That will almost certainly be the issue. Invasion commanders will aim to use 2 groups/profiles to defend each objective. I don't know 100% if all objectives "behind the lines" will do this, but it seems so. So that would be ~250 groups if that 120-140 is for a single commander. Occupation is 5/objective I believe so even more troops just to hold them what they already have.

Try adjusting # of objectives down and profiles up to get closer to where you want to be.

Objectives should be fair game so long as the module is synced to the commander. Setting BLUFOR to invasion will reduce the number of groups used to hold territory, freeing some up to take more ground. If that still isn't enough, or if you prefer the stronger defensive strength of occupation, the commander will probably need more troops at its disposal.

From looking through the code it appears a sort of points per group system. Contents of group doesn't look to matter (imagine it would make the force creation process mich more difficult to code and more computationally expensive to execute).

I usually either blacklist or customize orbats to turn the 2 man and fire team groups etc into squad sized elements to bypass this, and also not have these snack size units taking slots for commanders attack/defense ops when the enemy might have full size groups.

Yeah blacklists will ler you stop things fron spawning, but as to what does spawn, it must be existing/mod defined groups.

There are a few ways to define your own, either with a cfg groups in the desceiption.ext file, mod etc. If description.ext method works with RHS now, it would be the easiest. Sometime back it did not but may have changed. I made my own RHS clone factions with that method. Ill send or post an example if I have the chamce this weekend

By any chance were you using a UAV terminal in your mission? I forgot that, at least with the vanilla gear, if you don't manually deselect a UAV it will remain an active spawner, even upon closing the terminal and going about your business.

If you deselect (UAV terminal, choose ----- or whatever the "none" option is) it no longer spawns. I tested this with the Praetorian, assuming the mod you mention builds off/inherits from it? Otherwise must be something peculiar to the mod :(

Never tried with a "UAV", can you sync the gun to the AI module to virtualize it?

I could be mistaken but if no faction assets are defined, it would typically default to side (BLU_F, OPF_F etc.). I've not tried defining faction with empty vrackets, but if you set logistics to faction only and don't define the faction's transport assets it will use the default/vanilla choppers & trucks.

For the CAP, if the aircraft's guns are configed with lock on ability they can still be tasked for CAP, such as the WW2 aircraft in Iron Front mod. I've seen the Wipeout engage aircraft with it's cannon so assuming this is the case here.

Hopefully at some point we'll have the ability to specify aircraft classes for each mission type.

Global time acceleration is easy, as mentioned (clock time, game still plays "normal"). With a little scripting you could probably get exactly what you want. Eg, change the acceleration rate at night, either done at a certain time, or by user action. Or, you could just skip to a specific time, again passively or via user action. Eg, quadruple the passage of time at 8pm, return to your original setting at 7am, or, jump directly to 7am either automatically at a certain time, or have a user action to do so so you can have some night time, but jump ahead when you've had enough.

Don't have something on hand, but the scripting commands should be fairly straightforward: Time = XXXX to activate at a certain time, either skip time or setacctime to either skip X hours, or change acceleration rate.

My first guess would be the lack of @aliveserver. I would try getting that on your server first, it might save a lot of tail chasing.

That said, running dedi and client provides drastic performance advantages in a "busy" mission, so the effort is worth it. :-)