While We Wait: Writer's Block & Other Lame Excuses

[Symphony D.]

Yeah, but that was nine years ago and a period of one silly decision after another. The whole premise of the NES was ridiculous but all the dumb and unrealistic projects were somehow in tone of the game and our relative ages back then. I doubt we'd see something of the like today. Still I liked the military accounting of that game. (anti-matter and NBC loaded satellites not included)

I'm gonna chalk that up to nostalgia because this:

Military:
Army: 991,080 Infantry, 147,000 Guardos Civiles, 175,000 Volunteers, 2,920 Tanks
Navy: 81 Destroyers, 28 Battleships, 17 Cruisers, 52 Subs, 17 Aircraft Carriers
Air Forces: 280 Bombers, 534 Interceptors, 695 fighters
Special/Strategic/Space Forces: 680 Special/50 Nuclear-tipped ICBMs/250 Space

Isn't actually very detailed, and large swathes of it are either totally meaningless or misrepresentative.

 

[Kozmos]

In what way? Lacking descriptive doctrines, detailed composition of forces and actual capabilities of listed hardware?

 

[Symphony D.]

What's a "sub?" Is that a Type IX U-boat or a Virginia-class? Let's narrow down time and nation; is it a Typoon-class or an Akula-class? What's a "fighter?" Is it a Fokker Dr.I or an F-22 Raptor?

At one point in time (let's say 1961) SAC fielded the B-47, B-50, B-52, and B-58 and had only just retired the B-36 and B-45. A cursory glance at these will reveal they are all incredibly different aircraft with incredibly different performances and operational characteristics. Should they all be labeled as "Bomber?"

In 1989, the average Soviet Category A division would be fielding a T-80 while a Category C unit would be fielding a T-55—the Russian Army is still fielding T-55s. A T-80 is at least twice as lethal as a T-55 and more likely 3-4 times as lethal. In the 1991 Gulf War, certain US units were still using heavily upgraded M60s, themselves just heavily upgraded M48s, while others were using M1A1s. But forget about it, they're all just "tanks."

What exactly does "991,080 infantry" mean? Does that mean actual infantrymen with guns who go out and shoot people? What is their support infrastructure like? How many people on average are necessary to support these direct-combat positions? In the actual US military of the year 2008, that number was 1:3, meaning it took 3 people for every 1 out doing the killing. So why is only something like 1/4 of the military listed on the stats? Why are Air Force and Navy personnel not listed? Suppose I want to pretend I'm George W. Bush and implement something like Blue-to-Green whereby I convert people from one service to another, or redesignate Military Police to "Security Forces" so I can use them as makeshift infantry. Well, I can't, because they don't exist.

What good is a discrete integer number of infantry anyway, when I don't know what the population of my country is? I know exactly how many men I have holding guns but I have no clue what my national population is, what my gender ratio is, and how many of those people are actually fit for military service, so I have no basis on which to establish troop call-ups or anything of that nature other than my own whims. How many of these listed assets are ready to go at any one time? What is my overall readiness? 100% all the time? That's incredible!

I could go on. (Do I have tankers? What is my ISR like?) I think you take my point that these stats aren't helpful to anyone who knows anything about any of this, nor are they realistic or even plausible.

This leads us to another interesting point, which is: what are and are not reasonable definitions of player expectations? My criteria are simple at first glance: I cannot fill your implementation full of holes in 5 minutes either using my own personal knowledge or a quick Google search. In actual practice, that sets a pretty high bar. I'm willing to compromise on things like the above because hey, I get it, not everyone cares about this stuff. But if I find myself going "That's stupid," every five minutes, I'm just not going to play somebody's game.

 

[North King]

Symphony, out of [genuine, since the plan is to eventually model this stuff] curiosity, what would your ideal modern military stats look like, and what would be an acceptable compromise between that and not having the whole statbar taken up by military stuff?

 

[Immaculate]

Symphony, out of [genuine, since the plan is to eventually model this stuff] curiosity, what would your ideal modern military stats look like, and what would be an acceptable compromise between that and not having the whole statbar taken up by military stuff?

I too would like to see a sample modern military stats section- lets say for the USA- including army, air, navy, cyber, space, etc...

From Sym D but also from anyone else who cares to take a crack at it.

 

[North King]

Incidentally -- why there are no modern NESes?

Probably because all and sundry NESes die on arrival and modern games get tried less often. It's not like there's a surplus of any one type floating around right now. The real question is why modern games get tried less often, and that is likely due more to the interests of the people here than anything else. Do note that this site draws in far more people interested in ancient history than modern, and that there is a similar slant in how history education is conducted up to and through university.

 

[erez87]

I think its because they are too big for a start. Starting a NES with over a hundred countries, most of which the MOD has to personally control, is hard. That's a reason I think fresh starts tend to last longer - they are easier the mod at the beginning.

 

[Lord of Elves]

I'm really confounded by all the people who are evidently interested in achieving some kind of true fidelity in stats to the actual conditions of, well, actual polities. I care so very little how accurate the stats are to the actual blood and sweat details of actual statecraft. In fact, I think the proposition is just about the best way to kill my interest in an NES.

Never Ending Stories not Never Ending Spreadsheets.

 

[erez87]

I'm really confounded by all the people who are evidently interested in achieving some kind of true fidelity in stats to the actual conditions of, well, actual polities. I care so very little how accurate the stats are to the actual blood and sweat details of actual statecraft. In fact, I think the proposition is just about the best way to kill my interest in an NES.

Never Ending Stories not Never Ending Spreadsheets.

That^ is my opinion for a fun NES. But you know, some people like the spreadsheets and detail I guess..

 

[Symphony D.]

Symphony, out of [genuine, since the plan is to eventually model this stuff] curiosity, what would your ideal modern military stats look like, and what would be an acceptable compromise between that and not having the whole statbar taken up by military stuff?

Well if we're just doing my pie-in-the-sky desires at this point, first of all let me say that stat-pages should be wholly eliminated. There are innumerable better ways of presenting information than these dumb stat blocks, and realistically the quantity of things that have to be to be simulated warn against using stat blocks anyway.

Suppose you are actually the immortal godlike non-Human entity that has been ruling this nation since time immemorial or the gestalt consciousness of the executive branch of government or the sum total embodiment of the zeitgeist of the nation or whatever (not explicitly defining the player's relation to their "character" is another thing NES has dragged its feet on for literally more than a decade) and you're sitting at your desk (?) one day and a crisis pops up on the other side of the world and you want to muck around in it.

What does Obama do when this happens? Well, he goes and talks to the Pentagon and says "What do we have in the region?" He does not go and consult a catalog that lists every last weapon system and munition the US Military holds on to to create a custom response package to that crisis. (Set aside the fact that having the player's role undefined means that by some peoples' definitions, Obama would go talk to himself in some weird puppet show because they're all played by the same guy.) The Pentagon has various units that do various things and consist of various pieces of hardware. That hardware is important in terms of what it can do, but it's the unit that makes it happen.

You might initially be thinking "So divisions and air wings." No. Because that runs into the same problem of lacking any kind of granularity as to what those things contain.

So to return to my wish list, you should probably imagine something like a Paradox Map, wherein military forces are actual discrete things located in space rather than smeared across the national aether. These are attached to an Order of Battle, which nobody has to my knowledge ever attempted to implement across the board, down to the Divisional or Brigade level (former earlier in time, latter later in time). You go and you grab units based on regional commands or however your military is setup or based on specialty or whatever the circumstance calls for and they go and they do whatever it is you have tasked them with.

In actual practice, this probably means that control of a lot of the military should actually be out of player hands, and that the military would be akin to a faction within government like a political party, with that nation's history and values and traditions determining how much the military listens to the political apparatus or does its own thing or whatever (maybe compare the US Military, PLA, and Indonesian Army for different ideas of how this could look). Incidentally, this would give more value to military reforms and reorganizations than "make mans shoot better" because there would be all these response systems to tinker around with.

Realistically, a player should never have to count up how many guns they have. But that doesn't mean nobody should. Within each of those discrete units on the map there should be a counter of every last gun and bomb they possess. You could cheat and skip this, just giving the unit a net version of what QJM calls "Operational Lethality Index," but the math exists for actually computing it so me personally, I would say actually go and compute it. Actually computing it would mean that if a player really wanted to, they could click on that unit on the map and get its information (or more realistically, since the idea of interactive maps has been kicked around for years and years and nobody cares about that either, open a spreadsheet) right down to how many Makarovs or Berettas it has. Some people would be more into it than others and they would have that operational flexibility to go in and tinker with their stuff as part of their national policy, but they wouldn't have to.

All of this would be hooked into outside variables. For example, say you have a volunteer force, like the US does. It's not actually steady-state in size: people are joining and leaving all the time. You could compute force attrition and recruitment rates (based on... what? National mood? Military benefits? All kinds of fiddly variables you could add in here) to give a total force size that doesn't end in "0" and is actually attached to other things that are going on.

Or we could just continue making it all up as we go because that's a lot of work, which is why we haven't done it, even though it would be easier on everyone once it was actually done and produce a better experience. But if you're going to make things up, don't involve numbers at all, they just complicate things and make it easier for people to call you on having made things up.

To summarize, either go "simulationist," or go "storyist," and never betwixt should the two meet, because compromise makes no one happy.

I'm really confounded by all the people who are evidently interested in achieving some kind of true fidelity in stats to the actual conditions of, well, actual polities. I care so very little how accurate the stats are to the actual blood and sweat details of actual statecraft. In fact, I think the proposition is just about the best way to kill my interest in an NES.

Never Ending Stories not Never Ending Spreadsheets.

Some people don't like Alien Space Bats and not everybody has the same interests. I know this is a shocking revelation.

 

[Lord of Elves]

To be perfectly frank or whatever, I basically have no interest in an NES that requires me to maintain spreadsheets to do the business of playing a country/etc, and that's not going to change any time soon. It's just not worth the effort to me. This may not be true for many other people, but I find that this kind of statement is usually followed by belittling jabs about people who can't do math or people who are just lazy and stupid.

Even so, I think a certain silent majority shares this sentiment.

EDIT: As soon as you start railing against the established system of the player's relationship to the country ("gestalt consciousness" "sum of the zeitgeist," whatever) my hand is already against you.

 

[Symphony D.]

To be perfectly frank or whatever, I basically have no interest in an NES that requires me to maintain spreadsheets to do the business of playing a country/etc, and that's not going to change any time soon.

You go and you grab units based on regional commands or however your military is setup or based on specialty or whatever the circumstance calls for and they go and they do whatever it is you have tasked them with.

I want you to read this. I want you to re-read it. I want you to go back and read the material around it. Once you have read and comprehended it, you will understand that I am arguing people should not have to deal with spreadsheets directly if they don't want to. In fact, I am arguing that people should not have to pretend to play general like they know what a military expeditionary force should consist of. If anything, I am in fact arguing that primacy should be given to the political, because players could be (if they wanted) divested of the role of military planning and organization.

You would know that if you had bothered to read what I had written. I think it is evident you have not. Try reading it again.

EDIT: As soon as you start railing against the established system of the player's relationship to the country ("gestalt consciousness" "sum of the zeitgeist," whatever) my hand is already against you.

Or just flippantly dismiss it based on your own preconceived notions. If you would please, define for me what the player's relationship to the player character is in NES, Lord of Elves.

 

[Symphony D.]

By the way, as an aside? Another reason I don't help? "YOU'RE TRYING TO DESTROY NESING HE WANTS TO RUIN EVERYTHING GRAB THE TORCHES AND PITCHFORKS BOYS KILL THE INFIDEL!" That's why.

 

[BSmith1068]

At what point does the perfect become the enemy of the good?

More complexity does have the ability to make things more realistic, sure, but at what point have you added so much that it collapses under it's own weight?

I don't think there is a black and white answer to this question – either all story or super stats. There is a middle ground where you have a good foundational system that enables you to have good and creative stories. The biggest compromise (and I don't really think this is a big one) is the suspension of some disbelief.

There is just no way that someone is going to perfectly model the way the world works. Especially not for a free forum game. But that doesn't mean that good, creative and fun games can't be made. You just have to find the right balance of structure that allows the game to stand on it's own, but not be in a straitjacket. If that means simplified economics, military mechanics, etc., then so be it.

 

[Symphony D.]

I'm sorry, I don't buy the argument. Plenty of things that are free have enormous amounts of work dedicated to them involving literally tens of thousands of man hours over years of real time. There are innumerable games, game mods, community works... Just because something starts out simple and ad hoc doesn't mean it should stay simple and ad hoc forever. And realistically, there is no such thing as too much complexity from an operational perspective, just from a user perspective; that comes down to user interface design, that's all.

At any rate, I was asked how I would do it. No constraints of actionability were placed on the request. I gave my answer. Everything I have suggested is completely feasible, and were I in a position to pay someone (at most maybe... a dozen people? Probably less) perhaps a few thousand or tens of thousands of dollars to do it, I could have it inside of 6 months. There are enough starving economics grads and programmers to get it done. It's been 6 years since I initially started kicking the stuff around, and I refuse to believe that a sufficiently motivated group of individuals couldn't have done it for free in that time, in their spare time.

The thing is that nobody is sufficiently motivated. Including myself. But I can still describe the system.

 

[erez87]

Sure there are plenty of things, but those aren't made by a single person... It's rare that a single person make a super detailed great thing.

 

[Symphony D.]

Do you remember all those times I've stated that the community doesn't care?

I mean really, it was an unreasonable goal, because the community didn't care about something as simple as "Hey, let's make better maps!" or "Hey, let's make a Wiki!" either, so something like "Hey, we can take a lot of the BS guesswork out of this process and build a system that makes sense and lets people specialize into what they're interested in but some people will probably have to learn programming," was clearly doomed to fail.

 

[erez87]

Yes I remember those. I also ignore those times.

We did make better maps as far as I recall. A wiki was doomed to fail since... what would you write in a NES wiki? There are NESes with their own great wikis (like EoE).

And I personally don't like modern NESes... So I don't care about those, that much is true, and the more detailed they get the less I am interested...

 

[Immaculate]

OKay, let me rephrase my request,

"Assuming a realistic degree of moderator motivation - lets say similar to what TLK, Southern King, myself have done (and not as much as EQandCivFanatic or North King), what sort of model would you envision for modern military 'stats'?"

Or, if we have those limitations, are we really better off just using story only?

 

[Symphony D.]

We did make better maps as far as I recall.

No. I made better maps, with token assistance from other people, most especially jalapeno_dude. flyingchicken made better maps, because he didn't like my projection. Other people have made specific better maps. We do not make anything. That is precisely the problem.

A wiki was doomed to fail since... what would you write in a NES wiki?

Why do people write any Wiki?

There are NESes with their own great wikis (like EoE).

The one North King has to practically beg people to work on, updated mostly by North King? Yeah, North King does a great job.

And I personally don't like modern NESes... So I don't care about those, that much is true, and the more detailed they get the less I am interested...

That's great! I'm not asking you to care. I'm just saying no one does.