Hamstersss

Dalem, could you tell me what the parable thread is about?

Um, no. By good fortune I missed out on periods and pregnancy and now you're asking me to experience the culinary equivelent of both, simultaneously? No, madam. Only women have the fortitude to eat haggis. It's a genetic fact. Well, women and Scots, the former because of the fortitude thing, the latter because of the moronosity thing. Edited to spell haggis right. As if anyone gives a good goddamn how to spell it. And to add: One crepes, two crepes, three crepes, four.

See, see what happens when an incompetant tries to pull off a heresy? Lame-o. Loser. Baptist. Look, earless one, you can have your damned, stupid bull. And Hiram can put up new curtains. And Joe Shaw (Who never acknowledged my damned compliment, thereby proving himself to be not only an unmitigated stick of a man, but also an egregiously ill-mannered lout) can install his jacuzzi. And YK2 can bolt in the ol' trapeze, whatever. Just one thing. One little thing. Can we stop posting lameass, stoopid pictures? Not pictures of doofuses for all to mock, but like, glasses of wine and half-nekkid bims on redneck machinery. Mormon wives, UN dogs, aforementioned doofi plates, those are great, but the rest make my eyes bleed. They make smilies look like haiku.

I thought luddites were just against technology--you know, not just hollow charges but also normal rounds and the infantry guns that fire them and computers and video games, that kind of thing. It's the Amish who are against change in general (And though that tends to include modern technology now, that is simply an unintended side-effect. Or maybe you mean that BFC and its fans are acting a little too set in their ways. Likely one of the latter two. The only luddite here is Dalem, and he's definitely a reformed neo-confucian luddite, basically a Baptist. There are, however, quite a number of Greek Orthodox posters and a disturbingly large minority of Amish CM players.

Any chance of it running on Linux or is that just a pipe dream?

But, but, but, he used 'mayhap'! You can't fault a man for his love of the occasional rejoinder, sir. No, no. No. No... No. Goodness, he/she/it/that is both drunkard and ponficatus primus non plurus. This is a rare bird, like the phoo-bird of South American lore, and you know the rules with rare birds. Ah, but you do not. Nay, sir, you shall not brick it. Let me explain: The phoo-bird, you see, blesses us all with its offering. We are all blessed with holy, drippy sacrement. Yes, when the phoo ****s, wear it.

Joe Shaw, you force me to say it, in the immortal tradition of William Allen White... We who hate your gaudy guts, salute you.

We've so deviated from the poor SG44... With that ignored, what hope did Germany have? Should they have just stopped with France and entered a cold war with Britain (And likely America?) From what I've heard, they didn't need to go to war with the US when Japan did. Was Barbarossa just Germany starting a war with Russia before Russia did the same back to them or could the continent have stabilized with a Greater Germany and a French rump state? If war with Russia was inevitable, did that doom Germany to destruction no matter what (Would they have benefitted from a defensive war? Would it have affected US involvement if they were the attacked instead of the attacker)? Was WWII at its scope unavoidable or could Germany have won a Tactical/Minor Victory*? I'm more conversant with the Pacific theatre from a causal standpoint and it seems that Japan had been forced into war with the Western powers (And by 'forced' I must stress that I'm not being an apologist for the Imperial government; I suppose I mean it in a realpolitick sense). I know that in the economic miracle in Germany was sustained through fascist policies regarding military investment, was it at the point where it was the case with Germany that they had to have a World War II? *In the CM sense, of course, it was after all a strategic conflict.

All roads lead to Germanboy?

Agreed. And even so, with every victory, that's one more nest of hornets the Fuhrer needs to garrison. I think the latter half of the war against Japan was just vanity for the US and, if we had to, we would have scaled it down after retaking the Phillipines ("Be right back, Emperor, we've got a Fuhrer to stomp."). Japan, even more than Germany, would take years to create a viable force to threaten even a token American presence in Asia. We'd end up with a Chinese Korea and a Chinese Vietnam, but that wouldn't be nearly as bad as a Soviet Korea and a French Vietnam. I'm assuming the same timeframes for everything, Pearl Harbors and such, and I'd think that, even if experiencing more success in Russia (Perhaps because of it), Africa wouldn't be the toughest nut to crack. We still had Patton, he was a decent general, and even a more battered Russia would be a problem for the Germans. I guess that depends on Russia's breaking point. Does it take Stalin's bloody corpse being dragged through the streets of Tankograd or does he start getting practical after Moscow falls? Just think how much that stretches things and how little any of that stretch relates to SG44s. It wouldn't be WWII, that's for sure, and that's how drastically you'd need to change it to give Germany a fighting chance. I think the propaganda engines were running so hard back then that to this day we overestimate German soldiers, German technology and, really, Germany's chances of taking over the world. Stuck in our heads are reels of goosestepping ubersoldiers and great big black arrows streaming out from a cartoon Germany and into Europe and beyond.

Oh, very good, carry on.

It seems like you're right (And I have to stress again that I'm no scholar of WWII). Even assuming a successful Operation Sealion and a Russia beat back to the Urals, I can't imagine Germany standing against a fully mobilized USA on its western front. But then you get into questions of American willingness to fight a truly hard war, but I think its showing in the ACW proved a willingness to do that. Whenever I look at WWII, I see a lot of American frivolity when it came to materiel and strategic push (Namely the massive amount of strategic bombers, but I'm of the school of thought that strategic bombing was the definition of inefficient). In such a counterfactual, I'd assume the USA would just take its other hand out from behind its back and overwhelm Germany, who would never get the chance to rebuild Russia's industrial base and throw the weight of its newfound conquest into the match (After all, an occupied Western Russia would be in far worse state than Vichy). Hopefully, one day Battlefront will make a game accurate enough that we'll be able to figure it out.

Hey, Dalem, you think you could sum up that several hundred posts of 1:1 for me?

Maybe if we ask Steve real nice he's open-source the whole thing and then we can run it on Linux. Yes, I'm aware that OS software does not necessarily run on Linux. It's a joke, son.

Are you taking requests for undoings, because I can think of at least one person I wouldn't mind seeing stripped of his titles, lands, pets (No, Bauhaus, not his clothes, so you can sit down)... I'll give ya a hint, his name starts with Joe Shaw and ends with 'That rotten SOB of a Justicar'.

Not content with jumping the gun, I've decided to theoretically hop over a purely theoretical firearm and ask: How much will it cost to license CMx2's engine? Will there be any licensing considerations for hobbyists or is this too risky in terms of brand dilution? I'm sure the answers to these questions are not set, yet, nor do I expect a firm answer now, but I'm curious and probably not the only one interested, so any general feelings on the subject would be appreciated.

There was one on the Mississipi that was, apparantly, quite a fine ship, but they could never get it engines. What I mean is, had they managed to have a small ironclad navy, they could have delayed Anaconda for a little while (Until the North got ironclad production up to snuff, at which point, as with all wars, their massive industrial advantage would eventually crush the South). That's the way it seems in WWII, as well. Had the US had a real reason to phase out the Sherman, I can only assume they would have. And had the Soviet Union or Britain had to contend with jet fighters, again I think it stands to reason that they would. The only way a small power can win against a large is in the strategic/tactical execution of a war, not with gadgetry. When we dropped the a-bombs on Japan, they surrendered, but we were nuking a nation that had already watched its navy and territorial possessions reduced to nothing. If Germany started nuking Russian cities (Or, even more of a stretch, American cities) it would have escalated the war, not brought it to a sudden end. That's because, when it comes down to it, Germany was a small nation without much in the way of natural resources or manpower, facing up against enormous nations with huge stores. It seems like, from my amateur view, that it was glaring mistakes that doomed Germany. Switching from airfields to cities in the Battle of Britain, short-changing Army Groups in Russia, quitting paratroopers after Crete (And goodness knows what else on an operational and tactical level). Its analagous with the South, which manages to screw up too many things to win. You can't blame them, after all, they're like the Tampa Bay Devil Rays playing the New York Yankees, they have to play a perfect game AND hope that their opponents don't, whereas the Allies and the Union could afford to absorb all manner of collosal mistakes and still achieve victory. To stick with the analogy, counterfactuals that focus on technology are like baseball fans that say, "We woulda beat the Yankees if we'd had A-Rod/Bonds/Clemens" when the game was lost not due to bad play but bad managing. After all, what if Germany hadn't pulled off some amazing successes or Russia hadn't made some idiotic blunders, then the game isn't even close. Still, I think those early successes (And in this you can make a direct analogy to the South in the ACW) that doomed the Axis to such total defeat. If they hadn't set such a high standard, it could've ended along the lines of a normal war and not devolved into one of unconditional surrender. Instead, Lee kept obsessing about one great battle (He'd won so many, why not one more when it counted? End result: Gettysburg), Hitler kept holding on to the idea of executing one more brilliant operation (They'd pulled off so many, why not one more when it counted? End result: Battle of the Bulge) and Japan kept grasping for one more Pearl Harbor-like decisive victory based on fanatical devotion. I'm sure I've oversimplified it, but it seems pretty straightforward.

You... people... make... me... sick... Not as much, though, as other people. But close.

Why, naturally it's a rifled musket that, while quite a crudite at parties, still goes down smoooooth. Which is to say, um... Doh! I think, had the South managed to field some ironclads (They maybe, maybe might have) then they'd have definitely been in better shape economically. Not only could they still trade with Europe, but they wouldn't have lost their third-largest city early in the war. Still, the Union had them beat there, too, and I seriously doubt even if Britain herself went to war with the Union that Northern naval supremacy was in doubt. Granted, it was a greenwater navy, but at the end of the war the Union had an enormous number of ironclads, with even bigger ones in the works. Everyone who talks about British/French recognition is just what-if'ing themselves into a conquered Canada and French Mexico. The same thing is probably true about the SG44, the super u-boats, the jet fighters, the nuclear bombs, you name it. Germany could have produced everything and if they're still just as stupid at Stalingrad, Leningrad, Battle of Britain, Battle of the Atlantic--they still lose. Confucius say: Don't get into a war of stuff with two of the biggest stuff-producers on the planet.

No, they just made it interesting and gave the History Channel material. In order of importance, the Civil War was determined by: Industrial vs. Agrarian power in a stand-up, Industrial War. One-Sided Naval Theatre Strategic Awareness (Sherman, primarily, then Grant, Forrest) Tactical Aptitude (Lee, lack thereof in the case of McClellan) New Technologies Applied in War (Air-Conditioning, Ironclads, Rifling, Submarines, Repeating Rifles, but mostly Railroads) After all, most of the Rebel victories occurred in the beginning of the war, when their poor and underequipped army still had significant stocks of smoothbore rifles.

They did, the Spencer carbine, which was a cumbersome piece of equipment but, in comparison to the Enfield, pretty darn good. A repeating Spencer riflee was introduced after the war, The Buffalo Soldiers used it, among others. But this shows just the problem with counterfactuals and, I think, support for the initial disregard. These weapons take ammunition, significant amounts of it, and while industrial giants like the Union and the United States, respectively, could produce more than enough fuel, ammo and men, countries such as Germany and the Confederacy could only have won their respective wars through superior tactics, not superior technology.

While I demur to Michael on matters regarding WWII, the American Civil War was a small-arms battle and a change in small-arms technology would've affected it. The heavy artillery in use at the time was too unweildy except for siege and, in those cases (Such as Petersburg and Vicksburg), sieges were won through starvation and maneuver, not shelling. The majority of casualties were a result of big, accurate, rifled bullets, and any technology that would've increased the amount of big, accurate, rifled bullets would've had a significant effect on ACW battlefields. Of course, if I had a choice between 20,000 AK47s, a battery of 155s and the Battleship Iowa, I'd take the latter. With proper naval support, then the ACW becomes interesting.

Okay persons I loathe, I suppose I should do this quick, before the new thread starts and a bunch of know-nothing noobs see it. What? No, Bauhaus, not that. Go here and download the file with SETUP in the title (Unless you're installing it on Linux, in which case I'm gonna assume you're computer-savvy enough to figure that out on your own). Then, go and play the game titled A World Lost Slowly and the scenario Korea 2006. You can play other games, if you'd like, ya buncha idiots, but if you do, also make sure to play Opal once or twice. Then, either here in the Pool, or in an electronic missive to me, or here you can publicly lambast me about how terrible and un-fun it is. And then I can fix it and you can find some other mean-spirited, hateful thing to say about it and we can repeat it over and over again. You bastards.

What the holy hell, that's the worst string of posts I've ever read in an MBT. Sickening. Third grade? Punctuation? Daisies? Fishnuts, you people are imbeciles. Look, everyone knows Mensch gets all conjugal with the livestock, eats 3-day old Ethiopian food, washes with blubber and engages in currency speculation--how's insulting his frickin' grammar gonna make any difference? The man once ate an entire, live hippopotamus with nothing but a pair of chopsticks and you think telling him he didn't graduate third grade is gonna make a dent? And Mensch, what's with pointing out how 'sensitive' people are about grammar and punctuation. Jesus God, put some effort forth, lad, and tell Boo that you think his obsession with Justicarate cod-pieces is a little disturbing. Bring up his failed stint in the USFL. Eat his soul. Sleep with his many, voluptuous sisters. Befriend his dog. Something, anything, with a little more grit, a little more oomph, than this after-school special crap. Show some class you buncha sissy-pansies.

Reasons are for chumps, we're just looking for excuses.