A Kingdom at war with a Megacorp?

One of my odd story ideas, where the head of a powerful company with resources on par with a nation is at war (either full on or more of a Cold War) with a nation.

I haven't worked out all the nuts and bolts of it yet (and said MegaCorp may not even be that influential, along with the kingdom maybe being somewhat small itself), but I was curious as to what you guys think of it.

The lack of detail on the concept is again because it's in it's very early stages.

Edited by HandsomeRob on Jun 22nd 2019 at 11:28:20 AM

What, by mega-corporations are you talking about the likes of East India Company or Apple/Google type?

Well, more like fictional megacorps that that their own armies and shit on a good day.

Stuff like that. They are almost their own nations (even if a small one).

So, kinda like Borderlands manufacturers?

Yeah I guess. Or any other big company in different types of fiction.

For two examples of the kind of Megacorp I'm thinking of, there's the rare Benevolent example in Capsule Corp from Dragon Ball.

For a less benevolent example (and one with the resources to challenge a country) we have the Shinra Electric Power Company from Final Fantasy VII.

I'm reminded of The Lost Fleet series. A sci-fi series set in the far off future with the backdrop being a Forever War between the Alliance, an interstellar federation plus some allies, and the Syndicate Worlds, a conglomerate of MegaCorp who own their own region of space. The Syndics are a cut-throat business culture run by an Executive Council whose military is commanded by CE Os and sub-CE Os.

Edited by Parable on Jun 24th 2019 at 8:42:15 AM

I don't have anything to say yet about the kingdom part at the moment, but a lot of sci-fi media portray MegaCorp armies as fanatically obedient masses decked out in corporate Sigil Spam. If you're working on a realistic(-ish) modern setting, you... probably wouldn't want to do that.

If you're, say, a palm oil conglomerate looking to evict a rainforest tribe to make way for a new plantation, or a mining giant looking to silence local whistleblowers, you wouldn't send armed goons dressed in company colours to do it. It's a strain on the personnel roll and tends to tarnish the brand image, which scares investors off and is therefore a Bad Thing. Plus full-time militaries are expensive, and you don't want to spend more on your payroll than you have to. It's much more likely for a modern MegaCorp to contract the work to a specialist PMC (preferably through intermediaries), or just bribe the local government and armed thugs to do their dirty work for them.

If you go back in time to the 17th-19th centuries, then the PR aspect becomes a lot less important - the various East India Companies were happy enough to stamp their logos on everything, from guns to underground dungeons. But still, they did everything they could to avoid maintaining a full-time army: most of the time, their ranks were filled with local warriors and Asian and African mercenaries from various nations. Even their European contingents were largely made up of ex-soldiers from All the Little Germanies, hired on limited contracts. And you couldn't blame them, really. There's no point spending more on uniforms, training and benefits than you have to. Think of it as the Uber model, but for violent imperialism.

Edited by eagleoftheninth on Jun 25th 2019 at 6:25:59 AM

Also, the single-most important aspect of plotting out any kind of war:

What are the factions waging the war over?

Let them be fighting over "human" resources...

One side not wanting to become "bio-cogs" in the MegaCorp's machinery and the other looking for more people to forcefully..."recruit" into itself to grow bigger at the expense of the world.

That would be a war that's pretty much inevitable to avoid since nothing would sate the MegaCorp side but a complete surrender and overturn of the Kingdom's people.

Just a suggestion.

I should note that corporate mercenaries may (or may not) be better funded and equipped than national military forces, but they are in it for the money, not for patriotism or duty, and so they have one key psychological difference: they aren't willing to lay down their lives en masse. A PMC soldier wants to live to collect his retirement, not die for his company, and no amount of Training from Hell or Bad Boss employer tactics will change that.

If a scenario goes tits up for mercenaries, they will get the hell out. This gives a significant psychological advantage to the nation-state fighting against them. Of course, if the nation-state can't afford a professional army, is under-equipped, and/or mainly fields conscripts with poor training and discipline, then this may not prove to be decisive.

PMCs don't fight territorial warfare: they don't conquer and hold land. They fight to protect their financial interests or those of their employers, such as by dealing with banditry, piracy, or terrorism. If they do go up against a conventional army, even if they win they aren't going to sit around and secure territory, build infrastructure, and all the other things you do when you're trying to conquer a place, unless they are paid a lot of money. Their employer, in turn, won't pay them to do that unless there's a profit to be made by doing so.

The point is that the motivation of the army as a whole and its soldiers as individuals is critical, and these motivations are almost completely different for mercenaries versus soldiers.

Hmm.

A straight up war may not be feasible with what you guys are telling me.

A conflict over a resource could work however. It would also be interesting to see how these two different bodies (a company full of hired men and a country full of soldiers fighting for their home and glory or whatever) would bounce off each other.