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Along with the cost of transporting them an interstellar military must initially pay for their forces. The cost is not much - Confederate prices are in the low thousands of credits for infantry, and tens of thousands of credits specialty droids like droidekas, MagnaGuards and their vehicles, including starfighters (The Star Wars Roleplaying Game Core Rule Book, Revised Edition), while the Republic seems to typically pay in the tens of thousands for light vehicles hundreds of thousands for heavy vehicles and starfighters. (Star Wars Roleplaying Game, Revenge of the Sith Collection) Clones themselves retail for an unknown amount, though it is unlikely they cost more then the vehicles they drive. Officer training for Stormtroopers (nee clone troopers) in the time of the Empire costs 500,000 credits (Dark Forces: Soldier for the Empire) but it is to be expected that more advanced training will cost more. Both sides supposedly pay hundreds to low thousands of credits for various pieces of equipment their individual troops use (e.g. blasters), and in the millions of credits for starships, an amount that seems to low in light of other prices. (Star Wars Roleplaying Game, Revenge of the Sith Collection)
These values initially seem at odds with some of the above numbers, until one considers the scope of the galactic economy. We know from the Han Solo and the Corporate Sector Sourcebook that individual companies could casually invest tens trillions to tens of quadrillions of credits in commercial ventures and expect to see up to a 360% annual return, and that single continents on individual planets are expected to generate tens of billions of credits. Extrapolating that out indicates that a on a galactic scale economy, light growth can be expected to return tens of quintillions of credits annually. [4] Indeed, investments in the Corporate Sector alone would have totaled no less then 2.35 quintillion credits with an annual return of 8.46 quintillion credits. In light of this, that mind-bogglingly massive armies can be fielded – much less planetoid scale space stations - is unsurprising.
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