Military reform

Day 649, 01:23 • Published in Malaysia Malaysia • by Nagyzee

My third and last term is coming to a close but before that there are at least 3 important topics on which I'd like to achieve progress. I won't hide that I have my agenda behind it, which is that I'd like to see things done the way I'd prefer on these fields but of course you can have your say now as well as I won't start projects if people reject them and anyways the next president and his cabinet can always change things according to their wishes if they are not satisfied.🙂

The first topic I'd like to cover is the military. Plans, discussions about setting up an organized military have been around for ages. Gustavius and Ryan Southcombe have been exceptionally active in these. And I have my ideas, too.

To let you better understand why I want to push through a certain kind of military organization and why I think that more standard approaches won't work we have to take a look at the characteristics of the union's society and the differences compared to bigger nations:

1. A small population. We've had 163 voters on the last elections. The number of active citizens in the FRoSEA is probably not higher than say 3-500 including the recently joined new users (who are still weeks away from being useful for a normal army) and then I was very generous probably.

2. Bigger countries have a well organized military structure usually and most of their soldiers are mobile. On the other hand they rely heavily on "civilian" damage and their armies usually incorporate only a relatively small percent of the active population.

3. What would happen if we set up a rigorous, well-regulated system that smells of professionalism? My guess would be that it would reach out to only the most active, chat and forum using citizens of the country with a few exceptions. We'd have an army of 50-80 people out of which 30+ are in congress and a few others are lower level and probably a very low amount of stronger mobile soldiers. Also despite the continuous advertisements right now only 89 people are registered at the survey of the army which further illustrates my point.


Gustavius had the idea of setting up three regiments, National Defence, Elite and Airborne and set up the lower level units inside these partly based on time zone and usual time of being logged in to Erepublik. Then there was the idea that people should be grouped foremost by time zone. My idea correlates with this quite well but it's still far from being the same.

What I propose is using the social networks, the already existing private communication channels and so on wherever possible. I think we can reach out to a lot higher number of users this way. Of course this would mean a higher amount of less active citizens in the army but the important thing is that these citizens would still be fighting more efficiently as members of the army than before.

The military structure would be quite simple. Below the MoD and his deputies, closest helpers there would be only two levels. Let's call these two levels platoons and squads for now. (But they could be company and platoon just as well.) Platoons would be formed based on already existing networks of friends / people that know each other better where possible and on time zones / location where it isn't. I'd set up the following platoons:

1. IRL Malaysian / other Asian / Australian: This platoon could have squads with Malaysian as language of interaction (if requested). Also it would most probably have only a few stronger soldiers but could have 1-2 squads dedicated to the more active recently joined newbies. Here of course the most important would be teaching these soldiers how to fight efficiently, offer them a community that might keep them in the game longer and provide some help at ranking up later on.

2. (North) American: We have quite a lot of users from RL USA and Canada who are usually online around the same time. This would be more of a time zone group for now.

3. IRL Hungarian: There are enough Hungarians in the country to justify this. Language used inside the platoon could largely be Hungarian. With this we could reach a lot bigger percent of them.

4. Other European, African: With English as language. If there are enough people for this one...

5. eThai: I know that eThais live in different parts of the world IRL but I still think that this platoon would make very much sense - of course only if eThais feel the need for this. The eThai community knows each other better, you have your own communication channels, I guess and this would give you another area where you could stick together and keep your community alive. This unit could form the nucleus of the army of Thailand if you opt for independence sometime later on.


Citizens could freely decide which of the platoons to join (which fits their needs the best) and platoons could recruit people on their own. Of course this should be done in cooperation with the Ministry of Defence just like setting up the squads inside each platoon. Each platoon could have a different inner structure adapted to the needs and characteristics of users serving in them and various communication channels (chat, forum, pms, mailing list). Officers should speak English and be active on chat and forums of course so that they can efficiently take orders from the MoD and get them executed. The hierarchy would still be there and orders would still come from top down but the military structure would be more free-form and adapted to our society.

Also each platoon should have at least one organization as supply centre. As for state owned weapon companies, I’m not in favour of them. (Maybe some of the platoons could have their own q1 weapon companies but strictly from their own money.) Stockpiling weapons is also quite unnecessary as it’s very easy for a smaller nation like ours to buy weapons on the world market at any time. Though of course it would be ideal if we could secure deals with local weapon companies that they uphold a strategic reserve for us. Also the army should use locally made weapons (and gifts and moving tickets) as much as possible.

Best regards,
Nagyzee