sorry if my question just might sound a bit "blurry", i'm very, very sleepy...
Do be advised: we are bound by rule 16 - though i've obviously been rather lax about it recently.
Laxity comparable to a gulf the size of the milky-way... geh, we may return to "if it deals with ascension it's locked" in the near future.
Now:
cuz i can do that, right? untrain all non-mercs and make lifers out of them and then ascend? (i got a couple 100k more attack mercs than "required trained units needed", and tons of untrained mercs)
You keep your lifers - they are not translated into APP, do not count towards minimums, and do not... um... do that thing everthing else does when you ascended. Therefore, you train them into lifers you'll lose out on the APP, but they'll be waiting for you when you come back.
Untrained units and miners
do count toward APP (and thus minimum req.) and do "do that thing everthing else does when you ascened" (...e.g. vanish...

).
Therefore if you want the APP, check the conversion rates and find what is most valuable.
Otherwise, cut yourself down to the minimum requirements - turning the excess into lifers or shiping them off.
Just be sure to go on PPT before you do this - that way if you mess up the minimum req. or something else goes awry you have some time to fix things.