NationStates Jolt Archive

Hey all.

I need an OOC opinion on this. I’ve attached a link that should allow you to download a Microsoft Excel Spread sheet. On that sheet I have my military totals for units, costs, et cetera.

http://www.geocities.com/semi_equal_1984/Military.xls

I’ve set the maintenance cost of a vehicle to 10% its retail price, no bulk discount. I think that’s fair as far as upkeep costs go. As far as purchasing each piece of equipment, that’d be done by a special infusion from the crown. (Think the US president asking congress for a cash infusion for the war effort, but that money not counting towards the military budget.) Should the maintenance amount be higher? What’s a good rule of thumb?

I’ve set the non-combat personnel per combat personnel ratio as 7.5, meaning that I have to pay the salaries for 7.5 times more people then that I can ever hope to field. This number will increase when I introduce more high tech into my army but for a nation with armed forces that looks like it’s from the late 80s this is acceptable, right?

I’ve set the training budget to 105k per person, is this acceptable? Should it be higher or lower?

I’ve based all my land composition forces off of how many heavy tanks I’m fielding. I army is obviously lacking in air support but this is for RP purposes, if I ever have the time to get back to that. Are these acceptable ratios? What kind of force do you picture when you look at those ratios?

Salaries are set at just below my country’s GDP per capita. This was done to make my armed forces comparable to free market employment. That said conscription is in effect in my country. Is this a bad judge? What can I expect to see as a reaction if this was to come out in an RP?

(NOTE: Carrier Grp and wing means 1 Carrier, full air wing compliment, three battleships, six frigates, and twelve destroyers.)

I got my defence spending from here, http://nseconomy.thirdgeek.com/nseconomy.php?nation=Otares , is this an acceptable source or is there a better place to use. I found another, the addy eludes me currently, but it let me set my own %%%. I am using this one to keep me honest to the way I answer the issues. Is it acceptable for me to use the other one? It gives me more money.

Are there any other comments to be made? Please question away I think I am on top of the ball here but I don’t want to step on toes if and when I get back to the RP aspect. I will try to be very gracious in accepting criticism, I only ask that you not wield them too sharply as I have put a bit of work into this.

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I'll comment on a couple of things, though I don't have time to answer all of your questions, and I'm wary of opening unknown Excel files. Mostly regarding procurement.

When you buy something off of somebody else's storefront, they're usually going to do a background check. This check is usually a visit to an economic calcualtor such as Thirdgeek (which seems to be the nearly-universal standard for storefront economic background checks). As such, if you plan on buying stuff, your procurement should be included in your present military budget, not added to it.

Therefore, unless you're at war and need every penny you can get to funding the war effort RIGHT NOW, it's a good idea to rp a "procurement budget" within your existing military budget.

While Thirdgeek can seem arbitrary, calculators that ask you to input data regarding your appropriations seem to be frowned upon, because the flexibility they give is basically an open invitation to start wanking. Nevertheless, they can be useful in wartime, to rp the quick shifts in appropriations coming from immediate defense needs faster than the game can generate defense-related "issues" that you can answer to up your military budget through calculators such as Thirdgeek.

Fair enough. So would it be better for the sake of fairness to run a surplus within the military department and apply that surplus towards procurement, or merely scratch out 10% and assume it should be sufficient for my slow growth in the military?

I guess I had not considered a constitutional monarch as having problems extracting treasury funds, but there does need to be some form of agreement or this whole thing turns into a number wank.

Should it be decided that I need to run a realistic surplus in the military dept does that open up to me the possibility of collecting interest on my acquired assets? (The liquid not being applied to operational or procurement costs that is.) Collecting an assumed 7% compounding interest would offer up a fair bit of change over time.

That said can I also run a deficit in the military department as long as I am cognoscente of what my economy looks like, i.e. I cannot simply say that domestic institutions can simply cover the entirety of my debt if that debt is in anyway comparable to my GDP. For example I figure right now my private sector could cover at maximum $167,000,000,000 in debt.

The possibility of running a deficit also opens up RPs with other nations as ‘creditor’ nations. These nations would have a lean on me as I’d also be afraid that they might margin call.

As for buying off other people’s storefronts, I can’t see my nation doing that. After answering some issues as a protectionist, in trade, and cultivating my arms manufacturing sector, I think that the vast majority of my weapons would be made domestically. (Though this again opens up RP ideas to have other companies open factories within my borders.)

Lastly, to anyone reading, I am curious about the amount of government waste. What accounts for this? Is it money lost to bureaucratic inefficiency or is taxation that was over drawn, i.e. a surplus in the account. If so can the calculator ever read opposite?

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Fair enough. So would it be better for the sake of fairness to run a surplus within the military department and apply that surplus towards procurement, or merely scratch out 10% and assume it should be sufficient for my slow growth in the military?

I guess I had not considered a constitutional monarch as having problems extracting treasury funds, but there does need to be some form of agreement or this whole thing turns into a number wank.

Should it be decided that I need to run a realistic surplus in the military dept does that open up to me the possibility of collecting interest on my acquired assets? (The liquid not being applied to operational or procurement costs that is.) Collecting an assumed 7% compounding interest would offer up a fair bit of change over time.

That said can I also run a deficit in the military department as long as I am cognoscente of what my economy looks like, i.e. I cannot simply say that domestic institutions can simply cover the entirety of my debt if that debt is in anyway comparable to my GDP. For example I figure right now my private sector could cover at maximum $167,000,000,000 in debt.

The possibility of running a deficit also opens up RPs with other nations as ‘creditor’ nations. These nations would have a lean on me as I’d also be afraid that they might margin call.

As for buying off other people’s storefronts, I can’t see my nation doing that. After answering some issues as a protectionist, in trade, and cultivating my arms manufacturing sector, I think that the vast majority of my weapons would be made domestically. (Though this again opens up RP ideas to have other companies open factories within my borders.)

Lastly, to anyone reading, I am curious about the amount of government waste. What accounts for this? Is it money lost to bureaucratic inefficiency or is taxation that was over drawn, i.e. a surplus in the account. If so can the calculator ever read opposite?

I generally cut out about 10-15% for procurement, because I tend to buy a lot of capital ships. I've been known to design them, license the rights to some other nation, and outsource the production because it's cheaper over time to do it that way than to build my own (I'm a nation new to FT, I have very advanced technology, but the industrial infrastructure hasn't always kept up).

If you buy a lot of equipment from other nations, the budget set aside for procurement will have to be higher. If you are able and willing to produce most of the stuff you need, it will be lower.

I wouldn't RP saving and compounding interest in unused procurement budgets over more than a few NS years. If you're using a couple of decades worth of "savings" and trying to place an order all of a sudden valued at two or three times your defense budget, storefront owners are likely to reject the order because they don't see the money "saved." However, roleplaying a couple of years of unused procurement budgets stashed away is more permissible because the storefront owners will look up your budget and see that you do actually have the resources to pay it, be it from savings or sacrifices elsewhere in the military.

So yeah, you could concievably place huge orders of about a third of your military budget every few NS years, and it would be realistic under your proposed system of "saving" procurement budgets. Carry this too far, and storefront owners won't be able to see that you actually have the funds saved up.

As for government waste, dictatorships and opaque autocracies increase it. Anarchy increases it. If you want to squeeze every last dime out of your country's economy without changing the tax rate (i.e. grow the economy according to the calculators without changing economic issues), try to get both civil and political freedoms to "World Benchmark." Higher, and your government is inefficient because it doesn't have enough power/authority for domestic enforcement; lower, and money starts disappearing under the table as politicians (and dictators on the really low end) fritter it away into their own wallets.

Hope this helped...:p

Yes thank you, it has helped a lot. I am still keeping the post bumped to see if anyone will hazard a look at the .xls

I do understand why you don’t want to look at it; some of the macros you can put into the file are nasty. (I don’t understand why windows gives excel system privileges but meh.)

Thirdgeek has a few problems (mainly in the lower, but also some in the upper brackets) but it's pretty good for most nations. One thing that I don't like is it doesn't take into account crime and corruption. If you have a crime problem, or your government is described as "corrupt," a "morass," or both, you should probably ding off some more significant percentages due to graft, depending on how bad you think it is - one reason to pay close attention to your nation's description rather than just the calculator stats.

Thirdgeek has a few problems (mainly in the lower, but also some in the upper brackets) but it's pretty good for most nations. One thing that I don't like is it doesn't take into account crime and corruption. If you have a crime problem, or your government is described as "corrupt," a "morass," or both, you should probably ding off some more significant percentages due to graft, depending on how bad you think it is - one reason to pay close attention to your nation's description rather than just the calculator stats.

Thirdgeek does take this into account--but not where you might think it would. It penalizes authoritarianism and exceesive freedoms (anarchy) in per capita GDP, if you look at the formula behind it, before government waste is even calculated. For two nations with a "Frightening" economy and the same tax rate, I believe the difference can be nearly $10K per capita. Not all the effects of graft and inefficiency show up under "government waste;" they seem to be taken off before this is calculated.

Though if you want the effects of black markets and such, the Sunset Economy Calculator (http://www.sunsetrpg.com/nsxmlparser.php) is for you, though I personally think it goes to the other extreme.

Obviously, this also has significant effects on how much you can spend.:p

Thirdgeek does take this into account--but not where you might think it would. It penalizes authoritarianism and exceesive freedoms (anarchy) in per capita GDP, if you look at the formula behind it, before government waste is even calculated. For two nations with a "Frightening" economy and the same tax rate, I believe the difference can be nearly $10K per capita. Not all the effects of graft and inefficiency show up under "government waste;" they seem to be taken off before this is calculated.But neither anarchies nor authoritarianism necessarily are more "wasteful" - nor, for that matter, does it take into account the corruption indicators or indicators of crime level, which are managed (relatively) independently of those. None of those are in the XML feed, actually, which means none of the calculators take it into account that I'm aware of.Though if you want the effects of black markets and such, the Sunset Economy Calculator (http://www.sunsetrpg.com/nsxmlparser.php) is for you, though I personally think it goes to the other extreme.

Obviously, this also has significant effects on how much you can spend.:pFrankly, I'm not fond of any of the calculators; a quick trip to an economy calculator is useful, but you should always review your in-character history/decriptions and the details of your nation's description (and, of course, its history. You may have crashed your economy recently, or you may have only recently developed a prosperous nation.)

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