SDN World 3 Rules Discussion Thread

[Norade]

I figured that having a thread for rules discussion would be a good idea as I had a question and was unsure which thread to place it in.

I thought I had a question on starting militaries, but after a quick fact check I realized that most nations do not actively militarize a full percent of their populations let alone a potential 2.5% as my idea would have made a possability.

[Steve]

To define the intent of starting Military, it modifies your active duty Army as shown in Army Focus. If you have a 3 in Army and a 3 in SML, you'd have a 600,000 man Standing Army. Generally respectable by European standards.

If, OTOH, you have a SML score of 2, then you'd have 360,000 men in your standing army and 240,000 would be an active reserve. Gendarmes, garrison and fortress divisions, etc, soldiers who aren't entirely up to Regular standards and who are fixed in place because they're primarily militia, reservists, and draftees guarding a particular spot in your nation. (They may not even be available for use in colonial garrisons, or only marginal availability, to reflect things like France being barred by law from using conscript forces outside of Metropolitan France).

The latter are a tad of a risk, depending upon the size of your country and potential threats, because the smaller your Regular Army, the more you're reliant upon reserves - active and inactive, the latter drawn from combing Economy and Infrastructure scores and multiplying by 2 for a percentage of population number - that require mobilization and thus a deal of time to bring into service. You could end up like historical Poland in September 1939, where the Germans overran key towns and cities that served as mobilization points, preventing the Poles from effectively resisting the invasion.

[Ma Deuce]

I have a few questions myself before I post my definitive points score; below is my preliminary so far. I obviously can't raise home territory, and I'm not pushing population larger than 1 (OTL, Madagascar had about 3 million inhabitants at this point in time, though my backstory explains the bigger population for my game nation). Also, I don't really want to set my army and air all the way to 5 (well, maybe air), but having an island nation of 25 million field one of the biggest standing armies in the world seems a little much. Is there any way to spend leftover points on something else, or do you have to discard them if you choose not to take spend them all on the areas below?

Also, how exactly does the standing military limit affect forces other than the Army?

Population:1
Home Territory: 2
Colonial Territory: 1
Industry: 3
Economy: 3
Infrastructure: 4
Standing Military Limit: 3
Naval Focus: 2 (+1)
Army Focus: 3
Air Focus: 5

Second, has there been a final decision on what tonnage limits we're going to use for navies based on industry and focus score? Are we going to keep the ones still listed in the wiki, or are we going with say, Thanas' suggestion or something similar? I've been holding off any serious design for my navy until I know for certain what I'm allowed to build and how much.

[Thanas]

I have a few questions myself before I post my definitive points score; below is my preliminary so far. I obviously can't raise home territory, and I'm not pushing population larger than 1 (OTL, Madagascar had about 3 million inhabitants at this point in time, though my backstory explains the bigger population for my game nation). Also, I don't really want to set my army and air all the way to 5 (well, maybe air), but having an island nation of 25 million field one of the biggest standing armies in the world seems a little much. Is there any way to spend leftover points on something else, or do you have to discard them if you choose not to take spend them all on the areas below?

Also, how exactly does the standing military limit affect forces other than the Army?

Steve and I were discussing that it might affect your military industry, for example that with a 1 or two you might face certain penalties if you rapidly mobilize.

[Steve]

I have a few questions myself before I post my definitive points score; below is my preliminary so far. I obviously can't raise home territory, and I'm not pushing population larger than 1 (OTL, Madagascar had about 3 million inhabitants at this point in time, though my backstory explains the bigger population for my game nation). Also, I don't really want to set my army and air all the way to 5 (well, maybe air), but having an island nation of 25 million field one of the biggest standing armies in the world seems a little much. Is there any way to spend leftover points on something else, or do you have to discard them if you choose not to take spend them all on the areas below?

Also, how exactly does the standing military limit affect forces other than the Army?

Steve and I were discussing that it might affect your military industry, for example that with a 1 or two you might face certain penalties if you rapidly mobilize.

Yes. I PMed Thanas with the concept that a lower SML also means that your capacity for producing military equipment, at least Army and Air Force, is reduced to reflect your Standing Army is smaller and thus you don't need as much active machinery and plants to maintain arsenal and warehouse stocks. Thus when mobilizing or at least trying to expand your forces you must spend time and money hiring and training manpower to manage and work the defense plants, you have to take the machine toolings themselves out of storage and refurbish them for resuming production, etc.

I may permit some relief of this if you get a nation or ally that buys arms from you, thus keeping that machinery equipment and those plants in use despite your army and air force not needing that production for peacetime maintenance, but I'm not sure that'll work well and we all seem to be going for some self-sufficiency anyway....

As for fleets, we're generally leading to a pure tonnage cap only for starting fleet. We are also developing a system for a player having shipyards with repair docks and construction docks which means you have a finite capacity for building ships of various tonnages or repairing them. That means this won't be Victoria or HOI2 where you can build 20 dreadnoughts at a time if it suits your fancy.

[Steve]

[Uncle Chan]One more thing![/Uncle Chan]

Ma Deuce has a point. I'm pondering if the force size relevant to Army Focus should perhaps be a percentage of the population, not a fixed "so many hundreds of thousands of men" number.

We'd need to decide on which percentage each Army Focus level should have. SML would then determine how much of that is Regular Army and how much, if below 3, would have to be Active Reserve.

[Thanas]

I would be very wary of such a thing - more number crunching.

[Siege]

I'm with Thanas on this one; please let's not make this any more complicated than it needs to be...

[Norseman]

I agree as well, I really want to avoid number crunching.

[Norade]

Well it is one more little bit of math that can be done quickly with a calculator, but the real issue I was thinking of is that it might be hard to set the percentages exactly. The US has a large military for their population size and it is only 0.5% of their population where as China has a larger number but only 0.25% enlisted. With our numbers that could lead to 0 = 0%, 1 = 0.1%, and so on for starting forces.

[Thanas]

You already have resever forces coming out of the population. However, general population is a very poor baseline for the size of an army, for example compare Prussia, China and Britain.

[Norade]

Very true, just trying to make a suggestion to keep things easier for smaller nations rules wise.

[Thanas]

Hmmm. I don't know if such a modification does not accomplish the exact opposite. for example, an army focus of 5 allows a small nation to become a modern-day Prussia. If we would use population percentages, that would not be the case, for even a 25mil population country with a 10% mobilization would never stand up to a 110 mil country with only 3% mobilization. Thus, the current standing army limits are a bit more fair IMO.

[Norade]

Very true, I had never considered that.

[Steve]

All good points as well. Though I think we should find a way so that even nations with higher SML can field Garrison forces and such without sacrificing Regulars (below 3 SML you have to sacrifice Regulars). Historically a lot of countries had active reserve formations of a kind - stuff like gendarmes or conscript forces that were limited to defensive uses, maintaining order during emergency situations, etc. - and the SML system doesn't seem to fully reflect that.

I suppose I could just ballpark it, or alternatively we let a player have, say, a quarter or a half of his reserve percentage as active reserves if he's a 3 SML or higher (below 3 your military plants aren't expansive enough to support such). I want to keep things below numbercrunchyness without making things so abstract it's all subjective.

Or I can just drop it. *shrug*

[Thanas]

Meh. I mean, you are not likely to have those forces all in one place anyway. Some of them are always assigned to Garrisons for training, R&R purposes etc.

I mean, every military has its barracks.

[Steve]

Meh. I mean, you are not likely to have those forces all in one place anyway. Some of them are always assigned to Garrisons for training, R&R purposes etc.

I mean, every military has its barracks.

Indeed.

[Norseman]

Question: If I have some ships that were laid down in 1923 and won't (indeed can't) be commissioned before 1926, do they count as part of my current fleet listing?

Also if I have ships that were laid down in 1915 do they count as ten years old for the "half the fleet must be at least ten years old" rule?

[Norade]

Do transports count as ships for our purposes? For example if I wanted to lay down something like the RMS Olympic would that cost my starting fleet tonnage? The same question extends to destroyer tenders as well as tenders for transport ships as well.

Also what is this about a half of the fleet must be built before 1915? If I have the tonnage to build the ships that I want shouldn't that be enough? Doing a run down of my fleet listing assuming a construction time of 3 years for all ships over 20kt and a 2 year time for all ships under 20kt I could build up my planned forces with my level of industry even if most projects started in 1916 or earlier.

[Steve]

Question: If I have some ships that were laid down in 1923 and won't (indeed can't) be commissioned before 1926, do they count as part of my current fleet listing?

Also if I have ships that were laid down in 1915 do they count as ten years old for the "half the fleet must be at least ten years old" rule?

No and yes.

A ship in construction will be reflected by a cost in industrial points from game-start quarter to construction completion and by taking up yardspace.

Do transports count as ships for our purposes? For example if I wanted to lay down something like the RMS Olympic would that cost my starting fleet tonnage? The same question extends to destroyer tenders as well as tenders for transport ships as well.

My initial idea was that the tonnage limit was for full combat ships only, but you pose an interesting question. We may permit so many tons of military auxiliaries like troop transports, colliers/oilers, and tenders.

Also what is this about a half of the fleet must be built before 1915? If I have the tonnage to build the ships that I want shouldn't that be enough? Doing a run down of my fleet listing assuming a construction time of 3 years for all ships over 20kt and a 2 year time for all ships under 20kt I could build up my planned forces with my level of industry even if most projects started in 1916 or earlier.

The point is that a fleet doesn't just spontaneously generate, nor does it go through a complete replacement cycle in the span of a few years short of, well, major losses in battles. It goes through generations instead, with ships getting shunted into lower-priority areas - where they're still useful - as they get older before being mothballed or decommissioned for sale or scrap (presuming they're not sold earlier). Ships rendered obsolete get entirely repurposed, like predreadnought battleships being shifted to provide naval fire support for land forces or battleships in the 40s being relegated as a whole to big escorts and fire support batteries for carriers and ground forces.

Point is, if you have a fleet, it's not all going to be less than 10 years old. As such, at least half your fleet must have been in commission since 1915.

[Norseman]

Question about buildtime for battleships. I have basically assumed that I will pay for the two years they stay in the slipway, but that the ship will need another 12-18 months after that again before it is fully ready. Which makes kind of sense in that a lot of what follows isn't so intensive in terms of industrial capacity, on the other hand... well...

This is doubly important since it directly affects how many ships I have and how long a period of time there was between each one being laid down.

[Steve]

I'm open to the idea of industrial posts cost declining about a third to a fourth of the way before commissioning, to reflect the ship has been physically completed and launched. OTOH, as I recall ships were often launched incomplete and still required final fitting out, thus consuming construction space.

This will be discussed.

[Dark Hellion]

Would we want to look into some type of abstract "military psychology" rules to reflect the fact that troops suffer from morale, that field commanders occasionally make mistakes, that some times things just don't go right and troops get discouraged or distracted chasing ghosts etc.

There should be obvious exceptions to this such as crack troops, indigent guerrillas who can live off the land, etc. but even a really basic abstraction would solve a lot of the problems I have noticed in previous STGODs, which is the assumption that troops simply do what told like an RTS.

[Norade]

I would like to say I second this, no troops should be perfect and orders can only be followed and understood so well.

[Steve]

I'd prefer to have such things RPed, with those failing to open to having it RPed for them. Assigning numbers to it is, IMHO, unnecessary.