Nationstates Military Realism Consultation Thread No. 6
What is this thread?
This is a thread where we discuss how to make militaries realistic. If you have questions, feel free to ask: in ninety-five% of cases you'll get an answer on the same page. Sometimes more than one. If you have something to contribute please do, although please don't spout garbage over the thread.
Just be aware that anything you do post is open to criticism. If you don't like that, don't post. This is a discussion thread. We discuss things.
What is realism?
Of course, nobody can expect to portray exactly what would happen in the scenarios we're envisaging. There are so many conditions that models are very hard to produce. So maybe realism is a bad word. What we can use instead is Authenticity. We want things to look as if they could be real, not necessarily be real itself. In other words, it has to look, sound, and be believable.
Why are some things not realistic?
(1) The first and obvious answer is they are just straight up departures from reality. Tanks that weight two-hundred tons, an Army with twenty-percent of the country's population, ships a kilometre long, etc etc. This thread can help with that, but broadly speaking – if it has been tried before and failed, or never tried before and clearly very different from anything in real life, it's probably not realistic/authentic.
(2) The second most common reason is that they are tropes. A trope is a frequently recurring literary/rhetorical/plot tool that appears many many times in the broad scope of media. We can call it a meme too. And I say media, because it is media only. Let me tell you this: anything you saw in a film, in an anime, or read in a fiction book at any one time should not be considered applicable for realism. If it is a historical fact or a historical trend, it is much more likely to be realistic. We want our posts and our imaginary militaries to feel as if they could really exist. That's why it's a realism thread.
(3) The third most common reason is doing things which are obviously a bad idea according to contemporary thinking. Building battleships in 1940 is not a bad idea according to the people who ran the show then. Building a wooden ship would have been. Generally speaking, any plot device that has an obvious and powerful flaw that has to stay for a contrived reason is diabola ex machina (or deus ex machina) and it makes seeing something as realistic virtually impossible.
Who hosts the thread?
The next thread host will be selected via nomination in the ordinary manner when the thread approaches closing.
Useful links
I'll try to make a compendium of useful links here. Feel free to post any; I will start with the ones on the previous thread. PLEASE contribute to this!
Naval
Naval weapons & technology page
Naval resources page
Air
Ground
Doctrine
TO&E
UK TOEs
very helpful TOE listings
Soviet MR Division structure
Soviet MR Regiment structure
Technology
Nuclear stuff
Effects of Nuclear Weapons (Federation of American Scientists)
EMP Effects of Nuclear Weapons (Federation of American Scientists)
Effects of Nuclear Weapons (Princeton University [pdf])
Other
Wargaming Combat Resolution Model
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