NationStates Jolt Archive

What Do you think is an acceptable percent of a person's population for that person's military

i would say 5%

Depends on your government and society type, really. Anything ovr 10% is really pushing it, because yuo're pulling too many people out of the job pool and into positions where they take in resources but don't contribute anything.

There's a nice discussion on this somewhere....

http://forums2.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=275828

1-5% for a nation with voluntary military service.
5-10% for a nation with compulsory military service.
Add 5% during times that a draft is instated, however, this should increase protesting and support for the war in many cases.

I would say 2% if that. My military is about 0.2% including logistics.

My military is approximately 5% during war, and around 1-2% during peace.

For most nations most of the time? Less than one percent. Dra-pol is pushing towards 4%, and I RP the major pressure this creates on the economy and the national mindset. The idea of having 10% or more of ones population in the military is silly. I don't think that one person on my street is in the military... trying to imagine one person from every second or third house being in the military... no.

[OOC: Depends on peacetime vs. wartime. I've got about two percent in peacetime including logistics personnel, etc. It can go up to about five percent during wartime and in my case, that would be in the event of a country invading Sarzonia.]

I would say 5% is most generally considered correct here in NS. I include police, paramilitary, militias, into my military. So its a bit higher, but as such those units do not go and fight. Military service is compulsory, so I keep it at about 7.5% (remember police, militias, military academies all included). I also have a weird military system. One in which 6 months a year a soldier is training or is deployed (in peacetime), and the other 6 months working in mine industries. So the 7.5% works out in the end as being plausible.

For most nations most of the time? Less than one percent. Dra-pol is pushing towards 4%, and I RP the major pressure this creates on the economy and the national mindset. The idea of having 10% or more of ones population in the military is silly. I don't think that one person on my street is in the military... trying to imagine one person from every second or third house being in the military... no.
Well in the 19th Century and early 20th a continental European army would be around 10%, but they were given almost no equipment.

I believe that 1 - 3% would work for peace-time. 3% to 5% for "attack" wars upon other nations.

However, for compulsory military service, the numbers should be doubled, but if the nation chooses to have women in the military plus complusory military service, the numbers should be tripled.

I believe if a nation is invaded, then it should be able to field 20% of its population for defense, or 30% if it is a compulsory military nation. 40% if the nation itself has the same mindset as Japan.

Look at Japan in WW2. Most every citizen in Japan were ready to fight to the death aganist US invasion (If the US didn't use the nukes to end the war).


Just my 2 cents.

France had 4m out of 40m in ww2...

Japan had 5m out of less than 50m...

I use 3% standing, however there is a huge lower class in chellis which makes many poor people want to join up(we dont have high school education requirement).

Just use this calculator: http://www.thirdgeek.com/nseconomy.php

It does it all for you.

Most nations use in between 1-2.5% for their nations "peacetime" population in the military. For my nation I currently have 0.5% in the active military, this includes logistics and supply personnel (people doing desk jobs). I have a total of 2.2% if you add in the reserves which are only called upon when we have a shortage of active armed forces (when were streached militarily) and then it goes up to 5% if the Paramilitary Police are added and Homeland Defense Corps is added (they are only used if the Morathanian homeland is being attacked).

I would like to add that some nations have powerful ideologies that they would fight to the death for. Some people would fight to the last man, woman, and child to keep their freedom and life.

If the US had invaded Japan mainland, they would have been forced to fight Japanese civilians who wouldn't want to live under US rule.

I guess what I'm saying is that some nations are more inclined to surrender and subservience, while some other nations would choose death over surrender and subservience.

1-5% normally. In very bad wars that drag on, it is acceptable to do "Levee en masse" "Mass mobilization" and say get 5-15% into the army.

In RL, North Korea is the nation most often used as an example by both sides of the argument for and against high-% armies. Yes, North Korea has a huge percentage of its population in the military. They also have a worse economy than Albania (long considered the poster child for economic disaster areas), and routinely lose thousands of people every year to starvation.

Since the game mechanics do not allow economic penalties for stupid decisions, most players refuse to acknowledge military forces that are more than (at the very most) 10% of the total population.

Using the US as a model, the population is roughly 300 million. Only about 2.5 million men and women are in uniform total (including cadre for training facilities, staff and noncombatant functions, intelligence and security personnel, etc) during a war halfway around the planet. That's not even 1% (assuming that my military strength numbers are accurate).

Now let us assume that country A has a population of 100 million. Country A decides to conscript every person of military age (which will be 18-40 for purposes of this example). Country A now has two generations of people in the military, people who would normally be working to produce goods and services and preparing to replace the older workers who are reaching the ends of their normal working lives. For purposes of this example, we will assume that 20% of the population is of military age. We will also assume that all of them are fit for military service. So Country A has 20 million people under arms.

What arms? Where will you find 20 million AK-47s, for example? What will you use to pay for them? Hell, what about 20 million uniforms? This assumes that none of the rifles or uniforms wears out or break. You'd actually need several times that number, call it a factor of five to one. That's 100 million Kalashnikovs and 100 million uniforms. Oops! Forgot the ammunition. 100 million AK-47s times 500 rounds per weapon equals 50 billion rounds of ammo, which you will have to purchase or produce, store, ship, and replace every year or so.

Who produces these items? Who buys them, and what do you use to pay for them? International Arms merchants rarely accept credit, and your economy is probably making North Korea's look good by comparison by now. How do you get these items from where they are produced or purchased out to the troops?

Hell, how do you feed that many troops? Farming- even the advanced, mechanized version practiced in the industrialized world in RL- is still labor intensive. All of your young men are now in the military. Who grows the food? Who prepares the food, stores it, and transports it to where it is needed?

Some people claim that they'll just nationalize everything, and have the army manufacture and produce everything you need. There are a few major problems with that:

Problem 1: You probably won't have all the raw materials found within your borders. Someone will have to go to where the raw materials are produced and buy them (with hard currency), transport them, and get them from the port of entry to the manufacturing plants. If your troops are doing this, who is manning the ramparts against the hordes of foreigners?

Problem 2: While you've got your military making things and mining ores and teaching others to do these things (no one is going into the regular job market, remember? They have to be shown how to do these things), who is defending the country?

The answer to those questions is: The same 1-3% of your population that you should have had in the military in the first place.

You can pick whatever numbers you choose, of course. This is free-form roleplaying. But few players will agree to ridiculously huge militaries relative to your population.


TEO

Good analysis, TEO.

However, you must take into account that some nations / cultures / people would prefer death over surrender and occupation.

In these cases, civilians would fight the invaders alongside the normal military. This would give the defenders strength in numbers, and sometimes quantity wins over quality.

Israel has like 2.8% of their population in the military, and they arent that bad off economically. Chellis uses 3%, but for example, the military does the job of the police, etc.

I have 0.8% as active during peacetime (peace in the FKC? Nevar!) and 1.2% are in the reserves/militia. However, most of my forces are in a support role, so my actual front line troops are tiny.

What arms? Where will you find 20 million AK-47s, for example? What will you use to pay for them? Hell, what about 20 million uniforms? This assumes that none of the rifles or uniforms wears out or break. You'd actually need several times that number, call it a factor of five to one. That's 100 million Kalashnikovs and 100 million uniforms. Oops! Forgot the ammunition. 100 million AK-47s times 500 rounds per weapon equals 50 billion rounds of ammo, which you will have to purchase or produce, store, ship, and replace every year or so.


TEO



My nation's massive armaments corporation, Fabus Munitions Inc (Employs over 10 million people and has hundreds of factories) produced approximately 40 billion firearms of all sorts in the last 20 years. It also has produced over 30 trillion rounds of military caliber ammunition in the last 10 years.

But note about 20 billion of the firearms have been sold to CM civilians.

I prefer:
2.5% Standing army
4% Wartime
+2% of each city for militia, average city pop. in DGNT is pretty high, due to lack of habitable space...

As a nation with just 0.01% of the population serving in the military forces, with 45% of those being unarmed medics, Mattikistan would logically feel that you barely need a military at all. Indeed, since 1832, the only times we've used our military is for global humanitarian actions, or for dealing with national emergencies (soldiers propping up sandbags during a flood, for example).

But of course, most of the nations here prefer to kill each other, so they have significantly larger armies, armed with lethal weapons. In such a scenario, 1-2% would be an ideal number. 5% would be pushing it. 10% would be bank-breaking. Higher than 10% would be unrealistic.

Remember, that 100% of your population is not made up of healthy people who are willing to join the military, aged 18-30/40 (whatever age you deem appropriate.
There are children, too young to be in the military.
In some nations, the positions women can fill are limited or non-existent (not the case here, but elsewhere we know this to be true).
There are people too old for military service. 40-50 years old and older (a very high percentage of people in industrialised nations fall into the 'too old' category).
There are people unable to serve effectively on the front-lines, for example the physically and mental disabled.
If you are in a free society, there are people who are unwilling to join the military.
And out of those that are left, you must remember that the majority are in work, holding your economy together. Take too many away, and you'll lose the war whatever happens.

Ah, but some nations have certain 'modifiers' to who counts as fit for military service.
Not every NS nation is human, Vrak is a nation of walruses.
In my case, Im futuretech, the average DGNT citizen has a lifespan just over 100, or, if you can afford it, nearly infinite.
Naturally, only certain high govornment officials can afford to 'live forever'.

For my relativly high military, the justification is mostly in maintaining a five system Empire under a single dictator.

I did not really consider FT nations. As you say, there are too many variations to really set a universal number.

Personally, My military is less than 1% of my population and I still have a small amount of trouble feeding and supplying them all, but I can handle it due to my massive population and my strong economy. Once a certain point in population is reached, it's more about the quality of your weapons and support crews than quantity. My support crews are about 4 times the size of the regular army, navy, marines, imperial guard, and air force combined, and I need more than I currently have. It's based on population and economy, along with tech level and quality of weaponry.

I wouldnt say China is overly worried about quality :)

Anyway, like I said, its not just FT nations that have pop considerations, I once had a Goblin nation (modern), and Vrak is made up of walruses...
Anybody know the average lifespan of a walrus?

Percentage depends on a lot, many nations require basic training to all males of 18 years of age.
So each man above that age is a basically trained soldier.
If you were to invade a nation like that you could be looking at 20-30% of the population.
If you are the invader, you are reduced to lower %s bedause your populace lays at home.
I mean if someone invaded your country would you just sit around and hope the military took care of it?
SO I would say as an agressor 5% max,
Depending on the scenerio the defender anywhere from 7%-25%

Typically, less than 1% is reasonable.

5% is more or less the highest found outside of outright war for survival, in North Korea, and the consequences of that are rather well established.

Weyr's standing army is at:
700,000 High Guard (350,000 active, 350,000 w/ 24-hour mobilization)
800,000 Skyfleet (600,000 active, 200,000 "off duty")
300,000 Naval Guard (190,000 active, 110,000 reserve)
7,900,000 Logistics Directorate (6,500,000 active, 1,300,000 w/ 24-hour mobilization)

Remember that the Skyfleet includes a number of kilometer-long sky-dreadnaughts, as well as sky-carriers, sky-cruisers, and sky-battleships.

I usually use 2.5% including logistical support, reserves, and national guard, with Compulsory Military Service. I actually use far less than that for the sake of RP.

I used to use 3%, 1% for standing forces and 2% for manditory conscription (2 years at average life expectancy of 100 years).

But Wazzu has changed in the game-time centuries it has existed. Its population has swelled to well over 3 billion, and middle/working class life expectancies are pushing 150 years. Even when it had a smaller populace, Wazzu never really set up its military to invade, it didn't see a need for it.

So while until now I haven't reflected on what the exact percentage of my military was, I'd say offhand that it is something like the following.

Active Duty: 0.1%
Conscripted: < 2%

The Active Duty personal are those who are involved in everything from logistics to intelligence to special forces to manning (rather small) spacecraft. 3.4+ million is still a LOT of people, and Wazzu is a very capitalist nation, so there are many contractors to help support this already largely support force.

Conscription in Wazzu isn't exactly what it is elsewhere. It is used partly as manditory military training, partly as hands-on technical learning (to make more productive workers when they get out), and partly as public works (the hands-on). With so little experiance, they aren't particularly efficient at the last, but then, there are few public structures/areas in Wazzu. On the other hand, they make for great clean-up and foreign aid crews (something conscripts have done multiple times in the past).

Basically, what it comes down to is a 0.1% standing military INCLUDING support personnel, a 2% bunch of conscripts (kids learning tech skills) able to be called on in emergencies, and a population that in theory would help repel an invasion...not that there has ever been an invasion to repel.

When you give up desire to invade/occupy other nations, you give up need for a large military.

As a country grows, its military percentage should get smaller. It would be absurd for a nation like mine to have even one percent of its population in the military, because that's over 35,000,000 people being pulled out of the workforce, enough to shut down numerous businesses across the country. The larger your military is in absolute terms, the more vulnerable your nation is to that kind of economic damage, regardless of your nation's size.

For those curious, my nation's military is composed of 850,000 highly trained and motivated men and women.

I guess I have the size advantage from being from early 2003, but I only have .005% (half of 1%) in my military. Even with such a small percentage, I can still field an almost 15 million person military, and it gives me more than enough non-military population to support said military in a time of war. Plus, it gives me the option of instituting a draft in a time of war and surprising my enemies with absurd numbers.

Normally, Akaton's army is constantly at about 4% - 5%, but in the case of an invasion it may grow to 10% during urban combat and seiges.

depends on the nation ussually once you are up to a billion its more pain then its worth to have a military thats a full percentage point of your population. You dont need 40 million ground troops always prepared since at most youll only use a percent of them at one time.
If you needed to get yourself onto total war footing you could get that number in a few months of drafting.

Also for a total number it depends on the war if its a Defend the motherland till the last man you could get 25% of your people in the army. Look at Russia during WWII everyman between 17 and 60 was pretty much recruited.

Also look at germany by 45 most of the werchmacht especially on the western front was made up of 14 year old boys and 60 year old men riding on bikes with panzerfausts strapped to there backs.

It depends on the nation. Chellis needs its large military, as chellis is constantly facing conflicts, most of them waved away with the threat of the strongest army in NS, of one nation anyways.

I wouldnt say China is overly worried about quality :)

Anyway, like I said, its not just FT nations that have pop considerations, I once had a Goblin nation (modern), and Vrak is made up of walruses...
Anybody know the average lifespan of a walrus?

Wouldn't those fall into 'fantasy tech'?

Why High % Armies Are Quite Unrealistic (http://forums2.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=274393)

that's the thread you're looking for. the economic effects of a large military are, to say the least, devestating.

Israel has mandatory service for most of the population to get the 186,500 soldiers it has many young people wrapped up in military service after high school for 1-3 years, with often an additional year being lost to "rehab" vacations after the service. The reserves are quite significant since most of the adult population could theoretically take up arms, but the number of combat systems available is severely limited by budget constraints and the IDF has had to downscale many units while removing important systems (Like AEWS and AWACS planes) from service in others.

The US had 1,411,200 active duty military personnel distributed worldwide as of Dec. 31, 2002. Although that report does not list iraq or provide numbers for afghanistan, which are reportedly about 150-170,000 and 9-13,000 soldiers respectively, assuming the largest force that means ~160,000 active duty personnel (excluding private military contractors, which number about 10-15,000 in Iraq, by report). This means a total of ~1.6M active duty personnel out of (as the CIA worldfactbook estimates, c. 2004) a population of 293,027,571...or 0.544% This excludes the civilian contractors that have taken many formerly military jobs at bases and in support of the military, and may not include administrative personnel at the Pentagon, civilian researchers (Private (ie, RAND) and public (ie, Yuma proving grounds)), or officials in the DoD (which may provide up to a million or two more people).

Also, with current estimates...only 10-15% of a modern military force can be "warriors" while the rest are support or in aid (see the logistics thread for the article on this, about 2-4 pages in from the last post)...which makes it pretty clear why tens of thousands of reservists and now even retired soldiers are being called up in the "backdoor draft" to support operations in iraq, since soldiers on deployment cannot cover the full time of operations but rather must be rotated every 3-12 months for morale and health reasons.

an old tidbit:
Here are the per capita ratios (percentage of troops versus total population) for a few real countries in the late 90's.

USA 0.58%
China 0.23%
Japan 0.19%
Germany 0.49%
India 0.14%
France 0.87%
Italy 0.77%
UK 0.47%
Brazil 0.18%
Indonesia 0.13%
Mexico 0.19%
Russia 1.13%
Canada 0.28%
South Korea 1.64%
Turkey 1.28%

With the U.S having 283.8 million people, that only gives 1.65 million troops. Even if you consider a global war, like WW2, and multiply that percentage by ten - it's still only 5.8%, or 16 million out of a population of 283 million.

http://www.liberal-international.org/ldr/russia/schroder.html

From Parnassus

Personally, I try to keep the percentage below 1% (0.3-0.8% for normal operations)...out of 3bn people this is obviously a huge number, but a 3-8,000 vessel (~3,100 major combat vessels in Navy control, or about 10x the size of the USN) navy and significant other deployable forces means that many are occupied even then.

The truth is that unless you're a radical militaristic country or a country with a conscripted (russia, israel, China, N Korea, etc.) force you can't really muster more than 3% without it becoming an undue burden upon the population. Even 3% means that about all of your 18 year olds are enlisted for an avg. of about 2 years...

5% is REALLY high, 10% is just about insane and is almost impossible to muster outside of total, existential war (ie, your country is gone if you lose). Frankly, once you breach 300m, there's almost no reason to ever go above 1%, because it just means more and more costs go to fielding modern equipment, that each system acquisition costs a huge amount of money (since you have to distribute the new tanks to 30,000 crews instead of, say, 1,200). This reduces the uniformity of your force and decreases combat effectiveness as some units have low morale from a lack of systems and cost must be a greater factor in purchases, which dilutes the quality of systems. And even if you have 12M soldiers in your army alone...it doesn't mean that you can move them all. The US military is VERY hard pressed to move about soldiers and couldn't field a significant number inside of a month without a friendly nation to prep in...so how much do you need to devote a force almost 100x the size of the US force in Iraq? (before GWI it took the US 6months to assemble; GWII was hardly better...tremendous logistics problems now exist and the USArmy has had to contract Canadian and Israeli companies to produce millions of small-caliber rounds because ATK has all of the US small round contracts and major production facilities...and cannot meet half of the required amount of ammo. The US is running out of treads for the M2/M3 Bradleys thanks to wear and tear in Iraq and is depleting most of its stockpiles to cover that and other logistical burdens.)

Germany and Russia were reduced to extremes in WWII. Russia at first sent men into battle with 1 rifle and 2 clips of ammo/2 man team...the second being directed to pick up the gun of the first /when/ the first was killed. Officers stood behind with pistols to shoot those that turned back. Germany depleted its society of almost all young men as many european powers had done in WWI. Just because you /can/ put 50 year old men (avg. age of german gunners at Normandy was somewhere around 45) and 14 year old boys into battle doesn't mean that you should or could in normal conditions...10% would basically do that.

My nation's massive armaments corporation, Fabus Munitions Inc (Employs over 10 million people and has hundreds of factories) produced approximately 40 billion firearms of all sorts in the last 20 years. It also has produced over 30 trillion rounds of military caliber ammunition in the last 10 years.

But note about 20 billion of the firearms have been sold to CM civilians.

Which is completely beside the point of the post.


TEO

:sniper: i would say 16-20% because the military gives you shelter, income, and a chance to travel all over the world while defending your country. also, it doesn't take away from the working pool, because you have a job in the military that you get paid for. :mp5:

:sniper: i would say 16-20% because the military gives you shelter, income, and a chance to travel all over the world while defending your country. also, it doesn't take away from the working pool, because you have a job in the military that you get paid for. :mp5:

Great! Who is doing the paying? Oh, that's right, the government...

Where does the government get it's money? Oh, that's right, taxes...

Where do taxes come from? Oh, that's right, people working... OUTSIDE government jobs.


For the record, Vastiva - a nation with compulsory military service from 16 to 21 - has a 0.7% military, unlikely to rise anytime soon. Everyone in the nation can be considered reserves, as a week military "refresher" service is also compulsory - but this does not radically affect my economy. Of note - that military figure includes police, customs, and all "defense related" positions. If you have to be armed, you're in the military.

In war - offensively, we might make it up to 5%. If invaded, 75% of the population could theoretically fight - theoretically.

In the meantime, we enjoy a nice economy because people are employed at the business of making money, not passing it around in a circle.

OOC:

As well, since I'm surrounded by 6-7 nations of varying degrees of friendliness, and don't have a significant coastline compared to, say, Alcona and Hubris, my military layout is different than others. I concentrate on land and air power, which explains why my navy is smaller than some - but still somewhat significant. We (that is, Vrak) don't own any overseas territories so that's another reason why I have a comparatively small navy.

Israel has mandatory service for most of the population to get the 186,500 soldiers it has many young people wrapped up in military service after high school for 1-3 years, with often an additional year being lost to "rehab" vacations after the service. The reserves are quite significant since most of the adult population could theoretically take up arms, but the number of combat systems available is severely limited by budget constraints and the IDF has had to downscale many units while removing important systems (Like AEWS and AWACS planes) from service in others.

The US had 1,411,200 active duty military personnel distributed worldwide as of Dec. 31, 2002. Although that report does not list iraq or provide numbers for afghanistan, which are reportedly about 150-170,000 and 9-13,000 soldiers respectively, assuming the largest force that means ~160,000 active duty personnel (excluding private military contractors, which number about 10-15,000 in Iraq, by report). This means a total of ~1.6M active duty personnel out of (as the CIA worldfactbook estimates, c. 2004) a population of 293,027,571...or 0.544% This excludes the civilian contractors that have taken many formerly military jobs at bases and in support of the military, and may not include administrative personnel at the Pentagon, civilian researchers (Private (ie, RAND) and public (ie, Yuma proving grounds)), or officials in the DoD (which may provide up to a million or two more people).

Also, with current estimates...only 10-15% of a modern military force can be "warriors" while the rest are support or in aid (see the logistics thread for the article on this, about 2-4 pages in from the last post)...which makes it pretty clear why tens of thousands of reservists and now even retired soldiers are being called up in the "backdoor draft" to support operations in iraq, since soldiers on deployment cannot cover the full time of operations but rather must be rotated every 3-12 months for morale and health reasons.

an old tidbit:


Personally, I try to keep the percentage below 1% (0.3-0.8% for normal operations)...out of 3bn people this is obviously a huge number, but a 3-8,000 vessel (~3,100 major combat vessels in Navy control, or about 10x the size of the USN) navy and significant other deployable forces means that many are occupied even then.

The truth is that unless you're a radical militaristic country or a country with a conscripted (russia, israel, China, N Korea, etc.) force you can't really muster more than 3% without it becoming an undue burden upon the population. Even 3% means that about all of your 18 year olds are enlisted for an avg. of about 2 years...

5% is REALLY high, 10% is just about insane and is almost impossible to muster outside of total, existential war (ie, your country is gone if you lose). Frankly, once you breach 300m, there's almost no reason to ever go above 1%, because it just means more and more costs go to fielding modern equipment, that each system acquisition costs a huge amount of money (since you have to distribute the new tanks to 30,000 crews instead of, say, 1,200). This reduces the uniformity of your force and decreases combat effectiveness as some units have low morale from a lack of systems and cost must be a greater factor in purchases, which dilutes the quality of systems. And even if you have 12M soldiers in your army alone...it doesn't mean that you can move them all. The US military is VERY hard pressed to move about soldiers and couldn't field a significant number inside of a month without a friendly nation to prep in...so how much do you need to devote a force almost 100x the size of the US force in Iraq? (before GWI it took the US 6months to assemble; GWII was hardly better...tremendous logistics problems now exist and the USArmy has had to contract Canadian and Israeli companies to produce millions of small-caliber rounds because ATK has all of the US small round contracts and major production facilities...and cannot meet half of the required amount of ammo. The US is running out of treads for the M2/M3 Bradleys thanks to wear and tear in Iraq and is depleting most of its stockpiles to cover that and other logistical burdens.)

Germany and Russia were reduced to extremes in WWII. Russia at first sent men into battle with 1 rifle and 2 clips of ammo/2 man team...the second being directed to pick up the gun of the first /when/ the first was killed. Officers stood behind with pistols to shoot those that turned back. Germany depleted its society of almost all young men as many european powers had done in WWI. Just because you /can/ put 50 year old men (avg. age of german gunners at Normandy was somewhere around 45) and 14 year old boys into battle doesn't mean that you should or could in normal conditions...10% would basically do that.

Actually I heard that the actual combat troop to logistical ratio now is about 25 to 50% because of better shipping and organizational systems. According to the show future fighting machines the U.S. has 400-600 thousand combat troops.

[OOC: Depends entirely on the size of population, resources, economic strength, and organisational ability of the nation in question. It's like saying, "How long is a piece of string?"

Depends on the string.]

Actually I heard that the actual combat troop to logistical ratio now is about 25 to 50% because of better shipping and organizational systems. According to the show future fighting machines the U.S. has 400-600 thousand combat troops.

Support troops are usually 90% of a professional fighting force. The way I do it, every person in the chellian military belongs to a division, with very few exceptions, and 90% of the people in the divisions are support.

Actually I heard that the actual combat troop to logistical ratio now is about 25 to 50% because of better shipping and organizational systems. According to the show future fighting machines the U.S. has 400-600 thousand combat troops.

Those systems have failed, to date, to materialize in any serious manner and in any case unless you have a completely automated logistical train as some theoreticians propose it's not going to happen.

The source on "warrior" to "supporter" percentages: Page 9, post 123 of the Logistics thread (http://forums2.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=5891228&postcount=123)

Source on issues with robot support: Page 9, post 134 of the Logistics thread (http://forums2.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=6205326&postcount=134)
That professor mentioned there gave a figure of ~25:75 for Soldiers:Logistics (not support) personnel for the US Army (not other forces). The logistical population could become more efficient and smaller with larger, more efficient, and faster long range transport systems...but then again we don't have those yet. The main issue is that a 25% combat warrior status is theoretically possible, but modern technology is a strong force that pushes towards a smaller warrior percentage in part due to the logistical burden, in part due to the technical skills required, and in part due to the expenses involved.

As we've discussed in the logistics thread and elsewhere previously, a poorly armed force with few mechanized or advanced systems could obtain a 50:50 support ratio but then that force would likely have a low survivability ratio and would probably not be capable of making long-range engagements due to a lack of support personnel. As far as what that show calls "combat troops" vs. what the US military and military specialists call "Combat troops" I cannot say, but that is a reasonable number if you count all of the reserve soldiers currently called up for service (much to their annoyance and with a significant deleterous economic impact). Otherwise the US military has about 1/4 of the described force (from my above post) apparently capable of being deployed in major units for combat, but the resource I used (US military report on 2002 troop placements) indicates that many of the personnel are really just advisors and liaisons in foreign countries rather than members of combat formations.

The US has managed to increase the number of available soldiers by using prepackaged food, using (expensive) civilian personnel (who are not counted in that report) to maintain base functions and perform otherwise normally military duties, and by depending upon civilian cargo capacity (the Civil Reserve Air Fleet and commercial cargo ships) to deliver what the military needs. This is all very expensive and very shaky if it ever came down to another world war as we saw in WWI and WWII where enemies threaten all transport and logistical efforts with dedicated forces.

In NS this wouldn't work because there is no US like power that is free of worries about threats to logistical lines in the air and on the sea (you can't have your equivalent of FEDEX landing munitions for you without serious air-to-air threats) and so you have to either arm the merchant marine vessels (which merchant marines aren't happy about since it makes them a bigger target, which increases costs) or build military Logistics support vessels and place military staff in support positions at bases. Instantly, you're back down to 10-20% "combat soldier" availability on the battlefield with only 5-15% capable of being "warriors" that do the combat while the rest support them.

[OOC: Depends entirely on the size of population, resources, economic strength, and organisational ability of the nation in question. It's like saying, "How long is a piece of string?"

Depends on the string.]

But Ma-tek, with all due respect, certainly you can agree that there can be some agreed upon guidelines? One could interprete what you say to fully justify my OMG 1234567890 STEALTH COMMANDOS WITH TEH UNLIMITEDZ AMMO!

Less than 1 percent.

Wouldn't those fall into 'fantasy tech'?
The goblins were modern tech, any advantages they had over humans were balanced off by some disadvantages.

I dont know how Vrak deals with this though...

For most nations most of the time? Less than one percent.I agree. The commonly quoted 5% is excessive, let alone 21+%.

The goblins were modern tech, any advantages they had over humans were balanced off by some disadvantages.

I dont know how Vrak deals with this though...

Well, irregardless if an army is composed of humans, walruses, orcs, elves, dragons, etc... they all require a degree of support. They all need food, shelter, ammo, and weapons. I guess it comes down to how exact a person wants to figure things out

But Ma-tek, with all due respect, certainly you can agree that there can be some agreed upon guidelines? One could interprete what you say to fully justify my OMG 1234567890 STEALTH COMMANDOS WITH TEH UNLIMITEDZ AMMO!

[OOC: I love how people use that phrase - 'with all due respect...'

*grins*

But seriously: it's not particuarly my problem how people misinterpret what I say. Seeing as it was such a short comment, really, no such misinterpretation should occur except by those who don't pay attention to start with...

In which case they won't pay attention to detail anyway, will they?

But, since your point is indeed a valid one, despite my prattlings to the contrary, I'll write something longer.

A 'Brief' Introduction
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A LONG Introduction
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What Came First... The Sentence Or The Paragraph?

A nation is like a piece of string.

It can only be as long as it is long. You can't make a small piece of string into a big piece of string without attaching another piece of string, but the NS engine confuses this and so we have a weird multiple-time system, so sometimes the string is growing real fast in an RP sense, and sometimes it isn't. That's rather unfair on those who roleplay in realtime, but that's life.

For example, my population is actually two billion and thirty two million or so, currently. Counting tourists, about two billion seventy-five million, as it's the height of the holiday season. It was two billion and thirty million a year ago - the population boom is due to immigration (all those refugees!).

However, one of my allies, the Federation of Sentient Peoples, plays under a 'diluted' time system. Sometimes time flows faster than others. Now that is true for me, of course, as well - you can't really roleplay in real-time, but outside of character RP, I try to as much as I can. Sentient Peoples, however, has had a plot which requires a long period of time to come to fruition in many ways. That means that he's had to accelerate time every now and then - and always a little (if I'm understanding what he's said correctly - I'm sure he'll correct me if I'm wrong). As a result, whereas it can take me up to three months to build a single ship, it takes him considerably less time. At the beginning of the Alliance, our ships significantly outnumbered his. Now, his outnumber mine. To counteract this effect, I 'ramp up' several small things - I have super-brilliant propulsive systems, high-performance aircraft that sometimes appear to be on impossible to outdo in an atmosphere (but which also suffer from critical weaknesses), superconductive technology (which costs huge amounts to maintain), a pinpoint-accuracy orbital observation grid covering 9x% of the Earth's surface at any one time and 5x% of the sky from Earth (built up over a year and a half of intensive satelite launches to monitor various crises and conflicts around the world and, indeed, the solar system, to a limited degree); in short, I have less which equals about the same as more equals to less. This is balancing, which is critical in all RP. Naturally, if I were to fight in a conflict that is of far lower technology than mine, I scale down my involvement - perhaps even to just limited ground and naval forces, unsupported from the air on land and only supported in limited capacity at sea - as in the Knootian 'Shadow War', or even in the far older Amerigon Slave Conflict. Contrastingly, in the All Elves War, I deployed full-strength forces against Melkor Unchained - as his forces are roughly equal to mine in overall power. I don't mind one bit that his nation is smaller than mine: he's evil. Evil people are always stronger, basically because they're evil and they tend to amass might faster than a fox bolts down a ferret, but, by playing an evil dude, you kinda have to accept that you're not going to win so often. Good has to triumph - mostly, or at least somewhat - or the story suffers, right? So you always have to give ground, just a little, if you're portraying a 'bad guy'. So we have to give them a little ground - but only if they give ground on the grounds that their grounds are shakier than our grounds. Or, to make that actually make sense: only if there is give and take is such 'poetic license' agreeable. It's also preferable that, if you're roleplaying, you have a storyline. That means a plot, a story-arc, several story-arcs even; subplots, sub-subplots - the whole shebang, preferably. You can also go the other way - simulate, or try to simulate, your country in as much detail as you can possibly manage. Of course, that means research. Most people won't be committed to doing something like that unless they have a reason (see 'A Reason To Be').

So what does all that mean?

It really means that it depends. It depends on what you're trying to do, what 'they' are trying to do, and how that all fits. So if you're playing some weird nation that doesn't really fit in with everyone, you have to be sure that either

1. You make it fit by normalizing it in some way to everything and anything;
2. You just stay away from those it doesn't fit with.

Both take time. Roleplaying, proper, good roleplaying, is a committment. It's fun - but it still involves a workload. Tabletop roleplay is easier by far than this style, because only the GM really needs to research beyond normal character research. The GM does most of the work, so the players (and the GM *eg*) enjoy it to the fullest.

Here, we're all game designers, GMs AND players. We have to monitor ourselves, research our entire background and setting for ourselves - and then we have to make it match with everyone else as best we can... at least while we're roleplaying with THAT person.

So it's a really tricky business. Unfortunately, people here - people who roleplay - often don't seem to be very forgiving. Somewhere along the line they seem to forget that not everybody has a roleplaying background - not everybody has a writing background, for that matter. Even simple character RP involves complex decisions - how do I make this character seem real? how do I make them different to me, so that all of my characters are different? how do I make her seem like a her, when I'm a he? what would a six-year-old child think in this situation?

and so on.

So before we go any further, let me just scream one phrase to you.

ALL NATIONS ARE DIFFERENT.

ALL PLAYERS ARE DIFFERENT.

FOR GOODNESS SAKES, GIVE A LITTLE LEEWAY.

Thank-you. No more ranting, honest.

A Simple Point
or
Pin
or
The Simplistic Extension of an Object or Entity or Concept to Direct Attention to a Particular Ideal or Concept or Aim or Goal or Belief or Other Linguistic or Physical Object
or
An Even Less Funny Title Which Is Also Inconsistent In Style With The Last Possible Title For This Bit, Just When You Thought It Was Safe To Read The Post

My original point is a simple one. A nation can only be what it can be. If you have a real great economy, then you can probably actually manage as much as 21-30% of your population in your military. However, be warned: this would only work briefly, during an intense military buildup. The only outcome to such a buildup is a war - otherwise the economy would crash within ten or fifteen years. You can't pour funds into a military and then not use it. However, when you do use it, you can only really use it once - you then need to recover, unless you are specifically roleplaying a stupid leadership. If you are, then you need to be realistic in what your nation would then be capable of - and willing to accept defeat and occupation.

But there is a way to maintain a large military without economic ruin. Only one way, though. That is to ensure that your military makes money. It's the NASA principle: NASA cannot gain enough funding to do what it wants to do, or couldn't. So they launch commercial satelites. A military could conceivably operate at as much as 14% of the population of a state - if that military was actually generating enough income to pay a large portion of its own costs.

For example: military hardware often has civilian uses or applications. Superglue is a very good example; superglue was developed by the military for field use by medics. This is why superglue bonds skin so thoroughly: it was designed to be a quick-fix patching tool in the field.

Other military hardware can be put to use, as well - this equipment can then be sold on license to companies, who then sell it on and give a slice to the military. This allows greater funding without higher taxation, which doesn't stress the economy in the way that diverting funds away from corporations and the population to a non-returning government department.

Another method is to specifically design your economy in a particular way, so that funds are more equitably shared than in the capitalist market. This means greater freedoms for the population, however, which entails greater cost, so you have less to spend than you would think you might have to spend if you didn't spend enough time thinking about it.

I use a combination of the two systems above. The IDF, my military, sells on military-grade equipment and blueprints on license to Rivette MI Corporation exclusively. Rivette then uses this equipment in most of their goods; Rivette sells more cars and electronic devices in the Commonality than any other company for this reason. Usually it takes several years for technology to filter from the military to the public; this system allows all but classified weapons/counteractive weapons technology to fall into civilian hands as soon as humanly possible - at a profit to the military and the government. The military has a purpose other than warfare, then - it is a scientific arm of the government, as well. This allows a larger manpower figure, but not more highly trained soldiers. Every member of the IDF is combat-trained, but they are not all trained to the same degree. Simple regulars in the IDF Ground Forces only have US$15,000 worth of training and equipment, whereas the technicians and tank operators receive US$75,000 apiece. There are literally millions serving in the IDF GF - this is actually due to plot details (see warlike history of Nenyan/Human populations of the Commonality over the last several thousand years), however, and the unwiedly (and actually almost utterly unusable, excepting the armoured divisions) Ground Forces are being scaled back as fast as is realistic. In fact, were the IDF GF actually ever to be used aggressively, they'd be mopped up with relative ease. But then again, they receive only a tiny fraction of the funding my military departments receive.

In order to properly work out what you can have and what you can't, you need to know costs first and foremost. You need to know your budget; what do you spend on education? What do you spend on everything, for that matter? Do you have overbloated costs for government (like I do!)? What needs to be taken into account?

Once you take all those things into account, and you figure what you have left for the military...

Why, then you can have the military as large as you like. Have seventy-five percent, if you want to run your country into the ground within about, oh, a month... And so long as the majority have plastic toy guns, that is, that were found in a neighbouring country's landfill sites by 'special ops' (tourists).

But in seriousness, so long as you can't explain satisfactorily to other people why your military (and indeed, your whole nation) is the way it is, then you need to change it. And when I say explain, I mean in a way that makes them say, "Yes, that does make sense." I'm currently in the process of overhauling my entire nation from the ground up ICly for originally OOC reasons (although there are, of course, utterly valid and logical IC reasons for the changes that are occurring currently - mostly) because I had complaints in the past; I already have well over 20,000 words of primary storyline (I suspect it may be approaching 50,000, including stuff that I haven't posted yet and isn't quite done yet) - and that story has actually had to change from its original path as a result of these changes to accomodate what others see as realistic in comparison to what I see as realistic.

The Conclusion

How long is a piece of string? That's really the only answer. If you're playing a stereotypical Western democracy of about 250million people, then about 1-3% is probably appropriate and acceptable. The bigger you are, however, in theory, the smaller the number should be - unless those people are contributing to society and the economy in some way. But they have to contribute more than if they were not in the military; each extra soldier needs to generate about 40% more than an average citizen to 'pay their way' in the military, in fact - otherwise inequalities occur, and either your military gets pissed at you, or the civilians get pissed at you, or both because the two are inseperable. Remember: a military society is run by the military because most families have a family member in the military. That gives the military huge power. So the larger your military, the more unstable your nation will also be, unless you balance it with social balances and checks and meausures and ohhhhhhh that's a whole other story...

The key point to remember is a simple one, however.

Just remember to be realistic. If you aren't sure, think of how your nation is, go to the CIA World Factbook site, and find a comparison. Base your military on the strength of that nation relative to NS, and off you go. It's simple, easy, fast. It's elephant.co.uk.

And they say that advertising doesn't work...]

Ma-Tek, you limey bastard. Care to boil that post down to something readable? You know most people around these here parts can't maintain their focus long enough to read.....what was I saying again?

Anyways, back unto the main point of this discussion thread -

My personal preference for a (strictly) military force is under 1% at any given time. However, this does not include the logistics side of things, which may boost the actual % numbers to something closer to 5%, depending on whose system you use. But I suppose that this is rather unfair for many other nations out there, given my obscene population.

I think instead of stating how much military your nation has, the discussion should be based around how much of your military can you actually field at any given time. Too often one would read a post in which roving million + armies suddenly appear on someone else's coastline or are instantaneously mobilized. What many people choose to ignore is the fact that no one is capable of mobilizing their entire armed forces, or even a significant portion of it within a short time. Also, even after some time, the follow up deployment force would never be on the scale one often finds on NS.

For example, the US currently has roughly 170,000 troops deployed in Iraq. The number of personel in the US Army (as of 8/98, couldn't find a more recent source) is roughly 480,000. This means that barely a third of the US Army, which is considered the best equipped in the world (and best in just about every other category), is currently actively deployed in a combat senario. And if you have been watching the news/have friends in the armed services/other unknown sources of information, you would know that this is straining the Army as far as coverage (of the rest of the world) and troop moral (from being deployed too long, 18 months in the case of one of my friends) goes. Now bear in mind, this is a nation that is considered to have the most powerful economy in the world, the best armed forces in the world, the most spending power in the world, and generally the advantage in whatever other factors in the power equation. This would be the equivilent of an NS nation in the top 10% (being very generous here). And this nation (the US) can't even field a pitiful third of its army. Think about that the next time you field an army of 10 million.

On top of that, the basic logistical difficulties aren't even addressed yet. I'll leave that part to TEO, since he is the champion of logistics.

Sketch: That is the next logical step of the discussion. Everyone wants to deploy 100% of their military to fight in foreign lands without any consequences it seems.

Ma-tek: Ultimately, I think it comes down to this; everyone is free to have whatever kind of string they want, but in order to interact with other strings, some basic guidelines could be agreed upon - if nothing else among the players interacting within a given rp. These guidelines can also help people who want to interact with others they haven't met before. It’s all well and good to say “make it however you want” and, quite honestly, I admire the creativity and backstory that many folks put into breathing life into their own nation. What I’m not keen on is people using the “NS is real” argument to circumnavigate common sense problems. After all, in every science fiction or fantasy book that I’ve read, the characters did run out of fuel, ammo, had time constraints, some things didn’t work, some things broke, had to eat food, etc...

So, a realistic guideline on how many troops a nation can field (along with qualifiers) I think is okay, as long as the appropriate consequences are also understood. After all, no one can win in a godmode war.

Why High % Armies Are Quite Unrealistic (http://forums2.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=274393)

that's the thread you're looking for. the economic effects of a large military are, to say the least, devestating.

Yup. Its one of the few threads where I am in complete agreement with SeOCC. If that does not say anything then I don´t know.

I myself have always maintained a military of less then 0,50% of the population. It used to be about 0,40% but since I spend more now it may be a little bigger. (0,50%+)The standing army is NOT all of these troops, I should add. Most of these people are not permanently on patrol or deployed.

Really, I think all nations of the more or less civilised type should have such numbers. Tin pot dictatorships, fascist states and other extreme cases can of course have larger militaries but they should RP the consequences.

((EDIT: so I am not saying it CANNOT be done. I am saying it has drawbacks. And people won't like it either so you'd better have a reason.))

[OOC: One other little point.

Sometimes a nation might have a massive military due to the player attempting to roleplay poor previous planning - such as in my case. ICEL, and EOTED before it, are both built on collapsed preceding civilizations. As such, they have 'baggage'. Part of that baggage is a military tradition stretching back two thousand years; as a result, mandatory military service is still in effect even though the population has swelled to two billion individuals. That means that somewhat less than 7.5% of the population is working for the military at this particular moment (that figure is about four months old, and downscaling has been going on for over a year - both real-time and NS-time); however, as the military operates the education system, it is very difficult to do away with mandatory military service. Neither can large portions of the military be 'laid off', as a large company would do to prune costs. Instead, the IDF has been forced to rethink its structure.

Rather than being a military organisation primarily, the IDF - Imperial Defence Forces, probably soon to be renamed the CAS (Commonality Armed Services) - is now primarily a research+development organisation devoted to improving military performance. Millions of technicians, professors, etc, who enter the military directly following their military-academy educations, are pressed to the task of ensuring the safety of the men and women who actually fight.

There are dozens of arms of the IDF; exploration arms, scientific arms of varying types (including a humanitarian/medical relief arm)...

But the out-and-out military arms actually make up the smallest fractions of manpower. The IDF GF, IDF AF, IDF N, IDSF, IDF SPU, and CSF are the fighting arms of the IDF. However, all but the IDF GF are streamlined, small, and efficient; the IDF GF is, in fact, being scaled down to a thousandth of its previous size over the next five years.

The IDF GF Infantry Divisions, as a result, are immobile and largely unusable in anything but home defence. Even so, they require the support of nearly a million dedicated officers who ensure that they have the right orders at the right time for the right situation - even in peacetime, massive logistical operations are required all year around, driving costs up immensely.

The IDF GF Armoured Corps - some eighteen divisions - have been modernized in recent years. These were streamlined before EOTED came into being, unlike the Infantry rabble, and are believed to be effective in battle.

However, despite the massive size of the IDF, the largest ground force that has ever been deployed outside the current ICEL borders consisted of just sixteen thousand troops, during the occupation of Rukemia. Most other 'occupation duties' - which in fact largely consisted of policing duties until the major flair-ups that are believed (in Rukemia, at least) to have forced the ICEL withdrawal - were fulfilled by the then-named and utterly civilian Imperial Police Corps, now the Commonality Peace Corps.

The largest total force ever deployed by the IDF was to Knootoss; thirty thousand men fought and died in the defence of an ally of the Commonality, the largest number of non-civilian combatants ever lost in modern Iluvauromeni warfare (which doesn't include the fifty-million death toll during the War of Survival - the vast majority of which were civilian casualties).

The basic point: just because someone has a big military, 1. doesn't mean they want one; and 2. doesn't mean they actually ever use it.]

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