Terra Power and Development Index

[Farsun]

Its funny that this argument comes up so often but never materializes because players do not want it to materialize. The players who often want to implement it, don't want the consequences of realizing that their nation might not be the powerhouse that they have role-played it to be. It's why when I was in Dorvik it took me so long to even project my forces throughout the world and I had raise my defense budget realistically to do that.

The problem with all of this is that it doesn't have force of power behind it because moderation, at least in it's previous role, would never state that nations were weaker than one another unless it was drastic such as Hulstria versus Vorona. Realistically, the best bet is to gather a group of players in a variety of nations and have them RP together and only together until more tack on and become involved in realistic RP. It's a fanciful notion but we did it a few times and it managed to work out.

I know everyone is against guides and rules but honestly, in my 8+ years RPing and managing RP, sometimes rules and guides are necessary to ensure that things get done fairly and properly. People laugh but an RP Team is the games best bet, you all think I'm an asshole yet I was the one who has always pushed for RP reform and the fact that nations need variation.

Fundamentally the game lacks strong central rogue states such as those akin to North Korea, Iran, the Russian Federation, Syria and a basis for countries to actually cause problems. There is only so much one can do internally before it becomes boring and monotonous. I mean, do not get me wrong civil wars, rebellions, revolts, mutinies, bombings, terrorism, elections and economics are all fun but when they mean little in the wider scope of things, what really is the point behind them? I'm not advocating that we take real-world states and bring them into the game, trust me I am far from that but I am saying that International RP is what is going to help establish an order of powerful states and not just economically and militarily, because that is going to change with the player base, but politically where nations have the pull with other nations.

Without launching attacks at players or nations, there are nations right now which are RPd as powers when they never were and are unrealistically just doing as they please when people don't look at the wider scope of things.

[Siggon Kristov]

Its funny that this argument comes up so often but never materializes because players do not want it to materialize. The players who often want to implement it, don't want the consequences of realizing that their nation might not be the powerhouse that they have role-played it to be. It's why when I was in Dorvik it took me so long to even project my forces throughout the world and I had raise my defense budget realistically to do that.

+1

The problem with all of this is that it doesn't have force of power behind it because moderation, at least in it's previous role, would never state that nations were weaker than one another unless it was drastic such as Hulstria versus Vorona.

I tried to base my Macro-Economics spreadsheet's "Subjective Remarks" column on the Economic Protocols. EEL is helping me to revise them (I have exams, so limited time). I'll have it reviewed by Moderation, who I've already spoken with on the issue. The things aren't even that drastic, just small 2-3 word comments on comparisons between nations. Is it really hard for PaleRider's ego to give up Zardugal's claimed status of "high educational standards" when it has the state burdened with responsibilities for education, while having one of the lowest-funded Education/Culture Ministries in the world? Is it really that drastic for a nation with super-high Internal Affairs spending to be considered a Police State, or a nation with super-high Defence spending to be considered a militaristic state?
EEL pointed out the main problem in my subjective remarks: dichotomy. Everything was black or white. He helped me to construct a few grey areas, so instead of Good or Bad - we have Excellent, Very Good, Good, Above Average, Average, Below Average, Bad, Very Bad, Terrible (not exactly in these words, but we try to have a wider span than just Good/Bad).
The point is that the spreadsheets are only suggesting what type of society each nation should have, based on budgets. EEL's expenditure calculator will try to weight budgets against laws. It's not even saying which nations are powers and which nations aren't. I brought it up mainly to criticize the Development Index, because power is subjective and a spreadsheet can't calculate power.
The type of society would say what type of laws are appropriate, and what resolutions (really what I like to consider as local RP) could be about.
EEL's spreadsheet makes suggestions in the opposite direction, i.e. where my spreadsheet (like Economic Protocols) makes suggestions of what society should be RP'd based on the budget, EEL's Expenditure calculator will make suggestions for your budget based on what laws you have. Either way, the intention is to get laws and the budget matching RP. The Subjective Remarks translates the numbers into loose RP guidelines, I guess.

Realistically, the best bet is to gather a group of players in a variety of nations and have them RP together and only together until more tack on and become involved in realistic RP. It's a fanciful notion but we did it a few times and it managed to work out.

Agreed. We could just avoid RP with the egotistic anti-realists.

I know everyone is against guides and rules but honestly, in my 8+ years RPing and managing RP, sometimes rules and guides are necessary to ensure that things get done fairly and properly. People laugh but an RP Team is the games best bet, you all think I'm an asshole yet I was the one who has always pushed for RP reform and the fact that nations need variation.

+1

Fundamentally the game lacks strong central rogue states such as those akin to North Korea, Iran, the Russian Federation, Syria and a basis for countries to actually cause problems. There is only so much one can do internally before it becomes boring and monotonous. I mean, do not get me wrong civil wars, rebellions, revolts, mutinies, bombings, terrorism, elections and economics are all fun but when they mean little in the wider scope of things, what really is the point behind them? I'm not advocating that we take real-world states and bring them into the game, trust me I am far from that but I am saying that International RP is what is going to help establish an order of powerful states and not just economically and militarily, because that is going to change with the player base, but politically where nations have the pull with other nations.

Agreed. Blandness is not only local. We have a bland international scene as well. I think Jaguar did a good job with Jakania, and Polites always does good jobs (so Deltaria was once cool too). Lodamun's laws are ridiculous, but we manage to maintain international recognition for the Nationalist regime.

Without launching attacks at players or nations, there are nations right now which are RPd as powers when they never were and are unrealistically just doing as they please when people don't look at the wider scope of things.

One question I raised about PaleRider's Power Index was Lodamun's high ranking, and Luthori's low ranking. Lodamun shouldn't be (in my opinion) branded as a power anymore. If Luthori fell, I think we can fall too because we have less reason to remain high up than Luthori does.

[Afrocentric]

I did a quick once over of that Power Index thingy and I have more questions than answers. Was that based on actual data such as the Spreadsheets and historical stuff or was it just off the cuff?

I know for a fact alot of those nations listed have NO business listed where they were and to me it seems Pale was subjective as opposed to objective/non-biased when he did the list. Look, I have always said that the economic protocols should be mandatory as it would create realness and I have no problem adjusting my activities because at the end of the day, what is the fun with playing as a first-world nation with no problems?

In regards to the issue of blandness, I mean it is what it is. Some people are content with playing as a generic republic; it's just how they roll. My concern is when we start accumulating massive amounts of generic-ness which we are doing. I get mad, I really do when I have to look at countries like Alduria, Luthori and Davostan become generic, it takes the fun out of the game.

Finally, I seriously think we would have a more in depth RP community if we didn't do the same god damn thing over and over and over and over and over....you get the point. OMG weez beez havinz war in Majatrerzz. Blahh...lets get creative here and you know what, why don't we have the Olympics or WC anymore? Don't tell me it's because we can't get people to RP because in reality, you can do that with just one person using a Random Simulator of some other program. Alot of these other games like NS are good RP wise because they have an active community that doesn't engage in the same thing over and over again.

We should host the WC and/or Olympics and you know what, those that want to participate can do that, and I tell you what, you'll have so much fun doing it and eventually, it will trickle down into the player base and ignite a fire. Think about it, the last time we held the WC or TWC, didn't we have fun? We were so happy to root for our nation's team, like it was our own RL team in the WC. Why can't we have it here? Honestly, when was the last time you had fun RPing a war; especially when it devolved into OOC bitching and got ended due to mod intervention?

Look, we can make this game great and we certainly don't need a reset (I agree to disagree with some of you on this), it just needs a dedicated core of players (as was stated) who have the game's best interest at heart. We don't need factions, fancy labels or committees, just people who want to play politics, talk politics and RP politics while occasionally talking about random OOC stuff.
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TL;DR: The game needs fixing and if we pull together we can fix it....or something like that.

[Aquinas]

I know everyone is against guides and rules but honestly, in my 8+ years RPing and managing RP, sometimes rules and guides are necessary to ensure that things get done fairly and properly. People laugh but an RP Team is the games best bet, you all think I'm an asshole yet I was the one who has always pushed for RP reform and the fact that nations need variation.

Could you say some more about what this proposed RP Team would do and how it would work?

[Siggon Kristov]

I did a quick once over of that Power Index thingy and I have more questions than answers. Was that based on actual data such as the Spreadsheets and historical stuff or was it just off the cuff?

The Power Index is subjective, so PaleRider based that on RP.
I don't understand how he came up with the Development Index because it wasn't consistent with any stats.

I know for a fact alot of those nations listed have NO business listed where they were and to me it seems Pale was subjective as opposed to objective/non-biased when he did the list. Look, I have always said that the economic protocols should be mandatory as it would create realness and I have no problem adjusting my activities because at the end of the day, what is the fun with playing as a first-world nation with no problems?

+1

Look, we can make this game great and we certainly don't need a reset (I agree to disagree with some of you on this),

PaleRider and I are the only persons I see supporting a reset, so it wasn't a popular idea anyway.

[Farsun]

I know everyone is against guides and rules but honestly, in my 8+ years RPing and managing RP, sometimes rules and guides are necessary to ensure that things get done fairly and properly. People laugh but an RP Team is the games best bet, you all think I'm an asshole yet I was the one who has always pushed for RP reform and the fact that nations need variation.

Could you say some more about what this proposed RP Team would do and how it would work?

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=5572&start=10#p68286

For you Sir.

[soysauce]

One thing I've noticed is that the support for more players to play as less powerful nations usually comes from those controlling superpowers themselves and presumably not interested in controlling some third word banana republic while players in less powerful nations usually stay silent on the matter. Perhaps this shows (understandably) that no-one wants to play some irrelevant country that becomes the victim of the superpowers?

moderation, at least in it's previous role, would never state that nations were weaker than one another

If that is to be put into place then consideration must be put into how much force could be applied to the enemy, While in 1982 the Royal Navy and HM Armed Forces in general were vastly stronger than the Argentinian forces the Argentinians had the advantage of land based aircraft and didn't have to piss about with ocean liners to get troops to the Islands. As a result the balance of power was significantly different than the direct comparisons between the two armed forces (some would say the balance was against Britain) yet Britain still took back the islands successfully.

[EEL123]

One thing I've noticed is that the support for more players to play as less powerful nations usually comes from those controlling superpowers themselves and presumably not interested in controlling some third word banana republic while players in less powerful nations usually stay silent on the matter. Perhaps this shows (understandably) that no-one wants to play some irrelevant country that becomes the victim of the superpowers?

I think that you can have fun without pushing other people around. You can be irrelevant internationally but still have an interesting country with floods, famine, genocide and whatnot. And plus, even a banana republic can be regionally, if not internationally, destabilising. So I don't think that people ought to be reluctant to try their hand at a less developed country.

If that is to be put into place then consideration must be put into how much force could be applied to the enemy, While in 1982 the Royal Navy and HM Armed Forces in general were vastly stronger than the Argentinian forces the Argentinians had the advantage of land based aircraft and didn't have to piss about with ocean liners to get troops to the Islands. As a result the balance of power was significantly different than the direct comparisons between the two armed forces (some would say the balance was against Britain) yet Britain still took back the islands successfully.

Well, you'd have to consider the circumstances as well as raw power. Even the strongest superpower IRL can't just march into any other country half way across the world. But even taking into account power and the situation, there'd still be space for anomalies - like, as you say, the Falklands. They would have to be developed through (hopefully realistic) RP.

[Farsun]

I can agree with that entirely Soy, you have nations such as Zardugal which was once a very powerful nation (in the RP sense of the word) and literally fell from grace because of inactivity on the international stage in RP. I understand that Zardugal has been RP'd as a very powerful nation recently and that work has gone into restoring it to its former glory but mind you that for a large portion of time Zardugal was pushed around and treaties were against it having any significant military force and economic power. Yet, Zardugal has come back to be a "superpower" as I've seen it referenced (which might I add, was agreed upon by the Old Guard (Bean, Fred, Liu and whomever else gets that title often wrongly appended to them) that there were no superpowers in the game because it would bring massive unbalance, only great powers which competed with each other. Yes that was a thing.) I'm not calling out PaleRider, but it seems unlikely in the real world. It took me a good portion of my game time to make it somewhat realistic that Dorvik was a military power and it barely ever actually projected itself, it focused on intelligence and security missions throughout the world without ever really putting boots on the ground.

I'm not here to start a pissing match about whose country is more powerful than whose but it would be nice if people admitted that "Well, my country isn't a great power. It's a third world country." As was done by Jaguar and myself when we played in Jakania.

I think that you can have fun without pushing other people around. You can be irrelevant internationally but still have an interesting country with floods, famine, genocide and whatnot. And plus, even a banana republic can be regionally, if not internationally, destabilising. So I don't think that people ought to be reluctant to try their hand at a less developed country.

TO be entirely honest, I understand some countries being isolationist but at some point entirely shutting yourself off on the world to do the same things over and over again makes it seem 1) redundant and 2) like you think you are more important than you are.

[soysauce]

In real life the vast majority of international affairs and incidents go through maybe 8 countries, while an African nation might have it's day in the sun once in a few years when it becomes relevant to something involving a large power for the majority of the time countries like the UK hold their opinion in the same regard as they would hold the opinion of David Cameron's wife's grandmother. If you want to play with external RP then that sort of balance just won't do, you can't expect most players to be forced sit out on almost every international event.

I'm not saying that the game equivalent of Sierra Leone should be allowed to go all rambo on superpowers but I would advocate having the powers of nations rather more closely spaced than in real life,