"You were weak... and gods must be strong."
Posted by: Sigma617
Posted by: Gamma 46
...I'm aware it's canon. I just don't like it.
Also, it irks me that you speak of it being issued to S-IIIs... Noble Team was a combination of Spartan-IIIs who had genetic quality similar to that of the S-IIs... Basically, they were late-arrival S-IIs who were the 'cream of the crop' of the S-III class. Because of their exceptional abilities they were pulled out of the larger S-III ops, given the same equipment as S-IIs, and put together to form another team equivalent to that of Grey Team or Black Team.
Full S-III companies would never be given full sets of MJOLNIR armor unless our economy was booming.. which is hard to do when you lose trillions with the fall of each planet.
Actually, Human colonies are very sparsely populated. Reach, the second largest Human stronghold only held 700 million people. There are continents that are surpass that population even now.
Reach wasn't even close to one of the more populated planets, however- it was largely military and industrial. I'm sure there were other human planets with a higher headcount.
That said, throughout entire planets, I'm sure there were billions up to trillions invested or used on that given planet/they did produce a lot, large populations or not. High, unused resource counts after all ;)