Building on "Don't Read This Bulletin" by Cruzeiro

It says a lot about the state of rp when we get a new bulletin every three days or so complaining about rp has fallen or something like that. Everybody thinks that rp used to be better, and that things are worse. They also tend to blame their rivals in rp for that, instead of looking to themselves to see how they can improve their own rp. I think Nukey touched on this a few months ago, but I'm not sure. Anyway, to the subject of this bulletin: war and peace. 

The latter part, peace, is something we haven't properly had for a very long time in rp. Could peace ever be achieved in rp? Well, I have to look back to the Delta War, the war between Dreamistan and a Coalition made up of myself, Igua-Sul (today Cruzeiro), and FRS (no longer playing the game). I think, in the immediate aftermath of the Delta War, we had maybe five years of peace? Then everything blew up again, and since that point, there's always been some flashpoint, some major international conflict taking place somewhere. Although to be fair, it's not that unrealistic. For the past two decades of the real world, we've had active conflicts in Afghanistan, Sudan, Ukraine, Israel, Ethiopia, and Syria. We've had global flashpoints in Taiwan, Cyprus, Yemen, Iran, India, Pakistan, China, and many more. 

Although, asides from the conflict in the Ukraine, can we really say that any of these major international conflicts resulted in a global war of the scale and scope that we see on the daily here in Orbis rp? Personally, I doubt it. Nations generally cannot sustain large-scale warfare for long periods of time. An overwhelming majority of us have been in a state of major combat for almost two decades in game now. What kind of nation can wage total war for two decades and even survive? The Russians are forced to pull out of Afghanistan after 10 years, an incursion. their own borders. Maybe you fancy yourself to be an America-sized power. At most, you can wage a 20 year war against a far weaker insurgency before being forced to pull out as a result of internal pressure (Afghanistan and Vietnam). But total war for an extended period of time? Do we forget that after World War II, Europe and the Far East were in total ruin? Five years of total conventional warfare? The only reason the United States escaped from such a disastrous fate was as a result of their position as the Arsenal of Democracy and the fact that the fight was so far away from their own borders. 

The point I'm trying to make here is that if we want to keep rp realistic, periods of prolonged peace are essential. And to make peace viable, we have to do two things: make war undesirable, and make war realistic.

So how do we make war realistic? This is a massive problem. Many have tried, and many have failed to solve this issue. People are too desperate to hold onto their fantasies of war as some kind of glorious crusade (my own patriotism has made me guilty of this on more than one occasion) when it is really a terrible thing. We don't fight wars just for kicks in the real world. We fight wars because we have to, either to right a wrong, to defend ourselves and our allies, or to achieve some other goal where the reward of victory is greater than the cost to human life. The only way to really properly highlight the terrible cost of war and to make it be fought in a somewhat realistic manner is to declare war on nations within the game (such as how the aforementioned Delta War took place). But what if there was another way? 

We can take some element of the in-game, nation size, and have that inform our military sizes. But, there is a caveat. In the higher tiers, nations are often forced to be demilled for max in-game economic output. So, how do we allow large C-count rpers to rp as superpowers then? We have military numbers based directly off of city counts. By this measure, The United Imperium (nation on left) would be more powerful than Mexican Empire (nation on right), which makes sense both in-game and in rp. 

Say I was C31 (I am, btw). My base mil (as per TFP regulation) is 0351. However, in rp, this makes no sense. How can one just not have soldiers as a global superpower? For rp, we assume that I am at 5553 then. Five barracks gives you 15,000 troops, 5 factories gives you 1250 tanks, 5 hangars gives you 75 aircraft, 3 drydocks gives you 15 ships. This translates to my having 465000 troops, 38750 tanks, 2325 aircraft, and 465 ships in rp, even as my in-game military is much lower. These numbers are reasonable in my opinion. The US military has 1.4 million active personnel, approximately 28,000 armored vehicles depending on who you ask (APCs, IFVs, MBTs), around 3500 active combat role aircraft (again, depending on who you ask), and 470 ships in both active & reserve fleets. So you can see even at C31, I am still a ways to go from matching the current US military, and rightfully so! C31 is now considered mid-tier, and to be considered high tier, one would have to move up to C40 (where I imagine one would be pretty close to the modern USA in terms of power scaling!). Although, since there is no competition in terms of size in-game, this would put me in a US-like position since I would be far ahead of all but a few near-peer nations.

So that gives us reasonable military power scaling, which is further aided by the already-implemented rule of only having projects if you have that project in the actual main game. So a C31 now is definitely going to outnumber a C5.

Now, at this point, one may complain that they want to be a superpower whilst being a C5. Quite apart from this being inherently preposterous, it also doesn't makes sense that a C31 be comparable in power to a C5. Obviously a C31 is going to be much more respected than a C5. Anyone can be a C5. I think if you played your cards right, and picked up an alliance grant, you could probably get it in a week of playing the game. But to get to the mid-tiers takes months, even years, to build up to. This means a couple of things: 1. the mid/high tier nation has more experience playing the game itself, but also probably has more experience with the rp as they have been around longer. 2. It takes time and continued investment to build an empire. The old adage goes that Rome was not built in a day. Neither was the British Empire. No superpower spawns out of thin air. Why should it be any different for P&W? Nations who are superpowers should (and are!) only be in that position because of continued investment into rp and the maingame. 

Another point is sure, you can say that you should have the right of superpower because you chose to sit at C5 for a while (not talking about people who do this for raiding, btw). However, there is a problem with this. Small nations can still exert their influence on the world stage (Switzerland and Korea being two examples) but they are still well developed. A C5 which sits at that position (and not willingly) likely does so for several reasons. First, that they are in a bad alliance which doesn't have good progression into the mid/high tier. Second, they just aren't very good at the game and tend to get themselves mixed up in places where they shouldn't be getting mixed up in (getting into dumb wars in-game, breaking the rules of their alliance, etc.). The third reason I can think of that one would be a C5 for an extended period was if their economy was really bad. This ties into the progression thing with the alliances. If you don't have a good build, you aren't going to make money, and you aren't going to be able to fund expansion. All of these reasons in some way or another indicate a state of poverty, international isolation, or general destitution. Nations which are riddled by these issues should not be in the position to heavily influence the nations around them. North Korea is a perfect example of this. They cry out to be recognized as global superpower, but no one really recognizes them as such. Why? Because they are poor, cut off from the international community, and simply are not capable of exercising hard or soft power beyond their borders (aside from using Fail rp). 

Ok, so now we have justified using City Count to outline influence and military status in the international community as far as it pertains to rp. What about the wars? First of all, I notice that most countries which want war are the small countries. Rarely do you see more than two C15+ nations going to war in rp. They've been around long enough to recognize that it just isn't going to go well. Young nations do not have this hindsight. By scaling military power to city count, this should deter small nations from going to war somewhat, at least as it pertains to large coalition wars against other nations. I think that until we have a more permanent way to create deterrents to war, the scaling of power can serve as a sufficient stopgap to the issue.

Now, for my magnum opus. During the infamous breach of the space-time continuum, Rimskaya and I got a couple of moderators (Luna & RoDevs) to moderate the war between us (this isn't an rp bulletin, so I think I am in the clear discussing that incident in this bulletin). This system was flawed, but considering how toxic the wars concurrent to us and before us were (I mean that whole incident in South America was just a horrible mess) it proved to be a massive improvement in conducting unscripted war. After the war, I began iterating a system of more impartial moderation, recognizing some of the flaws in the original system. After a discussion with Dauchh and Nukey, I came up with an impartial system of fighting. This is a summary of that system:

Basically, I have all of your in-game city counts. I take those, and I formulate what your military would like should you be at 5553. From this derivation, we take certain multipliers to account for terrain favorability, logistical challenges, integrity of comms, etc. etc. The MAP system is the same. This forces players to be patient and fight wars in a semi-realistic manner. To improve realism, there are certain special actions which a nation can take to improve these multipliers. They generally cost 2 MAPs since they are not a direct attack but can play a major role in determining future attack success. Due to the absolutely !@#$ing stupid way in which rpers treat technology (Mach 8 fighter jets? despite the fact that most A2A engagements occur at subsonic speeds and extreme plasma build up occurs at the leading edge of an aircraft when you go high hypersonic???) technology is not a modifier. For simplicity, forward deployment, mobilization speed, and that sort of thing are not accounted for. Larger downdecs occur at higher city counts. Also, if you are dec'ing more than 7 cities below your own C count, your opponent receives a 50% bonus for general troops and all positive modifiers are doubled. This is done to avoid le bullying.

TL;DR we use a modified MAP & war system but tailor-made to fit the needs of rp. This helps avoid 1. bulletin spam, 2. makes combat actions more realistic 3. avoid failrp 4. Make wars more costly 5. Avoid voiding/toxic rp moments 6. Avoid beatdowns from superpowers to midgets.

Here is a list of the actions in the rp war system. you can see the similarities to P&W, but there are also extra modifiers in order to make the combat system of rp more detailed and immersive. We are still working out the precise resistance loss counts and how to do rolls/results for these attacks, but the general premise should be similar to the in-game war system.

On the right is a list of pre-war buffs & in-war buffs. These buffs help customize war further to fit a nation's combat doctrine. A lot of you guys go in depth as far as your doctrine so I felt this was a nice touch. 

Brief summary: use in-game city counts to determine nation military and power in general. Create ways to disincentivize constant war. Need a more impartial system for conducting unscripted war, could the methodology provide the answer? Recommend y'all try it out and see for yourselves.

I don't know how many people will read this, or if this will ever be implemented. But for those of you that do read this, consider spreading the word and pushing for the implementation of this system. I genuinely believe that this system is worth taking a chance on and could serve to benefit rp as a whole, lowering toxicity and improving realism.

Thank you for listening to my TED Talk, and a thank you to Cruzeiro for providing setup for this bulletin. Now, for some rp updates:

TUI national team loses in quarterfinal of World Cup to hosts Uwistan in match which goes to penalties. Fans are furious at controversial VAR decision taking back TUI go-ahead goal in the 79th minute, another controversial red card in 118th minute which allowed Uwistan to equalize in stoppage time of second half of extra time, and an extremely odd incident which occurred during the penalty shootout. Manager Erlan Holland refused to entertain criticism of refs, and demanded better execution of TUI players. Uwistan went on to the World Cup final, where they have the chance to win the entire World Cup as tournament hosts against Asian juggernaut India. 

Combined Arms FOBs in North Sumatra and Palau undergo force modernization upgrades to support Imperium influence in Pacific/Asia. Military looks into setting up FOBs in Middle East and Africa, reports indicate that the Imperium is willing to pay a hefty sum for the land.

TUI set to host 2095 Hemispheres Cup if no other nation from North America, South America, Africa, or Oceania steps up for hosting.

Senator Hawkins uses last minute filibuster to attempt to halt vote regulating filibuster in the Senate. Three representatives and Mayor Alan Doykin were indicted for insider trading. Senator Rysander Regan declares intent to run for the Presidency in 2095. 

Food and Uranium markets on the rise, while defense stocks plummet due to end of Global War against ODOO.

Link for all nations who want to join IFAPO and participate in Orbis World Cup and other Orbis soccer/footy events:

https://discord.gg/3S5cB9Bq

Link to GENDT server (where we will be doing the most discussion about these ideas)

https://discord.gg/D3Fg5ahE

Link to original bulletin which this was inspired by:

https://politicsandwar.com/bulletin/id=37178/don-t-read-this-bulletin