Conventions on Military RP

[PaleRider]

After yet again another failed bold reform proposal i figure it'd be more productive to discuss a moderate change to things. I think we should set up some broad based guidelines to lay out how military RP should be handled. So this thread should be over HOW we conduct military RP than how to start a military RP.

To start with, we should at least loosely define the type of military we have, its current state and focus on land, naval or air power. Even in todays world, very, very few nations have the luxury of operating a military that is able to focus on all 3 and thus as i assume Terra is made of more middle powers than not, unless we have budget busting defense budgets, most nations would only be able to focus on one area for development.
Bouncing off this we then need to look at troop numbers and defense budgets. Regarding troops, obviously the larger the military, the larger the defense budget. However i would wager that the larger the military, the LESS effective it gets a military is often expensive to supply and requires massive logistical challenges. Then moving onto budgets i feel that, depending on how a nation focuses depends on the finer definition of a defense budget. For example, if your nation focuses on its army, and relatively speaking armies are generally cheaper to fund as at its root you only need to buy rifles and bullets the defense budget would be lower. However if you decided to move in a naval direction costs would skyrocket. Ships arent easy to build, let alone maintain and sailors need extensive training to maintain ships, whereas its pretty simple to have a man aim fire and reload. An air force would, i think be somewhere in the middle as planes generally arent too expensive to build and buy (unless you start an F35 program which will bankrupt your nation before you get 1 out of it) but the training costs would be large as it takes time to train airmen.

Now that, that's settled i think we need to focus back on geography (viewtopic.php?f=5&t=5647). I say this because we all cant have mechanized armed forces going guns a blazing at each other. For instance if you lived in a tropical jungle region or a mountainous region you wouldnt have a large mechanized force would you? Of course not unless you were militarily challenged.

Going from there i would like to address the issue of nuclear weapons and WMD's. Now for nukes, as a rule no one uses them and that's fine, i agree; takes the fun out of war. However i do believe that there should be some facilitation of how to use nukes. If by chance a player willingly wants to be nuked and ALL the other RP participants agree along with ALL geographic neighbors then i say go for it and do it.
Regarding other WMD's, like chem, bio weapons i do believe that they should be standard fare in war if one of the powers chooses to use them as they do far less damage on every scale than nuke weapons.
As a side thought i do believe regarding ICBM use it should be restricted to nations who have high military standing.

Now as for research and development i do believe that depending on the power level, some guidelines should be here too. Since most nations are decidedly middle and average in Terra i would say that depending on the size of the education budget, Sci + Tech budget and defense budget a chem-bio program could take up to 10 years to fully implement and a nuke program around 15 depending on outside factors. Now some would say that nations have done it in less time, however without outside help (or US abilities and drive like during the Manhattan Project) the time scale should be lengthened, and that would allow for more RP surrounding the program.

Now as for what i see as the more divisive question: how to handle intelligence and black ops/programs. Domestic intelligence should be far easier to get than foreign intel number 1. Number 2, i think this is where a good, solid prior RP build up comes into play. As both nations can reason to have some form of limited intelligence asset in a hostile nation, what nation wouldnt? As for effectiveness i think nations involved in said RP should agree on how to handle how such intelligence is gathered. For a military RP i say that basic troop movements, limited success regarding signals intel for battle comms and such but any further penetration should be consulted with the other player.
As for secret programs and ops, this is admittedly a trickier issue. The way i see it, if a country wants to have a secret program then a majority of the governing parties need to agree to the terms of it and then it is up to said parties how, if it ever gets leaked out. Any outside party which wishes to announce its IC discovery should get permission to RP its discovery from the nation.
Now we have to balance that against the power ranking (viewtopic.php?f=5&t=5619&p=68328#p68328). Now as i see it if its a real powerful nation say Dorvik, going up against Jakania, haha sorry but Dorvik would be all up in that nation like no-ones business. Thus we should take a look at how powerful each nation ranks and then determine how they would line up intel wise.

So thoughts?

[Farsun]

The point behind OTAF was all of what you just said, you can gladly help me contribute to OTAF which has the backing of a multitude of players or we can do what most communities do (and often fail at) and start developing numerous other projects instead of setting aside their differences and working together on one project. That's my thoughts on the entire thing.

[PaleRider]

I thought OTAF was more about developing individual military's on a nation by nation basis? Needless to say if OTAF is still open for business i will def contribute what i can. Maybe we could have Armed Force Protocols?

[Afrocentric]

If we are going to rank nations and this is a big IF, it has to be done objectively and should be based around a few things:

Economics
Military
Human Development (education, mortality, etc.)
Human/political rights
Internal stability

I think the problem is that when we rank nations on here, we only look at one thing and then base our views of said nation solely on that thing; ignoring the fact a nation can be a world leader in one category, but lagging behind in another. In RL, North Korea is a military power (in terms of spending and strength) but economically, they're so damn poor that countries in Sub-Saharan Africa actually send them money. On the other hand, a country like Japan or Germany would be considered an economic power, but militarily, they are incredibly weak.

I say we rank each nation in either of those 5 categories and then use those 5 and include past history to give us a final comprehensive list of all 58 nations ranked. I think it can be done, but the problem will be with the player base. If we do this and we determine which countries are at the bottom, will some players accept the fact they play in a backwater nation? What about a country that is militarily weak?

If we are to go off the fact many players prefer playing in generic, Anglo-Saxon dominated nations, then you shouldn't get your hopes up. On the other hand, maybe we will see some more interest in the game as a whole. Nobody likes to be in last or at the bottom (unless you like to bottom), so players might actually become more invested and will be willing to RP appropriately and more creatively.

[EEL123]

What about the NPI? It probably needs a little tweaking and all, but it is a bias-free, entirely mathematical way of ranking countries. Once we agree on the right formulae and weightings, there can be no people screaming about them being maligned and unfairly treated, which is nearly inevitable with every other way of doing things.

[Afrocentric]

Yes, the NPI would be perfect.

[PaleRider]

I heartily agree! However, how is NPI calculated?

[EEL123]

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=4772

That's the original NPI thread. You can see the formulae there. I have tweaked them since to produce what I now consider to be a more adequate weighting system (and also to bring down the insanely high scores). More chances are likely to occur.
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https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/lv? ... sQkE&pli=1

That's the first calculator that I've developed. It is still fairly rudimentary. Again, I may further modify it.

[Siggon Kristov]

The point behind OTAF was all of what you just said, you can gladly help me contribute to OTAF which has the backing of a multitude of players or we can do what most communities do (and often fail at) and start developing numerous other projects instead of setting aside their differences and working together on one project. That's my thoughts on the entire thing.

+1

What about the NPI? It probably needs a little tweaking and all, but it is a bias-free, entirely mathematical way of ranking countries. Once we agree on the right formulae and weightings, there can be no people screaming about them being maligned and unfairly treated, which is nearly inevitable with every other way of doing things.

+1

[Opakidabar]

This is current military expenses by nations:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_co ... penditures

Eritrea does 20% of GDP. US and Russia does 4.4% of GDP. I have serious doubts nations in Terra go with those numbers Most aggressive nations are probably closer to Eritrea in this regard