Oh yeah definitely, Starship troopers is a huge influence to both, I don't disagree at all, the Starship troopers games seem to be a bit more serious and gritty in comparison to edf though. I'd say the gameplay in helldivers is very EDF also with the huge big swarms and over the top weapons.
The actual answer is that everyone should play Earth Defence Force (they just announced EDF 6), which I feel was a big inspiration for helldivers 2 bugs.
Anyone remember water rats? Peak 90's crime of the week show with as much drama off the set as on.
I'm using Rocky on my main server at the moment, I was/am used to Debian based operating systems beforehand but wanted to learn red hat without dealing with Oracle directly.
It was definitely a step curve getting to understanding the os but I'm quite happy with the stability of Rocky and it does everything I need and more. I think the real question is which would you get more enjoyment out of as far as learning and personally I don't think the learning curve is as steep with Debian.
The best thing I can advise is just back up your data regularly and if you're not vibing or something breaks don't be afraid to change to something different, though as an arch user I'm sure you're used to things breaking.