Is EVERYONE a superpower?

[The Cookish States]

Every day I read differnet wars, revolutions, conflicts, and random engagements on the international incidents section, and I've started to wonder-Is every single nation in this a superpower?
Example:
Nation 1:"I've got a guy holding a sign in my capital, it says Nation 1 sucks, helllp mee!"
Nation 2:I'm sending 1.2 million troops, 20,000 tanks, and 5000 aircraft to assist you in your time of need!
Basically, I'm not against having a huge military, if you do, you do. But don't mobilize a million men because of a 3rd world nations internal issue. My whole military is only 1.4 million in RP's, my navy is terrible, and my airforce is severely lacking. But that's okay, because I don't think being the biggest, most badass nation in NS is that much fun.
Also, why does everyones military consist of un-killable supermen and "the best" special forces? Ugh, it just irks me, and if you want to bitch and complain with me then come on, thats what this thread is for.

[The Cookie Warcaste]

So you -aren't- a superpower? *annexes*

But no, thats just what happens when you've only gotta wait 2 months to be as big as the united states IRL.

[Brachyuria]

I agree with the OP, and wish fiery death upon pretty much everyone who RPs on this site for those exact reasons.

If it will give you hope at all, here's proof that not everyone is a superpower, by listing what I do instead.

• Army sucks, always left behind as a defending force. Would only be used in an emergency, like if Brachyuria itself was invaded. In which case, they wouldn't actually be deploying anywhere anyway, since the fighting would be in Brachyuria
• Marines used as the attacking force, deployed sparingly even then. Have a tendency to get drunk at inopportune times (such as just before assaulting a beach) and end up making a complete mess of the carefully laid plans that their ineffectual command sometimes comes up with.
• Navy lacks any aircraft carriers (more on that later), and has no combat orientated submarines. Tech wise, not especially outdated, but has no state-of-the-art nuclear powered stealth destroyers either. Prefers larger numbers of smaller ships (which get destroyed a fair bit) to the larger ships (which also get destroyed a fair bit).
• No nukes, since from an OOC standpoint it's a boring way to deal with your problems, and as a spiteful response to people being prone to using Nukes at the slightest provocation, rather than fighting like real men. Covered with an IC stance of being morally against them.
• Because I decided the entire nation was going to be a bunch of crazy religious people who believe in giant immortal crab gods, I gave myself the disadvantage of having no airforce, airports or planes of any kind. Covered with the IC explanation that they all hate seagulls, as the enemy of the crabs, and despise planes for looking like seagulls.
• Use a population of 75 million, despite having an official site population larger than china's.
• Military (including the command, logistics and other non-combat people as well as the 500,000 reserves I will never ever use) numbers at 1.07 Million personnel.
• Always try to RP the realistic logistics of military movement. Made harder for me by having no air transport. Don't just have all my military arrive magically near my enemy's country. Take a day or two (in the RP) to organise the necessary expeditionary force.
• Ignore everything that doesn't seem feasible with modern technology.
• Respond to problems with diplomacy before sending in anything. Unless the (slightly insane) king decides otherwise.

My region adopted an RP stance of having more realistic populations, and we've generally been against the usage of ridiculously powerful or infeasibly technologically superior militaries. Maybe I'm just lucky.

[Raven Corps]

Not everyone is a super power... And this is the reason....

-Is everyones super; Than no one is-

Kinda like the idea that if everyone was superman/woman than no one would would be considered super.

[Ivanteyevka]

The People's Republic of Ivanteyevka isn't a superpower, neither are plenty of nations located within the region of Azhukali. However, I assume the definition of a superpower on NationStates is much different than that in the real world.

[Raven Corps]

Very

[White Picket]

Not everyone is a super power... And this is the reason....

-Is everyones super; Than no one is-

Kinda like the idea that if everyone was superman/woman than no one would would be considered super.

^This! In the "real world", White Picket would be the 3rd largest nation, and quite formidable even without actively building a big honking army. In NS, WP is just another small nation of little importance with a military that causes more laughter than fear.

[Helladria]

I'm here to commiserate. I don't play a superpower either.

$0.02:
-Helladria is a nation of 113 million people (less than 1/10 of what NationStates says) with a combined standing military of well under 1 million soldiers.
-I also don't send my soldiers rushing head long en masse into the conflict of the day (or hour), at least not until I've had a peaceful diplomatic exchange.
-My soldiers are professionals, but they're also people. Not fully biological robots.
-My best special forces are quite good, but they're still human. They also aren't officially recognized to exist by the government (so no IC bragging rights).
-I do RP logistics and keep a constant watch on my supply lines, changing strategies if need be.
-Helladria isn't a money machine and it doesn't give handouts or airdrop generic supplies.

Unfortunately, I've only participated in one really fun game so far, and it wasn't a total war, but rather a peacekeeping mission, in which the forces allowed to participate were severely restricted OoC. It has gone a long way to further enforce my bias to believe that the best games are small scale almost by necessity. That is to say, basically a setting where everyone can have fun.

I've seen a lot of what you're complaining about too, OP. Unfortunately, its a sign of rampant n00bism. Nation 1 would be well served to come up with an idea of where they want their story to go, and then create an OoC interest thread. Nation 2 is just number spamming.

While I don't think that gimping oneself or writing walls of text are necessary to have a well played game, those do seem to be favorite anti-Gmodding techniques; and to each their own (caveat: sometimes walls of text are used to justify godmodding, which makes me tired and want to go to bed). Also, no small amount of blame can be placed on the game engine, which has created more than a few monstrosities with populations larger than earth. I figure that as long as the WA Civil Rights, Economics, Political Freedom ratings are ignored in RP - which is a good thing - why not ignore hugely unrealistic population counts too?

I think I'm done ranting. For now.

[Bears Armed]

Bears Armed doesn't participate in wars, generally speaking, but for RP purposes I say that its population is only [just under] 19 million anyway: Apart from anything else, we have a regional map that has a definite scale and there wouldn't really be room for significantly more people than that in our share of the region without the place starting to get "too crowded" by our standards...

[Sieran]

We're not, we're just a small region of the Russian far east (in the real-world its the Chukotka region but here it became separate from the Empire after the Revolution in 1905 led to a changed October Manifesto).

We have few resources, average sized population and considered only to be a minor regional power at the present time (1938)

[Arumdaum]

I actually agree with the OP.

But Arumdaum only uses its 1 million person army in self defense.

[Raven Corps]

AS one of those players with a population count that exceeds that of RL earth I tend to throw my soldiers lives away on sensless wars that have nothing to do with me, that and I have 5 RPed aquired national lands in which I may draw from to fuel my war machine. No doubt this probably only worsens the current state of affairs . But I must point out that as NS players get older they will find less and less time to lead through example and the Noobism will undoubtably grow.

But At the same time I can only Rp like this because I spent a few years getting my Rp profile to the point it is now.... an all consuming Corporation which makes money through eradicating a population through slave trade, military conversion, or outright execution via military training, the land is strip mined by the forced labor until they all die, and then it continues to get strip mined by my "Employees". And before you know it an entire nation is now nothing more than a flat, barren place devoid of life save for the numerous Factory-Fortresses which litter the land scape.

But should my progress get slowed I pretty much implode. A specificly designed flaw made to help other nations unite against me. Once they do and great war can begin for all to enjoy.

[Kashyr]

There's a few cliques of RPers that concentrate on telling a damn good story rather than trying to "win".

It's just a matter of finding them among the 90% of rubbish that gets posted.

[Godular]

International incidents generally tends to draw a more, shall we say ADD crowd. ZOMG EPIC WAR 4 TEH LULZ so on and so forth, since that is technically what this subforum is for. If ya want roleplay, you'd be better advised to check out the Nationstates subforum as that is supposedly more geared towards those who aim for a decent story.

Not that I'd be able to claim such with any certainty, mind you. I've only looked in that forum like... three times with any actual intent to look at the content.

The real trouble is just as stated above, trying to find those who are actually interested in a decent story while discarding out of hand all the threads made by what I call 'One Line Wonders'

[Raven Corps]

The worst part about that old friend is that no one wants to out the effort into writting atleast a paragragh. Which I normally do any how even if I am answering a single line of dialogue, I normally employ imagry text and personal thoughts of the characters I'm Rping. Or as my mentor told me... Fake it till you make it... Just typing in a bunch of pointless stuff like that just adds a little flavor

[Tehraani]

I usually write several paragraphs (provide I have a lot to write about). and I don't number spam. I have had many occasions that I only had a few 5000 or 10000 soldiers at best facing down millions of enemies, usually from different countries. Or have my navy of 1 aircraft carrier and a few cruisers and escorts face down large fleets that were 3times the size of the whole American flotilla.

You could say their some superpowers out there. Those who have been around for some time and use their NS pop to base their army on with an frightening economic status and aren't to sloppy RPers either.

At least with my main nation because by puppet is online now.

[Blademasters765]

Well Bladia is a continent, 4 times the size of Australia, with a 3 billion population....so yes, I'm a superpower

[Dimoniquid]

Well Bladia is a continent, 4 times the size of Australia, with a 3 billion population....so yes, I'm a superpower

So's every other person in this game - it's kinda boring having ten-odd superpowers in a planned war, don't you think?

[Godular]

The worst part about that old friend is that no one wants to out the effort into writting atleast a paragragh. Which I normally do any how even if I am answering a single line of dialogue, I normally employ imagry text and personal thoughts of the characters I'm Rping. Or as my mentor told me... Fake it till you make it... Just typing in a bunch of pointless stuff like that just adds a little flavor

10% blaster, 90% bluster

Always worked for me.

[Salzland]

I contend that there are in fact no superpowers in NationStates.

The premise is quite simple. There is no solitary nation that has the ability to unilaterally impose its will, through roleplaying, upon the II community/NS "World" without running the extreme danger of falling victim to an opposing nation or coalition. Yes, by definition a "superpower" is an "extremely powerful nation," but one must keep in mind that there is a difference between an "extremely powerful nation" in the real world, and an "extremely powerful nation" in NationStates. A "superpower" in the real world, as applied in the traditional Cold War sense, would maintain the capacity to field and maintain a significant military presence on one or more continents simultaneously, while possessing significant economic and political capital that could be expended to bring less-capable nations into the fold.

A NationStates "extremely powerful nation," in contrast, would need to be able to exert itself against countries that have populations larger than real-life planet Earth, with equivalent resource capabilities. In most cases, attempting to do so would be so ruinously costly that said nation would likely cripple itself, and be exterminated by a rival power. No single country stands so far above and beyond its peers that it has the capacity to act with impunity, as a "superpower" would. It is quite clear that NationStates is a multipolar world, with the distribution of wealth and power scattered across so many nations that no single country has the capacity to act as a superpower.

Because of this, the role of the superpower has been filled, in a sense, by the alliance system. Finding a group of like-minded nations and banding together allows the members to exert far more influence on the global stage. For example, the individual members of your Brimstone Pact, or Incursus, or Conglomerate, or ODECON, or whatever, could be easily countered and contained by other countries of equivalent size and capability. As part of a group, acting together, such a member would have far more resources to draw upon (including shared intelligence services, integrated ballistic missile defense networks, etcetera) than said country would on its own.

Therefore, I submit that while there are nations in NationStates that have the capacitiy to wield significant amounts of economic, political and military power, none of those countries on their own would rate as a "superpower." The NationStates world resembles Earth around the World War 1 era, with multiple nations capable of acting on the world stage as individual powers, far more than it resembles a post-World War 2 era Earth that has easily identifiable "superpowers" that stand far above their closest competitors in terms of political, economic and military capabilities.

Disclaimer: I am not counting Maxtopia or any of Max Barry's accounts, because obviously the person who pays the bills for this site can do whatever he wants. I suppose, then, that whichever account Max Barry is using would qualify as NationStates' only superpower.

[Raven Corps]

Superman theory... As stated above...

[Ivanteyevka]

Actually, Salzland, a national superpower is defined as a powerful and influential nation. Although there are quite a few powerful nations in NationStates, there are substantially less influential ones. So my opinion is that there are way more superpowers in NationStates than in the real world, but not all the nations in NationStates are superpowers.

[Salzland]

Superman theory... As stated above...

The problem with that theory is that it disregards the fact that there will always be smaller nations in this game that have populations and capabilities comparable to that of nations in the real world. While it may be true that every nation with, for example, three billion people or more and the highest economic rating in the game could be considered part of the "Superman" club, there will still be nations that are excluded from this category. In fact, I will wager that the largest percentage of active nations in this game are nations that would more closely resemble nations ranging from real-life Israel to real-life China or India, rather than "Superman" countries.

The "Superman theory" doesn't account for this, because it doesn't recognize that there are nations that are not "Superman," and in most cases won't reach the stage where they could be considered to be "Superman" until after a year or more of playing the game. The "Superman" theory relies on each and every nation in the world having the exact same population, resources and OOC skills in handling their political, economic and military relationships with each other. In short, it depends on a world of perfect balance and symmetry.

The NationStates world is imbalanced, so the "Superman theory" does not hold true. There are a plethora of "powers," in the traditional sense, that could be defined through a variety of in character criteria (population size, economic rating, military prowess, etcetera) as well as out of character criteria (a player's knowledge of military tactics and strategy, diplomatic skills/likability, etcetera). These "powers" have the ability to contain and counteract each other on the global stage to varying degrees, keeping the system in check. However, keeping the system in check does not equate the NS world to the "Superman theory," because it is easier to check some nations more than others. For example, it would be far easier for someone to keep my country in check than it would be to keep an Automagfreek or Allanea in check. The fact that it can still be done means that there are no superpowers. The fact that it takes more effort to check some nations than it does others means that the "Superman theory" is inapplicable to the NS world.

Actually, Salzland, a national superpower is defined as a powerful and influential nation. Although there are quite a few powerful nations in NationStates, there are substantially less influential ones. So my opinion is that there are way more superpowers in NationStates than in the real world, but not all the nations in NationStates are superpowers.

I'm using the dictionary definition of a superpower. Specifically, "an extremely powerful nation, especially one capable of influencing international events and the acts and policies of less powerful nations." There is no one single nation that meets this criteria, because there is no single "extremely powerful nation" in NationStates that maintains the capacity to act as a superpower would (with the exception, again, of whatever nation Max Barry is using).

I stand behind my analogy comparing the NationStates world to that of the World War 1-era real world. There are powers, true, but there are no superpowers. There are too many large, capable nations that have the ability to not only resist the influence of other countries, but actively contain their counterparts on the world stage. In such a scenario, it is impossible to have a nation serving as a superpower, because it is impossible to have a nation in this game capable of acting in the way a superpower would.

Now if a nation were to show up with fifty or a hundred times the population of the next-largest nation in the entire game, it might be a different story. But no single nation has the capacity to exert its power and influence against its closest competitors so much that it would rate as a superpower.

[Raven Corps]

If one was to be picked however from a line-up of regular nations that could be considered a super-power it would have to be AMF itf he even Rps anymore. Though even then he also commanded a large allaince that was at his beck and call so he never actually needed to field his miliatry or bear his economic clout.

[Dobbstopia]

I haveto agree with Salzland, Well put. But i haveto say that sometimes in the (RP) people go overboard,but hey its a game so you can do that if you want.