All,

Thanks for your input. Here are some definitions (that I will use in my brief) to clarify the concept:

A faction is a political or military organization that commands units and is at the direction of a single user.

A unit is a military, political, social, or economic figure or element that conducts actions and is commanded by a faction.

An action is a military, economic, political, or social task conducted by a unit and that has effects.

An effect is a military, political, economic, or social consequence of an action. An effect will be measured in how it alters any of the values for factions and units (ie. increasing/decreasing legitimacy, etc).

As you can imagine, these four components will form the building-block of the sim. I'm busy developing the descriptive values for each (i.e. nationality, ethnicity, religion, cohesion, legitimacy, credibility, loyalty, mobility, survivability, etc). The values can either be numerical or text. As new factions, actions, units, and effects are created, users can mix and match any of them to represent conventional military units, unconventional fighting forces, individuals, or any other kind of organization of any size; military, political, or other.