OOC: The Rules

[Mr. President]

I'll try.

I think what I was thinking (though it may have come out sort of strange) is that you don't need to have 1 billion+ population superpowers side by side. I think it's a lot more interesting (and plausible) to have a mixture of large and small countries.

Think about the power gap (if you could call it that) between North and Central America. Or of Switzerland sandwiched between the bickering tribes of Europe.

(Yeah, I suppose the obvious answer is that I could go play an NES. )

Edit: As an aside, why do we demand plausibility in everything except the population numbers? I don't argue that we shouldn't demand plausibility in weapons and economics. I do argue that no-one bats an eyelid when I mention that Karakas' population is equivalent to that of the Earth circa 1950, just because it says so on Jennifer Government.

[Rasputin]

differing size pops is essential to the feel of the role play, we dont want everyone the same size, it introduces some risks and such forth.

if al lyou arguing is that the numbers presented at NS are too big, we can simply put in a divisor to cut back every nations numbers.

so there fore a nation of 3 bill will become one of 1 bill similar to china . and a nation of 500 mill will become 150 million.

could also devise some sort of slding dividor to cut back the really big much mmore than the really small.

[Mr. President]

The way it is now, everyone is a great power. At every crisis ten different countries send a carrier battle group and fifty thousand marines and I suppress the urge to call BS because I know the inevitable answer would be "My population is 3.529 x 10^9 and my economy is Frightening, why can't I?" But a division factor would help!

[Mr. President]

I've been thinking and I'm not sure even a division factor would solve the two problems:

Problem #1: The population figures are far too high, which leads to

Problem #2: Everyone is a great power.

If you divide everyone's population by some number, you still have about a dozen countries with an insane numerical superiority. And the population still grows too fast, so that if you recalculate every now and then you return to exactly where you started.

The only way to have some kind of real disparity, real power gaps, and plausible population distributions is to assign each nation or each map region a population.

[Flinx]

You could always use a non-linear 'division factor'

[GeneralTacticus]

That doesn't sound like a bad idea; we could say, for example, that the part of the population between 0 and x is halved in value; that between x and 2x is divided by 4; that ebtween 2x and 3x by something higher; and so on. That would even things up greatly, and cut down on the effects of continued growth, because the higher it gets, the less effect it has.

[Squeblish Nef?]

...But then we'd all be the same size.
Anyhoo, disregard that previous gripe.
GT's ideas' pretty sweet.

[Mr. President]

Oh, I see! That does sound rather interesting.

Edit: Let me make sure I understand, though. You divide the hundreds by something, the thousands by something else, and the billions by a third thing? That's not it, is it?

[Squeblish Nef?]

I think that's sort of it, but not necessarily just in those numbers.

[GeneralTacticus]

No, that's not it. The idea is that you divide the population up into segments of whatever, say 100 million. You then divide the first segment by, say, 2, the second one by 3, the third one by 4, etc. Thus someone with 100 million people would be considered to have 50 million, while someone with 200 million would be consider to have 83 million, someone with 400 million to have 108 million, etc.

EDIT: Now that I look at it, you almost had it, you just didn't express it very well.

[Rasputin]

certainly a system like that can be put in .. simple enoguh really too..


if we get some agreement in what divsiors to use.

i suggest 0-500 mill / 2

500 mill -1 bill /3

1 bill -2 bill /4

2 bill - 3 bill / 5

3bill + / 6

for this to work though you need to only divide the extra pop by the new figure ,

for example a population of 2.53 bill = 500mill/2 + 500mill/3 + 1 bill/4 + 530mill/5 = 772 Mill a more realistic number


hope that is good

[Squeblish Nef?]

Could work...
But what about 5 mil. nations?

[Flinx]

How about this?

Creates puny (under 250M NS pop), small (250M-1B NS pop), medium (1B-2B NS pop), and large (2B+ NS pop) nations.

[Mr. President]

Question, Flinx: What is in each of those columns in your image? I presume the 10, 3, 5, 2, 6, 8 column contains the dividing factors?

[Flinx]

col 1&2 - NS pop range
col 3 - 'division factor'
col 4 - modified pop from rage if you had max
col 5 - total modified pop