NationStates Jolt Archive

This is the first in a long line of polls and questionnaires designed to aid in the construction of a new system to improve the quality of the gaming experience on E2. The process will be long and often tedious but, hopefully, the end result will make Rping in E2 much more smooth and fun turning it into more of a thinking mans game or rather a chess game. For too long tactics, economy, and strategy have been ignored on the battlefield. War has turned itself into a spam fest ruining the level of game play and turning new players off to E2. This new system still in its early brainstorming stages will seek to fix not only that but the economic, diplomatic, and overall realism of E2. The only thing is we need your input as a member of the E2 community. You might agree 100% to some things and totally hate others and because of this we ask you add your input but remember that in order to take you have to give and compromises might be a way out of such situations.

So we ask you to answer truthfully and to the best of your ability. If you are interested in helping, which we hope some of you are, please contact United States of Brink (AIM= Hardballbrink) or Layarteb.

Just check off those that spark your interest.

War Moderators
Point Systems
Economic Moderators
More Realism


War Moderators: These would be a selected few of neutral stance that would “moderate” battles. This would add to the realism of wars by allowing a more strategic role. When planning an assault you hope would catch your opponent off guard you can explain the plan to the moderator and when launched cannot be called god-moding because the army ‘came out of nowhere’. This makes the game extremely more strategic as nations will now have to look at ground, plan for logistics, and prep for counter offensives, etc.

Point Systems: This would be the most comprehensive part of the system. It the wider spectrum it would give points to things on a global scale for instance a country’s natural resources, trade routes, defenses, weak points as well as limit both the attacker and defender. Points would be distributed depending on certain criteria that would allocate the number of offensives, counter attacks, redeployments, etc. This would make tactics very much important as much of your campaign would reply on communication and logistics. Points would even be given to certain land formations such as beachhead, mountains, rivers, deserts, etc.

Economic Moderators/Points: Like War Moderators these keep tracks of nations FTA’s and other deals as well as trade routes and even major inter-country transportation which would in turn roll over into the war department. Also major industrial zones would be marked so an attacker, if smart, can plan to hit these areas and hamper your ability to wage war. However they would also create points about natural resources and import/export which could lead to limitations on the number of military operations a certain nation can carry out meaning the attacker would have to pick his battles and would eliminate countries going to war over petty reasons.

More Realism: Something needs to be done. Whether it be using real life populations and adjusting the economies to fit like EV has done or creating limitations on natural resources such as oil. This is the most potent of issues as the rest really becomes not necessary. To think the world could sustain the oil flow when Layarteb alone has as many people as there is in the real world is well retarted. Defense budgets in the 20 trillions is tricky because you could pretty much to whatever you wanted with your military with no restrictions…you could have an M1 Abrams for every person in your nation. Limiting Resources would also make wars more interesting as emphasis would have to be placed on regions rich in resources.

While I agree that realism is a good reason to realign things folks like myself and some of the other larger nations stand to loose much more in this realism conversion than the smaller groups do. If this route is chosen how are we (the larger nations) going to be guaranteed that all the work we have done over the year or years isn't flushed down the drain? For instance, I spent two weeks straight working on revamping the entire organization layout of my ground forces, and aerial assets. I would hate to loose all that investment of time in a project?

I like the idea of forcing strategy in combat. It adds realism into the conflict. In our original WW we had RomeW as the moderator and of course we had rules like posting our forces at the onset to ensure everyone had there assets clearly marked. I think something is to be said for a well thought out battle that enstills detailed graphics, etc. rather than overrunning folks with shear numbers. When I fight now I rarely send "every" unit into combat I have that defeats the purpose. I use task specific divisons, or smaller units to take care of the task at hand. Irregardless of what most folks think, it doesn't take a very large unit to stall a division or two of armor, if you know how to use defensive tactics to your advantage. Often folks forget about the little picture and that comes back to haunt them in the RPing combat scenario. Hell you are talking to someone who wrote up a two page battle plan on the invasion of Russia that had a detailed target list and infastructure map that would make the DoD in DC proud.

In regards to the economic issue, I think the BISE is a good example of how that can work. I would elect Byornoya for that position. He also had a nifty trade routes map somewhere that I remember.


In regards to the points systems in battles I need more information about this topic before I can offer my opinion on it.


-Hawdawg

I agree completely with Hawdawg. For instance, my own nation is sufficiently large in E2 to hold a massive population. Most of Africa in RL is barren and un-developed, not so in E2. Thus population wise, things are different. And whats more I pride myself on having the biggest and best military in E2. This provides stability for my own nation, and quite possibly for my neighbours. I would be loathe to give up this advantage. I might however, be willing to cap my E2 population, possibly at 4 Billion, which I have been thinking of doing for some time. But I may not as this would leave me at some disadvantage if other nations did not do the same. And thats were problems arise.

Even though I'm particularly out and all for better realism, I think at this point, the best that we should be doing is to make certain that with the given settings [population 100 billion people worldwide], realism is best maintained. You know? Nations can keep their 12 billion people, but they can't be all super soldiers and such. Just common sense stuff. Otherwise, people will take huge hits, and given the present standard, I don't think too many people would like that or appreciate it by any league. Besides, the world is more modern that way, and I like having huge superpower nations around - makes the world more interesting than other worlds.

I agree with Hawdawg abouut the economics thingy. Bjornoya has already established something, so he should do well if we do something new with it.

In terms of war moderators, I agree - although I haven't been here long enough to make a war and even see one evolve. But from what I've heard, wars tend to grow into ooc bashes, so definitely moderators would be well-appreciated in any case. This probably also goes hand-in-hand with realism too.

my spiel...

Just to clear up off the bat, I am in no way telling you that this is going to happen or happen in a certain way. I’ve received blessings from Layarteb to conduct a number of survey’s and such and develop a system based on your responses. I’ll obviously need help and ideas so keep them coming!

The main concern at the moment is losing all everyone has gained and I understand the reasoning behind such. Here is my take which I’m sure will calm everyone down. The system I have imagined doesn’t truly need to limit your population but that doesn’t mean that nothing is limited. I was thinking and I said to myself if the population in E2 can be…very unrealistic, why does the amount of resources too? The entire military points system stems from your economy so this will be the biggest hump (I’m going to sidetrack for a moment to explain myself better)

You will be allotted a certain amount of ‘points’ to use during a military campaign based on how well you run your country during peacetime. This means that trading, natural resources, allies and enemies, recent conflicts, location, etc will all play into the system. It also means that we will look at more than just your defense budget meaning those that put money in different areas will finally have something to show for it. It also means that if you do engage in war and end victoriously with wealthy land at the end…well plunder away.

Now the numbers of points are free for you to use during conflicts. EVERYTHING will come at a price however. Mobilization, supply lines, air cover, recon, movement, defending, advancing, what route you take (takes a little more to clear mountains than open desert), occupation, etc. Now if you played your cards right you’ll have plenty of points and therefore many an option of how to conduct warfare giving the defender a harder time but if you stink at peacetime politics than you’ll be limited to your movements and thus more easily defended.

Combine this with a war moderator and warfare enters an entirely new era. You will now be able to launch surprise attacks without being called for godmoding, secretly adjust defenses to confront an advance you think is coming, recon and spying will be for real, terrain will now matter, and the playing fields will no longer be dominated by the larger force or the person with a PhD in Military Technology.

And it all boils down to your economic limit. If we increase the earth’s resources to parallel the population we don’t have to set population limits. It will simply be the same as it is in RL today just with bigger proportions. Yes the BISE is a very great thing but with nothing to play it up against it has very little meaning when push comes to shove (as nobody has ever mentioned it during a war rp). Same with the trade routes (yes they have been mentioned but no action taken besides verbal warnings). War will now cost you so you better be in it to win.

So that’s where I hope to take this. I did get a little carried away but I’m a dreamer so…well so what!?

Sounds good to me USB.
However, we need to be careful when dealing with natural resources. Not all nations use fossil fuels and many have highly developed alternative energy sources, such as Tidal, Wind, Thermal and Hydro-Electric, as well as Nuclear, Oil etc. But in E2 nations are bigger and richer, thus fossil fuels can either be exploited responsibly or badly. As well as that, in RL the biggest oil producer is in the Middle East and the most reserves are in Venezuela (although the oil in earth form in Canada trumps Venezuela's reserves). As for Gas, the big producers are Europe and Russia and for Coal, the biggest users and miners are the PRC and India, although the US still mines coal very effciently.

But in E2 things are much more diverse. Lay probably doesn't mine much coal because it isn't used by anyone in E2 that I know of. As well as that, Africa is the richest continent with the most resources, while Europe and Russia are much more connected, as is Asia and the Indian Sub-Continent. So in essence, we need to be very careful when we're talking about resources, energy and trade in E2 as we have to take info from RL but make sure it fits within E2.

Good to hear and like I said its going to take time, effort, and people to make happen. I’ll need more than myself for various reasons to help design, research, plot, hone the system. This is no easy quick fix but I hope in the end it’ll make E2 even more fun and intelligent than it already is.

I need more input!!!

I don't have time to expand on you comments but I am liking what I am hearing so far.

-Hawdawg

I like the war moderators and points ideas, though I hope it doesn't become too restrictive.

I have to say that I like the ideas presented here. I wish there was more input though, from more players. This could go for NS in general and not just E2. There are a lot of points here that are definitely missing in II in the majority of their wars, which usually turn into gang-rapes or OOC ignore fests.

Aye, this is no easy task. I could sure use some help, its coming along quite slow.

Naturally I'd be willing to help, but I agree with Lay that more E2 people should take a look at this.

Since I don't actually fight wars, I'll be willing to moderate them. As far as the "points" goes, I don't like them as they are stated. It's great that you want to reward a country for establishing things like alliances and free trade agreements, but those in of itself are not necessarily going to win a war. The points should be based on how likely a certain act will help a country at war- for example, a country that has a sophisticated network of pipes allowing for easy shipment of fuel will do better than a country that has five allies but none of which can easily supply them fuel. As far as I'm concerned, the points should be at least weighted based on military targets- i.e., how sophisticated the supply network is, how co-ordinated the divisions are, are there military colleges, etc.- with extraneous things such as alliances only used if that alliance can actually benefit the war effort (such as a country providing yours with a fuel you'll need).

I also think that points themselves could applied to military equipment itself- since not every one of us are well versed in physics or military technology, it'd be useful to know how powerful a certain tank is with simple, visual statistics. It'd be like characters in a RPG- a tank will have a certain offensive rating and a certain defensive rating, as well as things like speed and manoeuvrability. These points would have to be backed up with RL information, but at least it can provide a simple way of knowing just how good our equipment really is. If I knew that a certain missile can take out 5000 points of damage it's easier to calculate casualties than trying to assess how much damage would result via physical mathematical formulas (or just by simply guessing).

Economically, I think it's in order that we list our budgets OOCly so we know how much money a nation feasibly has. ICly it can remain hidden, but in the interests of the game, we should know how much a certain nation makes and spends to prevent the "infinite cash complex". This also means that whatever agreements made between countries is OOCly visible, as well as any loans that are being paid or paid out.

As far as realism goes this may be an unwinnable situation. It's just *too* complex- you have to figure out your citizen's average lifestyle, how much energy they'll consume, what kinds of foods they'll eat, electricty use, whether or not they like cars or buses, the clothes they wear, etc. It's a lot harder than it looks. Having said that, energy consumption levels for RL nations are listed online (CIA Factbook), as well as how much arable land there is for food production (FAO (http://faostat.fao.org/site/377/default.aspx)). We could create a simple points system based on that too, but I think the key here will be just to find some reasonable way to determine population, such as "X amount of arable land + X amount of energy available = highest available population". The point here is to keep it simple- otherwise it'll be too complex to follow correctly.

Let me know what you think.

Soviet Bloc and someone else were working on an amazing way to determine Corn & Corn VOP, Wheat & Wheat VOP, and Soybeans & Soybeans VOP. They were just doing in the US because that's what they have data for but it really went a long way to show sustainability. I wonder if he ever got to finish it...

Soviet Bloc and someone else were working on an amazing way to determine Corn & Corn VOP, Wheat & Wheat VOP, and Soybeans & Soybeans VOP. They were just doing in the US because that's what they have data for but it really went a long way to show sustainability. I wonder if he ever got to finish it...

Cool...I'm interested in knowing if it's done as well, because I'd love to see if we can apply it to RL as well. Do you know if they were lumping it all into a system to determine overall caloric intake and nutritional value, because that's what's most important. It's easier to see how we're doing when we can come up with, say, an overall score than having to weave through multiple results.

Did any of you see the economic system for E20? Each nation had Industrial Centres, which produced points for them depending on the type of Gov't/Economy. You could also get these points from excess energy/food production. In turn, these points were used on Social Spending, Military Upkeep, buying new military units, or other special projects.

Did any of you see the economic system for E20? Each nation had Industrial Centres, which produced points for them depending on the type of Gov't/Economy. You could also get these points from excess energy/food production. In turn, these points were used on Social Spending, Military Upkeep, buying new military units, or other special projects.

How did it work? If you could post that here (or the link) it would be great.

Cool...I'm interested in knowing if it's done as well, because I'd love to see if we can apply it to RL as well. Do you know if they were lumping it all into a system to determine overall caloric intake and nutritional value, because that's what's most important. It's easier to see how we're doing when we can come up with, say, an overall score than having to weave through multiple results.

No I don't think so but if you TG me you're email I could send it to you.

Did any of you see the economic system for E20? Each nation had Industrial Centres, which produced points for them depending on the type of Gov't/Economy. You could also get these points from excess energy/food production. In turn, these points were used on Social Spending, Military Upkeep, buying new military units, or other special projects.

That's very interesting. If you want go offsite http://www.theforsakenoutlaw.com/phpBB2/ and post it and me and Mari will probably be very interested in it. Thank you very much for mentioning it.