NationStates Jolt Archive

I have 110 million people in my country. My military is 750,000 strong.

That is .00681 of my population. Is that to big or to small?

Generally, I'd recommend a military of less than 1% of your population. The percentage of your population in your military looks about right to me.

My population is 1% rounded down just to make it easy, it's alittle higher then anything realistic but some people have 3-4% which seems like godmoding or unrealistic.

I keep my military at 2% Standing, 1% Reserve. Since I just started yesterday, this gives me a standing Army of 120,000 and an extra 60,000 in Reserve (a total of 180,000 troops).

Obviously, I'm not entering any major conflicts any time soon...

I have a very substantial population, so I keep my base armed forces at 2%, with .5% as reservists. In wartimes this figure becomes anywhere from 3-4%, which includes local militias and civilian defenses.

I keep my military at 2% Standing, 1% Reserve. Since I just started yesterday, this gives me a standing Army of 120,000 and an extra 60,000 in Reserve (a total of 180,000 troops).

Obviously, I'm not entering any major conflicts any time soon...

Smart move. I used the 2% figure when I was a newb nation. I don't remember seeing any threads that suggested that, but I figured that was a reasonable figure.

Nowadays, if my military reaches 2 percent, it's mostly navy since I put a heavy emphasis on navy.

Are these military size figures made up or is there an issue that starts your military off or what?

As for Jiggles' question. Is their a possibility of threat from enemies? If so you need to have a military that could adequately deal with said threat while still having enough of a force to stay behind and guard your country. Also if your nation is an expansionist state you need a suitable force to be able to conquer more land.

My military is about 0.01 of my poppulation, including support and logistics personel. As far as troops go, about 0.07 of my nation are soldiers. In case of invasion conscript troops would increase it to 0.025 of my nation.

As big as it can get!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

*unless its more than 15% of your population

my army is nonexistent as I am pacifist. Of course if you try to kill me, I can summon things to defend me very easily.

I use a 5% of my population for total troops... this is taking into account that usualy I have a 'military service is compulsatory' and the fact that Thelas is RPed as a militarist state. But for a new nation.... I would recomend.... ya, around 2% for active combat troop

Let me see.... anything else you want to know?

I currently have 0.03% of my population mobilized in the military. There haven't been any real conflicts lately, so I'm able to keep it at a lower amount, although, I'm ready to mobilize 1% more, in case a conflict arises.

Are these military size figures made up or is there an issue that starts your military off or what?

As for Jiggles' question. Is their a possibility of threat from enemies? If so you need to have a military that could adequately deal with said threat while still having enough of a force to stay behind and guard your country. Also if your nation is an expansionist state you need a suitable force to be able to conquer more land.

These are made up and used only in the forums, although you can't go and make a 300 Billion man army "Just Because". You're limited by your population size and your national/military budget, which can be found by using the Nationstates GDP Calculators. I know of two: a simple one which gives your GDP and National Budget among a few other stats, as well as a somewhat more complicated one that will also tell you what percentage of your budget is spent on what (for example, my Military budget is 13% of my National budget). If you look around, I'm sure you can find them.

Since I'm new as well, I'm not too familiar with more of the details, such as purchasing hardware etc., but I've heard that keeping a Notepad document with these things written down makes it easier to keep track of what you have.

Smaller nations can usually get away with larger percentages of the population (larger in this case meaning 3-4%) in the military- especially as newer nations really shouldn't be doing a lot of agressive military moves to begin with. 2% isn't really a problem, although one of the military calculators (the thread has died, but I have it saved on my hard drive if anyone wants to TG me their email address) is point-based, and the larger your %, the lower your points will be.

I recommend creating a couple of files to track and maintain your military. A spreadsheet is good for describing the actual units, what they're armed with, # of personnel per unit, etc. I use a Microsloth Word document to file detailed descriptions of individual items (weapons, aircraft, ships, etc) as well.

I also recommend converting any posts you write about weapons development into document files and saving those as well.


TEO