RPing Questions? Ask Here!

[Exantos]

Wouldn't this be best approached in the military Realism thread?

[West Aurelia]

I'm currently participating in a Cold War-style RP taking place in 1951. A communist country has just invaded a democratic country. I'm currently engaging communist MiG-15s, Il-28s, and La-15s in air-to-air combat. There are about 10 MiG-15s, two Il-28s (which have already dropped their payloads), and 12 La-15s. I have 19 F-86s (I'm supported by several allies and together I believe we outnumber them). What would be the most effective strategy in eliminating these aircraft and minimizing losses?

[Organized States]

I'm currently participating in a Cold War-style RP taking place in 1951. A communist country has just invaded a democratic country. I'm currently engaging communist MiG-15s, Il-28s, and La-15s in air-to-air combat. There are about 10 MiG-15s, two Il-28s (which have already dropped their payloads), and 12 La-15s. I have 19 F-86s (I'm supported by several allies and together I believe we outnumber them). What would be the most effective strategy in eliminating these aircraft and minimizing losses?

Your question might be better answered in the Mil Realism thread.

[West Aurelia]

I'm currently participating in a Cold War-style RP taking place in 1951. A communist country has just invaded a democratic country. I'm currently engaging communist MiG-15s, Il-28s, and La-15s in air-to-air combat. There are about 10 MiG-15s, two Il-28s (which have already dropped their payloads), and 12 La-15s. I have 19 F-86s (I'm supported by several allies and together I believe we outnumber them). What would be the most effective strategy in eliminating these aircraft and minimizing losses?

Your question might be better answered in the Mil Realism thread.

Oh hey OS. I'm trying to help us win.

[Organized States]

Your question might be better answered in the Mil Realism thread.

Oh hey OS. I'm trying to help us win.

I'll answer it either through TG or through the Mil Realism thread.

[West Aurelia]

Oh hey OS. I'm trying to help us win.

I'll answer it either through TG or through the Mil Realism thread.

I'll head to the realism thread.

[Lubyak]

Your question might be better answered in the Mil Realism thread.

Oh hey OS. I'm trying to help us win.

Note: Trying to 'win' an RP is usually a bad way to go. Since NS is an open form of RP, it's impossible to 'win' an RP. Attempting to do so generally will just devolve into OOC bickering over something and the death of the RP. When the question of 'how should this war go?' rises up, the answer should always be 'Whatever way would be best for the story we're writing.'

The Mil Realism thread is meant to inform people about military realism, as well as provide a place for all the people who care about such things to talk to other people who care about such things. It should not be used as a 'how to win an RP' source. It can make your military RP's more realistic by explaining how things WORK, but you should always remember that story should come first. Attempting to make NS RP into something you can 'win' is a fool's errand.

[The Black Plains]

Oh hey OS. I'm trying to help us win.

Note: Trying to 'win' an RP is usually a bad way to go. Since NS is an open form of RP, it's impossible to 'win' an RP. Attempting to do so generally will just devolve into OOC bickering over something and the death of the RP. When the question of 'how should this war go?' rises up, the answer should always be 'Whatever way would be best for the story we're writing.'

The Mil Realism thread is meant to inform people about military realism, as well as provide a place for all the people who care about such things to talk to other people who care about such things. It should not be used as a 'how to win an RP' source. It can make your military RP's more realistic by explaining how things WORK, but you should always remember that story should come first. Attempting to make NS RP into something you can 'win' is a fool's errand.

I'm so glad to see that NS popular opinion has done a 180 between the time that I got shouted down for saying this and now. Granted I probably could have said it more politely.

A good application of this rule is to have the final outcome of the RP pre-determined so that everybody's on the same page. You can work out the details IC as much as you like, but you should generally at least know who will ultimately win and who will ultimately lose. I could go into the theory and philosophy behind all of these ideas (it all extends from the concept of story ownership: that you own your writing and your nation and can develop them however you like, but that people do not have to include it in their story if they don't want to), but that's a lecture for another day.

Essentially, if you approach NS trying to figure out who's losing, it's you.

[Exantos]

However I beg to disagree on the fact that a pre-determined timeline will be successful. As I know and I think quite a few of you also know. In a RP anything can happen and anything can change. I remember a time when we had a giant asteroid heading towards our planet and one of the nations decided to be imperialistic and try to capture countries that were trying to find a solution to that problem. Which led to my nation intervening and in the ensuing war both of our countries were destroyed and so was everyone else. As you can guess the asteroid hit in the time period.(That was a nice non-canon RP) However back to my point. As I said earlier anyone can mess up the pre-determined roleplay and the best thing to do is just roll with it and try to figure out a way to keep your country out of the world's nuclear firing range

[The Macabees]

The key is to always be willing to cooperate and negotiate with the other members of the RP.

Edit: On NS, all RPs -- even war RPs -- can be win-win.

[Northmeadow]

What means MT and PMT and other things like this?

[Rhodevus]

What means MT and PMT and other things like this?

MT= Modern Tech anything modern +25-50 years usually
PMT= Post Modern Tech anything after 50 years until future stuff
FT= Future Tech anything futuristic and most sci-fi stuff
FanT= Fantasy Tech anything magical and not real
PT= Past Tech anything in the past.

[Lamoni]

MT: Modern Tech
PMT: Post Modern Tech

http://forum.nationstates.net/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=177519

You'll also be wanting to read this thread.

[The Macabees]

What means MT and PMT and other things like this?

They're broad classifications for tech level, usually military tech specifically.

MT or Modern Tech refers more-or-less to the technology real world modern militaries use, and some players might add a number of arbitrary future years to account for any innovation that might happen in the foreseeable future or any innovation that would have occurred had modern nations invested the amount of money countries on NS do. So, MT might refer to a tech level that corresponds to ~1980-2020 in RL years.

PMT or Post-Modern Tech is a broad period between MT and FT, or Future Tech. The line between PMT and FT is even more hazy than the one between MT and PMT, but if MT ends at ~2020 it follows that PMT is everything after that up to some year, after which it gets categorized as FT.

The divisions are entirely arbitrary, but it's a standard that NS players have set between themselves to coordinate the acceptability of certain technologies in particular RPs.

[Kyrusia]

[snip]

To add to this, there is some matter of debate as to where Post-Modern Tech and Future Tech truly begins. The debate lies in that, despite nominally being classified as "FT", many societies have aspects which would also feel at home in PMT; such as: cybernetic augmentation, nanotechnology, constant Internet/Ethernet/Something Similar connectivity, autonomous robots and robotics, a wide range of "soft" (or Virtual Intelligences) or "hard" Artificial Intelligences (or Synthetic Intelligences), etc.

Compound this with the fact that, in FT, dating and calender systems tend to not be anthropocentric or are otherwise not necessarily related-to or based-upon the Julian Calender or other Sol-based sidereal dating systems, and you get a bit of a rub as to where "PMT" begins and "FT" begins, due to the sharing of aspects.

Nominally, PMT has a "hard" termination which is widely-agreed upon, that being: PMT ends the moment of the advent (creation/successful execution) of superluminal (faster-than-light) travel. This is largely because, even amongst more "hard science-fiction" players, FTL is virtually necessary to keep-up (even including "Fluid Time") with the largest and broadest portion of the FT community.

[Ostryte-Addenburg]

What would be the best way to engage in armed conflict with a nation in which no prior contact has been made (save for the context of the war)?

[Roski]

What would be the best way to engage in armed conflict with a nation in which no prior contact has been made (save for the context of the war)?

Hope they don't have a huge military. That's all I can say

[Sunset]

Depends.

If it's an NPN... (Non-Player Nation)... Fall on them like the waves! Let desolation be your left hand and destruction your right!

If it's a PN... (Player Nation)... Ask. Put out feelers looking for someone to fight. Cooperate, Collaborate, and Listen. In general, someone isn't going to appreciate a surprise attack and likely just won't reply. That and for the most part they are very hard to pull off without assuming a whole lot of stupid on the part of the surprisee.

[Lubyak]

What would be the best way to engage in armed conflict with a nation in which no prior contact has been made (save for the context of the war)?

Send them a message via TG or talk to them in an OOC thread. Discuss what you want the story to do and how you want it to proceed, and start hashing out a plot...from there on the whole world's your oyster.

[Arstotzkas]

How would I figure out my army size for RPs?

[Roski]

How would I figure out my army size for RPs?

The average real world army is ~800k.

Depends on a large amount of factors. TG me, I can help

[Vancon]

How would I figure out my army size for RPs?

It's up to your imagination, but here's a few ideas.

-Use NS Tracker. It's a site that gives you a bit of info about any and all nations.

-Make it up yourself. Just 'cause you have 7 million people on nationstates, doesn't mean you have 7 million people on nationstates. Say that you have a couple billion people if you want, and in turn you can have a large military.

-Base yourself off of a relevant nation. Back when I had the same population as Germany, I based my military off of Germany's. Pick a nation that you like and copy it

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery

[Insaeldor]

How would I figure out my army size for RPs?

Usually the size of your army goes by the 1% rule. Whatever your RP population is it's usually good to take 1% or less and role with that. This also depends on how you play your nation as well with military dictatorships and North Korean-esque psycho states typically have large armies but with technology that shall we say isn't all that modern or at the least outdated by comparable standards, progressive democracies and republics will generally fluctuate in how large their military is but normally the exist in and around the 1% rule with some slight changes in the numbers depending on how hawkish the presiding government is.

I generally go with 0.2% of my population in in active duty and around 1% in reserve position. This is the case even as a nation which has full male conscription so that I have enough men to preform military operations but small enough I can realistically have a well armed well trained conscript military. Generally the 1% rule is the go to number but you can play with that a bit but if you're a hardcore realist I can see about 2% of the population in military roles before you feasibly start getting to logistic and economic troubles.

[Raltirian Denethier]

How would I figure out my army size for RPs?

Usually the size of your army goes by the 1% rule. Whatever your RP population is it's usually good to take 1% or less and role with that. This also depends on how you play your nation as well with military dictatorships and North Korean-esque psycho states typically have large armies but with technology that shall we say isn't all that modern or at the least outdated by comparable standards, progressive democracies and republics will generally fluctuate in how large their military is but normally the exist in and around the 1% rule with some slight changes in the numbers depending on how hawkish the presiding government is.

I generally go with 0.2% of my population in in active duty and around 1% in reserve position. This is the case even as a nation which has full male conscription so that I have enough men to preform military operations but small enough I can realistically have a well armed well trained conscript military. Generally the 1% rule is the go to number but you can play with that a bit but if you're a hardcore realist I can see about 2% of the population in military roles before you feasibly start getting to logistic and economic troubles.

That depends on your active/reserve and total numbers, as well. Real world nations have far more than just 2% in their armed forces in some cases without coming to any hardships. As far as I'm concerned, the measure is not your population alone. The measure is your economy. Base your economy on real world models, and then decide if you can pay for the desired amount of troops, based on real world examples of military budget per head. Of course, work that in with the population measure to consider that more people in your military can make it more difficult to have a large, wealthy economy.

[Lubyak]

How would I figure out my army size for RPs?

The general 'rule' in NS RP is that you can have ~1-5% of your population. Even then, 5% is really only in 'do or die, Germany in late 1944' levels of militarisation. Going up to--or beyond--this in general peacetime will often end up being quite damaging to your economy. The standard for having a good economy is generally <1% of your national population in the military.

HOWEVER, that is only a 'rule' in the sense that it's a widely agreed upon standard. If you stay within it, you likely won't be accused of being a 'wanker' or 'god-modder', but it's not particularly interesting. A better way to determine what size your military is to develop the rest of your nation first, and THEN pick the military that fits your nation, rather than trying to spew out a random number for your military size.

• What is your nation's geo-political position? This more than anything will shape your military. Are you an island nation, surrounded by friendly powers? A state with long land borders with hostile neighbours? The difference between their geo-political situation shapes how large their militaries will be.
• What is your nation's technology base? A very high tech military will often be smaller and cost more per individual when compared to a lower tech military.
• What is your nation's cultural background with the military? A nation with a very militaristic or nationalist culture will--obviously--be more willing to support a larger military. A more pacifist or cosmopolitan one will be less willing to support large military forces.

These are only a few questions you could ask yourself. As you develop your nation, you'll often see things crop up which will effect how large your military will be. In my opinion, you will get more respect for giving yourself a military size based on the way your nation is put together, rather than just using a bare ''percent of population" method. Remember, NS is a fully free form method of RPing. There are no hard or fast rules, only what you decided, and what your fellow players would accept. Trackers can be helpful, but they're not the end all be all, nor is the much touted '1-5%' of population' rule.