Razgovory

I was not aware of any Arab theocratic states.in 2008.

They may as well post pictures of Middle Earth.

There is a reason why countries like Iraq adopted Soviet doctrines. It might not build the most efficient army, but if you want to armed a large group of poorly educated and disinterested people of wildly differing backgrounds and get them all to marching in the same direction, the soviets had a talent for it. I'm not sure if Western soldiers would be conformable training them that way, or meting out Soviet style discipline.

I'd like to see: Russian equipped irregulars. NATO: Equipped irregulars. New terrain and buildings. Something to make it "feel" more like 2017 rather then 1944. Chain-link fences of various sizes, water towers, Radio and TV towers, Electrical pylons and substations.

I read this, and my first reading was you suggesting she was running a strip joint.

Honestly, I don't care about the "plot" to Black Sea. I'd like them to just throw in army or two with each module. Let the scenario designers figure out why Iran and North Korea or fighting.each other.

I'm sorry but I must disagree strenuously. When the T-34s were produced they not the right tank at the right time since they fail to hold back the German tide in 1941 and underperformed in 1942. If they were the right tank at the time, they would have been able to brush off the German army and counterattack into Axis territory. They could not do this in 1941 or 1942. Despite the apparently "inferior" Sherman, American forces were never pushed back 1,000 miles by German armies instead, you saw a fairly steady advance. Too often people look at tanks from a war gaming perspective, where armor and firepower are the most important things. When compared, the Early Sherman beats the T-34 for two reasons. It had a radio in every tank, and it could be landed on a beach. T-34s were not required to land on beaches, but this was an important requirement for Shermans. Keep in mind that the Germans had motives for claiming the superiority of the T-34, as it helped excuse their failure to win the war. To Western Audiences after the war they wanted to create a reputation of superb professionalism that was undermined by forces out side of their control. Blaming political causes helped distance them from Hitler which was useful in the early postwar period since a lot of people wanted to hang them and exaggerating the power of soviet weaponry helped convince Westerners to rearm Germany against the Russians in the Cold War (it also helped their own pride if an inferior people only outfought them because of numbers and better weapons which they would have been able to match were it not the political leadership they were not so eager to distance themselves from). The Germans created a myth to explain their defeat in WWI, and I believe they did so after WWII. I see no reason to believe either one.

Poorly!

Well, they probably weren't well trained, but it's hard to tell anything from a video like that. We don't exactly have a lot of context, and grainy film can give false impressions. For all we know, they thought were ambushed in territory they thought safe. When you are being shot at, it's hard to keep situational awareness, so people make all sorts of mistakes. There is a reason that coolness under fire is so highly valued.

What you are discussing is very much the product of democracy. The reason why so many Amerircans are in jail is because people demanded "tough on crime" measures be taken in the 1980's and 1990's. Politicians who were "tough on crime", won elections, Politicians who were not lost elections. One of the downsides of a Democracy is that voters sometimes make poor choices. What the Snowden revelations revealed was that the United States spies on civilians of foreign countries. Most Americans don't care about that or approve of it. The US doeds spy on some Americans, but are heavily restricted on what it can do and what it can collect. A lot of Americans don't care or approve of this as well.

I'm not sure this a is a good enviroment for the A-10.

There acutally is a similar situation with the US. We call the place Cuba. It was a seperate nation but under the thumb of the US with many Americans living there and much of the business run by Americans. The pro-American government fell, and the US used a large group of disidents and exiles to build a small army ordered it to invade Cuba. This disaster was called "the Bay of Pigs Invasion", in American history. The US denied responsibilty in the spirit of plausable denialitbility, but nobody believed it. It was absurd. Only the most extreme anti-communist partisan called it anything but an invasion despite the attacking force being mostly made up of Cubans. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bay_of_Pigs_Invasion You can read more about it here. I never heard it seen as the Bay of Pigs uprising or Bay of Pigs civil war in English historiagraphy.

It's what they did in Grozny.

I'm basing this on my experiences on Shock Force: and when I transitioned from the first Comabt Mission games to the newer engine. Okay everyone mentioned that infantry is more deadly. That can't be stressed enough. You can fail a mission very quickly with just one wrong move. In Shock Force you were often attacking enemies that outnumbered you two or three to one. So you had a platoon of infantry against a company of Syrians. I found that annoying, and hopefully it won't be in this game. With the better kit that Redforce is getting it probably won't be an issue. Still, keep in mind that a squad moving up in Normandy and running into infantry might lose a couple of guys and then retreat, in a Shock Force you probably won't have anyone come back. Since so much metal is being thrown around you'll have higher casualties even when in areas that are fairly safe. Abrams have a reputation as invincible war machines. They aren't.. Some guy in a building can hit an Abrams and disable it from a pretty good distance away. The RPG-29 is very long ranged and offers a credible threat to pretty much anything (I just realized that they aren't even in this game, or at least not in the manuel). Soldiers carrying a Guided missile launcher look silly. Artillery has proximity fuses. Anyone outside of a building is in danger. BMPs look like tanks. They are armored tracked vehicles with turrets, cannons and even missiles. They arn't tanks. They can be knocked out by small arms fire. They are also rolling bombs. Keep your infantry away from them as much as possible becuase when they blow up, they'll take out pretty much everything around them. Honestly, you are probably safer riding a bike into combat. Russian tanks have poor situational awareness. I once ambushed a platoon of Abrams with a company of T-72s. My guys never got a shot off. Tanks don't carry as much ammo as they did in WWII. It's kind of disapointing. With Guided anti-tank missiles you don't need to wait till the enemy gets close. It will lower the fly time the closer you get, but unlike an AT gun it does the same damage. Clearing out buildings is a real pain. You can lose half a squad to two dopes hiding in a corner. You have to do a lot supressing before you go in. The US army doesn't have flamethowers anymore.

I'm sorry, I meant T-55s and T-62s. They don't appear to be making it in the game.

I'm guessing 23 or 22. Almost all releases have been on Fridays or Thursday.

Well, while not in game I think it could probably kill a T-55, or T-62. Last year during the Maiden protests the protesters got a hold of some of these and put them in the barricades. I imagine that at the close ranges of a street battle it has a chance to knock out nearly anything the Ukranian government would send down the street. HEAT rounds could probably threaten tanks without ERA defenses as well. Still it is a museum piece and it doesn't look like something you move around very easily, but it can still kill people. Soviet designed armored vehicles that aren't tanks, such as BMPs, BTRs, SPAAGs etc would all be easily knocked out. The wiki article says that it can fire a guided missile which could possibly disable a Western tank.

34 years old. Like seeing things go boom.

Make no mistake, going on to Steam entails some risk, just as continuing the same business model. Combat Mission is niche, but not so niche as "99.90%" won't understand it. That's just elitism talking. Personally, I would hire more staff and try Steam. But it's their company, and they can run it the way they want. And God, do I wish was 18-25 years old!

They did use gamersgate for a short period, maybe that soured them. My impression is that Battlefront is very careful about losing control of their stuff. They have kept the company very small, despite being around for 15 years, they aren't exactly friendly to modding, and are resistant to publishiers that might decrease the price of their of products. They are also very proudly niche, and there is an air of resentment about them.

I'd kind of like to see some more modern types of buildings such a large TV and radio antennas and water towers.

Well the original post does have a point, though it's certainly not limited to this game or just guide missiles. Battlefields tend to be bigger in real life then in PC games for both techinical and flow reasons. Armor and Mechanized forces can cover 4km in a very short period of time. Line of sight can be much, much further. Ukraine is a big place, some of it can is forested, some of it you can see for miles. For proper scale you might need 40 square Km. Frankly that would be kind of boring. 20 mintues of driving through farm land punctuatied by a guy launching a Sagger into an unoffending barn. Combat Mission is still a game, and realism takes a back seat at certain points. When you start a mission, you know you'll face some stiff resistance. In real life, you have no idea what you'll face. Often it'll be light resistance or none at all. You might fight an small urban battle in Combat Mission shock force and go for 45 minutes of game time and win a decisive victory over the insurgents. In Iraq, you might be get in a six hour gun fight and never know if you actually inflicted any causalties on the enemy or how many there were, or even who they were and what their problem was. That doesn't make for a good game experience (or any kind of good experience!). There will always be a conflict between simulation, game, and what can realistically be produced on a computer. I'm not saying tha Battlefront is beyond critisism on any of these factors, but you should take these factors into consideration.

This was something I was wondering about. In particularly things like Cell towers, large radio and television antennas and water towers.

It's difficult to actually know. Unlike WWII tank battles, there's not a lot of data. Often things like armor thickness or makeup is classified. Not to mention what any given weapon will do to the armor. For all we know the Russians figured out how to defeat Chobham armor ten years ago. We really have no idea what happens if missile x hits vehicle y. Well someone probably knows, but that tends to be secret. In my mind the Abram's armor and guns are somewhat overhyped. The vehicle certainly isn't invincible. The biggest advantage is in crew training.

Yeah, I'm thinking their next game should be an unlikely war like Switzerland vs Iceland. If war breaks out in either of those countries they should give up wargames altogether and make games based on peace, prosperity,and recipes for fried chicken.