Raising An Army

Introduction: All factions need soldiers to fight their battles for them. While a number of PC pilots will join each faction and fight on their behalf, this does little to help the factional leaders and the officers build vast armies necessary to fight global battles. In order to build those armies, the faction leaders need to recruit and conscript or use any one of the several methods of raising an army listed here, in this article. This articles summarizes how to raise an army: the methods, the costs, and the consequences.

Ways To Get Soldiers: Fascinatingly, more often than not, a faction needs an army to fight a war. In times of peace, factions may keep standing armies, but often also keep reserves -- to be called up when chaos breaks out once again. However, these reserves are rarely enough, and factions will often also need to begin intensive recruitment to gain more soldiers. When they need still more, some world powers will resort to conscription -- forcing the young people of the country into the armed services. When still more forces are needed, the faction may call up militia to fight for specific tracts of land, or else hire mercenaries to fight on their behalf. In the course of the next few paragraphs, I will outline the basics of each of these methods: recruitment, reserves, conscription, militia, and mercenaries.

Recruitment: CAZ works on an annual recruitment system. Soldiers pour in over the course of the year, and they are processed, trained, equipped over the course of said year. On the your end-of-year report (or start-of-next-year, depending on how you see it), these soldiers will be added to your factional pool, along with newly purchased Zoids. This is standard recruitment. Standard recruitment always occurs -- war or peace -- the number of soldiers the faction recruits is not determined by the factional leader. It depends on the relationship of the faction with the public, the reputation of the war and the number of casualties, war weariness of the population and location of the war, and the factional recruitment budget. In recruitment, you get what you get -- the factional leader can always cap the number of people in your armed forces if you get too many, but you can't magically increase the number of recruits in the past year after the year has gone by. Interestingly, you must pay for an active soldier's equipment upkeep and Zoid again in full each year (this keeps the budget simpler, which makes me saner) -- so new recruits cost you more on top of last year's budget. Conscripts cost the same, but reservists (see below) cost less.

Note that in unusual situations, such as when war breaks out and recruitment increases massively immediately, you may receive a special update before the year is actually up -- and new recruits will swell the ranks of your factional army at this time.

Reserves: Keeping a standing army is damned expensive. You have to pay the complete cost each soldier again and again, every year, year in and year out. That's annoying, but it makes sense -- wear and tear on the equipment, people get hurt and need to be doctored, Zoids get damaged and need to get repaired -- multiple times. However, in time of peace, things aren't nearly that bad. A large portion of your forces can be reserves rather than active troops. In the world of reserves, you have a group of already trained soldiers sitting around, taking refreshers once a month, waiting to be activated and fight for your nation. And, they only cost a third of their initial cost per year in upkeep (though when you're initially buying Zoids for the reserves, the cost is full). So, they're cheaper and they're soldiers. What's the catch?

The catch is threefold. Firstly, reserves can't fight. They have to be activated before they can fight. Secondly, in order to activate the reserves, you have to announce that you (the factional leader or officer, presumably) are activating reserves. And then you have to wait. How long? Typically several weeks, and then they appear at some military base somewhere, and probably have to march to the front. Note that this is still much, much faster than conscripting and recruiting more units, but its still a bit of a downer. Lastly, after you activate them from reserves, you have to pay full price for the unit -- it's no longer a reserve unit. However, that's pretty much there is to say. After reserves enter the field of battle, they're not significantly different from the active standing army.

Conscription: Conscription, on the other hand, is an entirely different story. Conscription is the practice of forcibly enlisting people in the armed forces, in case you didn't know. The factional leader activates the draft, picks some number of soldiers he or she wants that's less than the number of people living in the faction (or less than the "fit for service" demographic, anyway), and the faction gets that many more soldiers. However, there are several consequences to conscription that should be noted. Firstly, a faction with a draft active sets a recruiting goal, and if the faction misses the goal, the difference is conscripted. Like recruits, these people are added to the factional pool at the end of the year, and distributed normally. Secondly, you still have to pay to train conscripts, so you can't actually just pick any number of people to recruit, just who you can pay for. Thirdly, conscription is extremely unpopular and conscription massively increases war weariness. Even if a faction had the money to conscript 1,000,000 soldiers to fight, the outrage over the action might cause the unpopular war to end (internal strife) before the conscripts even got out of boot camp. Fourthly, conscripts units are of inferior quality (read the NPC Units page at some point, if you haven't already). Fifthly and finally, conscripts usually only have 1-year terms, so to actually gain units with conscription, you have to conscript more and more every year, to replace the outgoing conscripts and gain new ones.

Emergency Conscription: Factions may often find themselves in a situation where the current balance of power is not to their liking, and they simply need more soldiers in a hurry. This isn't simply replacement-for-small-injuries more, this is more divisions of soldiers I'm talking about. Rather waiting until the end of the year for more soldiers (which is unhelpful), you can get more soldiers in a very big hurry. Unfortunately, the way to do this is more conscription. You can try to conscript soldiers in the middle of the year -- but it takes at while, at least a month, depending on how long your basic training is and how streamlined your drafting process is. It also costs money to use emergency conscription -- as much as it usually does to train and equip a soldier. If you plan to use emergency conscription, you might consult the world GM (me, Halen) before you do for other details.

Militia: Militia are a bit like reserves, but they get called up much faster and restrictions apply. Firstly, the unit is temporary (see NPC Units again for that one). To call up a militia, you need to name a city or region you want to call up the militia from. Note that the typically only cities have militias, and military bases obviously do not have militias. Generally, a militia may be the first line of defense for a city or region that is sneak-attacked, as many cities do not have garrisons. In this case, it's the job of the militia to hold out until reinforcements arrive, presumable from the army. In other cases, they fight along side army divisions already present to push enemies out of their homes. Regardless, they melt back into the background once the job is done. It takes militia on the order of days -- sometimes hours -- to muster and form a cohesive fighting unit. However, how many you get is a mystery -- it depends on how well-liked your faction is in a region as well as war weariness. Don't count on a city you've just conquered from the enemy and is still rioting to provide a militia, for example. You don't pay for militia (unless you want to make a special expenditure).

Mercenaries: Mercenaries are the complete and utter opposite of militia. They're not in it for their homes or for nationalism; they simply want the monetary gains. Mercenary Units are slightly different from regular units (again, see NPC Units), but their fighting capabilities and skill level aren't as important as their cost. Mercenary Units you have to pay for, and you usually have to pay several times more than you do for your average soldier. The exact cost? Consult your World GM and ask him (me) how much it costs to raise a mercenary army at such-and-such a place (I'll probably give you a per-head and per-Zoid figure). Note that lower quality mercenaries are cheaper, whereas higher quality mercenaries are expensive. It is also not always possible to raise a mercenary army. At certain locations, such as in the middle of central Nyx, there simply are no mercenaries to be found. Also, the time it takes to raise a mercenary force is variable (again, inquire within). Ironically, the Blackdust Mercenary Group does not count as a mercenary unit (a factional special ability waives the classification for the purpose of unit type) -- though you still have to pay them.

Replenishing a Unit: People die in war. It's just a fact that sometimes you will loose members of a unit. That unit will then be understrength. What then? Well, the easiest thing to do is pay to replace the lost Zoids -- that bit is simple enough (if you don't have enough money, it may come out of next years' budget and Zoid quota). However, there are also lost people, as you may have noticed. In the context of a militia, the unit's members can't be replaced normally. However, for most units, you just order the unit replenished -- in that case, new recruits come in to replace the losses. This is just fine and dandy, but it has several ramifications: 1) The new troops come out of your recruitment totals at the end of the year. 2) If you replace too many troops in the division, the division may loose skill (because of the infusion of new, less experienced troops). However, this is only if an extremely large number of troops in the unit must be replaced. 3) If you lose too many troops, you will not be able to replace all of them. Does that make sense? You only recruit so many soldiers. If your entire army goes under, you can't just recruit away your mistake.

However, the benefits of replenishing units far outweigh the bad. The new people that join the unit tend to be abnormally good for new recruits -- if it's a veteran unit, they'll bring the replacements up to speed. If you don't replenish or reorganize a unit, it can become demoralized or (if you've lost enough people) may even disband entirely. Lastly, your unit will fight much more effectively if it is at full strength.

Where Do I Post?: Though the results of raising an army will show up in numerous threads across the site, there's no special thread for raising an army specifically. Post it in the General Orders thread and I will see the post. If you are in command of a mission (not your factional leader) and you would like to conscript, hire mercenaries, call up a militia, or do something of the kind, I recommend asking your factional leader before you do so (or have your factional leader pre-approve such action for your mission).