@garmark93 well, I think you could argue that they didn't do it to save money, as much as they changed how the money was spent. Space stations the size of a moon aren't free.

So, since you assume you're mainly keeping civilians in line, and not fighting an organized army, you reduce costs in that area to help fund your new super weapon.

@seedyh @garmark93 Also, the thing about clones is that what you get when you clone something is an infant of that something. Epigenetics says that the way you raise a child not only has an impact on how they turn out, but also the actual expression of the genes they do have. The marginal benefits you may get from standardization genetically could likely largely be explained by the fact that you raised them all collectively from infants, which is a massively expensive endeavor which takes nearly two decades to pay off. Standardization also helps significantly more at lower ranks. You likely want diversity of thoughts and opinions at leadership levels, which you are much more likely to get from emotionally healthy human beings raised in a wider variety of circumstances. The benefits of standardization then arguably attenuate over time, and you become a more ideologically inflexible institution, lacking the circumstances that foster creativity to adapt to change and come up with new creative solutions to novel problems over time.