W3C Goals (Little Upsilon)

Though this would probably belong in the suggestions section, I think in this case the theme of the topic transcends the subject.

W3C has long stated that that monetary levels and military forces are unrealistically high in proportion to population. Most of their efforts that get players up in arms are the direct result of attempts to bring down those factors. This has been a continuous process since SC has been around.

What W3C needs to realize are 3 things in my estimation.

1. The use of extra-economic means to reduce game cash are exremely unsatisfactory to players: namely, Enterprise Tax and Financial Fees for game cash levels.
Both represent a form of deus ex machina that are not realistic.
Who is the Enterprise Tax paid to?
A soverneign nation pays fees to banks for having cash reserves?

2. The only means to reduce game cash and profitability in relation to population, while adhering to any notion of realism, is to reduce the potential profitability per worker of corporations.
Corporations are the wealth creating engines of SC. To reduce Game Cash to "realistic" levels, in a given time period, the only place to do so is through the corporation game mechanics.
Simply "taxing" player profits at the country or enterprise level is unrealistic and annoying.

3. W3C wrongly concludes that the limiting factors of military forces in the real world are economic. They are not.
The factors that limit military forces today and throughout most of the 20th Century have been human.
I will explain.
Why doesn't the US field 100,000 modern combat aircraft today?
Is it simply impossible to produce or pay for such a force?
No. It is not.
The limiting factor is the number of individuals who are both willing and capable of piloting modern combat aircraft.
I won't get into a long history lesson here, but one only need examine the history of modern warfare to confirm this fact. Germany had more aircraft in 1945 than 1941. The same is true of Japan. The lack of qualified pilots was what crippled their air forces.

Some time I will put a long post in Suggestions about how SC might structure military units to accurately reflect manpower requirements (miltaries are not composed of llw and mlm). Here, however, I will simply point out that the way to limit the size of forces in SC is not through econcomics, but through population.

In short, it would be entirely appropriate for W3C to determine that in a country of 50 million pop, only 50,000 potential military pilots exist, only 10,000 of them would qualify as fighter pilots, and only 5,000 of those would qualify as naval aviators.

That is the realistic way to limit SC militaries.

Trying to create economic conditions that limit forces is fruitless and unrealistic.

Estimation of point 1, Unknown
point 2, incorrect.
point 3, incorrect.

It is possible to train and field more pilots than W3C has players who know the answers. ;)

Dunno Bob, seems to me with incentives you could vastly increase or decrease the number of available pilots or military specialists of any kind.
I agree with your principle line of thought though.

The availability of astronauts (crucial for your space program) would also be another example.

Reducing the number of weapons in general is an old issue.
this applies not only to aircraft but to all weapons.

Today, the numbers are much smaller than they used to be. we had wars with millions of weapons.
we have reduced and want to reduce more.

when we reduced the size of mil. units by 10% there was a lot of shouting. but we want to do so again and again.
this will reduce the cost of war. just smaller numbers of weapons and smaller numbers destroyed in each attack.

this will also reduce shortages.

Your view on this might be correct but in Simcountry, it will be hard to implement while we have good alternatives to achieve the same.

Actually, Tom, that was the point of this conversation: to perhaps come up with some ways to acomplish that goal while adding some realism to the war game.

@CC. I was preparing another one of my Master's theses responses, but I know that you don't need to be spoon fed.

So let me respond with a hypothetical question.

If you were take your average 18 year old British male and train him at football, how long would it take until he was ready to play for Manchester United?

Think your answer through and I believe you will see what I'm getting at.

The same would apply to combat pilots, spec ops troops, divisional commanders, submarine skippers, or any other elite group of warriors.

CC?
Time is exactly what I'm not getting about it. In WWII time was critical ie; America sacrificing bomber crews for German fighter kills, and Japan not using combined forces, then sacrificing pilots.

Time is relative in war, in peace you can train what you want to afford for your airforce, each pilot has to have several mechanics and other support.

In SC you can buy 1 million people and toss them in high quality aircraft. It doesn't seem realistic to tie a limit based on a % of the total pop, when the total can unrealisticly be manipulated.

Combat experience is missing, it should be an added feature rather than a simulated nerf. I would aslo review pay scales for officers, add high level worker officers and re-adjust who supports what unit.

Population limit can be done by adding soldiers and officers to the employment lists (change profesion and priorities) seperating them from workers. This could give freedom to add retraining features for workers.

LSix, ya just rubbed my fur backward with your wording, nothing personal, good ideas.

Make Soldiers and Officers their own worker groups with their own education priorities?

CC as in Crafty Cockney.

The answer to the hypothetical: an average 18 year old British male could be trained forever and would never be able to play for Manchester United. He simply does not possess the abilities to perform at that level. No amount of training is going to turn him into a professional athlete.

The rest should be self explanatory.

@John: What I was thinking about was an attempt to have military units reflect actual military professions translated into SimCountry terms. The notion that soldiers, marines, airmen, and sailors are low level workers doesn't make sense even in SC.

A LLW would represent what in real life terms?
A worker whose training propably consists of a few hours or days of supervised OJT.
"You want fries with that?"
That isn't meant to be derogatory to those who work is such positions. A person is not their occupation, however, how does the game translate?

An Infantry Private receives several months of intensive 24/7 training before he has the basic skill set to join a unit and begin his real training.
This would translate into perhaps a MLW? An occupation requiring several months of extensive training and perhaps a certification or liscensing? Say a commercial truck driver or mechanic in civilian terms?

Our private would continue the training process through E3 and E4 over the course of the next couple of years, at which point he would be expected to master the complete skill set of a Combat Infantryman. This would translate well as a HLW. An occupation requiring extensive and extended training or apprenticeship without necessarily formalized schooling. Say an electrician or machinist, or perhaps an administrative type?

Assuming our private has demonstated basic proficiencies and kept his nose clean, he would given further formal training preparatory to promotion to NonCommissioned rank, a Sergeant. At this point, he would be a LLM. His training and responsibilities would continue as he progressed through the NCO grades, reflecting advancement through MLM, and finally HLM, at which level of training I would consider comparable to Command Sergeant Major.

These are the enlisted men at the bottom of the military heirarchy in the widest, least exclusive MOS: the ground pounding grunt.

Translate now the more technically oriented MOS's found in the Army, much less Air Force or Naval service. Some of these kids undergo a couple of years training just to learn the fundamentals of their military specialties. Translating these as HLW or HTE would not be unreasonable at all.

A junior officer has earned a formal 4 year degree as well as a master's level of military training before he ever gets turned loose on the troops. A MLM out the gate. Depending on his field, he may even has a thorough technical background as well. HTE?

Are we getting the point?

To replicate an Infantry Division translated into SC terms, we might get a manpower breakdown like this:
2000 MLW
4000 HLW
4000 LLM
2500 MLM
500 HLM
12 Exec
1000 HTE
480 HTS
8 HTX
400 Nurse
75 Doctors
25 Senior Docs

These numbers aren't meant to be hard and fast, but merely representative of a realistic approach to equating actual levels of skill and training into game terms.

A military unit should resemble a corporation in its personel requirements.

Imagine what a Nuclear Powered Aircraft Carrier's crew might look like. Care to take a guess at how many man-years of training that represents?

So we get to my intial line of thinking that the best, most realistic way to bring down the size of game military forces would be to interject some of the realities that actual militaries face. Getting qualified people being one of the biggest.

Synicus, it occurs to me that you probably aren't going to get what I was talking about in regards to pilots, so I'll give you the long version.

Most people do not have the physical and mental attributes to pilot aircraft in combat. Simple fact.

Sure, many more could trained to get off the ground, fly from here to there, and set in down without killing themselves, but that is a far, far cry from being a combat pilot.

The WWII examples I'm using are due to the fact that it was the most documented conflict in which extensive records were kept and then later analyzed by sholars whose findings where publicly published. The trends noted actually continued through later conflicts as well, and were documented and analyzed, but the findings were not so publicly aired.

The shortage of skilled pilots was a major issue for every major combatant in WWII. It not a question of training, but rather some rather umexplainable facts that apllied to everyone.
1. Less than half of all combat pilots, the elite of the pilot pool who where assigned to fighters, ever scored an air to air kill. This was a long war, it wasn't due to lack of oppotunity.

2. Only 10% of that half became aces, 5 or more kills.

3. Aces accounted for over 80% of all kills.

The conclusions of analysts and military historians?
1. 5% of the elite pilots who become fighter aces do all the killing. Everyone else is camoflage for their own aces or targets for the other sides aces.

2. Their is no explaining what makes an ace. Training does not factor in. The only commonality found between the aces of all nations were the following:
-They tended to be shorter than average.
-They tended to have lighter colored eyes, blue or grey
-They tended to have more daughters than sons.
And that is it.

These trends continue to the present day, although modern militaries don't advertise these facts.

The Soviets in WWII went so far as to gather their aces together in special Guards Squadrons and use them where they needed to achieve local air superiority.
The Luftwaffe had to be very careful engaing Soviet formations until they were sure they weren't facing one of the lethal groups.

Further evidence accumulated when all nations reached the point when they had to start training men who didn't have the natural aptitude for flight. On the Alled side, flight training was extended countinuously to try to compensate for lower quality of pilot that was going out to the fleets or over to Europe. It was never solved.

The Axis faced a tougher challenge. Fuel shortages required them to cut back on pilot training to the point that the Luftwaffe lost more aircraft to accidents in the latter stages of the war than to combat action. For the Japanese results, Google The Great Marianas Turkey Shoot.

The point being, Synicus, that a combat pilot is a rare breed.

The numbers of aircraft that SimCounties field is one of the extremely unrealistic aspects of the war game. A country could field quite a few cannon fodder divisions if forced to, and quite a few have, but putting fodder in aircraft produces only statistics.

Therefore, a seemingly arbitrary cap on airforces would have at least a justification based in reality, as opposed to god knows what W3C might do the economic game to try to limit game militaries.

How about the Malta's of the world?

How many troops can a nation station on the tiny island of Malta? Apply this to Simcountry.

Population size and armed forces size should have a direct relationship.

Large Population country = Large armed forces potential size

Malta popultation size country = Small size armed forces

Linebacker

What about line of supply? Any ideas in this area?

That's my point, Maestro.

Given any size population, it's only going to have so many of the individuals that have proven to be chokepoints to miltary expansion.

Combat pilots are a huge one, but so are competent senior commanders. Put a crack division under the command of an idiot and its loses effectiveness dramatically.

If you want a really dramatic example of that. Do a little research on Goring's Luftwaffefelddivisionen. They were some of the most lavishly equipped divsions the 3rd Reich ever fielded and disintegrated on contact with regular Soviet forces.

What W3C is doing now in terms of LOSC is interesting, but probably making things more complicated for their servers than they need to be.

Supply units simulate lines of supply and communication and attacking them would theoretically shut down field units, but the time scale is a little off for that to be truly effective. Furthermore, simply creating masses of these units negates that tactic.

It does soak up bodies and move in the direction of getting to that 10-15:1 ratio of support to combat personnel that is a halmark of modern miltaries.

For now, of all the changes the war game is begging for to get up to par with the econ model, supply units are probably one of last things I would change.

They aren't terribly realistic, but a step in the right direction.

I was thinking line of supply on a more global basis. Country to country.

Supplying your troops in an adjacent country vs supply your troops in a country several countries away. Perhaps there should be some kind of morale modifier for distance from home base. (Distance from secure main country)

I look at the German/Soviet campaign in sheer numbers. The Germans and their allies were spread to thin. Their supply lines were spread too thin.

Play Hearts of Iron and see how difficult it is to beat the Soviets.

Ok Maestro. First point.

Getting supplies in theater is by ship or rail( if possible). Once in theater, they move my truck unless we are lucky enough to have rail available.

Trying to supply modern armored forces by air is like trying to kill flies with lawsuits.

That's the real world.

Until/ unless W3C makes some major changes like seaborne invasion, this probably the only supply system we're going to have.

Morale can be factored into a wargame.

Second point.

Yes and no. Yes. That's where the real European part of WWII was fought. No. It wasn't so much a lack of mass or combat power on any particular front. Yes. Those long supply line didn't help the Axis powers, but since Germany captured the Soviet rail system pretty much intact, it wasn't too big of a factor.

The Eastern Front was a complicated situation as there were really three separate campaigns going on simultaneously. Four if you count operations in the Axis rear areas.

Army Group North, Army Group Center, and Army Group South were not coordinated into any sort of coherent, unified campaign. That was pure Hitler. Constantly switching effort from one area to another without giving any one enough support to make a decisive breakthrough.

Stalingrad was the real turning point that sealed Germany's fate. Too much was lost in that slaughterhouse that couldn't be replaced. It was all Soviet mass after that point.

The Soviets paid dearly for every yard of ground they took back, but Hitler just wouldn't let any of his Generals operate independently. Until Kursk, tt was more Hitler not winning, than the Soviets losing. Understand?

After Kursk, there was no stopping Zhukov.

Well, to add to LineBacker's point on supply by rail, look on the bright side.


We already have train tracks, we only need the trains that operate on them.

Glass half full.

lol L6,
The long version proved my point, thanks.

The Malta's of the world, often also have island size economies, just sayin. Hawaii for instance could field more military than an independant island of simular size and population. We have to consider transfers from empires.

L6

Should have taken out Turkey, Iraq, split Iran before the big show. (A 12 month delay)

India would get there independence and Australia would have fallen.

Take Suez from 2 sides.

Saudi Arabia falls to Axis powers.

Great Britian sues for "Bitter Piece"

The world would be a different place today.

You half way re-inforced my point Linebacker. An electrician (high level worker) in general would be more than happy to have his salary, free-time, perks etc doubled or trebled to work on Tornados, radar systems or working 6 months a time at sea, with an ever bigger bonus for being in a combat zone, guaranteed death/injury compensation etc.
This applies from the bottom rung to the top EXCEPT you say there are only a certain percentage of the population that could actually make a combat pilot as opposed to an aviator.
I have to bow to your much greater knowledge and experience in this area. The only thing I would have you consider is that your data and stats come from many years ago. ALOT has changed since then. Fighters are fly-by-wire, focusing the pilots skill set somewhat differently, for example, weaponry is self aiming, point shoot and forget stuff. I'm sure you could make a far longer list than me.

Oh, and dont forget, it is now rightly accepted that the fairer of the species are as competent as the men. Yay! for the first UK female combat pilot flying combat missions over Libya.

CC. a solid point about the expansion of females into the pool.

However, as counter-intuitive as it may be, with advance in technology, the demands on the pilot increase, not decrease. The pool is continuously shrinking, not growing.

Crafty, I have to come back to the sports anaolgies. How many Beckhams or players of caliber are there in a given population?

Civilians might thinkt its arrogant to compare underpayed, anonymous servicemen to the rich, elite athletes of the world; however, the numbers of each are comparable.

I completed both the US Army's Ranger Course and Special Forces Q course. However, I know with 100% certainty that I would not have survived SEAL training or the courses to become a resue swimmer. How do I know that? I have learned through my experience that I lack that certain type of stamina to function while hypothermic. That single limitation would have prevented me serving in either role. Not a question of training or desire, just cold, hard reality. I could have trained for a thousand years and never have been able to land an F-14 on a carrier at night. I don't have the intuitive spacial senses required of a pilot. Just a fact. Very few people do.

Many of you have no doubt at least heard of the training programs throughout the world's militaries that have washout rates of 50-95%. Why do you think that is? Why do so many fail? Are they weak pansies that just can't cut it? No. They are dedicated, capable human beings pushed beyond their physical and mental capabilities, because the demands of the job are that tough.

Back to your first point, Crafty, regarding the theoretical electrician.What you say is perfectly logical in a civilian context; however, it just doesn't mesh with reality. AVF, volunteer militaries, have have had to spend increasingly larger sums on recruiting and retention efforts just to maintain their force requirements.
This is a quiet crisis in the US military today.
Applying the incentives you outlined in your first paragraph will increase the number of volunteers to a small degree, but nowhere near on a linear basis.

I can use a civilian example to highlight this.
1n 2003, after the conquest of Iraq, Western, civilian truck drivers were recruited to work in Iraq. The pay scales to get civilians into a war zone worked out to 10 to 12 times market wages. Let me say that again. The financial inducements to get US civilian truck drivers to work in Irag was $350-650K in a field where these men earned $35-50K.

As to increasing female employment in traditionally male military occupations, that is ironclad evidence of exactly the manpower shortages that I am talking about.
As un-PC as it may be, females, though an incredibly wonderful, capable half of the human population, are more expensive to militaries than their male counterparts. Women have and do provide heroic service to their nations in military service, but their very presence in increasing numbers verifies just how hard it's getting to find male recruits.

But, all this wonderful discussion comes back to the original question: How do we reduce military forces in the game without resorting to economic histrionics?

At Maestro, the historical What If's are fun theoretical exercises, but we should probably take that discussion to another thread.

Start one, and I'd be happy to trade BS with you.
;:

Dawn of dog fighting, wash out rates of wash outs, civilians in desert war zones...

The intent of the discussion is to rephrase the question: How do we reduce military forces in game to realisticly reflect on population and economics?

Your making progress considering your decloration is now a question. ;)