Here's a new concern... What is the maximum percentage of your population that should be allowed in the military?
Items to consider:
- Type of Government
- Defcon Level
- Conscription & Draft Age
- Population Age Distribution
- Coed Combat Force (George wants an option for an all-female army, but we won't go there )
Reasonably under the most dire of conditions, I think the maximum would be 20 - 25% of your population.
Thoughts???
_________________
David Thompson
Lead Designer / Partner
BattleGoat Studios
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: battlegoat on 2002-12-23 20:33 ]</font>
I'd say thats decent- what about reservists? And what about mandatory enlistment?
I'd love the option of mandatory enlistment at 16 or 18..
As for the wish of an all-female army..maybe not army but hey Females would be excellent special ops agents I'm sure we all could find tons of ways to put their 'skills' to use. ;-D
I can agree with 20-25% of the population in dire circumstances. The US only put about 10% of it's population into uniform for WW2 and many of them never made it out of the US.
I would like to see options, though. Maybe through the A defense menu, or recruitment submenu, where you can select things like minimum and maximum age for enlistees, totally co-ed or partially (non-combat role) co-ed integration, or where you can pick only the cream of the crop or take anyone who can walk, talk and breathe, hire mercenaries, etc. Maybe in this menu you can also select length of basic training (6 weeks to 6 months?, affecting quality of units produced).
Naturally, I think there should be consequences. At all times, a certain percentage of the population should be allowed to be recruited without penalty(there will always be people who want to grow up to be soldiers), but as you take in more people, the economy should start to suffer, and internal discontent should increase. The breaking point should be where you can't deploy enough troops to quell internal dissent, maybe? A democracy would be the most fragile, a totalitarian state (North Korea or Iraq) should be the most robust. Theocracies like Iran might also be pretty secure with high recruitment, I'd think.
"Nuke the site from orbit, it's the only way to be sure."
Anyone know what percentage the Isrealis use ?
Seems to me they would one of the better measurements given the games premise and their real world situation.
You can set minimum military age to 14, 16, 18, or 21. We do have the coed combat setting, and you can turn conscription on or off. (There will be domestic and military benefits if you are able to run your military as strictly a volunteer force.)
I like the idea of your economy suffering the bigger the percentage of population that your military takes... so we will definitely incorporate that!
We don't have an option for mercenaries and I don't think it likely, although I will keep it in the back of my mind, and if it fits we will add it.
And YES most definitely it would be interested to know the percentages of Israel, so if someone knows, please share!
The Israeli's have roughly 110,000 regular military and roughly 500,000 reservists. With a population of around 6 million this would suggest that their regular military is right around 1.6 percent and their entire (reserve and regular) force is about 10 percent. Keep in mind that if these figures were applied to the United States, then we (or they if your not from the US) would have a regular force of 4.5 million and a reserve force of 28 million for a total military of 32.5 million. Which is about between 9 and 10 times the actual amount.
My understanding is that Israel has an unusually high number of reserve forces due to the length of service required. I don' tthink that would make a very accurate frame of reference. Then again, as Tkobo says, considerng our story line...?
It all depends on what you mean by Dire conditions. If you mean its like Annie Bring your gun then yeah 25% of the population may be able to resist with thrown molitov cocktails and what not but at that point your just throwing cannon fodder. 10% should be close to the max for a co-ed conscripted army. Lets face it in WWII the U.S. was fully mobilized by the end and we fielded 10% and maintained our manufacturing with women and criples and and trained baboons.
Thats another thing who is gonna run things if women are conscripted into the military. Who is gonna farm, build tanks, and Helo's. Who is gonna make all those sleeping bags our boys are gonna need in the cold nights on the front?? surely not grampa and gramma with there hands all crippled from Arthritis. With-out Women at home the U.S. war machine would probably have been pitiful in WWII.
Isreal is a special case they can conscript Women because much of there war material can be bought from the U.S. and Isreal has in the past fought very short wars (excluding there war for independance) where Industry played very little role. I beleive Isreal would continue to hope for the short war and aid from its Western Allies if a long war did break out. They wouldn't have the industrial power if they called up there reserves to fight a prolonged war.
You also got to look at what the germans did in World War 2, when they were starting to get into trouble they were putting kids as young as 13-14 into uniforms and oldmen at the ages of 60-70.
I think if your country is doing badly you should be allowed to generate conscripts on a higher percentage then a country that is doing well. Although these troops would be poorly trained led and equiped.
Frankly, I dont like the idea of artificial limitations on military size. Any nation should be allowed to field as many soldiers as they want- as long as they dont mind insanely low approval ratings, riots in the steets and factories without workers.
President: "The enemy has destroyed our armies and are approaching our capital! I want every citizen, man, woman and child, in uniform gaurding our cities!"
Sec. of War: "Im sorry, Mr. President, but the God of war hath informed me that we may not have more than %10 of our population in our Army"
President "DAMN YOU, MARS!"
Doesnt seem very logical to me. But then again, i've always hated games that put fake limitations on things.
~Red
<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: redshadow on 2004-02-09 16:42 ]</font>
Because of the young combatants in Africa, I wonder if the conscription age shouldn't go down to 6... Of course, they wouldn't do the same task and I don't think a democracy could have such "troops" but in Africa it is something that truly happens.
We did briefly consider where to set the minimum draft age, and 14 was the best fit. Regardless of the moral and ethical issues, much below that and you just can't get reasonably effective soldiers.
As it stands, a draft age of 14 will annoy your population and hurt approval ratings, so I wouldn't recommend it. At 16, the balance between approval hit and extra bodies may be worth it for some.
Since I too do not like 'pre set maximums' for anything, we have not set an absolute top to the %age of soldiers versus population you can have in your forces. However, a lot of factors play in to how fast you can grow your army, and how big it can get - defcon level and military spending both play a part in how fast people can be trained and added to your reserves. As well, the economy plays a part in two ways - if you have a very low unemployment rate, it can be harder to get volunteers and conscripts. And when you do conscript people in a low-unemployment region, you'll start hurting the economy and industrial output as you pull those people away from real jobs.
Well, I am very happy to hear that BattleGoat understands the negative side of 'absolutes'.
I was wondering though- regarding defcons- how exactly would that effect your military's size? I suppose if raising the defcon would mean a faster draft rate, and maybe lessened regulations on who would be drafted. But if I was just building my army up on an average defcon, and I wanted to draft and train as many conscript foot soldiers as possible, shouldn't I be allowed to do so? As long as I have no problem with factories shuting down, I would believe that I should be allowed (being a dictator) to recruit soldiers as fast as they could be trained.
Yeah, that is pretty much how it works - however, one thing that Defcon does is change the "how fast can they be trained" value. Basically, increasing defcon does two things:
1) Pumps more money into the system for training - the higher the defcon, the more it costs you, which translates into a greater training/recruiting capacity;
2) High defcon also helps whip your citizens into the appropriate frenzy - obviously in the US it was easier to get recruits and volunteers for WWII than it was for Vietnam. Create a sense of crisis, people will be more accepting of the call to duty.
But yes, given enough time, even at peace levels you can build up quite a large reserve force.
)
