@ChelonianCommander I think your population is quite fine, both the overall and military. The question of debate with my faction is that I am creating a faction that is strictly military and, furthermore, strictly various forms of elites that range from commandos to spies to assassins and beyond. My main concern, to which
@Sokka brings up valid points, is that I may be making an OP faction. To put perspective behind it, my force of elites is currently 1/14th of your total military force. Now, I need to look up and see if that is a reasonable amount. To address your final statement, I will agree that that is the case, but if the true leader of our mighty empire chooses to step in, then it will get very interesting and, quite likely, difficult for your faction. After all, the empire has, some how and some way, bound our various factions to it. We are beholden to it.
@Sokka You are quite right. They do not excel in head to head confrontation when solidly outnumbered by trained forces. Naturally, they do not seek to fight those battles. With discussing with one of my dearest friends and long time sci-fi and fantasy lover, the answer has simply become more research. While my forces may have significant numbers, I do need to set the scale against the entire empire's military. At the same time, I can also not daydream that I am the only one with special forces. So, I'm going to look into forces like terrorist organizations, their estimated numbers, look into what percentages of total military forces are special forces. So, much work to do.
To everyone and to attempt to address
@Sokka 's concerns on my factions limitations that I failed to mention in my faction overview. After I finish my research, and hopefully not not added to any watch list, I'll give it a massive update. However, my faction has been actively disinterested in using its military power to try and gain any political or territorial clout beyond what they currently have. They are satisfied as remaining tools to the overlord and selling out their various clans to the other factions within the empire for their various intrigues. For example, perhaps
@Sokka 's House Bausan hires a clan to crack The Network Caretakers', uh, network, to discover some of their charity deployment plans. Why? The clan hired didn't care. You're paying and not hurting the overlord directly. That's all they need. Then, perhaps, The Network Caretakers discover the hack and hire another clan to respond to this. Because they are content, they will never try to expand beyond their current borders and boundaries. As such, you need not worry about them trying to suddenly go all world domination and overpower their way through everyone else, which they couldn't anyway. I'll talk about why after my research answers my running hypothesis that my faction would suck at basic military conquest.
In my next post, I'll review and do a critique of
@Kian 's and
@Sokka 's factions. But for now, dinner.