Upon the RP Point System
The point system is often used in steam roleplays, in particular for modern national RPs. There, it constitutes the bedrock of the RP, defended upon the principle that it is what one is must used to, the easiest, and the only workable system. Unfortunately, asides from the sadly true first point, the point system is by contrast immeasurably removed from any semblance of presenting a truly effective, balanced, easy, and positive system. For a variety of reasons, outlined below, it conversely helps to strangle active roleplay, to consume large amounts of time, to introduce extreme disbalances in between nations and units, to unfairly penalize certain players, and to fail to in any way promote a fun and engaging role play systems. This is all the more tragic, because there are obvious and simple systems which exist as an alternate to it.
1)The deleterious effect of the point system upon national balance.
This point is actually one, which to be fair, has improved over time. In some of the earlier versions of the point system, incredible disparities between nations could be occasioned as compared to what might be their actual power. In what I believe was the Iron Curtain tier, a Cold War tier, the United States' point level was the largest in the world along with the USSR - but humble Albania was nearly a ninth of the power of the United States. A ninth! Ten Albanias could have had the power to destroy the United States, when such an idea boggles the mind in reality. There still exist some of these same issues today - in the current RP which I just examined, Twilight of Peace, the Ottoman Empire has 9.500.00 points - the same as the United States, and more than Italy, in 1910 when the Ottoman Empire had been reduced to what was at best a regional power, which lost quite handily a war to Italy. Often, colonies are particularly over-inflated in number terms: France - which also controlled the Rhineland, parts of Italy, and Catalonia- in Après Moi, Le Déluge Rp, had 12.000.000 points, later declining to 8.500.000 - by contrast, West Africa, a French colony, had 1.000.000. Was West Africa's economic size effectively shown by having it be nearly a tenth of France's size? Similarly, in Brink of War during the Interwar period, Australia had 1.5 million points, while Laos had 1 million, Luxembourg had 1 million, and every South American tiny nation had 2 million - were these nations really the equivalent in strength to Australia?
This problem is also difficult for outsized or particular nations: The United States has a huge, dominant, industrial economy, and to give it a point size to reflect this would render it a hegemon. And yet, the United States often was a nation with a limited and small military, prone to isolationism, which should be reflected. Reconciling these two tasks has been a nigh-impossible one in many tiers, which has occasioned fierce disputes and arguments.
2)The disastrous effect of the point system upon military balance.
While national points have been broadly, over time, improved, even if they are still commonly heavily flawed, military points have if anything, become significantly worse and more ill balanced. In Après Moi, Le Déluge Rp, a light cruiser cost 10.000 points - a carrier 200.000 points, and yet my cruisers would have been able to, with catapult fighters, place the same number of aircraft in the sky as the carrier, with 20 cruisers to boot. Any fight between the two would have been a brutally lopsided win for the light cruisers. The system is inherently easy to exploit, as there will always be units which are under or overpriced, and which nations buy in extreme quantity, be it infantry divisions or light cruisers. Overpriced forces can exist too: in Twilight of Peace, an infantry mortar battery costs 25.000 points - the same as a professional infantry division! 10 mortars, for the same cost as 10.000 men! It is impossible for us to ever really arrive at a completely rational understanding of the prices of certain equipment, and the failures are evident.
But worse, is that it makes for armies which are purely ridiculous in size. In the Brink of War tier, I had been Indochina, fighting against Viet Minh rebels. We both did receive external aid to some extent, but most of our points were internal ones, and yet we were able to produce balanced armies, not simply infantry masses, which were equivalent to the size of the entire male Indochinese population. The number of military units which nations can deploy is extreme, reaching into the hundreds of divisions from mere fractions of their military and financial strength. Armies are hopelessly huge, and are far beyond any capability of that nation to ever have equipped that sort of force. This is particularly the case for smaller nations, which often have powerful and technologically advanced weapons which only the largest powers would have been able to afford, and available in extreme numbers.
Another element is that it ignores differences between nations. Is an American infantry division the equivalent of an infantry division from say, Ethiopia? The American infantry division should have much more combat capability, but it is impossible to reflect this. This is always a hard and subjective category, but the point system simply makes it impossible to really reflect, especially since nations always have enough money to give themselves the best infantry units. Furthermore it is hard for admins to really grasp the difference between different infantry divisions in quality... what happens when 3 conscript divisions, a regular division, and 2 reserve divisions go up against 3 reserve divisions, a conscript division, and two regular divisions...? Most of the time, qualitative difference - which the players paid money for - will be ignored for simple ease of calculation.
Unrealistic, unbalanced, difficult for admins to handle, and exploitable: this is the verdict which one can pass upon the point system for military balance.
3)Calculating points takes away time from actual role play
It is hard to arrive at precisely having points used. If one has tens of millions of points to spend, to buy a huge amount of military units, it takes lengthy calculations to be able to spend this. Then this is amplified by having to update it with trade agreements, development, and admin events. In Après Moi, Le Déluge Rp, I had to spend a ridiculous amount of time calculating my empire's point levels. For nations without colonies this would be easier, but even for those, the calculations are long, complex, and fraying, and for what? To write some math numbers down? I could have gotten a math minor if I wanted that.
4)Role play is limited and made less fun
Points also confirm a bias that everything in role play has to be placed ultimately on military units and abstract formulas. Writing flavor announcements for your nation has no value, and the only thing which really matters for a nation is how they manage their expenditures of income and expenses. I could do that a lot easier in a Victoria II game. It isn't because of calculating my nation's tax revenue to military expenditure that I like to engage in national RPs.
Furthermore, it reduces everything to arbitrary values and prevents nations from being to take into account their historical developments and policies. To some extent, there has to be an abstraction of units to medium tank/heavy tank/tank destroyer/light artillery/heavy artillery/light cruiser/battleship, etc., but it ignores unique units and forces. Where does one fight dive or torpedo bombers in a unit list with only ground attack aircraft, light fighters, heavy fighters, medium bombers, and heavy bombers? Or maritime patrol aircraft? Or transports? What about people who like to play around with the qualitative nature of their military equipment? The point system throttles that and reduces flexibility, and to attempt to show every single unit would simply make it even more complex and unwieldy.
5)Points are difficult to check and examine
It is hard enough for national leaders to keep track of their own nation's points, much less for an admin who has other things to do and can't keep track of every nation. What happens if somebody lies or cheats on their points? It would be exceptionally easy to get away with. Instead of 20 infantry divisions, put 30 - and if somebody does find out (which is unlikely, since nobody is going to go through a nation's calculations), it was an "error". This can happen innocently enough. I know there were times in my own point systems when the numbers I had didn't match what my nation was capable of spending, but I was already exhausted after having done the numbers for the current point system, and so I didn't bother to modify it to hit exactly the figures that I should have. This wasn't purposeful on my intent and as soon as I could summon up the energy I fixed it, but what if somebody had declared war on me? The points they would see on my page would be different than those which I would actually have, because I couldn't keep up with tracking the changes for my units. For any RPer, dishonesty, either intentional or unintentional, is created by the point system.
6)Points are inflexible and vulnerable to sabotage
What happens if a point list for a nation is deleted or the tier suffers from a rash of deletions? Nations have to go through the entire process of recalculating their points and expenditures again, and the tier can be effectively destroyed, much more so than in a tier which relies on a more flexible system. In Après Moi, Le Déluge the destruction of the point system by a griever is what made any continuation truly impossible, since it would just be far too much work to attempt to resume it. But even outside of this extreme circumstance, what about if somebody's individual point page just happened to suffer sabotage? They would be deeply inconvenienced, and there is little that can be done to examine that. Furthermore, even in completely peaceful events the point system is one which is extremely difficult to change: what if it is decided that the point system is too inexpensive for a unit and it has to be changed? This requires a huge modification for every nation. If the system was less rigid and structured, it could be changed without the same degree of opposition. Too often, point systems are established which can never be changed.
7)Development tends to be hopelessly bad and penalizes many players
In the Brink of War based system, economic growth with developments is ridiculous, enabling your nation to mushroom in points at an alarming rate. The rate of economic growth means that even if military systems start out reasonable - which they tend not to, and they can never be changed once created due to the difficulty of changing around every nation to it - they rapidly become bloated. Furthermore, development favors the players who have the most time and who spend the most effort calculating their points. While this tends to be me often and so I personally gain from having points what about if a nation is led by an inactive leader for a period of time and then a new leader arrives? With other nations having done investments, they would find themselves far outpaced by these other nations. When I joined as France in Après Moi, Le Déluge, I found that I had been heavily surpassed in economic strength by the British Empire, because the previous French leader had done no investments. This applies as well to simple facts of new players joining. If an RP tier lasts long enough, no new nation could ever compete with a long established one, because they would be economically so backwards. New nations are penalized and prejudiced against compared to old nations, new leaders suffer due to the failings of previous leaders, development happens too quickly and skews point distribution and point systems. For all of these reasons, the development point system is incredibly self-destructive. No RP community can in the long run survive its dismal effects.
This can also make established nations invulnerable to internal conflicts. Playing as Spain in one tier, a rebellion against me could be promptly swamped, since even though they got a hefty percentage of my points, that was only my base points - I had huge investment results as well. Of course, admins could distribute these points fairly to both sides, but this is something that few will ever take the time to do - another example of the failings of the point system.
Trade also tends to be ridiculously simplistic. Yet to attempt to portray trade realistically would make the system even more difficult to use and excessively dependent upon math.
8)Points complicate battles
Theoretically, battles should be where points shine, as the entire system is built around using points to produce the armies for battles. But unfortunately points simply make it even harder. How do you deal for example, with losses of troops....? Most tiers never really clarify this. Do they magically return after the battle is over, when in a campaign they could be multiple battles? Do the points simply get returned to the player - in that case, what is even the point of having points? Do they come back after a certain time? In one tier, a Cold War one, the opposing player and me had different systems: he returned the points to his stockpile and deployed more troops into the field, effectively taking no losses, while I removed those points from the battlefield under the belief that I would figure out what would happen afterwards. Naturally, this penalized me, but the thing is, such events are essentially inevitable.
Consider things that are broader in scope. What happens if you bomb a factory in a point-based tier? This should, logically, result in a point drop, but that is very painful for a player to do, difficult to calculate, and as noted previously, admins have little ability to detect if the player actually made those changes or not. Points make it harder and more difficult to do a fun and engaging battle.
---What should be done instead?---
I believe that the above demonstrates that the failings of the point system are crippling, as it undermines real role play. However, this leads to the normal counter: if not the point system, then what? There are quite a number of different options, which can both co-exist and be adopted as appropriate to different eras. These fall into two general categories of how we manage wars and battles: through their representation in a game, or through a text-based interface. Some eras are more applicable to this than others, and some RPers might have different tastes, so the two are not mutually exclusive.
1)A power by region system, for eras in which games exist to provide for battles (RTW, ETW, NTW, Fall of the Samurai, etc.), under which nations would have a regional power ranking, and this would change by region. Therefor their home continent a great power would have a rating of say, 4, and another nation, very small, a rating of 1, giving a 4v1 setting. By contrast, in distant territories it might only have a rating of 2, while the nation it is fighting might have a rating of 2, thus provoking an equal fight and showing the problems of force projection. This system was used in Colonial Empires RP tier, and proved to be effective for a long time.
2)Basing military strength upon nation's historical strengths. Players would be able to modify and change this over time, and it would naturally evolve as nations develop. This would naturally mean that the armies would probably be more powerful than their historical equivalents - everybody buffs their army just a bit as they seek to optimize it and accepts high estimates. But it would be less flagrant than the existing point military system, which as the examples of Indochina demonstrate, can become rapidly absurd. Furthermore, it would inherently be the most accurate and balanced system. Thus, the actual balance of naval power in 1914 - where the exact number of dreadnoughts built or building, and often times naval plans for nations - can serve as the base for what realistic navies would be for a fleet in the era, which would be modified as nations undertake their own programs. This can be exploited I am sure of course, but no less so than the established system, and it is far easier for admins to check and ensure that outrages are not committed.
In effect, this would preserve the current discussion battle format. Wars and armies would still function in the same way. The only distinction is their source and how they are compiled, based off of free RP and historical guidelines.
This could also be referred to as simply a free RP system, but my suggestion is that historical army sizes and capabilities are the best judge to ensure balance. It is one which I feel best matches the needs of tiers for the 1870-1990 period, as in the current era it is much harder to accurately reflect war mobilization with such a model, and before that information on army sizes can be difficult and a power by region set up is much more effective.
2a)An expanded version of this is using historical military strengths but with some sort of development system for improving it. Say for example, that every nation starts with an index of 100, which is improved over time. This is multiplied as for example, 1.05 (105) times the original military strength (like having the capability to deploy 100,000 men, then becoming 105,000 men), to produce a military strength increase of 5% from the original values. This would prevent excessive strength build ups while still preserving the historical strength benefits.
3)My personal preferred option, is to have a Free RP system/point system, wherein people are free to manage and construct their nations and armies as they want. I have used this in a WW1 tier, and thus might be biased for it, but the way this would work in my opinion would be to have a purposefully weakened point system, where nations aren't able to afford even their historical army and navy levels, or at most only match them. If nations prove to be incapable of managing their nations, and not exploiting the freedoms given to them, then they would be told to utilize the point system. Conversely, if players really do love the point system, they could also continue to use this, even if it places them at a disadvantage. In my opinion, by keeping the free RP system as the preferred option and this as the disciplinary and fallback approach, it can help ensure both a high standard of RP by the majority of players and ensure that those who do not live up to these same standards can still participate.
---
There are certain exceptions where I can see there being a need for a purely point based system. In future RPs, where we have no capable way of evaluating strength for nations when we are dealing with a dramatically different world, different technology, or interstellar empires. But I feel that this is fairly niche. A fourth proposal, suggested by somebody else, might be useful there:
4)Some sort of region based system with set military supports from a region (with a country like say, Germany, being divided into 5 regions), and with regions being at different set levels of prosperity. This would help for modern tiers where the situation has to be abstract, and in making the economic arrangements somewhat more realistic.
---
Any system naturally has drawbacks and flaws. But what is a critique which can be applied to a free or historically based system, which cannot be equally applied to the point system, combined with many more negatives? If the free RP system is prone to be exploited, then the point system is inherently constantly full of exploits, if the free RP system can be difficult to set up, the point system is even harder, if the free system is hard for admins to keep track of, then the point system is impossible. A time for reform is needed, in order to improve the RP experience. Points have strottled genuine roleplay, and it is long past time that they be removed.
1)The deleterious effect of the point system upon national balance.
This point is actually one, which to be fair, has improved over time. In some of the earlier versions of the point system, incredible disparities between nations could be occasioned as compared to what might be their actual power. In what I believe was the Iron Curtain tier, a Cold War tier, the United States' point level was the largest in the world along with the USSR - but humble Albania was nearly a ninth of the power of the United States. A ninth! Ten Albanias could have had the power to destroy the United States, when such an idea boggles the mind in reality. There still exist some of these same issues today - in the current RP which I just examined, Twilight of Peace, the Ottoman Empire has 9.500.00 points - the same as the United States, and more than Italy, in 1910 when the Ottoman Empire had been reduced to what was at best a regional power, which lost quite handily a war to Italy. Often, colonies are particularly over-inflated in number terms: France - which also controlled the Rhineland, parts of Italy, and Catalonia- in Après Moi, Le Déluge Rp, had 12.000.000 points, later declining to 8.500.000 - by contrast, West Africa, a French colony, had 1.000.000. Was West Africa's economic size effectively shown by having it be nearly a tenth of France's size? Similarly, in Brink of War during the Interwar period, Australia had 1.5 million points, while Laos had 1 million, Luxembourg had 1 million, and every South American tiny nation had 2 million - were these nations really the equivalent in strength to Australia?
This problem is also difficult for outsized or particular nations: The United States has a huge, dominant, industrial economy, and to give it a point size to reflect this would render it a hegemon. And yet, the United States often was a nation with a limited and small military, prone to isolationism, which should be reflected. Reconciling these two tasks has been a nigh-impossible one in many tiers, which has occasioned fierce disputes and arguments.
2)The disastrous effect of the point system upon military balance.
While national points have been broadly, over time, improved, even if they are still commonly heavily flawed, military points have if anything, become significantly worse and more ill balanced. In Après Moi, Le Déluge Rp, a light cruiser cost 10.000 points - a carrier 200.000 points, and yet my cruisers would have been able to, with catapult fighters, place the same number of aircraft in the sky as the carrier, with 20 cruisers to boot. Any fight between the two would have been a brutally lopsided win for the light cruisers. The system is inherently easy to exploit, as there will always be units which are under or overpriced, and which nations buy in extreme quantity, be it infantry divisions or light cruisers. Overpriced forces can exist too: in Twilight of Peace, an infantry mortar battery costs 25.000 points - the same as a professional infantry division! 10 mortars, for the same cost as 10.000 men! It is impossible for us to ever really arrive at a completely rational understanding of the prices of certain equipment, and the failures are evident.
But worse, is that it makes for armies which are purely ridiculous in size. In the Brink of War tier, I had been Indochina, fighting against Viet Minh rebels. We both did receive external aid to some extent, but most of our points were internal ones, and yet we were able to produce balanced armies, not simply infantry masses, which were equivalent to the size of the entire male Indochinese population. The number of military units which nations can deploy is extreme, reaching into the hundreds of divisions from mere fractions of their military and financial strength. Armies are hopelessly huge, and are far beyond any capability of that nation to ever have equipped that sort of force. This is particularly the case for smaller nations, which often have powerful and technologically advanced weapons which only the largest powers would have been able to afford, and available in extreme numbers.
Another element is that it ignores differences between nations. Is an American infantry division the equivalent of an infantry division from say, Ethiopia? The American infantry division should have much more combat capability, but it is impossible to reflect this. This is always a hard and subjective category, but the point system simply makes it impossible to really reflect, especially since nations always have enough money to give themselves the best infantry units. Furthermore it is hard for admins to really grasp the difference between different infantry divisions in quality... what happens when 3 conscript divisions, a regular division, and 2 reserve divisions go up against 3 reserve divisions, a conscript division, and two regular divisions...? Most of the time, qualitative difference - which the players paid money for - will be ignored for simple ease of calculation.
Unrealistic, unbalanced, difficult for admins to handle, and exploitable: this is the verdict which one can pass upon the point system for military balance.
3)Calculating points takes away time from actual role play
It is hard to arrive at precisely having points used. If one has tens of millions of points to spend, to buy a huge amount of military units, it takes lengthy calculations to be able to spend this. Then this is amplified by having to update it with trade agreements, development, and admin events. In Après Moi, Le Déluge Rp, I had to spend a ridiculous amount of time calculating my empire's point levels. For nations without colonies this would be easier, but even for those, the calculations are long, complex, and fraying, and for what? To write some math numbers down? I could have gotten a math minor if I wanted that.
4)Role play is limited and made less fun
Points also confirm a bias that everything in role play has to be placed ultimately on military units and abstract formulas. Writing flavor announcements for your nation has no value, and the only thing which really matters for a nation is how they manage their expenditures of income and expenses. I could do that a lot easier in a Victoria II game. It isn't because of calculating my nation's tax revenue to military expenditure that I like to engage in national RPs.
Furthermore, it reduces everything to arbitrary values and prevents nations from being to take into account their historical developments and policies. To some extent, there has to be an abstraction of units to medium tank/heavy tank/tank destroyer/light artillery/heavy artillery/light cruiser/battleship, etc., but it ignores unique units and forces. Where does one fight dive or torpedo bombers in a unit list with only ground attack aircraft, light fighters, heavy fighters, medium bombers, and heavy bombers? Or maritime patrol aircraft? Or transports? What about people who like to play around with the qualitative nature of their military equipment? The point system throttles that and reduces flexibility, and to attempt to show every single unit would simply make it even more complex and unwieldy.
5)Points are difficult to check and examine
It is hard enough for national leaders to keep track of their own nation's points, much less for an admin who has other things to do and can't keep track of every nation. What happens if somebody lies or cheats on their points? It would be exceptionally easy to get away with. Instead of 20 infantry divisions, put 30 - and if somebody does find out (which is unlikely, since nobody is going to go through a nation's calculations), it was an "error". This can happen innocently enough. I know there were times in my own point systems when the numbers I had didn't match what my nation was capable of spending, but I was already exhausted after having done the numbers for the current point system, and so I didn't bother to modify it to hit exactly the figures that I should have. This wasn't purposeful on my intent and as soon as I could summon up the energy I fixed it, but what if somebody had declared war on me? The points they would see on my page would be different than those which I would actually have, because I couldn't keep up with tracking the changes for my units. For any RPer, dishonesty, either intentional or unintentional, is created by the point system.
6)Points are inflexible and vulnerable to sabotage
What happens if a point list for a nation is deleted or the tier suffers from a rash of deletions? Nations have to go through the entire process of recalculating their points and expenditures again, and the tier can be effectively destroyed, much more so than in a tier which relies on a more flexible system. In Après Moi, Le Déluge the destruction of the point system by a griever is what made any continuation truly impossible, since it would just be far too much work to attempt to resume it. But even outside of this extreme circumstance, what about if somebody's individual point page just happened to suffer sabotage? They would be deeply inconvenienced, and there is little that can be done to examine that. Furthermore, even in completely peaceful events the point system is one which is extremely difficult to change: what if it is decided that the point system is too inexpensive for a unit and it has to be changed? This requires a huge modification for every nation. If the system was less rigid and structured, it could be changed without the same degree of opposition. Too often, point systems are established which can never be changed.
7)Development tends to be hopelessly bad and penalizes many players
In the Brink of War based system, economic growth with developments is ridiculous, enabling your nation to mushroom in points at an alarming rate. The rate of economic growth means that even if military systems start out reasonable - which they tend not to, and they can never be changed once created due to the difficulty of changing around every nation to it - they rapidly become bloated. Furthermore, development favors the players who have the most time and who spend the most effort calculating their points. While this tends to be me often and so I personally gain from having points what about if a nation is led by an inactive leader for a period of time and then a new leader arrives? With other nations having done investments, they would find themselves far outpaced by these other nations. When I joined as France in Après Moi, Le Déluge, I found that I had been heavily surpassed in economic strength by the British Empire, because the previous French leader had done no investments. This applies as well to simple facts of new players joining. If an RP tier lasts long enough, no new nation could ever compete with a long established one, because they would be economically so backwards. New nations are penalized and prejudiced against compared to old nations, new leaders suffer due to the failings of previous leaders, development happens too quickly and skews point distribution and point systems. For all of these reasons, the development point system is incredibly self-destructive. No RP community can in the long run survive its dismal effects.
This can also make established nations invulnerable to internal conflicts. Playing as Spain in one tier, a rebellion against me could be promptly swamped, since even though they got a hefty percentage of my points, that was only my base points - I had huge investment results as well. Of course, admins could distribute these points fairly to both sides, but this is something that few will ever take the time to do - another example of the failings of the point system.
Trade also tends to be ridiculously simplistic. Yet to attempt to portray trade realistically would make the system even more difficult to use and excessively dependent upon math.
8)Points complicate battles
Theoretically, battles should be where points shine, as the entire system is built around using points to produce the armies for battles. But unfortunately points simply make it even harder. How do you deal for example, with losses of troops....? Most tiers never really clarify this. Do they magically return after the battle is over, when in a campaign they could be multiple battles? Do the points simply get returned to the player - in that case, what is even the point of having points? Do they come back after a certain time? In one tier, a Cold War one, the opposing player and me had different systems: he returned the points to his stockpile and deployed more troops into the field, effectively taking no losses, while I removed those points from the battlefield under the belief that I would figure out what would happen afterwards. Naturally, this penalized me, but the thing is, such events are essentially inevitable.
Consider things that are broader in scope. What happens if you bomb a factory in a point-based tier? This should, logically, result in a point drop, but that is very painful for a player to do, difficult to calculate, and as noted previously, admins have little ability to detect if the player actually made those changes or not. Points make it harder and more difficult to do a fun and engaging battle.
---What should be done instead?---
I believe that the above demonstrates that the failings of the point system are crippling, as it undermines real role play. However, this leads to the normal counter: if not the point system, then what? There are quite a number of different options, which can both co-exist and be adopted as appropriate to different eras. These fall into two general categories of how we manage wars and battles: through their representation in a game, or through a text-based interface. Some eras are more applicable to this than others, and some RPers might have different tastes, so the two are not mutually exclusive.
1)A power by region system, for eras in which games exist to provide for battles (RTW, ETW, NTW, Fall of the Samurai, etc.), under which nations would have a regional power ranking, and this would change by region. Therefor their home continent a great power would have a rating of say, 4, and another nation, very small, a rating of 1, giving a 4v1 setting. By contrast, in distant territories it might only have a rating of 2, while the nation it is fighting might have a rating of 2, thus provoking an equal fight and showing the problems of force projection. This system was used in Colonial Empires RP tier, and proved to be effective for a long time.
2)Basing military strength upon nation's historical strengths. Players would be able to modify and change this over time, and it would naturally evolve as nations develop. This would naturally mean that the armies would probably be more powerful than their historical equivalents - everybody buffs their army just a bit as they seek to optimize it and accepts high estimates. But it would be less flagrant than the existing point military system, which as the examples of Indochina demonstrate, can become rapidly absurd. Furthermore, it would inherently be the most accurate and balanced system. Thus, the actual balance of naval power in 1914 - where the exact number of dreadnoughts built or building, and often times naval plans for nations - can serve as the base for what realistic navies would be for a fleet in the era, which would be modified as nations undertake their own programs. This can be exploited I am sure of course, but no less so than the established system, and it is far easier for admins to check and ensure that outrages are not committed.
In effect, this would preserve the current discussion battle format. Wars and armies would still function in the same way. The only distinction is their source and how they are compiled, based off of free RP and historical guidelines.
This could also be referred to as simply a free RP system, but my suggestion is that historical army sizes and capabilities are the best judge to ensure balance. It is one which I feel best matches the needs of tiers for the 1870-1990 period, as in the current era it is much harder to accurately reflect war mobilization with such a model, and before that information on army sizes can be difficult and a power by region set up is much more effective.
2a)An expanded version of this is using historical military strengths but with some sort of development system for improving it. Say for example, that every nation starts with an index of 100, which is improved over time. This is multiplied as for example, 1.05 (105) times the original military strength (like having the capability to deploy 100,000 men, then becoming 105,000 men), to produce a military strength increase of 5% from the original values. This would prevent excessive strength build ups while still preserving the historical strength benefits.
3)My personal preferred option, is to have a Free RP system/point system, wherein people are free to manage and construct their nations and armies as they want. I have used this in a WW1 tier, and thus might be biased for it, but the way this would work in my opinion would be to have a purposefully weakened point system, where nations aren't able to afford even their historical army and navy levels, or at most only match them. If nations prove to be incapable of managing their nations, and not exploiting the freedoms given to them, then they would be told to utilize the point system. Conversely, if players really do love the point system, they could also continue to use this, even if it places them at a disadvantage. In my opinion, by keeping the free RP system as the preferred option and this as the disciplinary and fallback approach, it can help ensure both a high standard of RP by the majority of players and ensure that those who do not live up to these same standards can still participate.
---
There are certain exceptions where I can see there being a need for a purely point based system. In future RPs, where we have no capable way of evaluating strength for nations when we are dealing with a dramatically different world, different technology, or interstellar empires. But I feel that this is fairly niche. A fourth proposal, suggested by somebody else, might be useful there:
4)Some sort of region based system with set military supports from a region (with a country like say, Germany, being divided into 5 regions), and with regions being at different set levels of prosperity. This would help for modern tiers where the situation has to be abstract, and in making the economic arrangements somewhat more realistic.
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Any system naturally has drawbacks and flaws. But what is a critique which can be applied to a free or historically based system, which cannot be equally applied to the point system, combined with many more negatives? If the free RP system is prone to be exploited, then the point system is inherently constantly full of exploits, if the free RP system can be difficult to set up, the point system is even harder, if the free system is hard for admins to keep track of, then the point system is impossible. A time for reform is needed, in order to improve the RP experience. Points have strottled genuine roleplay, and it is long past time that they be removed.
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