Terra Firma, Planning and discussion

[The Republic of Lanos]

You do realize, that RL China (ranked 1st in world for army) only has a 2.2 million man military, right?

I assume (and desperately hope) that he means his total population is 250 million.

That. :/

[Fortunagen]

I assume (and desperately hope) that he means his total population is 250 million.

That. :/

Oh, so we are arguing about military populations again?

Just read this:

How to Create a Successful Military in NS: Part 1
Building A Military - by Starblaydia

Obviously (one would hope), all our nations have had military forces of some description or another since they were first formed, so even if you have to create, in text files, your whole military from scratch, it isn’t going to be too difficult or ICly expensive.

Firstly, the important basics, then the fun creative stuff.

POPULATION

Yes, yes, the older (2003) nations have populations about as large as the entire real life planet but even the difference between a 4 and 6 billion population in terms of military strength is quite low. If you’re a 100mil nation facing one of three billion: you’re probably in very deep trouble. Just because you’re a 4 billion pop nation doesn’t mean, however, that you’ll automatically wipe the floor with a 2 or 3bil country.

The number of men, women, dwarves, gnomes, elves, winged freaks or whatever else in your total combined armed forces is measured, quite simply, as a percentage of your population. Various estimates up to about 5% are thrown around, though looking at facts and statistic (oh, yey) things get a little more realistic:

From ’Economies, Militaries and Invasions’ by Clan Smoke Jaguar (who appears to be, or know a lot of, military veterans) we have this:

[QUOTE=CSJ]”I do have some good info on the USSR, the US, and China, from just after the end of the Cold War. The numbers can be seen here.

Soviet Union in 1992:
Population: 285 million
Active Military: 2.804 million (0.984%)
Reserve Military: 4.315 million (1.514%)
Total: 7.115 million (2.509%)

USA in 1992:
Population: 253 million
Active Military: 2.052 million (0.811%)
Reserve Military: 1.28 million (0.506%)
National Guard: 0.617 million (0.244%)
Civilian Employees: 0.865 million (0.342%)
Total: 4.804 million (1.899%), 3.939 million (1.557%) w/o civs

China in 1992
Population: 1144 million
Active Military: 3 million (0.262%)
Reserve Military: 1 million (0.087%)
Militia: 10 million (0.874%)
Total: 14 million (1.224%)

As you can see, even the nations with the largest militaries had little more than 1-2.5% of their population in the total military. Even at its peak, the active force was less than 1%. Also, that 2.5% total military was enough to run the USSR into the ground, though that owes more than a little bit to poor management and leadership. Still, a clear trend exists, and that is that the militaries of larger nations, and those of nations that have more modern ones, tend to be smaller, while those of poor-under developed nations tend to be bigger. But remember, those bigger armies have less training and poorer equipment, and will be decimated by the smaller forces in open battle.”[/QUOTE]

Don’t forget, of course, that anywhere up to (and beyond) 75% of those raw numbers will have been non-combat, non-front line personnel (there go the Logistics, for the first of many mentions) so over-all they’re pretty small. The basic answer is: anything over 1% of your pop classes you as a ‘militaristic’ nation, and Dictatorships and Team America: World Police-style nations have even higher numbers than that. Any more than 2% or so will ruin your economy, trying for 5 or even 10% will cripple your nation on all fronts within months, most likely a single-figure number of months, too. The majority of Democratic nations today have a military percentage of around 0.5% of their populations.

ECONOMY
Here’s where it all gets a little messy and everyone accuses me of anti-Lamoni bias. Quite simply, if your economy is ‘poor’ (Struggling, Weak, Fragile, Basket Case or Imploded) then, unless you chuck most of your GDP at it (more on that later) your armed forces will probably be poorly equipped and poorly trained, never mind the state the rest of your country will be in. Conversely, if you have a ‘good’ economy (Strong, Very Strong, Thriving, Powerhouse, All-Consuming or Frightening) then your military effectiveness will be based on how much of your GDP you spend on your army. Careful here; too much will lead to corrupt secretive projects and administrative black holes for cash. Who knows how much the CIA spends on their directors, or on their ultra-black secret operations? $400 for a ring binder? I don’t think the official public budget tells it quite as it is.

We all know where NSEconomy is located, thanks to our ever-calculating, AO’s own, Commerce Heights: http://nseconomy.thirdgeek.com/nseconomy.p...tion=YourNation. This, based on the XML data feed from NS.net itself, will give you a near-universally accepted basis for figuring out how much money you have, how much your money is worth, and what you end up spending your budget on. If you’ve just realised you spend less than the price of a happy meal per year on your military, don’t worry, there are always private organisations and militias/posses to defend your nation, but not much for you to send out on the offensive.

Quite simply, you should end up with a US Dollar figure (probably in billions, trillions if you’re lucky or millions if you’ve just been dealt snake-eyes) of what you can spend on your nation. Remember this, copy and paste it somewhere safe, we’ll be using it later.

GOVERNMENT TYPE
Your type of government will reflect on your military. Not the one that NS.net assigns you from the UN (Inoffensive Centrist Domocracy, Anarchy, Father Knows Best State, etc) but the one you RP with. If the one you claim to have ICly is the complete opposite of what NS says you are, you’ve been answering your issues wrong. Though NS.net does, in part, put Max Barry’s twisted sense of dramatic reality on things to exaggerate certain traits, it is generally reflective of what you answer in your issues. The accuracy of UN rankings, however, is yet another debate. Sufficed, and perhaps sadly, to say, your ‘Armed forces per capita’ ranking probably means very little here on the forums.

If you’re a good-ole’ democracy, expect to have a volunteer, professional army to wield. Perhaps you have a form of National Service for any one of a certain age, putting them somewhere in the armed forces, emergency services or similar for a certain period of time. Perhaps you have a conscript army, ready to swap their pitchforks, footballs and laptops for an M16 in times of need. Maybe it’s a combination. Dictatorships will usually have some kind of fanatical party unit with the rest being a mixture of volunteers and conscripts, or those who pick the army because they pay relatively well and you blow things up. Volunteers will have better motivation and morale than conscripts, never mind better training and equipment. People who sign up to defend their nation are, simply, more likely to stand fast and die for their country. If their country/leader has told them to stand there simply because they can wield a rifle slightly better than a straw man, they’ll most likely run away unless they are defending their own homes.

LOGISTIC
There is one particular thread called ‘What is Logistics?’ by The Evil Overlord, in which there are two posts (one by TEO himself, one by Agnosticium) that talk about Logistics in more depth, detail and diversity than I or TLC ever could:

• TEO, the opening post.
  
• Agnosticium, who interacts with F-15s, among others.

To put it in a nutshell: For every person who is there to fire the gun, crew the vehicle, fly the plane, etc, there is anything between 2 and 20 people behind them who don’t fight. If your Air Force consists of 20 personnel, you might only have 1 plane. [QUOTE=Agnosticium]Ok, so where are we in terms of numbers for a 15-jet squadron? I know I have left a few people out but even so, we are looking at a bare minimum of 137 people (and that means everyone has additional duties out of the wazzoo) up to at least 180 personnel. That's for ONE F-15 Squadron.[/QUOTE]

INSITUTIONAL STRATEGY
Here comes the fun part (for me, at least). When your nation fights, exactly how does it wage its wars? Some RL examples: The USSR and Warsaw Pact nations relied on a sledgehammer of tanks, APCs, artillery and attack craft. Their most famous helicopter, the Hind, is effectively a flying tank – literally called the Flying Tank (letayushiy tank) by its pilots. Their air force was mostly long-range bombers and interceptors, while their navy was full of deadly submarines and not much else. Great Britain, when they still ruled the waves, had an awe-inspiring navy and only a small, professional army with which to conquer those tribes armed with kumquats, loincloths and face paint. The army then trained local forces to keep His or Her Majesty’s peace for them while they annihilated some other tribe with venereal diseases and Christianity.

Have a think about your nation’s character, its culture. When applying that to war, what does that create? Is it the massive sledgehammer ground force war machine, or is it a highly mobile, highly specialised elite force that excels in the type of terrain found mostly across your nation. Does your map and location require all-round force capabilities, or is the need for a navy completely lacking in your landlocked state? Does your air force lend itself to ground attack, long range assault, airborne deployment, interception or a weird combination of all? Is the navy primarily about carriers, or subs, or destroyers, or battleships, or landing craft?

If you’ve written a history for your nation, dive into and elaborate it to think of just how your nation has fought any battles, revolutions, wars and the like. Or just be boring and copy the USA, USSR or similar. Go figure.

EQUIPMENT
Once you know how, you then need to figure out what they actually do their war business with. Here begins many a bone of contention. Do you use real-life units or create your own? If you go the real-life route, there are many real-life corporations to ‘buy’ your equipment from. If you’re after realistic prices, don’t go to the International Incidents storefronts, just read this post (CSJ yet again) instead for the sort of pricing structures you need.

Creating your own stuff? Holy hell that’s a big subject, so read these helpful, CSJ-written threads:

• Some things you should know about tanks
• Some info on naval vessels
• Things you should know about aircraft

MILITARY BUDGETS
10% (at least) will go on upkeep
20-25% (approximately) will go on procurement (i.e. researching and buying new stuff, supplies, etc)
The rest is up to you, divide the cash as you see fit between your three )or more) services.

This website provides absolute pure gold information. Though it’s obviously written with English as a second language and the formatting sucks, the information that’s in there is priceless. If you have no idea what’s going on with numbers and such, take a look at a RL country yours is similar to and extrapolate.

MILTARY ORGANISATION
The one problem here is that everyone RL does it slightly differently for each service based on their own historical and traditional eccentricities. Quite simply, for the army, we have The US Army’s own diagrams to help us along the way. Simple, informative, effective. But only for the army. Navies are much simpler, with fleets being created seemingly on the fly for their different tasks. Air forces vary wildly, even within the same Air Force: Multiple squadrons (typically three to ten) make up a wing - an air force squadron typically consists of three or four flights, with a total of 12 to 24 aircraft, depending on aircraft type and air force.

[Ea90]

Ooh, thanks for that!

[The Akasha Colony]

Suddenly, an expanding list of equipment!

Obviously a work in progress at the moment. Still have to add the equipment for my infantry brigades, as well as all of the small arms, and that's also why I asked for the standard NACO calibers.

[Transnapastain]

OK, so I've been thinking of dividing my land forces in two.

The main force consists of few hundred thousand conscripts with modest equipment and training but well trained commanders.
The most ambitious and best scoring conscripts would then be offered membership of an elite military force of about 50.000 soldiers.

It would be similar to the Saddam-era Iraqi army.

Y/N?

Thats exactly what I'm doing.

[Transnapastain]

Oh joy I got more armed forces cutting to do.

You appear to be continually forgetting the "realistic" part of the "Hard MT" region

This is not NS RP where you'll be facing nations with overblown economies and populations higher than unchecked rabbit warrens. You do not need, nor can you sustain, an lolmassive military. I'm not sure what Bosque has going on, but I know my military is pretty small, and the actually useful portion of it smaller still (and I might even reduce THAT number), I think Val Nube is in a similar position. You do not have the barbarian hordes at your gates trying to break them down, you have a collection of South American Banana Republics operating in conjunction and they could conceivably hurt you. Having a large military, larger than normal, makes sense, but trying to NSify it is not only breaking the spirit of the RP, it's impossible.

Also, again, you may seriously want to look into Brazil's military....its a powerful force using first rate equipment with numbers more, far more, than sufficient to the region its in. Also, while you're there, pay more attention to how life in Brazil, nominally the area under your control works, because its not a first world nation. Its low first or second world at best in the cities and third world in the interior. You obviously can run your government anyway you like, but some basic facts, like where humans would have settled, can not be easily changed. You said you're at, what 250 million? I'd drop it to like 220 million, though, I' might be willing to buy it with your little southern enclave there.



This is a rather good break down of where your population dispersion should be. like.

[The Republic of Lanos]

Ok ok fine. :/

This is harder than I thought.

[Coltarin]

Ok ok fine. :/

This is harder than I thought.

Not really. It only took me about 20 mins to figure out what my pop was.

[The Republic of Lanos]

Ok ok fine. :/

This is harder than I thought.

Not really. It only took me about 20 mins to figure out what my pop was.

Just redoing a lot of things different to your headcanon...but I can manage.

Thanks guys.

[Val Nube]

While it never entered production in real life, I intend to manufacture and field the Osorio.

[Transnapastain]

Try this again with correct numbers, now.

Population of Costa Mejis ~42 million
Military age: 18 to 35 years of age for male, wartime conscription 15–49 years of age
Available for military service: 10,029,488 males
Reaching military age annually: 350,040 males

Total military personal: 378,000 (.9% of population)
- Active: 115,290
- Reserve: 262,710

- Army total: 75,600 (20% of total military)
- Active duty: 30,240 (60% of total Army)
- Reserve: 45,360 (40% of total Army)
Notes: Standing army contains mechanized infantry, airborne, armor, artillery, and army aviation, as well as support personal. Used for offensive actions against insurgents or other nations, if applicable.

- Air Force total: 26,460 (7% of military total)
- Active duty: 18,522 (70% of total Air Force)
- Reserve: 7,938 (30% of total Air Force)
Notes: Includes combat, training and transport squadrons, as well as security personal and personal assigned to EW radar posts. There is very little in reserve Air Force presence.

- Navy total: 56,700 (15% of military total)
- Active duty: 22,680 (40% of total Navy)
- Reserve: 34,020 (60% of total Navy)
Notes: Includes naval infantry, sailors, and rotary naval aviation. In addition the Navy is used as a coast guard force, generally utilizing rotating reserve units, as the active duty Navy's priority is the defense of the Straights of Vi Castis

- Peoples Armed Militia total: 219,240 (58% of military total)
- Active duty: 43.848 (20% of total Militia )
- Reserve: 175,392 (80% of total Militia )
Notes: Quality of the Militia varies from unit to unit but is generally low, with many soldiers being "career conscripts". Often time, people with no other skills find a home in the militia, as well as criminals and other thugs who just like the power that comes with the uniform. Not as well equipped or trained as the regular army. Generally used for internal security duties. Usually, career non-coms and officers are assigned to militia units to maintain order.

This gives me a military about half the size of Columbia, with about 4 million less population. My military is larger than, say, Spain, a nation with which I have a similar population and landmass, however, Spain doesn't have a reason to maintain a large military, so using it as a base was flawed.

Anyways, thoughts on this?

[The Akasha Colony]

Try this again with correct numbers, now.

Population of Costa Mejis ~42 million

Total military personal: 378,000 (.9% of population)
- Active: 115,290
- Reserve: 262,710

- Army total: 75,600 (20% of total military)
- Active duty: 30,240 (60% of total Army)
- Reserve: 45,360 (40% of total Army)
Notes: Standing army contains mechanized infantry, airborne, armor, artillery, and army aviation, as well as support personal. Used for offensive actions against insurgents or other nations, if applicable.

- Air Force total: 26,460 (7% of military total)
- Active duty: 18,522 (70% of total Army)
- Reserve: 7,938 (30% of total Army)
Notes: Includes combat, training and transport squadrons, as well as security personal and personal assigned to EW radar posts. There is very little in reserve Air Force presence.

- Navy total: 56,700 (15% of military total)
- Active duty: 22,680 (40% of total Army)
- Reserve: 34,020 (60% of total Army)
Notes: Includes naval infantry, sailors, and rotary naval aviation. In addition the Navy is used as a coast guard force, generally utilizing rotating reserve units, as the active duty Navy's priority is the defense of the Straights of Vi Castis

- Peoples Armed Militia total: 219,240 (58% of military total)
- Active duty: 43.848 (20% of total Army)
- Reserve: 175,392 (80% of total Army)
Notes: Quality of the Militia varies from unit to unit but is generally low, with many soldiers being "career conscripts". Often time, people with no other skills find a home in the militia, as well as criminals and other thugs who just like the power that comes with the uniform. Not as well equipped or trained as the regular army. Generally used for internal security duties. Usually, career non-coms and officers are assigned to militia units to maintain order.

This gives me a military about half the size of Columbia, with about 4 million less population. My military is larger than, say, Spain, a nation with which I have a similar population and landmass, however, Spain doesn't have a reason to maintain a large military, so using it as a base was flawed.

Anyways, thoughts on this?

I don't see any problem with it. Of course, that depends on the political situation in South America, which I am not entirely familiar with, but it certainly seems sufficient for a regional power.

[Transnapastain]

Thanks, I mainly wanted to make sure it wasn't too much.

[Transnapastain]

What are the dates for GW1 and GW2 for us? I'm going to say that Costa Mejis declared independence from notSpain during the chaos of GW1.

[Aqizithiuda]

What are the dates for GW1 and GW2 for us? I'm going to say that Costa Mejis declared independence from notSpain during the chaos of GW1.

I think they're more or less the same as in RL.

[Transnapastain]

What are the dates for GW1 and GW2 for us? I'm going to say that Costa Mejis declared independence from notSpain during the chaos of GW1.

I think they're more or less the same as in RL.

Sounds good to me.

I said I wasn't going to do it but Costa Mejis has the beginings of a Wiki page

[Coltarin]

I think they're more or less the same as in RL.

Sounds good to me.

I said I wasn't going to do it but Costa Mejis has the beginings of a Wiki page

Is there really a need for NSwikis now that there are built in fact books?

[Val Nube]

Sounds good to me.

I said I wasn't going to do it but Costa Mejis has the beginings of a Wiki page

Is there really a need for NSwikis now that there are built in fact books?

In his case, yes. Yes there is.

[Transnapastain]

Sounds good to me.

I said I wasn't going to do it but Costa Mejis has the beginings of a Wiki page

Is there really a need for NSwikis now that there are built in fact books?

What Val said. Plus I like the format and appearance better

Also, I do believe that your limited to something like 25 entries on your in game factbook

[The Republic of Lanos]

lol I use NSwiki.

[Puzikas]

In relation to the Wiki: Any sight I should use?

[Virana]

In relation to the Wiki: Any sight I should use?

IIWiki. It's got better templates and generally a more Wikipedia-style setup than NSwiki, and it's more geared towards IC stuff on II as opposed to NSwiki which covers OOC aspects as well.

I've got an IIwiki page for my non-TF main, here.

[Transnapastain]

In relation to the Wiki: Any sight I should use?

IIWiki. It's got better templates and generally a more Wikipedia-style setup than NSwiki, and it's more geared towards IC stuff on II as opposed to NSwiki which covers OOC aspects as well.

I've got an IIwiki page for my non-TF main, here.

Yup what he said. My IIwiki page is in my signature

[Coltarin]

In relation to the Wiki: Any sight I should use?

IIWiki. It's got better templates and generally a more Wikipedia-style setup than NSwiki, and it's more geared towards IC stuff on II as opposed to NSwiki which covers OOC aspects as well.

I've got an IIwiki page for my non-TF main, here.

Where did you get your map done?

[Virana]

IIWiki. It's got better templates and generally a more Wikipedia-style setup than NSwiki, and it's more geared towards IC stuff on II as opposed to NSwiki which covers OOC aspects as well.

I've got an IIwiki page for my non-TF main, here.

Where did you get your map done?

The map is from the Pardes (my region) map.

I cut my nation out of an image of the Pardes map, colored it green (Wiki-style), and vectorized it so I could enlarge the image losslessly.

If you need info on how to make the map itself, I'd contact someone who makes them specifically. Not exactly sure who drew up the Pardes map, although Belfras is the current individual who maintains it.