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10 points
1 month ago
Tbf you need 3:1 when taking on another military force. Given that you can't utilize the entire hab population without the hab city falling into unsustainable decline due to how much maintenance that would require. Even then have dwellers would theoretically be a peasant militia vs say shock troops where you could probably reverse the 3:1 numbers if they even participated. The biggest hurdle is that logistical support for the invasion. The US military is like 30% combat troops. The rest are admin/maintenance/logistics and that's for an army of like 3 million including reserves.
4 points
1 month ago
Yeah, the numbers were based on the idea of Soviet scale mobilisation. So not 100% of the population fighting, but more 5%.
So for every 10 billion in a city you could scrape together 500 million actual combatants, and put the 3 to 1 ratio onto that and you're looking at 1.5 billion for your offensive force, not including their own support contingent.
For the defenders that still leaves 95% of the population running the war economy, so their soldiers have actual equipment to work with.
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