Yeah peasants have surprisingly high caps. They'll never get uber HP or STR, and "only" 100 melee, but their firing cap is equal to ubers at 120.
Male "slave" soldiers are pretty similar, naturally (with different starting tendencies). They do get more HP and STR cap, but less stamina and firing accuracy. Males also get stable morale and "overstun resistant", which is interesting, whereas females get pain resistance and a small bravery bonus to V.Def.
I'd say it largely comes down to the armors, though I haven't messed with the male superhero armors. But I do know that militia training for peasants is great, particularly once you have a sickbay/onsen/surgery set up to reduce the recovery times. It's only 14 days base, at my Luxury Spa base that's reduced to *6*.
The odd thing is it doesn't train strength, which seems like something you'd prioritize in basic training... But it only takes a hit or two in-battle to gain the strength for a Linux SMG. And going over strength requirements by a point or two isn't so bad.
Anyway yeah peasants can be pretty great! I like putting them in Defender armor and sending them against normal enemies, since earth-guns mostly just bounce off. Their numbers and very low cost make them useful against heavily armed but low-armor foes like Spartans, too. Throwing in a few Ubers equipped for enemy armor seems to work well.
Also: Their voodoo power caps at 69, the skill caps at 66. Which... wow, ubers only get 60/40! Human males are basically equivalent at 70/65, and the bugeyes 75/75 doesn't *seem* that much higher, except I think a lot of calculations use power*skill. So there's a quadratic effect.
Ubers can make up a lot of that difference with voodoo outfits like Theban or Novice, whereas so far I only see +5 power for humans (going nekkid).
Star god attack: Friiick, I'm getting paranoid about those, they've already done a couple pogroms. Maybe... a couple miniguns to strip down the shields and do armor pre-damage, HMG with plasteel to do the actual damage, and elerium grenades for the 4-tile sectopods (after their shields are stripped)? I think I'm about to unlock these damn mini-nukes, surely those will work as last-ditch suicide options. Probably destroying my facilities, but *surely* the star gods can't facetank nuclear weapons-
(oh right humanity lost the war lol)