The Western Isles

Military realism is a tricky topic. Everyone likes to be the best, or at least one of the best. But we can't all be the best, or there will be no best, and we'll engage in military numbers inflation, which eventually will land us in overblown future-tech territory. Therefore, I believe it's necessary to set some standards and limits on military.

First of all, we are an island region. Our regional size isn't exactly defined, and that's done purposefully so we can reconcile size differences in our individual maps. However, we are generally all small islands, definitely each smaller than the British isles or the Japanese isles. You're probably thinking, "Hold up, Vancouvia, size isn't the only determiner of military strength!" and you are absolutely correct, but for the sake of making things simple, we're going to say that that's our main limiting factor.

Reconciling NationStates Stats with RP Stats

NS stats are inherently flawed. Your population is small at the beginning and then begins to linearly expand, eventually passing any realistic country's population. There are very few countries on Earth that have more than 50 million population, but a majority of NS nations have hundreds of millions or billions of people.

NS stats are also an extreme, radicalized version of regular stats. In real life, you'd never come across half the issues that are thrown at your desk, nor would countries be able to hold dictatorships with 95% tax rates and 70% of the budget going to defense. In short, NS stats are for fun and cool little medals, but not for practical RP. So when you say "I have 500 million citizens and 30% of my budget is defense spending so I can have 8000 jets" just know that I, and a lot of your other region mates aren't going to take you seriously.

So how big can my army/navy/air force be?

Links to real-life numbers:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_warships
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_military_and_paramilitary_personnel
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependencies_by_population
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_level_of_military_equipment

Here are some soft limits:

0-1 (normal-sized) carriers. Carriers are incredibly expensive.
0-10 destroyers/equivalents. Ideally 5 or under.
0-20 subs. Ideally 10 or under.
0-20 frigates/equivalents. Ideally 10 or under.
The other classes of warships are generally variable and less widely used. Check out the wiki link and sort it by ship and then pick a number that is around the median of what navies have. You shouldn't have any futuristic "super-carriers" or anything that doesn't currently exist in real life.

1,000-40M total population. Keep in mind that we are on small islands.
0-200k active military. Ideally under 100k.
0-400k reserves. Ideally under 300k.

0-500 tanks. Ideally less, since we're an island region.
0-250 howitzers/heavy artillery.
Other land units, such as armored personnel carriers, can vary. Keep things small, and when in doubt, check wiki pages of a country of a similar strength/size.

0-100 attack helicopters. Transport helicopters can be slightly larger.
0-300 combat aircraft. Ideally less than 100. This includes both fighters and bombers, but not cargo planes.

Identifying your weapons/capabilities

Make a military factbook! Have it contain your total forces, equipment, ships, and planes. Explain what class/kind of things you have. Either link to a wikipedia entry or NS military thread entry, or list out the capabilities of your things. For example, for a destroyer explain how many surface to air missiles and how many surface to surface missiles it has. If you choose the latter option, be prepared to do much more research and be as accurate as you can be, basing it off of real-life stats.

What's most important here is that you identify what you have and how many of it you have. Don't go into a RP without revealing what kind of troops you are sending in and what they are armed with. Don't launch a naval invasion without explaining exactly how you will be softening the beach and getting troops to shore. Don't bomb a country without saying what kind of aircraft is doing the bombing and what is escorting them.

Try not to edit your army frequently. Don't add troops right before a battle/war. If you lose a battle/war, you should probably edit your military factbook to reflect the losses. Only add equipment if you purchase it or make it. Don't switch all your fighter jets to the new model without taking the costs. Announce big changes publicly.

Can I, uh, go over the limits?

For some things, but be prepared to have trade-offs. What I mean by this is you can focus on an area or two if you'd like, but you have to be prepared to sacrifice other areas. For example, if you have three aircraft carriers, you should have a smaller than average army. If you have an active force of 500k, then you should have a weak navy or air force. If you have a smaller than average size on the map, then you should have a smaller than average overall military. If you want to claim the largest amount of helicopters, then you should have the smallest amount of something equally important. Police yourself, don't go crazy, and respect the standards that are in place.

Vancouvia, why are you restricting us? Why are you taking away all my carriers?

My intentions are to move us towards realism, put everyone on a similar footing, and actually make alliances an important factor of war. You shouldn't be able to invade another country without help. You shouldn't be able to have total dominance on land, sea, or air. There should be tradeoffs that make for fun battles and wars.

I still want my 15 supercarriers

You can do so. I don't have the power to go in and edit your factbooks, or what you declare to be so. Role-play is a reciprocal process. If you say you have 15 supercarriers then people would most likely be incredibly reluctant to RP with you. No one likes someone that looks at your numbers and then says they have triple just because they can. Sure, you have the power to do whatever you want, but that's not a good way to make friends, be respected, or have fun.