NationStates

Why this is Godmoding: Okay, little guy nations, I know you're anxious to start throwing your weight around, but let's be honest; you are piddling nothings when you first start out in the world. To get specific with the logistics of your military, check this thread out: What Logistics Is (http://forums2.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=275828)
Also, check this thread out to get examples of how other nations in real life deal with their logistics: Economy, Militaries, and Invasions - More things to know (http://forums2.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=297064)

Note: Nothing stops you registering a group of nations and RPing each as a different but allied entity, or any other reasonable method of levelling the playing field you can come up with.

3.5) Example: 'Ok, I'm going after your major cities with cruise missiles.'
'Aha! My EMP defenses short out your missiles and defeat you!'
'But...Don't they destroy every electronic device in your cities, too?'
'No, because they're...Shielded. Yeah.'
'But then why couldn't I just send a spy to buy, say, a calculator or trouser press which would allow me to learn your secrets?'


Why This is Godmoding:
EMP isn’t magic. If you're a nation which has EMP devices and uses them regularly, it'd be ridiculous to think that in all that time nobody would have come up with an effective defense. Same goes for most technology, in fact: you should at least allow for the possibility that a nation which has faced your mighty ubertech on the battlefield has gone off and built something to counter it.

Creating a New Region

Valipac wrote:
forums2 links no longer work, so these need to be updated to the proper links (and if the guides were copied to these forums, just link those posts).

This is actually generally considered to be a horrific offense of godmoding, and is known as "puppet wank". You are allowed to RP with more than one nation, they just can not be allied or aid each other militarily. This might not have been the case when this guide was originally written, but it is definitely the case now. If it wasn't, everyone would just spam nations to gain the upper hand. And leveling is spelled wrong

I kind of agree with the logic here, but there's a difference between saying you have an uberdefense your enemy can't have, and then the EMP scenario mentioned here. Any EMP attack would take out a huge portion of civilian electronic infrastructure, and a fair amount of military infrastructure as well. What people don't realize is that EMPs are nuclear warheads detonated in space to create the pulse, which would legalize a strategic response. So while an EMP strike would certainly disable a large portion of your enemies military, they would probably launch nukes at you, so is it really worth it?

B. Invisible Troops
This section should state that invisible troops are not feasible for an MT setting.

Once you get to this point, it's rather irrelevant to II until you reach the "The Effects of War" section. Perhaps these sections could be edited out?
Other than that it's pretty good.

Valipac wrote:I'm going to hopefully go through the whole thing, but let's start with the easiest one, the last post.

viewtopic.php?f=5&t=12342#p442463

The Pipian calculator no longer works, and the same goes for the Colony calculator. The thirdgeek link should be renamed "NS Economy", and the nstracker link should be replaced by http://www.nstracker.org

I don't know if you linked the NS Art of War in there, but it definitely deserves a mention. It's probably too long to go in the thread itself.

That's still definitely not this case. There's nothing in the rules that prevents you from doing anything in roleplay (besides rulebreaking things, obviously). Is it bad form? Yes. Will it be looked down upon in the event people find out that two puppets are helping each other? Yes. Is puppetwanking against the rules? No.

Valipac wrote:That's the only thing I really disagree with you on. There is nothing "in the rules" that prevents you from godmoding at all - the facts are that the rules weren't defined to apply to this community, so we came up with our own rules, what is godmoding, and what isn't. And having multiple nations allied together, which might not have been considered godmoding at the time this was written, is definitely considered so now. Even if you only consider it bad form, some kind of disclaimer in the post that "this is seen as bad form by most players of the community" would be nice.

Valipac wrote:As far as the custom contract for creating embassies goes, that belongs more to the Factbooks forum, where the embassy exchanges now go. The "A Guide to Making Embassies" post is more or less a rehash of this, so I'm not sure that post is necessary, especially if this section is preserved. You might want to add a note that "some nations choose not to participate in embassy exchange threads, but rather assume that all nations have traded embassies with them." I for one take this approach, as do many others, although we consider it proper form to send a TG to the other nation ensuring that they are ok with it before we make specific use of that embassy.

Stealth matters: the F-22 is much less visible to other aircraft, BUT IT IS STILL VISIBLE ON RADAR, much like the way the B-52 Stratofortress is very visible but a B-1 Lancer is LESS visible.

The F-117A is slow (sub-Mach 1), carries no gun, has no radar (it can only pick up fighters with IR sensors maybe 5 miles away), and carries maybe two reasonable-sized laser-guided bombs.

The F-22 is nowhere near as stealthy. For one, it has that massive heat signatures from the engines- the F-117A has cooling jets to reduce the signature. It has a radar and gives off a big electromagnetic signature, and enemies can know there's an F-22 around from the radar signature. The shape, while stealthy, is not perfect at all and is only moderately stealthy to radar. And it carries just 8 missiles.

Layarteb wrote:

Stealth matters: the F-22 is much less visible to other aircraft, BUT IT IS STILL VISIBLE ON RADAR, much like the way the B-52 Stratofortress is very visible but a B-1 Lancer is LESS visible.

The F-117A is slow (sub-Mach 1), carries no gun, has no radar (it can only pick up fighters with IR sensors maybe 5 miles away), and carries maybe two reasonable-sized laser-guided bombs.

The F-22 is nowhere near as stealthy. For one, it has that massive heat signatures from the engines- the F-117A has cooling jets to reduce the signature. It has a radar and gives off a big electromagnetic signature, and enemies can know there's an F-22 around from the radar signature. The shape, while stealthy, is not perfect at all and is only moderately stealthy to radar. And it carries just 8 missiles.

Actually the F-22 is listed as stealthy as the B-2, which is a little stealthier than the F-117. The radar for the F-22 is an LPI radar that actually doesn't give a huge EM signature. By the time an enemy would detect the F-22 it would be within Sidewinder range. It is excellent acceleration and superior agility so in air combat the F-22 is utterly superior. Though it can only carry 2x 1,000 lb. or 8x 250 lb. bombs, the F-22 can penetrate the same targets that the F-117 could penetrate. If the F-22 is supersonic though this is negated. Any "stealth" weapon or aircraft, when supersonic is no longer stealthy. For example, the SR-71 is actually a very stealthy design but because it moves faster than Mach 3, it generates a lot of friction and has a huge heat signature, which is actually visible on radar with certain bandwidths as I understand it. The key thing to note here is the speed. A stealthy missile, for example, won't be if it is burning past Mach 1.

Layarteb wrote:The one thing to remember for any revolution is it's success depends on three absolutely crucial elements. Unless all three are present the chances of success are slim to nil and I'll explain why but first the elements.

1. Widespread & popular disapproval, suffering, etc. by the people (aka the masses)
2. Support by the societal elites (i.e. intellectuals)
3. Support of the military

Now if any one of these elements are not present it'll just be put down or it will be something different than a revolution.

>> If you have no support for the elites, the revolutionary masses will mostly be disorganized and flounder out, splinter apart, etc.
>> If you don't have support of the military it's just getting put down by the military
>> If you don't have support of the masses it's just a coup (if it's the military) or just a replacement of leadership (military + elites)

Classic examples of revolutions to really study and learn from are Iran in 1979, Nicaragua, Russia, and even Cuba. The ultimate, classical revolution is of course the French Revolution. Granted three out of the four are communist revolutions, each and every one had these three key and crucial elements. You can certainly have successful revolutions without total support of these three elements so the key thing here to note is while this is the most common, there are many revolutionary theories and no single theory can explain every revolution. Take, for example, the American Revolution. The second criteria was fulfilled quite early on and they created a military for number three. However, the people were split on thirds. One third were absolutely for it, another third against it, and the last third were largely apathetic either way. Yet it succeeded quite handsomely.

This is just a little snippet that goes into this and I hope it helps.

Layarteb wrote:I don't know if this is useful but I gave a small post about revolutionary theory and what not here:

viewtopic.php?p=609559#p609559

Layarteb wrote:The one thing to remember for any revolution is it's success depends on three absolutely crucial elements. Unless all three are present the chances of success are slim to nil and I'll explain why but first the elements.

1. Widespread & popular disapproval, suffering, etc. by the people (aka the masses)
2. Support by the societal elites (i.e. intellectuals)
3. Support of the military

Now if any one of these elements are not present it'll just be put down or it will be something different than a revolution.

>> If you have no support for the elites, the revolutionary masses will mostly be disorganized and flounder out, splinter apart, etc.
>> If you don't have support of the military it's just getting put down by the military
>> If you don't have support of the masses it's just a coup (if it's the military) or just a replacement of leadership (military + elites)

Classic examples of revolutions to really study and learn from are Iran in 1979, Nicaragua, Russia, and even Cuba. The ultimate, classical revolution is of course the French Revolution. Granted three out of the four are communist revolutions, each and every one had these three key and crucial elements. You can certainly have successful revolutions without total support of these three elements so the key thing here to note is while this is the most common, there are many revolutionary theories and no single theory can explain every revolution. Take, for example, the American Revolution. The second criteria was fulfilled quite early on and they created a military for number three. However, the people were split on thirds. One third were absolutely for it, another third against it, and the last third were largely apathetic either way. Yet it succeeded quite handsomely.

This is just a little snippet that goes into this and I hope it helps.

If it's a topic we'd like to explore I could make something far more formal.