NationStates Jolt Archive

I keep seeing completely outrageous numbers in different projects, even in military attacks, lets take a good look at this.

1: You can't send 1/4 of your population to do any one project with having a horrendous breakdown, they must support one another, like a pyramid, the bottom larger than the top, if too many are moved to one area, the entire nation collapses.

2: 10,000 troops is a HUGE army, this should be the most fielded on ONE battle field at ONE time. Even with nations of 1 billion, you should not field 100, 000 soldiers on a battle field under one commander, control becomes impossible, orginization and troop formation is indistiguishable because 5 or six square miles of land is filled with soldiers shoulder to shoulder attempting to fight. Artillery will rip you to shreds, disease will run rampant in your camps, it just don't work.

3: Theres more to war than simply whose got more or better troops. A hugely overlooked factor is MORALE. Morale dictates whether entire companies of soldiers surrender, rout, or continue fighting. Here are some general things that will affect morale.

1: Massive casualties inflicted on the soldiers, more than proportional to the enemies fought. It gets even worse if the enemy force is significantly smaller or is suffering nearly no losses.

2: Lack of food, sleep, and water. This will severly affect morale, starvation or dehydration becomes a real threat when your holed up in a bunker surrounded by enemies for 3 days, by this time they will usually die or surrender.

3: Destruction of their homeland. Sometimes this works both ways, destruction of their homeland can either steel a soldier and make him perservere out of sheer lust for revenge or it can cripple him, as he worries if his friends and families back home are being annihilated and hes helpless to do anything about it.

4: Execution, poor treatment, or torture of POW's. This is a kind of false morale boost. When enemies become infamous for their treatment of POW's surrender does not become an option causing soldiers to fight to the death, an affect that positive morale can bring about. This however, not nearly as healthy for the soldiers as a true morale boost.

5: Death of a leader. The death of the authority figure in a group can cripple a combat squads ability to fight, often leading to a complete rout, this can be crippling to morale and can cause entire companies to lay down their arms and surrender. However, as with #4, if the leader was well loved soldiers take on a "thats for my brother" type of mindset causing them to attack with greater ferocity and hatred.

6: Visitation by a well known and liked figure. A visit from a general or other high ranking/well known figure can do wonders for morale, this gives hope to the soldiers and thereby improves their performance.

7: Lack of communication with the homeland. The inability to send home letters or recieve care packages cuts a soldier off and alienates them from their families. By constant contact with support back home it reassures soldiers what they are fighting for and improves their performance.

8: Fighting a once loved ally. This is horrific for morale, this is very much present in civil wars, when you pit a countrymen against his fellows morale drops, firing rates decrease, and overall effectiveness drops, fortunately this is for both sides.

Back to the regular post, naturally there are far more morale influencing factors.

4: Supply lines. Don't forget most soldiers need to eat, without supply lines being defended and flowing morale drops to nill in no time and the war effort simply crumbles.

Also thanks for the heads up Seocc. ammunition is also very important, while lack of food and water can cripple morale, lack of ammo for a conventional army ends your ability to fight effectively.

5: Theres more than one type of attack. One very over looked attack is the raid, a swift attack on a carefully chosen and mapped posistion held by an enemy by a relatively small force of soldiers. Suprise is the main advantage in this type of attack and will be further detailed in 6.

6: Surprise. So often we see " my soldiers shoot you with their m4's." this fails to give any type of description of where they are firing from, how are they engaging, how visible they are, even how likely they are to miss. Its much better to detail what you are doing, especially in a surprise attack, something more like. "A small squad of four soldiers quietly slide through the knee high grass on their bellies. As they reached a small trench by the roadside shrouded in undergrowth they softly clicked their safteys off. In the distance the roar of an oncoming convoy audible. The soldiers held their posistion with absolute silence." With this type of description we get several things. 1, we know they're attempting to ambush a convoy. 2, we know they are prone. 3, we know there is plenty of soft cover that is knee high. 4, we know they are near the roadside. This will help elimate confusion.

7: Travel time, lets face it, things take time, if you want to move 2,000 men 20 miles on foot, its going to take time. Not only is this a perfect opportunity for an enemy ambush which is allowed by not having instantaneous transport, it also will reflect on the fatigue and morale of your troops when they arrive at the battle field.

I just thought it was important to bring up.

Agreed. But some people do not like these complications, so they ignore it. The more detail and effort you put into one of these things, the more realisitic and fun it becomes. Unfortunatly some people do not.

*Speaking as Raysia, OOC'ly*

Good points... the last war RP i got into, I was bloody surprised when the enemy sent like 3 million people in the first wave... wasn't hard to kill off a good 30,000 of them in the first 5 seconds of fighting... its called napalm...

I went easy on him from there until I decided to casually back out of the number war :P

But as for small armies, sheesh, I could get 10k people to a spot on the other side of the world in less than 18 hours... landing is one problem, but there's always a friendly nation nearby... it helps when you don't have to worry about a lagging navy. (Raysia is almost all Air and Ground)

But after 18 hours all those 10 thousand soldiers need rest, food, water, and shelter, all of this must be prepared before hand, so if your going on the on short notice expect delays or hits to morale. Most nations don't keep bases for 10 thousand running like a holiday inn.

But after 18 hours all those 10 thousand soldiers need rest, food, water, and shelter, all of this must be prepared before hand, so if your going on the on short notice expect delays or hits to morale. Most nations don't keep bases for 10 thousand running like a holiday inn.that's asolutely true... which is why I always hope that my allies are in the area so I can land somewhere... but if not, then I guess we have to wait for the floating airstrips to come into the area... which could be weeks.

we need a petition for no more million soldier waves.

we need a petition for no more million soldier waves.it's called an ignore cannon... or a nuke... if you fire a nuke at a million mana rmy, chances are you'll have zero civillian casualties :P you caould proably fire 10 nukes just at the army.

I could simply send in a few thousand troops on hoverskids, or from a few ships, anywhere on Earth, within 18 hours as well. It's not all that hard. I could also send in the same number of troops anywhere else in the solar system within a week.

Wars are hard to do. A great deal of time is required, but the preparation and thought can yeild great results.

You should see the five page long spreadsheet I’ve got to work out my military automatically when I put my population into it… of course, it’s still not accurate, but I tried to at least make it look accurate…

For example, I’m not sure if 160’000 military run vehicles (including trucks, hummers, tanks, anti-air, support vehicles and ect.) are realistic for my rather large nation of 1.427 billion-population nation. I suspect I can pull it off but I don’t know… of course, I would never dream of using most of it in war because they are a bitch to deploy abroad and supply thereafter.

Planes are another issue… I’m currently one another silly figure of around 100’000 air craft including: Fighter, Sea-Based Fighter, Heavy Bomber, Fighter-Bomber Combo, Light Hover Tank, Medium Hover Tank, Heavy Hover Tank, Hippogriff Support Craft, Spy/Radar Plane, Refuelling Plane, Transport Plane, Hospital Aircraft, Attack Helicopter, Transport Helicopter and General-Purpose Helicopter.

I know my space tech is ok, because it’s really undercut, I just have a big carrier and a load of fighters, several frigates and a large number of corvettes… overall it works out at around 275 fighter class craft and 120 corvette class craft (slightly bigger fighters, not anywhere near as big as their naval counterpart).

Naval isn’t huge… but I need to work out my navy better… I think I can get away with 35 carriers and 4 battleships (battleships are not very effective these days, so they are being phased out) however, I need to work out likely numbers. I think I may just post everything in a OOC post some day and let people dictate what I can and can’t have in a true NS rant…

Bearing in mind that out of the four mainstream tanks (Scout, Battle, AA and Artillery) each has around four or five versions (from old to new) of each tank it should be funny.

Oddly enough though, we only have around 5,900,000 infantry… which isn’t bad, all these figures were worked out using my population and then splitting that down into personnel from each type and how many vehicles I would need for those personnel… oddly enough though, my support personnel vastly outnumber my army…

it's called an ignore cannon... or a nuke... if you fire a nuke at a million mana rmy, chances are you'll have zero civillian casualties :P you caould proably fire 10 nukes just at the army.

the problem is that a lot of people will get pissed for ignoring them over issues like this. for instance, Knootoss has mobilized 250k troops and deployed them in 'wargames' in my neighbor, yet has not detailed how those troops are getting there, and less than half of those troops are support personel. am i allowed to ignore him for failing to set up the logistics nightmare you get when you uproot a quarter of a million troops and send them across the world?

i agree most strenuously with everything Quippoth wrote; i think you sould add something under supplies that just says:

AMMO

real people run out of ammo, especially when fighting foreign wars. but still the worst god moding offense is:

7: Travel time, lets face it, things take time, if you want to move 2,000 men 20 miles on foot, its going to take time. Not only is this a perfect opportunity for an enemy ambush which is allowed by not having instantaneous transport, it also will reflect on the fatigue and morale of your troops when they arrive at the battle field.

it takes days to moblize forces, which are days the enemy has to respond, to say nothing for the cost of moving them via air. how many transports do you need to move 100k people at once? and how many airfields will you be landing at etc etc.

once again, a cry for sanity that will be disregarded by the people that need to listen most.

World War 1-100,000 troops being sent at a time.

200,000 Dieing almost every day

More than 100,000 CAN be used.

The Battle of the Bulge: Almost 1 Million dead in a day.

I think that once I get my army fine-tuned I’m going have to run some war games. Iuthia has yet to be in a war… though we’ve deployed very small (easy to work out) forces.

10,000 troops is a HUGE army, this should be the most fielded on ONE battle field at ONE time. Even with nations of 1 billion, you should not field 100, 000 soldiers on a battle field, control becomes impossible, orginization and troop formation is indistiguishable because 5 or six square miles of land is filled with soldiers shoulder to shoulder attempting to fight. Artillery will rip you to shreds, disease will run rampant in your camps, it just don't work.

This is demonstrably untrue. The Battle of Kursk is a good example. The Soviets had on the close order of a million and a half men present at the battle, and the Germans had several hundred thousand. Several other battles during that war fielded huge masses of men locked in combat with each other. Granted that more troops present make control dificult, it is still possible.

Your post was pretty good, and reiterated several important points other folks have made here. I just wanted to make sure the correct information gets put out.

World War 1-100,000 troops being sent at a time.

200,000 Dieing almost every day

More than 100,000 CAN be used.
That was back in the days of trench warfare... that was terrible... and you notice, all those hundreds of thousands of people did was stall while waiting for negotiations... we advanced maybe 10 yards that entire war.

it takes days to moblize forces, which are days the enemy has to respond, to say nothing for the cost of moving them via air. how many transports do you need to move 100k people at once? and how many airfields will you be landing at etc etc.

once again, a cry for sanity that will be disregarded by the people that need to listen most.

Not necessarily. Days to mobilise a 10K force, yeah. But if the nation is on a war footing, paratroopers could be deployed in a matter of hours in small numbers to sieze strategic points, make assassinations, search and rescues, destroy bridges, etc.

Also, the whole thing about supply lines works both ways. I've been invaded before, and it was nice and fun to be fighting on friendly terrain, supported by the civilians and with a supply line that was practically non existent. It's important to remember that for every disadvantage there is an advantage.

1: You can't send 1/4 of your population to do any one project with having a horrendous breakdown, they must support one another, like a pyramid, the bottom larger than the top, if too many are moved to one area, the entire nation collapses.

True, all to true.

2: 10,000 troops is a HUGE army, this should be the most fielded on ONE battle field at ONE time. Even with nations of 1 billion, you should not field 100, 000 soldiers on a battle field, control becomes impossible, orginization and troop formation is indistiguishable because 5 or six square miles of land is filled with soldiers shoulder to shoulder attempting to fight. Artillery will rip you to shreds, disease will run rampant in your camps, it just don't work.

This all depends on your definition of troops and of battlefield. Do you mean the forces actively engaging in front line combat? If so, maybe.
10,000 is at best a small division. 5 to 6 square miles is fairly limited, except possibly in urban warfare (and even the is small). See the WWI and WWII examples above. Strictly defined, 10,000 is neither huge nor even a proper army. Divisions usually number10-20,000, corps comsist of a number of divisions, and armies consist of two or more corps.
As for the battlefeild, on the scale you give (5-6 sq.mi.), large forces are most likely unrealistic (I am allowing for odd possibilities with that qualifier...)
However, a war between even two small nations will almost certainly be spread over a much, much greater area than 5-6 sq.mi.

3: Theres more to war than simply whose got more or better troops. A hugely overlooked factor is MORALE. Morale dictates whether entire companies of soldiers surrender, rout, or continue fighting. Here are some general things that will affect morale.

1: Massive casualties inflicted on the soldiers, more than proportional to the enemies fought. It gets even worse if the enemy force is significantly smaller or is suffering nearly no losses.

2: Lack of food, sleep, and water. This will severly affect morale, starvation or dehydration becomes a real threat when your holed up in a bunker surrounded by enemies for 3 days, by this time they will usually die or surrender.

3: Destruction of their homeland. Sometimes this works both ways, destruction of their homeland can either steel a soldier and make him perservere out of sheer lust for revenge or it can cripple him, as he worries if his friends and families back home are being annihilated and hes helpless to do anything about it.

4: Execution, poor treatment, or torture of POW's. This is a kind of false morale boost. When enemies become infamous for their treatment of POW's surrender does not become an option causing soldiers to fight to the death, an affect that positive morale can bring about. This however, not nearly as healthy for the soldiers as a true morale boost.

5: Death of a leader. The death of the authority figure in a group can cripple a combat squads ability to fight, often leading to a complete rout, this can be crippling to morale and can cause entire companies to lay down their arms and surrender. However, as with #4, if the leader was well loved soldiers take on a "thats for my brother" type of mindset causing them to attack with greater ferocity and hatred.

6: Visitation by a well known and liked figure. A visit from a general or other high ranking/well known figure can do wonders for morale, this gives hope to the soldiers and thereby improves their performance.

7: Lack of communication with the homeland. The inability to send home letters or recieve care packages cuts a soldier off and alienates them from their families. By constant contact with support back home it reassures soldiers what they are fighting for and improves their performance.

8: Fighting a once loved ally. This is horrific for morale, this is very much present in civil wars, when you pit a countrymen against his fellows morale drops, firing rates decrease, and overall effectiveness drops, fortunately this is for both sides.

Back to the regular post, naturally there are far more morale influencing factors.

4: Supply lines. Don't forget most soldiers need to eat, without supply lines being defended and flowing morale drops to nill in no time and the war effort simply crumbles.

5: Theres more than one type of attack. One very over looked attack is the raid, a swift attack on a carefully chosen and mapped posistion held by an enemy by a relatively small force of soldiers. Suprise is the main advantage in this type of attack and will be further detailed in 6.

6: Surprise. So often we see " my soldiers shoot you with their m4's." this fails to give any type of description of where they are firing from, how are they engaging, how visible they are, even how likely they are to miss. Its much better to detail what you are doing, especially in a surprise attack, something more like. "A small squad of four soldiers quietly slide through the knee high grass on their bellies. As they reached a small trench by the roadside shrouded in undergrowth they softly clicked their safteys off. In the distance the roar of an oncoming convoy audible. The soldiers held their posistion with absolute silence." With this type of description we get several things. 1, we know they're attempting to ambush a convoy. 2, we know they are prone. 3, we know there is plenty of soft cover that is knee high. 4, we know they are near the roadside. This will help elimate confusion.

7: Travel time, lets face it, things take time, if you want to move 2,000 men 20 miles on foot, its going to take time. Not only is this a perfect opportunity for an enemy ambush which is allowed by not having instantaneous transport, it also will reflect on the fatigue and morale of your troops when they arrive at the battle field.


This all seems pretty good. :D

*as raysia*

All in all, I don't think I would really ignore a million man army, I just think that 10,000 man army with intel would have a lot better chance of winning... chances go up as it gets smaller.

Eliminate million man invasion armies and you'll just face some other kind of wankery. Like long ranged "unblockable" bombardment. At least you can gun down waves of troops as they bumrush you. Can't do that with artillery shells, or "high energy plasma discharge" :roll: for that matter.

Meh *shrugs* It dun matter to me either way.

World War 1-100,000 troops being sent at a time.

200,000 Dieing almost every day

More than 100,000 CAN be used.

The Battle of the Bulge: Almost 1 Million dead in a day.

When people do this however, they move 100,000 men at once. In the battle of the bulge all those million soldiers did not have one commander march them right into battle, they were brought in throughout the day, cycled with fresher back line troops, and spread out over a large area. We see countries saying I attack your city with 200 thousand soldiers, thats all well and good but that really isn't going to happen all at once.

bump

Large armies going into a pitched battle are easy targets, especially for a nation with spacefaring technology. Army camps and installations can be picked out by space based radar facilities, which can then organise assaults. Little is kept hidden from satellites.

take a bow. That was good. I have become so bored with RP that degenerates into
'I fire 1,000 missiles at you. Post casualties.'

Also on the Battle of the bulge. It took place over a huge section of front it would be more accurately described as a selection of battles closely linked in time.

Someone mentioned 160,000 military vehicles...the USSR was pulling off well over that number. In 1990 they had over 51,500 main battle tanks, 28,000 IFVs, 50,000+ APCs and we havn't even got to trucks yet.

http://www.csis.org/burke/mb/WestMB012302.pdf

If you want to reference that statement.

I'd just like to say, from first-hand experience, that it takes days to mobilize a division of paratroopers anywhere, even at high-readiness levels.

World War 1-100,000 troops being sent at a time.

200,000 Dieing almost every day

More than 100,000 CAN be used.

The Battle of the Bulge: Almost 1 Million dead in a day.

Eerrrrmmmm... no. I dont think so. WWI lasted 4 years. Do you think there would be anyone left in Britain or France if 100,000 died per day?

Also that battle of the buldge thing is a bit far-fetched too. Do you have any sources?

Heh, yeah, if a million men had died in a single day of the the Ardennes offensive the war would have ended that night.

I wonder, was Raysia talking about his intevention in Dra-pol? If so its worth noting that dropping a couple of thousand men into the middle of North Korea, half way through a war, arming them with submachineguns when the enemy occupy the surrounding hills and rely primarily on high power rifles and entrenched artillery.. you're going to lose a couple of thousand men.

Anyway, one major point here is RP style and flavour.. I mean.. some people play as if this were Risk, Civilization, or whatever, and others are much more story driven. Often when I, as Dra-pol, speak of massive human wave attacks and so many million men I'm speaking in broad, general terms. Trying to give the impression, the feeling of relentless assaults from a pool of such a size.
I do wonder if people take it as more a turn based strategy sometimes and think I'm throwing 9.1 million fusiliers at them in one wave... they wouldn't flippin fit on the field anyway.

I don't know where the 10,000 men thing came from. Napoleon took fifty times that from Paris to Moscow (all right, most died, but he still got them there to do their dying, and if Moscow had been less...freezing, it might not have been such a disaster) without so much as a steam train or a van.

Final thing, I have to agree on how annoying it is to read the phrase, "post casualties" What is this, an actual competition? It's RP, its a story, its a game, it's not a fight to the death. No one wins or loses. No one! If you think your nation is teh roxors champion you're completely wrong, no one cares.