NationStates Jolt Archive

Alright, I've tried doing this on my own and getting some help from a couple people, but I'm currently ready to count smashing my head into the wall a viable method to help me with this. So I turn to the MT community.

As some of you may know, I'm trying to get into MT. I have everything set up but the hardest part: the military. I've tried to get it set up, but every time I try to get one area squared away, I find parts that branch off that are required to fix it. I have my ground forces set up, thanks to an expensive purchase of Lyras outfitting them but I probably have more to go.

So I turn to you guys to help, since I'm pretty much on my way to high blood pressure at this point.

so are you looking for help to outfit your troops, set up a military factbook or something else?

Basically, I have no military aside from those troops I had outfitted by Lyras. I have no idea what to get for my vehicles, tanks, IFVs, APC's, etc, or my navy, from the frigates to the battlecruisers. I have no clue. I've never DONE this before, so I don't know where to START.

well start by hitting up wikipedia, and looking up Real nations militaries, it helps a lot, use some of their vechicles and then design your own and use other players vechicles that they are putting up for sale.

Um, I have no idea how to design these things.

well to design stuff talk to a veteran like Lyras, and then colaborate together on your first few until you get the hang of it. but the best thing you can do is look at what's already been made in NS or RL and try to make it better.

Ok then.
coughs
lets see
step 1: pick out your host countries military, in this case Brazil. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_Armed_Forces)
step 2: find the tech/branch you want. in this case the army (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazilian_Army) and a tank (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopard_tank)
step 3: look at tank, then search for other tanks on the internet and/or books noting key design features. Then decide if the tank suits your needs(actually this should probably be step one or two but heh)
step 4: go to draftroom (http://z4.invisionfree.com/NSDraftroom/index.php?act=idx) after researching for a few hours/days, if you still have questions make a thread, ask questions.
step 5: after you have a good idea what you want and what your going to put go to ground forum (http://z4.invisionfree.com/NSDraftroom/index.php?showforum=5) under draftroom(possibly researching point for other steps) and post your idea.
step 6: after approval/dissuasion is over post in factbook
step 7:after you have 3-8 "original" techs start a storefront and sell your design hopefully people will buy if not (you can cry in a corner and wonder why:) ).

He doesn't want a design, he wants the organization.

then just do step 1(and maybe 2) then.

Look at the 'Military of X' articles on Wikipedia, especially at the 'Air Force of X' and 'Navy of X' sections. Do keep in mind that (especially with regards to navies, but also air forces) outside the US, many militaries are limited artificially, by treaties or budgets, in ways that don't really apply in NS.
Check this page (http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/agency/navy/index.html) out. It should give you an idea of the organization of a modern navy.
Similarly, check this page (http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/agency/usaf/index.html) out; it's on the same website, and details the organization of the USAF.
Look at what other countries here on NS do or have done. Check out ORBATs in the various war threads and on factbooks.

For design, start from real-life designs and from designs on the NS Draftroom and go from there.

Start out with entirely RL equipment. As you become more experienced with MT buy some of someone else's designs or design your own to replace the old RL ones. :D

First off just relax and don't worry about these thigns overly much, there are soem great designers out there who know feck all about organisation and structure and equally there are those who are fantastic a tthier organisation but have no idea where to start with designs.

Its been a long time since I have looked at at tarting a military from sratch but since you have talked to lyras I woudla ssume that your main groudn froces are pretty much sorted leaving just your airforce(s) and naval units to deal with.

The make up of airforces (I use the plural as you might have a system with not one single air power entity as a seperate servcie but with the army and navy each having thier own subordinate units or you might have a seperate air froce plus a naval avaition force) and your navy will largely be decided by 2 factors:

1: Your nation's geography be it islands, land locked, a tiny bit of coast line but a couple of over seas dependencies requring secure lines of communication etc etc and what your neightbours are like.

2: Your nation's foreign policy and what demands that would place on your armed forces. i.e. how often are you goign to have to carry out force insertions (invasions) with or without support from other nations or if your amred froces are pretty much defensively orientated.

Hvaing a breif look at your antion's page woudl say to me that an overall defensive stance is most likely although you are likely going to want some sort of pwoer pojection even if only for providing disaster relief or humanitarian missions (this of coruse could be totally wrong it depends how you RP your nation).

With defence a major focus and your antion's size you could easily be looking at an airforce in excess of 100,000 aircraft (rough guess by taking the USAF and muliplying it by 20).

Again taking the USAF as a basis you would looking at a break down along the liens of (these are very rough number).
20% being affordable multi role fighters (F-16s)
15-20% being high end fighters/interceptors (possibly multirole) (F-15s/F-22s)
10% being dedicated attack aircraft (A-10/F15E)
3-5% being bombers
15-20% beign training aircraft
3-5% being martime patrol aircraft
15-20% being cargo/transport aircraft (maybe as high as 22% if you include VIP and command/laison aircraft in that total)
3-5% being recon, EW or AWACs aircraft
10-15% being tankers/tanker transports

The numbers above don't actually add up but they give a rough guide of where you would be heading.

I hope this rambling post helps a little and feel free to bring stuff like this up on the draftroom:
http://z4.invisionfree.com/NSDraftroom/index.php?showforum=7

Yeah, and get onto #draftroom, the Draftrooms IRC channel on esper.net too

Well, I very simply went all-RL from the UEMS storefront. Then I decided to make a slight modification to the Leopard II main battle tank. While reading wiki articles and things like that, you'll find yourself - well, I did - making more and more little modifications. Then I built my own tank. Then I improved it.

It isn't too quick a process, but after a while, after looking things up, you'll just find that you know.
You'll think about that RL tank that you have and you'll have an idea on how to make it a bit better, and you work up from there
I'd be happy to do a few joint projects with you, if you're interested please TG me and we'll take it from there.

Anyway, that's how I started. As a last note, my designs are far better than anybody else's so buy them at my storefront NOW

I have my navy mostly set up, just need to organize it into my fleets and such. My question is does anyone know any storefronts that sell guns, grenades, etc, since I need to arm my soldiers now.

Also, unless you plan on selling it, you really just need to know your power, the weapons, and how it fits into your military. My Kakaru Tank for example, was made in the Mokan Civil War, but, I didn't really put up a design for it. I just said what it did and such. A general estimate of how much something costs can be made, but if you really need too, a good general estimate for any light tank is about 150,000 USD(So however many of your currency that is, be it higher or lower)


Edit: If you get really desperate, my storefront i made a while back sells tanks and such.
Edit 2: Also, you can easily just use RL stuff for that, seeing as how it doesn't really ever make a difference. (Only 1 out of 10 times will you say what gun your soldiers are using)

I have never organised my Army. It's organisation is entirely roughshod. Only recently have I started to list equipment. The Navy has a rough organisation but is not written down because I believe in flexibility in organisation. There are so many things that can be made up ad-hoc it means that organisation needs little more than manpower figures and equipment lists. I don't even have those tbh. It has never caused me a problem.

I have my navy mostly set up, just need to organize it into my fleets and such. My question is does anyone know any storefronts that sell guns, grenades, etc, since I need to arm my soldiers now.


Well there is Crookfur Arms (http://z8.invisionfree.com/Crookfur_Arms/index.php?) ;)

As well as many others, there should be a storefront list in the stickies.

To be 100% honest, as Rithian said, whatever gun your troops are armed with, be it a M-16, AK, FN-FAL, SX23A1 or AVIR ,makes bugger all difference at a macro level and your own unique one is dead simple if you don't want to flesh it out i.e. "my troops use the TR-5K3, this is basically an HK-416 chambered for 6.5mm Grendal". See one top of the range assault rfile done in one line ;)

I would echo Questers in saying that you don't huge rigid structures and stuff and you should feel free to invent random divsions as needed if you really aren't hugely interested in sitting down with spread sheets and huge tables of units.

Check my factbook out, if you are going to say openly what your weapons are, those descriptions styles are probably fine. (That's the last paragraph under military, btw)

Organization is more important than hardware or size if you're RP'ing, unless you're set on RP'ing the purchasing and formation angle. The only time that's not true, is if you're assigning a larger-than-sustainable force (that is, millions of troops when you're in single-digit millions of people), or equipping men with improbable weapons (say, choosing a Barrett .50 as your standard infantry rifle because it's "Kewl"-most normal human beings don't function well carrying a standard rifle with only five shots that weighs twenty-four pounds). within the limits of what you see in modern militaries, just about any 'similar' rifle will work depending on what you're trying to do.

For instance, if your MT nation is sitting in the 1940s for most of your rp, you shouldn't be giving the men M-16's, whereas a cold-war army probably doesn't have UAV's, and a post-cold-war army probably isn't issuing M-1 Garands (unless the nation's really poor, or really isolated, or has a larger 'sponsor' and rarely sees combat.) Few non-client states buy their small-arms offshore, usually they lease the rights to produce them (or purchase the rights outright). Guns are a simple weapon, they're pretty easy to make in even relatively primitive machine-shops, and a "modern" nation likely has the ability to do so (insurgencies not so much, if you're in the condition of most of africa in today's world, not so much, but that's client-state status for ya.)

Point is, you don't need to buy your infantry weapons if you don't want to-you can probably find something IRL that isn't modeled out on somebody's storefront, or is obscure, or is so common that enough people have them that it's reasonable that you do too.

Again, use Wikipedia, FAS.org, Milnet, and the like, do a little bit of legwork (also a stop at Hornady's site for ballistic performance if you want to custom it).