Tomb's Rating System

KHR (who so ably notes that my rating is one-dimensional, which was 
no secret) said there were problems in my rankings. 

Anytime you aggregate a ranking from a diverse collection of weighted 
parameters (formally or not), you introduce all manner of suspect 
points: What are the parameters used/not used, what weightings are 
assigned, how did you arrive at values for the ratings, etc. 

The rating I gave was in terms of troop quality (meaning the quality 
of individual soldiers and leaders, as an average). This encompasses 
training, experience in small and large unit conflict (as it pertains 
to how well leaders handle these formations), technology (as it 
pertains to how well they train), logistics and support (as it 
pertains to how good their training is - how often, how real, etc), 
how often then conduct excercises (as it speaks to training), etc. 

It wasn't speaking directly to combat power, just to the quality of 
the average soldier. And a 2nd or 3rd rate power may not have been 
that far behind a first rate power. The gradations and the scale of 
their differentiation was never defined, though I didn't think of it 
as terrribly large. 

The best arguments I've seen so far for changes to my rankings 
involve downgrading Sweden and the Gurkhas for some of the same 
reasons I downgraded Scanfed. I actually buy those, though I suspect 
the Gurkhas operate with NAC and train with them and interoperate so 
well that they may actually gain many of the NAC benefits without 
actually being a large power (this is one lure for small client 
states and protectorates).

But I'd suggest, for interest, a larger write-in vote like the one 
Beth did for the fleets. But the trick would be in clearly defining 
categories that made sense and assigning them weighting wrt to the 
overall ranking tiers. Such an aggregate rating could produce 
subratings like : average troop quality, average officer quality, 
average NCO quality, national combat power, force projection 
rankings, etc. 

Anyone know of a non-subscription on line e-Poll place? That would 
allow us to do this rather easily. Alternately, someone could 
organize an e-mail poll. 

I'd suggest the following areas to rate (by nation) (leaving the 
discussions of weighting until later):

Individual soldier
------------------------
Equipment:
	Quality - how good is their equipment
	Reliability - how reliable
	Uniformity - how evenly available is the good equipment
Training:
	Breadth - how broad-spectrum is training
	Depth - how intense (related to how many hours) is training
	Uniformity - how evenly available is training
Mission / Combat Experience:
	Breadth - how many types of missions/ops 
	Depth - how often and how long 
	Uniformity - how evenly is the experience distributed 
Institutional/Cultural:
	Cultural - is the soldier from a more or less martial culture
	Institutional - does the military have proud traditions,
history, 
espirit de corps
Leadership:
	Breadth - have leaders had a chance to command varieties of unit

types, formation sizes, etc
	Depth - have the leaders got a lot of experience due to high op 
tempo or long training in mid-large size force excercises (and is the 
force big enough to allow this)
	Uniformity - is leadership skill divided evenly across the
force, or 
is it very spotty and intermittent

Ground Forces
----------------------
	Size - how big is the military
	Specialized units - does it support specialized units like 
engineers, tacair, spec forces, etc and to what extent relative to 
its size (average, more than average, less than average)
	Cross-Training - are the troops generally capable of attempting 
tasks outside a limited specialty and are formations capable of same
	Equipment - how much of it? how good? 
	Maintenance - how well maintained is the equipment? how well 
designed? how reliable?
	Logistics - how much supply is there? how much ability to deploy

forces and support them? how professional is the log corps? how much 
corruption is there? 
	Operational Planning - how good are the generals and senior 
commanders at the art of planning operations, strategy, etc.
	Investment in Personel - does the army suffer from under funding
or 
is it well funded for personel, training, manpower levels
	Investment in Technology/Materials - same, but for equipment, 
upgrades, quantity of specialized kit, etc.
	Political Involvement - how involved are the politicos or other 
powerful people 
(generally, the more, the worse.....)
	Tradition - does the army have a tradition of victory, never
giving 
up, fighting to 
the death, glory, professionalism, etc or a tradition of getting 
whupped, giving up, deserting, having discipline and morale problems, 
etc.
	
That's a first cut at a more detailed assessment.