Changes to Conscription Laws

[Clown Baby]

Right now, there are very few real negative debuffs to changing conscription laws. For example, going from volunteer to limited-conscription has no negative modifiers. Going to service by requirement only lowers factory output by 10% among other penalties. I think we need to take into account what increased conscription actually means. You would be conscripting old men and young boys, and it would definitely affect war participation and stability. A volunteer force should be highly professional and a higher organization and stats than units that are recruited through conscription. I propose that with every increase in conscription laws, there is a penalty to either combat effectiveness, organization or recovery time. This would reflect the older and younger members of society being conscripted into the armed forces, and the fact that they're less capable soldiers than volunteer troops

 

[MacroWarrior]

I think at least enwidement of the conscription limits should reduce stability. (extensive conscription -5, service by requirement -10, all adults serve -20, Scrapping the barrel -30)

 

[Ossiv]

Right now, there are very few real negative debuffs to changing conscription laws. For example, going from volunteer to limited-conscription has no negative modifiers. Going to service by requirement only lowers factory output by 10% among other penalties. I think we need to take into account what increased conscription actually means. You would be conscripting old men and young boys, and it would definitely affect war participation and stability. A volunteer force should be highly professional and a higher organization and stats than units that are recruited through conscription. I propose that with every increase in conscription laws, there is a penalty to either combat effectiveness, organization or recovery time. This would reflect the older and younger members of society being conscripted into the armed forces, and the fact that they're less capable soldiers than volunteer troops

You probably live in a country with volunteer military and therefore don't have first hand experience IRL, do you? I live in a country where we have had conscription for more than 100 years and it saved us during WWII. According to our military experience from WWII, on average reservists were as good soldiers as regulars. Also, nearly all WWII German soldiers and officers were reservists and in 1940 they won not just other conscription-based armies, but also the professional, fully motorized British Expeditionary Force. Also, today's Israeli military is largely conscription and reserve -based. Do you think their troops are not good because of that?

Serving as a conscript for a year or so, and serving after that as a reservist on side of civilian work does not have any noticeable negative impact. Also, readiness to defend motherland is often higher in countries with conscription-based military.

However, service by requirement can have negative consequences if a very high proportion of adults are required to serve in the military. Many nations in past wars have been able to mobilize about 15 percent of their total population to the military; most countries have more than that percentage of able-bodied men aged 20-50. But going much over that percentage can have the negative consequences that "scraping the barrel" represents in the game.

 

[MacroWarrior]

You probably live in a country with volunteer military and therefore don't have first hand experience IRL, do you? I live in a country where we have had conscription for more than 100 years and it saved us during WWII. According to our military experience from WWII, on average reservists were as good soldiers as regulars. Also, nearly all WWII German soldiers and officers were reservists and in 1940 they won not just other conscription-based armies, but also the professional, fully motorized British Expeditionary Force. Also, today's Israeli military is largely conscription and reserve -based. Do you think their troops are not good because of that?

Serving as a conscript for a year or so, and serving after that as a reservist on side of civilian work does not have any noticeable negative impact. Also, readiness to defend motherland is often higher in countries with conscription-based military.

However, service by requirement can have negative consequences if a very high proportion of adults are required to serve in the military. Many nations in past wars have been able to mobilize about 15 percent of their total population to the military; most countries have more than that percentage of able-bodied men aged 20-50. But going much over that percentage can have the negative consequences that "scraping the barrel" represents in the game.

Well I don't know how you understood these but basicly it is known that at least in that times, having a mass army is also having mess army I mean for example scrapping the barrel is including even preteenagers (12-13 or older), women and 60 year old people and more or less unhealthy people, wouldn't that both reduce the general stability of country as well as quality of that spesific army groups, how can you expect old man to fight like a 25 year old lad? And also militia groups get less training for fighting. These are all effectants of combat ability. They are all the same with "all adults serve" too.

In normal times, military has spesific criteria to get people into armies which improves quality, of course lightening the rules to join would mean joining of not that qualified people. And also taking huge amounts of people into military both damages economy and physchology of community. Many families are giving their fathers, their children or maybe even their mothers.

Think the example of Volkssturm forces, it is obvious that in average they can not be as a 1941 regular forces or pre-war SS.

I don't think that there should be combat debuffs as a country-wide effect but rather implementation of reserve forces system and also seperation of militia and regular forces.

 

[DilberDD]

Well right now there is a cost to changing conscription laws, it costs PP. I think it’s a good enough abstraction of the costs of conscription on society. I don’t think limited conscription or extensive conscription needs more debuffs than what they have already. Depending on circumstances limited may actually be superior to volunteer and especially disarmed nation. Then when you get to All Adults Serve and Scraping the Barrel - I see it as less about conscripting children and elderly and more simulating a loosening of health standards for conscription. I don’t know the statistics but a lot of people are disqualified from military service for a variety of reasons - all adults serve is when you only exclude violent criminals, mental patients, and contagious diseases. I think the costs of training these people and making them combat effective is simulated well enough with the current debuffs.

 

[TalyonUngol]

Why fix what isn't broke?

 

[Ffire]

Seems that none of you think about the economical burden on the society.

Pulling of the workforce millions of young men means you loose a lot of workers. Wages and prices follow the law of supply and demands : having less workers means compagnies must pay more to hire those who rest (especially if you seek to hire the best workers) and that will pull up all the production costs. That's logical : less people available to work means higher prices for anything that requires work.
The volunteers system means that people choose by themselves to go in the army : basically they will go there if they have nothing better to do in the civilian life. The notion of better change for all individuals : some are very patriotic or coming from a military family so there's very few civilian activities that will compete with a military career, others can't find a proper job anywhere else than in the army.
Pulling in the army every young man means that you'll have in the rank individuals that lack motivation and/or highly skilled people that could be very usefull in the economy. Of course, an exemption system can mitigate that but will be much less accurate than the sum of individual decisions in a system based on free-willl.

Finally having a bunch of people in the army not only means that they can't work. You also need to pay them, to feed them, to accomodate them, to clothe them, etc...

That's why anything above volunteer law should have an economical cost (which in HOI is % of civilian factories unavailable).

 

[BeauNiddle]

Seems that none of you think about the economical burden on the society.

Ideas - Hearts of Iron 4 Wiki

hoi4.paradoxwikis.com

Volunteer & limited are where you take the best able bodied soldiers
Extensive conscription is where you start employing the unhealthy or unwilling (hence training time increases)
Everything beyond that has ever increasing penalties to your economy


Is your argument that the penalties should be moved forward to even the earlier bandings? 5% of the population recruited isn't very much when the government can start instating rationing & reallocation of industry. (now doing it in peace time might be harder but HOI doesn't really cover peacetime)

Having the penalty as drop to factory output makes more sense for taking the most able bodied employees rather than increasing consumer goods

 

[Secret Master]

I think the penalties for higher conscription laws are okay. But our MP group realized that the thresholds for upping conscription were too high. As a result, we kept most of the existing penalties, but we reduced the manpower you get for most levels, and we added an extra level after Service by Requirement to smooth out the manpower curve a bit.

The goal was to get more countries to the economic penalties sooner so that they felt the consequences of conscription earlier in the war.

 

[kaguravitro]

Much important than changes in conscription, i would like a mobilization system / reserve army, when they were mobilized then hit economy/production

 

[DilberDD]

Seems that none of you think about the economical burden on the society.

Pulling of the workforce millions of young men means you loose a lot of workers. Wages and prices follow the law of supply and demands : having less workers means compagnies must pay more to hire those who rest (especially if you seek to hire the best workers) and that will pull up all the production costs. That's logical : less people available to work means higher prices for anything that requires work.
The volunteers system means that people choose by themselves to go in the army : basically they will go there if they have nothing better to do in the civilian life. The notion of better change for all individuals : some are very patriotic or coming from a military family so there's very few civilian activities that will compete with a military career, others can't find a proper job anywhere else than in the army.
Pulling in the army every young man means that you'll have in the rank individuals that lack motivation and/or highly skilled people that could be very usefull in the economy. Of course, an exemption system can mitigate that but will be much less accurate than the sum of individual decisions in a system based on free-willl.

Finally having a bunch of people in the army not only means that they can't work. You also need to pay them, to feed them, to accomodate them, to clothe them, etc...

That's why anything above volunteer law should have an economical cost (which in HOI is % of civilian factories unavailable).

But a volunteer army isn’t working for free, they are still paid and fed same as conscripts and still the same withdraw from workforce. As far as impact on economy, 99% of the time you switch to war economy before switching conscription laws. So impact on wages and prices are offset because of rationing - consumption based economy is gone, and the jobs available are in furtherance of the war effort. the Debuffs in the extreme conscription policies high enough prohibitive effect already that you only implement them once you absolutely must do so, although IMO they give too much recruitable population and should have diminishing returns on recruitable population the higher you go.

 

[Dimmie_Dumm]

the Debuffs in the extreme conscription policies high enough prohibitive effect already that you only implement them once you absolutely must do so, although IMO they give too much recruitable population and should have diminishing returns on recruitable population the higher you go.

You sort of contradict youself in these lines, but the thing I'd like to point to is that economy debuffs coming with harsh conscription are stacked additively with a whole bunch of buffs (i.e. from tech), so the actual impact is far less severe than one might expect from the look of it. I.e. -30% MIC output won't reduce it by 30% overall, but rather by some 12-15 or maybe 20% tops, all factors considered. Concentrated Industry V alone is +100%.

 

[Ffire]

Is your argument that the penalties should be moved forward to even the earlier bandings? 5% of the population recruited isn't very much when the government can start instating rationing & reallocation of industry. (now doing it in peace time might be harder but HOI doesn't really cover peacetime)

Yes that's my point.

5% of the population is huge, really. Because that's a lot much in % of the men. Half of the population is women. For the men, let's say than 50% of them are elder (more that 50 years old), child, or people not physicallly able to go in the army. That's leave us with only 25% of the population being men between 18 and 50. So 5% of the total population means 1 on 5 of all men in age are in the army. In other words that's like sending in the army every man from 25 to 31 years old. And those who are sent first are mostly those who are the most work-capable too, so the burden is even higher.

Rationning and relocating economical ressources by the government is the same as amputating is in surgeonery : a last resort action with dire consequences. Basically it's what the USSR did during its whole existence and they ended with an economy so crippled they even couldn't produce their own food... that kind of trick is not a solution.

 

[KongenfraNord]

I understand where you're all coming from, but I think this will only hurt playing a minor even more.

 

[xtfoster]

Yes that's my point.

5% of the population is huge, really. Because that's a lot much in % of the men. Half of the population is women. For the men, let's say than 50% of them are elder (more that 50 years old), child,

According to the US Census from 1940, all men aged 20-49 (it breaks it down by 5 year groups) comprised ~22.4% of the US population

or people not physicallly able to go in the army.

Unfortunately, the report includes "not able to work" in the same category as "those employed in own home housework, those in school, those unable to work, inmates in penal and mental institutions, and homes for the aged, infirm, and needy."

That's leave us with only 25% of the population being men between 18 and 50. So 5% of the total population means 1 on 5 of all men in age are in the army. In other words that's like sending in the army every man from 25 to 31 years old. And those who are sent first are mostly those who are the most work-capable too, so the burden is even higher.

Not sure I understand your math.
You say that 25% of the population is in the prime service age of 18-50, then say that 1 in 5 of the men in that age bracket would be in the manpower pool. But then you guess that every man aged 25-31 equals 5% of the population?

Rationning and relocating economical ressources by the government is the same as amputating is in surgeonery : a last resort action with dire consequences. Basically it's what the USSR did during its whole existence and they ended with an economy so crippled they even couldn't produce their own food... that kind of trick is not a solution.

The heavy draft was why you started to see more and more women in the workforce during (and leading up to) WWII. Just so you know, roughly 11% of the US population (Male and Female) served in the military during WWII.

EDIT: And that 5% is NOT just 5% of the men.
That is why you can take the 5% conscription level and have varying levels of manpower depending on things (Spirits, Decisions, etc.) like "Women in the Workforce"

 

[Cavalry]

That is a realistic idea. More conscript is not as young as smaller one. But in game this will favour China and big country that don't need high conscript and make life of a minor much worse.


On the other hands, let's say the norm in WW is everyone should conscript to max, and anyone that don't will not get the benefit of huge army. Yes, the way to win war is quantity first, if you can afford quality then fine, but not as the expense of quantity. So a good, realistic WW game design is gear everyone to max conscription.