Military System

Oh fuck this, I'm done I really don't care anymore, I'm not gonna play this game ever anyway so it really doesn't matter to me if you want to turn it into a math lecture.

It just LITERALLY makes me want to die...

Which is generally considered not fun, but whatever...

Instead of being so adamantly opposed to numbers that you try to shoot it down, you should spend your time trying to develop a system that adequately covers everything that doesn't need numbers. I'm not opposed to a system that doesn't need numbers, I'm opposed to you being opposed to numbers if it seems more logical if we have them.

Work with Crom to try and cook something up, convince us that it can be done without numbers and then we won't. It's that simple MN. You're being far too destructive with so little construction into your idea that you're not really supporting your points, you're only shooting down the numbers idea and providing little seemingly inadequate examples of a way to do it without numbers.

This actually really has nothing to do with individual points. I can surmise that basically here.

Handling it inside the context of an rp is the entire point, the objective is first establishing it as a numerical system.

We have two completely different philosophies. One that says all interactions should be judged on roleplaying and one that says roleplaying should be based on numbers. I strongly oppose the idea that any roleplaying on this forum should be dictated on a numeric system. It destroys the entire point of our style of roleplaying which is based maximizing the freedom of roleplayers.

Ok let's just establish that Chaos and BI are talking about establishing a traveling system, supply system, and a time scale which I have no real problem with having numbers in them...so long as it's a streamlined uncomplicated thing it's not really an issue and doesn't have much to do with the actual battles themselves outside of the actual number of battle worthy troops which is kinda needed I guess.

Of course some basic numbers are needed. But from what I see they are really creating a forum strategy game that would be completely separate from a roleplaying forum. It honestly reminds me of the Conflict for Skoljiir that I set up all the time ago for Final Gathering of Roleplayers. And I made that game because I thought it would be a badass way to have strategic warfare on a forum but that isn't material for RoKK.

Mmm... More or less what I was talking about last night with MN and about all this is that we should establish important concepts down with numbers first because it's easiest to wrap our heads around it like that, or at least easier for some people. After a numerical system is made it can be translated to an all-text system (except for areas that distinctly need numbers, such as troops and supply numbers and whatnot).

The thing is is that roleplaying won't simply be dictated by trivial numbers: any numbers we come up with will be based on logic which will then be relied on as simple placeholders for already-established logic which we then review for roleplaying, somewhat like reading the Art of War. In the end, everything is about logic.

That said, I have given a lot of thought into possibly doing this without including complicated systems, but I also realized my problems with what you were proposing, Crom, had nothing to do with anything that BI made.

For that reason, I believe we should split up anything we talk about militarily wise into some sections: Army Profiles, Army Mechanics, Army Roleplaying.

Army profiles will no doubt have numbers in them as they will be necessary. Army mechanics will likely have numbers in them but it's not necessarily crucial that they do. Army roleplaying must, of course, not have numbers at all unless someone's talking about the number of troops or number of supplies etc.

What you were largely proposing, Crom, was a system where what it seemed that army profiles and/or army mechanics were completely thrown away as simply 'keep-it-kinda-sorta-in-mind' while everyone roleplayed. My biggest problem with what you proposed is that it seemed like a few people were roleplaying small squads doing small missions, and these few people succeeded in their small missions. Because these few people succeeded in their small missions, their entire side won. Logically, I would agree, that the small bits add up to the large picture, but the impression I get is that too small of bits adds up to too large a picture, if that makes sense. That is of course without going into how it seems that it's playing down army profiles/army mechanics down completely and that I feel post space-age technology makes everything a whole lot easier. I'll make a post later summarizing what I feel BI's system so far is saying in text and hopefully it'll make enough sense.

That said, don't think I'm settled on a must-have numerical system. I still want to hear what you're trying to propose, Crom, I just either haven't really understood well or it needs to be tweaked somewhat to fit RoKK better.

Has no one else considered that in this case the numbers and the RP are functionally inseperable?
Oh the terms are unusuable, or change or what have you but if you RP a commander what are you concerned with?
Rightness, truth and the justice of the gods on your side?
Maybe.
What your objectives are, and how you'll achieve them?
Definitely.
How far your men can move in a day, how many days of food you have left, and the fact that your enemy has six to one numerical superiority?

Your either RPing a piss-poor commander or RPing a commander piss-poorly if you aren't.

Hate to tell you, but most of what commanders going to war have to consider boils down to logistics.

So there's a system for it. I don't care if you use it, but by god there will be a system for it.

Also in Crom's example I find it strange that the losing side didn't follow the most basic rule of any sort of logistics. I.E. Multiple redundancies. If you do not have them, it's because you were not even half prepared, or your entire side savors hubris like a gourmet savors a fine wine.

Multiple redundancies?

This is not an RTS forum. Just sayin.

It was a sci-fi battle!
Being conducted by the population of an entire PLANET and a GALACTIC REPUBLIC.

It just strains credulity that, for example, had that raid on the armor convoy worked, it would have changed anything, because that requires absolutely no one in the entire giant galactic army going

'Err, wait a tic, think we might want to maybe make sure the all-important armor comes from a couple of directions? you know in case we don't manage to wipe out absolutely all hostile forces on the entire planet save the fortress city? Or at least you know...deliver it by vertical landing, since it has to be debarked from our space ships ANYWAY, and we have almost total air-dominance?'

I mean if this was a war between say forces living off the land where the ENTIRETY of the force, including all support staff is moving in one body, yeah I can see fuck ups like that happening. Once you get the point where you have rear bases just for people who's job it is to make sure stuff like that doesn't happen, it gets a little hard to swallow.

They can't exactly replicate an entire planet wide war while still keeping in tune of a general galactic roleplaying site. They didn't have air dominance near the fortress and there was only one real area that allowed for massive troop deployment. The point here is to include a family of roleplayers in a war like conflict not pleasure a couple of commander characters and their war game.

BY DEFINITION the only ones using the war game system are commanders. The ones who are in fact commanding troops about. Which is what the system is all about.

The people who are not commanding would naturally not use the system that concerns commanding troops, and the concerns that go along with it.

So yes. The point IS to provide fun times for commander characters and their war game.

The fact that other people are occasionally making use of a system which has a larger impact than on the personal scale, in no way detracts from those who choose to operate on that personal scale.

That's the problem. This is a roleplaying site meant for individual characters to interact and affect the world. This is NOT a roleplaying site for international war games. You want a system that is NOT meant for this site.

Sub-commanders won't have to be so worried about logistics and whatnot unless it's delegated to them.

Also, if people can't handle the strain of command then they won't have commander characters.

World War 2 wasn't fought just by Generals, it was fought by hundreds of thousands of men, politicians included, but people high up called the shots based on war logistics and some such.

The galactic battle thing seems like it cut the concept of strategy and tactics short, dumbed it down if you will, as a cop out to include everyone. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but we're not about dumbing things down, you know?

CromTheConqueror wrote:That's the problem. This is a roleplaying site meant for individual characters to interact and affect the world. This is NOT a roleplaying site for international war games. You want a system that is NOT meant for this site.

I...fundamentally disagree with every part of that statement. There's no other way to say it.

Certainly I'm fine with individual scale RP. I just see absolutely no reason to deliberately limit ourselves to just that.

And I fundamentally disagree with everything you're saying. I'm not angry but I truly beg to differ.

Which means we got a problem.

Ok we seem to have something of a deep rooted clash of what exactly we intend to do with warfare on the site as a whole.

Crom doesn't want to play a war game the way BI want's to play it.

Which is fine, except it seems to me at least that BI is saying that the system he is designing doesn't really have much to do with the actual combat Crom is interested in. It seems to me like both can mutually co-exist to a certain degree.

We've decided to more or less just let BI's development go through, which I'll be supporting while he's gone, and Bronx can come in at some point and go "HUZZAH!" and everything will be better.

Since this is simply the development phase and by no means the end-all-be-all, we can wait and see how this works before it's really worth freaking out over.

I'm glad that nothing got too bad and that we can proceed with the military system.