NationStates Jolt Archive

How do you calculate the military or war capability's of nation before boing to war with another one. Is it possible to oqupy or taken over another nation , if so you do you do this. ?

Basically, you make it up. No, really!

However, there are a few rules that you have to follow, otherwise, no one will RP with you. Now, I could go through it, but the stickys explain it better then I can. The link is down @ that link.

http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=437653

Not really, because there are many variables involved. One of the chief ones is the RP ability of the country you're considering going to war with. If the country you're RPing against is an excellent RPer and you're not, you're going to have an uphill battle, no matter what the population difference. If population is fairly equal and RP level is fairly equal, the advantage goes to the defender who 1) knows the terrain and 2) can prepare defences. There's no way that war mobilisation isn't going to be detected in this modern age.

Ultimately, however, NS isn't about winning or losing. It's about telling a story. Personally, I loathe RPs that have pre-determined outcomes, but that doesn't mean you can't work out details either beforehand or as you're going along. The war RP I did with Pantera may have been the best one I've ever been in because we both worked together to tell the story and we were both willing to compromise to tell a better story.

Even though the Inkana Civil War was a pre-determined outcome (and Ink had to talk me into taking part because of that), I'm proud of my work in that RP because I and my primary "opponent" in that RP, Doomingsland, were both looking to tell a great story. I didn't worry about the fact I "lost" because it opened up RP possibilities (like my army reforms thread and my training RP).

Not really, because there are many variables involved. One of the chief ones is the RP ability of the country you're considering going to war with. If the country you're RPing against is an excellent RPer and you're not, you're going to have an uphill battle, no matter what the population difference. If population is fairly equal and RP level is fairly equal, the advantage goes to the defender who 1) knows the terrain and 2) can prepare defences. There's no way that war mobilisation isn't going to be detected in this modern age.

Ultimately, however, NS isn't about winning or losing. It's about telling a story. Personally, I loathe RPs that have pre-determined outcomes, but that doesn't mean you can't work out details either beforehand or as you're going along. The war RP I did with Pantera may have been the best one I've ever been in because we both worked together to tell the story and we were both willing to compromise to tell a better story.

Even though the Inkana Civil War was a pre-determined outcome (and Ink had to talk me into taking part because of that), I'm proud of my work in that RP because I and my primary "opponent" in that RP, Doomingsland, were both looking to tell a great story. I didn't worry about the fact I "lost" because it opened up RP possibilities (like my army reforms thread and my training RP).

Sarzonia here is right. Its about telling the story, more than winning or losing. Tell a good story, write it well, and it doesn't matter if you win or lose. Hell, losing is half the fun!

OOC: Sarz - can you get on msn now?

you could go here if you want to find out other facts about your nation....

http://www.pipian.com/stuffforchat/gdpcalc.php
http://twr.1colony.com/ver8/calc8.0.html
http://nseconomy.thirdgeek.com/
http://www.sunsetrpg.com/nsxmlparser.php
http://www.sunsetrpg.com/economystatistics.php

The third one (NSEconomy, Third Geek) is the most widely accepted. To figure out how many people you can have times your GDP spent on defense by your population. That is your max for the amount of soilders (with a gun) you can have. You can have more and be like russia, I will wait here until you die and I get your gun. Your ability to produce should be probably off your defense budget. That is were it can get tricky. You may buy or you may produce. When you produce your own you have to make sure your price matches your unit and that unit is not to godmodding. Buying pretty much is safer but at the same time you may be jiped when you realize the pride of your fleet can be taken down by about everything in an opponet's fleet.

The third one (NSEconomy, Third Geek) is the most widely accepted. To figure out how many people you can have times your GDP spent on defense by your population. That is your max for the amount of soilders (with a gun) you can have. You can have more and be like russia, I will wait here until you die and I get your gun. Your ability to produce should be probably off your defense budget. That is were it can get tricky. You may buy or you may produce. When you produce your own you have to make sure your price matches your unit and that unit is not to godmodding. Buying pretty much is safer but at the same time you may be jiped when you realize the pride of your fleet can be taken down by about everything in an opponet's fleet.

Right, the Defense% x Population method is a bad idea. If I did that, I could have roughly 1 billion soldiers, obviously not balanced in any way. Generally, your maximum army size is 5% of your population, usually much less, somewhere around 1-2%.

If you read it you would see that I said MAX or in english, maximum, the greatest amount, I was not saying you had to have that many, just the maximum.

Regardless, having 50% of your pop or more in your military, even as a maximum, is just silly. Using this as a guideline is not a good idea.

Using percentage of your population as a measure for how big a nation's military should be has very limited use. If you're a small country (such as an Israel) with threats all around it, you're going to need a much greater percentage of your nation's population in the military than a large country with few or no equally powerful nations that are direct threats, such as the United States. The United States has roughly one percent of its population in active military service (and, frankly is more likely to have less than that).

If the United States had five percent of its national population in active military service without a direct invasion from Russia, it would break the back of the American economy in no time flat. Think about it. The United States population is somewhere on the order of 290 million people. Five percent of that is 14.5 million people. The U.S. military's numbers likely would have to include reservists, logistics personnel, operations staff, and civilians who work for the military, and all of those might approach five percent.

The larger your military gets, the more logistical challenges it presents you. If you want to launch an invasion with a million man army, guess what? You have to get them all there. If your opponent is worth his salt, he's not going to just let you waltz onto his shores like you already own the place. He's going to contest your landing by doing things like laying mines, firing ASMs, and possibly bringing anti-armour assets near the beach. Want to land paratroopers? You've got to make sure you have absolute air superiority. That doesn't just include beating his fighters. You've got to suppress anti-aircraft defences as well or they're going to have a nice round of target practice on those big old transports.

Let's say you're able to land your troops, either by a Normandy-styled invasion or by paratroop landings. Now you have another problem: How are you going to feed them? How are you going to keep them clothed? How are you going to keep them supplied with ammunition? How are you going to get armoured assets onto the ground? What about repair crews? All of that has to do with logistics. And don't tell me you have three main battle tanks, all with different calibres of shell. That's a nightmare in itself. If you've got one MBT that fires a 120 mm shell, one that fires a 125 mm shell, and one that fires a 105 mm shell, you've got to make sure you give the right shell to the right tank.

If you want a way to measure intangibles, you can't. One of the intangibles that can't be quantified in this game is RP ability. You never know when the "piddling little 50 million population country" is run by the next Automagfreek or the next Praetonia or the next Pacitalia. I've seen a seven million population country (Hamptonshire) slug it out with a billion-plus country. I fought Pantera when he'd just hit six billion and I had just barely cleared three billion.

Other intangibles your military commanders have to take into account are the objectives of their side versus that of the enemy. If you're fighting to claim territory or you're fighting for some abstract ideal like democracy or the glory of the empire and your enemy is fighting for their lives and their homes, they're going to fight a hell of a lot harder than your troops are. And if you launch strategic attacks to demoralise an enemy populace, history shows that doesn't happen. It usually only angers them and makes them want to fight harder.

Regardless, having 50% of your pop or more in your military, even as a maximum, is just silly. Using this as a guideline is not a good idea.

Well, look at Afganistan almost 50% of the people are in the military (well enleast all men have an AK-47). They defeated Russia, Soviet Russia. Anyhow Sarzonia's thing is really like it is, logistics are everything.

Afganistan has a very small military, with only 24,000 men enlisted in their army as of February 2005. Men with guns are NOT soldiers, they are armed civilians.

RP counts. Big guns don't....at least, not that much.