World Building Knowledgebase - How to write good Military World Building

Question

This is a migration or re-post of something I posted in the Meta, which received good reviews:

Here is the Meta Post - go check the Meta out, it is where us cool-kids hang out.

This is going to be a Self-Aggrandizing Question, where I answer it myself - but I invite good answers to join in.

Background

I enjoy answering questions here about all-things Military (Weapons, Vehicles, Armour, Units - you name it, I love it) - and I started to see some trends whereby people had started with the cool flashy idea (which is Awesome, don't think I am hating on your version of the Death-Ray-o-matic-Necro-Star-killer 9000 - I love it, I truly do) and then struggle with the World Building.

Often, the Struggles were along very similar lines - such as how to incorporate an over-powered weapon into a World and not have it break, how to justify the usage of such a weapon or other world-building esque queries.

And so the question is:

How do I write good Military World Building?

Answer 1

TheDemonLords Tips for writing good Military World Building Number 1 - What is the philosophy(s) of the country or region

The easiest way to highlight this is comparing the likes of the US Military with say the Imperial Japanese Airforce or ISIS fighters.

The US places a high premium on the lives of their Service Members - one of their Credo is No man left behind. This means that they will often risk elite tier units and operators to rescue wounded soldiers.

Conversely - on the other side of the spectrum, countries have repeatedly used suicide attacks (ISIS and Kamikaze pilots respectively)

In addition to this - you have things like how the Military is structured - a military that is under control of a Democratically elected government with a free press is much more likely to be more... Restrained when it comes to the excesses of War, whereas a Military force that believes the Enemy to be infidels or untermensch or any other dehumanized group is going to be a lot more War-crime happy

As a general rule - Militaries that tend-towards valuing human life will opt for more precision weaponary, better body-armour, better medical evac support, limited effects on target (so things like poison rounds)

Whereas Militaries that have less accountability to the people or a belief in the inferiority of the enemy are more likely to have area-of-effect weapons, Excessively injurious weapons, Conscript troops with little or no training etc.

This is not a hard and fast rule - for example a Military that believes in Racial Superiority might have a callous outlook on their own service members (We dont need body amour - we are the choosen people!) or they might have a protective outlook on their own service members (Each drop of pure blood is precious and should not be wasted!)

TheDemonLords Tips for writing good Military World Building number 2 - Work backwards

What do I mean by this? Well - before you get to designing your new fancy-pants cool weapon for your awesome world that you are creating - stop and ask yourself:

What is the function that this Military entity is created to address?

You might roll your eyes and go 'Duh to fight wars!' - but you would be hopelessly wrong. To use real world examples - Different Militaries have different goals in existence. Sweden and Switzerland for example are famous for their neutrality - consequently their Militaries are designed around defence of the homeland, in Swedens case - in the 20th century, this was specifically around defending against Russian aggression. This lead to things like the S-Tank - which was a response to the threat that large numbers of Russian armour would roll into Sweden - so a low-profile turretless tank that could ambush, move, reconceal and repeat where they were not expected to have numerical superiority was the order of the day.

The NZDF on the other-hand has a lot of experience with humanitarian missions in the Pacific islands.

Then you have the countries with Blue-water navies, the US being the best example where the primary goal of their military is to project power - to be the big stick that keeps everyone in line.

Let us consider a World Building example - you are inventing a new military force for story and world building reasons - let us even throw in that there is something unique you want them to be doing (Clone troops, Power Armour, AI weapons, Alien races - whatever) - and like all World Builders you are excited about getting into the detail of your cool new force... (we have all been there) But you are struggling to make them seem real - well, first and foremost is probably because you haven't thought about the adversary or roll that your force is expected to counter or fulfill.

It doesnt make a lot of sense to have a military that is filled with heavy tanks with mega-armour, if they are going to be fighting against a few uncivilized tribes with bows and arrows, likewise if you want a military that is made up of super-ninjas who slash and stab - having them pitted against Cyborgs with hardened exo-amour also doesnt make a lot of sense.

First - think about what you want your military to do

• Peacekeeping military
• Homeland defense militia
• Asymetric warfare terrorists or rebels
• De-facto police force
• Global super-power/world police
• Island nation or Xenophobia
• Sphere of influence around unstable neighbours
• Humanitarian force The list goes on - the point is this - the first step to make your military feel realistic is to have it be a reasonable response to the perceived mission it is seeking to fulfill.

TheDemonLords Tips for writing good Military World Building number 3 - Everything is a Compromise

In the real world - even the most Overpowered bit of Military gear has numerous compromises that are a result of desired role.

Consider the .223 NATO round that is used in most infantry rifles. It is a good round that can accurately and effectively engage a Man-sized target within 400 metres. It has light recoil and good terminal ballistics. It is the product of the realization that most infantry-on-infantry engagements in WW2 took place within 400 metres (which is about the distance that you can identify someone without optics).

There are many rounds that have greater range, greater stopping power, terminal ballistics etc. but they all have their trade-offs, Greater range generally means a bigger cartridge which means for a given weight, the soldier in the field can carry less ammo. Greater stopping power generally means a heavier bullet which increases recoil making full-auto uncontrollable.

This is not limited to Rounds - Aircraft, Ships, Tanks, Subs - everything has a trade-off. Less Amour means more agility, better stealth means less fuel efficient, Larger fighting compartment means bigger target etc. etc.

In the real world - weapon designers consider how and where the system is likely to be used and then make the compromises based on that. A Main Battle Tank (MBT) is going to be in a position where it is attracting an awful lot of attention, so it needs to be heavily armoured to take the hits and keep fighting. Whereas a Scout vehicle needs only to be able to outrun anything it can't fight - and often will have a light anti-armour missile or similar system to give anything that it can't outfight a bloody nose so as to think twice.

Sometimes it is the right call to have a less impressive bang, for a more practical bang.

Also - an addendum to this rule - this is also why Super-Weapons tend to suck both in World Building and in real life.

TheDemonLords Tips for writing good Military World Building number 4 - The Human Factor - or who is doing your fighting

I am going to say Human for the sake of brevity - but regardless of what is doing your fighting - there are limitations - Endurance, Carrying Capacity, Logistics etc. Even in the modern military with mechanised infill and exfil - there is still a need for a Soldier to carry supplies in and out of the battlefield. Even if you have an all Robot army - they still need power - the point is the individual soldier or fighting unit has needs:

What are they and then the follow-up: How does addressing these needs impact their equipment.

You want all of your soldiers to be armed with massive super-assault-rifles - Thats cool... How does that look when you have been stuck in the middle of a Jungle or Dessert or other horrible place for a week because your supply shipment was intercepted.

Think about the limitations of the individual soldier and then think how a Military might work around these or compromise on these.

TheDemonLords Tips for writing good Military World Building number 5 - It is rarely overkill, it is usually good enough

So this is kind of an amalgamation of all the above points to talk about something we see often here - which is specifically about designing Weapons. Often people will want really cool sounding Fusion-plasmo-blaster 9000s for their standard infantry weapon that can do everything from stun a person to nuke the sun...

THIS IS A BAD WEAPONS SYSTEM

In the real world - whilst we have some very destructive weapons systems, generally we try to have it be just lethal enough to get the job done. As above with compromise - adding capability always comes at a cost. Having your standard infantry rifle being effective against tanks is cool and all, but that capability will come at a cost - and 9 times out of 10 it probably isnt worth it - it is probably more worth it scaling down the power or cost or size or weight or any N number of things that would make this capability feasible to make it a better weapon.

Now - if your world building has a guerrila force fighting against an all-mechanized force, then it makes more sense if the likely thing you are going to be fighting is tanks, then this makes sense - but most of the time - Militaries will want something that is only just good enough to get the job done - and so limiting the capabilities of your weapons system to make it effective against the most likely target leads to a more immersive world.

KerrAvon2055 Wonderful suggestion about Logistics - both good and bad

Robert H. Barrow “amateurs talk about tactics, but professionals study logistics.”

If we think back to WW2, at the start of it, America was not the biggest or most powerful military. Not by any stretch. However what America did, better than anyone else, was Logistics. Quick link to My favorite History resource - The Fat Electrician talking about American WW2 Logistics.

Even putting funny internet rants aside, Americas ability to scale up manufacturing, then ship material halfway around the world was second to none. Another set-piece in history was the Berlin Airlift. Even today, one could argue that it is not the technological superiority of the US Military that is it's most potent tooth, it's the fact that within 18 hours, they can have boots on the ground, anywhere in the world. Then follow that up with a Carrier fleet, resupply etc. etc.

It is the often overlooked and not very sexy part of the Military that World Builders tend to forget. To put this in real context - for the US Military, they typically run a Tooth-to-Tail Ratio of 1:10.

This means that for every 1 service member who is going out on door-kicking missions, there are 10 service members supporting them.

Considering the Logistics of your World is a major consideration. The best bit about this is that there are two ways to go on this - Either you can have a hyper-competent US Military system with lots of organized Transports etc. Or you can have the reality of the US military: "Your part is on Back-order" - both are equally valid.

In short - designing a Military unit, weapons system, vehicle etc. that feels realistic will require you to think about Logistics to a degree:

• How is it going to get from the Base to where it is going to be used.
• How is it going to be sustained in the field (food, water, parts, ammunition)
• What facilities does it need to sustain (Field hospital, Motorpool tent, Mechanics bay etc.)

Etc. etc.

Please, feel free to add your thoughts on what makes a good world-built military, try to answer the meta-question, if possibile.

Answer 2

The fort has gone in and out of fashion for all recorded history. Having a nice, safe place is an attractive idea. Sometimes it is good to stick in a prepared position, and sometimes it is better to move about. A fort is safe until the next advance in siege warfare; then fortification evolves to resist and the cycle begins again.

This is older than warfare. Evolution often divides a species into a heavy, 'robust' form (good at slogging it out); and a 'gracile' form (good at running).

Many good stories come from innovations where the balance between the two forms of fighting alters due to some innovation. At the outbreak of WWII. the 'robust' defence of the Maginot Line or the British Cultivator No. 6 trench-digging tank carried on from where WWI left off; and were outflanked by the more mobile Blitzkrieg. The 'pocket battleship' is a gracile variant on an essentially robust battleship: it cannot take on a first rate capital ship, but it can move quickly, sink smaller targets, and join up with others to take on a capital ship.

The 'robust' and the 'gracile' forms of war are always in near equilibrium. One may have the upper hand for a while, but the losing side will not be far behind. It will give ground, and while the other is advancing over hostile territory and having longer supply lines, it will adapt and fight back.

You do not even need a war for this evolution to continue. Armour and armour-piercing shells were developed in tandem. If you go into battle with your Kill-O-Zap 9000, and drive all before you, don't expect it to last.

Answer 3

A point i don't see often in military worldbuilding and that bugs me often:

Military-grade is the lowest common denominator

As anyone who's ever served in any modern military will tell you, "military grade" anything is the absolute lowest cost and quality anything can be made and still reasonably work most of the time (read: pass inspection). This is not a high bar to pass.

What this means for your worldbuilding is that it's pretty unlikely your soldiers have actually well made equipment, and it's also pretty unlikely that that equipment is that modern to begin with.

The reasons for this are quite obvious; troops don't pay for their equipment, the equipment might be lost in an engagement, and troops don't decide the equipment they get nor can they complain meaningfully about it. The powers that be are incentivized to find the cheapest possible way of supplying the troops that will not get them court-martialed for negligence.

This has a lot of knock-on effects: if the rifles are shit, what happens to a soldier that is stuck in the middle of combat with only an equally shit sidearm when the rifle jams? How are the rifles serviced, and is that service of good quality? How does your military ensure that service is possible at all? if they don't, do they overstock rifles? if they train their troops to service their own equipment and generally be self-reliant, how do they ensure loyalty when their troops do not need them to survive?

If the rifles are good (this usually means simple, mechanically), how do they ensure their design isn't stolen by the enemy/built in a cave with a bunch of scraps by insurgents?

There are very good answers to most of these questions, of course. The point is that these answers help you make your troops real when they complain about equipement, believe the shitty helmets won't save them, or have to bring their weapon to the armorer for a tune-up (bonus worldbuilding: you now get to write a disillusioned armorer who is annoyed that the troops keep breaking the rifles, despite knowing that the poor quality is to blame). This also helps you shape your governments by the ways they care or not about their troops.

There is often a stark disconnect between how good public relations will say a particular piece of equipment is versus how good it actually is in the real world, and you can play on that. The new advanced polymer battle rifle is just the old one but made out of plastic, and it melts in the sun.

Currently a notable exception is fighter planes, which appear to actually have very expensive and very good technology and materials on them. this doesn't mean that they aren't built for cost, just that the cost in question has been decided by a military that cares very much that they have air supremacy. When you write about a military, think of what is their most important doctrine, and ajdust what that means for their supposed budget, and therefore the quality of the equipment in that area versus all other areas.

Answer 4

I would add two pointers - by example

Jerry Pournelle and SM Striling's Falkenberg series (collected in a single volume in "The Prince" in 2002) has really good takes on a number of things, including why people fight, the challenges a commander faces, how political factors intersect with military, logistics challenges, appropriate equipment for the environment/mission etc. It also shows you the perspectives of both sides without making either side into a caricature. It is good enough that a US Army major wrote "This book will also give you a great starting point for a class or series of classes on Low Intensity Conflict (LIC)". Basically if you want to do good military worldbuilding, you can probably just follow their example on how to do it.

David Drake's writing, esp the RCN series and The General, gives you a more ground-level view of combat. I think it rates very highly on realism - especially overlooked aspects like eg people in extreme situations often do random things that don't necessarily make logical sense. When it comes to worldbuilding, some of the stories go light on gear or logistics for the interest of being a better story, but are again very strong on why people fight.

P.S. Both authors are veterans; that may have something to do with it. Pournelle was a scientist working in operations research; Drake was armored cavalry.

Answer 5

The structure of a military is a function of the military’s doctrine and dictates what types of situations they do well in, and what types of situations they do poorly in.

The most significant aspect of the structure of a military in most situations is the degree of authority delegated to low-ranking officers in the field and how far down the authority is delegated. In effect, this dictates how far up the chain of command an unexpected situation must be reported before the lowest-ranked soldiers can receive orders about how to proceed.

Less delegation means:

• More predictable responses to common situations.
• Slower responses to unexpected situations.
• Poor scalability, both horizontal (many people at the same rank) and vertical (number of ranks), because communication and information processing are major limiting factors.

Conversely, more delegation means:

• Each casualty is theoretically a greater loss of human resources.
• Military doctrine, including rules of engagement, is less likely to be followed to the letter.
• Internal strife is more likely, because the soldiers are generally more able to think for themselves.

At one extreme, you have organizations like the droid army of the Trade Federation seen in Star Wars: Episode I -- The Phantom Menace, which delegated absolutely nothing, centralizing all control in a single location. At the other extreme you have the almost completely decentralized command found in some modern real-life rebel or insurgent groups. Both situations are less than ideal, and the optimal approach is somewhere in the middle, but politics often pushes things away from that optimal approach.

Answer 6

How to Address Super Weapons in Any Setting

Since how to write a good military is an insanely broad topic, I will focus on the more specific question here: How to deal with balance and worldbuilding after introducing a "Death-Ray-o-matic-Necro-Star-killer 9000" (AKA: Superweapon) into your setting. First of all, superweapons are context specific. In 20,000 BCE something as simple as a recurve bow could be considered a super weapon, and in 20,000 CE antimatter warheads might be considered conventional weapons. Or in a fantasy setting, a super weapon might be a horn that can command dragons. So first we have to decide if your super weapon is a battlefield weapon or weapon of mass destruction based on the context of your setting, and then determine how that weapon affects the setting.

Battlefield Level Super Armaments

From a world building perspective, there is virtually no difference between an atlatl, an assault rifle, an anti-tank plasma rifle, and a spell of magic missile. As long as a weapon is limited in scope to a being able to kill the thing that you want without having to destroy a lot of other stuff as collateral, it's just a battlefield armament. How powerful that weapon is is mostly just window dressing. As long as both sides have comparable armaments, a balance will exist. As firepower increases, it can force armies to fight a bit more spread out, and rely more heavily on cover, stealth, and good recon but a battle is still essentially just two groups of guys trying to outmaneuver and murder each other en masse; so, it's not really worth worrying too much about balance in most cases.

The concern for balance often comes up when one side either has exceptionally better battlefield level armaments, or both sides have very different armaments that need to be made comparable.

For the former issue, the answer is almost always going to be asymmetric warfare tactics. A less advanced combatant that can not win on the battlefield can often do much better in the city streets, back alleys, and inaccessible wilderness. If the enemy has battlemages and I don't, then perhaps it's time to trade my knights for ninjas and focus on assassinating them instead of beating them in open battle. If the enemy have tanks with unbeatable armor, then I may need to focus on taking out their more vulnerable optic systems or cutting off their supply lines, to take them out of the fight even if I can't pierce their armor. If the enemy has bio-engineered super soldiers with unbeatable speed and reflexes, then maybe I need to lure them into a building rigged with explosives that I can collapse on them faster than they can get out. If you think long enough about it, you can generally find some way for anyone to kill anyone they want with whatever they have given a little bit of creativity.

As for making different armaments comparable, the more different two sides armaments are, the more it will be true that any battlefield one side chooses will favor that army. For example if a modern army were to face off against an army of wizards, the wizards could use all sorts of spells to hide their positions, scry for the enemies using someone's hair, and portal into to barrakes to murder soldiers in their sleep, but likewise a modern army might find a wizard hideout by tracking their Amazon purchases, and take them out with over-the-horizon weapon systems that the wizards have no SAMs or comparable systems for detecting and countering. In this since, a battle between two very different tech stacks often turns into both sides having to use asymmetric warfare tactics, because both sides will comparably do so poorly in a "fair" fight.

Weapons of Mass Destruction

When weapons become much bigger than this and destroying entire cities, planets, or even stars becomes trivial, you have 3 solutions: Appeasement, MAD, or Spread.

When a civilization develops a weapon that can wipe out another civilization without having to fight a battle over it, and other civilizations have no similar capabilities, the one with the super weapon has practically unlimited political power to get what they want; so, there is no need for a war. Each civilization will try to continue to survive by giving into the one with the superweapon exactly as much as they think is necessary to not get nuked. They might pay tributes, or sign off on bad trade deals, or give up some of their autonomy, but simultaneously, they might back terrorist groups, under deliver on promises, insert spies to steal military secrets, and produce propaganda that undermines the state that controls the WMDs. So they the goal is to appear be useful enough to keep alive while doing everything they can in secrete to undermine the foreign power. At least until they can get a super weapon of their own in which case the strategy will go into MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction).

I feel like Cold War Tactics such as MAD are the answer to about 80% of questions that ask about balancing weapons of mass destruction. If both civilizations can wipe eachother out, then warfare becomes a matter of fighting over things not worth nuking over. Conventional wars may still play out between the superpowers' allies where these civilizations may contest each other indirectly by backing one side or the other or they might become politically aggressive to try to deprive the other side of trade, key resources, and political influence with other civilizations.

The last possible way to answer this is spread. The ability to wipe out a planet only matters if each civilization has only one planet. But if both sides have thousands or millions of worlds, then even a war fought by deathstars will still in many ways resemble battlefield level warfare. Each planet destroyed representing nothing more than a little bit of civilian collateral damage in a war that is much bigger than any conceivable weapon system can assure the total destruction of the enemy.

Answer 7

Surrender

A lot of stories concentrate on a war where both sides are evenly matched. However, wars often end with the defeat of one side. The losing government may announce a cease fire. The members of their army cannot retreat, but there are other options...

• Go guerrilla and keep fighting
• Stay in their platoon but not fight
• Go home (especially if it is nearby)
• Hide (wanted for war crimes?)

The solution since the Trojan wars has always been that someone on the other side has to meet them, and persuade them to give up their arms. This is a risky business as the people may throw their rifle away, or hide it, or dress as a civilian. If they have decided to fight on, they can probably take down at least one of your side as a sniper. They know the territory. The can look like a civilian. Your losses may increase when you think you have almost won.

Intelligent drones may change this. An intelligent drone can approach a potential enemy one-on-one, and call on them to give themselves up. If the enemy attacks it, it can attack back, and/or alert your side. These drones would probably be ineffective in the middle of a campaign with a clear battle front, where the people surrendering would have to cross no-man's land; they would only be deployed towards the end of a campaign, when most people do not want to fight any longer.

If the losing side has drones, any truce should require the losing side drones disarm themselves, along with any other smart weapons such as land-mines. The drones ought to obey. If the losing side has programmed to do something nasty, then the truce is off.