to build all this [expletive]"

and now that it has been revealed that the detractors are right, that the CS doesn't have infinite resources, that they've been pulling a massive shell game to hide that fact, putting up a calm front to keep their lack of reserves hidden..

and the response from the detractors is "yeah i don't believe it"

Personally I have found the majority of posts on other forums welcoming the lack of resources. Keir's post is the first I've noticed to disagree with that view.

[keir451]

gb2098 is correct, many people on the forums have often said that it was impossible for the CS to be able to do what they have done. I, however, have long been of the camp that said they could and have pointed out, each time, where in each of the books it says the CS has "X capability" to produce "Y equipment". I have talked long and often with people who understand exactly what resources are available in the territory the CS holds and we project (as much as we reasonably can given the information we have on the CS) what they could do with said resources.
As I said earlier I understand why Kevin wrote the story the way he did, but my research has told me that this is just writer fiat for the sake of telling the story the way he wants. I'm fine with that, but I, personally choose to apply a different standard to the story than Kevin does.

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

gb2098 is correct, many people on the forums have often said that it was impossible for the CS to be able to do what they have done. I, however, have long been of the camp that said they could and have pointed out, each time, where in each of the books it says the CS has "X capability" to produce "Y equipment". I have talked long and often with people who understand exactly what resources are available in the territory the CS holds and we project (as much as we reasonably can given the information we have on the CS) what they could do with said resources.
As I said earlier I understand why Kevin wrote the story the way he did, but my research has told me that this is just writer fiat for the sake of telling the story the way he wants. I'm fine with that, but I, personally choose to apply a different standard to the story than Kevin does.

Welcome to Rifts.

I agree, personally - it's a blatant fiat/ret-con for story purposes.

However, given the absolute drek most of the Minion War books have contained (Dimensional Outbreak was the only one that didn't make me cringe and actually presented the Demons and Deevils as a credible threat) i'm not exactly surprised.

Ill probably finish Megaverse In Flames tonight before bed, and let me say, its easily the worst Palladium book ive read in over a decade. Its absolutely awful. None of the Demon and Deevil armies are credible threats. Wow, 50,000 demons. 20 whole tanks. Wowza. Such a threat. Deevil death-metal rocker riding his (literally) shapeshifting guitar-axe was so bad i wanted my money back and the book isn't even mine.

This just sounds like par for the course recently.

[HWalsh]

gb2098 is correct, many people on the forums have often said that it was impossible for the CS to be able to do what they have done. I, however, have long been of the camp that said they could and have pointed out, each time, where in each of the books it says the CS has "X capability" to produce "Y equipment". I have talked long and often with people who understand exactly what resources are available in the territory the CS holds and we project (as much as we reasonably can given the information we have on the CS) what they could do with said resources.
As I said earlier I understand why Kevin wrote the story the way he did, but my research has told me that this is just writer fiat for the sake of telling the story the way he wants. I'm fine with that, but I, personally choose to apply a different standard to the story than Kevin does.

Welcome to Rifts.

I agree, personally - it's a blatant fiat/ret-con for story purposes.

I can't call it writer fiat.

It makes a ton of sense.

The CS kept spending to keep up with an invisible benchmark and have spent trillions of credits to do so. Trillions. If, all this time, they were borrowing funds and eventually their creditors finally cut them off it would be an interesting development.

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

gb2098 is correct, many people on the forums have often said that it was impossible for the CS to be able to do what they have done. I, however, have long been of the camp that said they could and have pointed out, each time, where in each of the books it says the CS has "X capability" to produce "Y equipment". I have talked long and often with people who understand exactly what resources are available in the territory the CS holds and we project (as much as we reasonably can given the information we have on the CS) what they could do with said resources.
As I said earlier I understand why Kevin wrote the story the way he did, but my research has told me that this is just writer fiat for the sake of telling the story the way he wants. I'm fine with that, but I, personally choose to apply a different standard to the story than Kevin does.

Welcome to Rifts.

I agree, personally - it's a blatant fiat/ret-con for story purposes.

I can't call it writer fiat.

I can, because other books have blaantly contradicted this theory on several occasions.

It makes a ton of sense.

The CS kept spending to keep up with an invisible benchmark and have spent trillions of credits to do so. Trillions. If, all this time, they were borrowing funds and eventually their creditors finally cut them off it would be an interesting development.

Trillions of credits they can create out of thin air. UCs are fiat currency that they control utterly. The CS doesn't "spend" money. They have no creditors. Who would they be borrowing from - they ARE the money.

[HWalsh]

gb2098 is correct, many people on the forums have often said that it was impossible for the CS to be able to do what they have done. I, however, have long been of the camp that said they could and have pointed out, each time, where in each of the books it says the CS has "X capability" to produce "Y equipment". I have talked long and often with people who understand exactly what resources are available in the territory the CS holds and we project (as much as we reasonably can given the information we have on the CS) what they could do with said resources.
As I said earlier I understand why Kevin wrote the story the way he did, but my research has told me that this is just writer fiat for the sake of telling the story the way he wants. I'm fine with that, but I, personally choose to apply a different standard to the story than Kevin does.

Welcome to Rifts.

I agree, personally - it's a blatant fiat/ret-con for story purposes.

I can't call it writer fiat.

I can, because other books have blaantly contradicted this theory on several occasions.

It makes a ton of sense.

The CS kept spending to keep up with an invisible benchmark and have spent trillions of credits to do so. Trillions. If, all this time, they were borrowing funds and eventually their creditors finally cut them off it would be an interesting development.

Trillions of credits they can create out of thin air. UCs are fiat currency that they control utterly. The CS doesn't "spend" money. They have no creditors. Who would they be borrowing from - they ARE the money.

That wouldn't fly with foreign nations and holdings such as Triax or the NGR.

It could also be that they simply blew threw their raw resources. That could be a huge problem if their mines dried up. I back any attempt in the metaplot to weaken the CS. They needed a depowering.

[keir451]

gb2098 is correct, many people on the forums have often said that it was impossible for the CS to be able to do what they have done. I, however, have long been of the camp that said they could and have pointed out, each time, where in each of the books it says the CS has "X capability" to produce "Y equipment". I have talked long and often with people who understand exactly what resources are available in the territory the CS holds and we project (as much as we reasonably can given the information we have on the CS) what they could do with said resources.
As I said earlier I understand why Kevin wrote the story the way he did, but my research has told me that this is just writer fiat for the sake of telling the story the way he wants. I'm fine with that, but I, personally choose to apply a different standard to the story than Kevin does.

Welcome to Rifts.

I agree, personally - it's a blatant fiat/ret-con for story purposes.

I can't call it writer fiat.

I can, because other books have blaantly contradicted this theory on several occasions.

It makes a ton of sense.

The CS kept spending to keep up with an invisible benchmark and have spent trillions of credits to do so. Trillions. If, all this time, they were borrowing funds and eventually their creditors finally cut them off it would be an interesting development.

Trillions of credits they can create out of thin air. UCs are fiat currency that they control utterly. The CS doesn't "spend" money. They have no creditors. Who would they be borrowing from - they ARE the money.

That wouldn't fly with foreign nations and holdings such as Triax or the NGR.

It could also be that they simply blew threw their raw resources. That could be a huge problem if their mines dried up. I back any attempt in the metaplot to weaken the CS. They needed a depowering.

This last bolded section is the feeling of many people here on the boards, they WANT to see the CS "depowered" for whatever reason. I, however, don't want he CS depowered as it takes all the fun out of finding ways to beat them. I prefer a longer term approach, one that has the CS (specifically Joseph Prosek) realizing the D-Bee "invaders" aren't going to go away and the CS starts to adopt a "second class citizen" attitude towards these beings. But, again, that is merely MY opinion.

[HWalsh]

This last bolded section is the feeling of many people here on the boards, they WANT to see the CS "depowered" for whatever reason. I, however, don't want he CS depowered as it takes all the fun out of finding ways to beat them. I prefer a longer term approach, one that has the CS (specifically Joseph Prosek) realizing the D-Bee "invaders" aren't going to go away and the CS starts to adopt a "second class citizen" attitude towards these beings. But, again, that is merely MY opinion.

So you want to see them become "less evil" rather than them become more realistic villains?

[glitterboy2098]

that is the thing though. it isn't about credits/money. it is about infrastructure and physical resources reserves. much like the Soviet union, the CS military manufacturing is separate from the money based parts of the economy. so while your not spending money on all the armor and bots and tanks and stuff.. you are still expending physical resources. metal. rubber. rare earths. oil. etc. the raw materials that get turned into the finished goods.

raw materials that could also be used to say, build farm equipment, or new cities, or other new civilian stuff.

a smart nation has reserves. stockpiles of critical material they can dip into if they need to exceed what the normal production brings in during a given time.

the CS doesn't have these stockpiles.. or rather, they've been using them to equip those massive armies they have been using. and they're running out. and since it has all gone into military production, instead of say, expanding resource acquisition (mines, wells, refineries, etc) or infrastructure (factories, power plants, etc), they are now facing the problem if having to build up an even bigger army, and maintain it.. with infrastructure not meant to operate at those levels.

prettym uch the same as what the soviets did.. devoting their efforts to ever more advanced and larger forces, instead of fixing the factories, improving the farms, improving the civilian life, etc. they spent resources like water trying to keep up with NATO.. and eventually they couldn't squeeze any more blood from that stone.

[HWalsh]

that is the thing though. it isn't about credits/money. it is about infrastructure and physical resources reserves. much like the Soviet union, the CS military manufacturing is separate from the money based parts of the economy. so while your not spending money on all the armor and bots and tanks and stuff.. you are still expending physical resources. metal. rubber. rare earths. oil. etc. the raw materials that get turned into the finished goods.

raw materials that could also be used to say, build farm equipment, or new cities, or other new civilian stuff.

a smart nation has reserves. stockpiles of critical material they can dip into if they need to exceed what the normal production brings in during a given time.

the CS doesn't have these stockpiles.. or rather, they've been using them to equip those massive armies they have been using. and they're running out. and since it has all gone into military production, instead of say, expanding resource acquisition (mines, wells, refineries, etc) or infrastructure (factories, power plants, etc), they are now facing the problem if having to build up an even bigger army, and maintain it.. with infrastructure not meant to operate at those levels.

prettym uch the same as what the soviets did.. devoting their efforts to ever more advanced and larger forces, instead of fixing the factories, improving the farms, improving the civilian life, etc. they spent resources like water trying to keep up with NATO.. and eventually they couldn't squeeze any more blood from that stone.

It would be very interesting if within the next 5 years in-universe if the CS collapses from an over-use of resources.

This also means that they cannot afford another "Tolkeen" meaning that they can't risk fighting Lazlo now. If they are out of reserves... That is it. No more army for the CS. They lose soldiers now, they don't replace them. Any battle with heavy losses would start to cripple them.

So... In the end... It might have been Tolkeen that really did defeat the Coalition States.

Well played Tolkeen. Well played.

[keir451]

This last bolded section is the feeling of many people here on the boards, they WANT to see the CS "depowered" for whatever reason. I, however, don't want he CS depowered as it takes all the fun out of finding ways to beat them. I prefer a longer term approach, one that has the CS (specifically Joseph Prosek) realizing the D-Bee "invaders" aren't going to go away and the CS starts to adopt a "second class citizen" attitude towards these beings. But, again, that is merely MY opinion.

So you want to see them become "less evil" rather than them become more realistic villains?

The CS taking the view point of D-Bees as second class citizens IS more realistic, the CS simply CANNOT get rid of them nor can they close every single rift in North America. Plus they still have the Vampires in Mexico to contend with as well as other supernatural threats that make these D-bees very much a non issue.

[glitterboy2098]

since i doubtthat the CS will ever see a dissolution the way the soviet union did (though the idea of some of their member states quitting the way FQ did would make an interesting metaplot in itself), i can see two thing the CS could do after the current conflict is over.

the first would be the wise choice. go to a defensive stance. cut back the army, recycle the materials, funnel the troops being decommissioned into infrastructure improvement roles. keep the best gear and freshest troops in use, turn the rest into the tools of fixing their resources problem.

option 2 is the one that the french revolution tried, and which scifi writers love to use.**
ride the tiger. use the massive army you have currently to expand, conquer new areas. strip those areas of their resources. when the captures reserves run low.. conquer the neighbors a step farther out. try to avoid having to fix things by constantly expanding, trying to conquer new resource areas faster than you can deplete what your previous conquest took in.


Option 1 is the long term plan. try to hold what you already have and fix the problem. sadly this doesn't make for a very dramatic storyline compared to the war stories used lately.
Option 2 is the short term plan. in the long run it will fail.. but in the short term it avoid having to admit anything is wrong. which is what most governments tend to aim for.


**though not always as blatantly as David Weber's "Republic of Haven" in the Honor Harrington novels..

[keir451]

since i doubtthat the CS will ever see a dissolution the way the soviet union did (though the idea of some of their member states quitting the way FQ did would make an interesting metaplot in itself), i can see two thing the CS could do after the current conflict is over.

the first would be the wise choice. go to a defensive stance. cut back the army, recycle the materials, funnel the troops being decommissioned into infrastructure improvement roles. keep the best gear and freshest troops in use, turn the rest into the tools of fixing their resources problem.

option 2 is the one that the french revolution tried, and which scifi writers love to use.**
ride the tiger. use the massive army you have currently to expand, conquer new areas. strip those areas of their resources. when the captures reserves run low.. conquer the neighbors a step farther out. try to avoid having to fix things by constantly expanding, trying to conquer new resource areas faster than you can deplete what your previous conquest took in.


Option 1 is the long term plan. try to hold what you already have and fix the problem. sadly this doesn't make for a very dramatic storyline compared to the war stories used lately.
Option 2 is the short term plan. in the long run it will fail.. but in the short term it avoid having to admit anything is wrong. which is what most governments tend to aim for.


**though not always as blatantly as David Weber's "Republic of Haven" in the Honor Harrington novels..

Love the Honor Harrington reference!! Going by what has been printed, the CS's intent was to take Option 1; namely to settle in and secure the territory the gained from Tolkeen before moving on. It would make sense to me that Karl and Joseph would follow that plan once this current issue is resolved.

[keir451]

that is the thing though. it isn't about credits/money. it is about infrastructure and physical resources reserves. much like the Soviet union, the CS military manufacturing is separate from the money based parts of the economy. so while your not spending money on all the armor and bots and tanks and stuff.. you are still expending physical resources. metal. rubber. rare earths. oil. etc. the raw materials that get turned into the finished goods.

raw materials that could also be used to say, build farm equipment, or new cities, or other new civilian stuff.

a smart nation has reserves. stockpiles of critical material they can dip into if they need to exceed what the normal production brings in during a given time.

the CS doesn't have these stockpiles.. or rather, they've been using them to equip those massive armies they have been using. and they're running out. and since it has all gone into military production, instead of say, expanding resource acquisition (mines, wells, refineries, etc) or infrastructure (factories, power plants, etc), they are now facing the problem if having to build up an even bigger army, and maintain it.. with infrastructure not meant to operate at those levels.

prettym uch the same as what the soviets did.. devoting their efforts to ever more advanced and larger forces, instead of fixing the factories, improving the farms, improving the civilian life, etc. they spent resources like water trying to keep up with NATO.. and eventually they couldn't squeeze any more blood from that stone.

Actually it has been stated that the CS does have reserves, and while it has only been specifically mentioned that these reserves are military equipment I think that, going by Karl's description, he would also have built up his non-military reserves as well. He IS a historian and is more than intelligent enough to realize how these issues have caused the downfall of Empires and Nations in the past. He is stated as deliberately taking the long view as far as military conquest goes, so to me that means infrastructure as well. I recently saw people arguing about whether or not the CS would use robots for farming, and it amazed me to see that no one even once considered that the CS could rebuild and produce farm equipment. It wouldn't be too hard for the CS gov't to start producing farm equipment and then separate the manufacturing and "sales" from their military manufacturing, especially once the fortress cities were complete and they had access to Lone Star.

[Shark_Force]

the CS had literally millions of suits of just one kind of power armour in mothballs just a short time ago. they have reserves. it's called "getting all the stuff they just finished mothballing out of storage", and after giving them such stupidly large amounts of stockpiled stuff, it's pretty implausible that they are suddenly completely out of stuff. not to mention that since in the end they claimed the territory that used to be tolkeen, they also have full access to the canon "skelebot graveyards" that are all over the place, with millions of nuclear power supplies, laser rifles, MDC armour material, and all kinds of electronic and mechanical bits.

it would be one thing if the books had told us that the CS *appeared* to have lots of stuff. but that isn't what the books said. they gave us a narrator's official statement that they *have* absurd amounts of their old-style equipment. not just that they are rumoured to have it, or that their enemies assume they have it, but that they actually do have it.

[HWalsh]

the CS had literally millions of suits of just one kind of power armour in mothballs just a short time ago. they have reserves. it's called "getting all the stuff they just finished mothballing out of storage", and after giving them such stupidly large amounts of stockpiled stuff, it's pretty implausible that they are suddenly completely out of stuff. not to mention that since in the end they claimed the territory that used to be tolkeen, they also have full access to the canon "skelebot graveyards" that are all over the place, with millions of nuclear power supplies, laser rifles, MDC armour material, and all kinds of electronic and mechanical bits.

it would be one thing if the books had told us that the CS *appeared* to have lots of stuff. but that isn't what the books said. they gave us a narrator's official statement that they *have* absurd amounts of their old-style equipment. not just that they are rumoured to have it, or that their enemies assume they have it, but that they actually do have it.

That could have changed post-Tolkeen. Wars are expensive. Dead soldiers have families that the CS cares for. Recruiting new soldiers means money and equipment which needs money.

Then they need training which costs money. It's very possible that they're having to start selling their military reserves to cover bills.

I don't think people can grasp how much the CS military costs yearly.

I don't remember the pay per year of a CS grunt. Let's assume (since rank means more pay) that each person costs an average of 30,000 credits per year. In pay alone.

They have something like 5 million soldiers. Let's reduce that by 50% even though we know they have like 2 million SAMAS pilots.

I estimate their yearly costs around 28,250,000,000,000 credits not counting R&D, cloning, Skelebot manufacturing, medical, food, etc. Just people, food, weapons, and vehicles. This is also assuming the CS pays a fraction to make what others buy on the black market.

The real world US military operates on around $650,000,000,000 per year.

Now, assume the average civilian makes anout 50,000 credits a year, comparable to US earners and pays in 20% in taxes and are allowed no deductions of any kind. In order to pay for just the military of the CS they would need a population of 2,825,000,000 citizens

Now, the US has 318,000,000 people in it.

Do you think the CS in Rifts has greater than 9 times the population of the United States of America?

Maybe they pay 80% taxes? They'd still need 706,000,000 people which isn't feasible.

Which, logic states, that the CS would have been relying on their reserves since the CWC book. After a long and costly war with Tolkeen it makes sense that their resources are depleted.

[Pepsi Jedi]

i find it funny tthat the longest running and biggest complaint about how the CS has been presented is "there is no way they have that many resources!" and "where the heck are they getting the resources to build all this [expletive]"

and now that it has been revealed that the detractors are right, that the CS doesn't have infinite resources, that they've been pulling a massive shell game to hide that fact, putting up a calm front to keep their lack of reserves hidden..

and the response from the detractors is "yeah i don't believe it"

You noticed that too? lol. I've waited for someone else to point it out.

of course, no one believed it with the soviet union either until it shattered in the mid 1980's. it went from a seemingly super-powerful invulnerable entity to 15 fragmented states in the span of only a couple years. but that only happened because they reached the end of their economic and infrastructural rope a decade before, and couldn't back off from the image they were projecting to fix anything. (they were too afraid during the cold that backing down on anything would be taken as a sign of weakness.. which would to only undermine their internal social controls, but also was feared would give their enemies an opening to exploit) so they didn't try to fix the problem till it was way too late.

nazi Germany did it too in WW2.. prior to the war they used every trick they had to make themselves seem stronger than they actually were.. and asthe war concluded they were using every trick they could to try and hide how bad they were loosing from their own troops and people. which included a lot of effort in developing new "wonder weapons" to try and turn the tide.. cutting edge tanks, jet fighters, rockets, etc. too little too late, but fodder for their propaganda ministry to convince their people they could still win. right up to the point the russians marched on berlin..

Didn't they also build a working UFO?

[Pepsi Jedi]

that is the thing though. it isn't about credits/money. it is about infrastructure and physical resources reserves. much like the Soviet union, the CS military manufacturing is separate from the money based parts of the economy. so while your not spending money on all the armor and bots and tanks and stuff.. you are still expending physical resources. metal. rubber. rare earths. oil. etc. the raw materials that get turned into the finished goods.

raw materials that could also be used to say, build farm equipment, or new cities, or other new civilian stuff.

a smart nation has reserves. stockpiles of critical material they can dip into if they need to exceed what the normal production brings in during a given time.

the CS doesn't have these stockpiles.. or rather, they've been using them to equip those massive armies they have been using. and they're running out. and since it has all gone into military production, instead of say, expanding resource acquisition (mines, wells, refineries, etc) or infrastructure (factories, power plants, etc), they are now facing the problem if having to build up an even bigger army, and maintain it.. with infrastructure not meant to operate at those levels.

prettym uch the same as what the soviets did.. devoting their efforts to ever more advanced and larger forces, instead of fixing the factories, improving the farms, improving the civilian life, etc. they spent resources like water trying to keep up with NATO.. and eventually they couldn't squeeze any more blood from that stone.

It would be very interesting if within the next 5 years in-universe if the CS collapses from an over-use of resources.

Collapse? naa. Balinization at the worst.

This also means that they cannot afford another "Tolkeen" meaning that they can't risk fighting Lazlo now. If they are out of reserves... That is it. No more army for the CS. They lose soldiers now, they don't replace them. Any battle with heavy losses would start to cripple them.

Nope and nope.

1) When the tolkeen war started, the smartest minds in the world, AT LAZLO told Tolkeen straight up, "Even if every magic kingdom banded together, the CS would still win. We'd lose, we'd ALL die, and the CS would STILL be present.

So.. it's that powerful, BEFORE the Tolkeen war. It could have taken every magic kingdom and steam rolled them. Lazlo said this themselves.

After the tolkeen war ended, the CS basicly "Broke even" on troops. They had alot of losses but their recruitment covered them. Bit it's better/worse than that. Those that are still there, are now higher level (In game terms) They have millions of lvl 6-9 troops now, as the survivers got good and leveled up during the war. I.E. they have armies full of combat tested vetrans.

So there's that. That standing force is 4,000,000 strong.

now in HoH...

500,000 CS citizens signed up first two days.
1,300,000 people from the burbs signed up in two days.

For 1,800,000 people in TWO DAYS

over the next three months another 2,000,000 signed up.

Add in a quote "Untold number of dog boys" but you can figure 1 dog boy for each 3 human troops,

Would put the CS standing army at Roughly 9,000,000 troops. Yes.. roughly nine MILLION Troops.

There's no (Mortal) power in NA that could stand against them. ALL the mortal powers in NA couldn't stand against them.
The vamps, maybe, the bugs, maybe, but if every other mortal kingdom in Canada, NA, and Mexico... every one... teamed up.... the CS would still out number them tens of thousands to one.

Not 5 to one. not 10 to one. not 100 to one, but thousands to tens of thousands to one.

If they went to war with lazlo (Not smart, Lazlo doesn't want a piece of them) The CS would burp and it'd be over. (But Lazlo wouldn't fight. They'd hide or move. They're not that dumb)

So... In the end... It might have been Tolkeen that really did defeat the Coalition States.

Well played Tolkeen. Well played.

Right. They died on the sword, and the CS breaks 'Even' after the war with tolkeen, except now their 4 million troops are experienced and combat tested instead of rookies...

And they just recruited (and grew) Roughly 5 million more...

Yeah.. good job Tolkeen.... lol

[Pepsi Jedi]

the CS had literally millions of suits of just one kind of power armour in mothballs just a short time ago. they have reserves. it's called "getting all the stuff they just finished mothballing out of storage", and after giving them such stupidly large amounts of stockpiled stuff, it's pretty implausible that they are suddenly completely out of stuff. not to mention that since in the end they claimed the territory that used to be tolkeen, they also have full access to the canon "skelebot graveyards" that are all over the place, with millions of nuclear power supplies, laser rifles, MDC armour material, and all kinds of electronic and mechanical bits.

it would be one thing if the books had told us that the CS *appeared* to have lots of stuff. but that isn't what the books said. they gave us a narrator's official statement that they *have* absurd amounts of their old-style equipment. not just that they are rumoured to have it, or that their enemies assume they have it, but that they actually do have it.

The new book doesn't say they're "out" of stuff, but that they're starting to run out of stuff, or are about to run out of stuff. There's a difference.

Not for nothing but taking in 5 MILLION New troops in 3 months puts a pretty big strain on anyone.

[HWalsh]

Not 5 to one. not 10 to one. not 100 to one, but thousands to tens of thousands to one.

Pepsi, that is impossible. They literally cannot maintain an army that large. It isn't possible. I'm not just attacking them... They can't possibly do that... It is impossible. If they try to keep that level for more than a few months they will collapse economically.

[Pepsi Jedi]

the CS had literally millions of suits of just one kind of power armour in mothballs just a short time ago. they have reserves. it's called "getting all the stuff they just finished mothballing out of storage", and after giving them such stupidly large amounts of stockpiled stuff, it's pretty implausible that they are suddenly completely out of stuff. not to mention that since in the end they claimed the territory that used to be tolkeen, they also have full access to the canon "skelebot graveyards" that are all over the place, with millions of nuclear power supplies, laser rifles, MDC armour material, and all kinds of electronic and mechanical bits.

it would be one thing if the books had told us that the CS *appeared* to have lots of stuff. but that isn't what the books said. they gave us a narrator's official statement that they *have* absurd amounts of their old-style equipment. not just that they are rumoured to have it, or that their enemies assume they have it, but that they actually do have it.

That could have changed post-Tolkeen. Wars are expensive. Dead soldiers have families that the CS cares for. Recruiting new soldiers means money and equipment which needs money.

Ehh. yes and no. The new recruits taken in for the tolkeen war were from the burbs. They wern't full citizens yet. I.E. if they died, the families don't get an 'In card' they might be bumped up the list but the lists are thousands or millions deep. You don't get cared for for the rest of your life if you're someone 'Trying' to be a cs citizen and your husband or wife dies.

yes Recruiting new soldiers means money.

Then they need training which costs money. It's very possible that they're having to start selling their military reserves to cover bills.

Ehhh yes and no. Training costs money but they're doing that 'in house' you use your own troops to train the new ones. They're NOT selling military reserves they need every bit they can get. It's not about 'MONEY' (The CS controls the bank) It's about RESOURCES.. I.E> there's only so many pieces of the pie, once it's gone it's gone. If you have $5 or $5,000,000 once all the pie's gone, you can't buy another piece. THAT's the sort of resource problem the CS is looking at.

I don't think people can grasp how much the CS military costs yearly.

That I fully agree with. More over most people can't grasp how many 9 million troops is either.

I don't remember the pay per year of a CS grunt. Let's assume (since rank means more pay) that each person costs an average of 30,000 credits per year. In pay alone.

The CS pays it's privates $20,400 a year. Which is pretty good as they're fed and housed. But that's two thirds of your estimate. Thing is you are forgetting the CS pays it's troop then the troop promtly spends it's money in the CS, the money 'stays' in the CS

They have something like 5 million soldiers. Let's reduce that by 50% even though we know they have like 2 million SAMAS pilots.

The CS had 4 million before the HoH book. They're at 9million 'today.

I estimate their yearly costs around 28,250,000,000,000 credits not counting R&D, cloning, Skelebot manufacturing, medical, food, etc. Just people, food, weapons, and vehicles. This is also assuming the CS pays a fraction to make what others buy on the black market.

This estimate is unfounded and impossible to actually 'estimate' with any accuracy.

The real world US military operates on around $650,000,000,000 per year.

Now, assume the average civilian makes anout 50,000 credits a year, comparable to US earners and pays in 20% in taxes and are allowed no deductions of any kind. In order to pay for just the military of the CS they would need a population of 2,825,000,000 citizens

The average --household-- in the US, when we're NOT in a post apocolyptic world barely makes 50,000 a year. You're just.. kinda swinging and making up numbers and.. your gestimates are off by a factor of. well in this instance. 100%.

Now, the US has 318,000,000 people in it.

Do you think the CS in Rifts has greater than 9 times the population of the United States of America?

Maybe they pay 80% taxes? They'd still need 706,000,000 people which isn't feasible.

Which, logic states, that the CS would have been relying on their reserves since the CWC book. After a long and costly war with Tolkeen it makes sense that their resources are depleted.

1) It wasn't a long war.
2) We've been told that at the end, the CS more or less "broke even" After tolkeen.
3) yes they've used money to do so but your figures are just.. vapor. They're not actually correct so your summary is off

[Pepsi Jedi]

Not 5 to one. not 10 to one. not 100 to one, but thousands to tens of thousands to one.

Pepsi, that is impossible. They literally cannot maintain an army that large. It isn't possible. I'm not just attacking them... They can't possibly do that... It is impossible. If they try to keep that level for more than a few months they will collapse economically.

Hey man. I didn't write it. I'm pointing out what's been written.

In the first few pages of the HoH book they get
500,000 from inside the cities
1,300,000 from the burbs
in three monthsd they get an additonal 2,000,000

For a total of 3,800,000 human troops + "an untold number of dog boys"
If you figure 1 dog boy to 3 humans recruited, that gives you +4,800,000 new troops in three months. Round that for ease of discussion... and in three months the CS has ____ADDED___ Five million troops.

They had 4+ million before the HoH book.

Using the lowest numbers we have, the CS is fielding 9 million troops as of HoH.

Now.. go through and actually add up the numbers in Lazlo, new lazlo, alllll the other kingdoms you can find. And tell me what you get.

Again.. I'm not 'supporting it'. I'm 'reporting it'. This is what we're TOLD the CS has.

[Pepsi Jedi]

New point of interest.

I'm reading through the book tonight... past just how many troops the CS has added in and I saw something..... intresting/disturbing.

I'm not sure if Kevin did it on purpose or not. I'm reading it.... and I can't tell if it's PURPOSEFUL "Art imitating life" or if it is accidental.

In the first few pages of the book. The Emp gives a speech about the Minion war coming to earth. he calls on people to come together and fight back against the Demons and devils and such... and it's done in such a way.... that it FEELS .... like the US coming together after 9-11.

The reactions of the people in the book are very much like how the US pulled together after 9-11. Those of us who were alive then (and old enough to see what was going on) will remember that, for months, even years after 9-11 the US pulled together. We stopped sniping at each other and banded together and basicly went all out against an external threat. For a while (Months-years) it didn't matter about our own petty little things, it was all about the external threat, and how we could help each other. The army got such a huge surge in recruits it couldn't take them all. People were literally waiting... to go to training because the army couldn't train them all.

The HoH book... is written... and the reaction in the CS and in North America in general is much the same way. HUGE surge of people coming together. In this case.. Humanity. to stand against the external threat (The Demons and Devils)

Now.. that's... ok. a bit of an homage.. but it goes deeper than just that..

The book also talks about....retribution against... well... you know.

Not Muslims in the book. But DBees and Mages. People that lived beside them for years, suddenly formed lynch mobs (Honest lynch mobs,) and drug them into the street, beat them, and strung people up. The Burbs went from being pretty DBee and mage ... friendly to Burning down multiple burbs in a weeks worth of flaming retribution against Them.

This also harkens back to post 9-11. Now.. we didn't see cities burn to the ground, but there was a huge upswing in violence against Muslim americans and Arabic Americans.

This is a bit disturbing, coming from fiction. It's not too dark for me or anything, but... the direct parelles are a bit...... it hits ya. Kinda sideways.

And I simply cannot ascertain if it's written that way on PURPOSE, to PURPOSEFULLY hit you that way... or if Kevin wrote it and didn't realize that's what was coming out on the page.

If it's on purpose... it's... clever.. if going to rub some the wrong way once they feel it... if it's accidental... how did noone pick that up in editing? It took me about 10 seconds to see it.

Anyway. I'm not nearly done with the book. It's just something that jumped off the page and smacked me, as I started to read.

[HWalsh]

the CS had literally millions of suits of just one kind of power armour in mothballs just a short time ago. they have reserves. it's called "getting all the stuff they just finished mothballing out of storage", and after giving them such stupidly large amounts of stockpiled stuff, it's pretty implausible that they are suddenly completely out of stuff. not to mention that since in the end they claimed the territory that used to be tolkeen, they also have full access to the canon "skelebot graveyards" that are all over the place, with millions of nuclear power supplies, laser rifles, MDC armour material, and all kinds of electronic and mechanical bits.

it would be one thing if the books had told us that the CS *appeared* to have lots of stuff. but that isn't what the books said. they gave us a narrator's official statement that they *have* absurd amounts of their old-style equipment. not just that they are rumoured to have it, or that their enemies assume they have it, but that they actually do have it.

That could have changed post-Tolkeen. Wars are expensive. Dead soldiers have families that the CS cares for. Recruiting new soldiers means money and equipment which needs money.

Ehh. yes and no. The new recruits taken in for the tolkeen war were from the burbs. They wern't full citizens yet. I.E. if they died, the families don't get an 'In card' they might be bumped up the list but the lists are thousands or millions deep. You don't get cared for for the rest of your life if you're someone 'Trying' to be a cs citizen and your husband or wife dies.

yes Recruiting new soldiers means money.

Then they need training which costs money. It's very possible that they're having to start selling their military reserves to cover bills.

Ehhh yes and no. Training costs money but they're doing that 'in house' you use your own troops to train the new ones. They're NOT selling military reserves they need every bit they can get. It's not about 'MONEY' (The CS controls the bank) It's about RESOURCES.. I.E> there's only so many pieces of the pie, once it's gone it's gone. If you have $5 or $5,000,000 once all the pie's gone, you can't buy another piece. THAT's the sort of resource problem the CS is looking at.

I don't think people can grasp how much the CS military costs yearly.

That I fully agree with. More over most people can't grasp how many 9 million troops is either.

I don't remember the pay per year of a CS grunt. Let's assume (since rank means more pay) that each person costs an average of 30,000 credits per year. In pay alone.

The CS pays it's privates $20,400 a year. Which is pretty good as they're fed and housed. But that's two thirds of your estimate. Thing is you are forgetting the CS pays it's troop then the troop promtly spends it's money in the CS, the money 'stays' in the CS

They have something like 5 million soldiers. Let's reduce that by 50% even though we know they have like 2 million SAMAS pilots.

The CS had 4 million before the HoH book. They're at 9million 'today.

I estimate their yearly costs around 28,250,000,000,000 credits not counting R&D, cloning, Skelebot manufacturing, medical, food, etc. Just people, food, weapons, and vehicles. This is also assuming the CS pays a fraction to make what others buy on the black market.

This estimate is unfounded and impossible to actually 'estimate' with any accuracy.

The real world US military operates on around $650,000,000,000 per year.

Now, assume the average civilian makes anout 50,000 credits a year, comparable to US earners and pays in 20% in taxes and are allowed no deductions of any kind. In order to pay for just the military of the CS they would need a population of 2,825,000,000 citizens

The average --household-- in the US, when we're NOT in a post apocolyptic world barely makes 50,000 a year. You're just.. kinda swinging and making up numbers and.. your gestimates are off by a factor of. well in this instance. 100%.

Now, the US has 318,000,000 people in it.

Do you think the CS in Rifts has greater than 9 times the population of the United States of America?

Maybe they pay 80% taxes? They'd still need 706,000,000 people which isn't feasible.

Which, logic states, that the CS would have been relying on their reserves since the CWC book. After a long and costly war with Tolkeen it makes sense that their resources are depleted.

1) It wasn't a long war.
2) We've been told that at the end, the CS more or less "broke even" After tolkeen.
3) yes they've used money to do so but your figures are just.. vapor. They're not actually correct so your summary is off

I think you'd be surprised. If we go off of non-estimates then let's start at the top:

Grunts pull down 20k
Willing to bet higher than grunts make more. Hence the 30k estimate. So, sure, let's do real hard numbers and assume average military pay is 20k then multiply it by 9 million.

That is 180,000,000,000

Now let's look at the cost of a SAMAS they cost, what, 1.6 million on the black market? Probably 1 million to make. They have these but maintenance costs are usually 2% of a vehicle's cost per year.

They have 2.2 Million of them? At 20k per unit maintenance per year that's a lot of maintenance. 44,000,000,000 per year.

If we estimate low, each CS soldier has at least 50,000 credits worth of armor and weapons. That is at least 450,000,000,000?

Then there is the maintenance on that at 1% alone that's 4,500,000,000?

How many Skelebots? Death's Head Transports? We're at 678,500,000,000 right now. We haven't factored the upkeep of the men (food and medical) yet, or the other vehicles and robots. We haven't guessed at the R&D budget (in real life over 50% of the military budget goes there) but we could easily extrapolate a number once we factor everything out...

Upkeep on the men is probably comparable to 10%? So 2k multiplied by 9 million? Another 18,000,000,000?

I know my numbers are high, seeming, but they really aren't. I think if we actually math it all out you'll be shocked.

[Pepsi Jedi]

the CS had literally millions of suits of just one kind of power armour in mothballs just a short time ago. they have reserves. it's called "getting all the stuff they just finished mothballing out of storage", and after giving them such stupidly large amounts of stockpiled stuff, it's pretty implausible that they are suddenly completely out of stuff. not to mention that since in the end they claimed the territory that used to be tolkeen, they also have full access to the canon "skelebot graveyards" that are all over the place, with millions of nuclear power supplies, laser rifles, MDC armour material, and all kinds of electronic and mechanical bits.

it would be one thing if the books had told us that the CS *appeared* to have lots of stuff. but that isn't what the books said. they gave us a narrator's official statement that they *have* absurd amounts of their old-style equipment. not just that they are rumoured to have it, or that their enemies assume they have it, but that they actually do have it.

That could have changed post-Tolkeen. Wars are expensive. Dead soldiers have families that the CS cares for. Recruiting new soldiers means money and equipment which needs money.

Ehh. yes and no. The new recruits taken in for the tolkeen war were from the burbs. They wern't full citizens yet. I.E. if they died, the families don't get an 'In card' they might be bumped up the list but the lists are thousands or millions deep. You don't get cared for for the rest of your life if you're someone 'Trying' to be a cs citizen and your husband or wife dies.

yes Recruiting new soldiers means money.

Then they need training which costs money. It's very possible that they're having to start selling their military reserves to cover bills.

Ehhh yes and no. Training costs money but they're doing that 'in house' you use your own troops to train the new ones. They're NOT selling military reserves they need every bit they can get. It's not about 'MONEY' (The CS controls the bank) It's about RESOURCES.. I.E> there's only so many pieces of the pie, once it's gone it's gone. If you have $5 or $5,000,000 once all the pie's gone, you can't buy another piece. THAT's the sort of resource problem the CS is looking at.

I don't think people can grasp how much the CS military costs yearly.

That I fully agree with. More over most people can't grasp how many 9 million troops is either.

I don't remember the pay per year of a CS grunt. Let's assume (since rank means more pay) that each person costs an average of 30,000 credits per year. In pay alone.

The CS pays it's privates $20,400 a year. Which is pretty good as they're fed and housed. But that's two thirds of your estimate. Thing is you are forgetting the CS pays it's troop then the troop promtly spends it's money in the CS, the money 'stays' in the CS

They have something like 5 million soldiers. Let's reduce that by 50% even though we know they have like 2 million SAMAS pilots.

The CS had 4 million before the HoH book. They're at 9million 'today.

I estimate their yearly costs around 28,250,000,000,000 credits not counting R&D, cloning, Skelebot manufacturing, medical, food, etc. Just people, food, weapons, and vehicles. This is also assuming the CS pays a fraction to make what others buy on the black market.

This estimate is unfounded and impossible to actually 'estimate' with any accuracy.

The real world US military operates on around $650,000,000,000 per year.

Now, assume the average civilian makes anout 50,000 credits a year, comparable to US earners and pays in 20% in taxes and are allowed no deductions of any kind. In order to pay for just the military of the CS they would need a population of 2,825,000,000 citizens

The average --household-- in the US, when we're NOT in a post apocolyptic world barely makes 50,000 a year. You're just.. kinda swinging and making up numbers and.. your gestimates are off by a factor of. well in this instance. 100%.

Now, the US has 318,000,000 people in it.

Do you think the CS in Rifts has greater than 9 times the population of the United States of America?

Maybe they pay 80% taxes? They'd still need 706,000,000 people which isn't feasible.

Which, logic states, that the CS would have been relying on their reserves since the CWC book. After a long and costly war with Tolkeen it makes sense that their resources are depleted.

1) It wasn't a long war.
2) We've been told that at the end, the CS more or less "broke even" After tolkeen.
3) yes they've used money to do so but your figures are just.. vapor. They're not actually correct so your summary is off

I think you'd be surprised. If we go off of non-estimates then let's start at the top:

Grunts pull down 20k
Willing to bet higher than grunts make more.

Higher ups make more than grunts yes, but the vast majority of your troops are grunts. Not generals. So you don't use the general's pay for the salary calculations. You use the grunts.

Hence the 30k estimate. So, sure, let's do real hard numbers and assume average military pay is 20k then multiply it by 9 million.

That is 180,000,000,000

Now let's look at the cost of a SAMAS they cost, what, 1.6 million on the black market? Probably 1 million to make. They have these but maintenance costs are usually 2% of a vehicle's cost per year.

They have 2.2 Million of them? At 20k per unit maintenance per year that's a lot of maintenance. 44,000,000,000 per year

But that's not established cost. Samus are MDC creations. They don't have 'normal wear and tear'. We have no way to accurately factor in maintenance. It's been stated in the books that MDC gear generally has very very low matienance costs due to this. Which is one of the benifits of it. You issue a Troop a suit of MDC armor and baring getting blown away or bitten by a dragon that armor will be at the same MDC when your troop dies of old age as it was when he started. It'll be the same when that guy's great grand kids put it on. (Again baring MDC damage)

As I pointed out above some of these costs can't be estimated, as we don't know what if any matience is put in. We can assume SOME, but how much? We've no clue. And again you're assuming that's a cost that they field, when they produce the same product that they're servicing.

If we estimate low, each CS soldier has at least 50,000 credits worth of armor and weapons. That is at least 450,000,000,000?

But they don't get those weapons and armor re-issued every month. Those are one time costs. Not yearly. More over baring damage those weapons and armor will out live the trooper and his great great grand kids. Again as people with out MDC materials and such, we can't estimate such long term costs. Only one time costs, and even then, we can't estimate the "COST" of the CS producing it's guns and ammo, based on how much it goes for on the black market.

You're compairing market value or street value vs production cost.

We also can't accurately estimate production cost 1) because it's a military run society, 2) The usage of unskilled labor doesn't have a set price and 3) The inability to know how much production and or raw materials cost. We know they use MDC stuff but for all we know it could be made of dirt. (Ceramics are a part of it and it is... in essence.. dirt) It could be ground up trees that undergo a hyper advanced chemical process and results in MDC. It could be normal metal that's treated and or changed through hypersicence to be MDC, but we don't know how much that costs to do, as it's science fiction and it hasn't been established.

Then there is the maintenance on that at 1% alone that's 4,500,000,000?

Again. MDC materials change the maintenance costs. How? We don't know, but we can't properly estimate. so your numbers are just guesses at best, but uneducated guesses as we don't know the base figures to factor from.

How many Skelebots? Death's Head Transports? We're at 678,500,000,000 right now. We haven't factored the upkeep of the men (food and medical) yet, or the other vehicles and robots. We haven't guessed at the R&D budget (in real life over 50% of the military budget goes there) but we could easily extrapolate a number once we factor everything out...

But you can't though. You're just guessing, based on numbers you're making up. If the base numbers you're trying to factor are ficticious, any and all results from such extrapolations are likewise made up.

Upkeep on the men is probably comparable to 10%? So 2k multiplied by 9 million? Another 18,000,000,000?

I know my numbers are high, seeming, but they really aren't. I think if we actually math it all out you'll be shocked.

I wouldn't be shocked. My point is that you're just making up numbers to multiply by the numbers we DO have. At the best you can multiply salary times the number of troops. But the rest are either 1) 100% fabricated, I.E. made up because they sound good. or 2) Based on modern numbers which could be off by many orders of magnitude in Rifts either. UP or DOWN. It might cost 100 times more in Rifts earth on maintenance, or 100 times less Due to the MDC materials. Or something in between. Like wise the rest of the stuff I pointed out.

[HWalsh]

The reason you use estimates is because they're estimates. You can't be sure but you draw estimates. I'm also going down to 1 and 2 percent.

You're right we can't 100% know, but we can at least be reasonable. We can substitute things.

The idea is to show that it's totally possible and INCREDIBLY likely that the reports that the CS are having resource problems in HoH are fairly unsurprising.

[Pepsi Jedi]

I would think the numbers were alot more simple.

Estimates of total CS population is 24 to 44 million.

If 9,000,000 people are under arms (Even with 3.400,000 of them being new to the 'population') Then that's aloooooooooooooooot of mouths to feed (Clothe, equip) for the rest.

Thing is..... we can't estimate how easy/hard it is. as with hyper tech they might do things many 1000% easier than we do. One example, we know Lone Star makes genetic supercows, via their advanced science with grows faster cows, heavier cows, with more meat per weight, and they even taste better.... So at minimum, the food production for the CS is 'easier' than it would be for the US. and that's just one of a million factors.

[HWalsh]

I would think the numbers were alot more simple.

Estimates of total CS population is 24 to 44 million.

If 9,000,000 people are under arms (Even with 3.400,000 of them being new to the 'population') Then that's aloooooooooooooooot of mouths to feed (Clothe, equip) for the rest.

Thing is..... we can't estimate how easy/hard it is. as with hyper tech they might do things many 1000% easier than we do. One example, we know Lone Star makes genetic supercows, via their advanced science with grows faster cows, heavier cows, with more meat per weight, and they even taste better.... So at minimum, the food production for the CS is 'easier' than it would be for the US. and that's just one of a million factors.

Though even at 180,000,000,000 per year salaries at 44,000,000 people paying taxes that is really a strain. Just over 4,000 in tax revenue per person at population maximum. That is doable but only covers salaries and we know there are other costs.

A family of 3 paying 12,000 credits in taxes (with no tax breaks) is way higher than most people could afford. We can extrapolate that based on the prices of goods which align with 1980's prices by the book.

Realistically only between 1/2 to 1/3 of Citizens pay taxes because, well, kids.

[keir451]

I would think the numbers were alot more simple.

Estimates of total CS population is 24 to 44 million.

If 9,000,000 people are under arms (Even with 3.400,000 of them being new to the 'population') Then that's aloooooooooooooooot of mouths to feed (Clothe, equip) for the rest.

Thing is..... we can't estimate how easy/hard it is. as with hyper tech they might do things many 1000% easier than we do. One example, we know Lone Star makes genetic supercows, via their advanced science with grows faster cows, heavier cows, with more meat per weight, and they even taste better.... So at minimum, the food production for the CS is 'easier' than it would be for the US. and that's just one of a million factors.

Though even at 180,000,000,000 per year salaries at 44,000,000 people paying taxes that is really a strain. Just over 4,000 in tax revenue per person at population maximum. That is doable but only covers salaries and we know there are other costs.

A family of 3 paying 12,000 credits in taxes (with no tax breaks) is way higher than most people could afford. We can extrapolate that based on the prices of goods which align with 1980's prices by the book.

Realistically only between 1/2 to 1/3 of Citizens pay taxes because, well, kids.

The real question is: "Do CS citizens actually pay taxes?" There's no evidence that the CS has anything like the IRS or any sort of tax collection service. The CS doesn't have hundreds of humanitarian projects that it pays for, nothing that needs Federal funding such as we use.

[HWalsh]

I would think the numbers were alot more simple.

Estimates of total CS population is 24 to 44 million.

If 9,000,000 people are under arms (Even with 3.400,000 of them being new to the 'population') Then that's aloooooooooooooooot of mouths to feed (Clothe, equip) for the rest.

Thing is..... we can't estimate how easy/hard it is. as with hyper tech they might do things many 1000% easier than we do. One example, we know Lone Star makes genetic supercows, via their advanced science with grows faster cows, heavier cows, with more meat per weight, and they even taste better.... So at minimum, the food production for the CS is 'easier' than it would be for the US. and that's just one of a million factors.

Though even at 180,000,000,000 per year salaries at 44,000,000 people paying taxes that is really a strain. Just over 4,000 in tax revenue per person at population maximum. That is doable but only covers salaries and we know there are other costs.

A family of 3 paying 12,000 credits in taxes (with no tax breaks) is way higher than most people could afford. We can extrapolate that based on the prices of goods which align with 1980's prices by the book.

Realistically only between 1/2 to 1/3 of Citizens pay taxes because, well, kids.

The real question is: "Do CS citizens actually pay taxes?" There's no evidence that the CS has anything like the IRS or any sort of tax collection service. The CS doesn't have hundreds of humanitarian projects that it pays for, nothing that needs Federal funding such as we use.

Uh... The military gets federal funding. How else do you think they get paid? Heh.

[Proseksword]

The CS appears to be a command economy. Citizens inhabiting the outlying agricultural areas are likely taxed in the form of production quotas, but the fortress city inhabitants are likely paid as a form of a rationed stipend from the state rather than earning a private taxable income. This would also partially explain the value of the CS Credit - it represents a fraction of all the assets of the CS itself.

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

the CS had literally millions of suits of just one kind of power armour in mothballs just a short time ago. they have reserves. it's called "getting all the stuff they just finished mothballing out of storage", and after giving them such stupidly large amounts of stockpiled stuff, it's pretty implausible that they are suddenly completely out of stuff. not to mention that since in the end they claimed the territory that used to be tolkeen, they also have full access to the canon "skelebot graveyards" that are all over the place, with millions of nuclear power supplies, laser rifles, MDC armour material, and all kinds of electronic and mechanical bits.

it would be one thing if the books had told us that the CS *appeared* to have lots of stuff. but that isn't what the books said. they gave us a narrator's official statement that they *have* absurd amounts of their old-style equipment. not just that they are rumoured to have it, or that their enemies assume they have it, but that they actually do have it.

That could have changed post-Tolkeen. Wars are expensive. Dead soldiers have families that the CS cares for. Recruiting new soldiers means money and equipment which needs money.

Then they need training which costs money. It's very possible that they're having to start selling their military reserves to cover bills.

I don't think people can grasp how much the CS military costs yearly.

I don't remember the pay per year of a CS grunt. Let's assume (since rank means more pay) that each person costs an average of 30,000 credits per year. In pay alone.

They have something like 5 million soldiers. Let's reduce that by 50% even though we know they have like 2 million SAMAS pilots.

I estimate their yearly costs around 28,250,000,000,000 credits not counting R&D, cloning, Skelebot manufacturing, medical, food, etc. Just people, food, weapons, and vehicles. This is also assuming the CS pays a fraction to make what others buy on the black market.

The real world US military operates on around $650,000,000,000 per year.

Now, assume the average civilian makes anout 50,000 credits a year, comparable to US earners and pays in 20% in taxes and are allowed no deductions of any kind. In order to pay for just the military of the CS they would need a population of 2,825,000,000 citizens

Guy at CS Accounting types in the numbers "28,250,000,000,000".

He hits "enter".

Boom.

CS Pays all the bills.

They. Utterly. Control. the UC. And. It. Is. A. Fiat. Currency.

Now, the US has 318,000,000 people in it.

Do you think the CS in Rifts has greater than 9 times the population of the United States of America?

Maybe they pay 80% taxes? They'd still need 706,000,000 people which isn't feasible.

Which, logic states, that the CS would have been relying on their reserves since the CWC book. After a long and costly war with Tolkeen it makes sense that their resources are depleted.

[kaid]

Okay folks, I recently received my copy of the long awaited/dreaded Heroes of Humanity sourcebook and quite honestly I am actually rather satisfied with it. The only part I don't agree with from a logical standpoint is the idea that the Coalition is strapped for resources. I accept that Kevin felt it was "right" for his story and that it adds a sense of urgency to the Coalition's decisions, I just don't believe it.
Anyway, back the rest of the book; I really enjoyed the "fluff"/stories he inserted, I loved the artwork and especially the new O.C.C.s as well as the section on "AT" or "Advanced Training" that allows a player to possibly breathe new life into old characters. The further description and definition of the weaknesses of some of the demons was also very interesting and can add a extra level of interaction for PCs fighting this new, "Great Evil". The CS is again portraying themselves as the Heroic Underdog in this fight and their treatment of D-Bees, especially those in the Burbs, has gone from minimal tolerance to effectively Zero tolerance, while the soldiers in the field are, yet again, forced to consider the fact that not all D-Bees fall into such a neat and easily category, and that for many D-Bees the only home they've ever known is this one.
I honestly look forward to using this book (with a few tweaks to suit myself) in my future games.

I am only about halfway through it. On the resource thing frankly them being short of resources is one of the more logical flaws of the CS. They have clearly been manufacturing like crazy to basically totally replace all their military gear with brand new military gear in the last few years. Given the size of their territory combined with the size of army they are said to field it is shocking that they could do it at all resource wise. Their recycling facilities have to be pretty spectacular but even with golden age tech you don't get something for nothing.

The food shortages are a bit more of a question mark but they are greatly increasing the size of military they are supporting with all the recruits so that makes a fair amount of sense too.

[kaid]

gb2098 is correct, many people on the forums have often said that it was impossible for the CS to be able to do what they have done. I, however, have long been of the camp that said they could and have pointed out, each time, where in each of the books it says the CS has "X capability" to produce "Y equipment". I have talked long and often with people who understand exactly what resources are available in the territory the CS holds and we project (as much as we reasonably can given the information we have on the CS) what they could do with said resources.
As I said earlier I understand why Kevin wrote the story the way he did, but my research has told me that this is just writer fiat for the sake of telling the story the way he wants. I'm fine with that, but I, personally choose to apply a different standard to the story than Kevin does.

Welcome to Rifts.

I agree, personally - it's a blatant fiat/ret-con for story purposes.

I can't call it writer fiat.

I can, because other books have blaantly contradicted this theory on several occasions.

It makes a ton of sense.

The CS kept spending to keep up with an invisible benchmark and have spent trillions of credits to do so. Trillions. If, all this time, they were borrowing funds and eventually their creditors finally cut them off it would be an interesting development.

Trillions of credits they can create out of thin air. UCs are fiat currency that they control utterly. The CS doesn't "spend" money. They have no creditors. Who would they be borrowing from - they ARE the money.

Also one has to note that where the CS military is concerned it is not a free market. They are not contracting out the business to private industries. The military and government say make this and you make that item. The costs are material costs and wages for the employees. Energy costs are pretty much solved with the tiny nuke plants they have, Leasing space is not a concern and a lot of the laborers are robotic. It says in NG1 that the CS has far more heavily automated construction setups than the NG does. Workers who can work 24/7 last for years. And given they supply themselves with these workers after the initial setup costs your main issues are feeding enough resources into the factories and just watch machines work making other machines.

[kaid]

the CS had literally millions of suits of just one kind of power armour in mothballs just a short time ago. they have reserves. it's called "getting all the stuff they just finished mothballing out of storage", and after giving them such stupidly large amounts of stockpiled stuff, it's pretty implausible that they are suddenly completely out of stuff. not to mention that since in the end they claimed the territory that used to be tolkeen, they also have full access to the canon "skelebot graveyards" that are all over the place, with millions of nuclear power supplies, laser rifles, MDC armour material, and all kinds of electronic and mechanical bits.

it would be one thing if the books had told us that the CS *appeared* to have lots of stuff. but that isn't what the books said. they gave us a narrator's official statement that they *have* absurd amounts of their old-style equipment. not just that they are rumoured to have it, or that their enemies assume they have it, but that they actually do have it.

That could have changed post-Tolkeen. Wars are expensive. Dead soldiers have families that the CS cares for. Recruiting new soldiers means money and equipment which needs money.

Ehh. yes and no. The new recruits taken in for the tolkeen war were from the burbs. They wern't full citizens yet. I.E. if they died, the families don't get an 'In card' they might be bumped up the list but the lists are thousands or millions deep. You don't get cared for for the rest of your life if you're someone 'Trying' to be a cs citizen and your husband or wife dies.

yes Recruiting new soldiers means money.

Then they need training which costs money. It's very possible that they're having to start selling their military reserves to cover bills.

Ehhh yes and no. Training costs money but they're doing that 'in house' you use your own troops to train the new ones. They're NOT selling military reserves they need every bit they can get. It's not about 'MONEY' (The CS controls the bank) It's about RESOURCES.. I.E> there's only so many pieces of the pie, once it's gone it's gone. If you have $5 or $5,000,000 once all the pie's gone, you can't buy another piece. THAT's the sort of resource problem the CS is looking at.

I don't think people can grasp how much the CS military costs yearly.

That I fully agree with. More over most people can't grasp how many 9 million troops is either.

I don't remember the pay per year of a CS grunt. Let's assume (since rank means more pay) that each person costs an average of 30,000 credits per year. In pay alone.

The CS pays it's privates $20,400 a year. Which is pretty good as they're fed and housed. But that's two thirds of your estimate. Thing is you are forgetting the CS pays it's troop then the troop promtly spends it's money in the CS, the money 'stays' in the CS

They have something like 5 million soldiers. Let's reduce that by 50% even though we know they have like 2 million SAMAS pilots.

The CS had 4 million before the HoH book. They're at 9million 'today.

I estimate their yearly costs around 28,250,000,000,000 credits not counting R&D, cloning, Skelebot manufacturing, medical, food, etc. Just people, food, weapons, and vehicles. This is also assuming the CS pays a fraction to make what others buy on the black market.

This estimate is unfounded and impossible to actually 'estimate' with any accuracy.

The real world US military operates on around $650,000,000,000 per year.

Now, assume the average civilian makes anout 50,000 credits a year, comparable to US earners and pays in 20% in taxes and are allowed no deductions of any kind. In order to pay for just the military of the CS they would need a population of 2,825,000,000 citizens

The average --household-- in the US, when we're NOT in a post apocolyptic world barely makes 50,000 a year. You're just.. kinda swinging and making up numbers and.. your gestimates are off by a factor of. well in this instance. 100%.

Now, the US has 318,000,000 people in it.

Do you think the CS in Rifts has greater than 9 times the population of the United States of America?

Maybe they pay 80% taxes? They'd still need 706,000,000 people which isn't feasible.

Which, logic states, that the CS would have been relying on their reserves since the CWC book. After a long and costly war with Tolkeen it makes sense that their resources are depleted.

1) It wasn't a long war.
2) We've been told that at the end, the CS more or less "broke even" After tolkeen.
3) yes they've used money to do so but your figures are just.. vapor. They're not actually correct so your summary is off

I think you'd be surprised. If we go off of non-estimates then let's start at the top:

Grunts pull down 20k
Willing to bet higher than grunts make more. Hence the 30k estimate. So, sure, let's do real hard numbers and assume average military pay is 20k then multiply it by 9 million.

That is 180,000,000,000

Now let's look at the cost of a SAMAS they cost, what, 1.6 million on the black market? Probably 1 million to make. They have these but maintenance costs are usually 2% of a vehicle's cost per year.

They have 2.2 Million of them? At 20k per unit maintenance per year that's a lot of maintenance. 44,000,000,000 per year.

If we estimate low, each CS soldier has at least 50,000 credits worth of armor and weapons. That is at least 450,000,000,000?

Then there is the maintenance on that at 1% alone that's 4,500,000,000?

How many Skelebots? Death's Head Transports? We're at 678,500,000,000 right now. We haven't factored the upkeep of the men (food and medical) yet, or the other vehicles and robots. We haven't guessed at the R&D budget (in real life over 50% of the military budget goes there) but we could easily extrapolate a number once we factor everything out...

Upkeep on the men is probably comparable to 10%? So 2k multiplied by 9 million? Another 18,000,000,000?

I know my numbers are high, seeming, but they really aren't. I think if we actually math it all out you'll be shocked.

One thing you have to remember when dealing with troop costs and wages is that the CS is effectively one giant company town. You get your housing from the company you get your script from the company that you use in that companies stores to buy goods that company makes. Its is for the most part a closed loop. Other than losses to the black market or approved outside vendors such as the northern gun anything they are paying to their troops winds up back into their system going to their stores and buying their own products.

As long as the citizens continue this behavior costs of wages for troops/workers and what not while something they have to plan for is not in the long run that big of a deal for them. The problem is if they truly are running out of the physical resources to mine and given their levels of production thats totally possible you could stall out their economy if they just physically don't have the raw resources to put into the mills.

[Alrik Vas]

Most currency is fiat of a sort. Has more to do with confidence in the economy than the amount of money in print. Given that the CS can sell themselves pretty well to their population, I don't see them having real money problems unless physical resources start to run dry.

Honestly, the NGR is really their only economic balance as they don't recognize anyone else's right to governance.

[The Beast]

Guy at CS Accounting types in the numbers "28,250,000,000,000".

He hits "enter".

Boom.

CS Pays all the bills.

They. Utterly. Control. the UC. And. It. Is. A. Fiat. Currency.

There's only one person who controls the CS's finances, and his name doesn't end in Prosek. Take a deep breath and relax. Look, I even have a link for you.

[Pepsi Jedi]

Not trying to be a buzzkill but isn't this fiat currency thing going on in another thread... like right now? So, if possible can we keep this one to HoH?

I don't mind divergence. Goddess knows I do it often enough, but this exact conversation with the exact same people is now in two threads. We don't really need both.

[Shark_Force]

The new book doesn't say they're "out" of stuff, but that they're starting to run out of stuff, or are about to run out of stuff. There's a difference.

Not for nothing but taking in 5 MILLION New troops in 3 months puts a pretty big strain on anyone.

conveniently, they probably had 5 million troops or more before they switched over to their new gear, and they took all the stuff those troops needed plus a crudload of spares (they didn't have over half their troops in SAMAS armour, but they did have over 3 million SAMAS suits... which means they had a lot of extras, and that probably extends to most equipment since a typical grunt can ask for basically anything and stands a chance of getting it if they can persuade their commanding officer it's necessary, without concern for rarity... the OCC entry literally says they can just straight up ask for a tank, for example) and mothballed it.

so unless they're declaring this as a total retcon, it still quite simply doesn't make sense that they're running out of stuff, or really even getting close to it. they can take a third of your estimated troop increase and just straight-up give them old-style SAMAS suits.

now, i would welcome a total retcon, because those numbers have always felt silly to me. but that is what they have available, assuming they have not produced extras of their new gear at all since they first started making them. given they had the production capacity to just re-outfit their *entire* army in one shot *and* equip all their new recruits with the new gear as well, it seems unlikely that their losses in equipment were so great that they couldn't easily keep up with replacements while also making more.

(also, actually recruiting that many troops is likely a huge overreaction from what i've heard of the other demon war books... simply put, there aren't enough demons in existence to require that number of soldiers iirc).

[Pepsi Jedi]

Again guys. I didn't write it. I pointed out this number when it peeked through in the 'Preview" book out last year, but waited to really hammer on it till it was full canon.

Kevin/Palladium put the troop numbers out there. I think they're stupid high myself. The logistics boils down to intaking what, 8 people a second, every second of every minute of every hour of every day to pull it off?

Kevin/Palladium doesn't really comprehend large numbers well. If it's got more than two zeroes behind it, it's kinda a stand in for "Big number here" be it thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions.

Five hundred thousand... here sounds impressive. One point three million there... another two million there.... It sounds impressive and 'Big number of troops"

With out really comprehending that in one paragraph, and in 'two days+3 months" Time, the CS has taken in 4 or 5 times the ENTIRE US ARMED FORCES OF EVERY BRANCH.

And The CS Has total population smaller than present day California.

But I didn't write it. We can just go off what we're told.

[glitterboy2098]

this actually got discussed fairly in depth on the facebook groups.

it helps if you remember that recruitment and reporting to training are two different stages. recruitment is people committing to joining and paperwork getting filled. reporting takes place days, weeks, or months later after the paperwork is processed, the new recruit has settled most of his standing affairs, and the military has arranged a gathering point and transport.

with the CS, a lot of that paperwork is going to be digital and already in the computers of the CS bureaucracy, just needing copies transferred to the right servers. signing up is likely as simple as going to a website on the CS local intranet, listening to a disclaimer speech about what signing up means you are committing too legally, and then clicking "Yes". then it processes, spits out an ID card with a barcode, and tells you to expect a notice of the date/location to report.

the real slowdown would be the people from outside the CS or from new territories where the CS doesn't have all their fingerprints, voicematch data, medical history, background history, etc already on file.

odds are it'll be upwards of a year before some of those new recruits get the notice to report to boot. and the training, even if accelerated, isn't going to be fast.

[kaid]

Again guys. I didn't write it. I pointed out this number when it peeked through in the 'Preview" book out last year, but waited to really hammer on it till it was full canon.

Kevin/Palladium put the troop numbers out there. I think they're stupid high myself. The logistics boils down to intaking what, 8 people a second, every second of every minute of every hour of every day to pull it off?

Kevin/Palladium doesn't really comprehend large numbers well. If it's got more than two zeroes behind it, it's kinda a stand in for "Big number here" be it thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions.

Five hundred thousand... here sounds impressive. One point three million there... another two million there.... It sounds impressive and 'Big number of troops"

With out really comprehending that in one paragraph, and in 'two days+3 months" Time, the CS has taken in 4 or 5 times the ENTIRE US ARMED FORCES OF EVERY BRANCH.

And The CS Has total population smaller than present day California.

But I didn't write it. We can just go off what we're told.

Honestly if the will was there it could be done if they had the stock piles of the juicer rigs to begin with which it sounds like they did. Basically it sounds like they had the open in case of apocalypse cache of stuff things that could turn total untrained green troops into at least a usable fighting force in the shortest period of time possible. In this case if you can get the warm bodies in the door and the burbs alone had some pretty sizable populations to pull from and are willing to slap a juicer rig on anybody willing to do it they could probably get those numbers at least initially. The volume would slow down fast as you start running out of people willing to do that option. But with the juicer rig you can turn a unfit country bumpkin into a better than olympic athlete in about a week. Give them a gun and some basic armor and a couple weeks of training and tell them to shoot at any demon looking thing they see.

The quality of that force is going to kinda suck but the plus side with the juicers being so hyped up and agressive due to the transformation they make at least semi effective shock troops even with crappy training they believe the juicer mythos and that helps bolster a lot of the morale issues green troops normally suffer from.

[kaid]

this actually got discussed fairly in depth on the facebook groups.

it helps if you remember that recruitment and reporting to training are two different stages. recruitment is people committing to joining and paperwork getting filled. reporting takes place days, weeks, or months later after the paperwork is processed, the new recruit has settled most of his standing affairs, and the military has arranged a gathering point and transport.

with the CS, a lot of that paperwork is going to be digital and already in the computers of the CS bureaucracy, just needing copies transferred to the right servers. signing up is likely as simple as going to a website on the CS local intranet, listening to a disclaimer speech about what signing up means you are committing too legally, and then clicking "Yes". then it processes, spits out an ID card with a barcode, and tells you to expect a notice of the date/location to report.

the real slowdown would be the people from outside the CS or from new territories where the CS doesn't have all their fingerprints, voicematch data, medical history, background history, etc already on file.

odds are it'll be upwards of a year before some of those new recruits get the notice to report to boot. and the training, even if accelerated, isn't going to be fast.

Actually it is really fast. They are talking on the order of 2 weeks training for people from the burbs to a month or so for CS full citizens. It is one reason they are pushing the borg/juicer stuff so much ratchet up their base levels of the green newbies physical abilities enough to offset they may barely know which end of the gun to point towards the enemies. It sounds like they are going full on the job training after the basic boot camp intro stuff. Probably best to disperse these squads amongst the more professional trained soldiers to bolster their numbers and let your sgt's pound them into shape in the field. If they die they were random people from nowhere and are now martyrs to the cause.

[Alrik Vas]

Borging and Juicing an 8th of your population seems counter productive in war unless your situation is do dire you're facing extinction if you don't.

Is that how Palladium paints this situation, or just how the CS sees it?

[kaid]

I guess one advantage about stamping out literacy is all your equipment has simply got to be pretty much idiot proof where any slack jawed yokel should be able to figure out.

Yes that is exactly how the CS sees this incursion. They have some records of the dark ages demon plagues and they were always worried and preparing for the day when it would happen again. And it always was a when not if it happens again. They know if the demon plague is as bad as they are afraid of it is clearly an existential threat to the CS. You don't take 300k guys with a couple weeks training slap a juicer rig on them and send them out to the war if you don't believe there is an imminent threat to the survival of your nation.

Also remember it is not just their population. They basically are saying if you are human and you want to fight for us sign up and we forgive any past bad associations with magic or dbees. Anything that happened before is gone if you are willing to sign on and fight your slate is wiped clean.

Also you have to think if the CS is clearly going all in on this and all the other nations are echoing in on it as well that this is a do or die time. People are seeing even the juicer conversion as an improvement over their odds of surviving if they don't do it.

[kaid]

I should also mention a lot of their tactic other than seeing it as a direct threat to their existence is realizing their best hope of a good outcome is hit the invaders hard and fast with every thing they can possibly throw at it to prevent any/all toe holds from being established. Let to many hell pits get established it may be game over for them and they know it so they are being hyper aggressive throwing as much weight behind their response as they can muster and probably more than they can afford.

[glitterboy2098]

this actually got discussed fairly in depth on the facebook groups.

it helps if you remember that recruitment and reporting to training are two different stages. recruitment is people committing to joining and paperwork getting filled. reporting takes place days, weeks, or months later after the paperwork is processed, the new recruit has settled most of his standing affairs, and the military has arranged a gathering point and transport.

with the CS, a lot of that paperwork is going to be digital and already in the computers of the CS bureaucracy, just needing copies transferred to the right servers. signing up is likely as simple as going to a website on the CS local intranet, listening to a disclaimer speech about what signing up means you are committing too legally, and then clicking "Yes". then it processes, spits out an ID card with a barcode, and tells you to expect a notice of the date/location to report.

the real slowdown would be the people from outside the CS or from new territories where the CS doesn't have all their fingerprints, voicematch data, medical history, background history, etc already on file.

odds are it'll be upwards of a year before some of those new recruits get the notice to report to boot. and the training, even if accelerated, isn't going to be fast.

Actually it is really fast. They are talking on the order of 2 weeks training for people from the burbs to a month or so for CS full citizens. It is one reason they are pushing the borg/juicer stuff so much ratchet up their base levels of the green newbies physical abilities enough to offset they may barely know which end of the gun to point towards the enemies. It sounds like they are going full on the job training after the basic boot camp intro stuff. Probably best to disperse these squads amongst the more professional trained soldiers to bolster their numbers and let your sgt's pound them into shape in the field. If they die they were random people from nowhere and are now martyrs to the cause.

i assume this is direct from the book?

wow.. that means most of these new troops won't by the CS Grunt OCC. they'll be whatever passes as "NPC civilian OCC" with a few headhunters, cityrats, and other "player class types" mixed in.

still.. it is clear that the CS isn't getting millions of people going into Boot the next day. your looking at millions of people being divided up into discrete groups, being shipped to different boot camps over the span of probably a year.

i mean, lets assume they have groups being gathered and shipped to boot every single day.
3.8 million new troops means that each day you have to have 10,410 people gathered and shipped off.

there are 6 coalition states (not counting FQ). that means each state on average is sending 1735 people to boot each day. a big number but not too unrealistic.

we can assume that the CS has several boot camps in every state to handle the influx.


and for those freaking out over the huge size of this military force.. remember tooth to tail ratios. at best maybe 10-15% of those numbers brought in will be actual combat troops. most of the rest will be in support roles like logistics, medical, office work, etc. away from the frontlines.

[HWalsh]

Doesn't it take like a year to finish 'Borg conversion?

Note to self, off-topic, find out if there is a Psi-Borg OCC...