I made this post to gauge interest in a 20th century based MP, and the response was positive, so I am going to be writing this post under the assumption that season 3 will be in the 20th century.
The Battle System
Out of all the things we set up to play ModernPowers, I think this is the one we fell short on the most. We actually had problems with this right off the bat, when the ever-inactive creator of MP, Justin, decided to go to war with Ukraine, and @Boukert had to do 150 rolls to sort out one battle.
Arguments
One of the problems with battles is it is very hard to find a middle ground between realism and practicality. It would be very easy to implement an extremely complex battle system that took minute details into account and simulated them accurately. Nobody would ever use it.
Alternate history is fascinating. Sometimes the "what-ifs" of history are more interesting to consider than the truth. Sometimes we have had arguments over posts on MP, but the majority of them have been counterproductive and have achieved nothing, but I think they could serve a role here. Our current battle system does not really take small details into account very well. For example, I could say to you that your army is not well fed because of a post I made a week ago that disrupted your supplies going to the frontline. If players gave some thoughts on the outcome of a battle and took these details into account, we could agree as a collective group on a few different things, and actually factor this into the equation within the battle system. I don't know exactly how this would happen, but I think it could introduce another layer to the battle system and factor in a lot of strategic advantages and decisions that are currently not present in the system.
The FATE system
@Jidlaph has just outlined this to me in IRC so I will paste his explanation here rather than butcher it myself.
"It is a very loose tabletop system, mostly just SKILL+ROLL vs SKILL+ROLL. But one of the unique parts of the game is something called "Aspects". A character sheet (which can be a person, thing, vechicle, nation, whatever), will have various descriptors which outlines what that nation is all about. The GM [mods] describes the layout/terrain, and writes down Aspects for that terrain (like DENSE JUNGLE). Whenever someone wants to take an action, the GM or other players can help/interfere by saying that the aspect DENSE JUNGLE is, for example, interfering with troop movement, and spent what is called a Fate Point to make it true, increasing or decreasing the difficuty of the roll. Battles can be resolved to create Aspects on the war as a whole, which can then be used to boost a bimonthly whole-army-vs-whole-army roll."
I think this could be used either within the current system, or on its own to create an entirely new one. He also said this, which I find interesting:
"Character sheets usually top out at 5-ish Aspects, and get various Stunts that can be pulled off under special circumstances. A player would probalby have to pick the ones that best embody their country's situation."
This is very similar to the game Hearts Of Iron, in which countries are given certain national modifiers at the beginning of the game that give positive or negative bonuses, and can be removed depending on events that are triggered in-game. I also think that the HOI system of triggering certain events to give modifiers is a good idea, though they would have to be planned before the start of the game.
Time
Another problem we face on MP is time. Currently, 6 days is a year, and we take Sunday off. I would propose a slight change to this system, and give mods the ability to speed up or slow down time. If there are a lot of battles going on in WW2, for example, time might be slowed down to 1/4. If we are in a period where nothing important is really happening, and there isn't much reason to plan anything out, make alliances, build up armies etc. we could speed up time to 2x. This would solve the problem we have with conflicts being frozen all the time whilst time is carrying on at a steady pace for all other in-game events.
Moderation
In the past, mods have intervened in posts when a certain level of realism has been breached. I think this is absolutely necessary, and we should keep this in place. It will be far easier to do this too, as we actually have historical context to decide if something is absolutely ridiculous or not.
The one thing I want to change is mods stepping in purely because a player is making a bad decision. We have either told players not to make the post, or given warnings beforehand on what could potentially happen if they do make the post. I think this should be completely scrapped, and players should have the potential to make very large mistakes. One of the reasons for doing this is to keep in line with realism. The 20th century saw a catastrophic amount of military and diplomatic errors that we should not try to prevent from happening, because it will make the game more interesting.
Fate seems good.