NationStates Jolt Archive

I may be a newish nation having returned after a 9 month rest but here is my v1.0 guide:

1:The 2-5% rule

It is important to understand how big your military actually is. As a rule of thumb, most playesr suse a base rate of around 2-5% of their population as their total armed forces including support personel. This is because to have a military any larger would be either to expensive to maintain or to much to keep control over. Many of the larger nations use even less for logistics purposes. It is important to note that in some instances where conscription etc applies, the standing army may be larger than 5% but, it should be lesser equipped to represent this fact.

2:The Budget rule:

It is important to understand that although you may have an absolutly huge military budget, thsi does not roll over from year to year if you do not spend it. You may only spend a certain amount of money per day in the various shop fronts in II because you are limited. There are various sites around which are useful and inform you of your budget such as THIRDGEEK (http://nseconomy.thirdgeek.com/). Also impoortant to note is that you should, as a baseline spend at lkeast 10% of your military budget on upkeep. This is to say that 10% fo your funding goes on keeping your military up to date and in good working order. This can vary dependant on the size of your military ranging from just 1% to up to 50% and beyond.

3:The logistics Rule

It is important to remember, that just like real life, it would be impossible to keep your armed forces on constant high alert and ready to go. In reality, you would usually only have an absolute maximum of 1/3rd of your forces ready to go into battle instantly. The other 2/3rds could take months to get readu and deploy. It is considerd godmodding to just magically have your army appear in a nation as you should, by following ettiquette allow time for your forces to mobilise and describe how they get to the nation your attacking. This leads me nicely onto

4:Attacking a nation.

You should have an extremly good reason for attacking a nation or, the international community will either ignore you or come down heavily upon you. I have found the best way to arrange a war is to talk with the nationsate you wish to invade by whatever means you have avaliable and find out why the war is going to happen, when and where. Once these things are decided, you can procede to have your war. You may even get credit from other nationstates if they find the war enjoyable to read.

5:Everybody looses sometimes

Remember, no one is invincible. Just because youve developed some super shield doesnt mean that your opponent wont eventually RP a way of getting a round it. You have to learn to take casualties as well as give them. This will make u an excel;lent RP'er and one many a nation is likely to enjoy rp'ing with. It is sometimes fun to loose and rp through the consequences o flosing a war such as annexation and oocupation and may even lead to a second war.

6:Nuclear Weapons

As a rule fo thumb, only nations more than two months old or in ceratin circumstances smaller (e.g, a small nation with a frighetning economy) may own nukes. This is because of the logistics and costs of having an firing/dropping them. The same goes for chemichal weapons. Another note of nuclear weapons is that during a war, they should be used as a last ditch method, not as an opening strike. This is because of the M.A.D. (Mutually Assurred Destruction) policy. It is boring to just use nukes rather than fight a war just because your going to loose anyway and may result in you being ignored. Most nations own nukes only to make sure that they themselves cantg be nuked (much like the real world)

Finally:HAVE FUN

The most important thing of all, as with all rp'ing is too have fun. If your not having fun, the somethings not right. Try and tweak the rp so you are having fun and if it doesnt work, abandon it and try again.


Hopefully, this guide has helped you. Any comments/suggestions on this guide are appreciated. Thanks, in advance, Exetonia

Yeah, this is really what you want, a guide, giving you the basic facts. But, a bit short. But hey, I suppose it's better that way.

Nice job on this guide Exetonia. It summarizes military-basics, but it doesnt confuse the newbs who know nothing. Excellent. :)

An Uber Guide to the real wars in NS

May the need to pin this,

nahhh make it larger

(ooc:Added rule 6)

Hmm... pretty good Exetonia. Straight and to the point. I can't stand reading those uber-posts. Though they may informative, I have a short span of patience for those. So, you got your point across and didn't use up half your oxygen to do it.

I applaud you.

how does one decide what your millitary budget might be?

Great job EM, though you might want to show some examples of those certain things, both good and bad, also another thing you might wanna add, no nation has an army of just tanks or a navy of just battleships or carriers, you need an equal balance between firepower and support.

yeah, how do you decide how much you can spend on buying your balanced military

Fintlewood,

Your military budget is determined by issues that you answer each day. To find it out, click the thirdgeek link in his post, the at the end of the URL put
?nation=Fintlewood this will show you your entire budget. Your defense budget is down on the page a little.

Pentova

I know this is all a pretty bare-bones thing, but since I'm here, I'd like to say that I think you're sounding a bit too liberal with the size of a typical military. Dra-pol is essentially North Korea on PCP, as I often say, and our military is in total around four to five percent of the population, and as a result I play a terrible economy rather than the listed all consuming (or whatever it is today), and the vast majority of equipment would look more at home in the seventies. To have one percent of a population in the military is no mean feat; in reality China has a few million including reserves and that constitutes the largest military in the world, I believe. To have even one percent of its population even in the reserve formations would mean I think far more than doubling that.
Granted, China doesn't have dozens of other massive nations surrounding it and making hostile sounds as is sometimes the case in NS, so that might justify larger forces... on the other hand, the Chinese armed forces continue to shrink because it's the only way to modernise them.
In my case (Dra-pol's) it doesn't make sense to down-size, because we simply don't have the avenues or revenues to import modern arms, and our isolated technology base can't make them. If it could, I'd not be justified in having four percent of the population under arms.
Sorry, maybe that's a bit long-winded, but I sometimes get a little bit dejected to see nations thinking they can have their cake and eat it. If you have even a couple of percent of the populace in the military, there must be threats to justify it, and societal structures built up to support it and to make sure that people don't greatly resent it, and it's going to be damned hard to make it match up stealth-fighter for stealth-fighter with a military constituting 0.15% of someone else's population.

I would like to point out to those nations who might be confused that you do not need a website to tell you your budget. Once you get a feel for the game you can always make a custum budget.

1:The 2-5% rule

It is important to understand how big your military actually is. As a rule of thumb, most playesr suse a base rate of around 2-5% of their population as their total armed forces including support personel. This is because to have a military any larger would be either to expensive to maintain or to much to keep control over. Many of the larger nations use even less for logistics purposes. It is important to note that in some instances where conscription etc applies, the standing army may be larger than 5% but, it should be lesser equipped to represent this fact.

Actually, many of the role-players I talk to in IRC as well as some of the larger nations in International Incidents would argue that 5% is an obcene percentage of your population to have in the military.

To give backing to this I will note that the current real life example of this is North Korea, a nation which has an basketcase economy due to the fact it spends pretty much all it's effort on it's huge military which it feels it needs to protect itself from the much larger China.

All of the worlds military powers, Russia, America, China (which has the biggest army in the world) and perhaps Europe (if you want to count it as a military power) have their percentages at the lowely figure below 1% of their population.

This is because the larger nations can't afford to have millions of soldiers in their military because they need the money for other important improvements which keep their economy running and their people happy.

The more people who are in the military, the more people who they have to pay for their training, feeding, housing and equipping. These soldiers aren't contributing to the society by working for companies and as such the higher number of people in the military, the less people working real jobs and contibuting to the society as a whole.

We all know that a soldier costs alot and the more you have the more they will cost... but the fact her is also that the more you have the less people who are working to pay to help your economy (and thus your tax income) which pay for the military.

Whats more, few nations need armies larger then a million... the only military in the world which has around a million men is China, which has the biggest population in the world and their soldiers are not as well trained as the American soldiers (who are estimated to cost around $200'000 each of their training and equipment).

While I will admit that in International Incidents this is lax and less important, I feel it's important to note that some people will frown upon overly large military percentages and concider it to be numberwanking. However you can probably get away with 5% if you really must.

Personally I'm a nation which is damn near run by the military and I have less then 1% of my people in the military (including support figures) due to cost and need.

It's also important to note that there are no rules, just peoples ideas on what is acceptable and what isn't.

2:The Budget rule:

It is important to understand that although you may have an absolutly huge military budget, thsi does not roll over from year to year if you do not spend it. You may only spend a certain amount of money per day in the various shop fronts in II because you are limited. There are various sites around which are useful and inform you of your budget such as THIRDGEEK (http://nseconomy.thirdgeek.com/). Also impoortant to note is that you should, as a baseline spend at least 10% of your military budget on upkeep. This is to say that 10% fo your funding goes on keeping your military up to date and in good working order. This can vary dependant on the size of your military ranging from just 1% to up to 50% and beyond.

I can't be sure about your figures, I'm not a logistical whizz but I'm happy you have mentioned military budget and how it doesn't always stack. People can spend as much as they want in Storefronts, though if they spend too much people may choose to ignore them if they feel it's unrealistic because it ruins the realism of the thread.

I should also note that Storefronts don't add to a nations GDP, they simply roleplay part of where you get the money from in your GDP. I guess you could claim it's extra but whether or not people ignore it or not is up to them...

Which is another thing... you don't need a calulator. They look nice but they are often concidered inaccurate by some. As such it's not really a rule to use them, it's a personal choice.

If you are just reasonable about the money you spend you don't really need one. If not then people may quote them to show you how you've spent too much.

3:The logistics Rule

It is important to remember, that just like real life, it would be impossible to keep your armed forces on constant high alert and ready to go. In reality, you would usually only have an absolute maximum of 1/3rd of your forces ready to go into battle instantly. The other 2/3rds could take months to get readu and deploy. It is considerd godmodding to just magically have your army appear in a nation as you should, by following ettiquette allow time for your forces to mobilise and describe how they get to the nation your attacking. This leads me nicely onto...

Again, it's good you've noted this. Though I feel your figures on this one are not terrible they aren't really backed up. They give the reader an idea that they shouldn't just pile their military into battle, but they also allow them to think it's perfectly acceptable to just assume 1/3rd of their military is prepared without giving any idea as to how long it may take to move them.

Personally I take around a week to mobilise anything which is around, I don't know, say anything from 20'000 to 200'000, perhaps a couple more weeks for the end of that spectrum depending on how much we were leading up to it in the first place (i.e it wasn't a suprise).

From there it takes maybe another week or two for the first shipments to arrive depending on where in the world they are... if they are on my border then it could be just a days worth of travel. If it's in my region maybe a couple days on a ship. If it's beyond that then a week or more depending on how far...

Ships should be used for large numbers, planes can be used (but I wouldn't always advise it) for small numbers. Remeber that really large forces will take several months to deploy in another nation due to the fact you have to make more then one trip to pick up more. But this really depends on who you are RPing with... thats my preference.

For a good look at logistics, this thread has is probably the best for explaining it.

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

4:Attacking a nation.

You should have an extremly good reason for attacking a nation or, the international community will either ignore you or come down heavily upon you. I have found the best way to arrange a war is to talk with the nationsate you wish to invade by whatever means you have avaliable and find out why the war is going to happen, when and where. Once these things are decided, you can procede to have your war. You may even get credit from other nationstates if they find the war enjoyable to read.

Fair enough comment, I agree completely. Not much more to add... maybe something like "Don't go to war for OOC hate because thats just dumb."

5:Everybody looses sometimes

Remember, no one is invincible. Just because youve developed some super shield doesnt mean that your opponent wont eventually RP a way of getting a round it. You have to learn to take casualties as well as give them. This will make you an excellent RP'er and one many a nation is likely to enjoy rp'ing with. It is sometimes fun to loose and rp through the consequences of losing a war such as annexation and oocupation and may even lead to a second war.

Again, good point. Not much to add here.

6:Nuclear Weapons

As a rule fo thumb, only nations more than two months old or in ceratin circumstances smaller (e.g, a small nation with a frighetning economy) may own nukes. This is because of the logistics and costs of having an firing/dropping them. The same goes for chemichal weapons. Another note of nuclear weapons is that during a war, they should be used as a last ditch method, not as an opening strike. This is because of the M.A.D. (Mutually Assurred Destruction) policy. It is boring to just use nukes rather than fight a war just because your going to loose anyway and may result in you being ignored. Most nations own nukes only to make sure that they themselves can't be nuked (much like the real world)

Fair enough, it's not a rule that you can't have nukes... but generally you should have a good reason for having them as a small nation.

Finally:HAVE FUN

The most important thing of all, as with all rp'ing is too have fun. If your not having fun, the somethings not right. Try and tweak the rp so you are having fun and if it doesnt work, abandon it and try again.

Yup... having fun is what NS is all about.



You'll note I've been as respectful as possible with my opinions regarding this. I hope you don't concider my advise to be helpful and hopefully I can stop some of the assumptions made with my comments.

I have another thread similar to this one at:

http://forums2.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=361143&page=1&pp=15

I have to admit this is pretty good though.

thanks for the comments guys. Like i said, this is a work in progress and i shall trake your advice on board and modify my guide as you suggest.

there are several excellent threads concerning warfare that have been showing up lately, and all are worth checking out...

including your guide, good job Exetonia

Jauxism's instant sticky started it. Anything else goes in Euro's Guide.

Jauxism's instant sticky started it. Anything else goes in Euro's Guide.

Jaxusism. And I deserved that sticky! :p

VERSION 1.5 (http://forums2.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?p=7276920)

[insert random comment about deserving that sticky and not getting another here]

To be honest I'm surprised that they gave you the first one, but I guess they felt it needed to be said, so fair enough.

As for you're RP guide... they are many many guides for that and to be honest if a guide is good then it will at the very least be recognised and tagged by some. Perhaps you can get Euroslavia to link it in his own guide which covers things a whole lot better itself.

Personally I can see where they are coming from.

Hey Iuthia I edited my post so I wouldnt get in trouble for arguing with the mods. Could you edit yours too please? To keep the peace?

Hey Iuthia I edited my post so I wouldnt get in trouble for arguing with the mods. Could you edit yours too please? To keep the peace?

Personally I've made a couple guides and I've never bitched at the mods to sticky it... it's up to them. Ulitimately how a person RP's is down to opinion, that is part of their point. By making something which looks like rules a load of nations will assume they are and it will stifle freeform RP.