N4 Economic Outline (Not Finished)

[Korpen]

I don't think this is necessary.  Did N3 have any fights to the death?

I agree that the model we want is that of the Cabinet War, IE wars of limited objectives and limited means.

Michael

It did not as most wars seems to have ended by mod intervention as they took much time. I also get a feeling that most of the wars were started with the purpose of expansion.

While rules such as this might not be strictly necessary, they serve a purpose it that they affect how the players themselves act and what their expectations of war is. It helps set the tone of a game.

[Nobody]

Just one little idea to reduce RISK-like behaviour, not certain in which thread to put it, but here seems as good as any place.
A country's income is reduced by the same percentage as the new territory increases it, but the penalty is reduced by 1%-unit per year. So if a country after a war gains new territory increasing its economy by 20% it would have a reduction to its economy for the next 20 years. The exact numbers are a bit arbitrary, and could be subject to individual changes.
Also, no income from territories unless they have been legitimized; that is officially ceded in a peace treaty by another country, so pure occupation is just financial drain.

The point really is to discourage war for total conquest, and be more in line with the typical 19th century wars which usually had fairly limited objectives. Also, if conquest do not pay (or loosing might hurt that much) players will perhaps be more keen to seek a negotiated peace after a few decisive battles, rather then to keep fighting to the bitter end.

I think the idea, that it takes time before a new region works the same way as old ones and that a peaceful way of doing so should speed things up, is a good one. However, how would you decide if the new colony has been acquired in a peaceful way or not? Worse what if it is done forceful at first, but they later agree to a peace treaty? By the way I think that would require 2 more rows in my excel sheet.

[miketr]

I don't think this is necessary.  Did N3 have any fights to the death?

I agree that the model we want is that of the Cabinet War, IE wars of limited objectives and limited means.

Michael

It did not as most wars seems to have ended by mod intervention as they took much time. I also get a feeling that most of the wars were started with the purpose of expansion.

While rules such as this might not be strictly necessary, they serve a purpose it that they affect how the players themselves act and what their expectations of war is. It helps set the tone of a game.

There is a difference between wars of expansion and wars of annihilation.

Michael

[Korpen]

I think the idea, that it takes time before a new region works the same way as old ones and that a peaceful way of doing so should speed things up, is a good one. However, how would you decide if the new colony has been acquired in a peaceful way or not? Worse what if it is done forceful at first, but they later agree to a peace treaty? By the way I think that would require 2 more rows in my excel sheet.

No quite. I meant that the entire economy of a country contracts, not just the territory conquered. As for colonies; was it gained in peace treaty after a war with another state? If so it was gained by force.
I also meant that if you in a war occupy territory of another state you will only get income from that land after a peace treaty giving you that land. So long as there is a state of war one would not gain anything finically by holding on to territory that belonged to the enemy at the start of the war.

So it would not be any grey zone in between peaceful acquisition of territory and military acquisition of land.

[Nobody]

OK Korpen you propose:
If a country gains a province, which would increase it's economy by 20% then it's total economy is reduced to 20%? In other words it would be at 96% of it's original value, slowly recovering 1,2% per anno until it reaches the new full potential of 120% after 20 years?
That doesn't sound right to me. It's obvious you can't expect to get full taxes from a newly occupied region, but why should that effect your homeland in any (negative) way? Aside from the cost of the standing army that is.

I also meant that if you in a war occupy territory of another state you will only get income from that land after a peace treaty giving you that land. So long as there is a state of war one would not gain anything finically by holding on to territory that belonged to the enemy at the start of the war.

No, why? If I conquered and occupied some land, than it is mine. Whether the former owners agrees to that or not does not matter. It might speed up things if he did, but it would still be my forces collecting taxes.

[Korpen]

OK Korpen you propose:
If a country gains a province, which would increase it's economy by 20% then it's total economy is reduced to 20%? In other words it would be at 96% of it's original value, slowly recovering 1,2% per anno until it reaches the new full potential of 120% after 20 years?
That doesn't sound right to me. It's obvious you can't expect to get full taxes from a newly occupied region, but why should that effect your homeland in any (negative) way? Aside from the cost of the standing army that is.

Mainly a game balance rule, but if one wants to see examples I could use Italy and 2nd German unification as examples were the economy as a whole took a blow from the expansion.

I also meant that if you in a war occupy territory of another state you will only get income from that land after a peace treaty giving you that land. So long as there is a state of war one would not gain anything finically by holding on to territory that belonged to the enemy at the start of the war.

No, why? If I conquered and occupied some land, than it is mine. Whether the former owners agrees to that or not does not matter. It might speed up things if he did, but it would still be my forces collecting taxes.

The land perhaps, but not the bureaucracy needed to utilise the resources of the region to any significant degree. By it very nature an occupation is tailored for short-term needs, if you want it long term, get a treaty.

[TexanCowboy]

One other thing...why are we going with normal tonnage. It's allowing us to build fewer ships in a sim that already has had fewer ships than OTL in the past...

[snip]

One other thing...why are we going with normal tonnage. It's allowing us to build fewer ships in a sim that already has had fewer ships than OTL in the past...

Im going to bring up the point I made when we disused this last night to present it as a counter-point. Is it really necessary to re-create the Grand Fleet, or the WWII USN? Is it possible that we could see different tactics evolve that would be vastly different from OTL, that IMO, would make the sim much more interesting as it becomes less of a rehash of OTL and truly explores something new.

[Nobody]

One other thing...why are we going with normal tonnage. It's allowing us to build fewer ships in a sim that already has had fewer ships than OTL in the past...

I could think of a couple of reasons, like:

• it makes designing a ship to a certain size much simpler (good for beginners)
  
• it's the way it was done in OTL as well
  
• to prevent "fuel hogs"
  
• it's simpler than choosing e.g. empty/standard weight for constructions (pure steel mass) and full load for upkeep (because I expect that ships which carry more fuel are likely to burn more as well)
  
• the crew size depends on it (EDIT)

[Logi]

Im going to bring up the point I made when we disused this last night to present it as a counter-point. Is it really necessary to re-create the Grand Fleet, or the WWII USN? Is it possible that we could see different tactics evolve that would be vastly different from OTL, that IMO, would make the sim much more interesting as it becomes less of a rehash of OTL and truly explores something new.

No one is going to redesign the Grand Fleet. I design ships quite differently as a designer than the USN or the HSF. However, using normal tonnage without an adequate increase ship building ability (that remains to be seen) would just limit our designs since we can't get nearly as many ships up. For a naval sim, having less ships would just make it that much less likely for a real naval engagement. I mean not destroyer vs destroyer but capital ship vs capital ship.

I feel like that would just lead to what the Chinese Civil War on sea evolved into, over simplified risk because no one thought it was worth simming out destroyer/torpedo boat battles.

[ctwaterman]

I think people may be missing a point..... that you can have naval combat that does not involve two great powers throwing all their ships at each other like GB and Germany at Jutland.

When you fleet is likely to have 6 to 8 Battle Ships some cruisers and some destroyers well then the battles are likely to be more like the USN vs. the Spanish off Santiago or in the PI.  Smaller more managable sized battles.

In addition all the players should be starting off equally.  No Great Powers just a large number of roughly equal nations.

Charles

[snip]

I think people may be missing a point..... that you can have naval combat that does not involve two great powers throwing all their ships at each other like GB and Germany at Jutland.

When you fleet is likely to have 6 to 8 Battle Ships some cruisers and some destroyers well then the battles are likely to be more like the USN vs. the Spanish off Santiago or in the PI.  Smaller more managable sized battles.

In addition all the players should be starting off equally.  No Great Powers just a large number of roughly equal nations.

Charles

This is what I ment when I said new naval tactics.

[Logi]

Problem is even now we don't have 6-8 battleship battles. That's upper end, France tier. The rest of us are lucky to have even one battleship.

I'm sorry but, just cruiser vs cruiser isn't a very fun sim.

[Kaiser Kirk]

• it's simpler than choosing e.g. empty/standard weight for constructions (pure steel mass) and full load for upkeep (because I expect that ships which carry more fuel are likely to burn more as well)
  

Hmm, but I'm still advocating a heavy industry category, which would make pure steel mass more relevant.  This basically just makes ships cost more, and now we're paying for bunkerage, boiler feed water spaces- and we have to pay maintenance to cover actually using those spaces. So after reviewing the 'for' comments, I'll say I don't like the proposed "Normal" weight usage. 

As for battlefleet size, I'll caution that as capital ships grow, fleet sizes will shrink.  So the SIM should take into account the ability to generate a reasonable size fleet of 1940s era ships as a metric for desirable industrial output level.

[Nobody]

What we would like to see are mostly "satellite" or "colonial" battles between small portions of ones fleet (or fights between small local powers against a fraction of a major fleet) and not huge, unmanageable clashes of the main forces, right?

For that I understand wanting rather large fleets, so we can send a portion of it away (including some battleships) without exposing the homeland, and no critical losses even if they are lost. What we have in N3 are mostly fleets like the one Germany had when they entered WW2 - very few ships of each class and generation. Any single loss of a capital unit would put the player in bad position.

I'm sorry but, just cruiser vs cruiser isn't a very fun sim.

Isn't it more like destroyer vs destroyer?

Anyway, to counter that we would have to discourage building smaller ships. Something like: "the bigger the ship the lower the cost (per ton)" be that for upkeep, building or both.