chrisaukcam said:
calculating armies - This is done as percentage of the population. My thinking is that future armies could be robotic or human. Also a number of the army units could be reserves. But a good point about a high tech world not needing as large of a standing army as a low tech world. I can see about tweaking the percent down as the TL goes up.
At a certain TL, the military will be mostly a gravitic one, using more expensive vehicles but able to greater project itself, thus it's power increases. Robotic vs. humans really doesn't factor much into they power capability of a military force, especially at this level. The only real difference is you might be more willing to sacrifice robot troopers. Reserves will, most likely, never be more than 50% of the active military, though that might vary if you have a planet like say Switzerland with mostly reserve forces. That's not really the norm though. Most nations will put the bulk of their credits towards an active force (for various reasons).
chrisaukcam said:
number of ships - As I think about it you are probably right. I will look at the math, right now it is using the gnp to calculate how many ships it can support with the government determining the desire to have more military units.- maybe at the higher levels I left off a zero or something. 1/10 of the numbers is closer to being realistic. 3 carriers, 10 battle cruisers, etc.
You should try to calculate the variance between naval and ground forces. Naval forces would almost always take the bigger chunk of change because they are your first line of defense, and they can actually DO other things that most active military can't/won't do. Say at least 60/40. Larger ground forces make sense with larger population bases. But in general most planetary navies aren't going to be projecting power beyond the system - the Imperials can/do, but I'm not sure of any planets that own other planets in other star systems. In the same system, maybe, but multi-stellar entities gets too close to starting your own pocket empire. So I'd say any stellar-capable ships would be far fewer than ships that you want to keep in your own system.
The 'carrier' designation is pretty broad. A BC would most likely be under or around 100,000 Dtons, but carriers are all over the map. Maybe use fighter wings? They can be local, or on a carrier, but since this all about local star systems, all you really care about is what the have locally. If they project power, that's another ball game. I'd also probably back off on the number of ships available, say 50% of the overall naval budget is available for offensive action. The rest goes towards fixed installations, personnel, weapons, training, etc. Your SDB's also should come into play here. And you should revise some of those numbers waaayyyy down. A thousand SDB's in one system?? That's pretty damn high, and probably not supportable for any system that has to pay for that bill on their own. A RICH system might have a few hundred, tops. Assuming you had 400 SDB's defending your system, nothing but a major battle fleet could even touch you, let alone invade. While we don't have very clear rules in regards to them, SDB's have always had the reputation of being extremely fierce and a major issue for any invading fleet.
chrisaukcam said:
Nukes is a low base chance. I used the countries of earth as an example and without looking at the code I am thinking the base chance was like 5% with some modifiers. And I can see where a higher TL should increase the odds. So this is something else that can be tweaked.
Nukes in navies is actually one of the few places you should be seeing them. Nukes provide huge advantages - assuming you can hit with them AND your opponent does not possess nuclear dampers. But forcing your opponent to include them costs credits, and means you have less offensive gear. Of course you have to PAY for them to make a credible threat, but a system with any sort of navy is going to have nukes in their missile and torpedo payloads. It's not quite the same when you are a nation on a planet where you can't haphazardly use nukes. In space it really doesn't matter as much.
I know your program doesn't take input, but other factors that you might want to have maybe a y/n entry for would be naval base, scout base, capital, very important system, etc. Those factors would increase military forces present.
