NationStates Jolt Archive

Hey guys, I'm pretty new to Nationstates and RPing in general. I've read over all the help threads, which were very useful, and have read through several threads to get a gist of what to do. The thing is, it seems to me that you have to know a whole lot about military stuff like tanks and junk, and I'm quite ignorant in that category. Is there anyone (or a group of someones) who would be willing to help me through the basics, like "What is a Howitzer?" , and maybe help me start my army? Thanks alot!

PS: I wasn't sure if this was the proper place to post this, but I didn't see anywhere else that fit. if this isn't the correct place, I apologize.

whoops for doublepost. doublepost doubleplus ungood

I'd be glad to answer any questions you have. I've been around here a bit, and I've spent a lot of time and effort crafting a realistic military.

So....whadda ya need to know?

sorry I took so long to get back to this, my computer hates me. as for what I need to know...pretty much everything. Main thing I need to know are the basic units, weapons, and vehicles and stuff like that. also logistical stuff, because while I understand the need for logistics, I have no clue how to realistically RP them. after that, any info/advice about building, maintaining, and RPing a good military would be greatly appreciated.

okay....logistics involves having enough stuff for your men, and getting it to them.

basically, for large units (like a division or larger- anything over 15,000 guys) supplies= speed and whoopass. they burn more supplies when they move, and when they fight. so, a spearhead tank division is going to burn a LOT of supplies. tanks get bad mileage to begin with, and a battle (lots of stops and starts) is like....uuh, city driving i guess. point is, for an attack, your supply lines are life. if they are limited, you have limited options.

for instance, in this war i'm in right now, the only major bridge over a river (the border between me and the enemy) was bombed. I had to halt the advance of a whole army group (over a million men) for three weeks before they could get supplies to start moving again.

I'll fill you in about hardware stuff later....i mean, if you have more questions. I could even design your military for you, if you want. I live for that kind of stuff (i've done that for a friend of mine's nation)

I'd be willing to help you out...

First off, as a basic rule of thumb, 1 combatant for 5 support troops.If you havea a 200,000 man army, expect about 40,000 men in tanks or rushing the enemy with rifles. The rest are doing everything from moving supplies, holding taken areas or lines, repairing damaged tanks or working on intelligence. Any number of things you can expect to happen.

Once you have a fairly large army, you can just figure out that it takes time to move soldiers and supplies, you cant advance too fast usually, and you dont have 2 million guys with AK-47's in a 2 million man army.

Basically, while it differs from nation to nation, you will probably use the following groups for your army..

Squad:A rifle Squad usually consists of about 9-16 men, Most of them with the main issue rifle of the military, then some with either support weapons or officer weapons(usually smaller weapons). Heavy weapons squads are usually around the same, more if mechanized(uses transport vehicles), and a heavy weapons squad might use mortars, heavy machine guns, etc.

Division:As opposed to squads, who are more used for detailed RP, Divisions are usually used to express army units moving, or generally acting. A division may push towards a city, or work up the east flank of the nation, or something along those lines. A Division can reach from about 8,000 troops to 22,000 troops. A division can be air cavalry(usually helicopters in general), Infantry(foot soldiers in general), Mechanized(Foot soldiers with transports in general), Armoured(Tanks or artillery, etc in general).

The thing is, it seems to me that you have to know a whole lot about military stuff like tanks and junk, and I'm quite ignorant in that category.

You do not have to know that much about it... There may be people laughing at you because you do not know the proper abbrevations for... stuff, it doesn´t matter.

Balancing is all that counts, and with a bit of common sense, it should work.

And if you make some extremely silly mistakes, and the one(s) you´re RPing with are not complete assholes, and just point oout your... mistake, rather than flaming you, you can always correct it (Had to do that several times for my own stuff).

Oh, and it isn´t necessary to use RL equipment (In my humble opinion, since the geopolitical and geographic as well as industrial situation in NS has nothing to do with what we know from the real world, using RL equipment is actually quite silly, since said equipment is actually based on the geopolitical, geographic and industrial realities ;)).

Last but not least, contrary to the dozen 'OMG WAR' threads started every day, war isn´t the only thing in NS, and you can certainly participate in more peaceful settings while knowing shit about military stuff :P

PS: I wasn't sure if this was the proper place to post this, but I didn't see anywhere else that fit. if this isn't the correct place, I apologize.

Well, gameplay or Nationstates would have been more appropriate...

[quote]Oh, and it isn´t necessary to use RL equipment (In my humble opinion, since the geopolitical and geographic as well as industrial situation in NS has nothing to do with what we know from the real world, using RL equipment is actually quite silly, since said equipment is actually based on the geopolitical, geographic and industrial realities ;)).

THANK YOU!

He's really right. Don't go using a bunch of US stuff that would never be sold ever. (kilean will sell you weapons, btw- non-RL weapons. we'd love to help you out). I think you should also avoid storefronts, beacuse those are lame.

Generally the building blocks of your army will be a division.

A Kilean division has something around 25,000 men, 200 tanks, and 120 artillery pieces. However, Kilean has large divisions by world standards.

Another really important thing is training- most wards on NS are just equipment jackoffs. It's far more important in my current war that II corps is an all-volunteer formation with the best officers in my army, and is trained with the best combined-arms/chemical warfare doctrine than the fact that II corps has over 600 Cougar heavy tanks.

Get the idea? you need good material, but more than that, you need good men.

Ok, so let me see...going by the 5% max for army size that I read about, I can have a 700,000 man army, and only 20% can be combatants by your ratio, so thats...140,000 troops that I can send into battle?

ok, that answers that question. Now, my goal is to be more hit-and-run oriented than traditional warfare, as I only plan to attack alongside of allies, with a decent defence force to protect my nation. what should I purchase and how should I divide my troops? I've got about $12.4 billion to spend on my military.

and Der Angst: I realize that you don't have to be a military genius to RP it, but you do have to know enough to create a decent army and know what its supposed to do. And I also realize that there are plenty of non-violent threads, but I want to be able to participate in both kinds.

Well, Most times, it is really irrelevant how much you actually know. Most people just buy guns that look and sound cool. On an individual basis, guns and tanks dont matter. Just use logic:

Light Tank > Rifleman
Medium Tank > Light Tank
Heavy Tank > Medium tank
Air power > Virtually anything, depends on mass of fighters
Sea power > Everything that moves on the water smaller than itself

I hate to advertise, but you can buy some guns and planes that are particually n00b-friendly I devised on our RelicArms website:

www.freewebs.com/bluebomber

Correction: I have $24 billion to spend on my military. just found a more precise GNP calculator. and ISAF, I sorta knew all that. that's why I plan on focusing on air power. controlling the skies=controlling the battlefield.

OOC: Your computer doesn't hate you, the hamster powering the NS server gets tired from running on the wheel all day.

i think the hamster died long ago :D

OOC: Your computer doesn't hate you, the hamster powering the NS server gets tired from running on the wheel all day.

So true

Ok, so let me see...going by the 5% max for army size that I read about, I can have a 700,000 man army, and only 20% can be combatants by your ratio, so thats...140,000 troops that I can send into battle?


5% in the army would be a 'I`m invaded and use all I have' army...

I would suggest 1%/ population as maximum size for peace times, IF you are a militaristic regime (either in the top 1% for military spending or devoted to defence/ effectively ruled by the department of defence), otherwise lower. Remember, whoever you have in the military, can´t work, thusly, the larger your military, the more trouble your industry has.

Hmmmm, that puts a little bit of a damper on my army if I follow that. Do you think 2-3% for a hugely militaristic, small country would be reasonable? and I'm talking Hitler-era Germany militaristic here.

I hate that hamster now. >:(

I was...actually, I pretty much still am, in deep Newbness.

Some helpful places to go for inspiration would be

www.raf.mod.uk

www.royal-navy.mod.uk

www.army.mod.uk

The UK forces appear to have very helpfully listed a whole bunch of non-sensitive but useful facts like how many aircraft a small nation has in a squadron, and what those squadrons do.

Additionally, go find the various storefronts by Clan Smoke Jaguar. He's created some 'packages' for air and ground formations of up to Wing/Division size which, if nothing else, will give you an idea of how to construct a balanced force.

That's a shameless plug, because I buy heavily from the chap and I've found him helpful and useful, but like I said, he's put in a lot of work and it saves an awful lot of time.

One last thing: when you create your armed forces, think 'balance'. I've seen lots of "Raaarrrr! I invade with my 100,000 Super Plus Double Hard Tanks and a Billion Men!". That's one heck of an armoured division, but it's at a total loss without bridging equipment, even if the tanks run on fresh air.

Good luck!

TAG

(What?! Yes I know I should know all this by now. Even some of us slightly older Nations need hints every now and again)

hey,welcome to NS,just a few small technical things here....
if you get "this page cannot be displayed" when you get into the forums,just refresh,its the forums not you.
a puppet nation is a secondary nation owned by a larger nation,but by the same person.
a "bump" means someone had posted just "bump" to get the thread back up to the first page.
a "tag" message means someone has marked the thread,so they can get back to it later.
if you see something like "im a member of the ----" only replace the "----" with an abbreveaton for an allience,which you have to manually join,not something built into the game,just made up by the players.
if you want to get images into youre post you gotta use image tags
http://img12.photobucket.com/albums/v36/ybtypical220/kihameria.jpg[img] <- wrong
you have to add a slash mark(/) at the end to get an image,and it has to be off a website,so get familiar with image searches.
and notice,the desired effect(i use my flag,and i use the site photobucket.com)
[img]http://img12.photobucket.com/albums/v36/ybtypical220/kihameria.jpg
see ?


and if you see something like this
"
---------------------------
Prime minister Dimitiri Mishkin
Ambasador from Nation X
"

the bottom below the --------- marks is what soem people call a signature,they put it in themselves because the forums dont allow it.
and note,nation X i dont think i is a real nation,just an example.
if you see a post with "storefront" in it it means it is a storefront,browse and if you see something you like just post "the nation of Nation X would like to buy 1,000 M1-A1 abrambs" normally it is common cutrosey to "do youre math" which mean if it lists the item price just cauculate (# of item) times(price of item) and then finish youre post like "and the total price would be one billion dollars" or something...
it is also common for the "one billion rule" before you legiably use nuclear weapons,it means you must have over one billion population before you start nukeing people.
if you want to start youre own storefront you can do so,but keep it realistic and look up spec's on youre items,not just a picture and a price.
and "moding" or "godmoding" is like sending ten trillion men to attack youre enemy,it just cant happen logistically,and likewise if you have a storefront with M1-A1 abrambs for only one hundred dollars,the equipment has its costs,not to mention labor,so keep things logistic,and for safetey just use a fractions of youre population as youre military,i use about less than 7 percent(i wont disclose any more on it,national safety is at hand)
and just one more thing....
feel free to customize youre nation,make a map of it,make a flag of it,set in youre own currency,etc.
note,this isnt evreything,just an overview,but feel free to telegram me if you have any questions.

Ze, just make the rest reserves, and activate them in time of war.

For your size of country good size of military would be something like
50 000. With around 10 000 actual riflemen. And rest pilots, APC crews, refueling vehicles, navy, etc.
(Correct the number of riflemen)

Some semi-random stats:

One regiment=650 troops. However, in some cases that 650 men =one battalion, with a regiment being around three battalions.
(For example: Britain's Parachute Regiment is made up of 4 Battalions - three full time and one reserve/territorial - each one being the size of a complete regiment.)

One division of infantry might be up to nine battalions with supporting artillery and light armour.

Several Divisions, between two and six, make up a Corps.

As an example, the US's rapid reaction corps consists of:

One airborne infantry division
one air assault division
one mountain division (probably light infantry)
a mechanized infantry division
an independant armoured brigade
and independant light infantry brigade
an armoured cavalry regiment, to do recon and screening work for the above massed formation.

And apparently, in the real world that entire formation (something over 60,000 troops) can be anywhere in the world within 18 hours.

Recommended reading: Check out 'Red Storm Rising' by Tom Clancy, a good look at a potential third world war, for some hints about leadership and troops in addition to the effects of having the right tools for the job. Tom's big on troops being capably lead and motivated...much moreso than he is on shiney kit and flashy guns.

Dangit! these army estimates keep getting lower and lower! oy gevaldt, I'm just gonna stick with happy medium of a 2% population army. ok?ok. I think I'm ready to start actually making my army. suggestions?

btw, Ze Shwagmeister is CP's puppet. or vice versa, I can never tell. ;P