zinzan

It was a crippling bottleneck. Italy was indeed a rural nation known for its citrus and wine production. On the one hand, some of the world's most famous automotive, arms, and aero firms were there. Maserati, Beretta, Fiat, Ansaldo, etc were world wide brands and made considerable profits on international sales. Italian industry was capable of making high quality products, it just clearly was not capable lots of quality products. All of Italy's best hardware was generally limited production run stuff, and manufacturing was always slow. Even small orders were ridiculously expensive owing to the need for them to import raw materials, and because the Italian government would generally take private firms on their word that they were getting the best deal. 
There were some silver linings. Italy had a large population for its size and could put millions of men in the field, but arming all these men was problematic due to the industrial bottlenecks and even cases of corruption. Many men in the Italian Army never got uniforms or boots, much less weapons or rations. The Italian Army's ration during the war was of such notoriously bad quality that Italian troops referred to it as "dead donkey". 
The Italians inherited lots of weaponry from the defeated Austo-Hungarians in the last war. Much of which were quality artillery tubes by Skoda works. In fact Italy's artillery may well have been its most functional arm during the war and both World Wars were artillery wars. However it had the classic limitation of needing to rely on pre-planned fire missions because radios and field telephones were so scarce. The Italian Army did not have enough trucks or movers for all of them and i'm sure there weren't even enough horses to meet the artillery's requirements for mobility. Even if there were, ammunition shortages had to be frequent events because of the next major issue, the Italian Navy.
On paper the Italian Navy looked very impressive. Lots of relatively modern capital ships with impressive throw weights. I believe the most modern of which the Littorio class actually overmatched the most recent British and German designs in firepower at least until HMS Vanguard appeared. In many ways German capital ships were markedly inferior to Italian ones, and it was in Regia Marina the Germans placed the most hope in an Italian partnership by far. The Italian Navy also had impressive sealift capability, operating a large merchant fleet. However, the Italian Navy was remarkably deficient in escort vessels, the lack of which was so egregious that when the Italians launched Littorio and Vittorio Veneto  in 1940 they had to withdraw ships from outposts like the Dodacanese Islands to protect them. This meant that the safe perimeter the Navy could operate within got that much smaller leading to an overall decrease it capability. The Italian Navy actually lost effectiveness by having too many capital ships since it had to shut down bases without so much as a shot being fired. Since the Navy was pressed to protect its own assets from destruction it's natural to imply that they would find it extremely difficult to protect Italy's communication lines to its Empire and all those issues caused by industrial bottlenecks are now magnified tenfold because what little they do manufacture is unlikely to end up anywhere it will have an effect on the war. 
That last bit really sums up the whole war effort. Everything in the Italian war effort was a circular mess of self perpetuating failure. The failure of one element led to the failure of the others and then vice versa. 

Rotflmao.  I had to go open it to see if that was just you or did someone edit the release.  If that is me I know what I was doing- using my super powerful optics to see just when the hell I might be able to retire.

NATO Operational Combat in Europe or something like that? I forget that particular one, but I like a couple of others  
Nuclear Weapons - Either player, feeling his position is hopeless, may overturn the game table. He forfeits the game, but we hope he enjoys losing so spectacularly. Use of tactical nukes: if one of the players resorts to the use of tactical nukes, spray zippo lighter fuel over the game and set it to fire. The effect is comparable to reality.
 

So did I beat you with the Blue AI plan, or did Redforce win the day ?
P

MINUTE 13
I am not sure but, on the right, I may have a good location for watching the village. I am sending my Scout team there.

I have lot of difficulties to find a good way to enter this village. Moving here (below screenshot), I might be protected from the fires from the leftmost woods. But, there are still these houses in front of us. I suppose the LMG team could go at the same spot than the Scout team to suppress those houses if, with our ROE, the LMG team still hear the enemy.

What is important guys, even if the situation is not really good for me, I am having fun. For a game, this is essential.

> And if games are expensive to make and require anticompetitive pricing - then maybe the business model of said developer is messed up?
I can guarantee you Battlefront's business model is messed up.  The product they labor over is a niche one so no matter how good it is the target market is small.  If they took that same effort toward a mass appeal game they would make a hell of a lot more money.  I thank them for sticking with CM.

Whilst this is inline with 60s Societ thinking as I pointed out Soviet plans from that era that have been proven real and are readily available envisioned hitting Vienna with several multi megaton strategic weapons neutral or not.

Some facts to go with all this fascinating punditry.

Firing the 152 mm gun/launcher on the Sheridan WOULD decollimate the infrared beam transmitter from bore axis, killing ATGM capability. This was because of the shock loads on a very light chassis and was reported in ARMOR magazine in the late 70s or early 1980s. Never saw any such discussion regarding the much heavier and stoutly constructed M60A2. What I did see were complaints about what a beast it was in terms of maintenance, what with all that advanced tech.
Shortly after the Berlin Wall fell, Armed Forces Journal, a big deal defense magazine, published a brief but harrowing report of a key finding from a recovered Soviet war plan for Europe. Hope you're sitting down. It envisioned the use of no fewer than 200 tactical nuclear weapons (strategic weapons held in reserve as a deterrent) and being to the English Channel in two weeks. Memory hazy as to CW, but I recall no mention of BW. Would further note the Russians had 'mask breaker" agents to defeat respiratory protection and new gen CW weapons combat tested in Afghanistan--Novichok (recently in the news) and a super powerful knockout agent called Blue X,. The last was used in Afghanistan for sure. And let's not forget the tricothecene Yellow Rain munitions. Don't buy the bee poop nonsense. It doesn't cause whole villages to projectile vomit blood, which is but one of the grisly effects.

The Russians didn't trust the Poles as allies and didn't at all relish the thought of the Poles being in a position to strangle their all-important rear and transshipment point (rail gauge conversion) where reinforcements and supplies came in from Russia. Suvorov/Rezun says this was the view when he was in the GRU working in the GRU HQ for the Carpathian Military District, and I've seen it elsewhere. Meanwhile, we in the West were concerned about the significant force increment and modern equipment the Poles contributed to the overall effort, including highly capable SOF equipped to do Skorzeny type false flag ops while equipped with the right vehicles!
What was the only NATO (including US) ground force unit that scared the Russians, per Suvorov/Rezun? The BAOR.  The GRU was so obsessed with it that when a TOP SECRET message from agents of the Carpathian Military District reported two Chieftains had been seen on a certain bridge, but the agents failed to note direction of travel, GRU there sent a blistering admonishment regarding this, for it was vital to know whether the tanks were being added to or subtracted from the BAOR's force strength. 
Finally, as I've said many times, if BFC is going to do a Fulda Gap game, it is essential that the armor-anti-armor situation be correctly depicted. As I've noted previously, we were grossly deficient on both ends of the equation. LAW was obsolete, likewise Dragon, even TOW until mod after mod was fielded. In fact, the classified assessment in 1984 was that the only two  weapons we had that could reliably defeat Russian MBTs frontally were the Hellfire and the mighty Maverick. On the other end of the scale, we discovered that in the early 1960s, in response to the T95 we didn't build), the Russians had developed and deployed HEAT munitions which would defeat that MBT's silceous cored armor. CIA's assessment in 1985, and which was briefed to some 200 defense contractor threat specialist personnel, was that the HEAT round recovered from PT-76s (using the same gun as the T-34/76) could get a frontal kill on the brand new XM1. Lots of gasps in the auditorium over that one. Felt nauseous. We also discovered that static firing cannon launched Russian HEAT munitions was a bad idea. Why? It had to do with the way the warheads were designed to take advantage of the impact kinematics, resulting in performance understatement of some 40%. Memory fuzzy on the missile side of things. This list isn't complete by any means, but I think it important to note that Shtora has proven to have significant effect vs. even TOW 2 in Syria. That being the case, I shudder to think what it would've done to stock TOW. In a nutshell, we were in a horrible situation in armor-anti-armor at a time when we were counting on our tech to get us long range kills to thin the horde, but the Russians had the cards to win the ground war, and that was their General Staff conclusion. But if you read the debriefings of top Russian defense officials, they didn't attack because of our strategic superiority. There was also the small matter that they were reading our mail in real time, thanks to the Walker-Whitworth spy op which gave the Russians key settings for crypto gear recovered from the USS Pueblo by Russian crypto specialists who went to North Korea. Said ex-KGB Major General Kalugin flatly of the situation, had war come "We would have won."
Regards,
John Kettler
 
 

You're certainly right there. There must have been multiple millions of pages of planning documents generated by that and all the other possible battlefields for a NATO/Warpac confrontation.
Michael

That's weird. I completely missed the refresh monkey part! I am slipping in my old age. Pretty soon I'll be just like Emrys, eating tapioca and screaming at the mailman because they raised the price of stamps again..
 
Mord.

That's the thing about demos that pre-date the final game release. You get a peek at the last remaining to-fix items still in the Beta build. Consider it an 'easter egg'.  

Glad that things are coming along... but it would be really great if we could have the base game and the British Forces add on first, I mean... who's really interested in a bunch of web foots? 

You know, Steve, it's actually pretty cool when you can come on these forums, and not only talk a little bit about the development stages of a game (when time permits), but simply to shoot the breeze with us from time to time
Guys...Your not going to get that from Big Game Developers.

Big Game Developers? To be fair, I've never seen Steve in the flesh, he might be *huge*.

An even better example was GDW's Fall of France. I always wanted to try the sane option where the charge into Belgium was not obligatory to see if the Germans would still win anyway, but the damn game took so long to set up and play, and took up so much room in my apartment that I never got around to it.
Michael

Never in all my games. If I start seeing it now, I will blame you two.

Michael

Well, that's the thing -- it's not with all the trimmings. It's also got a lot of content behind microtransactions (at launch). As a customer, "Games are expensive to make", is not really an excuse when their competitors offer a better deal. Go up in price, and you'll get even less sales (optimization problem). How much do they spend on marketing? How much do they spend on bonuses? That's additional overhead that does not add quality to their product.
I'll admit, I like GTA V's model -- and my friends do too. Maybe why it is so damn successful. You buy the game for standard price, you get a singleplayer campaign, and full multiplayer with regular FREE updates. Sure, they sell Shark Cards, which are microtransactions -- but Shark Cards are just in-game currency. You do not need it to access any of the content, as you can buy anything in the game with PvE money.
No pre-order bonuses, no dlcs, no paid mods, no paid currency -- you get the game, you have the game. If I can get quality content for cheaper -- I'm there, dude!

Dude, CK II is a minor offender. I'm not a fan of excessive DLC, but they got nothing on the big boys (Ubisoft, EA, Activation-Blizzard...) Bethesda is becoming a bad boy, too... (Creationist Club, no mod support, less quality content per dollar)
Look at the new AC game? A game designed around microtransactions, with a 150 dollar Ultimate edition -- ON LAUNCH! Look at what EA did to the SW Battlefront franchise. Bioware is now making a cookie cutter open world multiplayer shooter -- like everyone else. They're legit selling F2P games, these days. It's gotten so bad that I think even the mobile market is blushing in comparison.
I don't know a single Paradox game that even touches microtransactions. Their games are usually released with above-average content -- for below than standard price for games. I like how Graviteam handles DLC. There's a lot of it but it's generally substantial and you know what you're getting. CM games are even more substantial -- I have yet to complete the content of an entire game. There's also RNG missions and user content up the wazoo (which I haven't gotten around to yet). Then, I get Destiny 2 and seasons pass (buying hypothetical glorified free dlc early), I beat the campaign, reach max level and beat endgame in like a week.
The game wasn't Big Rigs, was it? xD Yeah, that's sadly a story I've heard a few times. At least they shipped an improved version, I've bough one or two games that promised they'd change -- but never did. One of my favourite games, KoTOR 2, had to cut a lot of content for Christmas release. It took a decade for fans to reconstruct a significant chunk of cut content.
I feel you, man. Plenty of customer companies that are internally conflicted about what they want from a design, or simply do not know what they want or why they want it. Most irrational customers are older folk that want things done a certain way, simply because that's what they're most familiar with. Which is something many of us are guilty about.

Yep, same in the non gaming industry. Thankfully we only have a few unreasonable and very few irrational customers but they are there.
 
Yuck - that sounds uncomfortable. Clearly unethical but their assessment of the business reality sounds like it was correct. Still - no cool.

Yep, I agree and I think a rational person can tell the difference.
Like I said, "rational person". There are guys that are gonna scream because that is their nature. EVERYTHING should be in the release even if it takes five years to create the content first. Just idiocy on a level I can't fathom.
Music to my ears.
 
I've been holding off posting an official update because there's been an annoying detail and a few other things that needed to get nailed down first.  It's pretty much where I need it to be, so expect a post in a few days. -Steve
And this one, yesterday:
"That said, I've been wanting to make a post that *IS* meaningful and *WILL* do something other than say the same old thing.  But like so many other things, life is not that simple and I can't make the post yet.  If wishes were gold then we'd be retired by now " -Steve
From here:
 
 
Mord.

That's pretty funny and true. But on the other side of the argument you get guys like Crusader Kings II players b****ing that every DLC should've been in the main game. Or you don't get the full experience if you don't have all the expansions. And my thought is, well, it took them five years to get here, so basically your argument is they should've spent five more years developing the game before they released it. In which case they'd get heat for taking eight years or so to make it. It's a no win situation because in the end a lot of gamers are just b****es. They'd cut their own heads off to spite their nose.
I love companies that spend years adding features and content to a good title instead of abandoning it six months after it comes out , just to make a watered down new and improved version as quickly as possible (that's a cash grab IMO). It keeps a good game fresh and gives it longevity. I couldn't of been happier than when BFC announced they'd keep all tiles at the same engine level. I hope that's the future of many wargames. I've seen a few that are doing it now.
 
Mord.

I'm not sure whether that's covered in their sales policy though. 

No suspenders, that's a good way to get dragged through a chipper.
Just between you and me...number 7.  The old man can rock a sports bra.
 
Mord.

I still have the modpack for CMSF1.
All that is really needed for the modpack to work in SF2 would be retextured infantry models. Everything else would port I believe. Of course it might be better to upgrade the ground textures with those from BS, and I'm sure there are other improvements that could be made. Still though, you could actually get yourself a decent looking formation of Soviets, or an even better fit with the DDR. Convert the T-72M1 to have the textures of a T-72G. Could be a fun project.

If employing combat power against an enemy is mind boggling to you, you need to reinforce your mind a bit. 
First off, the idea that using these assets against "primitive" insurgents being wasteful is wrong. Yes, these assets are expensive. You know what is infinitely more expensive? Human lives lost doing a job a Tomahawk/F-18 can do risk free. Preventing combat units from being used against actual targets in order to posture against nations that aren't targets is the literal definition of wasteful. By the way, just because you don't think those "primitive" insurgents are worthy of the munitions spent on them, I am quite positive you would be singing a different tune if they were lighting you up. Even if you were indifferent in said situation, I am quite content in the tens of thousands of lives that have been saved as a direct result of those supposedly "wasted" munitions being used against those supposedly "primitive" insurgents. 
Second, the US Navy is not overstretched. The Navy operates 10 supercarriers and is building more that are a newer generation. The supercarrier is an asset the US has with no equal. Carrier Strike Groups (CSGs) are assigned to all of the worlds major oceans. I can assure you, that having 1 or 2 carriers operating in the Persian Gulf and Mediterranean is not "overstretching" the rest of the 8 carriers, or their deployment rotations. The CSG's that are "confronting" the Russians and Chinese in both the Atlantic and Pacific are not negatively effected by Middle East deployments of carriers that are assigned to that part of the world to begin with. 
The Apache exists. Fixed wing propeller aircraft are redundant and are less effective at doing the same job. If an Apache can't solve the problem, a slow moving prop plane won't be any better. At that point you need bigger assets, like A-10's/F-15E's/etc. Designing an airframe specific to one type of conflict that would be useless in other forms of conflict is wasteful. 
As it turns out, a (very) small sliver of that bureaucratic inertia is a good thing. Without it, the US Navy would have scrapped all of its carriers just after WWII, as @Vet 0369 pointed out.