:. CN Sanctioned Stats Depot, Special Edition, Nukes of the Second Great War

This is from a derail in the current FARK Suicide thread.

It is decidedly more likely than my normal thread to elicit trolling and general partisan sniping, which is one of the reasons I started it in its own topic. Let's try to keep it as constructive as possible. My hope (probably foolish) is that if people can start being honest with themselves about what actually happened, the chances of it happening again will be reduced greatly.

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It seems that some members of the former League (and their supporters) would like to retroactively assert that the nuclear arms race that proceeded GW2 was spearheaded by the Initiative. The numbers tell a different story. And when it comes to trends involving thousands of nations across 8 of the largest and most powerful alliances on Bob, I trust the numbers over the protestations of the individual players.

Nukes of the Second Great War:
(Posted Image)

The vertical orange line is the day that LUE began attacking select GOONS targets; January 5, 2007.
The vertical red line is the day the full-on League-Initiative slugfest began; January 9, 2007.
The vertical blue line is the day the official peace occurred, on January 17, 2007. If I'm not mistaken, the cease fire had started two days earlier on the 15th.

This is the table of Nukes used to create the graph:
(Posted Image)

For reference, Strength of the Second Great War:
(Posted Image)

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Now, the reason I began tracking these numbers in the first place was because of the nuke gap between the Initiative and the League. Back during the NR crisis, it was clear the League would outgun the Initiative in any nuclear conflict. I decided to begin tracking the difference in nukes every day. Since it was all coming from the same place, I decided to keep the other relevant data that makes my other graphs possible. TMYK.

On December 29, the first day I began collecting data, GATO, NAAC, LUE and CDS had 1,527 nukes. NPO, GOONS, NpO and GGA had 1,231. The Initiative had only 81.6% of the nukes the League had.

The gap did not shrink after the NR crisis, it in fact peaked at 412 on January 5, the day things started spiraling into GW2. The figure was 1,828 to 1,416 (the Initiative possessed 77.5% of the League's nukes), as the number of nukes in the arsenals of everyone had grown 17.5% from December 29.

When all hell broke loose on January 9, the figure was 1,852 to 1,547. The numbers still rising, but the Initiative had closed to 83.5% of the League's nukes.

League nukes peaked on January 12, at 1,939 to the Initiative's 1,618 (83.5%). By this point, the war was clearly going the Initiative's way. This is important -- the war was already going badly, and League nations were still buying nukes at a frenzied pace.

The Initiative didn't surpass the League's nukes until the 16th (1,598 to 1,635). If I'm not mistaken, that's past the point of the cease fire that led to the official peace.

The numbers do not lie.

The League started the nuke race in the lead position from the very foundation of the League, continuing to and past the NR crisis. The difference in NS did not warrant the disparity.

Even in the middle of a horribly losing conventional campaign, they spent money buying a record number of nukes. Money far better spent on keeping the conventional war they were fighting from getting worse. Money their weaker members could have used to help carry on battles. They did not.

The idea that the most powerful nations in the League decided in the midst of a losing war to nuke up, without direction from their superiors, is insulting. They nuked up because they expected them to be used.

Edit: it's != its
Edit 2007-03-24: New hosting, courtesy of Diskord.

This post has been edited by Unspeakable Evil on Mar 24 2007, 02:03 PM

Nice graphs

Edit: I should have looked at the graph better <psy?>

nice!

This post has been edited by Phoib on Mar 3 2007, 07:51 PM

Like some people said(I think), they were excepting an all out nuclear war.

C'mon Mr. Statician!

You need to start posting the dx/dt Derivitaves of these graphs so the crayola crowd can gauge the rate of increase!

Good point, by the way.

You also need one showing # of "Nuke Rogues" from both sides, to make it all fair and stuff. :)

Nice job! Where did you get the numbers? Is it recorded somewhere or did you keep track?

I am not entirely convinced that is the case based on numbers alone. Just curious, is there any other evidence to support your therory? To me, it was a time of war and don't forget that Initiative forces were stocking up on nukes as well.

Regardless, nice work. I like it.

-Psych

This post has been edited by PsychWard on Mar 3 2007, 08:07 PM

Never again will I do derivatives if I have anything to say about it. I still have nightmares about those classes.

That's data I don't have available. Might be interesting to insert them on the graph.

I've been keeping track since the end of December. I've got my own little MySQL database and everything.

Edit: it wasn't a double post, it was a mangled reply.

This post has been edited by Unspeakable Evil on Mar 3 2007, 08:23 PM

The Initiative clearly didn't need nukes to win. By the time the League's nuke count peaked, they were already well on the losing side of the conflict.

The Initiative was winning without using any nukes. The issue from our point of view was that the League could only hope to win at that point by way of a massive and coordinated nuclear assault. They did not (of course), and it's far from certain that it could have won the war, but at the time it was a very real threat. So parity or better was in the Initiative's interest to keep things from going nuclear. Besides, being on the winning side and having more resources to spare, the nukes were not hindering the Initiative's other war objectives.

Given that the Initiative was not nuking, the League should not have been wasting resources buying nukes. From an objective standpoint, they were useless if they were not going to try and win the war with them. Those resources, better used, could have helped turn the tide of battle. I highly doubt it, but using it on nukes they didn't plan to use would do even less.

Cause mysql is SO much fun to use.

Just joking, impressive job though.

It's funny, I don't really like mysql very much. Postgres is better by most metrics, but darn it, it's just so easy to set up a mysql database (read: I've done it so much I can do it with my eyes closed). And since it only ever has a single user and a few thousand rows in a handful of relations, it's Good Enough ™.

Edit: That's amazing -- it parses ( tm ) into ™.

This post has been edited by Unspeakable Evil on Mar 3 2007, 08:18 PM

Edit: I fail sometimes; post != edit.

This post has been edited by Unspeakable Evil on Mar 3 2007, 08:23 PM

I wish you had had the nuke counts in October and November, where the Initiative (AoA, I guess) was much higher than the League (uhh, MDP web?). Still, quite excellent statistics.

Well, neither the League nor the Initiative existed before mid-December, if I recall.

Looking backwards from December 29 would have left the League at a substantial nuke advantage for at least a fair number of weeks prior. Since only one nuke per nation can be purchased per day, it'd take some time of the Initiative buying few or none and the League buying every one they could to cover the 298 nuke difference between them that existed on December 29 in a lesser timeframe.

A linear approximation of the nuke growth between December 29, 2006 and January 9, 2007, projected back an equal period of time yields:
(Posted Image)

So I'm reasonably certain the correlation of nukes that existed at the formation of the League and Initiative was similar to that which existed at the end of 2006.

This post has been edited by Unspeakable Evil on Mar 3 2007, 09:20 PM

I wish I could learn mysql

No, no you do not. Trust me on this one.

Ok.

You are 5 weeks late.

I can only speak for the NAAC during that time, but the nuke count was not nearly as favorable for the League at the begining of december. The NAAC realized the immense nuclear gap between itself and the alliances around it (I believe at the time NPO had aproximately 400-500 nukes and I believe the next largest nuke holder was actually IRON of all people at like 250-300 nukes). The NAAC made a concerted alliance wide effort to close the nuclear gap, and like you have documented actually at one point reached a point where they had an average of more than 1 nuke per NAAC nation.

The belief at the time was that the war would quickly escalate to a nuclear exchange (I believe this was based on how the GW had started with Tyga's nuke) and some of us even acknowledged privately that the League's ONLY chance at victory was either through an intervention of an outside party like Legion, or by going nuclear. It was obvious that the Initiative had better communication and coordination, and the battle experience and tactics that the NPO had refined in previous wars was shared amongst it's allies, whereas the communication "difficulties" inside the League did not fascilitate nearly the exchange of information that the Initiative had.

I believe that we as the League initially underestimated the control that the Initiative would have over it's member nations, but through my talks on #NSA during the conflict and with several alliance leaders it became quite clear that the Initiative nations were given VERY explicit instructions NOT to use nuclear weapons, secure in the knowledge (correctly so) that they could win a conventional war.

After 2-3 days into the war it became apparent that the Initiative was not going to escalate this to a nuclear exchange (one of only 2 scenario's in which the League had a reasonable chance in my humble opinion) the League still did not wish to escalate to a nuclear war because of the belief (I don't know, but probably rightly so) that if they did it would completely kill any chance they had of recruiting Legion in to the war. Now after about 4-5 days it again became apparent that the Legion would not be entering the war on either side, at this point the League was losing the war and had 2 paths to pursue. If they initiated a full scale nuclear war they wouldn't be able to win, but they would be able to inflict enough damage on the Initiative that it would secure the Legion as THE premier alliance in the game for the foreseeable future. I know this option was discussed, as some felt that a Legion led CN world would be better than an NPO led CN world. The other option was to sue for peace as quickly as possible to try and limit the damage done to the League alliances with a hope that the damage hadn't been too great that a balance of power, when adding Legion into the League side, could still be maintained with the Initiative.

I would be interested to hear from the Initiative/NPO side of things, but they seemed awfully willing to negotiate what I would consider generous peace terms with the rest of the League (excluding LUE) when they obviously held the upper hand at the time. My belief is that 1) during the war NAAC who was primarily leading the peace talks at the time had gained a measure of respect from the Initiative, 2) The Initiative's true frustration at the time was with LUE, and by suing for peace with all but LUE they could insure LUE's destruction with minimal impact to their alliances and 3) they still knew that a nuclear exchange, even at that point where they were clearly winning, would damage their strength sufficiently enough that it would give Legion a clear lead in the strength race leaving the Orple power bloc as the primary power bloc in the game. This is all speculation on my part, but while I may have not always seen eye to eye with the NPO and it's allies at all times, I have always had respect for their decision making abilities and that most of their acts and decisions on a "governmental" scale are calculated in helping them achieve superiority in the game (which is the end game for all alliances in CN, the NPO just currently is the best at it).

Once the ceasefire/peace was reached it was an economic drain to maintain the high nuclear stockpiles and at least in the NAAC in the interest of rebuilding mass decommissioning of nukes quickly followed to help with the post war reconstruction (which I believe any smart alliance would have done, the cost of maintaining the nuke count would prohibitively impacted the NAAC's ability to conduct post war reconstruction). Which is why the Initiative now maintains the nuclear advantage, in that their nations weren't as badly damaged which allowed them the ability to maintain their nuke count.

I love your graphs, UE. Very informative in this case. Nice to see some actual data instead of just arguments.

This post has been edited by Bossk on Mar 3 2007, 11:39 PM

There was time shortly before this graph when the NAAC held very few nukes at all.

I issued a specific order to acquire nukes based on the numbers we could see at the time. IIRC correctly we had 220 odd to the NPO 850. We went on a massive increase acquiring a large arsenal leading up to Christmas when the first series of drama were unfolding.

I concur with Diskord, I was surprised at how peace talk developed, and I believe that nuclear weapons if they had been used strategically at the start of the war could have seriously changed the result if not the outcome. Unfortunately the Initiative wouldn't play the game and launch a strike against us. Our charter gave me no room to order a strike without nukes being used on the other side, so we held.

You may wish to remember that for the future, our charter is fairly strict. We came from a basis is as late as October that nukes were damaging for the alliance economically and we didn't hold that many. We didn't launch even though we were set to do so. However I also believe that if we didn't have the nuclear balance we would have been nuked to high heaven.

It is all about balance of power keeping it in check. There has been much speculation by so many about what our intentions were, what our tactics were etc, most of what I read is total bullcrap. There was never a time when I ever had my finger on the "alliance wide red button", surrender the fantasy.